Thank you note living...

We have been getting thank you notes in the mail from Alison’s friends who came to spend a weekend with us as a retreat time. Written by hand on lovely cards, expressing gratitude for their time here, they lift my spirit when I see them on my desk. Going to the mailbox was an adventure in thanksgiving as they began to arrive. Snail mail still matters. My mama would say they were “raised right” because they took the time and made the effort to send a concrete expression of gratitude.
Our daughters have worked with our grandchildren to teach them the basic words of politeness... please and thank you. Every time they ask for something, the word “please” must be used and when they receive something, thank you is required. On birthdays and holidays, thank you notes come from them emblazoned with drawings and words and scribbles. They are learning the fine art of thanksgiving. It is an art that only requires a grateful heart and the will to express it concretely.
My niece Genny sent us several thank you notes for our help with her wedding. The most fun ones were the picture postcards from their honeymoon in Hawaii. We felt that what we had given really was important to her and that we mattered enough to take the time to include us in her life. I am astounded to hear how many brides and grooms never send thank you notes for wedding largesse.
A few Sundays ago, Hannah and I made origami books for our small congregation and stuffed them with slips of paper. We handed them out at the end of worship and asked folks to keep a record of what they were grateful for during the next week. I didn’t have any presents that week wrapped in gift wrap but I found so much to be thankful for. The horses and donkeys making me laugh with their morning antics, the taste of fresh eggs scrambled with cheese, the sunlight on bright fall leaves after days of rain, a new (to me) car that is fun to drive, hot tub bath in an old cast iron tub that is just right for soaking and reading, riding Junie B even when she is cranky, a baby calf that scrambles to find his mama, the shape of graceful deer wreathed in early morning mist at the edge of our front yard...These were on my thank you note to God that week.
John Claypool’s sermon Sunday on gratitude and generosity has echoed through my spirit as I try to get my self together for this week. Paying bills... more bills than money this week, worrying about a friend who has been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, trying to figure out a way to help Tina, doing fall cleaning, looking for a home for Beagle Bailey who is driving me mad, changing summer clothes to fall and winter with a Goodwill bag collection... how can these be transformed into thank you notes?
Paying bills... We are not rich in money but we have more than enough even when we have to rob Peter to pay Paul. My sick friend... Walt and Mary Lynn were my best adult friends in college. Walt was my Baptist Student Union Director and he and Mary Lynn lived in an apartment in the center. They modeled another way to be married than the one I knew from my parents. Walt kicked my brain into gear with my faith, challenged my simple beliefs and loved me through an awkward transition to adulthood. When Tim was killed, he and Mary Lynn came when I needed them most to give me a day off from grief and anger. I am grateful to have them for friends. Trying to help Tina has been a tar baby. I keep getting stuck, pulled in feeling responsible for a woman I sometimes don’t like very much. Helping someone who is not like you can open windows into your soul and shine light in your internal darkness. What I see is not always very Christian. I think I am grateful for that. Fall cleaning... I have a house to clean when others have no home at all. Closet cleaning... I have more than enough clothes, enough to give away. Haven’t come up with a thank you for Beagle Bailey yet. Will have to keep working on that one. In all things, give thanks, the Bible says. This week I will continue to work on transforming gripes into gratitude believing God needs my thank you notes as much as I need to write them. This is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. Amen.

Tomato Soup Saints...

