Morning Rounds and Evening Musings

This was on Oprah today. I didn't see it, but a friend passed it on to me today. It's both beautiful and tragic, as so many things in this world are.

Today was a good day because:

I got a surprise call from Wes (who I haven't seen since Monday) saying he was at Emory, and had time for a quick dinner before he headed to Grady for another overnight shift! That meant I got to see him a whole day earlier than I was planning!

And, I haven't had any panicked calls from volunteers waiting or confused about their transportation. This is the first time in 2 1/2 weeks that I haven't had my evening interrupted by transportation hassles.

The house is clean, I'm ahead of a deadline for an article I'm writing for Refugee Family Services, and my Anglican Theology prof gave us a two week extension on a doctrine paper we have due soon.

All in all, a good day. Now, time for some reading for class, a glass of wine, and a hot bath!

Dan and Erin Holcomb just posted this video about Advent Conspiracy, a movement I'm trying to get my church and Candler to join. I have done a lot of thinking (and not enough action) about simplicity and generosity, and there's no better time to put both of those into practice then at Christmas when Americans--Christian Americans-- are their most consumeristic.




Beyond the potential for giving and generosity for communities that don't enjoy the most basic resources for their survival and the fact that giving of ourselves--our time, our energy, ourselves--is MORE rewarding than giving or receiving stuff, why simplicity?

I would like to elaborate on this at some point, for now, I can think of several additional reasons, even though investing in our relationships and spending more money on others seems like reason enough:

1. It's better for the environment. A big part of the reduce, reuse and recycle equation is reducing and reusing. I know I'm far to quick to use as much as I ever have and toss it in the recycle bin rather than find ways to reuse or better yet--don't buy and consume so much crap in the first place!

2. The less money I need for stuff, the time I need to spend working to earn money to buy stuff. And that means more family time, more investment in the community and in my church. More rewarding relationships.

I don't think seeking simplicity in our lives has to be in response to guilt about having too much. I want to seek simplicity because it's a more attractive option than having too much--because relationships are more important, more rewarding and what Christ was certainly all about. So it's not in a spirit of self-sacrifice or deprivation or even about voluntary poverty as much as it is about choosing a better way, making a more rewarding choice--not a less rewarding one. For example, I truly, truly would rather have your stories and have you share a piece of my history with me and yours than I would new clothes. Really and truly.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! And thanks to Erin and Dan for reminding me about this issue, especially as Christmas shopping and gift giving is just over the horizon.

You can find out more about Advent Conspiracy at: www.adventconspiracy.org.

Dad apparently did his homework and sent my plea for stories to his family. My uncle Tom emailed me with week with a photo of my grandpa and his siblings 8 years after they came to America from the Netherlands. He also included the following from his cousin Larry (Not sure what that makes Larry to me...2nd cousin?). I tried to identify the relationship of each of these people to me in parentheses:

The Ten Harmsel clan came to America in 1920 when a whole bunch of brothers, including our grandpa (my great-grandpa), Herman, left the small town of Nijverdal and got on a boat to come across the Atlantic. They left tow sisters in the Netherlands--both of them single--Tante Dena and one other sister whose name I don't know. The sisters lived into their nineties, and I know that Grandpa Herman visited them when he went back to the Netherlands in the late sixties.

The brothers came with their aged parents. I think their mother died on the boat on the way over (although I"m not sure about that--she may have died just before they left). Their father (my great-great-grandpa) died shortly after they arrived in Iowa, and is buried there. The six or so brothers, with their wives and kids, all settled in northwest Iowa, around Hull (Perkins Corners, Doon, some other small towns in the vicinity).

After they were in this country nine years, when they were just starting to get on their feet, the Depression hit, and devastated all of them. Some were able to go on making a living, but Grandpa (my great-grandpa) was thrown out of work and plunged into terrible poverty. My dad (my great-uncle, I think) still remembers as clear as a bell the time in 1936 when the family had to auction off everything they owned in the world, and take what little money they could get for it and come to Zeeland, Michigan where Grandpa had found work. It was a very dark time for them, although it began getting a little better after 7 or 8 years in Zeeland.

But then World War II came along. The Ten Harmsel family had three sons in the army at the same time, and the whole gang was worried about their safety. As it turned out, my dad (great uncle again) didn't go overseas, but you dad (my grandpa) and Tony (another great uncle) did. And they were part of some of the worst action of the war--both on D-Day and, in the case of your dad, in the Battle of the Bulge, too.

As you may not know, I (dad's cousin) worked with your dad at De Leeuw Lumber Company from 1959 until '62 or '63. I rode with him from Zeeland every morning of the summer in those years. He was driving a '57 Chevy with a straight stick--a cool car as far as I was concerned. He never talked much about the war--said a few things, but the general impression I got was that he didn't care to linger too much on that experience. He came unwounded, while a lot of guys he knew didn't come back at all. And it was a sobering experience, not the sort of thing you take lightly or discuss much. (that car is not the actual car, but I wanted to see what a '57 chevy looked like).

He (my grandpa) was always cheerful, full of jokes (some of them off-color) and he was far and away the strongest guy at the lumberyard--a place where everybody was fairly tough. Herm could haul lumber off the boxcars with his bare hands (which were like leather) while everybody else wore gloves. He would handle 2x12's two or three at a time, while I had to grunt with just one. Yes, back in those days we unloaded boxcars full of lumber by hand. Nowadays it's all containerized and mechanized. We used to have little contests at the yard, where people would make guesses about, say, the length of a 2x4 laying on the ground a hundred yards way. Herm always won those bets. I remember one time when people were betting the 2x4 was either 14 or 16 feet long, but your dad said it wasn't either--he thought it looked like about 15' 3''. We sent a guy over with a tape measure and sure enough--it was a sixteen footer that had had 9" cut off. I was always amazed at the accuracy of his eye.

