Go & Worship

[NOTE:  I wrote this reflection in the fall of 2006.  In the eight years since, so much has changed and so little.]

My thought today is a simple one: go to worship this weekend.  Not out of burden or duty, but out of gratitude that you can.  I spent time with a Christian group in Iraq and was struck by how difficult and sometimes impossible it is there to go to worship.

I was unable to attend church more often than not in Iraq – I missed church because the times of worship change to accommodate the before-dark curfew.  Another week I was on the Syrian border with Palestinian friends running for their lives.  Many times a priest friend would tell us not to come, that it was not safe today.  ‘Maybe next week’, he said week after week.

And then there was the day we actually made it  – the day that churches instead of mosques were bombed.  On our way, we saw the black smoke of car bombs at churches in the area.  Six in all.  But that day, it wasn’t the church we were going to attend.

Never before have I had to risk my life to worship in community, to go to church.  It has given me a profound gratitude for the privilege of gathering with the communion of the saints.

One evening at Mass in a nearby Catholic church, I wept at the courage of the gathered community who risked their lives to gather.  This night the priest said, “You are the result of God’s love, not it’s cause.”  I will never forget his words.  For such love, my Iraqi friends, Christian, Muslim, Yezidi, and others, gather still.

Pray for them, please.  Pray for us.  Go and worship.

Larry Died Today

Larry died today

and I found myself

these past days

and weeks – looking –

without realizing – 

for signs – not wonders –

just signs – just a little hint,

Lord, that all is well with Larry,

that all would be well with

Larry, that even as we’re here,

and he was here and not here,

that You are here with us and

more, there, wherever there is,

with him – and who knows about

such things – do I see what I’m 

looking for?  Or did you really 

send some signs to a little ole’

country preacher – was it you

when I saw Larry’s profile, hugged

by a mother, in last evening’s clouds?

Was it you?  Or even Larry?  In the 

swirling dervish of autumn leaves

swirling and swirling round me and

running, like a teasing child, across

the road, taking the leaves with you,

like when Larry used to mulch and

mow and rake and gather and cart

away the many leaves of fall – 

a tender by nature, Larry tended

these grounds I inhabit so very well – 

the leaves did dance around and then

away from me – but leaving a few 

behind in my rocking chair – 

in the hours after – 

when he has gone and we are left

and wondering what to do with

ourselves now in the aftermath, in 

the gone-ness of this thing that was

a life?  I do not know which of you it was

– but I was looking for signs without

even knowing I was looking and 

somehow, I got my answer, didn’t I?

And that is enough and good enough

and more than enough and Larry is

fine and more than fine and it is another

day and the leaves are dancing and 

signs and wonders are abounding

and I?  Well, I suppose I am grateful.

Thanks for the leaves – always the 

perfect leaving – how do you do it?

Thank You, Lord, For Not Killing Me

[F]or Paul, salvation does not primarily mean the end of past disaster and the forgiving cancellation of former guilt. It is . . . freedom from the power of sin, death and the divine wrath; that is to say, it is the possibility of new life.  –Ernst Kasemann

Preachers get paid the big bucks to think on such things as did Jesus have to die on the cross?  If so, why?  What happened with his death?  How do we put that in words?  

With that comes my own discomfort on the emphasis of atonement and words like justification and redemption.  Too often, these concepts (that Jesus ‘had to’ suffer the cross in order for humanity to be restored, redeemed, reclaimed, reconnected, reconciled [notice all the ‘re-’s?] to/with/for God) echo in my own mind with the sharp feminist critiques of thinking that such views somehow require God to turn to murder (if not Jesus, then it would have to be us) in order for everything to work out right.

This thinking makes (for me) the most fervent prayer: Thank You, Lord, for not killing me.  

Is that really the prayer God desires?  It seems small enough thanks to offer – the cringing plea of the undeserving supplicant grateful to be spared what she surely had coming.

Somehow this line of reasoning seems to me to combine in an artificial way The Fall (original sin) and Jesus as the curative restorative that reduces the thing ‘saved (humanity) to a thing pitiable beyond recognition.

I am a grateful woman and offer regular thanks . . . for the beauty of the world and all within it . . . for the many graces I have experienced in a lifetime on this planet . . . for the very gift of life itself . . . for each new marvel of ingenuity . . . for children and laughter and good food and quiet times and playing bridge and big thoughts and night-sky wonders and . . . and . . . and . . .

