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.

Day 5:  Gratitude

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” ~Meister Eckhart

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”
~G.K. Chesterton

I don’t know who delivers our mail.  I have lived in my current house for two years and I have never met the person who makes sure we get our birthday cards, local flyers and bills on time.  This person does not knock on the door when a parcel is delivered.  He or she puts it in between the two front doors and walks away, which works out well for us because whether we are home or not, we always get our packages.  But it also means we never meet the person who brings them.

Monday was my day off, and I was home reading over the 40acts challenge for the day, “thank someone who doesn’t usually get thanked:  your bus driver, local postman …these people need to be appreciated and being thankful is a great way to start the week!”

Local postman.  That was a great idea.  I’d start there.

Making myself another cup of coffee, I looked at the clock on the stove.  9:32 a.m.  The mail would likely be delivered before noon so I’d just keep an eye out.

It made for a restless morning punctuated by frequent glances out the window, and my ears perking up at any sound that seemed to come from outside the front of the house.  Twice I ran to the front door thinking that I heard something only to find my cat scratching in a nearby litter box.  And twice, she looked up, unimpressed, at my eager and expectant face as if to say, “Do you mind?”

10:00 a.m.

10:35 a.m.

By 11:30 a.m. the restlessness had intensified.  I was meeting my dad for lunch at 12:15 p.m. and wanted to see the mailperson before I had to leave.   The interesting thing in all of this was how much I was looking forward to seeing this person, someone I didn’t know at all.

It was as if the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to say, thank you:  thank you for making it up our driveway on the icy days; thank you for being out there during this harsh winter;  thank you for bringing me hand written news from family and friends; thank you for delivering endless packages from Chapters without complaint.

How often we  miss moments to be grateful.  How often we overlook the people for whom we are grateful.  In this tiny moment of contemplation I had begun to notice how simple gratitude expanded the heart, making room, in this case, for a stranger to become a friend.

What would it be like to make this a regular practice?  What if we created the conditions for a full life  through the simplicity of grateful living where what we have, the people we encounter, and the experiences God gives us are felt and known to be more than enough?

Suddenly, I heard the neighbour’s dog barking wildly.  I looked out the front door and saw the mailman walking up the neighbour’s driveway.

This is it!  I get to say thank you!

Standing near the door I waited, perched on tiptoe.  The dog continued to bark as the postman walked down the driveway, onto the sidewalk, toward the direction of our house.

We’re next!  Anticipation built as he reached our driveway.  Here we go!

But then, instead of turning into our driveway he continued on the sidewalk.  Perplexed and then disappointed, I watched helplessly as he walked right past our house.

I considered putting my boots on and running after him, red hair whirling behind me as I yelled, “Wait!  I wanted to say thank yooooou!”    Decorum prevailed, however, and instead of chasing him in a 40act-of-crazy, I watched him go around the corner, and out of sight.  My heart sank, not a bad thing in the whole scheme of things because it meant that I cared.  And that’s something, isn’t it?

Later that day, I wrote him a note.

Dear Friend. 

We just want to thank you for all of your hard work and for delivering our mail each day.  We’re grateful for you and for the service you provide.

Blessings,
Michelle and Jake

I placed it in the mailbox with a coffee gift card, grateful, that on this day, I got to be someone who delivered the mail for someone else.

The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. ~Job 33:4

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. ~Genesis 2:7

And when Jesus had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” ~John 20:22

Day 4:  Connect

On Saturday, I was in the unusual position of  having my sermon done and ready.  That freed me to actually have the day off and I was looking forward to using some of that time to attend a meditation group that I try to get to as schedules allow.

It had been a while since I had been to the group.  I was looking forward to sitting with everyone, wrapping my prayer shawl around me and settling into stillness the way I might sink into a warm bath, concentrating on my breath, watching it as it flowed in and out, until it no longer felt like my breath at all.  Until it felt like something more spacious was breathing me.

pneu·ma  (ˈn(y)o͞omə)  —Spirit…wind…breath 

I used to know most of the people at the mediation group, but time moves and faces change.  I find I know fewer faces.  Saturday was no exception.

We don’t talk much at these gatherings, typically.  We arrive, we breathe, we go.  But that day the invitation from 40acts was to connect.  So while I was putting my boots on at the end of the session, I introduced myself to someone doing the same thing.  We hadn’t met before.  We hadn’t talked before.  We’d never connected.

I don’t know about you, but for me there is always a moment after saying, “Hello,” to someone, a stranger, that I wonder if it was a wise idea.  Would they talk to me?  Would they talk too much? It’s an awkward moment.

What I discovered in the conversation that followed was that the two of us used to live in the same town and had enjoyed some of the same places, such as the local Farmer’s Market.  We chatted about long commutes, working on weekends, and of all things, waxing cross country skis.

