Missing aluminum cans

We are being victimized at church. Yes, we are. No kidding. I had no idea to be honest with you, but I had some suspicions. I began to notice that whenever we would realize that the aluminum can bin was full and needed to be taken for recycling, somehow the cans magically disappeared. I am somewhat delusional at times and I decided that probably some fine church member was taking the cans to be recycled and was holding the money for Relay for Life, which is after all why we collect the cans in the first place. Only this is not the case. It turns out that some fine industrious folks are coming into our parking lot, mostly likely to get food from our food pantry, and helping themselves to the aluminum cans. You may ask how it is that I know this. It is because our maintenance person and my friend Stacy happened to be in the parking lot and observed the theft in action. She said they took off when she said something, but she got their license number. Colombo would be so proud.

Here is the thing. Is one upset about having cans one is willing to give away stolen from one's parking lot. I am in a complete quandary about this. On the one hand, it does seem wrong that people, going to the effort of saving their aluminum cans and bringing them to the church in order that they may be cashed in and the money used to support Relay for Life, are not getting any money for this cause as a result. In fact they are bringing their cans as a bank of sorts for these folks to come in and take a withdrawal and use for whatever purposes. This is outright stealing and whether the cans are locked up or not does not make it right to go into someone else's can bin on someone else's property and help yourself.

On the other hand, we are perfectly willing to give away the proceeds, in fact we are collecting them in order to do so, so is it reasonable to be angry that the cans are being taken instead of given. After all, if these folks come to the food pantry we happily give them a week or ten days worth of food. We go out of our way to provide as much assistance as we possibly can so, why am I worked up about the cans?

I have been mulling this over and I think it has nothing to do with the cans and everything to do with the method. If we were asked for the cans we would have the option to choose whether we wanted to part with them. When things are taken instead of given there is a feeling of coercion that is less than pleasant. In fact it feels like a violation. Wait, I think it is a violation.

We got into this kind of discussion, though not on the aluminum cans, but about submission this week. There was some digging in over the term quite frankly. There was a negative spin over the word submit and we never got to resolution until we got to definitions. It is only submission when we are given the opportunity to yield our wills to that of another. It is oppression when the options is removed. We make the free choice to submit, to give, to share or care, that which is taken or forced or legislated is something else entirely.

This is why I am feeling just a little bit like sitting at the recycling bin with a gun and saying "go ahead, make my day". I don't have a gun, maybe a golf club. I don't have a good swing though so maybe a baseball bat. I am not any better at that, so maybe some hair spray. Actually, I don't hair spray, I use that foamy stuff, and I dont think it's much of a weapon....I am thinking maybe I better just sit in my car and think things. This sounds safer.

Kleenex Season

For the third time since March I am a nasty, stuffy, snotty mess. I am very irritated by this. I have things to do, places to go, people to see. What is the deal with this? I hauled my germ encrusted body to the doctors and she laid hands upon me and said something profound. She said I had a sinus infection. Well, no duh. I told her that when I called. She also said I had to have blood drawn to do a count and check some levels or another. This is probably NOT true, she was just mad that my diagnosis was correct. Doctors are like that you know.

The vampire who took my blood was efficient, though she had the personality of a board. I am telling myself that not all of us are called to be charming but it you are going to stick a needle roughly the size of a garden hose, suck out three or four pints of my blood, you ought to smile a little and look concerned. This should be part of the Hippocratic oath. I maybe exaggerating about the blood. Sick people do that you know.

I am now the proud owner of a small bottle of huge pills. A purple space age thing that is suppose to make breathing easier and some tiny little tablets that are supposed to make me less reactive to allergens. I am telling you, going to the doctor is like going to the mall, only like paying admission and then everything else is free. I don't know if any of them will work you understand but they were included in the cover charge.

My dear friend Rhonda tells me I went to the wrong doctor. Her doctor, same sinus infection, gave her two shots and seven prescriptions. I think this is remarkable. I don't know whether to feel relieved or ripped off. I think I am falling into the relieved category but if I am not better in the morning I might begin to rethink this position.

