More lessons from the cat....

I had a wordless sermon early one recent morning as I left bed about 6 a.m. for my rocker, where I keep a heating pad to help the stiffness from a lingering back issue. As soon as I settled in (ah…warm…soothing), I became aware of a pair of amber-green eyes mounted on a gray striped head staring at me. Thus began the four-point sermon, in true alliterative speech outline style:
LOOK at likely source of nourishment (buyer of cat food, mostly healthy, some filler).
LISTEN for the golden words: “Aug-cat, are you ready for breakfast?”
LICK the dish clean.
LINGER in case the human says, “Do you need more?”

After spooning that disgusting cat food in his bowl, I settled back in my rocker for more back-warming and brought my Bible to my lap. As Aug-cat slurped away, I realized there were some similarities with my “feeding time” with God.
LOOK to God, who wants to nourish me with His Word (100% healthy, no filler!)
LISTEN with my eyes for the golden words that express His love or correction.
LICK the dish clean. I read with a pen, linking repeated words, making comments in the margins.
LINGER, savoring what I’ve just read, then talking to God. If I want more, I know His answer:
LEAP back in.

Actually, the cat does say something to me in cat language. He trills a little “brrruppp?” and turns on his purr. Feeding time over, he’s at the back door, scratching at the threshold, eager to face his fearful world and protect his territory…for about half an hour.

Oh, cats. Sometimes the analogies end....except to remember that I should be even more eager for my morning "manna" than he is for cat slop!

Give and Take: A Guide to Friendship

Photo: The wall of my office where I have a display of "friendship"-related sayings--daily reminders that friendship is both a gift and responsibility.

A reader of the Dec. 1 blog, "In praise of Girrll-friends," expressed her desire to have such close relationships, but how? My best answer, as trite as it seems, is that to gain friends, you must be a friend. We need to take the initiative in getting to know people on non-threatening turf, like group activities--even if we need to set those events up ourselves. Friendships begin in shared experiences, like volunteering together, having a pizza-and-video night, walking a nature trail together. I know of some friends who go to yard sales together! One time I stopped at a local eat-in bakery, I noticed a group of older women having a great time together at two corner tables. They keep their friendships growing over coffee and a sweet roll.

As I pondered how to encourage this person, I thought of an article I wrote several years ago. Below is what first appeared in Pursuit in Spring 1992, titled, "Give and Take: A Guide to Friendship." I know it's lengthy but hope you'll read to the end of it, and find something to encourage you.

I was midway through a mundane Saturday morning when the phone rang. “Hi, this is Char,” came my friend’s voice from 250 miles away. The morning’s dullness dissipated as we chatted. Moving away usually takes a heavy toll on friendships. Belong long, once-close friends are reduced to sparse greetings at Christmas. But sometimes there are long-time friends like Char, to whom I am bonded by common struggles. She is nearing 40 and single; I didn’t marry until 34. Thirteen years after my mother died of cancer, hers also died that way. We write and call. When she stops on business trips, she’s once again “family.” One time she gave our then-small children a stuffed toy lamb from New Zealand, named “Lamby-kins.” When our kids grew up and pared down their huge collection of stuffed animals, Lamby-kins was kept--so strong was the symbolic connection to her enduring friendship.

LEVELS OF FRIENDSHIP
Like favorite stuffed toys, friendships change with the ebb and flow of life. They vary in numbers and intensity. They would graph like a pyramid: many acquaintances at the base, a few closer friends in the middle, and a few, very close, at the top. Psychologists have estimated that the average person makes 500 to 2,500 acquaintances a year. These come from everyday contacts through leisure, work, or religious activities. Such people are friends only as their interests or memberships cross ours.

Deeper than “acquaintances” come “core friends.” We see these friends more regularly and usually know them by first name. We have 20 to 100 such friends from work, school, clubs, church, and the neighborhood. They may be relatives with whom we have only limited contact. They may be people we admire and seek out as “mentors” for a period of time. Finally, a person develops an average of one to seven “intimate friends.” These are people who, as one saying puts it, double our pleasure and divide our grief. We feel comfortable together even when we do nothing and share few words. It’s enough to have each other’s presence.

WHY WE NEED FRIENDS
“No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote John Donne (1573-1631), long before psychologists started amassing the evidence that friends are essential to physical and emotional health. A study conducted over a nine-year period in California showed that people without a good network of relationships had more health problems and a mortality rate two to five times higher than others. Stress-related health problems seemed to increase as a person had fewer friends and relatives to help him cope. In line with these findings, other studies showed:
*Pregnant women under stress, without supportive relationships, had three times more complications than those with a support network.
*The divorced and widowed had a higher rate of disease, including terminal cancer.
*Unemployed men who had a good support from family and friends reported less depression, fewer illnesses, and lower levels of cholesterol.
*Women who had a close friend to confide in were less prone to depression.

