I think I might be a discipline addict. Perhaps the reason I get to feeling so bogged sometimes is that my answer to everything is a new discipline. Training plans for running, Daily Guide to Prayer to recommend scripture passages, a promise to myself that I will write every day, and now, as if that was not enough, I started a new book called 31 Days to Clean: Having a Martha House the Mary Way. There are reasons that discipline is good though. It works for me with running. I need the help with the cleaning and the ordinances to keep it from getting overwhelming, and I believe that it is necessary with writing as well.
What I really want to write about today is running, so I'll get to that, but I need to take a quick side-trip to the world of writing. Or, more accurately, to being visible and vulnerable, and writing is one way I am doing that. I was going to write this today on a sheet of white paper and tuck it away somewhere that no one, not even I, would ever see it. But I am struggling struggling struggling (still, again, always) with calling. How am I to be making a difference on this planet given my particular circumstances and non-helpful array of gifts? How can I use the things I do and enjoy to be of service to others? Oh, I'd love to write some life-changing novel and become esteemed and called upon to give inspiring talks.... But here's the problem: I don't seem to have a novel in me just now. And who is that goal serving? Well, I do want to bless people as I have been blessed by some really touching novels. I do. But the esteemed part.... Yeah, that's about me, not you. (I intend to come back to that pride thing in regards to running.) The content I do have available to me is this kind of thing. I've been writing in my journal--sometimes daily, sometimes not quite--since early on in high school. Well over twenty years. Mostly, it's petty and personal and doesn't seem the least bit like service. Who needs to read what I write about my morning run or the trials of trying to clean up tar and bleach simultaneously? But lots of people have read "Why You Should Run," which is really just a spiffed-up journal entry. And some people far away and who I've never met have been inspired by it. And today at church a friend I didn't know read my blog or ran (although I should have remembered this) told me that she liked it. And it occurs to me that writing about running, and maybe sometimes about some other things, might be an act of service. A small, trivial one. A start. And maybe, sometimes, the conversation could include some more important stuff. At the least, it might let people know me enough to say hello, enough to call upon me when I am needed, enough to plant a relationship seed.
Hopefully, that's what happened today. I've been working on some adult education stuff for church this weekend, and so I am reminded that we are supposed to be practicing talking the walk. Definitely we are called to act. We are called to feed the hungry and visit the sick and imprisoned. But we are also called to commune, to include, to form friendships, to be fishers of men, and--dare I say this?--I believe that words actually are as powerful as deeds when it comes to that sort of thing. It sounds too easy. But to some, it also sounds too hard. It's more comfortable for some of us to pitch in and do with a quiet smile and a friendly wave than to be still and reach that wave into a handshake and the do into a tell. It seems like a lot of vulnerability with no visible result. You can build a house for the homeless and see that it is done. You can cook a meal and watch the hungry eat it. Most of the time, when you send yourself out into the world, you have no idea if it has done any good. I believe, though, that if opening your doors and windows helps someone find a home in your presence, it is worth the risk.
After church today, not being burdened with a husband eager to get out of church, I got to spend some time in fellowship hall. I closed the place down, actually. My daughter had a piece of cake and some friends and some unnecessary bleachers to play on, so she was happy. I talked to some people I needed to touch base with about church stuff, and then I noticed a woman with small children who looked familiar, but I couldn't place her. She wasn't talking to anyone, but she was there in fellowship hall.
Back story: A few years ago I took a trip to the east coast to visit a good friend who had recently relocated there and was having a hard time finding a new community of friends. She is naturally far more outgoing and extroverted than I am. Not shy. Really friendly. And not finding friends. Huh. She commented that she didn't know her neighbors. I went out for a run one morning and was greeted by the woman who lived across the street. She apologized for not saying anything the past few months but now wanted to welcome me to the neighborhood. I thanked her and suggested she make an effort to say the same to my friend who actually lived there. A day late and a euro short, lady. I began to understand the problem. On Sunday we went to church. Afterwards, in an attempt to forge some connections, we went downstairs to coffee hour in the church basement. There were donuts for sale (feeding not the hungry, necessarily, unless they came to church with cash,) and we bought a couple just to have a reason to stick around. (A shout out here to the people who brought and served cake today in honor of their 60th wedding anniversary. It kept the family I was about to meet in the fellowship hall long enough for me to meet them.) All of the tables in that east coast church basement were either empty or filled to capacity (note to church: leave some empty seats at every table!), so my friend, her husband, and I decided to start a new table and hope that people would join us. We thought it had worked when, only a few minutes later, someone came up to us and asked if the chairs next to us were taken. We put on our happiest glowy faces, and my friend is master of the happy friendly face, and said, "No!! Please!! They're yours!!" At which point the questioner thanked us and took said chairs over to a crowded table that had run out of chairs, leaving us at our empty table without the possibility of being joined. Ugh. Don't worry: my friend is in a better place now with friends galore, but that visit made a huge impression on me. How NOT to love your neighbor.
Emboldened by my recent committee efforts and my long-ago donut experience, I said to the woman, as she was bent over dealing with a small child, "You look familiar, but I cannot place you. I'm Cara." "Oh," she answered, "I heard you speak some time ago about learning how to do triathlons. Maybe that's when you saw me. I haven't made it here much lately." I had, some time ago, agreed to be part of the message at the women's advent service. It was slightly scary but surprisingly painless, and it meant that I was out there just enough to have a connection today. And so we began a genuine conversation, sparked by questions about running and running injuries and ending with an e-mail address and an invitation to participate in a future gathering. It may be working, this being out there thing, this sharing of trivial stories and silly details.