Have I mentioned I am going to work a retreat this weekend? No sleep, long hours, emotional people. This stuff better work quick. I might fail retreat 101. How sad if I get fired. What will people say? Oh wait, I know. It's about time, that woman would use any excuse to be grumpy and say, "do we need to have all this mushy emotional stuff now?"! I tell you what, the cloud of witnesses better be cheering loudly tonight.

Here is what I am confident about. God is not surprised that I am feeling nasty. He has a plan in place. The plan is good, it all works out in the end, and in 100 years people really will not care. In fact in a year people wont care. I suspect very few people care now, but they are too polite to say so. It could all be worse. I think. Oh well, thanks for noticing me.

Getting it together, forgetting where it is

It is another day. The sun rose brilliantly and the rays that crept into my bedroom and poured light on my sleeping head are warm and inviting. I would not get up to respond except the alarm will, in a minute or two, make an awful sound that will be much less pleasant so I do. I find that if it has to be a Monday, a sunny Monday makes life so much better and I give thanks. I am trying to do that more, say thank you.


I am organizing. I am organizing thought and work and filing and arrangements and people and ministry and time. I am trying very hard to remember to be flexible, to have back up plans, to allow for unexpected agenda items, leave room for the Spirit to move. I am practicing kindness, goodness gentleness and practicing and practicing and practicing. Surely with all this practice I must be getting good at it. I am not quite confident since I keep practicing things like not saying everything I think, smiling bigger and nodding politely to the outrageous things people say, and yet I am still awfully wobbly at this. Just the moment I once again say something I shouldn't say I think....oh dear I just did it again. Okay, every once in a while I think: YES! I did it again and in a minute I will be sorry but right now it's all touchdown dance. See my problem? I do too, but I find I am stuck with me.


So here is the issue. What if I succeed? What if I truly get it all together and then, like with so many other things I own, I put it in a very safe place? This is a reason to be concerned. I have this feeling that I may have more children than I remember, having put them in the safe place. I know I always planned to have more.... I guess you could safely say about my safe places that they are very, very safe. Who could find them? Certainly not me.

I will say I do have one excellent memory gift. I know where all my friends safe places are. They do not and I frequently have to say, now wait that's under your bed or in the storage building or you gave that to me last year and you can't have it back. This is only a little handy and would work out better if I was smart enough to entrust the location of my safe places to others. I would you see, but then they wouldn't be safe anymore. I don't have one single thing other than my kiddies things like pictures and papers and Popsicle stick frames that I really am all that hung up on, so what on earth am I keeping safe. I can tell you right now it's not important papers like wills and so on. I haven't seen them for years.

I have a new plan, I am just going to focus on getting it together and then leaving it lay around. Someone will pick it up for me and keep it safe. If only they will put it in one of their safe places.

Once Upon a Time

In a land far far away lived a fairy princess. She was very small and very delicate. She was quite beautiful and so gracious and gentle in spirit that she was well loved and had many faithful friends. As she was so delicate she worked very little but past her time quite happily reading books, talking to her friends, creating beautiful art pieces that she gave as gifts of love. She was well learned and a delightful conversationalist, an excellent listener. At the perfect time a handsome charming prince waltzed into her life and they fell in love. They were married in the most beautiful of all churches. People came from far and wide to see their favorite princess married to such a gorgeous man. They had a perfectly lovely daughter who grew up to be a wonderful princess herself, a scholar and a very successful career woman. They also were blessed with a delightful son who was both handsome and charming and stepped into running the kingdom business with great pride. The son, when he was full grown and established in the running of the kingdom, looked around himself for a lovely bride. He found a beautiful sweet girl who both of his parents loved and they too were married. Their wedding was the event of the year and from near and far came people of all ages and stages of life and it was a great and glorious day. In fact it was a wonderful life and the princess lived quite happily ever after. Cue the violins and the dry ice please.

And give me some Tylenol.

Spending time planting

Mr Sam is on Spring Break this week. I think by law somewhere or another this means I should take him to Florida. Only I do not have the week off myself, not to mention I am driving back to Kansas City for class one more time this weekend. So he is being neglected or abused or just plan disappointed because we are staying here and he is goofing off.

