Fancy Windows

 After all this time, the kiddo is still the one and only regular church-going kiddo at our church.  At this point in her life she might have good reason to wonder if A) I’m involving her in some very dubious activity or B) there’s something a little off about us that scares the other families with young children away.  Six years of being the only kid - that’s a long time to wonder what’s up.

 

Obviously, we’ve gotten used to this.  The church even had an Easter season kid service each Sunday, complete with snacks (snacks!  in church!) and crafts.  Come on - how awesome is that?  But yup, except for one Sunday when we toted along a friend, the kiddo was the only attendee.  And those services were amazing by the way - really neat.

 

One Sunday we did a treasure hunt looking at the stained glass windows - finding everything from a worm (yea worms!) and amoebas to a dragon and a tally of somewhere around 30 angels.  It was wonderful to walk, meditatively from window to window, starting up at them and letting the sun pour down through them and seeing these stories - like vivid dreams awakened.

 

And those windows - well, those windows are a mixed blessing for the church.  They are, some of them, Tiffany, and most all of them are extraordinary and old.  Some have been stolen and some have been restored as the church survived a town fire about a 100 years ago, as well as the pounding of many winters and salt sea air.  People wander in off the street to look at them, to photograph them.  People come for weddings.  And folks in town tend to think this is the church hat has it all made.

 

There’s a preschool out back, that gets high praise and has a waiting list (in a town that’s not so overflowing as to have much of a waiting list for anything) the boy scouts meet in the Parish Hall, there are spaghetti suppers and AA meetings and even Jazzercize, of all things.

 

But it doesn’t add up to people bringing their kids to church.  And the whys and wherefores of that have long been puzzled over - I keep being asked, as if I, who obviously was the only one who didn’t get the “kids don’t belong here” message - am supposed to know.  But I don’t.

 

What has evolved of this, is that my daughter, yet again, has a sense of at-homeness and ownership in this church that suits her down to her grubby bare feet.  At each service there is a penny collection that follows the usual Collection - people bring their spare change in prescription bottles and baggies, toss in whatever pennies at the bottom of their purses.  Sometimes this goes to a special cause - the SPCA or an African well digging project - but most Sundays it goes to the windows.  Yes, we have to spend money to maintain those windows.  Mixed blessing, indeed.  Anyway, as the one and only kiddo, the penny collection has fallen to her.

 

She bursts onto the scene, fresh and rumpled from playing on the jungle gym - and twirls and jingles as she works the aisles, smiling shyly, hugging, dancing as she gathers up the pennies.

 

And I’ve found, much as it sometimes takes super-human courage to let her jingle and dance when I’d like her to be a silent, perfect little flower girl gracefully, humbly accepting the change, that I’ve now twice had someone admit to me that she - bare foot, singing off key - was THE thing that most moved them about the service.

 

I’m glad they’re telling me - because my own childhood was frequently one of repressed enthusiasm, of bare feet and skinned knees -  but also a subtle sense of shame in those things - a sense that I could and should be cleaner, tidier, fancier, more mannerly.  And I’m only beginning to parse out what all those shoulds mean in my heart - and when I hear them if it’s really God speaking or just my grandmother, harping away about my failings.

 

And so at our weekly prayer group a wizened (and by that I mean that even her chin is fabulously wrinkled) older woman has been slowly working back towards faith after what sounds like about 40 years in real anger at the Church.  A mutual friend said that even though she’s gone to church these last few weeks she mostly sits there and grumbles about everything she can’t stand about it.  She’s clearly working through some real revulsion and pain here.  And she admitted that this last service what moved her most was the barefoot child gathering pennies.

 

Cue kiddo - who bursts in from the other room where she was (not quietly) watching Pinky and The Brain and eating (rather explosively I found out later) a croissant - who twirled in for a hug and kiss (the sweet side of ADHD, I guess).  And we all laughed.

