When Cookies Come Running

It's amazing what goes through your head when you get the text at 8:30 p.m.
"I'm stopping by in about thirty minutes.  I have a delivery."

You start to think, "Christmas!"
Then you start to think, "Uh oh. Something bad."

And when it turns out to be cookies, carried in bubble wrap so they don't break, delivered on an evening run by my friend whose wife makes THE BEST chocolate cookies ever

you start to think, "Love."

Greater love has no man's wife than this: that she delivers cookies in the middle of grading season.

#

The Table of Loss and Profit

So many days and nights I moved in-between slumber and wakefulness thinking about the people I lost. In those days of their absence more prayers happened for them, more tears shed for their health than all combined in the days when we used to share mission and meals and Christmas and Tuesdays.  Even when a new path was laid out for us, even when new friends said, "We're with you,"  I lagged behind wishing newness could, just this once, be retroactive.

But with this practice the days are presenting themselves to me now with import and profit.  Insight is resulting in a mindful closing, and the things of the past lay behind a thick curtain of protective memory.  It's no longer mine to captain or create, to fix or to form.

What is mine is faith and even that is a good gift from God; faith that is less a surrendering to God's will than it is an acceptance of my active role in God's future.*  And God's future now looks a lot like a table spread with pasta and sauce and bread and brownies.  One that is encircled by trust and openness and warm laughter.  It is the friends who lean over it and say, "We believe the same thing."  It is the fact that we sit around it dreaming and suggesting and envisioning what our role in that future could be.  When we sweep the plates away to move from stories to schedules excitement mounts. We can see it, we can taste it; this new future that faith has invited us to.

But just as the past doesn't own today the future doesn't trump it either.  In James 4:13-17, the merchants who announce that they'll travel about and trade and make a profit don't even consider that their pronouncement of "the way we're going to move forward" is so full of mist and obstruction that they won't just be wrong about the way forward, they'll actually vanish as a result.  It's not the planning that James is denouncing; it's the presumptive pride. The what-will-be cannot push aside the what-is.

What is now, what is today for us, is new and fragile.  It is reliant upon God's favor and direction.  It is risk and hope.  It is holding loosely what's in front of us, because at any point God could say, "Give it."

This table we eat and talk and work at represents today well.  It's a folding table.  Two weeks ago, here sat a proper table. Until one day it seemed appropriate for my friend to determine that he ought to trade it to a man for a motorcycle. To him it's of no real consequence. God will provide another proper table if he wills. He leaves room for the possibility that it might not turn out as he planned.  But today, all goodness is still given regardless of what we're leaning over to receive it.

Today I play an active role in God's future.  And if I only get to do it for today I did it with friends around a table set in hope and trust and love.

*I wish I could take credit for this idea about faith. It's from a message Barbara Brown Taylor gave to Duke University.

The Discipline of Presence

When we move into a fog color fades, mist obstructs, deep within the loss a crash feels immanent.  To punch through it we need to turn on some lights, slow down, pay attention.  Spiritual disciplines are the lights we follow to a new place of heart and character, color and truth.   When I walked through the sunlit neighborhood last week, leaves like confetti meeting the ground, my own private parade, creation celebrating my awakening, this discipline of presence was conceived.  

"A spiritual discipline is an intentionally directed action which places us in a position to receive from God the power to do what we cannot accomplish on our own." - Richard Foster

Today 
If I hadn't said yes to this daily practice, I would have let this moment go by.  I wouldn't have seen it on my own.  Under my previous fog in an attempt to keep them focused --  to move it along so I could say in my distracted way that 'we'd had quality time,' -- I would have asked to see the card so I could read it with speed and precision.  But as I learn to let the fog fall away I'm learning to see what's in front of me again.

And this one was big.  This was the moment he turned a corner. 

#

In September, the phone call came from his teacher -- a wonderfully, encouraging woman who loves on 17 of our young heartbeats every day and goes home to stare cancer in the face.  She said, "Normally, we like to see the students begin the year at a level 16.  He's at a 4."

I knew his reading wasn't where it could be, but I treated reading like potty training: they 'get it' when they're ready. I'd planned to work more on it this year when I knew I'd have him all to myself to teach.  That was before our plans for him changed in a moment.  Before he was going to have a teacher with a quota and a standard.

So, every morning we say, "Love you!" and "Have a good day!" to his brothers when their father drives them to school.  And then my smallest son and I snuggle down for thirty minutes before it's his turn to go and he gets the quality time that moves and motivates him.

Together we take a deep breath, sound it out, think 'e at the end makes the vowel long', repeat it again and essentially wrestle those words off the page. Wiggling legs moving him slowly off the couch every few minutes, finger to the wrong words, long pauses -- it would be painful if it weren't so sweet.  Every morning I get to look down at his blond eyelashes, windows to his diligent brain, and I get to hear his still young voice -- my mommy heart tries to record it -- and sometimes I sniff his hair, just like when he was tiny.

Nearly two weeks ago, I noticed a change.  Something was quicker, his stabs were more correct, his cadence smoother.  It was starting to click.

And then this morning he was reading the papers on the side of the fridge. And the books his dad and I left laying about. And the screen I was typing on.

