CELESTE STORY SEPTEMBER 10

 

CELESTE STORY SEPTEMBER 10 

 

I’ve been a chaplain for Celeste for several years at the Golden Oaks Retirement Facility.   

 

Over the years we’ve become great friends.  About six weeks ago she started telling me about her poster ladies.  Starting in First Grade ladies on posters would speak to her.  First, the activities were fun then as Celeste got older the activities became more supportive of people around the world.   I didn’t believe her at first that these events weren’t just the figment of an old lady’s imagination.  But, the details were so compelling.  

 

***** 

 

 As she moved up to Prairie du Chief junior high school the assignments became more humanitarian in nature. 

 

In high school, she and other poster ladies and other students took on more activities.  Celeste didn't describe the activities to the depth that she went into in her first years.  Sometimes she was invisible to the people she was helping and sometimes visible?  They helped feed and clothe the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, fight hare around the world, stop domestic abuse, helped people get jobs, and helped after floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters  

 

In college, Celeste got a music scholarship for her clarinet, oboe, and violin playing.  With her experience with the poster ladies, she majored in social work with a double minor in business and Spanish her role with the poster ladies was changing too - from a helper to more of an apprentice poster lady.   

*****

Celeste described her life to me.

“In college, I went on a poster lady trip to Tibet.  The Chinese government had just taken over Tibet and I went with Beryl to Tibet to help those who were being pursued.  We were invisible to everyone except each other.  There were several other teams there including teams with Opal, Jasmine, and Ruby that had been my poster ladies in the past.  

As a Chinese soldier was ready to shoot a defenseless Tibetan woman, I pushed the end of his gun up so he missed.  Others made an artificial sand storm by throwing sand into the eyes of the soldiers.  We tripped soldiers, we emptied their ammunition out of their guns when they took a break.  And, we guided the Tibetan people through passes and trails out of the country.  Nepal took in most of the refugees.

There was a college young man that I seemed to recognize.  His name was Saul.  He helped carry food for the refugees as he was taller and stronger.  

When our mission was over, Beryl took me back to her poster in a hallway about being a music major at my college.  The coast was clear as I climbed out of that poster at the same time I climbed in.  (I was never too sure how that worked).

I hadn’t gone more than twenty steps when a man entered the hallway from a classroom.  I recognized him immediately as Saul from our Tibetan mission.  And, he recognized me.  Somehow we hugged there in that hallway.  He asked me if I wanted coffee, and that was our first date.

We dated through college and saw each other on other missions - helping people over the Berlin wall, hiding peace-loving people from terrorists in Nicaragua, and other places.  And, after college, we married.  

We both had joint missions for the poster ladies and separate missions - and still no time elapsed between the start and the end of the missions.  Saul became an immigration lawyer and I became a social worker, who went back for a master's degree in psychology and social work and a doctorate degree in psychology and social work.  Saul and I worked on immigration, social justice, and racial and sexual equality issues.  I had a small private practice that funded a lot of our mission work.  We adopted the slogan “Love Wins” as our mantra and worked for peace and nonviolence practices.  We still made about four mission trips with the Poster Ladies most years - again with no time lapsing from our regular lives.

We had three children, Ivan, Klavier, and Harmony.  When Ivan was 42, he started a gender change and became Isabelle.  

Saul died twenty years ago and I carried on for social justice.  Here I am in hospice, knowing I am going to die.  But, I know something else.  I will become a real poster lady after my death.  I will lead missions, I will help people understand each other better, and I will through small steps and activities closer to God - however you conceive Him/Her/It/The Force. 

****

As our session together was drawing to a close, a picture on the wall in Celeste’s room widened and a voice called out to both of us.  With Celeste as my guide, we ended up in Nigeria where Christians and Muslims have fought for years.  Boko Haram was kidnapping a group of school girls in Northeast Nigeria.  We spent two days there working on spreading the message that love wins.  Ultimately, the leader of this particular Boko Haram group had a major change of heart and released the girls.  He convinced his group to practice the way of peace and nonviolence.  

As our mission in Nigeria was coming to an end, a strange thing happened.  It was like Celeste was cloned.  One Celeste went back with me, but upon entering her retirement living facility, she died; but in my heart, the real Celeste had become a poster lady and led mission teams to show agape love.

*****

Two weeks later as I was visiting another friend in the retirement facility, there was a new poster in the hall - and it was Celeste - who winked at me from her poster.  

Several times over the next years, Celeste helped me into her poster and we helped solve issues around the world.  I think I will become a poster gentleman after I die.  

LOVE DOES WIN

Karen White

September 10, 2022, ©