Seeing What's Left

Rewind the tape back forty days.  Though no one rewinds tapes anymore.

Here I sat, head in hands, praying for provision, filled with fright.  This Lenten fast loomed before me, a covenant commitment.  Calendars aren't dictators but Lent wouldn't let go.  

At first we saw provision to the penny.  Marvelous no matter how cliche.  That standard, textbook God-response made my shackles of unbelief fall.  

Now I just get what I can, when I can.  If I can't I can't.  I don't pray for the miracle, just live with the tension and trust.  The unexpected happened.  The starter did need to be replaced.  The karate tournament fee was essential for my son to demonstrate great courage.  The traffic ticket surprised us both.  I took it all out of the seventy five percent rather than ask for help from others out of my own fear.  If God saw fit to fill in the gaps, then he did.  I have a ten dollar refund from the dentist waiting to be cashed.  I don't know why it came.

With relaxed hands it was easier to move into the river that was already flowing, something Richard Rohr mentions somewhere.  So often we fight the current instead of just moving into what's already happening.  Letting go of the rocks was the first hard step.  From there it was easy to float.

Lent wasn't about making seventy five percent turn into eighty or ninety, yet I started to pray for God to do it, to give more, to "show up" according to my perfect vision.  Lent was about abstaining from plenty, sometimes from enough.  But it wasn't about multiplying.   

That phrase, "Beggars can't be choosers"  is unfortunate and devastatingly true.  But beggars can see and re-envision.  I've needed help seeing but I've known that's been my choice.  My quarter offering could give someone a new way of seeing and introduce choice which is of course the garden that God places us in.  

Fast forward forty days.  When there's nothing left in the house to eat today I do not sit down with my head in my hands, go to the store and overextend -- not even for butter or oil.  I look deeper and somehow make French Onion soup and a loaf of wheat bread.  When have I ever made that?  A cup of granola for the just found unopened yogurt.  Why was it left unseen?  Leftovers will be redesigned for tacos.  That Christmas gift mix in the darkness of the pantry will be scones at breakfast.  Iced Tea is always forgotten, and yet always ready to be made.  When will we learn to see what is here instead of what isn't?

What was in the tomb when Jesus called Lazarus forth, mourning friends all around?  An impossibility or a body preserved and ready to respond...

What was left to say the deepest thank you when Mary's livelihood was returned?  A wasteful, pointless expression or the hope-enshrouded alabaster jar from an interrupted death...

What was in that dipping of the bread seen by John and Judas?  A devil's identification or a friendship offering at the very last moment...

At the end of Lent, what is really left?  Abiding.

"The point of simplicity is not efficiency, increased productivity or even a healthier, more relaxed life.  The point is making space for God's own self."   Jan Johnson.  Abundant Simplicity: Discovering the Unhurried Rhythms of Grace

I am not leaving Lent panting for the dinners out, the put-off products, the coffees or other wants.  Our celebration on Sunday will be a celebration of life sustained and prolonged.  And we'll go and buy a few things that we need and even a couple wants, like candy for some boys' Easter baskets.  But we won't be undoing it all.  We'll still be saying, "You are enough."

{Giving Out of Poverty. Lent 2013}

Greater Things

I read through the gospel of John.  I see the seven signs:

turning water into wine    healing the official's son at a distance   making the paralytic walk   feeding 5,000 with loaves and fishes  walking on the water   healing a man born blind    raising Lazarus

Are things missing in his first steps toward making all things new?  There wasn't a creation salvation: he didn't protect the coral reef, the melting ice caps, or the species' we've lost since then.  He didn't harbor a child, a battered woman, or an oppressed slave.  And, of course, he didn't create any political freedoms. But there's also this:   Jesus didn't lift anyone out of poverty.  

In John's story, healing takes priority and changes four stories.  That Roman official spreading the news.  The paralytic at the center of a Sabbath controversy that would cost his healer dearly.  The man born blind walking away from darkness to light.  Lazarus making the most of his second chance sharing a table with Jesus again and again.  Certainly new legs and new eyes could now give a man a living.  Mary and Martha spared destitution with the return of their brother's strength.   A field of people were given a meal, but just once.