But I find that I am never grateful that God didn’t kill me as I so richly (according to some) deserve . . .

Perhaps that makes me a bad Christian.

Perhaps.

But it also makes me, perhaps coincidentally, a thankful one.

Holding My Breath

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until they got  here all safe and sound, but I was.

It’s one year ago this evening my mother was in a serious and life-threatening car accident.

Last night my son and friend Laura pulled in with Mom safely ensconced in the back seat – over an hour later than I thought they’d be, even though Ben had called to say they got a late start and even though I could figure they would have stopped a couple of times and even though the roads were clear and dry this year, unlike the ice-covered slick the mountain roads presented my Mom last year.

The ringing of the phone turned out to be a friend calling to wish Merry Christmas early, but the sound of the ringing filled me with dread and even after the call, my heart beat too fast for comfort – even though my head knew the call was a good news rather than bad thing, my heart took a bit longer to catch up.

Even though all these things were true, it is also true that my imaginings get held captive, especially with such an anniversary reminder.

There are no guarantees beyond the immediate moment we inhabit and yet we (or at least I) continue to live into the expectancy that the next moment and the next will be as it should be, even though I know better.

I know to inhabit this moment fully, with all it brings.

I know not to worry about that which I cannot control.

I know that life is a fraught thing.

And still I get gobbled up in expectancy every now and then.

Sometimes my unmet expectations fill me with sadness or frustration or anger.

But sometimes my unmet expectations fill me with joy – like a day when I worry that those I love have been harmed and I wait cringing at every sound of the telephone.

This was that kind of a day – a day when the failure to meet my expectations was a good thing.

For that, I am grateful.

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.

Thank a Teacher

My father, Albert Lawrence Pyles (Sonny Boy to those who knew him as a boy – the only ones he would forgive for using the nickname he didn’t much care for as an adult) grew up in Depression and post-Depression rural West Virginia, the oldest of four – bright, on a farm, and dirt poor.

College was not an option in the economic realities of my Dad.  Yet it happened.

Education as a possibility was born in a public education that began with a boy whose father had to get credit to buy him the required shoes to attend school.  That journey was a painful and formative memory for my Dad, as store after store denied the needed buying power against the promise to pay.

At home my Dad read the Bible and the dictionary (the only books in his house) through and through who knows how many times.

Teachers taught him to read.

And teachers in the one-room school house he walked to in the winter coat a neighbor had given him and the teachers in the larger school he moved up to saw something in that bright little mind that they fed and encouraged and made possible for the dream of college to be a reality.

He had the mind and the desire, but those teachers were the ones who shaped that young man into dreaming what his people never could never have dreamed into reality for him.

Teachers got him to apply and paid for the process out of their own pockets.  They helped him do it.  They taught him what he would need to know to succeed in a life of learning.  They thought his poverty did not disqualify him from dreaming big.

So as I sit in my comfortable living room this morning with a Bachelors of Arts, a Doctor of Jurisprudence and a Master of Divinity under my proverbial belt, I know that, but for those women who dedicated themselves to teaching the country children that included my Dad, that thanks is a debt owed; and I am moved to offer them thanks for their service, and thanks to a country that believed (at least then) in public education, for without it, without them, where would I be?

Without teachers that cared for a tiny boy walking his way to what they had to offer . . . without teachers who shared what they knew with a hungry mind . . . without teachers that did not presume his economic poverty did not equate to poverty of mind or spirit . . . without teachers that dared to believe he could go out into the world . . . without them, I would not be here in a very literal sense, for it was in college that my parents met.

So yeah, I don’t just thank teachers.  I adore them.

_______________________
In my own journey, I remember and thank Miss Taylor in 2nd grade, for taking the mid-year new kid as she was, guiding her in new ways with kindness and patience . . . for Miss Daughterty in 5th grade, the first woman of color I knew well, who managed a class of 50 with humor and skill and the patience of a saint (especially when it came to me) . . . for Mrs. Palmer in 6th grade, who forgave me . . . for Mrs. Davidson in junior high who showed me the world . . . for Mr. Hawkins in high school, who helped me find my voice . . . for Professor Weber, who showed me that learning could be fun . . . for Professor Cleckley in law school, who taught me the importance of genuine justice and to always fight for the people in desperate need of it . . . for Professors Rorem and McKee, who opened the doors of faith and understanding in the present through the lens of the past . . . and for friend and Professor Stu Hammel, who taught me to think and showed me the world and believed that two West Virginia girls could hold their own with the best of the country and in his believing, made it so.