When we started the game after dinner he told his brother -- the one who has nurtured him all seven years, who has tied his shoes, worried about his safety, wrestled countless hours, and who has read to him on the mornings when younger brother climbed up the ladder to squeeze quality time from anyone who'd awaken -- "No, I want to read the card."  And he did.  And the next and the next as best as he could.  He didn't give up. He nailed Kodiak, but couldn't do bear.  Work in progress.

This is the day I wait for in the lives of my boys.  Every parent has their moments; my husband couldn't wait to play catch. But I love leading them to the belief that they can read. When they think in their head, "I'm a reader" their world transforms, their eyes open to everything that was previously foreign and they own and guard words like the life-giving secrets they are.  Today he is no longer "other;" he is with us.  

What if I had still been in the fog?  What if I still walked through autumn streets seeing only gray, thinking only about summer, wishing it wasn't dead, that it could be brought back to the life I'd envisioned for it.  That was something I couldn't do on my own.  It was something only God could do.  And the way he chose to do it was to open my eyes.

"Everybody is trying to patch us up and get us back to who we were, when in fact what we need to be told is, You're dead.  Who are you going to be tomorrow?" - Reynolds Price

Marginality

Experience marginality and

replenish the reservoir of compassion. 

-- Henri Nouwen

I arrived at the east entrance bewildered to see the metal detectors, armed guards.
     "I think I'm at the wrong entrance."
     "Where you headed?"
     "Employment First?"
     "This is the place.  Bag in the tray.  Empty your pockets."
I passed through the detector and sighed at the beep.
     "What you got in there?" he said with a sly smile, grabbing the wand, remembering all the others.
     "Buckles on my boots."
     "Oh, yes."

In these first moments of the exercise, one I tasked myself, deemed as spiritual - that of moving myself into the margins, I wanted to turn around, forget it.  But my name was on a list somewhere and I had to trade my presence for help.  Just like everyone.

In the room: name signed, cold plastic chair, forms read, expectations announced.  The girl to my left, bracelets rattling, blond hair attractive, moved here for a job that didn't last long enough -- rug pulled out from under her.  The women on my right, red plaid shirt, dark sad eyes, badly mumbled what little she said.  I wanted to find out more stories to connect the paths that brought us together. All of us image of God and human flesh.  But this room persisted in silence and sighs.

#

Last month I signed our family up for food stamps.  It was an afterthought, a "let's give it a try" moment. While I filled out the application for a different state aid program I simply checked that box too.   

Just a few days later, a warm and unexpected efficiency, the phone call came for an intake interview.  It seemed like an afterthought when she said, "Because you are underemployed you qualify for Employment First.  It's attached to your food assistance.  Can you come to the orientation?"
     "Sure."
     "We'll go over job interview skills, resumes, workplace training."
     "Uh, ok."
     "Great.  See you then."

When the form arrived in the mail it said something about "attending all meetings."  Something else about a case manager.  I felt trapped.  I have a calling; I don't need a job.  I struggled with pride.  With guilt.  With shame. I tried to breathe in the greater good.

#

In the room: together we filled in our blanks, signed the yellow page, made a choice from the list.

"Eight hours of volunteer work before next week."
"Another meeting on Wednesday."
"Bring twelve employer contacts with you."
"Volunteering starts now.  Color a bag for Project Angelheart.  No 'God Bless You' statements."

Our table was tasked with collating forms before we drew autumn scenes on the brown bags that would carry meals to the threatened lives.  I stuffed hard the pride that wanted to roll the eyes. The sad-eyed woman seemed grateful to do what she needed to.  At least she wasn't needing the meal her bag would carry to the dying.  I followed her response and picked up my crayon.

"In a state of reverence we stand in the full presence of another, while being fully present ourselves. There is deep acceptance and love in this state, as we encounter the image of God in each other." L.L. Barkat

I wanted to do this as a spiritual exercise.  I wanted to grow in hospitality as a fundamental expression of the gospel. I wanted be a more hospitable host, one that anticipated the kingdom, one that welcomed the margins.  Hospitality isn't just a momentary kindness, or as the social services model, a well-managed give and take that labeled me according to my need and maintained my isolation. I didn't need another job. I didn't need to volunteer at a thrift store to learn skills.  I needed to eat and I needed to be seen.

But I also needed to be a stranger; to be pressed to the margins again.  I can already say I've been homeless.  I can say I've endured a long season of unemployment. But if I'm going to open myself up to a ministry for anyone, then I needed to know what these brothers and sisters have to do to be helped.  I needed to know in a first-hand way and to move into their suffering and build a house there.

"The most transformative hosts are 'bridge people'."  Christine Pohl

At the three-hours end, I felt too many barriers to move forward with this experiment. My new friends were going to have to work hard and show up and get signed off and keep returning just to eat.  I had tasted the same smokey air, waited in the same line, chose from the same lists of workplaces, sat in the same abashed silence.  I took my name off the list.  I would eat another way.

Today:

I'm not a stranger. I'm loved and known by friends who see me.  Whose children pick corn right from the stalk and pile it into bags and offer it to me to take home.  Today my community fed me.  And I would do the same for them or for anybody.  Because caring for others is caring for Jesus.  And when my new brothers and sisters come around I can say to their story, "I know what those first steps are like.  Come in."