Post-Covid Reunions

Posted on June 7, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

For the first time since the pandemic, two of my grandsons came for a weekend overnight. These are the first two grandsons I babysat after I retired. These are my first two baby crushes. All you grandmothers know what I mean, that unbounded love for the vulnerable little ones placed in your arms.

So let me back up. Newly retired, when my daughter-in-law went back to work part-time, I offered my Mary Poppins services immediately. First, it was peek-a-boo. Then chase me. Then hide and seek. Then slow walks to the park noticing: storm drains, fire hydrants, roly poly bugs beneath the rocks, worms beneath the leaves, blue jays on the power lines, until we got to the swings and the sliding boards. Then there were stories and naps, building cities and knocking them down, learning letters and numbers, playing in the wading pool, eating popsicles on the porch, building snowmen in the backyard. No matter what we did, the fun was just being together.

When they moved across the state, oh, how I missed them! We visited as often as possible, but it was never enough.

Then came another grandson to babysit when my local daughter went back to work. And then his younger brother. Three days a week now we play and enjoy each other. The last time he left my house,  his mother said he cried, “Grandma,” all the way home.  

I have another daughter who lives a four-hour flight away. Of course, I can’t babysit for her little darlings, but as often as possible, I spread my wings and visit for a week or so. The last time I saw them was in April after I was vaccinated, and when their grandpa and I said good-bye, they cried too.

Getting back to this past weekend, our oldest grandsons rediscovered all the toys in the toy closet. They got up every morning at 5:30 and got out the cards to play War. They helped me gather the eggs from the hen house, and we made scrambles for breakfast. Their local younger cousins came over to splash in the wading pool with them and swing on the swings. We ate watermelon together and tried to reconnect what had been disconnected by Covid.

The last morning of the boys visit, we went to a nearby lake. The younger brother built cities in the sand. The oldest can swim now and played crocodile while I defended myself with a squirt gun. When he was cold, he got out, and shivered in his towel. “I don’t want to go home.”

I told him, “I think I know how you feel. When I was a little girl, I visited my grandmother every summer and had tons of cousins to play with. She had chickens too and a river where we went swimming and fishing. I hated to go home because I loved them so. Is that why you’re sad?”

His eyes misty, he nodded his head.

I could have told him even more. How my grandmother’s farm was like heaven to me, surrounded by a tribe of people who loved me unconditionally, who made me feel like I belonged to something bigger than myself that made me feel safe and special and incredibly lucky. But I did tell him that I was sad too because I would miss him until we saw each other again, so I made plans with his mommy to do so.

Reflecting on our weekend, I remember when I was a child, how time turned so slowly while I waited forever for my birthday or Christmas. I wonder if the pandemic decelerated time until my grandson feared he’d never see the people he missed again.

Photo by Sujith Devanagari on Unsplash

As a grandma my time races by with day-blurring velocity. And the pandemic has given me an urgency to spend what time I have left with my dearest. Perhaps we’ve all been stricken with PTSD, Pandemic Time Sense Distortion. Or maybe that’s another name for our own mortality. Surely, no matter how old we are, we long for a perfect world where we can be together forever with those we love.

Photo by Leslie Joseph on Unsplash

That reminds me of an old hymn from my childhood:

“Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.

The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.

We share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear; and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part it gives us inward pain; but we shall still be joined in heart and hope to meet again.”

When we asunder part it gives us inward pain, but we shall still be joined in heart and hope to meet again.

John Fawcett 1740-1817

Cover Photo by Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir | 4 Comments

Aunt Nelly and Janis Joplin

Posted on May 26, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

Now that pandemic restrictions are lifting, I was able to attend the memorial for one of my husband’s aunts. For privacy’s sake I’ll call her Nelly. Early in our marriage, Nelly’s home was where we joined innumerable relatives to celebrate every Thanksgiving. My children called it going to the White House as if we were visiting the president because it was an impressive Victorian set on a wide lawn populated by mature shade trees. In the center of the foyer was a magnificent, curved staircase Scarlett O’Hara would have been proud to descend. Although the architecture was elegant and the home richly appointed with family antiques and foreign curiosities, it was comfortably lived in, and my children and myriad cousins played hide and seek from bedrooms to basement. Aunt Nelly was at the center of it all, the consummate hostess, warm, welcoming, and always glad to see you.

