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One of the activities I wish I had done more with my children…

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by: Karen Mains

Author: Karen MainsOne of the activities I wish I had done more with my children is read to them. Now this is ironic, a writer lamenting that she didn’t take time to read enough to her children!

We have friends who have four daughters—all grown. The mother was an early childhood education specialist and the father a doctor. After dinner, it was the responsibility of the daughters to clean up the dishes and the kitchen—BUT this task was made enjoyable because Daddy read books to them while they worked. Absolute genius!

Instead of watching television together, substitute the exploration of the wonderful imaginative literature that exists in the world.

One mother wrote me recently, “So glad you’re re-illustrating and reprinting these wonderful books. I have fond memories of my husband reading to our girls, with all three of them often in tears. Our daughters grew up to love the Tales and the King.”

I think reading allows the imagination to develop in another way than watching film does—where nothing, really almost nothing—is left to the imagination. Telling stories at the dinner table, at bed time, reading together, not only creates warm memories, it enhances family bonding, stimulates the creative inner life, and is a GREAT way to get the dishes done and the kitchen cleaned!

>> Enjoy this NEW LINK we published online of David reading Chapter 9 – Two Noisy Knights <<

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We still need assistance to reach our goal though, as here is our present status:
$16,091 pledged = 72% funded by 73 backers with 14 days left to raise the balance of $6,384.

IF we don’t reach our GOAL of $22,500 we receive NOTHING. That’s scary, so THANK YOU in advance for sharing our page and story with those you know, to help us get to fully funded status within the next 14 days.

SHARE these links:

Due to your incredible pledges of support, of 129 total Children’s Book Projects live and active on Kickstarter today, we are STILL the 2nd MOST FUNDED! CHECK THIS OUT:

 >  Kickstarter page
>  Kickstarter SUMMARY page
>  LIKE our Facebook Page
>  BLOG with lots of updates on the project
> #KickstartTales  – search this hashtag in Facebook or Twitter to see it pull up all content for this campaign
>  The Kingdom Tales website
> Karen Mains’ Facebook Page

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Imagination Garden

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Imagination GardenAbout ten years ago, our septic system started leaking and after the septic crew tore up the lawn under the great ash tree (to connect the underground boxes that had never been connected), I sat on the back porch surveying the BIG mess and just cried.  It would take me years, going at the speed most improvements take within the system of the Main’s family schedule, to make things right.  I was overwhelmed with the thought of the effort.

Then one morning, I looked at the mounds of overturned clay (we live on a nasty streak that has demanded I build my own black soil) and thought, “Well, OK.  Why not turn those mounds into a spring garden?”  I moved the 10 peonies bushes, piled on black soil, added some grass and variegated hostas, and over the next decade, cultivated a rather lovely garden where there had formerly been piles of despair.

This took some imagination to see beauty instead of desolation.  To me, that is the role of the artist, to imagine what could be.

There are some people, many of them well-meaning Christian folk who think the imagination is a bad thing.  To me, I don’t know how any of us go through life without an imagination.  How can a cook plan a lovely meal for family or for guests without imagining what it will look and taste like?

How can a decorator redesign the look of a home without imagination?  How can a farmer plant vegetable gardens without imagination regarding a harvest to come?  More importantly, how can we become intimate with a God we cannot see without imagining his personality and his characteristics and his everlasting love working in our lives as well as the life of the world?

Imagination is essential.  I looked at the devastated mounds of lawn in my back yard and imagined that a beautiful garden might exist under the ash tree.

One day some thirty years ago, I also imagined that a book (eventually to become three books) could captivate readers with the scriptural concepts of the Kingdom of God told in literary formats.  Those books became The Kingdom Tales trilogy and have brought both tears and delight (not to mention) to the minds of readers.

Imagination (particularly one that becomes persuaded and informed by holiness) is essential.

We are mounting a Kickstarter Campaign to raise funds to revise, re-illustrate (with multi-ethnic characters) and re-publish these award-winning books Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration.  Without imagination, great literature of any kind, would not exist.  It also takes imagination to conceive of a campaign that will provide some $22,500 to reach this goal.

Can you help us by becoming a Backer (we have the imagination to believe that several thousand people will support this effort)?  The Backer levels go from $3 to several hundred dollars.  All the levels are basically pre-orders that provide the funds for the republishing campaign.  Check out our Kickstarter page.

All it takes is a little imagination to create beautiful things in the world.

Karen Mains

The “imagination” garden this spring/summer as seen from David Mains upstairs study window.

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How Was Your Flight?

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Because I travel, and generally someone picks me up at my destination airport, I have heard the question “How was your flight?” hundreds of times—literally. The answer after flying into Washington, D.C. last weekend was different than my usual response of, “Oh, fine. The flight was fine.” On this flight, the pilot and air stewardesses coached us through an emergency landing.

Fifteen minutes out from Reagan International Airport, flying from Chicago, the pilot’s voice, calm and reassuring, announced, “Ah, folks. We’re having some trouble with the flaps; they seem stuck in the down position. This is nothing to worry about. We’re going to try some flight maneuvers and will be circling the airport for a little while. We’re in contact with the ground mechanics who are seeing if there is anything else we can do. We’ll let you know more in a few minutes. But I repeat, this is nothing to worry about.”

