When my sister, Resi, and I were children, maybe nine and ten years old, my mother would take us to see our grandmother in the nursing home every Saturday afternoon. Located just behind the skating rink at Tenth and Georgia, Hillhaven was a stinky and depressing place, the hallways lined with women worn out and discarded, weak, permanently bruised, slumped in wheelchairs, desperate for the energy we brought with us, and envious of my grandmother because she had regular visitors.
Resi was a good sport about going, but I resented the imposition. Even then I was selfish with my time. My sister was patient with the women who droned on forever about their ailments; and she wasn’t disturbed by the bags beneath their eyes that had been subjected to gravity for so long that their lower lids drooped until the pinks were showing; nor was she repulsed by the massive pores of their large honking noses.
There was a piano in the visitors’ parlor and Resi was always glad to play for them—whatever classical piece she was working on, but also songs from their childhoods; and after she finished showing off and they all went on and on about how talented she was, she would play hymns while the two of us harmonized. Oh, we knew all the oldies—Amazing Grace, It is Well, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, In the Garden, The Old Rugged Cross.
We always started with my grandmother’s favorite—How Great Thou Art. Do you know it? The first stanza—O Lord My God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
It’s a perfect hymn on every level—the melody and lyrics complement one another, and the words relate all one needs to know about the immensity of God. Every time I hear it I’m reminded of times when I felt close to my sister and had a small part in brightening someone’s day. Also, it brings to mind my grandmother, who loved my sister but didn’t like me much; probably because I told her at some point that she smelled funny; or she suspected that I tried to get away with sneaking cookies and making rude faces, which I did, because I could, because she was blind.
So onward: David and I visited the Grand Canyon this past week and that first verse of How Great Thou Art popped into my mind because if that magnificent work of earth-art isn’t a display of God’s power, I can’t imagine what is. Of course the recollection of the hymn made me nostalgic and a bit teary-eyed because the planet offers so much that is huge and wondrous, and by comparison we are insignificant and helpless and fleeting and at times tawdry. Also, I’ll take a second to discuss the modern overuse of the word awesome. The Grand Canyon is awesome. A new pair of shoes is not.
Because we drove, two days there, two days back, through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, on highways bordered by abandoned homes and barns with caved-in roofs; gas stations with boarded up doors and old-style rusted pumps out front; falling-down barber shops behind faded signs; bedraggled drive-in movie screens hanging from their frames; derelict trains frozen on tracks and covered with graffiti—I couldn’t help but contrast God’s projects with the puny projects of mankind. And viewing all of these unsightly and forsaken structures, all I could think was that there should be a law. When you build a house you should be responsible for it, not just leave it behind to become uglier and uglier in a place where people have no choice but to look at it. Anyway, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say we saw two hundred of these ramshackle buildings that had at one time served a purpose but are now a blight on the landscape given to us by God.
Following these thoughts in a logical sequence, I’m forced to contemplate the money I’ve spent and the distances I’ve traveled in order to view other old structures, worn down remnants of past civilizations—the ancient cities of Petra and Jerash in Jordan, the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, The Valley of the Kings in Luxor and the pyramids of Giza, the sleeping remains of Pompeii, and every holy site in Jerusalem. And in all these locations if you stand still and listen, you can hear the wind carrying stories of the people who once lived there, which deity they worshipped, what they ate, whom they loved, and how they disposed of their dead.
At what point does a splintering shack become a notable ruin? Who decides? Rick Steves? Eugene Fodor? Regardless, I don’t think tourists are going to be flocking to the southcentral states to take pictures of the crumbling hovels along the highways any time soon.
As to the Grand Canyon, any human words I could use to describe it have already been used. If you haven’t been there I would strongly suggest you make the effort, even if you live on the other side of the world. A feature so breathtakingly beautiful and vast has a way of lending perspective, which everyone needs from time to time.
Happy Easter!
And it goes on and on and on. . .
Because you haven’t seen me in a while. Not as thin as I was before the pandemic.
Between Lubbock and Sweetwater, one of too many.