Friendship answers several deep human needs. These include the desire to be known, to give, to be encouraged, and to have someone to admire and follow. I experienced this as a single woman in my first job in a strange town. I felt very lonely and vulnerable. Then a widowed nurse 50 years my senior, whom I met at church, invited me to dinner. Learning of my unpleasant experiences in the local public laundry, she offered use of her washer and dryer. That grew to a weekly Friday night “date” to share our leftovers for dinner while I did my wash. My laundry money (left in a special piggy bank I bought her) gave her some extra change, but I benefited beyond price as I was nurtured, encouraged and mentored. I had friends my own age, too, but none as true and caring as this older woman.

Ironically, those deep human desires that draw us to one another in search of friendship also keep us from making friends. We want to be known, but we fear rejection if we are truly known. We want to give, but we fear being turned down. We want to be encouraged, but risk being despised. We want models, but wonder if they will fail us.

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS
To make friends, we must be friends. We have to take that first step which takes the attention away from our own struggle with shyness and focuses attention on the other person. Friendship starts with going where there are people who share our values and interests. It begins with a smile and a greeting: “Hi, I’m John [or Jane]. I’ve not met you before.” Learn a person’s name right away—a person’s own name is the sweetest sound in his language. Say it several times in the first conversation. Use memory devices, if necessary. Offer your own as an ice breaker. A jolly, “ample” switchboard operator at work volunteered her own memory phrase, “Kelly with the big belly.” I never forgot that!

Keep the conversation focused on the other person. Ask open-ended questions about the other person’s work, schooling, or interests. This question often works for me: “How did you get interested in that field?” Finally, make them feel important. Encourage and admire them: “I’ve always appreciated the way nurses help ease the emotional pain.” “Without music teachers like you, we’d lose a precious part of our culture.” “I could use some hints from an experienced mother like you on helping my children keep their rooms clean.”

HOW TO KEEP FRIENDS
As these “casual” friendships deepen over time into “core” and “intimate” friends, they’ll need nurturing to continue. The acronym FRIEND is a good way to remember how to grow a friendship.
F—for FUN. Friends aren’t afraid to be crazy around each other. Margaret kidnapped Irene on her birthday and took her to a park. She set an old picnic table with china and candles, put a birthday hat on her friends, and served her a birthday breakfast with candles in the eggs.
R—for READY TO LISTEN. Rick was going through a divorce and needed to talk out his confusion and anxieties. His friend Tom assured Rick he could call any time the emotional baggage got too heavy. He did.
I—for INTERESTING. Iron sharpens iron, a proverb says, and so one person sharpens another. Janice’s love for great literature got Jamie into books that broadened her reading tastes. Mike helped John with a remodeling project, and realized he could handle a hammer after all.
E—for ENCOURAGING. Jenny’s out-of-town friend has a child with cancer. Regularly she writes “thinking of you” notes. When Ken wanted to change careers and go back to college, his friend slipped him a check as “seed money” for that goal.
N—for NOURISHING. A friend feeds the relationship by remembering dates and events that are uniquely “you.” He celebrates birthdays, births of children, and achievements. She brings over a meal when you’re sick or under pressure. He’s there with emotional support when a family member is injured or dies.
D—for DEPENDABLE. A friend is loyal and reliable. When Sue confides in Betty, she knows her secrets are safe. Norm has seen Joe at the worst in his addiction. He’s now seeking help and knows Norm will stay by him in the struggle. Howie’s personal and physical problems have distanced many people, but Andy remains true. When Howie needs a listener or an extra hand, he knows Andy will juggle his obligations to make time. Andy also does yard work for Howie’s widowed mother when Howie is away.

How many friends do we need? Ben Jonson (1572-1637) wrote, “True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.” Over a lifetime we’ll come in contact with thousands. But true friends will be there in our greatest need—and be glad they are. I met Peggy through church and our friendship grew during a commitment to exercise together. I knew she was becoming a true friend when she risked my giving her a home permanent!
One Mother’s Day morning she broke her foot. I felt privileged to be able to take her to the emergency room. When a cast put her in crutches for more than two months, I insisted on coming to help clean and do laundry. “Only a real friend can fold your underwear,” I teased. “Besides,” I added, nearly falling down her stairs one day as I helped, “I may need you when I break my hip!”

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare wrote, “A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities.” In the cycles of friendship, we each will have a term of infirmities. A healthy friendship has give-and-take on both sides. But as we give, we take away something of immeasurable value: the joy of being part of something that really works.

First published in Pursuit (Spring 1992), Copyright © 1992 by Jeanne Zornes.
*Most names have been changed to protect privacy

Radiant hope

Shown: a rainbow in the sky north of our home (you can see the snow on the rooftop). I was working at the computer and took an "eye-break," and this glorious sight was just out my window. I speak in this blog about iridescence, and here's one example of the creative wonders we can see--one that clearly reminds us of a Creator.

A few years ago when I taught writing through a correspondence school, I had one student who aspired to write travel articles. He must have had a mathematician’s brain because no matter how much I encouraged him to appeal to the senses in describing things, he’d end up using cardboard words like “lovely” or “interesting.”

