Joining a Sacred Harp singing is now on my short list of highly recommended, along with New Zealand and guacamole. The physical power of this strange, haunting, apocalyptic music is not captured at all by this video (sorry Richard). Mellie and I stumbled across Sacred Harp a few years ago through this great documentary. We’ve been waiting for the west coast convention to arrive in San Diego ever since. Very nice folks took us in and even let us lead a song or two.
Places featured in this vid: San Diego, Big Sur, Mt Whitney, New York City, Mt Shasta, New Zealand, Montreal, Alabama, Mt San Jacinto, camping in a Chic-Fil-A parking lot (for 1 year of free food!), Honopu Ridge in Kauai, and my parent’s house.
Act 1, Scene 1. 2AM, a darkened bedroom in the Gray household.
Me: [startled awake by creepy dream] Ah! Mellie: [groggy] What’s wrong? Me: [shaky voice] Ick. Bad dream. Mellie: Mmm. Me: [snuggling closer] It was really bad. I need to be comforted. Mellie: Well don’t tell it to me. I don’t want to be scared. [falls asleep] Me: [lies awake, staring at the partially-opened closet door]
Mellie Mix, April 09!
A collection of tunes to make her ears happy.
Chariot, Page France. Let’s Stay Together, Al Green. How I Got Over, Mahalia Jackson. La Vie En Rose, Louis Armstrong. Blindsided, Bon Iver. In Spite Of All The Damage, The Be Good Tanyas. Way Back Home, Husband. Just a Lady, Kutiman. You Send Me (The very cool demo version), Sam Cooke. Little Martha, The Allman Brothers. J’irai La Voir Un Jour, Patty Griffin • Divine Romance, Phil Wickham. Falling Slowly, Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova. C’mon C’mon, Jon Foreman. Jesus, Page France
iMix available for your iTunes browsing pleasure. A few of the songs didn’t show up. Noteably, Just A Lady by Kutiman, and C’mon C’mon by Jon Foreman.
Today we went to the unveiling of Jeremy Wright’s incredible mosaic. The project covers the outside of God’s Extended Hand Mission, wrapping around the entire front of the building at 16th and Island in downtown San Diego. I say it’s Jeremy’s mosaic, but it is actually an amazing community project, created by over 90 people over the past four years, including homeless, students, neighbors and friends. It is truly magnificent to behold, and it was super cool to see it finally completed. Jeremy was on hand chatting it up, taking pictures and telling stories from the last four years of this project. He’s already making plans to expand to the intersection’s other three corners.
I stumbled across the work-in-progress about a year ago and immediately knew Mellie would dig it. We came back together and it turned out that she knew Jeremy’s mom from her north county days! Small world. We were super stoked when Jeremy invited us to join in. We went back a few times to add our little bits to the project and even brought Nate and Sarah along. It’s fun to think that the pieces we contributed will probably last longer than we do.
God’s Extended Hand is the oldest rescue mission in San Diego, and has been providing meals and shelter to homeless folks since 1925. Over the years the building had fallen into serious disrepair. When Jeremy showed up the city was threatening to declare it a blight and give it the wrecking ball. You know you look bad when you’re declared an eyesore in that neighborhood. I love the fact that this beautiful community art project adorns the ugliest building around, and has brought new life and hope to a pretty hopeless place. What a picture of grace.
Just got back from the endocrinologist. Mellie is officially benign!
We are relieved, joyful, stunned, a little confused. The original biopsy was highly suspicious for cancer, but the final pathology report came back completely clear. It is much more likely that surgery confirms a suspicious biopsy, or the biopsy is negative but surgery reveals cancer. The doctor said that in her 11 years of practice she has only seen it happen this way twice.
I knew Mellie was special.
So we are stoked. But confused. Mellie is now down one thyroid and has to take a pill for the rest of her life. What was all this about? Was there ever any cancer? What are we supposed to take away from this episode?
