Author Archives: Jenelam

Tulips and the Tornado

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I was awakened by the loud, unfamiliar, crashing, whishing noise just at daybreak. I had no idea what that could be. In a sleep stupor, I went out on my deck, rubbed my eyes, and saw the winds moving the tree branches in all directions at once. I was in awe, for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a minute.

Suddenly, I realized that I might be in danger and that I should probably get to the basement. The noise lasted only a few minutes. Later in the day, I took a walk through town and through the campus of Berea College. I saw a lot of personal belongings that were blowing around – even old letters.

I saw that one of the stone buildings on campus that seemed invincible had been brought down by the tornado. Amazing! Even more amazing though, right next to the fallen stone building was a patch of yellow and red tulips. They had not been touched. Such seemingly vulnerable flowers not affected by the intensity of the tornado’s winds? I was again in awe.

It was 1996, when I was living in Berea, and a tornado came through. “It’s just pathetic destruction,” said Clifford Kerby, then mayor of Berea, KY, where a twister ripped a path right through the center of town.

Berea, a community of about 8,000, appeared to be the hardest hit in Kentucky. About 800 to 1,000 homes were damaged, with about 20 percent of them destroyed, said Kerby. However, only minor injuries were reported by the storm that hit about 6 a.m. “You’ll have one house perfectly all right, and the one next to it is missing the top half and it’s laying in someone’s yard blocks away,” Kerby said. Roofs were blown off most of the area’s motels, numerous businesses were wrecked and the campus of Berea College had “more trees down than standing,” the mayor said. At one gas station, he said, “the gas pumps were just bent in half. The Burger King sign was in some people’s back yard three blocks away.”

“It cut just a narrow swath, but it did a good job on that swath,” Kerby said.

I resolved that day I wanted to be like a tulip. I wanted to stand in my strength and beauty amidst the storms in my life. But, are there barriers?

The Dance Hall

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An image shared by Margareta McKenna

The following vision came to me not in a dream but while I was awake. In it, I see myself in an old dance hall, of the very plain variety you would find in the Irish countryside a couple of decades ago. There is a row of chairs along one of the walls where all the women sit. The men are huddled together at the door. I sit on one of the chairs.

Surrounding me on the floor is the luggage I have picked up during my life. There are many suitcases and rucksacks and shopping bags and small handbags. They contain everything that makes up the person that is Margareta McKenna—all my memories, all that I have been taught about how to behave in this world, my thoughts on the
meaning of life, my emotional memories, my fears and doubts, my ideas about God. In my vision, it is extremely important for me to hold on to my luggage. I mustn’t lose it as I would then lose my identity. What would be left of me?

So I am quite happy to sit there minding my luggage. But then something unexpected happens. God comes up to me and asks me for a dance. I am, of course, flattered—and honored. But regretfully I have to decline the offer, for while I’m up on the dance floor,
someone might come along and steal my luggage. I don’t want that to happen.

God accepts my explanation but returns after a while with another invitation to dance. This time I reply, “Thanks very much, but you see. I’m not very good at dancing, and anyway I’m happy to sit here and watch the others dance.”

Once again, God accepts my excuse, but God returns again and again and again with furt;her invitations. In the end, I get fed up and I say, “OK God, I’ll give you one dance.”

I bend down and pick up all my suitcases and my bags. I have to bring them with me onto the dance floor, lest someone come along and steal them. But soon I understand that it is impossible to dance while carrying all that luggage, so I put them back on the floor.

I enter into the dance with the Dancing Partner who knows all there is to know about dancing and who patiently teaches me each new step. I quickly realize what a pleasure and a joy it is to trustingly allow myself to be led in the dance. I had no idea dancing would be such fun!

After a while, in my vision, I ceased to care about what happened to my luggage. For all I know, the next day, when the cleaners came to clean the dance hall, they found it where I left it and simply took it away.

Having entered the dance with the Dancing Partner and having left all that luggage behind doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t discover from time to time some more bags that I have been holding, unbeknownst to me. It’s almost as if the Dancing Partner is lovingly  and joyously leading me in the dance to places where I can see myself in a new light, places where I am presented with new callings I and am again presented with new ways of letting go of that which holds me back.

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Love Tsunami in Motion

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On December 3, 2012, I was diagnosed with triple negative, aggressive breast cancer.  I had no idea what that meant. 

As news of my diagnosis of breast cancer spread, people started calling and emailing me with love notes and questions.  Very quickly, I got overwhelmed.  I had doctors to visit and lots to do. Not having a clue how one ‘does’ breast cancer, I sent out a mass email to everyone who wanted to know more and those I thought would want to know…Dear Community of Family and Friends… What came back was knowledge that I am loved beyond anything I could have foreseen. People were kind, compassionate, loving, and practical. They offered to bring me food, go to the doctor with me, go to surgery with me, stay the night with me if I was lonely, play me music, sing to me, send me flowers, clean my house, and so much more. It felt sacred and I felt like I was on a journey of love, of a new kind. A friend from work, Jean, said it sounded like a love tsunami. And the love tsunami stayed in motion for the next eight months, from diagnosis until the last treatment ended and my doctors declared me launched beyond breast cancer.

As has been said, if you share your concerns and sorrows they divide, and if you share your joys and happiness, they multiply. My journey is truly an example of this.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
– -Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)