Slow and steady

My life has been crazy busy lately, and in this case, that’s a good thing. They are not deadlines imposed on me by others, or commitments I’ve agreed to but resented. Nor are they idealized standards I’m trying to live up to. And so, this current busyness is peaceful and well-paced and joyous.

I wouldn’t have believed that possible not so long ago. One mantra I now try to live by is to act as if I have all the time I need, instead of the one that used to hammer in my head “too much, too much, too much!” My other new focus is gratitude. Realizing how grateful I am for this moment, why would I squander it by fretting about the next? Humility is the third. I used to actually believe that only I could do something well, that only I was truly dependable and that, imagine this, if I didn’t do it – well and dependably – it wouldn’t get done. What arrogance! What distrust! What narcissism! Yeah I got pretty sick of myself, too.

Now, I don’t worry about outcomes. I listen to your ideas and suggestions. I wait for the right moment to begin rather than forcing it. If I need to rest first, I rest. God holds every moment in all of time, and if I trust God then I can trust God’s timing and pace. The hare’s speedy race was very much about ego, but the tortoise’s steady journey was about trust.

This is such a better way!

Hot dogs on the altar

I caught a glimpse of myself today in a moment of full concentration. Kind of an out-of-body moment when I saw the way I was sticking my tongue out slightly, left of center, when I’m really focused. The way my hands moved slowly and precisely. The way the noise and activity around me fell away. And what was I doing to invoke this much focus?

I was cutting up a hot dog for a toddler’s lunch at the free lunch ministry to people in poverty where I volunteer. On Thursdays, I’m the chili dog lady, and I do a brisk business at my station, but then the business is brisk at every station. People are hungry, and just trying to make it from one day to the next.

So I’m cutting up this wiener. Slicing it, then slicing it again because I want to make sure no one piece could cause a child to choke. And I am totally involved in this task. You’d think I was a neurosurgeon.

In that instant, nothing was more important to me than preparing for this child – whom I didn’t know and didn’t meet – food to fill her belly. One less hungry child for at least a few hours. I think that deserves our full attention. I wish a lot more people paid attention.

The Sacrament of the Hot Dog served at the Altar of Need. Amen and pass the ketchup.

And then the rain came

It rained this past weekend. Almost 6 inches in one day. We had received less than an inch of rain for the three months previous. This was the hottest, driest summer on record in our state. And then the rain came.

Every living thing raised itself up to receive this long-awaited rain. You could almost see spirits lift, from the smallest plant to humans who stood in grateful awe watching sheets of water fall all around them. Likewise, you could see the plants greening as the moisture and the nitrogen found their parched roots and offered them what they were slowly dying without.

This is how I feel during centering prayer. I lift my head up to receive the love of God who pours it over me abundantly. My spirit, parched by the dailiness of life, lifts and I feel lighter and lighter. Surely, I would die without this downpour of grace and mercy, forgiveness and love.

And like a single blade of grass, I am renewed, sparkling with the droplets of divine sustenance. It is, indeed, the greening of my spirit. I soak it all in.

A living hope

When we run out of grocery money before the week is through…
When the only medication that might help isn’t covered by insurance ….
When the scientific data says there’s nothing more that can be done …
When the water bill is twice what we expected …
When the person we cared about deeply turns his back on our friendship …

That’s when we remember whose we are. Our God carries us just above this furrowed field of facts, then sweeps them away as so many pesky flies, replacing them with fragrant flowers. We are people who do not live by fact but by faith. And we are people of hope.

“In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead …” (1 Peter 1:3, NIV).

Read through verse 9 in this passage. Yes, there are troubles and trials, but our inheritance is being safeguarded. We have a “living” hope, and in that there is no despair. Instead, we are “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.”

Flies or flowers? Facts or faith?

Looking for meaningful work?

Have you had a mountaintop experience? Those times when God’s presence is so real you feel like you could reach out and touch the Divine? When everything – all worries and concerns and fears and sorrows – fall away and you are embodying a “peace that passes all understanding?”

I recently came back from a mountaintop experience – literally, as I returned from a week in the high plains of New Mexico. I was so like Peter at the Transfiguration: “Let me pitch a tent, Lord, and stay here with you forever!” Sounds like a plan to me! Except, there’s not much work for a transformed believer on the mountaintop; the work is to be done in the valleys.

Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest writes that when we are brought down from those times of exaltation “it is neither beautiful nor poetic nor thrilling … But it is in the valley that we have to live for the glory of God.” (October 2 devotional)

In scrubbing the soup pot after providing a meal for people who are hungry. In embracing the urine-soaked, dirt-caked older man who lives on the streets because the horrors of the war he fought in makes it impossible for him to sleep in a shelter. In separating two 2-year-old children hitting each other because in their world if you don’t grab it and fight for it, you won’t get it.

It is in the valleys of hunger, violence, scarcity and humiliation that the saints must serve. That is where God needs us. Yes, an Omnipotent God who “needs” us – not to bring about the Divine Potential, but to embody fully what it means to love one another.

The air smells much better on the mountaintop but it is our job to bring that sweet essence to the homeless, the hungry, the embittered, the forsaken and the forgotten.

We all want meaningful work to do. Here’s the good news: There are many vacancies! Applications are being accepted!
No urine test required. Compensation commensurate with your love.

Simply yours,
Victoria Grace