We moved out West. Moved back East. Our children grew up, and Nelly, at more than ninety was nearly the last of her generation to pass away. All to say, it was a long time since I’d last been to the big white house. But as we drove up the drive, the cousins waved and grinned from the expansive front porch as if it hadn’t been almost thirty years since we’d been to their childhood home.

After giving the first hugs I’ve given since Covid, I asked if I could go inside and look around. In the foyer was the small leather elephant my toddlers had tried to ride. To the left was the dining room readied to serve the others who would be coming after the memorial. To the right was the sunroom with the couch upholstered in salmon velvet, and above it the oriental painting that had always hung there. Perpendicular to the couch was the piano my children and their cousins banged on. Or was it the same piano? I’d never noticed the intricate fretwork on the upper panel. Maybe it was always hidden behind sheet music. And I’d never noticed it’s golden, burled finish. But the bench that held three cousins at a time wasn’t made from the same wood.

I circled the rest of the house, strolling through the living room furnished with two of the longest sofas I’ve ever seen, but then Aunt Nelly raised eight children. Through the cozy breakfast room, the tiny kitchen, the pantry, back through the dining room, and onto the porch. But my mind circled too, back to the piano.

When I stepped onto the porch, I asked the cousins, “Is that the same piano in the sunroom?”

The oldest sister answered, “No, that’s Janis Joplin’s piano.”

My heart did a flip, and my jaw dropped. “How did you get Janis Joplin’s piano?”

“Someone gave it to my brother.”

We were given a ride to the cemetery by the brother gifted the piano and heard the rest of the story. It concluded with the fact that the sound board was broken, so you couldn’t actually play it.

I wondered if that was because of all the blues Janis pounded out of the keyboard, or because it was just old. After all I was a freshman in high school when I first heard her sing, “Piece of my Heart” on the Cheap Thrills album. Could that be over fifty years ago?

At the graveside, people told stories of how Aunt Nelly was someone who listened, really listened, who invited you into the family even if you weren’t officially related. A man I didn’t recognize said Nelly helped him get into Yale simply by encouraging him to say what he really wanted.  He was part of the other side of the family I learned she hosted every Christmas. The funeral director, also counted her a friend, saying she was a woman who knew how to get things done for the community. And someone recalled Nelly as always saying, “Isn’t that wonderful!”

Me and middle C on Janis Joplin’s piano

When we got back from the cemetery, I asked my husband to take a picture of me in front of Janis Joplin’s piano. It was still incredible that I was in the same room with an instrument that had been played by a Woodstock icon. And yet I don’t know if young people today even know who Janis was. In the big picture, I suppose it was a cheap thrill to stand beside her piano that can no longer make music.

But here’s the thing, this isn’t really a story about Aunt Nelly or Janis Joplin’s mute piano. It’s a story of the life-long resolution of my own insecurities. I confess, when I first came to Aunt Nelly’s home, I perched on one of those long couches as a young stay-at-home mom, surrounded by people whose professional accomplishments and exotic lives made my ordinary existence feel inferior. But in mortality’s clarity, it’s obvious, what really matters is to love and be loved. That sounds cliché. But clichés are true.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

At the end of the memorial, Aunt Nelly’s ashes were placed in a grave next to her husband’s, and as I turned to leave, I saw one of the Christmas relatives, scattering rose petals on top of all that remained of dear Aunt Nelly who I imagine would have said, “Isn’t that wonderful!”

“We have a special role in his (God’s) plan. He calls us to life by the message of truth so that we will show the rest of his creatures his goodness and love.”