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.

10 Reasons to Be Grateful

[Sigh] So how to be grateful when I’m not . . . grateful?  Oh yes, the outside in approach – you know: changing my behavior can and will change my emotional state, my feelings, the way I see things – outside in.  Simple, right?

Well, maybe.  Let’s see – I know: I’ll do a gratitude list.  I don’t even have to mean it; I just have to do it.  So here goes.

I am grateful for:

1. Silence
2. Alone time
3. Acerbic wits – they make me laugh
4. A self-righteously smug attitude which protects me from all the C.R.A.P.
5. Protestors – love them
6. Bears – they actually get to growl
7. People who hate the very idea of women clergy – without you, who would I feel superior to?
8. Racists – ditto #7
9. Paperwork – it gives my life purpose if not meaning
10. Meetings – what would I do without meetings?

Okay – I don’t want to get carried away, after all.  I am a curmudgeon and I’m in a particularly curmudegonly mood that I don’t want to spoil with too much gratitude, so I think I’ll end it here before I go all mushy and come up with a real list, something that might read:

I am grateful for:

1. Roof overhead
2. Chirping birds
3. Laughter
4. Green
5. Cars and the possibilities of travel
6. My family
7. Electricity
8. Food
9. Hospitality
10. Smiles

Yep – there it is – that warm and fuzzy feeling I so hate.  Darn it, where did my curmudgeon go?  I know I put it somewhere.

The Answer to a Prayer

I started to say, the answer to a prayer I didn’t know I spoke.  But that’s not quite right: I did and I do know I spoke it – I spoke it aloud.  Aloud and alone in the sanctuary tonight, reading the litanies, beholding my Lord at the empty cross, weeping my prayers – I did speak it.

I asked God my purpose here.

I wept for love of them, of me.

I shared the secret lonely places of my heart with my God.

I asked God my purpose.

I beheld my mortality, inscribed in ashes on the back of each hand.

And when I came home, there it was: the answer to my prayer – a typical (if I might be so cheeky) indirect kind of God answer, but an answer nonetheless: the blinking light and beep . . . beep . . . beep of the telephone message variety.  Sigh.  I sit down, hit the button and listen.

Barbara wants to know if I can play bridge next Wednesday.

And Will shares a need and a good deed done, prompted, he says, by asking himself what Beth would say he should do in the situation.  And he thanked me for my influence in his life.

And my prayer was answered.

I’m still not sure what it means as an answer, but I do know this: God gave me a great big hug tonight – one I desperately needed – and I am grateful.  God whispered in Will’s ear and Will called and I am grateful.

Tired and grateful.

Rent and grateful.

Lonely and grateful.

Overwhelmed and grateful.

Sore to my soul and grateful.

Filled with far too many human-exploding Dresden-burning images . . . and grateful.

It’s the smile at the gut punch – the smile that is seeing something else even as the pain spreads.

And I am grateful.

A Few of My Favorite Things: Top 7 Blessed Church Moments of 2012

2012 has been a rough year personally and for our nation – a year fraught with violence and conflict, tinged with the red of the rage of others.  How I long to be shed of it.  But in bidding this year farewell, I am trying to remember that there were good things too.  So I am compiling my own personal list of favorite things of 2012 – the things big and small that lifted my spirits.

Top 7 Blessed Church Moments of 2012:

1. Chocolate communion – a time when we get silly with Jesus and it is fabulous.

2. Sitting with – I do a lot of sitting with – and there is always blessing to be found – there in the silences and the whispers and gentle prayers.

3. Bible study – Rosalee gave me such a gift the other day – saying, “You make us delve deeper, you make us think.”  Teaching – never my particular gift – is always a challenge that leaves me feeling wanting – thus to hear that this thing I so struggle with is a blessing is its own blessing to me.

