Feature Friday: Tender Mercies

Tender Mercies is a book by Mark Stratton, a blogger who writes at Aggaspletch.  This book contains Mark's first collection of poetry. Mark says the reason the poems ended up in Tender Mercies is because "....As they were being written, they said they belonged together. "

The poems were written within a period of about two months. Unlike other volumes of poetry which focus on one theme or one direction, Tender Mercies explores life as a whole. It pushes back the curtain on life at its lower ebbs in Tender Mercy #13.

"Living in a depression, basting in the blues, 
Searching for caution in caustic waters 
Living in regression, bankruptcy court blues
pleading for redemption Don't gimme no I.O.U...."

Tender Mercy #19 and 20 pick at the futility of regret.
"....Yesterday is fairy dust in a 
pocket, overshadowing the now
Blinding all to the presents of
                              the ahead


Regrets, I live them
Breaking shoulders
with the       weight
of going nowhere
                 endlessly."

"Regret, 
             Hoarse grackles chittering
             On sullen ropes"

Tender Mercy #18 remembers the freedom of being a child with no worries or cares.

"...of itchy scratchy places and 
we didn't seem to mind it so
much when we had summers
as a kid now did we?"

From Tender Mercy #1A all the way to Tender Mercy #28D, Mark Stratton uses words beautifully. Even when he purports to have '...misplaced my words, I kept them in the lee of a tow sail..." He throws in phrases which repeat in your head long after you have read them. 

"...The airbrushed memories Fade as they dry..."

or

"The Cowboy Rides through invisible societies
He is recognized yet barely acknowledged..."

The words in Tender Mercies come alive to the reader. They may have been penned to mean one thing, but as they rise up from the page they emerge into what the reader sees. When I read the first few lines of Tender Mercy #6,

"And it came to pass in bonded black leather 
frayed at the corners soldered with duct tape..."

I immediately saw my old Bible...frayed at the corners, barely hanging together with duct tape... I didn't want to read further- I wanted to sit and contemplate this forgotten image. I knew, as I read further the words would confirm this was not the true meaning of the words...but for a few moments, I chose to read the words over and over again. The words brought a smile to my face.


Tender Mercies by Mark Stratton fits neatly in the book shelf right above my desk. I reach for it from time to time...flip through it...and reread my favorite poems.  If you would like a copy of Tender Mercies you can purchase it from online either at Amazon or at  Createspace.  It can also be downloaded as an e-book. I think it might fit neatly on your bookshelf too, don't you?   

Thankful Thursday- REBLOG ABOUT MY MOM

As Mother's Day approaches, I am thankful for my own mother, Margaret Belle Hansen was born in Peking, China. She spoke only Mandarin until the age of five, after which she learned to speak English. 

 "Margie" sitting on her mom's lap, picture taken in Peking, China.

Little "Margie" could never have imagined 12 years after her birth she and her family would be prisoners in a Japanese Internment camp in Wei Hsien, China. 

   *Courtesy of Wei Hsien website

Dec 1943 marked the date Margaret and her family arrived in New York as exchange prisoners of war. Before she knew it, she went back to Asia as a married woman.  

 

Margaret on her wedding day 

In 1955, Margaret Belle Seaward settled into life in Singapore where she made good use of her childhood Mandarin. One day I must write a book of her life, as it was filled with grand adventures and marvelous miracles.

Margaret Seaward now resides in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. She flies between Singapore and KK regularly. In a given month she will fly over to Australia to speak for a conference and then zip back to Malaysia to speak for some meetings; a quick dash down to over to Indonesia and back up to Kota Kinabalu....then she wonders, "why am I so tired"

"Mom, because you are 81 years old and you act like you are 21!"

My mom, Margaret Seaward, in 2011

I want to wish my mother a Happy Mother's Day- and thank her for all she has instilled in me.  The words -"Impossible"...."no"...."it cannot be done"....were never part of her vocabulary. She taught me above all to put God first. She taught not only by word, but by her very lifestyle.  I can only hope that when I am 81 I will be as 'young' as she is. :)

Margaret and Fred Seaward- taken in Singapore 2009

Wild Wednesday: This will not be politically correct

I've been hearing a lot lately about how children who are spanked will have a lower IQ....and be more prone to violence. Okay, let me set the record straight- I'm NOT talking about abuse, I'm talking about a spanking...maybe the concept of this is like a dinosaur: people don't even really know what it looks like anymore. All that aside, where are the statistics coming from which make the correlation between IQ and spankings??

I spanked my children. 

In Singapore you can get nifty little canes- a swift flick on the open palm- does not cause any damage but it does send a point home. Let me see...now my children are all grown up...all three of them have above average IQs- my son works in a field which requires high intelligence. He holds a degree in Physics. My daughter graduated from university with honors and was her class speaker. My youngest daughter is pursuing her nursing degree. I guess they decided not to poll my family. 


I grew up in Singapore where spankings were accepted as a normal form of discipline. I don't see the IQ of the nation suffering in any way. I'm just curious about these studies. Where actually do they do their testings or research? Do they go to some out of the way place and recruit a group of people that are a bit slow to begin with. Then do they find out those people spank and conclude that the spankings caused the slowness? 


Spanking a child- if done correctly- will not make a child smarter or make them dumber. I'm sorry to tell you- whether we like it or not- there are certain of us who are not going to be as smart as the next person no matter how hard we study. My elder brother is a genius....literally....he graduated early from high school and started University just before he was 15- graduated at with his BA before he was 17. My two older sisters were 4.0 students. I had a mere 3.6 average in University...and no matter how I tried I could not raise it. I learned long ago in life to accept the fact my siblings were just very gifted in the head department and I just had to work a bit harder to 'get things'-- that is life-- spankings....etc didn't change that fact. 