James 1:18 ( The Voice)

Cover photo by Vishnu R Nair

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | 1 Comment

Let it Be

Posted on May 15, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

“The Love and peace generation of the sixties wasn’t wrong in trying to imagine something better than a world filled with hate and war – it was wrong in not finding a better Messiah than the Beatles.”

I’m part of the generation that grew up with the Beatles from the time they were a teeny bopper boy band to transcendental gurus, so this quote by Brian Zahnd brings up all sorts of memories.

I was in fifth grade sitting on a pink chenille bedspread when I first heard, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” My best friend and I were looking at her older sister’s very first Beatles album, the one with John, Paul, George, and Ringo wearing black turtlenecks and unprecedented shaggy hair. Who was the cutest? My vote, Paul with his dark arched eyebrows and down sloped eyes. I think my best friend picked George, and her older sister said Ringo was ugly, which made me feel sorry for him.

Then the day after Christmas 1963, The Beatles entered my living room via the Ed Sullivan Show. Sitting on our gray carpet, I stared at a boxy TV set and felt slightly embarrassed as Paul sang, “All my loving I will give to you,” while my parents looked on from the sofa.

My next Beatle memory was taking the bus downtown to Proctor’s Theatre with my friends to see A Hard Day’s Night, a feature length music video/ documentary before there were such things. On a hot summer afternoon, high in the balcony, beneath a gilded ceiling, we watched four zany boys chased by screaming, swooning girls they couldn’t escape.

By the time I was in high school, the Beatles had produced: Rubber Soul, Sargent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, and Abbey Road, and as vanguards of globalization, brought home pot, LSD, eastern religions, Transcendental Meditation, batik fabric, Nehru jackets, and sitar music after befriending Ravi Shankar, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

My sophomore summer was the Summer of Love, when teenagers ran away to San Francisco, put flowers in their hair, and John Lennon’s song “Give Peace a Chance” became a counterculture anthem.

Photo by Vasilios Muselimis

The following spring, my best friend’s mother died of cancer, and as rain speckled my bedroom windows, I listened to Paul’s haunting “In my Life.”

The next summer was Woodstock, the legendary concert that created mantras like Do Your Own Thing, Free Love, and Question Authority. It was as if the Beatles had opened Pandora’s box containing death, shame, and an anxious freedom.

I graduated high school as the Beatles fell apart, yet the year before I graduated college, I studied in London, and one night, my roommate and I, stumbled upon their recording studio on Abbey Road. In the dark, leaning over a waist high wall, we lifted the lid of a garbage can on the other side, and grabbed fists full of trash as if we were back to being fangirls from A Hard Day’s Night. Amongst our finds was an envelope addressed to Paul McCartney. I don’t remember what happened to it. It hardly seems real I ever held it in my hand.

What I remember for sure is that a few months after my first child was born, John Lennon was shot and killed. Sitting on my living room carpet, alone with an infant sleeping upstairs, the same eyes that watched John’s meteoric rise on the Ed Sullivan show, spilled hot tears. Tears for John, for Yoko, for their own baby, who would grow up without a father. For all John Lennon had imagined that never came true. For Peace and love to have a chance in a world everyone was desperately trying to escape. I mourned him as someone, maybe something, I grew up with that died too young, my innocence.

Photo by Neil Martin on Unsplash

Brian Zahn was right. John, Paul, George, and Ringo made lousy Messiahs. But they were seekers like me, young and effervescent, looking for love, looking for the transcendent mysteries of life that music endeavors to express. 

Almost fifty years ago, I stumbled upon the true Messiah, Jesus, who alone paid the price for us to be back in harmony with God and mankind.

And fifty years ago, last week, The Beatles’ final album, Let it Be was released.

Looking back, maybe, Paul was my favorite not just because he was my teenage heart throb, but because his songs express something true: the struggles of this world although global are as local as the human heart.

None of our yesterdays can be altered by looking back. We have to let it be with the Lord and be happy.