The stewardesses went about their landing procedures, collecting garbage, checking seatbelts and whether luggage was properly stowed and if trays and seats were back in their upright positions.

During the 20 minutes until the second announcement, I had time to observe my own reactions. Certainly, my role was to pray for security and safety for everyone on the plane. I particularly asked my loving Heavenly Father to send His guardian angels to surround our airborne 747. The Scripture came to mind, He will give his angels charge over you lest you strike your foot against a stone. I thought of my husband, David, with love and with no regret for the 49 years we have shared life together. And I heard an inner voice (my own) repeating, My life is in Your hands … my life is in Your hands.

The pilot’s voice came on again: “OK, folks. We’re going to make an emergency landing without the flaps functioning properly. Again, I repeat: This is nothing to panic about.” Indeed, his voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “We’ll be approaching the airport from a different angle, going at a faster speed than you may be used to. Some of you may notice emergency equipment on the runway—fire engines and ambulances. This is merely a precautionary measure. Again, this is nothing to cause panic. Cabin crew, prepare for landing.”

And we landed—actually one of the smoothest landings I’ve ever experienced. The breaks did not overheat, although they were checked by the fire department before we were given the go-ahead to proceed to our gate. However, it was interesting to compare
my peace-given reaction with a colleague who was flying with me (also with my sister who was also in the back of the plane).

“The lady beside me was just tight with panic, her knuckles were white from clutching the armrests. So I told her that she shouldn’t worry, that two of the most powerful pray-ers I knew were on the plane. [I think she meant ‘my sister and me’—no pressure there!) The lady said, ‘Oh, really?’ and seemed to relax.”

I thought the pilot and crew had handled the situation admirably, that it was one of the smoothest landings I’d ever experienced—no bumps, no jarring crosswinds. My friend thought we had blown a tire—she had felt a definite whomp on landing. She also stated that the pilot’s announcements had been worded poorly (her ex-husband was a Navy pilot who eventually flew commercial airlines. That insider-wife’s vicarious expertise is not always calming in crisis experiences).

So, later, when I had time, I considered the slight difference in our reactions. Power pray-er or not, I had been surrounded within a bubble of peace, doing whatever work prayer does when we link our finite beings with the infinite divine. And that work had left me with the impression that it was one of the smoothest landings I’d ever known.

Which was the reality—hers or mine? I really don’t know.

“Well, it couldn’t have been too bad,” I said to my friend. “We weren’t instructed to go into the emergency-landing tuck position”—heads down over our knees with our arms locked around them. I thought about this, of course, after we landed, not as we were rushing, without functioning air flaps, toward the hard concrete of the landing strip.

But human as we are, we made something out of this with family and friends. I called David, just to let him know we were in the hotel but that the landing had not been an ordinary one. “Oh, something kept nudging me,” he replied. “So, I checked the radio to see if there were reports of an airplane crash. When I didn’t hear anything, I concluded you were all right.”

“No. No. If you feel nudges like that, you’re supposed to pray—not check the radio!”

The rest of the family (my sister’s husband and sons) were rather nonchalant about what we were now billing as a near-death experience. “Is that so? Glad you’re all right.” No one seemed to make a connection that both their mother and a well-loved aunt might have perished in a fiery landing.

So, I called my son-in-law who graduated as a theatre major from Miami of Ohio University. “I need someone to get a little dramatic about this,” I laughed, telling him the story of our emergency landing.

“Just a minute; let me get my actor’s hat on.” His voice came back over my cell: “WOW! Are you OK? Do you need to take the afternoon and rest? I can’t believe you had that close of a call! We’re so glad you’re still around!”

Silly as it is—this made me feel some slight comfort, even though we were laughing at my wanting a little drama in my phone call responses.

“Not only did we almost crash, but Valerie Jarrett was also on the plane.”

“Who’s Valerie Jarrett?”

“Oh, she’s one of the Chicago Circle, who functions as an advisor to President Obama. She was sitting a row behind me and I kept thinking, Who is that woman? Where have I seen her before? Then I realized that I’d seen her on the news. I appreciated the fact that she was flying in the economy section, not in First Class.”

“Well,” said my son-in-law. “If your plane had burst into flames, no one would have known that you and Valerie Bell were on it. But everyone would have known about Valerie Jarrett!”

An incident like this is sort of an unfolding revelation. I registered at the hotel desk, signed in at the conference table, collected my packet, found my room, unpacked clothes, called another colleague who had arrived a little earlier than ourselves. We made one of those complicated group decisions about where to have dinner, found a taxi, and then called an end to a long day by returning to the Sheraton where we were lodged.

I’d pooh-poohed my friend’s designation that my sister and I were “power pray-ers,” but the thought suddenly occurred to me in the middle of the night that maybe we (and other unnamed pray-ers) were on that very flight to pray it down safely, to give the pilots calm and proficiency, to not allow panic to spread through the cabin.

None of us know about the web of prayer that surrounds our lives. We have no way of measuring how many times prayer has protected us, preserved us or assuaged our distresses. We just complain about what goes wrong, howl over the suffering that, unwanted, comes our way; shake our fist in the face of God and cry, “Unfair!  Unfair!” But we do not count the ways we have been kept safe, nor measure the days that have been shot through with happiness.

We have no idea how many times He has given his angels charge over us, lest we strike our foot against a stone.

