Guilty Thanks

Yesterday, driving the interstate a few car lengths ahead, the black pick up truck must have slid on some ice at the other end of the bridge.  I watched in horror as it slapped into a right angle to the road even as my foot went to the brake as my mind screamed don’t brake!  Do not brake!  at the same time it is responding if you don’t you’ll hit him!

These things happen so fast you can’t know for sure – but I think it was more the car’s abilities and technologies than my own that stopped our own slip into skid, but the pick-up truck was not so fortunate.

For a brief instant I thought all would be well as the truck simply faced into the median, but inertia had other plans and the truck propelled into the median, which has a steep middle.  The truck flipped onto its top and into the opposite lanes.

The driver (we think his name is Gary) was thrown from the truck onto the roadway.  He was alive at the scene as best we could tell, but his injuries were severe.  His mother managed to crawl out from under the smashed top.  She didn’t seem to be hurt, but she was in shock, so it’s difficult to know.

Several folk, we among them, stopped to render aid and as is so often the case, some who stopped were people with the needed skills – a fireman, a nurse, and others.  Cell phones become the blessing of the moment as people are able to call quickly for help.  All I managed to do was to silently pray, which is not nothing, but feels at the time so little.

Often have I heard folk speak about those who slow down passing an accident with scorn.  But I think it’s nothing nefarious or nasty.  I think they’re slowing down to make sure there’s help.  And to say a small, whispered, just-a-little-guilty thanks that it wasn’t them, for how easily it could have been.

We’re praying for Gary and his mother this Thanksgiving Day as we hope to hear news of whether he survived.  We’re saying our own (guilty) thanks that it wasn’t us this time.  And we’re giving thanks for firemen and nurses and random folks with tools in their trucks ready to be used to help at a moment’s notice when a stranger lies on the pavement fighting to live when, just moments before, whatever life he led was heading down the highway blissfully unaware of what was to come.

Life is so tenuous as well as so precious, with each moment offering no guarantees of another.  And so it is, for all the moments that have passed, I give thanks.

A Crap Gratitude List

It’s November and it’s fashionable and even desirable to make the proverbial gratitude list – the calling to mind of the things for which we are grateful: the people who matter . . . the events that mark, in good ways, the passage of our time.

This is not that list.

This is the list of the stuff that doesn’t make the usual gratitude list.

This is the list of my own discovering of what has been offered to me in the crap moments.  At its most fundamental level, this is my own declaration that I am grateful to be.  Maybe everyone isn’t.  And maybe that’s okay.  The only walk I have walked is my own, so I cannot say.

Hence, no wisdom is offered here; no greater learning to be sought.  It’s just one woman’s list of the crap and how she’s looked at it and called it, if not good, at least worth remembering.

1. I am grateful (or trying to be) when people are nasty to me – grateful that they feel safe enough with me to show themselves (up to a point).  It’s a gift for another human being to take the mask off and just be their old, hairy, even mean, selves.  Hurts.

2. I am grateful that I am someone content with her own company most days, since I am single.  Better me than someone who isn’t.

3. I am grateful that I do not always get my own way.  My head is big enough without more privilege.

4. I am grateful to walk with the dying.  They teach me things.

5. I am grateful to hate the taste of fish and sea food – at least I’m not depleting the numbers of sea creatures on the planet.

6. I am grateful that I have a big mouth – someone has to say the stuff that needs saying – might as well be me.

7. I am grateful that everyone doesn’t like me – reminds me I’m not all that – and every now and then, reminds me to take a look at me a little closer.

8. I am grateful that I sometimes let people down – reminds me to be forgiving when disappointment comes my way.

9. I am grateful to live in a place where I stand in disagreement with most folks about most things – I love a good argument and if I lived with the like-minded, who would I fight with?

10. I am grateful to have rolled in the mud-ugly of life – I am kinder, gentler, more flexible for it – sometimes.

This is no Pollyanna exercise.  I do not say, nor do I believe that everything happens for a reason or that all will be well in the end.  This is the simple realization that even the crap in my life, whether self-induced or visited upon me by others, has something to offer right in the moment of its happening.  Perhaps it’s a bit Zen, this thinking that the good and the bad can co-exist (whether peacefully or not is beside the point).  I cannot say.

10 Marks of Friendship

I listen to the radio this morning and hear the tail-end of something, so I may have missed the main thing.  But this is what I heard: you’re known by the friends you keep.  The speaker went on to talk about our sin and seemed to be saying to watch out for who we hang out with.

Fine advice, perhaps, for our teenagers, who may not yet have developed their resistance muscles sufficiently to stave off temptation to all kinds of stuff we’d rather they didn’t.

Maybe.

But I am more minded of Jesus and his collection of friends, who weren’t all that.  In fact, they were gluttons and drunkards (Matthew 11.19) . . . his betrayers (Matthew 26.50) . . . tax collectors (Luke 7.34) . . . those who could do nothing for him in return (Luke 14.12) . . . the dishonest (Luke 16.9) . . . those whose station in life gave them no right to claim him as friend (John 15.15) . . . the sinners (Luke 19.7) . . . those Jesus claimed as friends were unsuitable in every way.  Even being seen with them ruined his reputation.

In friendship, as with all human relationships, there is an unspoken assumption of mutuality – that we can and do do for each other.  There’s nothing wrong with that, so far as it goes.  But the reality of lived relationships is that there are times when one must carry the other, be the strength for the other, show the other the way.  Sometimes it’s my turn.  Sometimes it’s yours.  But sometimes, it’s always your turn.  Or mine.  There is no graph or chart by which to measure such things, for the fact is, it’s not only some days that my need is the greater; sometimes it’s a whole lifetime when my need is the greater.  And sometimes, as Henri Nouwen learned when he lived in the L’Arche Community, the one who thinks he’s meeting the needs is actually having his own needs met.  Things are not always as they seem.

