He Danced (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

 

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A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets . . . The beauty of humanity is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day. - Jean Vanier in Community and Growth

Twilight fell and the campfire flickered. 

A small, clear voice rose, “The floooo-wer grooooows, and the house, and the stooooop signs, and the caaaars.” He was just getting warmed up.

Later, his body twisted and turned, arms in the air, waving, then down at his sides.  His hips wiggled, feet stomped.  He spun, swooped, shook, with a far off look in his eye, his body responding intuitively, impulsively to the sounds of the singer, the acoustic guitar. 

Four year old Isaiah stole the show last night.

His twin brother, Levi, drifted off to sleep, tucked into the nest formed by my arms and legs, a fleece blanket pulled up tight around his cheeks.  Sleep hits him like a freight train come seven thirty.  Seated on the ground by the fire’s warmth, I swayed like a cradle and watched his eyelids drift.  Lifting his face, he said, “I’m going to sleep now for a little while.  Wake me up when they clap because that means it’s the end.”

Isaiah danced so long and so hard he finally flopped right down on the ground, huffing and puffing.  Then he was up again, moving and shaking and running over to his Daddy and I every minute or two, a desperate look on his tired little boy face.

“Is it almost done?” he asked.

Afterwards, he was proud.  

“Someone told me ‘Thankyou,’” he said, “and someone else patted me on the back.”

It was a big and important thing he did, that dancing.  He danced with serious abandon, every move an extension of his soul. 

Over fifty people came to hear John Francis perform in the lap of our great, wide yard, underneath the dark night and stars. 

Kids tore in every direction on wheels of every shape and size. 

Our dog, Coco, chased kids and chickens like it was her job. 

Donations were collected and we raised $400 to help provide hot, home-cooked, Thanksgiving meals for local families in need. 

We huddled close around the fire in the surprisingly cool night air.  We shivered and laughed, shrugged under blankets.  We sang along and clapped our hands and I felt the goodness of a frequent smile on my face. 

But the best part of it all, by far? 

My son – he danced.  

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God? 

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  

You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.       

I'm Not Powerless (Tales of a Young and Pregnant Chaplain)

I didn’t have a cleric’s collar, a long robe or rosary.

I lacked a book of formal rites and a heavy, dangling cross.

Because of this, I envied the Catholic chaplain (a priest) who strolled the hospital halls with confidence, the concrete symbols of his authority displayed for all to see.

I was young, female, wearing a small collection of casual-professional attire.  Later, I was visibly pregnant, wearing an even smaller, less formal wardrobe. 

I carried a notebook with a few prayers inside and wore a bright blue tag that said simply, “Chaplain Kelly.”

I wanted something to fall back on, some symbol to carry with me as I waited and prayed with the family of the latest Code Blue or visited with the parents of a preterm baby. 

That was early in my residency as a Chaplain at a Level One Trauma hospital. 

It was before I learned how to argue well and calmly with a surgeon, before I held family members back from rooms they could not enter.  Over time my hands stopped shaking when dialing the numbers of loved ones and I prayed calmly and clearly around the bodies of the recently deceased. 

By the end of the year – when I left to give birth to our first child, a daughter – I’d incorporated a new mantra into my thinking, “I’m not powerless, I have authority.”

Somewhere along the way I realized that authority isn’t held or conveyed in symbols, but is instead endowed by nature in who we are – in who God made us to be.  It’s our presence that carries authority, our ability to rest sure and certain in the truth of our own flawed and gifted being.  The closer we live to this center of God’s making within us, the clearer we ring with the fullness of our own humanity. 

I offered myself to the families and individuals I met and they welcomed me.  With time I saw how, in certain contexts, the very symbols I envied could also be barriers to intimacy. 

Toward the end of my pregnancy I was called to pray with a family whose loved one was preparing for major surgery.  I met the large, extended family in a waiting area and the patient’s wife, clearly surprised by the extremely pregnant young woman before her, exclaimed, “I’ve never seen a PREGNANT CHAPLAIN before!” 

After an awkward pause I smiled and laughed and one of the grown children kindly explained that the wife was “more used to priests.”

“Well,” I replied, “we come in all shapes and sizes these days.”  

With that we moved into prayer, our eyes closed and my voice rising with its own song, its own authority. 

