Story #1652

If you read the shortest verse in the Bible and truly understand it, you don’t need to read the rest of them.

“Jesus wept.”

And weeps.

Christmas has come and gone. I’m snuggled under the covers in the Clark’s guest bedroom. I have two and a half more days of this wonderful escape from reality until I re-enter the world of DenUM…for “good” this time – no holiday excursions, no weekends away until April. This is the time to invest myself. The make or break.

As we live these twelve days of Christmas, we celebrate the incarnation. “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” And we also are to live – he came that we might have life, and have it abundantly.

And abundant, world-changing, everlasting life…it can mean weeping.

Jesus wept.

He wept for the love he had given and received and the connections he had made that he would soon be leaving. He wept over each of the disciples – the pain the had, and would continue to endure, the undeniable truth that they would love him to the last and yet still sometimes doubt, sometimes betray him. He wept for Judas, whose betrayal of Christ would set in motion the salvation of the world.

He wept for the pain he knew was coming but could not change or erase.

He wept for the joy he knew was there that others would never be able to rest in.

He wept for you – for me. He shared in the tears that he knew we would cry as we journeyed towards our own crosses.

My own weeping will come soon enough. For now, I will try to remain in Christmas, in the incarnation. I will try to regain my strength and renew the courage it takes to see Christ in my midst.

Because Christmas tells me that he is there.

the Waiting game

It’s the day before Christmas break at DenUM – a day, it seems, on which everyone is restless. We started the morning with The Grinch being read over the intercom…and now we’re all just…waiting. Waiting for 3:30. Waiting to leave town. Waiting to rest while the agency is closed for a week. Waiting for the new year, when we can do the work it doesn’t seem worthwhile to do now.

There’s something in waiting – some lesson that I haven’t quite discovered yet. As I was waiting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office yesterday (there’s that word again), I read about Mother Teresa in a really old issue of Time magazine – the only magazine in the entire office that wasn’t about parenting.

It was, of course, an article about the controversy surrounding Mother Teresa’s “crisis of faith”. It seems this woman bound for sainthood was also waiting – waiting for a time when she could once again feel the presence of the God whose love she was living so radically. But the waiting did not stop her from continuing to walk forward. And the waiting should not stop us.

Advent – this time of expectation, anticipation, and again…waiting – will end on Monday. We will celebrate the entrance of Christ into our midst. We will celebrate the now and present kingdom revealed to us through the mystery of the incarnation.

We will celebrate…but the waiting will continue.

Just as Mother Teresa walked forward despite her doubts and fears and troubled spirit, we are called to walk forward despite the waiting. To take the steps necessary to achieve Kingdom ends – even if the ends are never revealed. Even if the waiting never stops.

Some waiting is easy, exciting – waiting for 3:30 – waiting for Christmas. Some waiting is more difficult – waiting for God to be revealed – waiting for the Kingdom to shine forth.

But we step forward in faith that if that, someday, the incarnation will gain new meaning as Love makes its way into the nooks and crannies of our world.

Nothing we do is complete, and that is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us…we are workers, not master builder;, ministers, not messiahs; prophets of a future not our own.

How to stay sane as a YAM (a reminder for myself)

• Keep a schedule.
• Assign specific activities to specific spaces.
• Keep your room clean.
• Stay engaged at work.
• Focus (for now) on familiarity, not relationships.
• Stay involved in your community.
• Ask for support when you need it.
• Read instead of watching TV.
• Limit your time online.
• Be intentional about keeping in touch with family and friends.
• Eat healthy, regular meals.
• Get out and move every day.
• Engage in spiritual practices regularly.
• Concentrate on and engage systemic issues.
• Watch the news.
• Play piano or guitar (create!)
• Journal regularly instead of complaining.
• Think about the future, but control your daydreams and imaginings. Don’t let them trap you and bog you down!
• Be self aware. Live simply. Stay balanced.

Oh Joy that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee. I trace the rainbow through the rain, and know the promise is not vain – my morn shall tearless be.

The call that woke me up this morning

“I’m stuck in my driveway”

“Again?!”

“It gets better. The keys are locked inside.”

“What?”

“Wait. It gets better. It’s running.”

“…you’re stuck in your driveway, your keys are locked inside, and its running.”

“Yup. And the bass is in it and my glasses are in it.”

…that’s my boyfriend.

(to be fair though, we’ve all done something at least half as bad as this, right? share your lack-of-keys stories in the comments!)

I almost called this “Monday Musings”…

…but it’s not Monday. Thank God.

Christmas is exciting and fun and full of snow and lights and wreaths and people who don’t return phone calls because they’re busy playing with snow and lights and wreaths and such.

Which is, I promise, the only reason I’m blogging from work. Because I’m waiting for the phone to ring. And/or for staff meeting to start in 2 hours and 10 minutes. Luckily, I get lunch before then.

Some fun facts:

DenUM gave out 981 food bags in the month of November (29,430 pounds of food). Because of various Thanksgiving things, we were open for the equivalent of about 17 days in November. Because I have too much time on my hands, I can calculate that that was approximately 280 pounds an hour for the whole month.  (Not counting the 311 Thanksgiving boxes – an additional 3,832 pounds of food).

This is what working here has done to me.

Another fun fact, gleaned from the extensive reading I have done in the last few weeks about nationwide food shortages and the Farm Bill:

Of families receiving food stamps in New York City, 24% use their entire allotment in the first week, 60% use their entire allotment by the end of the second week, and 84% run out of food stamp money in the third week of the month.

Also, the real value of government commodities supplied to food banks was $319 million in 2002 – and only $67 million in 2007.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens after the Farm Bill gets passed. Whenever that happens.

But, the thing is, ya’ll might not care so much. So I’ll leave you alone.

Except one more thing: you should all visit www.denum.org and read the wonderful articles I wrote for the website! Woo-hoo!