“How was your flight?”

How is your flight through life, through the moments of the days? Begin to look for the gifts of prayer, see if you can detect that figurative flash of wings, the hidden sound of something beating beneath the surface of things. Concentrate, instead of what has gone wrong, on what has gone right.

I promise that this is one of the better ways of gettin’ thru’ the days.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Burton Mains’ other involvements these days, apart from praying in airplanes when flaps don’t work, is writer mentoring. She and 11 other people are teleconferencing for one hour, twice a month, in order to become better memoir writers. A waiting list is now forming for the new Cycle. If you are interested, please contact Karen at the Hungry Souls office, info@hungrysouls.org. Karen is also involved with an international team of concerned friends who are launching the Global Bag Project, encouraging seamstresses to sew reusable shopping bags to provide themselves with sustainable incomes. Visit the new Web site, www.globalbagproject.org.

Among other things, Karen Mains is an award-winning author, a spiritual coach, Christian blogger, and Director of the Hungry Souls ministry.

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Raising Juvenile Delinquents

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I remember a friend, a young mother, with three children under the age of seven, saying to me (also a young mother with four children and a busy husband), “I just wish someone would tell me when I’m doing a good job. What I really want to know is that I’m not raising juvenile delinquents!”

This lament—of not knowing how we’re doing and suspecting we may be doing it all wrong—is felt by many who are plodding through the shifting sands of family life. We have a haunting sense of our own inadequacies in establishing good family-systems. And the truth is, when we think we may be doing pretty well, many of us don’t have anyone who says to us, “You know, you really are doing a good job raising those kids.”

About 30 years ago, several major universities launched research projects to discover what made healthy families healthy. Thousands of families in the U.S. and across the world were carefully studied. The cumulated data was eventually shared in a National Forum on Family Well-Being sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services. At this time measuring tools were established to help family professionals (including parents) recognize the traits of healthy families.

The traits are as follows:

1.    Healthy Families Have Good Communication
Good communication results from a loving relationship between parents. The healthy family:

a.    Listens and responds rather than listening and reacting (reacting: projecting one’s own feeling and experiences; responding: empathizing with the other person’s feelings).
b.    Develops patterns for reconciliation (including having a good sense of timing for heated discussions).
c.    Controls television viewing.
d.    Recognizes nonverbal messages (lack of eye contact, mumbled messages, etc).
e.    Places importance on intensity and spontaneity in conversation rather than on propriety.
f.    Recognizes turn-off words and put-down phrases (a comment made in jest to one person may be an insult to another) and works on eliminating hurtful words and name-calling.
g.    Encourages individual feelings, independent thinking and uniqueness.

2.    Healthy Families Spend Time Together
Times spent together are both planned and spontaneous times, serious and fun times. The healthy family:

a.    Allows themselves time to play and relax, time to dream without guilt (laughter causes remarkable physical relaxation—humor banishes the tightness and severity necessary for anger).
b.    Prioritizes activities:
–    Why do we want this activity?
–    What will it replace?
–     Will it affect our life together?
–    Is it worth it?
c.    Values table time in conversation—the dinner meal becomes an important   part of the day (activities that infringe on this time are discouraged).
d.    Maintains a balance of interaction in its time together (discourages cliques among members while still encouraging individual members to spend time together).
e.    Doesn’t allow work and other activities to infringe routinely on family
time.
f.    Occasionally participates as a unit in activities chose by individual members—other members compromise even if that activity isn’t their choice.

3.    Healthy Families Encourage and Affirm One Another
The parents have good self-esteem and pass this on to their children by:

a.    Expecting family members to affirm and support one another.
b.    Realizing that support doesn’t mean pressure (to succeed, look good, win, etc).
c.    Giving genuine approval and support to help children develop good self-
esteem (rather than being concerned about causing them to become conceited).
d.    Maintaining a basic positive mood.

4.    Healthy Families Deal Positively With a Crisis
Children learn to solve problems by living in a family that solves problems. parents give children the hope and conviction that “when things get tough we’ll be able to cope.” The healthy family:

a.    Expects problems and considers them to be a normal part of family life.
b.    Develops the skill of knowing when a problem is a problem (doesn’t become overly concerned by annoying events).
c.    Develops a skill for identifying potentially serious problems and tackling them early, which helps avoid a crisis.
d.    Allows give-and-take in negotiation—if a problem concerns the whole family, everyone gets a chance to speak.
e.    Possesses high initiative for helping itself, but isn’t afraid to reach out for help from support groups or professionals when facing a problem too big to handle alone.
f.    Stands together in bad times as well as good.

5.    Healthy Families Have a Commitment to the Family
The husband and wife share a consensus of important values. If parents aren’t committed, neither will children be apt to be committed. The healthy family:

a.    Treasures its legends and characters—the past is preserved and passed on to future generations.
b.    Honors its elders and welcomes its babies—all the seasons of life are appreciated by others.
c.    Makes a deliberate effort to gather as a people—strong families enjoy being together and make any excuse to do so.
d.    Views itself as a link between the past and the future (family members don’t end with death—deceased members are discussed so others feel acquainted with them) and instinctively warns individuals to reach out and hold other members for as long as they have the privilege.
e.    Cherishes its traditions and rituals, thus helping the family members celebrate life and one another.