The Fountain (the "sidewise glance")

And in that instant I understood that if I were to pay attention to the spaces between and just behind the things I thought I needed to look at, there was no limit to what I might witness . . .  It's not just the genius or the personal friend of [God] who can be privy to great visions. Sometimes all it takes is looking just to the side of the obvious. . . . beauty and epiphany bide their time in the sidewise glance.          - Trebbe Johnson in "Where's the Temple"

Before my children came along and life turned topsy-turvy, I spent a year training as a Chaplain through a residency at a large regional hospital.  Several times a month my fellow residents and I worked grueling on-call shifts, covering the long, dark hours from 4 pm until 8 am the following day.   

After a long night on-call the last thing I wanted to do was fill the chapel fountain, but there was no avoiding it - it had to be done.  If we didn’t fil the fountain, the pump would blow, again, and the Pastoral Care Department Budget couldn’t handle any more pumps, at least that’s what the Department Head said.  So, on my way to brush my teeth in the women’s room and freshen for the day ahead, or after a rousing middle of the night emergency in the trauma department, I would turn into the small chapel that seemed strangely spooky in the dark quiet of the hospital’s off-hours. 

The fountain sat, bubbling, in the middle of the small gray space.  The room, constructed it seemed, of great slabs of gray stone, resembled a tomb and I didn’t relish venturing into its dimly lit cave.  Moving quickly I headed to the Islamic prayer corner, stepped gingerly over the prayer mat and opened the door to a hidden room that housed, among other things, an organ and a white plastic bucket. 

Grabbing the bucket ,I headed to the women’s room just down the hall where I would fill it in the public sinks.  The sinks, of course, were equipped with automatic shut-offs and were too shallow to hold the bucket, so I had to fill and dump, fill and dump with a secondary Styrofoam vessel poached from the cafeteria while battling to keep the water on.  My twin boys who play “fill and dump” endlessly in the bathtub would’ve love the job, but I and my fellow chaplains were less enthused. 

Walking in quick little steps I would gingerly carry the full bucket back down the hall trying not to slosh and spill, then into the chapel where I dumped it into the little bubbling square.  Then, if I were really doing the job well, I would repeat the whole process.  We were really supposed to do two buckets a night, but on the nights when I felt with certainty that five more minutes spent filling and dumping would prove to be the end of me, I got by with one. 

Often, someone forgot to fill the fountain.  Often, we complained.  And often, we suggested with no little amount of indignation, that the job was beneath us and should be added to the long list of tasks performed by the maintenance department. 

One day, though, as we were cycling through yet another stream of indignation and discontent, our department head spoke up.  While I don’t remember his exact words, he said, in his typical calm, quite manner, something to the effect of, “You know, this comes up every year.  Every new group of residents wants to get out of filling the fountain.” 

Then that old gray-beard added, “I always like to think of filling the fountain as a symbol of how we care for the spiritual health of the hospital.  We are bringing living water to the people here and when we don’t bring it, things run dry.”      

Well then. 

It takes a certain kind of vision, doesn’t it, to recognize the potential for the mundane tasks of daily life to be transformed into prayer, into a window – a threshold – for the holy.  This, I believe, is how Jesus saw the world.  This is why Jesus could watch a woman sweeping or a hen gathering or a farmer sowing and see beyond flesh and blood to the image of God made manifest, glimpses of the holy truths that undergird the warp and weave of our flesh and blood world. 

For me to be a follower of Christ is to make this transformation too, to allow for daily incarnation, to seek it even, in the smallest and simplest moments of my day.  To me, this is why Lent matters, this season in which our outward practices become a reflection of our growing spiritual freedom, this season in which we attempt to “bear about in our bodies” in some new way, the life and death and resurrection of Jesus (2 Cor 4:10).    

During Lent we affirm, as a community, that even our most earthly desires -  our growling stomachs, our sugar-craving appetites - might open in us a doorway into the presence of the Living God.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like Baskets of Leftovers.

This post is shared with Playdates With God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday.

Happiness is More than an Endless Supply of Tissues (The Myth of Money)

Given the addition of twins and my choice to stay home, most months find us juggling bills, making tough financial decisions and waiting for miraculous provision in one area or another.  Recently we overspent in the beginning of the month, which made the end unbelievably tight, so I vowed to “get by” on what we have.  This included, among other things, not buying tissues.  Given the number of allergies in our house and the propensity for every cold within a five mile radius to tear its way through all six members of our household, this would prove to be no small feat.

