Barely eight weeks after one of the worst natural disasters in history, news of the devastation of the Indian Ocean tsunami has been relegated to the inside pages – or the closing sound bite on the nightly news. It’s not the lead story any longer. We’ve apparently reached the saturation point on how much horrific detail can be absorbed.

But one story has lingered.

“Baby 81,” a four-month old Sri Lankan infant swept from his mother’s arms, has finally been identified. He was pulled alive from a heap of mud, debris and corpses, and became the 81st patient admitted to a small hospital in the coastal town of Kalmunai. Nine couples quickly claimed the child was theirs – and for eight weeks, officials sought to determine who “Baby 81’s” parents really were.

I confess as a city girl I don’t know much about plowing. I’ve certainly never walked behind a plow – although I did ride the tractor once with my granddad as he dug rows for cotton seed to nestle and grow.

What I remember about that tractor ride was the rich smell of turned-up earth…and how good it felt to sit safely tucked under my grandpa’s chin as we rumbled over the field. Plowing didn’t seem so drastic a measure when it was only the ground that was broken.

It’s a whole lot different when you’re the soil that’s being readied.

The earth doesn’t seem to mind it’s bruising – but I mind mine. “No’s” hurt when you’ve prayed for “yes’s” – and slamming doors can jar the joy right out of your day. Little indignities you’re used to overlooking can super-size before your eyes when what you needed instead was a double dose of kindness. Disappointment is as sharp as the point of any plow – and so are longing and waiting and the quiet wounds that they make.

It struck me again this week that, although I live in a duplex and have an upstairs neighbor, not once has she changed our porch light. Ever. She uses it of course. She turns it on and off. But when my neighbor notices (as she must) that the light bulb over the front door has burned out, she simply waits for me to change it.

She is not physically challenged in any way. She’s probably a decade younger than me. She waters her plants. Feeds her pets. Even feeds the stray cat in our neighborhood that mistakenly thinks its address is the same as mine. But she doesn’t do porch lights.

I know, because I’ve tried to wait her out.

When I was little, I used to run past the stuff I was afraid of. Dark rooms, big bugs, mean dogs – anything that frightened me I consistently passed by with as much speed as I could muster. The faster I moved, I reasoned, the less chance there was of the scary thing “getting” me.

We’re all a little (or a lot) afraid of something. Even as grown-ups. Maybe it’s crime, or natural disaster. Or maybe cancer terrifies us – or heart disease. Perhaps abandonment is a big dark room to some, or change, or hunger or solitude. We’re not just frightened for ourselves, either. We fear for our loved ones, too – and for the hidden dangers we can’t see or name, but know are out there just the same.

It’s time for a new Bible. Not because at least a dozen new “versions” of the world’s oldest bestseller are introduced every year and are begging to be tried – but because mine is falling apart. I don’t want a new Bible. The one I’ve used for a decade now is comfortable, well-marked and familiar. I am in no way eager to “break in” a spotless, creaseless, pristine cousin of my beloved, beat up companion…but I’m going to have to, before long.

The cover has detached from the spine, and pages are coming unhinged, great sections at a time. The concordance has several folded pages stashed in the back, the way my grandmother used to keep folded up tissues in her purse. If I don’t turn the pages gently and coddle it carefully in my lap, it might not last another week.

The most beautiful things I’ve seen lately might, at first glance, seem spoiled.

Maybe that’s because our buffed, airbrushed and artfully arranged culture leaves scant room for anything it deems less than “perfect.”

Just days ago I noticed that the peonies I paid too-much-a-stem for out-of-season are dying in the most exquisite way: leaving their silky, fragrant and feathery petals in pools of red on the dining room table. Each morning a few more fall, until now there are handfuls of them…so lovely that I can’t bear to pick them up and toss them away.

Recently I visited a 17 year old in the hospital; she is giving cancer a hard run for its money, and seems to be winning. Except her hair is gone, save the softest, fuzziest stuff that doesn’t keep her skull from showing through – and radiation has left mean scars on her neck where the skin was once soft and smooth.

Luke 2:14

Who are we to hoard Your glory,
close it in earth’s cluttered halls–
when it was made to echo
through the heavens’ vast expanse?

Who are we to try and grasp
the splendor that is Yours alone–
as if by clinging we could steal
one glimmer of Your brilliance?

Who are we to pilfer praise
When every alleluia boasts Your fame–
except the chorus that adores You and
sings glory to Your precious, saving Name?

© Leigh McLeroy 2004

If I speak too often of Chester, I hope friends will forgive me. Most people teach their dogs. I seem to keep learning from mine.

When Chester the adorable Japanese Chin was just a pup, we attended obedience school. He really retained only two “obediences” learned there. He backs away from anything he’s sniffing, sneaking or stalking when I say “OFF!” in a stern manner, and he sits for his food.

When I fill his dish he knows that it won’t be placed on the floor until he sits. So he sits. When he’s put in the kitchen because I’m going out, he marches in without coercion, then turns to face me, and sits. He’s come to expect a treat for his willing obedience…and 99% percent of the time, I oblige him.

About twice a month, I get a piece of Miss Laura’s mail. It’s been coming for over three years now. Miss Laura was the spinster-lady who lived in my duplex before me until she passed away. Her spinster-sister lived upstairs, and as near as I can glean from stories the neighbors tell, she died about five years before Miss Laura. (Believe me, I do see the irony here. My current upstairs neighbor is also a single woman – but I’m thinking there must be another way out!)

Her sister’s mail has stopped. But Miss Laura’s keeps coming.

There’s no family member to forward the mail to, and so I destroy it. But having collected it for quite a while – I’ve learned things about Miss Laura, even though we never met.

An e-mail from a well-spoken friend contained this phrase I couldn’t stop turning over in my head. She referred to someone she loved crying “the good kind of cry,” and I felt instinctively what those few simple words conveyed.

Some tears are so unbidden, and pure, and necessary that they cleanse and heal, almost without us. Such tears are the essential lubricant for what my friend described as that “good kind of cry”.

They can’t be conjured any more than they can be quieted. They simply are, for as long as they need to be. They aren’t manipulative, or especially dramatic, or perhaps even readily visible. But these tears can speak volumes when words won’t do at all. And they can respond with powerful eloquence when the muscles of our faces or arms or legs are rendered frozen and still.