6.    Healthy Families Have a Religious Orientation
A question to ask each other: How are you doing spiritually?

How frequently, when I teach on these, parents respond by saying, “That’s just common sense. We could have listed those ourselves.” That’s true. Yet when the academic community and the social services community link their research to the efforts of family specialists, it is a comfort to know that our common sense is basically valid.

These common traits gave concerned parents specific areas where they needed to improve; but the indices of well-being also allowed parents to pat themselves on the back and say, “Hey! We really are doing well—here, here and here!”

Sometimes, when you’ve got a house full of kids, and you’re wondering how you’re going to make it through the days, it’s a good idea to pull out this list and say, “Hey, we’re not doing all bad here. In fact, we’re pretty good at some of this.”

Intriguingly, most of those research studies begun 30 years ago listed a spiritual orientation as one of the common traits of healthy families—healthy families have some kind of spiritual life together. This trait is not such a big surprise to those of us in faith-based communities: Establishing healthy families, after all, is one of God’s Big Ideas.

As you consider how you’re doing if you are in the middle of the parenting juggling act,  make a point of taking time to hear God say, “You really are doing a good job!” Then invite Him to be the Teacher who helps you truthfully evaluate where it is you need to improve. You may discover that He is a better Family Counselor than you ever dreamed.

No, despite those momentary fears, you are not raising juvenile delinquents.

Karen Mains

About Karen Mains:

Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write new content for her Christian blog, “Gettin’ Thru the Day.” Through her Hungry Souls ministry, she serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and has started teaching a mentor-writing class.

Karen and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David is completing a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and he and Karen are considering if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

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Everything I Do the Baby Thinks Is Funny

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This baby, our eighth grandchild, is round.

His mother had the stomach flu last night, so I received an early-morning call of desperation from my son, the father. “Mom, can you watch Eliana (aged 29 months) and Neeham (7 months) while I teach class this morning? Angela really needs to sleep. I’ll be done around 1 p.m.”

Fortunately, I have the kind of work where I can set my own hours, and while waiting for the little ones to be dropped at the door so their father could rush off to teach his Spanish class at a nearby college, I decided I was not going to try to do anything else but just play with them.

I took off Eliana’s pink winter (fake-leopard-trimmed) coat, got her started playing with the toys from the cupboard that holds stacking blocks and magnetic-footed circus people, plastic spiders in a plastic jar, easy puzzles, a big container of farm animals, and the inevitable stack of books.

Then, I stripped the baby’s brown bear snowsuit off and lifted him out of his carrier chair. My goodness!—he’s a heavy chugalug. If you hauled him around all day, there’d be no need for weightlifting exercises! “Was Jeremy this big?” I asked my daughter at a recent family gathering; she is older than her brother and seems to remember more about my babies than I do. Granted, Jeremy weighed 10 lbs., 13 oz. at birth, but did he have these thick thighs and rolls after rolls of leg fat? “Oh, Mother,” Melissa recalled, a little disdainfully (Where was my memory, after all? She would never forget such pertinent information about her children!). “Don’t you remember? Jeremy was a chunk. He was every bit as roly-poly as Neeham. You used to call him Buddha-baby.”

OK. I’ll take her word for it. Today, I tested Neeham’s sitting-up abilities. Pretty good, although his weight does tend to make him roll forward or sideways. But for the most part, the back muscles are strengthening and his balancing ability is balancing.

Two months ago, I rushed (as the result of another emergency call—Jeremy and Angela could not quite match their work schedules) over to the house to filled in for that intermediate hour where the parental tag-match didn’t work. Neeham took one look at me, crumpled his mouth into a huge pout and began to wail, What? You’re abandoning me to this lady? Who is she? What does she have to do with me? Does she do milking? Where are you going? Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a. He was not to be consoled and wept himself to sleep. At that point, I decided I obviously had not been spending enough time with my youngest grandson.

So today (after some corrective measures in between), when he came to my house, with a sister happily stacking soft Beanie Babies on all the bookcases shelves she could reach, Neeham and I played in the sunshine that was falling this winter day on the dining-room rug. Oh, now we’re friends. Everything this lady does is funny. He chortled and chuckled over my blowing air into the crevice of his neck. He thought my ah-boos were hilarious. When I changed a diaper, he pulled his feet up to his mouth (how do babies do this?), and I couldn’t resist the temptation to roll him on one side, then back on the other. Freed from garments, he kicked his toes in glee, laughing all the while. His round bald head, the darling butt baby-bare; everything was ovoid. This was pure delight to me. Now diapered, he sat on my lap on the couch where I tested his standing-straight propensities. (“Biggie boy. That’s a biggie boy!”) Soon, cuddled in my arms, his mouth latched onto his thumb and the sucking commenced. In no time, he was sound asleep. I pressed my nose to his fat cheek—nothing on earth like that baby smell.

What a happy morning. By this time, Eliana had systematically progressed through her caravan of play—first the Beanie Babies, then the farm animals set to standing by the fireplace, then the books, etc. I carefully placed the baby in his carrier and sat my granddaughter on the kitchen counter. She demanded an apple: “Ap-pop.” I sliced and peeled one and fed her tiny bits. Eliana is being raised bilingually. She looked up at the plates hanging on the soffit and said while drawing circle with her hands, “Círculo.” This word I knew, and think she is impressive making her way in both early Spanish and early English. Obviously, I’m going to have to come up to speed with some basic Spanish myself if I’m going to understand her.