Make me taste, smell, see, touch this setting, I urged. Use figurative language. I gave him examples. Instead of, “It offers good ice fishing,” I suggested, “When the rising sun first spills pink on the glazed lake, dots of fishermen in bear-size neon parkas are already huddled around lucky holes.”

Okay, so I got a little carried away, but I really was trying to help him think outside the box. Sometimes, though, we simply can’t think outside the box. Describing Heaven is one such time.

I recently finished reading Randy Alcorn’s novel, Safely Home, about the persecution and death of a Chinese Christian. The novel ends in a sweep of grand scenes about how the author imagines Heaven. Even though Alcorn also wrote a scholarly book on Heaven, the bottom line is this: nobody knows for sure. No one has traveled to and from to report on it with credibility—except for Jesus Christ. He told us, “In my Father’s house are many”—and here he used the Greek word mone, which simply means “dwelling places.”

But we’ve been given glimpses—and this aside from those who claim to have had a vision of heaven while clinically dead. One such glimpse comes out of the first chapter of Ezekiel, which, coincidentally, I read in my Bible about the same time I was finishing up Alcorn’s book in my leisure reading.

The vision Ezekiel had of the glory of God defies description. In fact, the best he could say was that what he saw “looked like” or “appeared like” something known on earth. Over and over he used those conditional words. Artists who have attempted to draw what he described just can’t do it. Our finite minds can’t wrap around the magnitude and greatness of it, any more than a mosquito could understand an explanation of jet propulsion.

One thing caught my attention from Ezekiel 1: the repeated mention of glowing and radiant things. One such verse (29): “like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.” It made me think of the claim of Don Piper, author of 90 Minutes in Heaven, who said his vision of Heaven included a sense of a “bright iridescence.” Something “iridescent” constantly changes glittering colors. The closest I’ve come to such a sight is seeing the sun sparkle off a fresh snowfall. When that happens, I ponder how, if this little piece of earth is so glorious, how more so in Heaven.

I have to admit that when it comes to describing celestial habitations, my vocabulary is as limited as my student who said “the lake has good fishing.” Someday, though, we’ll know for certain what hides behind the veil between earth and Heaven. And what a glorious day that will be!

Some lessons from viral fame

Thanks to U-Tube, Nora was probably the most famous musician of 2007.That year, her owners uploaded a video of Nora playing the piano, and her renown went viral. Her style was, well, what you’d expect from a five-year-old cat from Philadelphia.

The big cat, rescued from a shelter by a piano teacher, had heard enough during her master’s lesson days to know that when you press those black and white things, they made noise. If you did it while someone was watching, they praised you. Though Nora had a decidedly eclectic style, a Lithuanian composer-conductor actually wrote a four-minute “catcerto” to a video of her random plunkings. Performed by the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, that too went viral on-line. Her owner said of Nora’s exploits, “She does like attention.” As the sixth animal in the household, it proved an effective way for her to get verbal praise and petting.

Fast-forward a few years to a talent competition in England, April 11, 2009. A very ordinary, even plain, 47-year-old unmarried woman stepped on stage and took the mike. The audience twittered over the audacity of this woman thinking she could make it where glamour and style counted.When she opened her mouth, the judges dropped theirs in amazement. As Susan Boyle brought vocal excellence and drama to “I Dream a Dream” from Les Miserables, her dream came true. Overnight, this unknown daughter of a miner and typist—youngest of ten born when her mother was 47—became an internet sensation. Ten minutes after hearing her sing, an engineer created the YouTube channel dedicated to her shocking “Britain’s Got Talent” performance. Just overnight, it generated 20 million views.

She was the unlikely winner. Because of oxygen deprivation at birth, she was always a bit “different” and as a child was bullied. But she found her love in singing, and regularly sang in her church choir and in karaoke bars. She took some singing lessons to improve her skills. Finally, to fulfill a promise to her late mother, she mustered the courage to audition.

Today, the frumpy look is gone. Her clothes are more stylish, and her hair and face show a beautician’s touch. But the voice is still there, smooth and vibrant. Remarkably, when asked what she’d do with her new wealth, Susan replied, “I’d like to get some teeth fixed but I don’t have a lot of needs.”

The difference between the two ‘net musicians? Nora was random, a novelty who thrived on attention.Susan quietly prepared, then dared to try. Nora reminds us that humor and fun can crop up in unusual places. Susan’s story reminds us that a lot of hard work precedes what the world calls “big breaks.”

Few, if any of us, will sing like Susan and wow a crusty panel of talent show judges. More of us will be asked to be faithful in becoming better at what we do well, regardless of public acclaim.It’s easy to be Nora the cat, looking for approval from The Master for some plunking around. It’s harder to take what God has given you, work at expanding and perfecting those skills, and blessing others along the journey. But someday, when you least expect it, your final performance will come and you’ll stand before The Master.

Now? Never forget Philippians 3:14: “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”