4. Those in the body who take care of me – some may not even know they’re doing it – the ones who call just to say ‘we love you’ . . . the ones who send the special cards of caring . . . the ones who listen when I need someone to listen . . . lunches and shared confidences . . . the entrusting of so much to my care – the confidence that I’m up to the job . . . the wrestling ones who challenge me and my faith as they struggle with their own . . . the ones who always have a smile and a gentle hug . . . the ones who think I know something they might like to know as well . . . the givers of gifts – just because . . . the ones who pray with and for me . . . the ones who make sure I know what I need to know . . . the ones who step up to help when help is needed . . . it’s all of you, really, and I love you all so dearly and am so blessed to be loved by you . . .

5. Singing our joy – loudly, boldly, softly and tentatively . . . and amazingly often in complete harmony – surely God rests there.

6. Walking our woundedness together – for we are surely the walking wounded.

7. Thanksgiving Eve – as we shared our gratitude, many speaking of family, and my own family walking in, grandson Rowen first, my gratitude there before me on two spindly legs, followed by the generations – four, all in one place.  Holy ground indeed.

A(nother) New Day

I love the potential of a new day – opening its sunshine welcome through the curtains – the promise of possibility like an infinite blanket of hope – small things come to mind mostly – maybe today I’ll finish the ironing – I actually like to iron – it’s pleasing somehow to press out the wrinkles and the smell of clean linens a bonus to the senses – maybe I’ll finally begin repairing the quilt I made for Mom and Dad more than 30 years ago – I am old enough to have created something now time worn – how well I remember my own pride at the gift when given – satisfied with what I had made passed down through my grandmother’s hands – maybe I’ll start walking again – it’s been too long – I will mail a letter that needs sending – maybe I’ll actually schedule that long-overdue hair appointment – that will feel like progress – I will look upon the mountains and be refreshed – their presence my comfort – I will listen to cat’s purr and smile benediction upon her contentment – maybe I will tick a few things from the list – my perpetual write-down of the next indicated things – or not – I will read – glad that I finally can again – leaving behind the tens if not hundreds of books begun and set aside – it’s a perfect laundry day – my only regret that I have no laundry to hang – so many roads spread out before me at the beginning of this new day – it matters not much which I take – for now – in this moment – the promise – the possibility – is enough and more than enough – and I am grateful – it is tomorrow and I am begun again.

Water, Water, Everywhere*

Jack & Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water . . . 

The itsy, bitsy spider went up the water spout . . . 

Over the water and over the sea . . . 

Little drops of water . . . 

There’s water in the rain barrel . . . 

Dark brown is the river . . . 

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream . . . 

Down by the old (not the new but the old) mill stream . . . 

March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers 

Nursery rhymes and songs I learned as a child echo in my mind as the rains come and come and come.  Water is much with us, and a good thing.  But this week, I have been mindful of water in a way I haven’t been since spending time in Iraq, where the water is often unfit for human consumption, and being a desert clime, incredibly scarce.

Illustration of The Ryme of the Ancient
Mariner.  Illustrator:  Paul Gustave Doré

For while the rains come here in a poor imitation of the monsoons of Asia, the water in the ground, coming as it does in my small village, through a water treatment plant instead of a spring or well, is unfit to drink.

They’ve found E-coli in our drinking supply.  Thus we are to boil all our drinking water.  No problem, I thought.  I’ve done this before.  So I boiled a good supply of drinking water, and in anticipation of the water being shut off to find the source of the problem, filled the bathtub with water for cleaning and flushing.  I washed the dishes and then rinsed them with Clorox.  And I remembered to keep my mouth shut in the shower (not as easily done as you might think).

No problem, I told myself – I’m an old hat at this.

But I forgot one thing: I brushed my teeth with the water from the sink.

Oops.

And then I remembered that you can’t forget anything.

And what I forgot is the most important thing of all: mindfulness.  Mindfulness of everything you do is called for when the drinking water isn’t safe and water itself is in short supply.  Bathing becomes a luxury instead of a daily routine.  Securing drinking water is part of the daily routine; there is, there can be, no forgetting.

I’m lucky – this is only a temporary situation for me.  I will not have to hand carry water from a distance.  I will not have to keep bleaching my dishwater.  I will not have to remember to boil any water that could go into my mouth.