The children’s father came home at the time promised; now the baby had wakened and Eliana was asleep on the living-room couch. “Your daughter’s diaper was so wet, I had to take off the onesie. It was soaked.”

“Oh, I know, Mom,” he said with a grin, scooping them both into car seats, spreading the pink winter coat over the daughter and the brown bear suit over his son. “We are just really bad parents.” And after thanking me at least four times, he and his carload were off.

Stepping back into the now-quiet house, I picked up all the scattered toys. This familiar pickup routine only takes me a few minutes. Really, I thought, I should have thanked my son. I’d had an exquisitely happy morning and had loved the fact that Eliana is content here, loves to play with the toys, sits on my kitchen counter, eating like a little bird the tidbits of apple I popped into her mouth. How great is it to know that my grandson no longer puckers and pouts and howls when he is left with me.

It occurs to me that this is one of the primary ways of getting through the days. Find something young, babyish, and enter into play. Borrow babies from a friend if you don’t have any—they’d all love a break! Serve in the church nursery. Pick up a couple kittens; dangle a string or push a ball of yarn their way. Stop at the chicken incubator in a nearby farm in the city and take time to watch the tiny beaks peck their way out of the shell, wet feathers eventually fluffing themselves under the heat of the lamps, then little chicks waddling about, bumping into other chicks.

There is something about going back to the beginnings, something about being near newness, close to fresh starts, something about rediscovering origins. Everything is tactile with babies. We hold, we nuzzle, we press our face against their skin; we pinch and tickle and pull at their soft cheeks. We give our fingers to be grasped in their tiny fists. We place them on our tummies and nap while they nap. We crawl on the floor chasing after them; we catch their ankles and roll with them protected in our arms as they chortle with delight. This sensory interaction is some of the closest connection we adults allow ourselves. It is healing all around.

Once during an extremely stressful time in my husband’s life, he spent every Saturday morning with our first grandchild, then a toddler. They ran errands together. He would pick her up and, in these days before car-seat laws, buckle her into the front passenger seat. Her little legs were too short for her knees to bend over the edge, so they would stick straight out, gym shoes pointing up. To the bank they would go, to the post office, to the drugstore. Often they’d get their hair cut in the same salon, and always, afterwards, they would buy sugar cookies at the bakery on the same block and eat them while driving home. This happened week after week. I often thought that Caitlyn, by just being so adorably new and by just being eager to go on errands with “Papa,” probably saved his life. I am serious.

How lovely that babies are given at a time when their grandparents are in the aging process.

We are watching the film How to Eat Fried Worms a lot right now with our 10-year-old grandson Elias. Evan Almightyis another kid favorite. Right now, both these films never seem to grow old to them. I love to hear my grandchildren laugh. I promise you, if you can get back to the beginnings, back to those who see the world the ways that you have forgotten to see the world; if you can rediscover the origins, you will make it through the days. And if you can find a baby who thinks everything you do is funny, you are most blessed.

After all many things in life renew themselves, day always comes after night, the seasons are on a yearly rotation, the earth goes again and again around the sun. Old friends come back into our lives. We celebrate the holidays every year. Some things always come around again. Death and resurrection are renewable. It is all “círculo.”

Karen Mains

About Karen Mains:

Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write new content for her Christian blog, “Gettin’ Thru the Day.” Through her Hungry Souls ministry, she serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and has started teaching a mentor-writing class.

Karen and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David is completing a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and he and Karen are considering if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

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Making Marmalade

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For some reason I made a beeline to the church kitchen. My husband was the guest speaker for the Raitt Preaching Series at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Santa Ana, CA. He preached Sunday morning and Sunday evening, then three times (the same message in the two morning sessions), once at 6:30 a.m., then at 9:00 a.m., then in the evening at 7:00. Perhaps, it is because I have been a pastor’s wife, and in the ministry all our married life, that I appreciate the hard work (and often un-thanked work) of the people behind the scenes. I wondered who would be taking care of the continental breakfast so early in the day.

“Hi! I’m Karen Mains. Just wanted to see what was goin’ on back here.”

My attention was immediately grabbed by the slices of oranges being arranged on trays. They were juicy and ripe and almost red-orange in color. “Oh, oranges!” I exclaimed as though no one else in the room knew what they were.

“Yep,” said the gentleman slicing the fruit. “They’re navel oranges. They’re from our trees. Help yourself.”

Shamelessly, I began snarfing up the slices, almost as fast as he could place them on the trays. Now, fresh citrus fruits in California are commonplace. Ripe fruit drops from the trees in fields and over backyard fences, and the harvest is so plenteous that wind-fallen grapefruit and lemons and oranges may just rot on the ground. But for a Midwesterner who is used to imported fruit, picked too early, shipped by trucking routes inland, I am aware that we rarely eat citrus at the height of their ripeness.

The wife piped up, “Oh, we make fresh orange juice too, but most of it was drunk in the 6:30 meeting.” I realized these new friends, both in their lively 70’s, had English accents.