“Oh-bla-di Oh-bla-da life goes on bra! La-la how the life goes on.” Paul McCartney

Cover photo by Fedor on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Rewrite

Posted on April 28, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

A book review of: When You Don’t Like Your story: What if Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories by Sharon Jaynes

*************************************************************************************

How many of you would like to rewrite certain chapters of your life? Probably the ones you regret, the ones you’re ashamed of. Probably the ones that portray the most hideous things done to you and the most damaging things done by you of your own free will. I know what my chapters are. I’m sure you have your own. This is the assumption behind the title of Sharon Jaynes new book, When You Don’t Like Your Story. Her subtitle, What if Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories, shows how God, the master author of all our stories, can use our most difficult chapters to redeem what was lost, destroyed, or broken, not only to showcase his glory, but to rewrite the lives of others.     

Her chapter titles pave the way for this process, starting with: “Why Me? Why This? Why Now?,” “When Forgetting isn’t enough,” “The Scab You Won’t Stop Picking,” and “Leaving the Shame Place.”

But Sharon doesn’t leave us with just forgiving ourselves and others by claiming our holy, chosen, and beloved identity in Christ. She makes a compelling case through numerous anecdotes and Biblical examples that demonstrate how our shame-filled stories and the specifics of God’s healing in our lives are exactly what others need to hear in order to trust him and be healed as well. She touches on issues of divorce, abortion, sexual abuse, prostitution, domestic violence, alcoholism, suicide, depression, and more.

And here’s where the rubber meets the road for me, and perhaps for those of you who are also writers, she says,

“You may feel that you wasted part of your life because of failure, but the greater waste would be not telling what you learned from that failure. How God picked you up after you fell down. How God turned you around when you were headed in the wrong direction. How God drew you in when you had pushed him away…”  

All this to say, I struggle with telling the unflattering truth about myself even when I feel led to do so by the Lord, so Sharon Jaynes’ book was exactly what I needed to hear as I’m promoting my first book, Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School, and sending out proposals for my next memoir, feeling vulnerable, unsure and unqualified.                    

But “Listen,” she goes on to say, “the devil does not want you to tell your story of what God has done in your life. He wants you to keep it bottled up and hidden away in the back of the pantry where no one can find it. He doesn’t want you to tell how you traded in your angst and resentment for God’s grace and forgiveness. How you traded in your feelings of condemnation and self-loathing for freedom and a new beginning.”

This doesn’t mean we all have to be authors, but we all can tell our stories to those who trust us and need to hear living proof that they too can overcome what feels irreparable by the immeasurable power of a God who loves them to the moon.

Photo by Kourosh Quaffri on Unsplash

Finally, Sharon reminds us of Rev. 12:11 “By the blood of the Lamb and the word of their witnesses, they have become victorious over him.” (VOICE) Meaning, sharing our painful chapters is right up there with the very blood of Jesus in defeating the devil’s schemes.

So do it afraid, sisters.

Tell the tale of your defeat and God’s triumph. And if you’re not brave enough to do so yet, check out Sharon’s Jaynes’ book, When You Don’t Like Your Story: What if Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories. It’s a great read aimed at a more meaningful life, so turn the page and let God rewrite a beautiful new ending that demonstrates what his amazing grace looks like in an ordinary life.   

Cover Photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash

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Frozen Forsythia

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

Halfway through April, and it’s snowing again. The forsythia bush outside my window is in full bloom despite an icy veil. Writer to writer, the weather reflects how I feel. After months of perfecting a proposal for a new memoir, I finally got up the courage to send a query to my dream agent and within twenty-four hours received a rejection. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word rejection. She was timely, candid, and kind in telling me she loved my topic, and it was certainly important, BUT it’s almost impossible to sell a memoir by an unknown author. So how does one become known? The proverbial question asked by us unknown authors, in full bloom beneath obscurity’s veil.