I think Jesus knew that.

I think Jesus picked his friends based on their need of him more than out of his need for them, but in the picking, I suspect Jesus received as well as gave, learned as well as taught.

But back to the original point: there are marks of friendship.  Here are my top 10:

1. You say yes just because I asked.  Simple as that.

2. You meet me where I’m at, and don’t wait for me to get to where you think I should be.

3. You like my hair, my tattoos, my clothes, my house, because I do.

4. Yes, you tell me the hard things, but mostly you don’t – because you know that I already know.

5. You never have to say that anything is for my own good.  We both already know my good is all you desire for me.  It never need be said.  You’re my friend, so you never preach.

6. You rejoice when I rejoice.  My happiness makes you happy.

7. You have no agenda to change me.  You love me as I am.  And you are wise enough to know that for the stuff that needs changing, change will come because we spend time together, not because you tell me to change it.

8. You know I will let you down.  But you already forgave me for that when you decided to be my friend.

9. You don’t keep score.  You know that some days, maybe even most days, you’ll be a better friend to me than I am to you.

10. You know that while I may be what I do, I am not all that I do.

It all comes down to acceptance, doesn’t it?  Acceptance doesn’t mean that you jump into the deep end of the pool with me.  It doesn’t mean that you make my problems yours.  It doesn’t mean that you let me walk all over you.

But acceptance does mean that you take me as I am.  It does mean that you don’t worry to much about how good or deserving I am, because you’re wise enough to realize that I am a work in progress.  It does mean that you see my worth regardless of the judgment of the world.

It is a great gift – this gift of friendship that has been given me, for I have been blessed with many people along my life’s journey who have greeted me thusly.  I hope that I have been a good friend in return, saying yes to all your crazy schemes and dreams as you have to mine . . . been there for you as you have been there for me . . . or not . . .

So to all I call friend, thank you for carrying me when I needed it.  Thank you for your time.  For your caring.  For your forgiving in advance.  For knowing me just as I am and finding in that something to call good and worthy.  For being my friend.

I hope I live up to the honor.

A Thank You to My Family

After all the food was eaten, the dishes washed and put away, football watching wound down, and the family game (Taboo this year) played to satisfactory conclusion, after all that, came my favorite time of Thanksgiving . . . gathered in comfortable pauses and quiet conversation, family all around, young and old, happily in each other's presence, too tired to care about any remaining mess and simply glad to share snippets of thoughts, moments of our lives.

Thanksgiving has always been a favorite, blessed, gathering in my family.  In that space, wherever we gather, we don't so much express our thanks as live it out in time spent with each other.

And in the aftermath, with the turkey gone, the pies all eaten save the secret piece stashed in the back of the frig, the family scattered back to the winds from whence we all came, I find I am thankful . . . thankful these people are family to me and I to them . . . thankful that we can gather together and share and laugh like fools and cry like babies . . . thankful for the memories that will carry me forward to the next Thanksgiving.

Blessings to all now and evermore.

Mindfulness

I am not a vegetarian, but I did grow up a town girl, so the processes of producing the meat I eat were generally at a far remove from my awareness.  Save for the time I saw my cousin Mike kill his first chicken (which made a lasting impression), I haven’t even been witness to how meat comes to my table.

Of course, I intellectually know about how such things happen.  But I haven’t been mindful of much else, simply because I haven’t had to be.

Thursday, that changed, albeit at a remove.

Throughout the day in the village where I live, I could hear the sound of gunshots.  It’s unusual this time of year, as there is no hunting season just now.  And generally, even in the country where I live, I don’t much hear gunfire.  The sound is a jarring one.

I wondered what it could be, but did nothing to investigate other than to speculate: maybe somebody’s target shooting, I thought.  But they shouldn’t be doing that so close in to ‘town’ (referring to the area where I live with roughly 75 other souls).  Or maybe they’re sighting their guns.

Later, at a church gathering, somebody suggested it was a local family slaughtering their cattle.  They shoot them? I asked.  The one who suggested this alternative looked at me a bit funny, as if to say, How long have you lived here?  Translation: Of course they shoot them; how else did you think farmers slaughter their beef cows?

I never thought about it before.  I know larger farms take their cattle to the slaughterhouse.  I never thought about how smaller farms slaughter on site.  Chickens, at least on my uncle’s farm, got the axe.  I guess I thought, if I ever thought at all, that cows got similar treatment.  But a cow is a very different animal than a chicken and killing a cow has to be much more challenging in all its practicalities.  An animal is hardly likely to stand still while it’s throat is being cut.

All these musings swirled around in my head and the word ‘mindfulness’ emerged.  I have not been mindful of how cows exit this world in order that I might eat beef.  Mindfulness is the process, the effort, of staying aware; of being in touch with things in each present moment.

Of what shall I be mindful in the slaughter of cattle that I might eat beef?  Perhaps there is no better place to begin than in thankfulness.

Native American spirituality has the hunter prepare for the hunt by offering up a prayer of thanks and apology for the life of the animal taken that the hunter and his family might live.  It is said that the act of taking an animal’s life is a sacred act, in the understanding that all life is interconnected and the sacrifice of one for another that the other might live must never be taken lightly.

In other words, we must be mindful, not only of our own needs and their fulfillment, but also of the cost of the meeting of those needs.


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Source for Native American practices:  Mitakuye Oyasin: We are all related, by Fr. David Gallus, OSC, at http://www.crosier.org/default.cfm?PID=1.48&inq_key=20320&action=detail&LibID=859