He was here to point to himself, the rescuer.  He was here to usher in a new creation trickling it out to our grasping hands. First things first: draw hearts, shift thinking, give choices.  

He didn't come to make us rich, but to make us reach.  For him.  For one another.  Perhaps the poor won't always be with us and we can move to eradicate poverty in my lifetime,

Today we would ask for all the other things -- communal salvation, global relief.  We'd beg, "Help all the sheep. All the folds."  That was his intent all along.  We just weren't ready to join him.  He wanted us to be a part of the process.  He's left some miracles for us to do.  Rescue and redeem all of creation through the work he's already done.  And even greater things than these.

{Giving out of Poverty.  Lent 2013}

Monday's Oxymoron: Writing About Humility

February came and blasted us.
as February is prone to do.
Winds of opposition.
A weeklong blizzard of misunderstanding.
Mistrust.
It's the last hard push into Spring to make us alive again.
Death loves to whip its tail around while we crush its head.

The tapes in my head say: don't make major decisions in February.  Don't disengage, disavow, distort, disable, disband.  It's only the weathering of February.  It will pass.

When winter storms hit around here, snow pack below average, it's only a moment before the first person says, "We need it so bad."  We speak this need while it's all falling beautiful and white or days after when getting out is easier and we can make our own choices again.  But when shoveling happens two or three times in one day just to keep up, when slickness keeps us home, when we cancel conversations -- that's not the thought I choose.  Did I need this?

Perhaps yes:  my muscles thankful for the workout.  My children thankful for the yard's fresh canvas.  My calendar thankful for the rest.  When everything is falling all around I have to let all slide out of my hands and ask, "What has this storm brought?"

What do they all bring?

Perhaps the reminder that I don't have the market on assumptions.
Perhaps a different kind of desperation.
Perhaps a practice session of having less.
Perhaps something that I could not have done.

...Humility is not a thing that will come of itself, but that it must be made the object of special desire and prayer and faith and practice. (Humility, Andrew Murray)

I walked into Lent with three ideas: humility, detachment and generosity.  Generosity was going to be, hands-down, my favorite.  Detachment was necessary for generosity -- so I could hold my breath for 40 days while I gave.  But humility just sounded good.  I'm not sure I really wanted it to go beyond just living poor.

But that's what I have in front of me.  Pushed in by a storm.  Unsettled air.  Laying it out and holding out everything precious to me: my skills, my identity, my calling.  Offering them to be reshaped by the storm.  Left trusting, more detached.  More generous with my listening, and hoping, and unity.  Shoveling out wasn't fun.  There's still some frozen places to remove, but I can make it in and out again.  Grateful.  Dependant. and Free.

{Giving out of Poverty. Lent 2013}

Hungry

Last week I was thankful that we could eat.  I was hungry.  But it wasn't for lack of food.  We had plenty to sustain us though much of it was in a potential rather than prepared state. Some if it was easy: there was shredded bbq beef and rolls for lunch, peanut butter and jelly, hot dogs and bread dough, frozen pizza.  There were snacks such as peanut butter and crackers, cheese, apples, carrots, popcorn.  With a tiny effort we could have black beans and rice, raviolis, salsa and quesadillas, salad, soup and stew with meat.  There were still two kinds of frozen chicken and vegetables too.  There was oatmeal and eggs and bacon for breakfast.  If we ran out of bread, I could bake more.  We had clean water.  We even had milk.

Looking at this list, isn't it enough to last a week?  I saw it all, but it was as if no one else did.  They were staring into the cupboard, into the fridge bemoaning that the shelves were relatively empty because other than what I listed, there were only a few random things besides. I think in their minds they called it scarcity and they became a little afraid.  Their only starvation was from lack of choices.

Before I wrote it down on paper I even found myself wishing for more too.  I found myself saving food so the kids could have enough to choose from.  I optimized what we had, making homemade tortilla chips and even granola bars with that cereal no one would eat.  I baked them Valentine's treats. I could have baked so much more.