No one that I know who does have to do these daily chores necessary to sustain life complains.  It’s simply the way things are.  It was my own attitude as well when I was there.  But I am here now, and in the land of plenty, with so very much for which to be grateful, I must continually remind myself to the task of gratitude.  I wonder why that is?  I wonder why we with so much are so often the least grateful?  I am sorry for the interruption of our steady supply of good water and its impact on others less able than I to cope.  But I am also grateful – for the reminding call to be grateful, if nothing else.

___________
*From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

When the Lights Go Out

My cousin Mark Taylor says this looks like a grazing dinosaur

I’ve lived through lots of losses of electricity – the mid-winter ice storm in West Virginia that left us without power for a week . . . intermittent losses of no more than a day throughout a lifetime . . . the more or less scheduled daily absence of electricity interspersed with inexplicable powerless days and weeks that is Iraq . . .and most recently, the storm of last Friday that swept the central eastern United States.

Jumble of home-run wiring in Baghdad

In Iraq, such an existence is a way of life, no more remarkable than that it’s hot in July – really hot.

But in the US, we have grown so accustomed to the ready and consistent availability of electricity to the point that its absence is more than an inconvenience: it’s a threat – or at least perceived as one.

But when the lights go out, some pretty amazing things, things that make even our fears seem small . . .

Outside, the evidence of Mother Nature’s handiwork is an awesome thing, reminding us of our relative smallness in the cosmos, up close and personal.  It’s one thing to stand before the ocean or the night sky and be reminded of the vastness and power of creation . . . it’s quite another to stand beside a hundred-year-old tree, impervious to we humans below, broken or uprooted by the force of wind, while its neighbor tree remains untouched.

Inside, to feel the heat unabated by the modern wonder of air conditioning is to stand with poorer brothers and sisters around the world as well as our ancestors, surviving without the cool comfort we so enjoy and take for granted.

Lights out at dark changes our daily rhythms away from our own artificial ways back to nature’s own harmonies . . . I like that rhythm better and find I don’t need a clock to tell me when it’s daylight.

And, of course, there’s the help of neighbors.  I still don’t know who took away the debris that landed on the church, including a branch that was so big it seemed in the random photo someone took (the only way I even knew it was there) to have been a tree sprawling across the front doors.  For that and so many other acts of overt and stealth kindness, I say thank you.

For Benny for getting and storing my frozen goods in their generator-run freezer during the outage . . . for Bev and Rich for watching my cat while I was gone, when they had so many other and more pressing concerns on their plate . . . for all the neighbors that checked on each other and did what they could to help . . . for the many, many, people who have traveled away from their own homes and families to walk into these woods carrying hundreds of pounds of gear to repair lines and poles and restore power . . . for Betsy, equally at home in the most chic of locales or boiling water from the river for her family . . . for a church that doesn’t need its pastor in town to tell them to take care of each other . . . for all the acts of grace seen and unseen, I am thankful.

Too Blessed

I have been too stressed to be blessed.

Oops

It’s supposed to be ‘I am too blessed to be stressed.”

Supposed to be.

But I forgot.

Then someone brought me some lettuce from another friend’s garden – sharing her largesse.

And another friend lent a listening ear.

And other friends brought me gifts of red meat – kinds I love from Whole Foods – some days you just need gifts of red meat and this was one of them.

And then another friend, my own personal pastor, reminded me of important truths and loved me.

Others sent e-mails and phone calls and prayers of love.

Son Ben said the words a mother loves to hear: when I asked him what I needed to do, to bring, to a family gathering, he answered, “Nothing but yourself.”

And I went to a revival tonight where personal testimonies were given by lay people who opened themselves and shared their stories of pain and joy, faith fulfilled and prayers answered in ways big and small.

We were all invited to see the connections – to remember the movement of God in our own lives.  While friend Alex was speaking, I opened the song book to I Surrender All.  The worship leader wasn’t taking requests, but I really needed that song.  And the last song he called out as we were leaving was I Surrender All.

I rode over and back with Peggy and Baptist and Presbyterian giggled in the night like old friends.

Then I got home and found a message of encouragement from Mickie, a former congregant now living in Louisiana.

I have received many kindnesses today.

And I am grateful, Lord.

I am seeing the connections tonight, God.

And I thank you for them.

I am revived.

And I bless you for that.

Gas & Gratitude

On a random day during my time in Scotland, I pull to the pump to fill the car’s tank with petrol (English speak for gasoline).  The price on this particular day is £1.42 per liter.