I don't think the De Leeuw brothers ever paid your dad all that well, but he really seemed to enjoy the work, and I never once heard him complain. He was, all in all, a real pleasure to work with, and to get to know in that way.

I think I know someone else with leathery hands who would probably put everyone in a lumberyard to shame. Hmmm. Wonder where he gets it? Also, I went online to see if DeLeeuw Lumber still existed. And they do! And they had a little history section on their page that talked about them starting up 1947 and being the first ones to use some kind of dump-truck technology or something. So, I swiped some pictures from their site.


This story makes me curious about even more, though, I must say!

-What was the town of Nijverdal like and what's it like now? Why did the Ten Harmsels leave the Netherlands? And why did the two sisters (my great-great aunts?) stay behind?

-Why Iowa?

-What happened to the other brothers who came over on the boat?

-Who are all the people in the photo and which one is my grandpa?

Also, just as an interesting and terrifying side note--please notice that the photo above has two sets of twins in it! None of my Grandma and Grandpa's kids (my uncles) were twins, but isn't there some idea that twins skip a generation? Oh crap! Hopefully, Grandma's genes and the Van Goor and Henricksen genes are dominant!

This week has been absolutely crazy. Not overly busy, but incredibly stressful. I had an exam on Tuesday, I'm teaching Sunday School on Sunday, and I've got two more reflections to write for our church's Advent devotional (and the readings for one of them is filled with judgment and God killing children--I'm not sure quite what to do with it!). On top of that, I've spent the last month trying to arrange transportation for all my volunteers who are traveling around Atlanta to volunteer. I finally found a taxi company to contract with, but every day there has been another disaster--volunteers are stranded out in Doraville with no clue where their taxi is, volunteers getting charged for their taxi when I've made it clear that our account should be charged instead. It's insane. And interfering with my school work, and with my general mental health!

While I wish I was back at our B & B on Amelia Island with a Corona in one hand and a good book in the other while dolphins go swimming by, there's no escaping school, work and everything else life throws at me for now. And I'm realizing I'm not the best at coping with these things! My perfectionism comes to a head and I find myself obsessing over 'getting it right' and feeling terrible when it doesn't. I have to fight the urge to constantly check up on everyone in my office and with those working in the taxi company. I hate being out of control.

What's more, having all these different things on my plate makes life feel really compartmentalized. I jump from class to work to the gym to homework to church work to trying to relax with Wes with hardly a moment's breath in between. My brain feels frazzled and pulled in a million directions. I feel tired and worn out from trying to be perfect and avoid mistakes. And I feel anxious when facing the fallout from my own mistakes or those of others.

So, I'm trying to breath. I'm trying to sit on the couch without music or tv or the email open or the phone.

Just sit. And breath. And pray. And relax.

Even if just for ten minutes in between these weird transitions my days bring.

Our church has been doing a Sunday School series about stories. Obviously, our Bible is full of them, and as a way of building community at church, we've been telling each other stories as well.

It has got me thinking about how embedded we are in story--how our brains organize information into stories, we remember things better when stories are attached and the whole history of our faith and what we know about God is through story. Even my anxiety-ridden dreams display the things that stress me out in complex story forms.

Just like the story of Israel tells us not only where we come from, but who we are right now, the story of our families tell us much more than history. I know some stories from both sides of my family, and from Wes' family too. But there are so many more I would like to know. And with both my grandpas gone, and all Wes' grandparents gone, I guess I'm feeling acutely aware that when someone dies, they take all those stories with them--some never to be recovered.

So, to the Henricksens and Ten Harmsels: instead of traditional gift-giving this season (as much as I love it!), tell me a story. Write it down. I would love to see the Van Goors and Ten Harmsels, the Henricksens and the Morks make this a family-wide effort for Christmas. To have everyone write down a significant story from their life, or a memory of someone else in the family would be invaluable. I know so very little about Grandpa Ten Harmsel, who died when I was a baby. And even though I know Grandpa Van Goor much better, to hear first-hand accounts or perspectives from Grandma is totally different. And while we know mom and dad, Scott and Karen much better than our grandparents in many ways, there is so much of your lives I wasn't around for or don't remember the same way or simply don't know about.


Here's some ideas of things I'd love to hear:

Your wedding day
The day you met your spouse
Your biggest mistake
Most embarrassing moment
the birth of a child
your first apartment
A holiday gathering
the day Grandpa and Grandma met my dad (or the day Grandma TH met mom)
Your 16th birthday
Your earliest memory
Dad--write down that story about the chicks from the hatchery. I've heard it a hundred times, but having it on paper would be great!And tell me more about Grandpa.
Your college roommate
A crazy thing you did
A prank you played on someone
A trip you took
Mom-tell me about the days at the cottage growing up. I have my own memories, but I'm sure they're much different.
your first job

I would love to have a collection of stories to pass down to my kids (should there by any...ahem!) and to have for myself. With our family scattered all across this nation, roots are important. And I want to discover those roots in the stories that have made me who I am, whether I know it right now or not.

This Saturday Night Live sketch is one of my favorites. It's been making the rounds for quite some time yet, but I know a few of you out there haven't seen it yet. SNL brought back Tina Fey just for the election season for obvious reasons.

Enjoy!