So we’re in the great tissue spending freeze and I’m pulling boxes from all around the house and vehicles as we slowly work our way toward a long awaited payday. We’re down to one box now and I’m hoping it’ll somehow multiply like the loaves and the fishes or the widow of Nain’s jars of flour and oil.  This isn't the first time I've done this sort of thing - one time I decided to stop buying soap until we'd used up every last drop in the house, including the oatmeal bars we made ten years ago, the random gifts of body wash from my second baby shower, and the tiny bars of Dove snatched from the free samples basket at the pediatrician’s office.      

I’m prone to fret and fuss about money.  I hide it, count it obsessively, and shuffle it between envelopes and jars, storing up for times of need.  So when I see people who I know have quite a bit more money than we do still complaining, worrying, and fretting about money and life in general, I find myself thinking, “What can you possibly have to complain about?"  At times like that I have to refrain from blurting out unhelpful things like, “Are you kidding me, we can’t even buy tissues!” 

God dealt with me on this awhile back, this belief that somehow things would be easier, that life itself would be better if only we had more money.  It had become a real issue for me, breeding bitterness, jealousy and envy that threatened my relationships with those I perceived as having more.  God spoke to me one weekend as I sat in a friend’s new home and listened to the unhappiness there, the fear and anxiety that weren’t so different from what I knew.  It was one of the few times when God has spoken so clearly to me and the message was, “Kelly, you wouldn’t be any happier if you had more money. ”

I told this to my husband as we drove home and I felt set free, delivered from envy, delivered from the lie that money brings happiness.

*   *   *   *   *

While I was training to be a chaplain I learned to type up and analyze conversations from my visits with patients and their families.  Part of the analysis involved noticing what myths the patient or chaplain were operating under during the conversation.  It was often easy to tell which myths were driving the conversation, which ones ruled over the patient’s life with a watchful eye, delineating truth, establishing boundaries and taboos with unquestioned authority. 

We all have certain ideas that may or may not be true or helpful, yet somehow persist in shaping our view of ourselves and the way we ought to operate for things to go well in the world around us.  Although many of the patients I spoke with, prayed with and sat with were in crisis situations, it was also clear that much of their personal emotional anguish came from their beliefs about the world. 

It may sound Pollyanna-ish, but attitudes and beliefs are often at the heart of our happiness and misery.  The things we believe about ourselves and the world, especially those that migrate slowly, gaining speed, from our hearts to our mouths and out into the air around us, hold great power over our lives. 

*   *   *   *   *

God delivered me from the myth that money brings happiness, for awhile anyway.  But recently, visiting friends again, I found myself slipping, judging those with more, lacking compassion for their deeply felt fears and anxieties because I felt that the fact that they had more than me should solve the problem.  Internally I argued, reminding myself I’d been set free from the myth, but I could feel myself waffling, could feel my compassion and my own capacity for joy constricting.    

Then we came home.  Home to our cramped quarters, littered with toys and socks, divided by wobbly gates to keep the twins safe, home to our emptying refrigerator, to our last box of tissues and I felt the tug of that old lie more fiercely yet.   I pushed back on it, though, and tried to remain centered in the truth until the moment when my husband turned on our PC. 

The computer wouldn’t start, not in safe mode, not in regular mode, not in any mode.  We ate dinner and got the kids to bed and ran a test that revealed the worst – the hard drive was shot, dying, dead.  Then, oh my, did that old myth ever get loud.  It rolled its way round and round in my thoughts gaining speed, gaining momentum, gaining power as I gave in to exhaustion and frustration. 

Then, in the quiet of looking for candles and flashlights to see us through hurricane Sandy, in the preparations for having, making-do with less, I heard that voice again only this time it said, “Everyone feels this way.” 

Everyone feels frustrated, overwhelmed, powerless when their computer crashes.  Everyone feels like they ought to know more about it, ought to be able to, with money, control that which they cannot.  It helped me to see that the way I was feeling wasn’t due to a lack of money, but rather a lack of control in my particular situation. 

