“Just Enough Jesus”

Today my mother, Mary Martha Griley Leistler, would have turned 70 years old. That is three score and ten years old.

When I was a little boy, my mother would tell me that God promised us in the Bible a lifespan of “threescore years and ten.” She was a marvelous storyteller, and even when she was explaining simple, or complex, life lessons, they were always wrapped up in a memorable way of story telling. So I have this memory as a child of my mother, rather wistfully, leaning on that promise in Psalm 90:10, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten.”

When my mother turned 50 years old, my father and sister and I had a party for her at one of our favorite eateries, LaRosa’s—not a surprise party, mind you—my mother loved looking forward to parties too much to reduce the party to just those few hours of revelry. And my father welcomed everyone to the celebration of MM’s demi-centennial. He quipped, “I thought of inviting all of Mary Martha’s doctors but there wouldn’t have been room for anyone else!”

In the thirty months since my mother physically left us, it has always been apparent that she would never really leave us. There are so many family stories, so many turns at which I seek and feel her guidance and her inspiration.

In my childhood she came up with a travel game that served us well to kill time and keep we(e) children entertained. We never really had a name for the game, but the idea was to try and stump my mother. She challenged us, as we drove through the fields of Indiana and Illinois on our way to Aunt Helen’s house, to give her any idea, and she could instantly turn it into a Devotion, a meditation on Christian living. Now—it may not seem like a rousing game—I mean is this as exciting as License Plate Bingo???—but again, you had to know my mother to understand how everything about her was exciting, or different, or over-the-top. Concrete images—a mailbox, a dead deer on the side of the road, a leftover wrapper from a Snicker’s bar—no problem! You would yell out your topic, and in a matter of seconds she would say, “Oh that’s a good one," and proceed to offer a 5 minute “instant” devotional about God’s plan for our lives, or our journey with the Lord. As we got older, we offered up more abstract ideas, and again, her brain could instantly transform whatever seemingly random thought into a beautiful, touching meditation on the fruits of the spirit. Our lives were a constant devotion.

Well, last week, I found myself offering up a variation on this game while my friends Nancy, Tessa and Tristan and I were sitting on the balcony of our bungalow by the Red Sea. We had just realized that Christmas vacation was coming soon, and we had an impromptu sing-a-long of Christmas songs. Naturally, since I have this odd competitive streak (again, if you know my mother, you know I come by this naturally) and I wanted to challenge my friends to try and stump them with obscure Christmas carols. They had not heard of “Bring a torch, Jeanette Isabella!” (Tristan kept asking, “Who is this woman, Jeanette Isabella, and where has she been??”) nor had they heard of the medieval advent hymn, “Adam Lay a-Bounden” (Thank you WO for that one—I will always win the contest with that one—some people may not know ‘Lo, How a Rose ‘Ere Blooming’ well, but please—“Adam Lay a-Bounden”—anyone, anyone, anyone???

I told my friends that I was thinking of my mother especially this week coming up on her birthday, and I confided the odd childhood devotional game. Nancy especially loved it. She is an ordained minister, and she said she just loved coming up with sermon titles. That was her favorite thing. So we had a little contest. Let's create some interesting sermon titles! Nancy laughed when she thought a great Immaculate Conception sermon title would be, “I just can’t believe a word you are saying, Mary!” I channeled my mother’s instincts and came up with: "Just Enough Jesus." I explained that Christians want a nice, protected life, and don’t want harm, but they don’t really want all the work that comes with being a super-committed Christian—they want just enough Jesus to make the journey easier.

I laughed and thought MM would like that title.

All week that concept of ‘making the journey easier’ reverberated in my head. My mother endured MS for over 45 years. It was never an easy journey. But it is not her arduous life struggles that linger with me now—it is the radiance of her smile, her focus on individual people, her faith that every soul contains a spark from God. Interestingly, last week as I was at Mt. Sinai in Egypt, I remembered the Judaic belief in neshamah—the belief that all the sparks belonging to all the Jews who would ever live were present at Mt. Sinai. It was a heady experience pondering that when one of these sparks is born, it seeks to return to God.

When my family speaks of my mother, it is never with a morbid fixation on her death. I know that death makes many people uncomfortable, but for my family, in reminding ourselves of MM, it is always uplifting. There is such thanks within us that her spark and her soul touched our family. Her influence permeates our actions, our impulses, our struggles. Whenever my father sits at his diner, the imperious Mayor of the Imperial Diner, he is carrying on her work of visiting, and one might even say ministering, to friends and acquaintances. Whenever my sister, who imagines herself as introverted, helms a project at church or her children’s school, she is seeking to be extroverted and meaningful as my mother strove to be. Whenever my brother-in-law gives of his salary, he is remembering her goal of sharing and missions; whenever he laughs that marvelous laugh, he is reminding all of us how MM’s humor and laugh could wipe away hurts and fears. Whenever niece Emma and nephew Jack have something hard to accomplish in school, they are reminded that ‘Momma’ was a hard worker, and very smart—and “don’t we want to be like her?” Whenever I teach a class, I try and emulate her star-power exuberance.

The other day a student asked me how I was people to think so fast and respond to complex essay topics almost instantly. I debated telling them about the devotional game in the car, because surely that has aided me far more than I ever imagined.

My mother planted in me the idea that God had a particular plan for each of us. It is sometimes difficult to discern what the plan is, but my mother believed education was at the heart of it all. Education is at best, provocative and unpredictable. We must go where challenges await us. We must awaken ourselves to be provoked. We must catch the next assignment.

It was only a matter of months after my mother’s death that the article in the New Yorker about KA landed in my lap—literally, from my friends Peter and Anne. In the thirty months since May, 2006, I have often wondered if I would have come to Jordan had my mother lived. I might easily have not even considered it since it is so far from home. But in the 16 months I have been here, sauntering through the Holy Land, I know she would have approved of this challenge. She would have been the first to say that growth and education takes unexpected twists and turns. Take that risk! We think life is going one way, and then ideas and opportunities can grow in the most fantastically unexpected directions.

This idea of a Divine plan, in one word, of course, is providence. I remember in 1989, around Thanksgiving, I was doing a great deal of soul-searching. I hated the history Phd program I had enthusiastically entered at Brown just a few months earlire, and I didn’t know what the direction of my life should be. In a lovely twist of irony, Brown is in the city of Providence. I got to thinking.

I was meant to be a secondary teacher. And I guess I was meant to come to Jordan.

As an innovator, as a pioneer, my mother would have loved everything about this project!

I suppose one could grouse that Mary Martha did not get her “threescore years and ten.” But while she may have physically left us, there are so many ways in which she continues to shape us, encourage us, and help us. Her impact will last far beyond threescore years and ten. God has kept His promise.

Last year, in my Thanksgiving blog entry, I mentioned that sometime in my childhood my mother changed her greeting to people on this day to wish them a “Happy Thanks-living.” Just like any good network show, let me offer a bit of a “repeat” from last year’s blog entry on Thanksgiving: “Of course as a child I thought it was just weird. But as an adult, now more cognizant of her 49 year battle with MS, I plainly see how she embodied an appreciation, a thanks, simply for living, and loving.”

“At my mother’s funeral in 2006 we marveled that on earth she had freely lived her life in the service of God, and now she would eternally bask in the presence of God. How fitting that I can celebrate the lessons of her life every year as Thanksgiving rolls around. Just as the pilgrims celebrated their survival, their thanks-living, we can also offer thanks for the miracles around us.”

A woman as charismatic as Mary Martha deserves a major holiday for remembrance. It is almost as if the poet W.H. Auden had her in mind as he once wrote, “All our thinks should be thanks.””