Photo by Sergey Lapunin on Unsplash

Last weekend it was pushing seventy degrees, the grass was greening, the daffodils were lifting their heads to the sun, and I was basking in two encouraging speaking engagements involving my first memoir, Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School.  One was a virtual women’s group at my church, Grace United in Northampton, MA. The other a virtual open mic through Straw Dogs Writers’ Guild, a local writers organization. One of the participants at the Straw Dogs event, also a self-published author, Stephanie Shafran told me I could sell my books on consignment at my local bookstore, Broadside Bookshop. So Monday morning, I called the bookstore and they graciously accepted three copies for sale. Later in the day, I emailed another participant at the Straw Dogs event, Terrianne Falcone, an online writing teacher, and she bought the very first copy I ever sold through a bookstore. Yeah!    

It’s a scary thing to put yourself out there. To tell the stories that haunt until God heals. Scarier still to place your book for sale as if the truth and freedom you’ve found can be defined by a sales figure. And most frightening to keep trying with failure your most predictable outcome.

But what else can we do, we writers who have to write because it’s part of the way God made us? What else can we do but unfurl our joyful yellow standards in a frozen world? And who knows, along the way we might meet some new friends and fans to cheer us on, and even some truth tellers to course correct. By the way, there’s a saying about the weather in New England. If you don’t like it, wait a minute, and it will change. But God Almighty never changes. And with him nothing is impossible.

Photo by Lauris Rosentals on Unsplash

That said, outside the snow has turned to rain, and sunshine is predicted for tomorrow. Thanks for listening, sisters. My mood, like the weather, is already brighter. Hope yours is too.

Posted in Flash memoir, Writing Process | 5 Comments

Easter’s Aftermath

Posted on April 9, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

After the crucifixion, the disciples scattered and hid, crushed and disillusioned. Big, strong Peter disowned Jesus afraid of a little servant girl. But after Mary Magdalene and a few female followers saw the empty tomb, and encountered an angel, and the resurrected Jesus, everything he had foretold added up differently.

One of the things Jesus had taught them was the Lord’s Prayer, a pattern for how to talk to God. As a little girl, I learned the same prayer by rote. It was just a string of words I said in unison with the congregation during the boring parts of church which honestly, as a child, were all boring. But after the reality of the resurrection struck me as an adult, I see that prayer in a different light.

Our father, creator, and spiritual daddy who birthed us body and soul out of nothingness in his own eternal image,

Who art in heaven, in another dimension where we can’t see you, but somehow we know you exist,

Hallowed by thy name, for you are holy, meaning complete and good in every way,

Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, because you are the perfect ruler of the universe, we want what you want,

On earth as it is in heaven, because this world is a disaster already happened, and we need relief from its hideous chaos,

Give us this day our daily bread, as we don’t even know what we actually need. Make us dependent on you day by day and free us from our foolish self-sufficiency,

And forgive us our trespasses, the selfish, hurtful stuff we do, even when we don’t want to, that crosses the boundaries of other’s lives and damages us all,

As we forgive those who trespass against us, help us trust you with what others owe us, especially when we carry the heavy baggage of revenge. Help us remember you are the God who sees and your sovereign justice goes above and beyond any resolution we can ask or imagine,

Lead us not into temptation, trusting that your ways are better than our ways,     

But deliver us from evil, by breaking the chains of all our destructive behaviors and empowering us with your bottomless love to live free, exhilarating lives.

For thine is the kingdom, you are in charge of everything seen and unseen,  

Photo by Ussama Aza on Unsplash

And the power, you alone are imbued with energy supreme,

And the glory, all the earth reflects your magnanimous, unmatched reputation,

Forever and ever, our souls mirror your eternity and will be resurrected like Jesus to a world sublime with beauty where death has lost its sting, and we will see you face to face,

Photo by Fionna Smallwood on Unsplash

In Jesus name, the name of your Messiah, who ransomed us with the payment of his blood.

This is the aftermath of Easter, sisters, how our human zero meets God’s infinity, and alters everything. The laws of higher mathematics never change. When infinity is defined, zero plus infinity always adds up to infinity.

Amen, let it be done.