I’m writing this because I don’t want to forget, don’t want to slip back into that old lie about money and happiness and I have a hunch I’m not the only one who’s fallen prey to it.  For me, the disciplines of presence and thanksgiving play a large roll in helping me to remember and remain rooted in the happiness and beauty of the life I do have. 

Do you find yourself giving in to the myth that money brings happiness?  If so, how do you overcome it?

 

Great Tissue Spending Freeze Update: Just the other day I got ten boxes of Kleenex "for cheap" at the local bent and dent store. I guess we'll really be living large now, blowing our noses whilly-nilly, without a second thought, just for the sheer fun of it. Crisis averted. 

 

Not Dead yet

Our nine-month-old twins are sick and the batteries in the swing are dead.  No one’s going to get any sleep at this rate, so I volunteer to run out for batteries.  On the way I to the store I call a friend whose father was recently diagnosed with a deadly form of cancer.  She tells me her father believes he’s dying; all of his relatives, save one sister, have at one time or another had cancer. 

I called this friend because I wanted her to know I care, but also because parents with cancer are right up my alley.  My Mom is 4 years into remission from non-hodgkins lymphoma and I have several other close friends whose parents have died from cancer. 

Died.  Dead.  Like my swing batteries.  I think about it as I hang up, get out of the van and head toward Walmart to buy some more “life” for my machine. 

Cancer.  “His whole family,” she’d said.  I think about my own family as I cross the parking lot.  My family littered with cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure.  I wonder how long it will be until I’m diagnosed with something?  Until John and I drop everything to head to the nearest teaching hospital hoping, praying to buy more life for our “machines”?

Crossing a dirty mound of mulch in the barren parking lot I suddenly feel the urge to run, jump, skip.  It occurs to me that I’m not dead, not dying.  I’m alive and the bleakness of my friend’s father’s diagnosis makes the joy of my own life incredibly clear.  My heart-pumping, blood flowing, running, jumping life surges within me and I wonder how I can live so unaware of it so much of the time? 

*   *   *   *   *   *

I remember a similar thing happening when I worked as a chaplain.  One of my first on-calls found me sitting with a woman and her deceased husband.  His body was covered with a sheet, his head exposed.  He was recently dead.  Enough so that his wife still caressed his hair, his face and kissed his lips as she talked about his life.  I had a difficult time staying in that room.  It was one of my first experiences with death.  I don’t remember being scared or weirded-out, but I do remember wondering, “How long do I have to sit here?  How soon can I leave without seeming impolite?” 

There’s so much in us that keeps us from wanting to linger with the dead.  It was a discipline for me to stay at that bedside.  But as I sat and took in the reality of the lifeless body I felt the same surge of joyful energy that I experienced in the parking lot the other night.  I sat there quietly as my whole being shouted, “I’m not dead!  I’m ALIVE!”  It was all I could do to keep from jumping up and running out shouting for joy.

*   *   *   *   *   *

I’m part of a young church.  A community of 20 and 30 somethings who live far from our extended families.  Gracefully, thankfully, death has been far from our little community.  I wonder though, if we aren’t missing something in our isolation from the dead and dying? 

Maybe we should simply be thankful to be spared this difficult detail of life for the time being.  But I wonder if the absence of death in our lives doesn’t somehow leave our lives a little less, well, alive.  Many of us spend most of our lives only partly alive.  Maybe a simple encounter with death is what’s needed to help us see that.  To help us embrace the gift of life. 

When our second twin, Baby B, was born there was a moment during which he didn’t breathe.  My husband told me later that he stood listening, waiting for the cry of life as Drs and nurses swarmed around the tiny body.  How long did he wait?  Minutes, seconds?  All the while wondering, is he dead or alive? 

The line between life and death is so frighteningly thin, like ice on a lake in early spring.  Only a fool would venture out onto the shifting, creaking mass.  But no one could blame you for feeling a surge of joy at having made it across if you do. 

*   *   *   *   *   *

I hurry on into the store.  Past the young man crouched down in his hoodie smoking outside the door.  Past the Mom with two kids, pausing at the soda dispenser.  I have to ask for help to find the batteries.  D batteries.  Big ones.  Expensive.  Our swing goes through them like crazy.    