What I really want to write about today is running, so I'll get to that, but I need to take a quick side-trip to the world of writing. Or, more accurately, to being visible and vulnerable, and writing is one way I am doing that. I was going to write this today on a sheet of white paper and tuck it away somewhere that no one, not even I, would ever see it. But I am struggling struggling struggling (still, again, always) with calling. How am I to be making a difference on this planet given my particular circumstances and non-helpful array of gifts? How can I use the things I do and enjoy to be of service to others? Oh, I'd love to write some life-changing novel and become esteemed and called upon to give inspiring talks.... But here's the problem: I don't seem to have a novel in me just now. And who is that goal serving? Well, I do want to bless people as I have been blessed by some really touching novels. I do. But the esteemed part.... Yeah, that's about me, not you. (I intend to come back to that pride thing in regards to running.) The content I do have available to me is this kind of thing. I've been writing in my journal--sometimes daily, sometimes not quite--since early on in high school. Well over twenty years. Mostly, it's petty and personal and doesn't seem the least bit like service. Who needs to read what I write about my morning run or the trials of trying to clean up tar and bleach simultaneously? But lots of people have read "Why You Should Run," which is really just a spiffed-up journal entry. And some people far away and who I've never met have been inspired by it. And today at church a friend I didn't know read my blog or ran (although I should have remembered this) told me that she liked it. And it occurs to me that writing about running, and maybe sometimes about some other things, might be an act of service. A small, trivial one. A start. And maybe, sometimes, the conversation could include some more important stuff. At the least, it might let people know me enough to say hello, enough to call upon me when I am needed, enough to plant a relationship seed.
Hopefully, that's what happened today. I've been working on some adult education stuff for church this weekend, and so I am reminded that we are supposed to be practicing talking the walk. Definitely we are called to act. We are called to feed the hungry and visit the sick and imprisoned. But we are also called to commune, to include, to form friendships, to be fishers of men, and--dare I say this?--I believe that words actually are as powerful as deeds when it comes to that sort of thing. It sounds too easy. But to some, it also sounds too hard. It's more comfortable for some of us to pitch in and do with a quiet smile and a friendly wave than to be still and reach that wave into a handshake and the do into a tell. It seems like a lot of vulnerability with no visible result. You can build a house for the homeless and see that it is done. You can cook a meal and watch the hungry eat it. Most of the time, when you send yourself out into the world, you have no idea if it has done any good. I believe, though, that if opening your doors and windows helps someone find a home in your presence, it is worth the risk.
After church today, not being burdened with a husband eager to get out of church, I got to spend some time in fellowship hall. I closed the place down, actually. My daughter had a piece of cake and some friends and some unnecessary bleachers to play on, so she was happy. I talked to some people I needed to touch base with about church stuff, and then I noticed a woman with small children who looked familiar, but I couldn't place her. She wasn't talking to anyone, but she was there in fellowship hall.
Back story: A few years ago I took a trip to the east coast to visit a good friend who had recently relocated there and was having a hard time finding a new community of friends. She is naturally far more outgoing and extroverted than I am. Not shy. Really friendly. And not finding friends. Huh. She commented that she didn't know her neighbors. I went out for a run one morning and was greeted by the woman who lived across the street. She apologized for not saying anything the past few months but now wanted to welcome me to the neighborhood. I thanked her and suggested she make an effort to say the same to my friend who actually lived there. A day late and a euro short, lady. I began to understand the problem. On Sunday we went to church. Afterwards, in an attempt to forge some connections, we went downstairs to coffee hour in the church basement. There were donuts for sale (feeding not the hungry, necessarily, unless they came to church with cash,) and we bought a couple just to have a reason to stick around. (A shout out here to the people who brought and served cake today in honor of their 60th wedding anniversary. It kept the family I was about to meet in the fellowship hall long enough for me to meet them.) All of the tables in that east coast church basement were either empty or filled to capacity (note to church: leave some empty seats at every table!), so my friend, her husband, and I decided to start a new table and hope that people would join us. We thought it had worked when, only a few minutes later, someone came up to us and asked if the chairs next to us were taken. We put on our happiest glowy faces, and my friend is master of the happy friendly face, and said, "No!! Please!! They're yours!!" At which point the questioner thanked us and took said chairs over to a crowded table that had run out of chairs, leaving us at our empty table without the possibility of being joined. Ugh. Don't worry: my friend is in a better place now with friends galore, but that visit made a huge impression on me. How NOT to love your neighbor.
Emboldened by my recent committee efforts and my long-ago donut experience, I said to the woman, as she was bent over dealing with a small child, "You look familiar, but I cannot place you. I'm Cara." "Oh," she answered, "I heard you speak some time ago about learning how to do triathlons. Maybe that's when you saw me. I haven't made it here much lately." I had, some time ago, agreed to be part of the message at the women's advent service. It was slightly scary but surprisingly painless, and it meant that I was out there just enough to have a connection today. And so we began a genuine conversation, sparked by questions about running and running injuries and ending with an e-mail address and an invitation to participate in a future gathering. It may be working, this being out there thing, this sharing of trivial stories and silly details.
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