We chatted about the qualities of different oranges—they have 13 trees on their property!—Seville, navel, tangelos, and Valencias. And somehow, we got onto the topic of making marmalade. I had spent a Saturday last year experimenting with a whiskey-marmalade recipe. We three agreed we loved good marmalade, but my new friend made it clear that the preserves in our American supermarkets were too sweet—not “tart enough.” Certainly not as good as the British variety. I heartily agreed—English marmalade is exquisite—a good enough reason to travel overseas!

“Do you know how marmalade began?” queried the citrus-grower, still slicing oranges. Marmalade, legend has it, was a chance invention. Some time in the 18th century, Mr. Keiller, a grocer from Scotland, acquired a load of Seville oranges when a ship was driven ashore by a storm. His wife, Janet, experimented with recipes, added sugar (Sevilles are very bitter) and invented the chunky orange marmalade that became Scotland’s own. The preserves sold so well that it soon became a staple of every breakfast table in the land, and the name of James Keiller & Sons is still associated with it.

David, my husband, preached in those early sessions, and I was proud of his command of the Book of Revelation and of his great gift of reducing the most complicated of passages to their essential meaning. But I made sure I didn’t return to the guest house where we were staying without transcribing the marmalade recipe that lodged in this man’s mind onto a scrap of paper I found in my purse. Here goes:

British-like Marmalade

Take one large lemon, two white grapefruit (not ripe, because there is more pectin in the skin), and seven Valencia oranges (which must be very sweet).

Slice them, leaving on the skins and instead of water, combine all with the juice of one orange. Add 3/4 cup sugar if you like a tart taste; one cup if you like it sweet. Boil everything down for about 5 hours, stirring occasionally over a low heat in a five-quart pan until the contents are 25% reduced.

Stir in 5 tablespoons (we’re guessing here—I’m thinking it may take more like 1/4 cup) of whiskey or Grand Marnier. Let the ingredients sit for one-half hour to cool.

While still warm, spoon into sterilized jars (use any leftover jam and jelly jars). You do not have to add pectin because there is pectin enough in the skins and the juice. Screw on the tops. Cheerio!

Without a doubt, one of the great gifts of life is meeting enchanting people, people who carry on a kind of romance with life. People who enliven rooms just by being in them. People who open doors and show you intriguing vistas you have never seen.

I’m an introvert and it takes a little effort for me to strike up conversations with strangers. My natural default procedure is to be politely withdrawn and to stand back observing, but lately, perhaps due to the aging process, I’m not so shy, and I’ve met the most surprising folk. Everyone is fascinating (well, actually, some people are boring—they just haven’t reached their fascinating potential yet), but truly evolved personalities strike matches in the soul, stimulate the minds of their listeners, arc high in the back-and-forth swings of discussions, love the world. Finding them is worth the few who make your eyes roll back into your head.

For instance, my new marmalade friends. Although retired now, the gentleman was an aerospace engineer and worked, among other things, on the project that developed Teflon for the space program. After retiring, he helped some ailing friends with their produce truck farm (“The loam of the San Joaquin Valley is 12 inches deep in some places,” he informed me). He sold the produce in local farmer’s markets, which make fresh vegetables and fruits straight from the fields available year-round. What an intriguing second career!

Are your days a little dreary? Well, winter months in Chicago can certainly become wearying. We have had cold weather and snow on the ground since November (it is now February 9). I will be returning home in two days. I think I’ll find me some interesting people.

“You like being here with these folk,” my husband said to me, noticing my liveliness. “I do,” I responded. “They have been wonderful to be around. Did you know that orange trees have three blooming seasons in a year? There are oranges on the trees now that ripened in June. There are oranges on the trees that are just beginning to ripen. And there are blossoms for the ones that will ripen this summer!”

This is one of the ways for getting through the days. Find people who are bearers of light. Learn from them.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is beginning to build distance-learning opportunities, teaching wannabe writers how to be better at their craft. She is offering telementoring conference-call training twice a month for eight months. This current cycle is filled. If you are interested in future cycles of training, the Web site www.KarenBurtonMains.com is being built to facilitate this effort. We invite you to check it out for announcements of future classes.

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

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In the Desert: Pillars of Light

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The north edge of Phoenix still has vistas that remind the viewer of what this desert was like before population sprawled. No matter where I am, I play a little game: I try to imagine what the location must have been like before man casually and all too carelessly began tramping across the terrain. For instance, where I live—Illinois—what was the geography like before the forests and prairies were hewn away to make place for farmland? What was the swampy shoreline like that breached Lake Michigan before Chicago began to rise in her concrete and multi-storied splendor?

The parents were off vacationing in Florida, the grandkids had gotten themselves off to school, and I, on recess from grand-parenting, took off looking for a Starbucks where I could access a Wi-Fi connection. Suddenly, in the distance, beyond Interstate 17, beyond the shapes and forms of the new shopping mall, I could see a patch of what looked like twenty-or-so pillars of light ascending into the morning clouds. Rains had come to Arizona, and the morning horizon was crowded with billowing harbingers of more storms on the way—but light going up!—I must be seeing things.

That’s strange, I thought, steering myself around the unfamiliar streets. What would make light appear to be shiningup? I am trying to discipline myself to pause in the daily run of things when these sudden instances of beauty catch my attention, but morning traffic pushed me along.