I get my butt in gear and hurry home to the babies who’re not yet asleep.  Isaiah is ba-ba-baa-ing to beat the band in a voice that can be heard throughout the house.  The older kids are half-pajamad swarming around the living room dropping clothes and papers and toys as they pass.  My house is full of life, “teaming with life,” I like to joke. 

The only thing dead here is the swing and soon, thanks to the batteries, it’s running again.  It’s not dead yet and, thankfully, neither am I.   

Enjoy! (Tales of Chaplaincy, Waitressing and Motherhood)

After graduate school I worked for a year as a waitress at the Olive Garden.  Dressed in black pants and a pressed white shirt with requisite greasy necktie, I carried heavy trays of dishes to my waiting tables, taking care to place each meal with precision before its corresponding diner.  I liked waitressing in the same way I like online arcade games like Big Money and Bejeweled.  It was, once you knew the menu and wine list, fairly mindless work. 

One of the easiest ways to increase your income as a waitress is to increase your speed, cycling as many diners through your allotted tables as possible during your given shift.  The litany at the Olive Garden went: orders, drinks, salad and bread, entrees, dessert, check and repeat.  Since we were limited to three "open" tables at a time, some servers I knew took things a bit further by slapping down the check and cashing the customer out as soon as the meal was served so they could pick up other tables.  With typical bawdy restaurant humor we jokingly referred to this practice as “pre-mature echeckulation.”

Every time I served a meal I ended my delivery with a cheerful, “Enjoy!”  I said it often and repeatedly without thinking until one day I noticed the phrase as it slipped from my lips, “Enjoy!”  From then on I heard it every time I said it, an open invitation. 

*  *   *   *   *   *  

After my stint as a waitress I worked as a Chaplain at Penn State Hershey Medical Center.  The job required considerably more mindfulness, though here too there was a litany to follow which, when paired with my own self-imposed pressure to increase productivity, kept the days moving along at a rapid clip. 

One morning in the midst of a conversation my supervisor, who was nearing retirement age, said something like, “Now that I’m getting older I find myself wanting to, trying to, savor life.” 

Savor.  The word sat there on the table between us like a tempting morsel, something invitingly heavy and rich.  I picked it up and bit into it, rolled it around in my head for weeks, months, years, savoring it, I suppose. 

Now I held in my hands, my heart, two invitations, “savor” and “enjoy,” that seemed utterly opposed to the way I'd learned to play the game of life.  These words offered a time-out in the midst of the litany of run, run faster, run harder, run until you don’t know where you came from and can’t recall where you’re going.

*   *   *   *   *   *

The litany has changed again, but the feelings haven’t.  Now I’m at home most days in a job that involves an endless list of coffee-fueled cleaning and carrying and ferrying of people and things, from dawn until dusk, then repeat.  There are days, of course, where it becomes a game, where I make it a game in order to survive.  Days that I push my children through with the efficiency I learned as a waitress, the productivity I learned from my time working in the medical system. 

Still, everywhere I go, people call out, “Enjoy it, it’ll be over before you know it.” and “It goes by so fast!”  These are usually passing strangers, grayed and bent with age, looking longingly, hungrily at my bouncing, bopping, hopping children as we pass on the sidewalk or in the aisle of a store.  Their carts hold the humble needs of a household of one while I struggle to push a veritable Big Mac filled with as much food as we can afford.

When my oldest was an infant these comments annoyed me to no end.  Those were days that I struggled, seeing no future but only a ceaseless unsavory present.  Like the waitress waiting for her big break and the chaplain struggling to believe that offering presence in the present was enough, I pushed through my days barely daring to pause for fear of what I would find. 

I get it now or, I should say, I get it more than I did then.  Or maybe it’s more that I hear a voice in my own heart echoing that of those around me, “Enjoy!” and “Savor.”    

*   *   *   *   *   *

These are the last days of summer, the heavy days, slow and fast at the same time, the fleeting ones.  These are the days before my oldest is off to first grade and my preschooler will be gone three mornings a week.  The days before the twins will be really walking, then running, in opposite directions from each other.  These are the days before whatever comes next, be it welcome or not.  These moments that come and go with the slamming of the screen door.  These are the days to savor, to enjoy. 

Ah, God, still our souls, awaken our senses to these days.  Help us to sit down, sink down into them in all of their blessing and struggle, for this day, these days, are the days that the Lord has made.