In any other week I would have gone to the store to get more bananas, more applesauce, more bread.  But not this one.  Not when you're not spending more than you have. There was food here.  And it was actually much of what they would normally wish for.  Of course they eat their favorite things first when it's all new from the store, piled up on shelves like it's a priceless collection.  As he carries in groceries one son usually remarks, "Now I can feast!"  He's my pickiest.  By week's end there is less, but there isn't nothing.  I think that without a full refrigerator or a bursting cupboard to accent it all they feel confined to the food choices they would have made anyway.

No one likes to feel confined.  Hedged in and boundaried.

I'm reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers.  It's a remarkable work of narrative non-fiction that paints life in a Mumbai slum, high rise hotels just on the perimeter, potential so close and yet so unreachable.  They do what they can with what they have, sorting trash to sell to recyclers and in the slum they are doing well enough.  I can't wrap my mind around that sentence. (I've been to India and walked through it all.)  The thing that's absent in this book is want of food.  In this work poverty and hunger are not synonymous.  Poverty and corruption are.  And corruption takes away choices.

In my Lenten endeavor to grow a little closer to poverty my discipline to "go without" might be off.  I need to lean more into "can't have" or "cheated out of."  I'm not sure how to do that. Willingly.

I'm reading John.  The remarks about food and water in this book are plentiful not just in occurrence but in symbol. Turning water into wine (six huge pots to pass around at the end of the wedding).  Drinking at the Samaritan well (but offering living water to keep her from thirsting ever again).  Feeding the multitudes (it was just fish and bread, but twelve baskets full of leftovers).  And in the middle of all this epicurian excess Jesus says, "I don't need any of it.  I'm not hungry for that.  My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me."  Jesus points to all the wine, all the water, all the fish and bread and says it's not what's most important.  It doesn't make us rich or poor.  It doesn't add to our everlasting life.  What matters is doing the will of God.

In my Lenten season, I'm trying to shrug off the superfluous and take up generosity.  I'm asking to be led into what is most important.  This is the fast that I choose:  to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.  To share bread with the hungry... (Is. 58)  It's all there together.  One just might lead me to the other.

I'm reading A Place at the Table.  The lillies beautiful. The grass thriving. Why do we worry?  "Don't reduce your life to the pursuit of food and drink; don't let your mind be filled with anxiety.  People of the world who don't know God pursue these things, but you have a Father caring for you, a Father who knows all your needs.  Since you don't need to worry -- about security and safety, about food and clothing -- then pursue God's kingdom first and foremost, and these other things will come to you as well." (Lu. 12:2-31).

We busy ourselves with worry not about daily sustenance but most often about status. We do not fear that we will not have enough to eat -- for most of us this is a non-issue.  But we worry and fret over having the right clothes, driving the right car, and living in the right part of town."      -- Chris Seay

But Asha wanted to be a politician, not a low-paid Kindergarten teacher.  To achieve this goal, she thought she'd have to shed her slum ways as she'd shed her village ones. It was a second kind of migration -- of class.          -- Katharine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

It's the same in India as it was in Israel as it is here. We have what we need, not always what we want.    Here I am in 21st Century Colorado in this moment thinking I'm driven hardest into poverty when I go without food.  Thinking when I don't have it in abundance then I am poor.  But poverty clings more to position than provision.  Rising up out of poverty is to rise to a new position.  It's to broaden our choices; to move the boundaries.  It's to step in willingly into an unfinished work.

Jesus has that new position waiting freely in hand.  It is given without our scavenger efforts to get it.  The food, yes, it will come.  The needs, of course, will be met.  But when we are looking with the eyes of Jesus at the world waiting to be made right do we ever get so excited about doing that work that we simply can't eat?  He raises us up so that we can see. In the end, engaging in the fast makes me full.

{Giving out of Poverty.  Lent 2013}

The First Gift

During Lent there will be three paychecks.

Yesterday was payday number one and yesterday I wrote our first check made out to no one (yet) for the amount we are giving away.  I set it on the dinner table and we all looked at it.  We prayed our Lenten prayer with it in our presence.

The check on the table is more milk, more bananas, more bread.  It's the frozen yogurt I would have treated them too.  It's the lunch we would have grabbed on our way back from our field trip; Chip's lunches with the set-up team on TNL nights. That check is the new pants I'm pretty sure I can't wait too much longer to get for my growing son.  It's the socks that the store was out of.  That check is the excess heat that I'm now turning down when I leave the house.  It's the miscellaneous stuff I toss on the credit card during the month .  It's the Kindle books for only 1.99, the Redbox movies, the good deals that came to my inbox.  It's the coffee mentoring meetings in which I bring my own tea from home.  It's the lunch with my husband using a cafe gift card from Christmas instead of that romantic Valentine's dinner out.