All of that in common with a complete stranger proving once again that there is generally more that connects us than divides us.

I’m endlessly in awe of how Jesus was able to connect with people.  Wherever he was, he was able to connect—in the synagogue, around a table, at the lakeshore, beside a well, on a hillside, even on a cross. He connected with people.  He connected people.

On my way home I couldn’t help but wonder:  what enabled him to do it?

Jesus was conceived by the Spirit, baptized by the Spirit, led by the Spirit.  Breathing in—Spirit.  Breathing out—Spirit .   Jesus took into himself the very breath of God and then sent it back into the world again.   Those around him felt it.  Wherever Jesus was, the Spirit’s wind was felt, ruffling feathers, fanning flames, soothing wounds, bending certainties, propelling dreams.

Ru-ach  (roo’-akh)—Spirit…wind… breath

Is this not also the same air that we all breathe, that was actually breathed into us when we were formed from the dust?   Is this not also the life giving thread that connects each of us to the other, that moves through us and resides in the spaces between us?  We are all connected.  I think Jesus knew this and lived its truth.

The thought occurred to me that perhaps sitting with others, focusing on breathing–on our common Source of Life–was itself a profound way of connecting.  Breathing in—Spirit.  Breathing out—Spirit.   No words needed.

As I continued to drive home, the lyrics of a song I used to sing in Sunday School breezed into awareness:

 “The Spirit in me greets the Spirit in you, Alleluia.
God’s in us and we’re in God, Alleluia.”

Day 2:  Generosity Jar

Why is making a decision so difficult sometimes?  I can take the simplest thing and complicate the hell out of it.  You’d think grabbing a jar and labeling it “Generosity Jar” would be simple.  But what jar?  A mason jar, a pickle jar, a vase that could be used as a jar?   What about a fish bowl?  I’m not using that for anything right now.  It would be unique, certainly.  But it is big.  I’d have to be mighty generous to fill it up.  Is it possible to be that generous?

I don’t have much spare change because I use my debit card.   Would I have enough change to add to the jar?   I suppose I could take money out of the bank.   Or I could look at the other option of writing generosity promises.  What are generosity promises, anyway?   The instructions on the site:  invite guests to pick one when they visit.  But we don’t have many visitors so that’d be a bust.  Argh, this is so complicated!

Day 4 and I still hadn’t yet decided on a generosity jar and was feeling mighty defeated (already behind after two days of the Lenten Challenge…this must be a new record…let’s call it 40acts of failure.)

Then, miracle of miracles, by the end of Day 5 I had my jar (a mason jar), my purpose for that jar, and an idea for the fish bowl, all proof that there is a God.

Saturday (Day 4) was International Women’s Day.  I saw a post from the United Church of Canada on their Facebook page:   “International Women’s day is coming up on March 8.  Please consider giving a gift to honour a woman or girl in your life.”   My family is full of wonderful women and girls.  This would be a really neat way to purpose the generosity jar AND at the same time honour some pretty fabulous women in my family.

Later that day my husband said, “I was thinking.  It would be good to have a fish bowl full of suggestions on how to be generous for people to take at church. Write the ideas on pieces of paper and invite people to take one after church.  They do that task during the week.”  And yes, he did indeed reference the fish bowl.   I know.

After church on Sunday I was looking forward to meeting with others to talk about experiences with 40acts (relieved that I could say, finally, that I had a generosity jar!)  I had invited the congregation to join the 40acts movement and then join me after church on Sundays in Lent to talk about and share the experience.  I was looking forward to hearing about how others were finding the experience.    But only one person showed up.  The good news here is that one person showed up (thanks, Susan!)  We had a great discussion about some of the 40acts of the previous week.  I also happened to mentioned to her the idea that Jake had about the fish bowl. “I like it!” she said and proceeded to offer ideas about how to fill that fish bowl with acts of generosity.

By the end of our time together it was decided to have the fish bowl  at the door on Sundays as people left the sanctuary.   People could take one and that was their invitation to practice generosity for the week.

Now I can’t wait for Sunday.   If people aren’t able to come to 40acts, we will bring 40acts to them!

Shortly after getting back from church that afternoon Jake and I went out to run some errands.  We decided to stop at Starbucks for a treat.  I was still thinking about 40acts and the fact that people at church didn’t seem interested.  Maybe I hadn’t publicized it enough in the bulletin.  Maybe I didn’t explain it well. “Maybe forty acts just sounds like a lot and people don’t have time to make that kind of commitment,” Jake offered as if reading my mind.  “It sounds like a lot to me,” he added.   He had a point.  It does sound like a lot.