Bear with me as I use some of my math skills to get where I’m going.

One US gallon (not to be confused with the UK gallon) contains 3.7854118 liters.

Thus the price for one US gallon of gasoline on this day would be £5.375284756.

On this random day, the exchange rate of British pounds to US dollars (as opposed to Australian or Canadian or Hong Kong or 21 or so other kinds of dollars) is:  £1 = $1.5896.

That means that one US gallon of petrol or gasoline, if you prefer, on this day, cost $8.5445526581376, or rounded off, $8.54.

Whew!  Let me say that again, as living in the United States, it can be hard to wrap our minds around this: in the United Kingdom, to buy gasoline costs roughly $8.54 per gallon.

Cars are generally smaller there and gas efficiency - miles per gallon - for vehicles is generally much better than in the United States (a friend with an SUV actually gets 35 miles to the gallon, although I’m not sure if that’s the US gallon or the UK gallon – you begin to see how tricky this is).

And distances routinely driven are generally much shorter there than here.  And mass transportation (bus and train) is much more readily available in the UK than in the US.

But this was the promise I made to myself while I was standing at that petrol pump a few weeks back:  the next time I get mad/flustered/upset/enraged/disheartened about the cost to fuel my automobile back home, I am going to remember that what I pay is still less than half of what they’re paying in the United Kingdom and I’m going to calm down just a bit . . . well, until, that is, I remember that they have universal health care here and we do not.

Oops - I’m already back on the roller coaster of comparisons before I’ve even gotten my land legs back – here we go again!

From Flickr Commons by DRAMOS 19

Being Grateful

Isn’t it so true?  And I have no idea why.  I have some guesses, but that’s all they are: guesses.  I am guessing that gratitude does in fact turn what we have into enough because being grateful is full-time work – it doesn’t leave much time for anything else.

But even more, gratitude is a state of being that is turned outward rather than inward.  It considers the other more than the self.  When I am thankful for what you have done for me or allowed of me, there isn’t much, if any, room for me to be anything but thankful.

It’s a reorientation of sorts, isn’t it?  A way of looking that sees the 360̊, gratitude allows us to apprehend the before and after of things and to appreciate the contrast which has worked to our favor.

Gratitude recognizes that much of what we have and who we are is the result of the kindness and efforts of others . . . God . . .family . . . friends . . . strangers . . . and even enemies.

I am grateful for the shining sun I did nothing to bring into being . . .

I am grateful for the mind that I have that was gifted to me by the generations . . .

I am grateful for the job I was given by people who were strangers when they decided to trust me. . .

I am grateful for children who are who they are in spite of as much as because of me . . .

I am grateful . . . and I have enough.

For the Man Who Was So Much More

My friend Stu, Stuart F. Hammel, late of Reading, Pennsylvania, died yesterday morning at 3.52 a.m., lying in his family bed, with his wife Twila holding his hand and whispering reassurance into his ear.

Stu at the Golden Gate bridge -
one of Stu's 'thin places'

What keeps coming to me as I think about such things as life and death and the singularity that was Stu is exactly that . . . Stu was a singular guy.

He was my college professor and debate coach more than 35 years ago.  Naturally, I harken back to those times . . . truly halcyon days in our lives, Stu and Twila and me.

I think on Stu and cast about, trying to define Stu’s place in my own life . . . college was such a foundational time, but it was so very long ago . . . how can I recapture that time?  Those feelings?  The defining beginning of a tapestry that would weave our lives, together and mostly, separately?

This is what I come to: Stuart Frederick Hammel was a man who looked at people and decided about them . . . and what he decided was whether they were worth knowing . . . worth adding to the Stu Hammel ‘collection’.

And for some reason, Stu decided that I was someone worth knowing and worth knowing better.

That’s quite a gift to give someone: the belief that in your eyes, they are worth knowing and over time, worth knowing better.

I hope you have such people in your own life.

For one, I am so very, very, grateful that I had a Stu . . . no, the Stu, in my life, deciding that I am worth being known.

Thank you, dear friend.  May your eternal rest be all that I imagine it can be and so much more.

______________________
Stu's obituary

For more on Thin places (the places where we feel our closest connections to God and the cosmos), check out Iona's web site.