Thanks to Thanti Nguyen for the cover photo on Unsplash

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How to Kill a Zombie

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

I recently joined a storyteller’s circle, which as a writer, I thought would be a piece of cake. A lot of the same rules apply whether you are writing a story or telling it orally. The end has to kiss the beginning. The middle has plenty of wiggle room, and you need a takeaway which is best if embedded and not didactic.

What’s different is how you rehearse. As a writer, I start with a rough draft, spilling all my thoughts on paper. Then I edit and add until I find the kernel of truth I have to share and weed out everything else.

This week I tried to orally rehearse the story of why I wrote my book, Teacher Dropout: Finding Grace in an Unjust School for my next story circle. While speaking into a voice recorder, I took a long walk up and down the hills surrounding my house. The result was eleven attempts, each one with a slightly different emphasis, breathy with pauses, and too many words like so, um, and then.   

Even now writing this, what freedom I feel to take back words that have escaped onto the page and replace them with something better. A more perfect, phrase. A more powerful verb. More precise vocabulary.

But every word that leaves my lips as a storyteller is free for all eternity, never to be retrieved or reformed in anyway. Every thought loosed into the outside world floats into the listener’s ear never to be pulled back out. All my sentences must build on each other no matter how sloppily they exit my brain. There is no chance to clarify logic or crystallize an image except more words which runs completely counter to my writer’s instinct to cut, trim, and refine.

Oral storytelling’s vulnerability is both exhilarating and full of stage fright. Even on a country road, with no one listening, I was tongue tied when I couldn’t remember or connect my next thought. It reminds me of a recurring dream I have where I am in a play I didn’t know I was supposed to be in and can’t find my script. No one else can find it. No one knows my lines, yet I’m semi-confident that if I could just figure out where I’m supposed to come in, I could improvise.  

But I don’t want to tell a story half-baked. I want to nail it like I can on the page.

So how to tell the story of an almost two-hundred-page book in ten minutes of improvised sentences? What kernel of truth can I confidently grow in such a short season?

Teacher Dropout was my attempt to articulate the freedom God granted by letting me fail.

I went to an “under-performing” school at the top of my game, hoping to be a hero like teachers in the movies faced with challenging students and unsupportive administrators. One of my students saw her mother bleed to death from a bullet meant for her gang-banger brother. Another saw a bullet fly across his kitchen from his father’s pistol into his mother’s arm causing a wound like a meteor crater. These kids had bigger fish to fry than improving their test scores, and I could not save them academically or otherwise. When one student sexually harassed me and called me a puta, Spanish for whore, I resigned at the end of the year, far less than a hero, broken in a way I couldn’t explain even to myself.

Even after I’d physically left the building, my experiences there continued to torture me. And where was God? Why didn’t he help me? Help the students? Why didn’t he protect me from horrible administrators who seemed to hate me and my students?

Looking back, God let me go to the dead end of my own efforts.

In a world where the wages of sin is death, and sin is anything toxic or damaging, I was trying to earn my worth in an abusive school. Perhaps I was a puta—for approval.

That’s when I accepted, deep in my bones, the crucifixion as physical proof that God loved me even when I screwed up like any other under-performer. Even when I prostituted my gifts to gain acclaim instead of trusting him for my worth.

God didn’t change my circumstances, but he changed the way I saw my circumstances. Jesus was the door out of a prison I’d created myself, a prison I’ll call professional co-dependence, trying to prove I was worth loving by my professional achievements and success.

So, I was free from competition, free to be myself, free to relax in a perfect love that would never fade. Nothing left to prove.

That’s the didactic end of my story.

But a full-throated narrative where you see and feel what I went through is so much more. That’s what’s embedded in Teacher Dropout and what I hope to portray in the story I’ll tell my new story circle friends.    

Still, I confess, whenever I try something new or take a risk, I’m afraid I’ll flub up, and behind my fear, leers the zombie lie that raises its head from the grave over and over again, who are you if you fail?