We sat at the table eating tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches Megan had prepared for lunch. Conversation was random, enthusiastic and loud as it often is when you eat with three boys ages seven and under. Mason asked for seconds of the soup and enjoyed it down to the last drop. I watched as he put the shallow mug to his face, held it there for several minutes before he put it down. As he lowered the mug to the table, he grinned, a large red ring circling his happy mouth. “I licked it clean!” he announced. And so he had... love of tomato soup led him not to waste any of the remains in his mug.
I thought of Mason this morning in worship as we celebrated All Saints Sunday. Our worship table held pictures, books and other reminders of those who are saints to us. We told our saint stories about teachers, grandparents, therapists, friends, aunts, and others who were the face of God for us. A sermon preached by John Claypool (thanks to the wizardry of modern technology) helped me understand a new meaning for saints in my life.
His sermon focused on two bedrock attitudes and behavior for a Christian lifestyle, gratitude and generosity. John spoke of Jesus’ gratitude for what he had been given. There was no sense of entitlement nor complaining about the cards he had been dealt in the game of life, only a profound sense of thanksgiving for the gift of life. And because he had been given much, his sharing of all he had and all of who he was, flowed like a healing river over all he met and loved. There was a recognition of the gift that life is and an equal desire to share the whole of it with others.
So I began remembering many of the saints I have loved in my life, none of whom were perfect. But, many of them shared these two important characteristics of a transformed Christian, dare I say saved by grace? Like Mason and the tomato soup, they drank deeply from the well of living water and loved the life they had been given even with its limitations. They lived with joy and thanksgiving even when life was difficult and the cup only half full. Whatever life brought to them, they licked up the last drops and were grateful for what had been and what was yet to come. In their sacramental approach to living, all they had and all they were, were gifts to be shared with open hearts and hands.
Mr. Reem, the best ever church custodian, who made care taking of the church building an art that cared for the ministers as well... Miss Panos, the daughter of Greek immigrants, who taught American history in my high school and ignited a love of freedom in our little redneck hearts... my grandma and Aunt Thelma who modeled constancy as members of the same church for all their adult lives... ministers I have known who spent their lives in small churches that never made it big in any way but in the ways of a loving Jesus... Mason’s school teachers who lay down their lives every day so that the children in their class can celebrate the gift of their lives... I am surrounded by saints and I give thanks for the gifts of their lives and the generosity of their spirits.
On this All Saints Sunday, I pray that we might be saints for one another, helping one another hold on to gratitude and generosity when life does not turn out as we hoped and planned. We are called to pass on the gifts we have been given, to share with thanksgiving as we live out our days on this earth knowing that our life was created in joyful relationship. Springing from One who was lonely in the Garden, we were created in God’s image and if we are true to our family heritage, we will pass on the gifts we have been given to those around us.
C.S. Lewis said “Nothing is ours until we share it”. So let me share, dear Lord, this week, the gifts from the saints I have known and loved. Let me be a saint and open my eyes and heart that I may see all the saints who surround me, that great cloud of witnesses, who are my kin people in the faith. Help me drain my life’s mug and let me lick it clean with enjoyment and enthusiasm and gratitude. Amen.

Ladies Aid to the Rescue...

We are continually borne by others. Therefore, willingly or unwillingly, we are perpetually in debt to God and to the whole creation. Mary Shiedler

I was miserable... lonely and lost, in Louisville. We had moved from a place I loved dearly and Michael was immersed in his new job as a professor at the seminary. He was starting a new center for family ministry as well as teaching. His days were filled with meaningful work and travel. I was at home with three children, one of whom was a depressed and angry teen. Our home was lovely, our neighborhood was full of nice people and lots of children, we rejoined the church where we met and were married, I volunteered in the schools, worked in the church, did part time work, went to therapy to work on my mixed up self and still felt lonely.
Michael was feeling lonely, too, so as a present for him, I gave him a Brotherhood. I called a group of men together at our house for an evening of food, fun and fellowship. I introduced the evening, served the food and then said, “You are on your own. If you want to keep this going, plan it yourselves.” They did. All the time we lived in Louisville, they met every month at the same restaurant (the same one frequented by Thomas Merton) creating the ties that bind and sustain.
I created a Ladies Aid for myself... five women whom I had known for years, some better than others. We were dedicated to eating in every restaurant on Bardstown Road at least once. Over shared meals, soaking in Eleanor’s hot tub one snowy evening, sharing the bread and wine of true communion, we shared one another’s burdens. One in our group was a widow trying to find her way back to a new kind of life. One was a contemporary gospel music performer who had moved to Louisville so her husband could teach at the seminary. Another was a professor at the medical school and a social worker rounded out the lot of us. Three of us had children still at home. All of us were members of the same church. Two of us were married on the same day, years apart. None of us had a perfect life and all of us had burdens we were bearing. It took awhile for the shields to drop but when they did, it was a relief to discover someone was standing beside us helping to hold us up.
Yesterday was my birthday and I gave myself the present of another Ladies Aid. Last night we met at a local restaurant in West Asheville. Gathered around the table, we began the getting to know you dance. We have known each other for years but not on a regular basis. The Vermont Rules were our guiding light... no talking about work, children, money or parents after the first ten minutes. Once members of the same church, we are now scattered with some still at the same church where we met. It doesn’t matter. What I need is a place to be with women who matter to me and to whom I matter. I don’t know how this group will come together. Maybe a few more will join and a few will drop out. Over the long haul, with the passage of time, a center will emerge and will hold us together like the gravity that plants our feet on the ground. Our roots will sink deep into one another’s lives and our branches will intertwine holding us up during storms.
One of my daughters has her version of a Ladies Aid group in her church. They came to the farm for a weekend retreat recently. I loved listening to them laugh, tell church stories, talk about their lives and watched as they took a break from their work-a-day worlds together. They go to movies, take road trips, eat out, work together, care for one another’s children and live their lives knowing there is a group of friends who will drop everything to come to their aid.
We are continually borne by others even if we appear to be self sufficient. Our outward selves rarely reflect the whole of who we are underneath. Only when we are in a safe place, a place where we know we loved no matter what, can we find traces of God as we let our masks drop to the floor, revealing the terrible awful wonder and need of being fully human. It is a gift and a crucifixion all bound up together. Listening and loving one who is different from me, who makes choices I would not make, who struggles with life situations that are foreign to me, trying to hear the soul speaking through the mouth of the woman who sits at my table not just the words... this is the hard work of being Christian, called to love others as I love God and myself. And if I show up, make myself available, do the work, I will find love and life and laughter in abundance as I am freed and free others to become their own true creation.
We are meeting again in two weeks to help Mary Beth put her Christmas Village (metropolis, actually) together for the holidays. We may try her crustless pizza recipe for our communion meal.Holler if you want to come.