Underpants? For Me????

I am so excited to share this particular Christmas with my grandson Rowen.  He is now 4, the perfect age to grasp the wonder and awe and majesty, to rejoice in the anticipation as much as the event, to relish each surprise as it comes his way.  To see Christmas again through such eyes is a delight and I can hardly wait.

In my family, and I suspect in yours, when it comes to Christmas gifts, some are absolutely inspired and will be remembered for a life time, but most are pretty pedestrian, the giver more appreciated than the gift.

And as soon as November rolls around in my family, we stop buying things for ourselves or others unless they’re to be saved for Christmas.  Need a new pair of socks?  Wait for Christmas and maybe Grandma will get you some.  Getting low on dental floss?  There’ll probably be some in your stocking.  And if you’re lucky, there’ll be a can of your favorite black olives all wrapped up under the tree for you.

We wrap everything and call it a gift – I love that about us, even if it does make for some pretty funny gifts (use your own imagination, but think on the advantages of Polident once you’ve reached a certain age).

But my absolute favorite gift moment has to be my son Ben, exclaiming as he opened one such family gift from me, “Underpants?  For me????”

Like Rowen, Ben was still a small boy and there was no irony in his voice.  He was genuinely thrilled to be receiving a gift of white jockey underpants.  Every single gift he opened was a new and wonderful surprise and he received them all, even the underpants, with equal joy.

I love that about him.  I loved it then and I love it still.  This son of mine always finds joy in receiving.  He doesn’t measure and find wanting.  When it comes to gifts, he sees the glass not as half full, but as overflowing.

And isn’t that so very true?

The gifts we receive are gift and giver, all rolled into one . . . what rapture, what joy, that you would think on me . . . that you would give me this . . . from you . . . oh, how lucky, how blessed am I!

Gifting is holy ground and all who stand upon it are blessed.

I don’t know whether Rowen will have his father’s unabashed excitement and gratitude at receiving gifts or not.  I hope so.  I hope I hear from him this Christmas, “Underpants?  For me????” because he is surely going to receive some.

Merry Christmas, Ben.  Be watching for those underpants.

Love, Mom

Thank a Bureaucrat Day

I doubt if there is such a thing as “Thank a Bureaucrat Day”, but there ought to be, especially in these times when it is popular on all sides to castigate, denigrate, and demonize those whose life work is spent in the public sector, as if they were the collective author of all the evils that befall us individually and collectively.

There isn't such a day, I fear, but if there were, for possibly the Best Bureaucrat Ever, I would like to nominate Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey and the FDA.

There isn't such a day, but if there were, this would be my nominating speech:

If you were born in the United States and you are a Baby Boomer, thank the Food & Drug Administration of the federal government and especially thank Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey.


Because you were born in the United States and because of Dr. Kelsey’s actions, you were saved from the horrors of Thalidomide.  


Thalidomide was a drug prescribed to pregnant women in the late 1950's and early 1960's in Europe, Canada and other places in the world to combat morning sickness.


Thalidomide resulted in horrific birth defects in the children born to these women, including children born with no arms or legs, even in cases where the pregnant mother took only one dose of the drug.


As a reviewer for the FDA, Dr. Kelsey refused to approve Thalidomide for sale in the United States, having concerns about the drug’s safety.  


Because of the simple heroism of doing her job well, Dr. Kelsey saved countless Baby Boomers and their families from the tragedy wreaked on the less fortunate babies born elsewhere.


Dr. Kelsey is a naturalized citizen, so perhaps this should also be ‘Thank an Immigrant Day’.

I was born just a few short years before the efforts to have Thalidomide sold in the U. S. came to fruition before the FDA.  And I, for one, am glad that people like Dr. Kelsey serve their country from behind a desk somewhere largely unknown to me, looking out for my best interests.

And by the way, if you’re a Christian, it doesn’t hurt to remember that we are called to dwell in a spirit not of condemnation, but of gratitude.  So let us be thankful for all the many Dr. Kelseys among us.  After all, they are our neighbors.  And even when we don't know it, they're often busy at the business of saving our lives.

_________
SOURCES: Wikipedia on Dr. Kelsey Wikipedia on Thalidomide Toxipedia on Thalidomide Toxipedia on Dr. Kelsey  Romans 6.14