Redial

Day 7: Redial

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ John 13:34-35

“Michelle, are you available?  It’s someone named Cathy on the phone.  I don’t know the last name.”

Garth was speaking to me from my church office door.   It was 9:30 a.m. I wasn’t sure which Cathy it could be either.

“Hello,” I said picking up the phone.

“40acts said to reconnect with a friend, so I’m giving my friend a call,” said the voice on the other end.

It was my friend, Cathy Gradante,  a United Church minister.  We had studied at Emmanuel College together and were ordained the same year out of the same conference.    She called to catch up and to see if we could get together in a few months to celebrate our 5^th year anniversary of ordination.

“We made it past the make it or break it mark!  5 Years.  That’s worth a celebration, don’t you think?  I thought we could all meet at Milestones”

She always did love a good theme.

It had only been an hour earlier that I had opened my email to read the 40acts task for the day:  Redial. “Your act today is simple: pick up the phone and reconnect with someone you’ve not spoken to in a while.”  And once again I was amazed at how I found myself on the receiving end of an act of generosity.

It is a beautiful thing, hearing the voice of a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, isn’t it?  Connecting with a person who is on your heart but who you don’t speak with regularly for whatever reason.  When all evidence points to it being a good thing—an enjoyable thing!—why do we not connect more often?  Is it because we’re too busy?  That’s frequently the rationale I use.  Too busy.  Too many demands.  Not enough time.

“How are you?”
“Oh, I’m soooo busy.”  

When did that become our standard answer?  And why do we say it as though it were a source of pride?

Author, Wayne Muller, wrote something about that:  “The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine to others.  To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know that the sun has set at all), to whiz through our obligations without time for a single, mindful breath, this has become the model of a successful life.”[1]

I know my excuse of being busy is lame.  I also know that when someone calls the church and says, “I don’t want to bother you.  I know you are really busy,” there’s something inside me that puffs up just a little bit, like a needy sponge soaking up validation.  They think I’m busy; they must think I’m important.  It’s a trap.

Jesus never said, “Blessed are the busy, for they are important to God.”    We wish he’d said it, but he never did.

Arriving home that night I decide to make a phone call to someone I hadn’t spoken with in over a year.  The moment I pick up the phone, I feel a familiar drop in my stomach which tells me something:  it has not been my busy-ness that has prevented me from calling, it has been my guilt.  Guilt from seeing her kids’ pictures on Facebook and never commenting; guilt from driving past the town where she lives without ever stopping in; guilt over letting so much time pass;  guilt that I haven’t been a friend at all.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” (John 13:34)

As I have loved you….

Healing words for an anxious-guilty-busy-excuse-creating-and-loved-anywaydaughter of God.

I dial my friend’s number and wait.

The phone begins to ring…

[1] Muller, Wayne, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives (New York: Bantam, 1999), 2-3.