In fact, my three elder siblings- with their 4.0 GPAs- got alot more spankings than I ever got! I was the 'baby' of the family- and my mom slowed down a bit when I came along. So that seems to actually support the reverse of the statistics.


Again, I'm not talking about abuse. And I'm not advocating using a switch when 'time out' works well enough. There is a time and place for everything, and discipline can come in many forms...to eliminate one form completely will have sad lasting effects. (which will only be seen as the child gets older)

Tree Tuesday: Lost branches

One of my pleasures....when all work is done...when there are no commitments...is exploring my family tree. I've been amazed at some of the things I've discovered in the process of this exploration. There are different tools you can use to study your family tree...I choose to use ancestry.com.

I started out using their 'free' membership...I started a simple family tree. As the years went by, I upgraded to a paid membership because I wanted to access to more documents. I've also found other sites which provide great resources...one of said sites is...familysearch.org
This offers ample free resources which can help one build a substantial family tree.

One of the blessings of researching your family tree is that you find relatives you didn't know you had. Just recently, while I was in Denver, I was contacted by someone who was researching my gr-grandfather's family....I had been told my gr-grandfather had brothers....but I never knew what became of them. They were from Chicago....only my gr-grandfather came to Washington State....now suddenly I was introduced to a 'lost branch' of my family tree.

Amazingly, we both realized that we were in Colorado at the same time. We made plans to meet up...can you see the family resemblance? Our gr-grandfathers were brothers. 

The Chezsven Blog has a great story about cousins meeting up. You need to go and read about it at the blog update In which Sven meets his first cousin.  An absolutely amazing story about finding family connections. 


If you haven't ever dug around in your family roots...maybe you should consider starting today!

Memory Monday: Theme Day

In the blogathon, today is a theme day....what are the five movies which inspired your blogging...I thought about this for quite sometime. I pondered. Unfortunately, I could not come up with even one movie which matched the topic. 

Although I can't think of five movies which inspired my blogging, I can think of one movie which inspired my life. This was a movie I saw many...many...ok, eons ago! The title of the movie was "Hudson Taylor"

First, allow me to give you a short background of who I was when I watched this movie. I was the the type of person who not only had a five year plan....I had a 25 year plan....I went to church...was involved in a street ministry (to the homeless)...would wake up early and go for prayer meetings...but when it came to my career, my policy was "God I know better than you...so please let me handle it." 

I knew I could not be President of the United States, because I was born in Singapore....but I aspired to be as close to that as possible. History and Poli Sci were my majors and I went on to do two internships...one at the White House (during President Reagan's administration) and then another internship at a Senator's office. I knew exactly what I wanted my life to look like and I was making sure it happened just the way I wanted it. 

All it took was one Sunday evening at a church in Walteria California. They were showing the movie, "Hudson Taylor" and I had read his biography before but I was eager to see the movie. I sat through the movie and wept. When the last scene of the movie flickered across the screen...the song leader started singing, "I Surrender All"  

At that moment...I realized I had been giving God only 95 percent of my life...and holding on to 5 percent. I had not surrendered. I can tell you I wept as I sang the song. It was not an emotional weeping...in the sense of my emotions being stirred up...it was a thoughtful weeping...I knew what I had been doing and now I was so sorry for having held out on God. I asked God to forgive me for trying to be 'boss' of my life....and then I laid my life before Him and said, "Okay God...whatever you ask me to do...I will do it..." Little did I know....He would take me at my word. My life was never the same again....even now, when I think of that movie and remember the song....I tear up, because I'm so thankful to God for giving me the privilege of surrendering ALL to Him...not just part of me!!

Sunday Birds- Song of the Spring

Kusum who blogs at Scrapbook takes the most amazing pictures and has corresponding dialogue which make the pictures come alive. She has graciously offered to do guest posts for me on Sundays- and it will be titled Sunday Birds. I am looking forward to what she has for us each Sunday- and for this Sunday....this is what she has to say!

Sunday! Well, we all have plans, don't we? Plans of waking up late...stretching the bones...having a hot cup of coffee gazing through window...huh?

This morning I was aimlessly gazing out of the window, looking at nothing...I heard chirping of a bird...I curiously looked out to follow the call. I saw a beautiful little bird hopping from one branch to the other...it reminded me of a beautiful morning hike...


It was California coast...springtime...rising sun was lifting the blankets of clouds from the cliffs and the distant mountains...the ocean breeze was amazingly soothing...and this beautiful white crowned sparrow perched on a yellow lupine bush singing happily ...singing the song full of love to call its mate ...

The More the Merrier

Two and a half years ago, we moved into our church facility. We had a hundred chairs to get upstairs. My husband, myself and two other people showed up to help. Can I say we were exhausted by the end of the day? In fact, there was one point I thought my husband was going to have a heart attack!

This morning our church moved to a new location. There were more than seventeen people who showed up. It was the smoothest move I have ever been a part of. Things were carried downstairs quickly...they were loaded on and off the truck with no difficulty. No one looked like they were having a heart attack....because there were so many of us to help!

We need each other. There is just no way of getting around that fact. Yes, it is true, we can do things on our own...we might even enjoy doing them on our own...but it is so much better doing things as a team.