By the time I had turned off  35th Avenue onto Happy Valley Road and was driving east, the direction of the pillars of light ascending to the heavens, they were gone. This was a matter of three minutes. In just a flash of my life time, I had spotted something magnificent, something I had never seen before and will probably never see again. The grey morning without the startling pillars of light was still beautiful framed by the roiling clouds, their edges shot with rising-sun silver, but I had seen this beauty before—I am from the Midwest, after all, where rainy days and storm clouds are common. I was haunted all day by the thought that I hadn’t paused to drink in the holy metaphor of these pillars of light no matter their cause—the earth sending up an ethereal sculpture of praise for the drought-parched land finally receiving drenching sustenance.

I should have stopped the car by the roadside, opened the door and stood gazing at this phenomenon with nothing to distract my attention. Were there beacons set into the land that Phoenix uses for special days of commendation and I had witnessed an early morning test? Were there atmospheric conditions, just right at that moment, so wind and air and moisture could produce a light show from the desert floor? Like many, however, I suffer from a common human failing: My personal agenda sets my path. Consequently, I am prone to miss exquisite moments of sublimity.

Jesus, frustrated with the denseness of many of His followers, pronounced an analysis that has been common to mankind throughout the centuries, “You have eyes to see but do not see…” I want to be a see-er, someone who is not negligent in observation, someone who is not rushing so much that wonder is abandoned. I want to become habitual in stopping, in looking, in attending. I want to have eyes that see.

I should have gotten down on my knees and raised my hands to the heaven, prayers of praise and worship rising from one human devotee there on the desert roadside in the same way the pillars of light rose to the sky. I should have breathed in the rain-blessed earth. I should have listened to the cry of the still-wild things and known myself for an intense fraction of time in harmony with all things that be, lifting my head to the graying, looming skies, my soul crying Selah!

Noticing is one of the better ways of getting through the days. If we do not turn to see, we all too often plod, the soul heavy, not knowing that the pillar of lights are shining skyward.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains is beginning to build distance-learning opportunities, teaching wannabe writers how to be better at their craft. She is offering telementoring conference-call training twice a month for eight months. This current cycle is filled. If you are interested in future cycles of training, the Web site www.KarenBurtonMains.com is being built to facilitate this effort. We invite you to check it out for announcements of future classes.

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

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Falling Up

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The tangle of computer cords under my desk kept grabbing at my foot when I left to pull things from the copier, or to attend a meeting. I kept warning myself, Better take care of that, Karen, or you’re going to be sorry.

And I didn’t—take care of it. And I was sorry. The cords finally got a good grip around my ankle and plunged me face down to the floor, which I hit hard with my right knee before going prone.

I really wrenched that baby. I limped for weeks and took the stairs like a two-year-old, and moved carefully even during the unconscious moments of sleep. Just when I thought the knee was healing, a small sideways motion would wrench it again. Some days I could take the stairs like an adult; other days, I’d be doing the two-step shuffle again.

Bending my knees to kneel was agony, and getting up after carefully maneuvering myself to the floor—to look under the couch, for instance, or to scrub up some kitchen spills—was a prophecy to me of old-age days to come.

So, before taking myself to the orthopedic office (I’m avoiding the medical community these days until our government lands on some kind of healthcare solution), I went back to CURVES. Would this gentle, but regular, women’s exercise rotation strengthen the muscles that were not holding my damaged kneecap in place?

Sure enough, just after a week, I was taking the stairs without pain. My knee felt much, much better (though a little seemingly innocent twist had me shuffling up and down the staircase for a day). Although improved, I’m learning that I regret it every time I feel frisky. Kneeling is still tricky.

As a side effect, CURVES exercises are also working out the sore arm and shoulder that threatened to freeze up on me—a holdover, perhaps, from the days when I lugged suitcases through the airports of the world. Years ago, a doctor diagnosed it as “luggage elbow.” Unfortunately, this was one of the physical annoyances I seemed prepared to live with, so I am pleasantly surprised with this secondary improvement.

The point of all this is that some falls are not falling down—even though our first trajectory seems to be floorward—some falls are really falling up!

I have no choice if I don’t want to become increasingly crippled but to do my exercises. My goal is to get in an hour a day. I’m not thinking about losing weight—which I need to do—or looking good—although that would be nice. I’m thinking about something even more basic—being mobile.

Now the interesting thing about just-being-mobile-exercises is that there are all kinds of side effects. My 46-year-old daughter announced that one of her goals for this year is A Severe Self-Care Regimen. That was a viral thought waiting to be caught.

As long as I was being virtuous in keeping my three half-hour CURVES appointments per week, why didn’t I just go on and add all those nitty-gritty little should-do’s that swirl around in my noggin, crowding out the more important ideas? What would that include?

  • The 7-minute workout morning and before bed that claims to be “the ultimate energy workout.” Two summers ago, I bought a mat for a yoga class (for ages 50 and up) that got cancelled. Now I could use it.
  • The steam machine with a face mask for opening pores for cleansing—hidden away on a closet shelf—was resurrected for weekly sessions.
  • Walgreens’ Alpha-Hydroxy Face Cream for Aging Skin and Walgreens’ Moisturizing Face Cream for Dry Skin (I can afford these). I use them morning and night along with the Wal-Mart-brand Equate Daily Renewal Cleanser (“with gentle micro beads that unveil youthful, radiant skin”).