 

It was hard for me to come to this church.  It’s till hard for the kiddo to be the only kid.  I wavered the first few services - feeling the urge to flee all this fancy-windows and Sunday hats and handshake Peaces.  Yet I heard a voice chiding me, “It’s not always all about YOU.”  And so we stayed.  And we stay.  And it is good - and better for us than I could have predicted.

Lectio Divina…electronica?

Lectio divina is an ancient sacred practice - that of multiple readings and meditations on the same short piece of text.  This can be done collectively, in a group (preferably small) where one person reads aloud, then people share silence - or share a sentence, image or phrase that leapt out at them from the words read.  This isn’t a discussion, quite often we don’t know why that phrase or word has caught us and this is really too soon to begin to articulate it - you just speak aloud whatever it was and sit with it.

 

Then another person reads aloud the same verse, perhaps in a new translation, perhaps simply a repetition.  - Again you sit and depending on your group, you respond, some groups have you respond with what part of the reading speaks to you, to your personal life - or you simply take those words inside.  

 

And then the reading is repeated for a third and final time.  And by this time, usually there is some time to speak - to say something about what  has been moving in you during this prayer and meditation - some groups ask you to reflect on how something in the phrase speaks to your community - some have no structure, but just invite you to speak what’s been happening for you.

 

Some months ago a Sister and I began doing lectio divina together -online.  We live in very different places and climates - yet we knew we wanted to do lectio together.  We wanted to recreate the feeling of being in a room together - something that once seemed a huge challenge and yet we’ve found comes very easily now.  We read the same verse (coordinating that was actually our most challenging piece of this) early in the week, then read it daily or more often, as the week progresses we then email one another as moved.

 

And the extraordinary thing for me about this is that I find the process truly different - and in many ways more moving than it might be in any other medium.  By the time I’m ready to sit down with my response, I usually have a fairly blank mind.  I’ve been hearing and feeling the words for several days now - several times I’ve had some bizarro dreams about them - and I sit and just begin typing.

 

I find out things about myself that I hadn’t expected - I find out things about the words I’ve read that I never “knew” with my mind.  We happen to be following a New Testament Gospel liturgy, but I think this is infinitely adaptable - to whatever holy words your faith guides you to.  As my Sister said as we were trying to choose “I think it’s all the same to God.”  Indeed - the Divine speaks, and reading this way, in small deep reading, we are opening ourselves to words not on the page but words written in our hearts and on the face of the universe - in God all things are possible - and surely when we listen to God, the human words are merely props.

 

I invite you to read in this way.  I invite you to find someone in your life who would share this kind of deep listening and praying with you.  Our group has grown to 6 participants now - we’ve asked further seekers to create their own group, as we want to be able to really listen to each of us, to be present for each writer as she prays “aloud” with us.  But even just doing this with one person is powerful - in some ways more so than with a larger group - but each reader, listener, voice we’ve come to find is like a facet of the Divine voice - each response is so different (and yet often there are similarities that surprise).  And often we find that when one or another of us feels closed out of the words - caught in our minds - too busy parsing or hearing old sermons or interpretations to hear the words breathed alive again - the others begin opening a space in the words, to hear anew what they are saying.

 

Indeed, this is, for me, one of the beautiful ways in which community expands us, challenges us - and reminds us to turn our faces towards the sacred.

St. Francis & The Worm

“Even for worms he had a warm love, since he had read this text about the Saviour, ‘I am a worm and not a man.’  That is why he used to pick them up from the road and put them in a safe place so that they would not be crushed by the footsteps of passersby.”

 

For the last few months, we’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of our worms, Eisenia foetida, red wigglers.  The winter was, in most ways, beautiful and invigorating and not overly harsh or long - but after the compost bin topped off and froze, I vowed never again to have to suffer months without being able to compost.  What a difference in the garbage load and stink factor!  

 

Worms can’t be shipped up here midwinter and so we’ve been waiting until ambient temperatures are more worm-friendly, building and filling our little box so that a happy worm home is already merrily decomposing prior to worm arrival - estimated to be this week sometime.  (Meanwhile of course excavating the finished compost and making lots of new room in there, too.)

