Saving "lost" and "saved"

What does it mean to be lost? I used to worry about getting lost, still do. I remember as child our family would sometimes go up on Roan Mountain at the state line between Tennessee and North Carolina. It is a magical high place where the rhododendron gardens bloom. Rhododendrons are huge bushes that remind me of mangroves. They only grow at a few select high places. These bushes are as tall as twenty feet, woody and wide. Their leaves are long ovals, dark green and leathery, like magnolias. They make round multi-fowered blossoms bigger than your hand in early June, soon now. The whole mountain top looks mauve pink when they bloom. At the park there are paved walkways and picnic tables through the rhododendrons gardens. My great grand parents loved that place. We would have my Grandmother's birthday there the first week in June, with fried chicken and cake in a rectangle pan, potato salad and baked beans in covered dish wrapped in a towel. And every time we went there my mother would warn me to stay on the pathways, not to wander off into the rhododendron. Children got lost. In my memory some never returned. I imagined being lost among the rhododendron, sleeping on the deep shining green pads of moss as big as a bed, wandering alone searching for human contact, to be found, to be saved from sure death in the cold where the high mountain wind blew even in June. I imagined the spirits of long ago Indians haunting me and helping me as I wandered lost. It frightened and beckoned me. When I heard a story of a child actually lost there in the park, we waited to hear that the child was found, that the child was saved.

This week I have been thinking about being lost, and so often I see lost people wondering among us. I think about being saved, about how to save them. It seems the words have gotten tarnished under some religious rust, a coating of flaky meaning after reaction with too much oxidation, too much air, too much talking with those words, lost and saved. The meanings are lost. And this week I have been lost again for a while, and perhaps saved again, perhaps only for a while. I was lost here at home, in my house, lost in pain, in memory, in worry. I make myself sick, get lost under the covers, perhaps hoping not to be found. But of course needing to be saved. And like all the bad dreams we make, we hold all the starring roles ourselves, the little lost child and the big strong rescuing parent.

One of the strings that lead me back up out of the labyrinth of lost was Sara Griscom of Gypsy Hands Healing Center http://www.gypsyhands.com/ She is a gifted intuitive. I made and appointment for myself to see her, an act which was like throwing myself a life preserver. I waited a week for our meeting. Her office was dark, and warm, and scented. She had just finished working with a beautiful man who wore a kilt and a red handle bar mustache. I was shocked by how attractive I found this strange man as I watched him in the lobby. His presence lingered for a moment as I entered Sarah's office, but as we settled in it was entirely her space again. She quickly related that as I had waited a few moments for her, she had meditated on me and saw a number of things. The reading proceeded out of this awareness. I won't go into the whole of it. But the point was that she validated all that I had seen, validated that I am seeing direction, which again is a life preserver. The message was you are beyond the point of return, the transformation is underway and must proceed. The remaining old things must end. Drop the chains and go, now. She saw my Granny Guide, Dolly, who said "No more excuses, hop to it." Dolly points her bony finger at me and points me out to go, Now.

My mother tells the story that when labor began with her first child, my sister, she decided she didn't want to have a baby after all, she changed her mind about it. But of course it was nine months to late to change her mind. The transformation was underway. No turning back. It was time to push. To stop now would be death for mother and child. So this time of being lost is pause in my labor pains. I remember when my first baby was coming and finally got a an epidural, the spinal block pain killer. As the anesthesiologist made me lie still on my side to push the long needle between my vertebra, I told him "this baby is coming now." I was already in transition. But they did not believe me. When the pain relief calmed me and the doctor looked again inside, he said "this baby is coming now." He said "it's time to push." I thought "Fuck pushing, I'm Resting." But the contractions did not stop. And I had to push on. The baby was born in minutes, all eleven pounds and twenty four inches of him.

So what am birthing? I know only a little and I will tell more about it later. I have prayed to make me a blessing, to use me, to send me a higher love. I have gotten in the boat with Jesus to cross over to the other side. The storm is raging and Jesus sleeps. (Mark chapter 4) I shall wake him and we shall see. I am lost and shall be saved.