But it's also 19,217 Rupees.  The poverty level in India is 29Rs a day, 22Rs in rural areas.  But 30Rs a day doesn't make you any less poor.  And there are a bunch of people who have less.  I have 19,217Rs sitting on my table.  That's about nine months of basic utilities for an apartment (electricity, gas, water and trash).   It's 1600 bottles of water.  It's two years of college at Delhi University.  It is more than three and a half times the average monthly income.  

I can't wait to find out whose storyline will be impacted, changed, by this gift.  Maybe it will send a few women to beauty school to get out of the slum.  Maybe it will go to a hospital, a daycare center, an ashram.  I wish I could already know so my children could think of them when they are wishing they could buy the Star Wars game or the hands free microphone headset or the ice cream.   It's only the first week. I won't fool myself into thinking they'll stop making requests.

Today as I made dinner with leftovers from yesterday my youngest asked me, "Mom, are we writing another check for dinner?"   I smiled at his very big heart.  Not yet.  Soon.

{Giving Out of Poverty.  Lent 2013}

If You Give a Girl a Crisis

If you give a girl a $57 crisis...
she just might get angry and feel entitled to live without going through it.
If she gets angry and feels entitled she won't like it and she just might examine her heart.
If she examines her heart she'll find that the crisis really was an invitation to seek the God who led her there.
If she seeks God for a resolution to her crisis she'll lay at his feet the $57 she doesn't have.
If she lays the $57 at his feet she just might sense that he'll take care of that.
She'll re-balance her checkbook just to see.
When she re-balances her checkbook she'll find that she was roughly $50 off.
In her favor.
And after she finds that she's $50 off in her favor
she'll breathe a little easier and pretty much call it 'crisis averted.'

But that would be foolish because everything is always intertwined and connected and touching over and over like small boys wrestling when the work is done. There's more, stretched out and ever lasting more.

She'll find a reimbursement check on her counter for $13 for something she forgot she'd submitted.
When she picks up the check she's happy that she's now ahead by $5 but the check reminds her that she wrote another check to a friend to cover a field trip, but the friend actually wants cash instead of a check.  The field trip is tomorrow and the bank is closed.
When she turns to tack the check to the refrigerator she sees that her oldest's book of bus passes is empty and she needs $1 a day to get him home.  She feels frustrated and her happiness goes away.
When she feels frustrated she problem solves, rips up the check her friend doesn't want and borrows $4 cash from her other great kid to go with the $20 she'll withdraw from the ATM to equal the check's amount.
She goes to the ATM.
When she goes to the ATM she sees that she'll need gas for the field trip and she feels defeated.

When she sees that she needs gas, she asks not one, but two friends, if she can carpool with them.
When she asks her friends they both say, "no."
When they both say no, she gets an email from another much newer friend, one that she doesn't know well, one that might not share her worldview, one that simply needs someone to take her daughter to the field trip.
When she gets the email she may or may not close it and think she can't even get her own kids there let alone someone else's kid.
When she closes the email she might find that it won't leave her alone.
If it doesn't leave her alone, she knows it's a nudge.
In this season of her life, when she gets a nudge she follows it.
Because it won't leave her alone she opens it again.
She says, "yes" to the new friend and trusts that gas will just find its way to her tank.
When she trusts that gas will just show up so she can help a friend she learns a little about what it means to give out of her poverty.

When she fills her tank with gas her account is, again, $50 in the hole + the $4 she owes her great kid.
When her account is $50 in the hole she prays that God will take care of it and leaves her -$50 (actually  -$54) with him.
She takes her friend's daughter on the field trip.  They have a good time.
When she takes her friend's daughter on the field trip, her friend gives her $20 to share in the expenses for the gas.  She chokes back the gratitude.
When she's at the field trip the coordinator hands her back $3 because it wasn't as expensive as she thought and she gives this to her great kid so now she only owes him $1.
And later that night a friend who owed her $9 for a book she'd bought paid her back $10.
And another friend paid her back another $20.
And she finds $10 in her purse that she'd been looking for for a month.  No joke.
And since she had gas she went to pick up her oldest son from school instead of getting him bus passes so she paid her great kid back his other dollar.
And the girl decided to stop worrying and to trust God for her needs because she's now convinced that he's paying attention.  Which is exactly what she invited him to do when she said she'd give away 25% of her income during Lent.