Now I know why they always hold up a cross to keep away vampires

that try to suck the life out of you.

Photo by Kenny Orr on Unsplash

Trusting that Jesus took death’s bullet meant for me, meant for you, is the only antidote to keep the lie that we’re worthless nailed in its coffin where it belongs. We as believers are the holy, chosen, and beloved of God even when we fail.

Thanks to Yohann Libot for the cover photo on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir, Writing Process | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Kingdom of Kerry

Posted on March 17, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

For as long as I can remember I’ve known I was adopted, and my birth father’s family came from Ireland. But before this week, the week we celebrate St. Patrick who brought the gospel to my ancestral homeland, there were no more details.

I’ve written before about the time in college when I hitchhiked with a friend from Dublin to Galway and down the southeastern coast of the island. With few cars to pick us up, we tramped across fields and stumbled upon a castle, without fanfare, no guided tour, just a broken tower with a stairway open to the sky. Atop the lookout, I could see the edge of the world, the Cliffs of Mohr which fell over seven hundred feet to the sea. Waves which rolled from a continent away crashed on the rocks below.

Photo by Sylvia Szekely on Unsplash

But here’s the part of the story that matters today. On the road out of the little town of Dingle, we climbed the broad-backed highlands of the Slieve Mish mountains until it narrowed to a single ridge. Just beyond the summit was a white-washed cottage with a thatched roof. Window boxes dripped with geraniums. Roses crawled the fence. A white pony browsed in the dooryard, and a stone path curved to a rounded, red door. In the rising mist, it was a mystical vision as if I were looking through the thin, gauzy space that separates the earth from the sublime. And I wondered, if I pressed my nose against the windowpane, what would I see inside. God himself in a rocking chair beside the fire? Or perhaps a long-lost relative who would claim me as his own.

And on the opposite side of the road, down the green slopes dotted with sheep, I could make out the ragged peninsula south of Dingle. That was in 1973.

To make a long story short, my husband has been digging into my genealogy for some time, and this week located the birthplace of my great grandfather, Michael Joseph Sullivan, born in 1873, who came to America in 1890 from the little town of Cahersiveen.

Photo by Morgan Lane on Unsplash

Drumroll please; Cahersiveen is on the Iveragh peninsula, the peninsula I overlooked at that holy ground moment on the mountain 100 years after his birth.

His wife, Ellen McSweeney was born in the small village of Beaufort that we surely hitched past on our way south to Killarney. Both towns are within the Ring of Kerry in county Kerry.

When I Googled the Ring of Kerry, I found this anonymous quote,

“Any Kerryman will tell you there are only two Kingdoms: the Kingdom of Kerry and the Kingdom of God.”

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Perhaps that’s what I felt so many years gone by, and what I discovered again today, amazingly on St. Patrick’s Day.

The slim intersection of the dust I’m made from and the sovereign hand of God who alone guides my destiny.

Cover photo by Aldo De La Paz on Unsplash. Thanks!

Posted in Flash memoir | 8 Comments

Possibilities

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

The pandemic is taking its toll on me. It’s been about a year of masked isolation and monotony, and I’m feeling bored and antsy at the same time, if that’s even possible. I’m retired. I get to babysit some of my adorable grandchildren. I have free time to write. So, what am I complaining about? Still, I’m not myself.

So, what do you do when you can’t take it anymore, whatever it is? You lie on the couch under a snuggle blanket and click through streaming video options of course. The other night I selected Hello, My Name is Doris starring Sally Fields as a quirky old lady who… I won’t say more not to spoil Sally Field’s wonderful characterization that drives the plot. 

What caught my eye is the point in the movie when a friend invites Doris to hear a motivational speaker. The speaker points out the word impossible, reads, I M possible if you simply pull out the first two letters. He then expands it to I am possible as his motivational mantra.