We ordered two lattés.  When we got to the drive thru window the barista had some news, “Your order was paid for by the person in front of you.  Have a good day!”

What?

Jake and I had done that exact same thing for someone behind us in the drive-thru last year.  During Lent.  As part of 40acts.   Here we were in the season of Lent a year later talking about 40acts, only to find ourselves the recipients of similar generosity.

Delighted, we wanted to pay it forward.  We paid for the order of the car behind us.  “It’s pretty cool.   A guy started this about four cars ahead of you,” the barista told us.  Pretty cool, indeed.   Maybe the man who started it was doing 40acts, too.  Suddenly, it occurred to me I was worrying for nothing.   Generosity this Lent seemed to be alive and well.

Thank you to the guy four cars ahead of us for your generosity. Blessings!

A generous Lent has begun.  It’s been a year.   Maybe it is time to dust off my blog and integrate a discipline of writing and sharing into my Lenten practice.

Now I just have to remember how to get onto my blog site…(yes, it has been that long.)

Anyway, here it is, reflections on 40acts 2014.

“Each journal has a story even if it does not yet contain one.”

Day 1:  A Journal

I have bazillion journals on my book shelf.  One entire shelf  is dedicated just to journals.  Most of them I have written in, however some have never come close to a writing utensil. Used or not,  I can tell you where each journal came from:  the multi-coloured paperback from a discount section of Chapters (I purchased  it with the purpose of filling it with poetry—its pages are still empty);  the two-toned fake leather journals  I bought because they looked like a photo album I had received from the mother of a beloved friend who had died the same year I was married; the journal I picked up in Thailand to chronicle the adventure of riding elephants and floating down the river in a boat that had a car engine fastened to the back of it;  the journal with the red sparkly cover that a first grader gave me when I was a student teacher–
Me:  “Wow.  That’s a beautiful notebook!  Thank you!”
First grader:  “Yeah.  It works, too.  I tried it.”

Each journal has a story even if it does not yet contain one.

Start a journal.

I went to my bookshelf my eyes running over the collection, remembering.  Picking them up one by one I looked at their covers, felt the weight of them in my hands and flipped through the pages to see what they contained:  poems, rants, questions, experiences, sermon ideas, shopping lists.   Through this process I rediscovered a unique book with a moss green velvet cover and yellow unlined pages rimmed with gold.  The pages remind me of a bible, or of a gift edition of Shakespeare Sonnets.   I had only written in the first twenty or so pages of the journal so most of it is blank.  It was a gift from my mother-in- law the fall I began my last year of studies for my M.Div.   Inside the cover on the first page she had fastened two pins:  one was a cross with a circle of people holding hands, the other, footprints.   She had written a note to me on the first page  “As you travel…you will always have us around to support you and cheer you on!”

Flipping through the pages I also discovered a quote by a woman from the first church I served and which I wrote down.   It was about why she read the bible. “It was gift from someone.  It didn’t seem right to let it sit on the shelf unused.”

Somehow, this journal just seems…perfect.

“Create a journal and begin Lent with a gratitude list.”

I sit down, so many memories filling my heart.  The pen flows easily.

My Gratitude List

1. Family
2. Friends
3. Faith
4. Elephants
5. First graders
6. Bibles
7. Gold paged journals  …  
   

Something funny happened today in the grocery store.

I was looking for horseradish and found myself walking up and down the condiment aisle.  Passing by the pickles I saw a product called B’n Olive.  They were olives stuffed with green beans.  Now I’ve seen olives stuffed with almonds, with pepper, with garlic, with cheese but I have never seen them stuffed with beans.  Curious, I just had to pick up the jar.  And I’ll be honest, they looked ridiculous!  So I laughed out loud right there in the grocery store aisle and then turned to share the hilarity with my husband what was standing at the end of the same aisle.

“Hey look at this,” I said, holding up the jar and grinning ear to ear.

As I turned I discovered it wasn’t my husband.

That’s the neat thing about these 40acts tasks.  They make you pay attention to moments you might otherwise ignore, or in this case, be embarrassed about.   And I get embarrassed easily. But since today’s task was to share a smile, I thought, heck why not.

“Oh sorry!  I just saw something that made me smile and was going to tell my husband, who apparently isn’t here…(awkward pause)… anyway, have a good day,” I said, still smiling.

I think he thought I was a little off-my-rocker but he politely responded, “Thanks.  You too.”   And he was smiling.

Hey 40acts, can I consider that mission accomplished?