{Giving out of Poverty. Lent 2013}

Failing Lent Before it Begins

The disappointing news pounced on me after the hundredth time the six-year-old son failed to listen, failed to keep his hands to himself, failed to stop asking the question that had elicited a "no."  So, when it pounced I smacked it back hard, in no mood for any more obstinance.

However, as I recoiled into the phone held to my ear I smacked my husband, on the other end, in the process.

The disappointing news was really an honest mistake?  Error?   What do you call it when one intends to follow through on a task in a timely fashion only to find out the timeline moved underneath him and now you both were out several hundred dollars?

Unfortunate?  Irritating?  Intolerable?

Or do you call it an invitation to the feet of God?  The very invitation you've been asking him to deliver.

[I chose the former to my great shame.]

Do you mumble under your breath that now you won't be able to put gas in the car?

Or do you whisper a prayer of thanks for the chance to see something good and strong and new arise from your lips and your life?

[repeat above]

This year's Lenten fast, only the second of my life, will test me.  I inherited from my mother the wonderful gift of being able to make money come out of a rock.  I did not, however, inherit its counterpart known as humble generosity.  I try.  But it's not second nature quite yet.   Detachment is something else to move toward: holding things more loosely so I can give them freely.  This sweet spot we live in, it can't last forever.  I must be able to hold everything out and say, "Do what you will.  It's yours."

This season I determined that walking a bit closer to the edge of poverty just might be the place I was being pushed to.  I committed.  I didn't just commit myself though, I committed my family.  For forty days we were going to live on 75% of our income and give away the rest.  Give it away.  25% of our income to friends in India who know where to alleviate someone's poverty.  That would be the rewarding part.  Living on 75%, that would be the lengthening.

We are a family of five on a single income.  And not just any income -- we live on tithes. The gravity of this is not lost on me.  We manage this love gift with a lean red pen.  Having opted out of social security years ago we diligently save for retirement.  We set a chunk of money aside for everything each month:  insurance, the mortgage, sewer bills, vacation, Christmas, taxes and all the rest.  We don't waste.  We've learned how not to want.  How was I going to give so much?

But the point wasn't to know how to do it.  The point was just to do it and wait on God to show me the way. 

Still I prepared.  I crunched the numbers.  I figured out how to save on food: cooking once and eating twice.  I took our February paycheck to pay off our credit card in order to enter Lent debt free.  This meant that we began our Lenten practice of living closer to poverty two weeks early because after I mailed that big fat payment I had $95 left to spare for two weeks:  gas for the cars + a field trip + classes for the boys + stamps to mail off our tax packet + more milk and bananas = not enough already.

And today my partner in life called and said the timeline shifted and a withdrawal couldn't be stopped and a matching gift to our retirement would have to wait another month.  And I flipped through the check register in my head and knew that we'd now begin Lent in the hole.  I was angry because it had not been according to my plan.  Humility, generosity and detachment stood on the other side of a vast chasm carved there by my own self love, out of my reach.  Lent was going to push me hard toward God.

Here is what Lent is not:
Lent is not a chance for us to show God what great brilliance and resolve we have.
Lent is not planned so heavily that no room is left to see God move.
Lent is not maneuvered on our own power and skill.
Lent is not refusing to trust when our margin gets squeezed.
Lent is not NOT falling at the feet of God -- at his invitation, to our great challenge.

What have I really given up if I've planned out my scarcity ahead of time and provided for it too?  I'm doing my own giving and my own taking away.  I'm playing the role of God.

Here it is seven days out from the start and I've already tripped over myself on my way to look for God.

The good news is, there's a lot of room for growth.  Amen.

Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”  Luke 21:1-4

{Giving Out of Poverty.  Lent 2013}