The good news is Mr. Sam appears to find this not a problem so who am I to explain why we aren't in Florida. Mr. Sam is my kind of child. He loves pajama days, he enjoys sleeping in and he loves to read. He thinks this is as exciting as Florida. I tell ya, the kid is a keeper.

We spent the weekend enjoying the local celebration for sweet potatoes (please don't ask me, I merely live here). Today we both enjoyed the pleasure of sleeping in, me longer than Sam, and then we worked a little and stopped at a store and picked up some plants and spent the evening planting most of them. We got gloves that we wore with great pride as if we were Master Gardeners instead of plant destroyers which I suspect we are. We dug, and watered, potted and fed and spruced the place up nicely. I was worn and aching and I was quick to accept the invitation to sit in the chaise lounges and watch for the stars to begin appearing. It took a few minutes, couple of planes pretended to be stars, then the first two appeared. These were delightful and we watched them intently but we still had to wait a bit before they were joined by others. Soon the sky filled with stars. We recognized some constellation groups, which I never do well. I still only get the Dippers and sometimes with great instruction Orion's Belt. It cooled off quickly but it was a great way to relax and rest after a busy day.

Tonight as I drowsily think through the day, I realized that the flowers and vegetables we put in have a 50/50 chance of survival, based on our ability to remember to water. The real stuff we are planting together is the kind of character we are growing up in Mr. Sam. The recognition that time spent together is valuable, even as he is valuable, no matter what we do. That doing things well, making a plan and following through, taking a part in accomplishing a task and contributing to the outcome are all things I want Sam to do naturally. I want him to get excited about life and have a clue what to do with it! I want him to be successful at whatever he chooses to do, not necessarily successful in terms of the worldly definition, but that he can learn to be satisfied when he finishes a project and knows it was well done. I certainly pray those seeds are finding good soil to root in.

We are people of faith and I think we model that for Sam. We take him to church often and we have exposed him to people of great faith, and we have tried to educate him in the faith. We are purposeful in this because it is important to us. I want to be just as purposeful giving him the tools he needs to cope well, to have balance in drive and excellence and the ability to step back and let it go. To find his joy not only in achieving but also in the process of achieving. To remember that God desires more for us than the world can ever offer and he should never settle for it's definition of having arrived.

Gosh that's a lot to grow in the child! Good thing he can speak and will remind me to water him. I have a much better shot of raising this one to maturity!

Brevity

Well, I am taking yet another class. I know. I can hear it now....when exactly to you plan to be educated. I think the answer to that is.....I am not sure I do. I love the process of learning. I find it fascinating. I had a funny experience a couple of years ago. My pastor got all worked up about getting to go on a behind the scenes tour of the IT system at Church of the Resurrection. I will admit I was a little tired and I could really not see the value in looking into closets and basements and examining wires and pretty lights. Before long I discovered that this source of information knew all there was to know about running networks. information storage, speed, enormous phone systems, computer expenses, operating budgets and managing an inventory. I was completely in, now my pastor was lagging behind a little but I was on our guide like glue. I still walk past doors we went into and think, I know what's in there.

So, I am back in another class and we are learning story telling techniques. Our homework for this week is to tell our faith story, life before conversion, events leading to conversion and life after conversion. The catch is, we have to do it in three minutes or less. It was suggested that I write, I was a sinner, I was forgiven, and I am living in grace. This is accurate and certainly less than three minutes but I think it fails story telling.

So, I wrote this:

I was born the third child to parents who had planned for two. According to the stories, I was discontent in my father’s care and though I was certainly made with his image and many of his characteristics, I was not my father’s daughter. We shared the same love of music and quirky thinking; we did not connect in them. I searched diligently for a father very early in my life. My father, in addition to teaching music, was a church musician and being in church was a part of my early years though my memories are limited to lighting candles in Sunday School and my brother’s horror of my behavior while singing in front of the church. This was bad experience for him, a delightful experience for me.