My grandma is in the hospital.  She fell at home and fractured her pelvis…again.   The last time she did that she was carrying something to her car and fell on the steps of her front porch.   My grandma lives in the boonies of northern Ontario.  Her nearest neighbour is miles down the road and her house is concealed from the main road by brush.  Knowing that she couldn’t just lay there on the ground, she crawled a few meters to her car, got in the driver’s seat and somehow managed to drive herself to the nearest town 15 minutes away.  She turned onto the road where her sister-in-law lived, went over the curb onto the front lawn and the laid on the horn until my Great Aunt and Uncle came out to see what the lady in their front yard was doing.

The X-Rays revealed Grandma had broken her pelvis.

This time she was putting wood into her wood furnace in the basement when she tripped over a piece of cardboard and fell onto the concrete floor.  That’s all it took and she is in hospital again.

It’s hard being such a long distance from family, especially when things like this happen.  Westminster United Church has a wonderful prayer shawl ministry.  Beautiful, handmade prayer shawls are knit and given to people who may need that extra bit of encouragement.  The prayer shawls wrap people in warmth as a reminder of the embracing love of God and the care and supportive of this community of faith.  I asked the woman who organizes the prayer shawls, if it might be possible to give one to my grandma.  Without hesitating Shirley said, “Absolutely.”  She made a special trip to the church to choose one specifically for Grandma.  It was beautiful—warm neutral tones, soft to the touch, cozy and light on the lap.  Perfect!

My dad is heading up north to look after some things for Grandma.  So I sat down and wrote her a letter to accompany the prayer shawl.  I wanted her to know how important she is to all of us, and that we were thinking of her.  This is something that faith communities can offer one another:  presence in spite of distance.  Even though Grandma is an 8 hour drive away, I hope she knows that she is always close in heart.  I hope that when she uses the prayer shawl she is reminded of all the love and encouragement that surrounds her…even by people she has never met.

This past weekend I was away with my confirmation class at a retreat at Five Oaks near Paris, Ontario.  Being that we were in one place for the weekend (no need to travel), away from commercial shopping centres (no place to shop), and had everything we needed with us (no need to shop) this task seemed pretty easy.

Then lunchtime happened and I knew I had my blog entry.

At the retreat there were just over 40 youth from various United Church congregations in Southwestern Ontario.   Typical of many teenagers they loved to chat with one another and they loved to eat.  Meal time was very important so when the organizers of the retreat decided to “mess with mealtime” at lunch on Saturday…well, let’s just say there was quite a reaction.

This is what happened.  At lunchtime, everyone had to line up.  As they neared the front of the line, they had to reach their hands into a bag and pull out a piece of paper that was one of three colours: yellow, red, green.  The colour dictated what you would be able to have for lunch.

The largest group of people got the yellow card…probably about 90%.  Their lunch consisted of bread.  That’s it.  To eat their lunch they all had to gather around 2 tables with only 12 spots for sitting, so many had to stand.

The next colour, red, got bread and some salad for lunch.  Each person got to sit at a tables.  They were a considerably smaller group.

Finally, there were those who got the green cards, the smallest group of all.  Their lunch consisted of a full feast—hamburgers and hotdogs with all the trimmings, a few types of salad, water, dessert.  They sat at a table set with full linens and silverware.  Someone was there to top up their glasses of water when they ran low.  They could go up for seconds and thirds if they wanted.

Needless to say many of the teens were not happy…at all.  The faces of the youth in my group were sour—particularly those who got the yellow card.  They stared at the bread on their plate:

“They’re not allowed to tell me what I can and can’t eat.”  “You don’t mess with my food.”  “This is stupid.” “They tried something like this at my school and it didn’t go well.”  One of our group refused to participate with the card he had picked and went to the green table instead.  He was ready to go to battle with anyone who might dare tell him he couldn’t.

I also had picked the yellow card.  Most of the kids took no comfort that the majority of us were in the exact same boat.

After everyone had gotten their “lunch,” over top of the grumbles the organizers facilitated a discussion.  What had the youth noticed?   The majority of people had the least amount of food, and the least amount of space.  The red group was thankful for fresh vegetables.  The green group had more than they needed, and more than they could possibly eat.  In fact, compared to the yellow group the green group looked positively indulgent.  Couldn’t the green group share with the rest?

You can probably discern what the exercise was intended to do:  get the youth thinking about the world situation and about the disparities that exist between the haves and the have-nots world-wide, to get them to think about the majority of people worldwide who exist on less that $5 a day.

In the end, after the discussion and all the grumbling, everyone got to have a full lunch:  hamburgers and hotdogs with all the trimmings, a few types of salad, water, dessert.  Small consolation to a disgruntled group.  One of my youth said to me, “I wanted lunch, not a lesson.”

He only had to wait ten minutes for lunch—actually he only had to wait ten minutes for a full lunch, he did at least have bread to eat in the meantime—and it was that difficult.  Imagine how it must feel for those in our world who never see the kind of lunch that we feel so entitled to.

How privileged we are.