Many are called, many are chosen.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. Henry David Thoreau

Living on a farm requires everyone in the farm family to work. As a child, it was expected of me to help with the garden planting, hoeing, picking and preserving. When it was hay season, I was on the trailer stacking bales and helping to transfer those same bales to the pole barn for storage. When a new pasture was needed, my sister and I spent five of our Saturdays sprigging and watering grass with our father. Driving the tractor while my dad peeled hay off the roll for the cows, washing the clothes and hanging them out on the line in the backyard, learning how to shoot a rifle so I could kill a rattlesnake (we lived on a farm that had previously been named Rattlesnake Hill for good reason), bucket feeding orphaned calves twice a day, feeding and watering the chickens were a part of my daily life as a child in the rural South. When my mother went to work outside the home when I was nine, daddy gave my sister and me two cooking lessons... how to make vegetable soup and how to cut up a chicken (you could only buy whole chickens back in the dark ages). After that, we were on our own and required to help start supper for mama before she got home. Often we had the meal ready by the time she arrived. This work was in addition to the usual chores... make your bed, clean your room, practice your piano, do your homework, help with the housework on Saturday mornings, iron clothes. Children in all the families I knew were good for something besides just being.
Barbara Brown Taylor in her book An Altar in the World lists all the jobs she has had and all the jobs she hopes to yet have. She chooses to see them as opportunities to learn about herself and connection to other people she would not meet except through that job. Like most of us, she lived with the illusion that God had one overarching most important just right job waiting for us when we grew up.
In my Baptist world, this was referred to as “being called”. A popular folk saying was “Many are called but few are chosen”.Working at the paper mill was o.k. but being called to be a preacher was much higher on the list of godly work. Being a teacher was good work but being a missionary was the pinnacle of sacrificial calling. Listening to Miss Pearl Todd tell of her work as a missionary in China elicited in my twelve year old self an earnest desire to be called to full time Christian service. I claimed that call by walking down the aisle and announcing it to the preacher, Brother Kannon, who promptly told the congregation. In later years my father owned his fear of that call coming true when I married Michael in seminary. He figured God was finally going to get me and send me to “Darkest Africa” far, far away from him and the family.
The truth of the matter is we are all called to and chosen for many different kinds of work in our lives. My daddy worked in a paper mill, his college degree prepared him for a work he chose not to do, in order to buy the farm, work that he loved to do. My mother loved working in the insurance business but was never paid what she was worth. I’ve been a social worker, a paid child care provider, a piano teacher, director of an Information and Referral Service, an office assistant for a fund raising effort, an organist, a picture framer and a teacher in a continuing ed program. None of this work was all of who I was but each job taught me something new about myself.
Most of us have two kinds of work... work we have to do and work we choose to do. Sometimes the work we have to do keeps food on the table and a roof over our heads, the dishes washed and the house cleaned. The work we choose to do keeps our souls fed and sheltered. Even those lucky few who have work that supplies both needs, will find worms in their shiny red work apples. The work we do, both kinds, is a gift we offer to the world not because it makes us somebody but because we are already somebody, a special gift from God to the world.
I mother my children and other young friends as one of my vocations. It is as special to me as the art I create and the classes I teach. The horse poop I scoop and the hay I feed the cows is have to work that offers me an opportunity to rest my spirit in the needs of the present day. Shopping for groceries, washing clothes, cooking supper and mopping the floor become sacramental acts, offerings of grace filled joy because I have been given much. In Ecclesiastes, the preacher says, “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love...all the days of your life which have been given to you under the sun... and in your work at which you work under the sun. Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”
And so today, Lord, help me do what needs to be done and what I choose to do with all my might, not from any sense of unworthiness, but in the gladsome assurance that all I do is a gift from you that I am giving back to you. I am a somebody, a whobody, an employee whose paycheck is love, laughter and life. Thank you for all my jobs, great and small.