Doris repeats his catch phrase, I am possible, I am possible until it becomes the catalyst that changes the way she thinks about herself and her situation. If I am possible, maybe nothing is impossible This is the fuel for Doris’ transformation, beautifully portrayed by Sally Fields, with the kind of happy, feel-good ending we all need after a year of lockdown and life-threatening, world wide disease.

But here’s the thing, what if I am not possible? What if I am weak, weary, and nothing is really within my control? What if I’m insecure, prone to worry, and my greatest gift is forecasting future doom?

The morning after the movie, I’m again on the couch, wrapped in the same blanket, sipping a cup of tea. But this time I’m streaming the Holy Spirit when the thought enters my mind that God was first known by the Israelites as the Great I Am, a God too big to be contained by any name.

When I open the Bible app on my phone, the verse of the day is Matthew 19:26.

Jesus: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

25 The disciples, hearing this, were stunned.

Disciples: Who then can be saved?

Jesus: 26 People cannot save themselves. But with God, all things are possible. (VOICE)

Later in the week, I’m faced with a crisis too personal to name. One a perky, quirky, I-am- possible Sally Field could never solve.

Oddly, I don’t feel panic or dismay. It’s as if I’m shielded by a peace, that doesn’t make sense. As if I’m floating above circumstances that should derail me. Instead, I’m resting in the knowledge that I can do nothing to change things.  

Odder still, this is the catalyst that transforms me from being bored and antsy to grateful for a God who sees, a God who provides, a God who cares, a God who is never surprised, so knew ahead of time, to remind me that nothing is impossible with the Great I Am.

Photo by Dennis Mayk on Unsplash

The Great I Am,

a God too big to be contained by a name, yet knows mine.

That’s my motivational mantra for the week, sisters. Keep the faith!

Cover photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash. Thanks!

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The Eye of the Storm

Posted on March 3, 2021 by Ann C. Averill

How often I was closest to God’s power and glory

when closest to destruction.

*************************************************************************************

Where was God when I was conceived out of wedlock?

He was secretly knitting me together in my mother’s womb.

Where was God when I was relinquished at four days old and placed in a foster home?

He was working in the heart of my foster mom to love me as her own.

Where was God nine months later when I was taken from the only mother I’d ever known and given to strangers?

He was preparing my barren parents to treasure me all the more. Adoption records note I went into their arms without a care.

Where was God when my new mom was in a car crash that almost killed her?

He was completely healing the broken bones and internal injuries that kept her in the hospital for five weeks and caused me to treasure her all the more.

Where was God when I was overwhelmed with being a parent myself, desperate for affirmation, and ready to divorce my faithful husband for another man who paid me a passing fancy?

He was preparing my heart to receive the gospel that revealed only the love of Christ could satisfy my deepest needs and save me from myself. 

And where was God when my wonderful husband was laid off as an engineer?

He was providing temporary work with a friend as a roofer.

And where was God when we needed more money?

He was leading me to teach night classes at a community college where I first met immigrant students from around the world.

 And where was God when my husband accepted a job offer halfway across the continent?

He was leading me towards a scholarship at the University of Colorado, so I could better serve the immigrant students I’d grown to love.

Where was God when we moved back East to care for elderly parents in failing health?

He was leading me to teach in a failing school that made me feel like a failure.

And where was God when I just couldn’t teach anymore?

He was freeing me from idolizing my profession and turning me into a storyteller who understood that

my core identity and worth had nothing to do with

where I came from,

what I had,

or what I achieved.

My worth and identity are in his love alone, the love that has carried me my whole life and carries me still.

Photo by Danylo Suprun

In the midst of a pandemic, close again to destruction, I recall the calmest place in any storm, is its eye, the place where it began. And so I nestle ever closer to my creator, savior, and friend.   


“I have cared for you since you were born.
    Yes, I carried you before you were born.
4 I will be your God throughout your lifetime—
    until your hair is white with age.
I made you, and I will care for you.
    I will carry you along and save you.”

Isaiah 46:3-4 NLT

Thanks to Romain Paget for the cover photo on Unsplash

Posted in Flash memoir | 8 Comments