 

So it was with great delight that as I rounded out The First Book of Thomas of Celano’s Life of St. Francis (the only book written by a Brother who actually lived with and knew Francis) I found that worms too were in Francis’s sight and love.

 

I particularly love how this is described.  It’s not quite of the same stuff as what follows in the book - the leaving out of wine and honey for the winter hungry bees, the adoration of flowers, the trading of his clothes (as he had no money) for lambs being sold for slaughter and having them follow after him rapt with love.  But in fact there is a sense of a turning point in those sparse sentences, “since he he had read the text…’I am a worm and not a man.’”  That in hearing those words Francis too found a conversion, a way to change and move more closely toward God.  This reminds us that conversions, turnings toward the Holy, are constant, continuous events - that even the saints have not somehow arrived but too -perhaps more than the rest of us - are continually seeking renewal, continually discovering new ways to reflect God’s love.

 

I also love the utterly simplicity of his interpretation.  This to me, more than the adoration of the flowers and bees and worms, is what made Francis so extraordinary.  He was not just forever striving to embody  God’s huge love for the whole of creation - he was also continually simplifying himself.  Humbling himself in body and mind.  He turned away from theology, from books, from studying.  He’d spend hours in meditation before entering a village to speak and he’d stand in front of the crowds and his mind would go utterly blank.  He might have had a dozen ideas of what was a good thing to preach on or talk about but - like any of us standing there looking at the expectant faces - he was speechless.  And then he’d let the words come.  Not the planned out words - there’s no mistake that we find virtually nothing written by his hand, even quotes from his mouth are fleetingly rare - yet words would come.  Don’t be fooled by the quote often attributed to him “Preach the gospel.  use words if necessary” for nowhere is it recorded that he said them.

 

He did preach with words, but they were words that were not transcribed - words that perhaps, like birdsong were less about making sense than about making joy.  He certainly captured the fancy of throngs of people who left their lives to follow his - and he did not do this without speaking.  But he did this without knowing first what he would say, and when words failed him, he danced.

 

But I love how he took this bit of Psalm 22, the Psalm used as the cry for mercy at Christ’s last breaths - the Psalm Christ quotes from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  and He of course dies before he could reach the words which His listeners must have known by heart, the words turning from suffering to comfort and praise as we do, sometimes, after the long darkness of night and the grief is exhausted, “From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me… in the midst of the congregation I will praise you!”

 

Ah, but before the rescue, when the suffering of life is still full, “But I am a worm and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people.  All who see me mock at me…” 

 

And Francis, who so loved the human “worms” of his day, who would not allow anyone to be spared charity (some of the other Brothers would not want to share whatever little they had with those they suspected might not need it - a familiar line even now - about secretly wealthy panhandlers - remember Reagan’s Welfare Queens?) Francis, who despised no one but himself, looked then for more truth inside the words.  For worms too, mosquitos, black flies, snakes, roaches - the despised of the earth, human or not human.

 

And found that his love - and indeed His Love - has no limits.

Stamping Out Hunger

It was so neat to see all of the bags hanging from people’s mailboxes yesterday.  It was the Post Office’s Stamp Out Hunger day and it was so heartening to see the level of participation in our community.  

 

We soon got to see it from the inside, too, as the Food Pantry had sent out an email asking for help sorting the incoming goods.  We’re only occasional Pantry volunteers since most of the hours they need folks are also hours my boss expects to see me busily doing workish things, so aside from the odd evening or lunch break, I’m scarce enough over there that there’s still this feeling of confusion when I come in the door - am I a helper or a needer?  And I admit this made me sort of uncomfortable the first few times - that and saying, “I’ll be going to the Food Pantry for lunch” or even just turning down their driveway in this small town.  But whatever - I think it’s good for the ego to have these moments and feel that and know it doesn’t really matter - there’s not so much space between helper and needer.