I believe God is sovereign, which means among other things that nothing random happens. I also believe he is good. I don’t always know how those two fit together.
But I know Mellie is cancer-free. She’s on the mend. Thank you God. Thank you family and friends.
appendix, one kidney, one lung, half a pancreas, bone marrow, a good portion of your liver, tonsils, gall bladder, ear muscles, thyroid gland, adrenal glands, vomeronasal organ (look it up), tail bone, wisdom teeth.
The above is a list of body parts which you can have removed and still maintain a manageable lifestyle. From our experience, one thyroid gland equals one week’s worth of friends bringing us tasty home-cooked meals. There are 14 items on this list. That’s 14 weeks worth of food. Multiplied by two people, that’s a solid 7 month stockpile of supplies.
In these tough economic times it’s good to know what you can count on.
No one looks healthy in a hospital. The confident surgeon, the caring nurse, the visiting friend, the coffee cart worker, the smiling child in her mother’s arms—all of them sickly. The proximity of the suffering patients and their grief-stricken families, glimpses of red-rimmed eyes and shattered countenance behind swishing curtains, pacing past knotted clots of coagulated whispers in the hall—the dying diffuses through the air, bending the light in some unflattering way, highlighting an ugly commonality. The same broken lines etched across our faces, the same hinting hue in the soft blue shadows beneath our eyes. We are all residents of the terminal ward.
Standing in the bathroom outside the third floor Post-Op, recognizing these things in my own reflected face, doesn’t prepare me for her pale lips and large dark eyes swimming above the gauze-obscured wound at her throat, iodine-yellow. She is the color of milk. There is a dark red line drawn across white bedsheets, beginning at her neck and ending at a machine crouching in the corner making sucking noises. We are in a crowded room full of clatter and wheeled gurneys and beeping machines and hurrying people. Her eyes unfocus, slip off me to the movement behind. God, her eyes are so dark and so large. The air crowds in, bending the light.
When Jesus Christ walked the earth he healed our diseases. He multiplied our food and we were full. He calmed our storms, he restored our community, he freed us from spiritual oppression. He pulled the money we needed from a fish’s mouth. We had no lack of wisdom. Even death obeyed him. He claimed he could forgive our sin.
All of this, every conceivable need of our sickly race, met in himself. And yet he had the audacity to say, straight-faced, It is for your benefit that I am going away.
And he did it. He left us here, in sickness, in hunger, in poverty, in conflict, in sorrow, in hospitals, in ugly commonality, for our benefit. He left us here, where his own sufferings flow over into our lives, in between resurrections, for our benefit. He left us here, part of a body and in the company of a counselor, for our benefit.
It is a strange gift, and I can’t get my mind around it, lying here at 3:00AM on a makeshift bed of chairs, red-eyed behind swishing curtains, listening for her breathing.
Mellie’s little thyroid went to be with the Lord Tuesday, Feb 24 at about 1pm. Hopefully it won’t be missed.
Surgery took 2 hours. Doc said all went well, Mellie was a champ. Initial tests look cancer-free! Thank God and thanks for your prayers. We’ll get the full pathology report when we get a check-up next Wednesday. A bunch of folks came by for a visit post-surgery, bringing warm fuzzies for Mellie. No beds at the hospital so we stayed in Post-Op for the night. Pretty lame place to begin recovery—lights on, slamming doors, people in and out all night, not to mention somebody drawing blood or prodding her with questions every three hours. I doubt she got more than a couple minutes of sleep at a time. I’m sure me snoring in the chair beside her didn’t help. We made it out of there by 11 the next morning; our hospital stay was almost exactly 24 hours. Mellie got to ride in a wheelchair out to my waiting car. Got her home and tucked into bed, and she’s been resting ever since. Mom and Darci have been great, the three of us just hanging out and helping M with whatever she needs. We’ve declined most visitors but friends have been delivering meals each night. How awesome to have such great support! We have a little womb here, safe and warm and well-fed, and Mellie is on the mend.