I was nine when I went with some neighboring kids to see a movie. I do not remember a thing about the movie only when it was over everyone was crying and people were praying and someone asked me if I wanted Jesus to be my savior and I said sure. When I was eleven a group of college kids spending their summer doing week long camps in neighborhoods came to mine. They taught me more about Jesus and connected me with a lady who sent me weekly Bible studies where I had to read the material and take a test. At twelve my mother took me back to the Episcopal Church where I was confirmed in the faith by Bishop Applegate, who fell out of the pulpit but retained the right to confirm though perhaps with less dignity.

Since those defining moments, my life has been a steady though often erratic journey in grace. The lack of connection and distrust of others has over the years developed into a deep confidence in my identity as a child of God and dependence on His love to satisfy that longing inside. As He has brought healing over the years, He has also brought redemption in using the previous hurts as points of connections for others. My father died nine years ago, following the birth of my third child. He never became the father I wanted but we did form the connection I needed. After years of separation from God my father made his own profession of faith, and went home confident in the acceptance he would find there.

You know, it's not the whole story or even half of the story, yet it tells the story. Maybe there is something to those cute little sound bites and one liners.
Maybe the rest of the story doesn't always need to follow. Perhaps like clutter we should pare down some of our details, or save them for those who need them.

It's a thought. Bet I could have said, talk less and made the same point. Too late, now we will never know.

Pick a column

It's is an eye opening experience to reflect back on a day or a week or even longer, if one's memory will allow for this, and divide, as neatly as one can, the things that brought one life and joy and energy and the things that are draining, energy depleting, negative and dark. I was in Kansas City again for class over the weekend and this was one of our exercises. I am a list person anyway and before I had even finished reading the directions or receiving instructions (who needs that anyway) I had neatly divided my paper into columns and made little numbers for each question and across the bottom made my little time line with all the things I could remember that had happened the last week. Probably because they stuck out in my memory I had no trouble deciding which was a happy column, or a sad column activity. After all, all of those things that were flat, neither one or the other, had long left my memory.

My happy column (which of course is not accurate but work with me here) I had email that had really tickled me. I listed the senior council at my church who had been such a blessing to me this week. I wrote down a wonderful God connection that put the right people in the right place for hope and help. I listed the time away following the Easter holidays to rest. I enjoyed the joy of reliving all the energy producing stuff.

In my sad column went an argument I had with a dear friend, a difficult conversation with someone over perceptions and vision, feeling overwhelmed about all the things I don't know how to do and the vastness of the job that needs to be done. Friends I haven't had time to be with and conflicts in the Body.

The thing that was inspirational was not which column things went into, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that, but to see how God was moving in or not moving in each of those moments, positive or negative. I don't know how to define what God causes, or allows. I don't if we can say this happened and God did it and this happened and God didn't. It is interesting to review with a little time passage to see the outcome. One example would be when I got into a conversation that so overwhelmed me that I thought I am definitely in the wrong area, that I had missed the boat. The information I was given indicated I was clearly ill equipped and unprepared to do the job at hand. This went into the sad column. In a response to that desperate feeling, the next day I sent out email to an instructor I had in a previous class hoping he could help me with information. He did (happy column), but that was only a small answer. He also told me about a program that would provide genuine help on a bigger scale than I ever dreamed (very happy column). One day I was overwhelmed and feeling gloomy and the next day the sun is shining again. This same occurrence happened for some of those other unhappy things, but not all. Some await the redemption but not as those who wait with uncertainty. It all is redeemed, just a matter of waiting on God's timing.

I have learned to embrace my knuckle headed status. I know I am messed up and there is no fixing me except through God's intervention. I am confident that God plans to fix me up, not as good as new but better in every way. The bad sad column leads not to the good happy column, but to life eternal with a Father who loves His children so much that even filthy dirty, doing exactly what they were told not to do, acting like He wasn't coming to set them straight, He loves them unconditionally and continues to call and to court until they find their way home.

Not all do find their way home, I don't think. Many would argue with me and perhaps they are right, but I think when Jesus grieves over Jerusalem, He grieves for all who will not come. I know this, for all us knuckleheads who wandered home because there was no place else for us to go, the party has been divine. This is in my happy column.

And this is going into the introspection column. Maybe the happy column and the sad column all end up being the same column in the end, the redeemed column. I am adding it to my paper now.