 

So the kiddo and I helped with the sorting and counting and shelving for a couple of hours.  We were there for 3 car loads and left before the final arrival.  The poor postal carriers were working their butts off.  Not so bad for the ones on wheels - a little harsher for the ones on foot.  Yup - despite what you might think, at least here, there wasn’t any truck going around collecting the goods - the carriers just had to hoof it over to the PO as they could.  So there was sort of a trickle effect, letting us sort as we went.

 

There’s a remarkable sameness in what comes in.  I was guilty of that myself, and I got to open the bag I donated - and watch as it blended in with all the others, standing out only by the tofu package - which to my relief one other person donated, too.  But they were sort of lonely up there on the shelf.  I donated: canned soup, black beans, a couple of old jello boxes which I hadn’t wanted in the first place, tuna.  Well, that and the tofu. 

 

Some packages had clearly been bought specifically for the drive - huge multi-packs of Mac & Cheese, 10 pack tuna cans - some were painfully dusty - off brands of creamed corn that had been sitting for awhile.  One package had some canned spaghetti sauce of a brand only offered here by the food pantry - some of their own, coming back (maybe not so tasty).

 

What really changed from the before and after was the variety on the shelves.  The plethora of choices that assault us whenever we go shopping - the 40 kinds of pasta sauce we can pick from, the regular maxipads or the slender ones with wings? grape juice or apple? - dwindle to monotony at the understocked Food Pantry.  The shelves after a food drive not only get a lot fuller, they also get a lot more colorful and appealing.

 

 I start seeing my own kinds of choices appearing, I can put a box of crackers away that I’d honestly say looked tasty, I’d put up cereal or soups I’d be happy giving to my own kid.  I think it matters a lot - whether you’re milling around with the obvious rejects of a community - thinking of trying to get a nice meal out of some dubious ancient offbrand canned ham or whether you can take something that actually looks yummy.  I think that matters.

 

What we got enough of to put some by in the back for times when the shelves get empty (not that they will go uneaten - not at all, and the shelves weren’t exactly overflowing to start with, but the grocery stores tend to donate a lot of also):

soups

pork & beans

canned green beans

mac & cheese

canned tomatoes

applesauce

pumpkin pie filling

 

What we needed and run out of fast (to keep in mind for the next food drive you might be able to contribute to):

canned fruits

healthy juices & juice boxes (parents need to send their kids to school with two snacks even if they’re on a lunch program)

healthy snacks (see above)

cereals

oatmeal

toothpaste

diapers

shampoo

deodorant, etc.

 

And know, it’s not too late to donate to your food pantry - find one here:  http://www.secondharvest.org/zip_code.jsp

And if you garden, please consider planting a row for the hungry, because fresh and local foods are particularly hard to come by for many families:

http://www.gardenwriters.org/par/

The Happy List

The UK newspaper The Independent has recently generated a list celebrating the 100 happiest folks in Britain:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-ios-happy-list–the-100-816335.html

 

What a wonderful celebration!  Rather than yet another listing of who’s richer or sexier or more famous than we are, there’s something uplifting about reading about happy people.

 

One unifying theme in their lives?  Generosity and creativity.

 

Another potentially surprising theme?  Physical injury or illness.   That’s something to reflect on.

 

It seems that maybe being sexy, being rich, being powerful, or even being unscathed by illness are not the ingredients crucial to joy.  What seems to matter more than anything is reaching out to others.  This is echoed in Eric Weiner’s funny book  The Geography of Bliss http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780446580267-9 where he details ala Bill Bryson travelling to different countries and comparing their happiness quotients.  The happiest countries were small, had a strong sense of community and trust.  They tended not to be rich - but they also tended to not be consumed by their poverty.  They have what they have and they make the best of it. 

 

Perhaps many of the qualities that make a nation happy are those that make individuals happy too.   And the happiest news of all is how accessible it is - it’s not reserved for those who can afford it or who have time to exercise or really great genes - it’s there, for each of us, and it’s contained, more than anything, in how we live our lives.