Oh, you get the idea; my fall down, contrived by a colluding set of computer cords, has really been a fall up. I, a woman not given much to regimens of any kinds, am finally putting into place a self-care program I should have begun 30 years ago!

It seems to me, as I look back on my life, that every downfall has its upfall component. If I hadn’t totaled the car, we wouldn’t have discovered we could do just fine with one vehicle. If we hadn’t lost our business, we wouldn’t have learned to enjoy our marriage in these later years of our lives—because we wouldn’t have had enough time. You get the point.

This has been a good exercise for me—thinking about my downfalls. Perhaps you might want to start a list of your own. Excuse me, though—while you consider that, I need to do my morning 7-minutes (the ultimate energy workout) on the purple exercise-mat, which is spread out on the carpet, right by writing desk. It’s all about feeling good (“stress-free and vibrant, not tired and anxious,” i.e. book-jacket copy). And I certainly want that.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains heads the spiritual-mentoring ministry Hungry Souls (www.hungrysouls.org), which is offering an eight-month teleconference training for Wannabe (Better) Writers. This mentor-writing course begins Thursday, February 18. The curriculum will concentrate on Personal Memoir Writing and will meet twice a month by phone for an hour each session. For more details, fees, assignments, the curriculum and how to enroll, go to http://www.hungrysouls.org/events.php. You must register by January 31. Inquires can be made at info@hungrysouls.org.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new “Listen to My Life Mapping” Listening Group as well as two 3-Day silent retreats for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

Karen Mains is also continuing to write new content for this, her Christian blog, “Gettin’ Thru the Day.”

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

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Red Bird on Snow

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We have been snowbound here in the Chicago area for the last three months, since early November. Now, being snowbound is different than being housebound. We can get out and get around. In between snowfalls the roads cease to be icy—but the layer of white that covers our yards has been slowly growing since before Christmas without a single thaw.

“How much snow do you think we have?” my husband asked one morning as we were pulling the car out of the garage. We both estimated that there was at least 12 inches sitting on the flowerpots, which winter over in the garden. In the snow banks where the plows dump, the excess snow is higher, of course—three to six feet high. We are living in a white-on-white world.

For many northerners this presents difficulties. Even though we’ve had a fair share of sunny days, a series of overcast days, another storm that dumps three to six inches can make people weary of winter—it’s just hard to drag yourself through the routine, donning warm extra-thick stockings, a sturdy pair of boots with good treads on the soles, layers of sweaters and wool vests and down-filled jackets, and gloves—how many pairs of gloves do we go through getting in and out of cars? (My goal this winter has been to not lose a single pair.)

Then sunshine-deficiency syndromes take over, vitamin D starvations, which set off physical lethargies that for some folk, tumble into depression. Skin dries in the heated homes, even with digital thermostats automatically turning down the temperatures when we’re working or when we’re sleeping. A warming spell (39 degrees today after weeks of single-digit readings) tempts us with the possibility—maybe we’re done with the worst of it!—but no, in our heart of hearts, we suspect we probably have a few good snowstorms still to come.

Yesterday, one of those bright sunny days that glisten on the white, where the sunrises and sunsets are exquisite, I looked out the back window to see if we needed more seed in the feeders. There were six bright-crimson cardinals on the ground, on the feeders, flying in and out of the bushes. Red birds are beautiful in every season, but in winter, on the snow, when the days have been dull and are for a moment bright and the months ahead are still long—they are breathtaking. One bird would have been enough—but six!

The prize-winning poet Mary Oliver has written this in her book Red Bird:

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

I guess my responsibility for getting through the winter is to luxuriate in the moments of beauty that “fire up the landscape” of these long months. Next time six red birds come to the feeders, I will stop what I am doing, put on my boots and scarf and down-filled jacket, walk quietly to the back-yard bench, slowly sweep off the 12 inches of snow and sit. I will breathe in the fluttering molecules which must be speeding through the air with all those wingtips beating. I will put my head back and take the deepest sigh I can possibly take and thank Providence that the cardinals, symbols of flying hope, come to my feeder and wing through my spaces. Without snow I would not know this moment.

Still, for whatever reason—
perhaps because the winter is so long …
or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens—
I am grateful …

I hope I have another chance.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen Mains right now:

Karen Mains heads the spiritual-mentoring ministry Hungry Souls (www.hungrysouls.org), which is offering an eight-month teleconference training for Wannabe (Better) Writers. This mentor-writing course begins Thursday, February 18. The curriculum will concentrate on Personal Memoir Writing and will meet twice a month by phone for an hour each session. For more details, fees, assignments, the curriculum and how to enroll, go to http://www.hungrysouls.org/events.php. You must register by January 31. Inquires can be made at info@hungrysouls.org.

Hungry Souls is also offering the new “Listen to My Life Mapping” Listening Group as well as two 3-Day silent retreats for 2010.

Karen is also developing a two-day training event for those interested in becoming Silent Retreat leaders, and the Global Bag Project is developing a template for Bag Parties in a Box.

Karen Mains is also continuing to write new content for this, her Christian blog, “Gettin’ Thru the Day.”

About Karen Mains:

Karen Mains and her husband, David, have been in religious communications for decades—radio and television and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy, Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. David has been working on a manuscript titled Revelation for My Grandchildren, and they are just beginning to brainstorm if this should be made into a fourth Tales book, Tales of the Revelation.

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