Life or Lucre?

Flying back from a last minute trip to Charlotte where my younger brother, only 47, was "suddenly" diagnosed with kidney failure, heart failure, and high blood pressure. I put "suddenly" in quotes because the reality is that this had been developing for years and began manifesting itself in the final form a couple of months ago, ending in a crescendo of a life altering visit to the emergency room. In The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Mike describes his going bankrupt as "Slowly at first, then all of a sudden." The same is clearly true of many things in our life; health, mental well being, personal finances, loss of faith, relationships and more. The reasons are many, and hardly worth mentioning except for the lessons learned by Keith and others. They include an irrational loathing for modern medicine and reliance on "natural medicine" that when combined, created cognitive dissonance even in the face of an obviously worsening condition. The result is that he will likely be on oxygen for the rest of his life, have to schedule himself around dialysis three or four times a week, take a bucket of medications, have one of the most restrictive diets known to modern medicine, and have many choices in his now dramatically shortened life eliminated; all because of a dangerous script and filter that he applied to his life. Psychology, fear, isolation, the list could go on, but the end result is that through his choices earlier in life, he is now sentenced to a very restrictive life drive by the very thing he railed against, the modern medicine that saved his life last week. There is no doubt that if he had waited another day or two, perhaps a week, he would have died.

Moving forward he will learn to live his new life, and mom now has something to do. At 77 she becomes caregiver to a disabled man. Emotionally for me, it's heartbreaking. Being a nurse I know it could have been avoided entirely, and as a brother and son, I see that many of their choices in life are forfeit. I will, of course, always be available for calls, advice, consoling and emotional support. But what do I take away from this? In what areas of my life do I have a cognitive dissonance influencing my decisions? Obviously my health is in the forefront; I need to lose 80 pounds, now. I need to build my core strength and flexibility to preserve my back. I'm overdue for dental work and due for sinus surgery. Those are the easy ones. But what about the bigger questions? The gorilla in the room?

I wrote a poem called Three Months to Live, that posed the question, "If you knew you had only three months to live, would you be living where you live and doing what you do?" That's a hulking gorilla of a question. The answer for me, is yeah, I'd be ok living where I live. I'd rather be on a tropical island, but living where I live now in a cute house with room for a garden in the country is just fine. The larger part of the question is would I be doing what I do, more specifically how would I spend my days if I only had three months to live. I teach about roles, goals and priorities and perhaps should have been taking my own medicine. Considering my roles, especially how it affects and influences my day to day and daily activities, I'm out of balance, not the totally out of whack balance, but the imbalance that results from ignoring what's really important, where your love lies, and where you have the greatest impact. My vocational role for the past several years has been a nurse; I'm good at it, communicate well with patients (I think,) and am currently the Clinical Educator for a small hospital. I enjoy teaching and creating curriculum, not so keen on drudgery, tracking, and people who won't take responsibility for themselves. I'm good at the big picture stuff and direct a couple of projects along those lines. The work is good, I enjoy it, but I certainly don't wake up Monday morning excited to go to work.

So what of my roles? Disciple of Christ, husband, dad, writer, and gardener. I pray, but there's really no time for soaking, probing prayer. Leonora and I have a heart for the hungry and homeless and we do some to that end. I've wanted to write on theology and discipleship, but that has been an effort of fits and starts. There is so much more that I could be doing as a disciple. As a husband, I love my wife. We're empty nesters now, but our leisure time, due in large part to fatigue, is spent in front of the television. We got rid of DirecTV, maybe it's time for Netflix and Amazon to go as well, but probably not. We spend very little time exploring our world, and intimacy is mostly sitting next to each other on the couch ... with the dogs. We could have a much deeper relationship. Dad, well the kids are grown. Sarah has her own life as a teacher in Southern California and Jonathan is living the dream working on his Marine Biology PhD in Australia. A writer? Writers write, and I do on occasion, but I freaking love it. This is probably the most glaring area of role deficiency. To be a writer or not be a writer; that is the question. YES! an emphatic, unreserved yes. So the question is how do I transition my good paying job to making a living as a writer?. And gardening? We're working on our own, and I run the community garden which blends with the discipleship since half of what we harvest is given to the poor.

Recognizing your roles and calling is so important. There have been people in church who seek their "calling" when in fact they're just trying to be special. What I'm talking about is what God has intended you to do; the answer to that not only serves Him, but provides for your worldly needs. Of this I am certain. Life has to be more than the hours you sacrifice in exchange for lucre. There are a lot of resources on the internet to "find your purpose," but it can really be quite simple. If you won $100M (that's one hundred million dollars) what would you do with your life? I've run the numbers and paying off all the debt for family members, buying everyone a house, funding all the nieces and nephews education, a ridiculous vacation, and a couple of cars only comes up to $10M. Don't even bother with that part, once you and your family have all the possible stuff you could want, how would you spend your life? How will you serve God? What value will you add to the world? And most importantly, what's your new day look like? This is a turn on the motivational question of what would you do if you knew with certainly that you could not fail?

I pray for my brothers complete and miraculous recovery, but lacking a miracle, he's working with a "new normal" he never imagined two weeks ago. What if the same thing happens to you or me? Chances are it won't, but spend some time talking to God to figure out this thing called life. Make the most of it. Glorify the Lord. Help a bunch of people. Make sure your loved ones know that you love them. And don't just trade the hours of your life for money.

A Calling of Compassion

It probably started with our parents. Both my wife and I come from homes as imperfect as anyone’s, but stable. Our parents were married once and stayed that way until a spouse died. We didn’t have a home where waifs and homeless cycled through like Mother Theresa’s family, but there was always love and caring.

As teenagers, we drifted towards those who were on the fringes and not part of the in crowd. Maybe they needed friends and comfort, more likely we saw ourselves in their loneliness. Early in our marriage we had the normal spaghetti pot luck dinners and BBQs, but there was always a couple or two where we would make sure we provided the vast majority of the food, often bringing “extra” groceries that we had. It’s just the way things were.

With children growing up, we started having one or more of our kids’ friends staying with us. Although we had our share of tough times, we were the same stable family our parents had. An island in the storm of discord for others. We weren’t special, or better in any way, just consistent. The times kids were with us we didn’t have special rules or try to have interventions, just the same rules of the house, chores, and the expectation of respect. A couple of times they’d go off the rails and we’d be at the jail to pick them up. They all survived and with just a couple of exceptions, are thriving in life to this day.

One of our children and then the other made their way in life off to college, starting a career and becoming their own person. But, the helping continued. When I was called to ministry, our congregation met Saturday evenings; when the chapel is free, you take advantage of it. After the service, we always had a meal. Fellowship and food, pot luck but always enough to send home our intentional leftovers. Our outreach ministry involving members from the church and others made sack lunches for the homeless, provided anonymously through a soup kitchen.

It’s curious that the service and direction we have which is so obvious to us, is a challenge to others. I recall one neighbor who occasionally came to church but never helped with the sack lunches. I decided to ask her one last time, and she said that she had been praying about it, but wasn’t sure it was a calling the God was setting out for her. In my mind I thought, “It’s not a calling, I’m just asking if you’ll help us make lunches for hungry people.” About the same time, I asked for permission to use the church’s kitchen and large dining hall for an outreach program I called, “Join us for Sunday Dinner.” This was to be an open invitation to people in the community, some of whom were homeless, others shut ins, to get out, have a free community meal, and hear an encouraging message. They declined to let us use the facility; their main concern was “What if homeless people start hanging around the church?” Indeed.

At that point I started to understand that people often set up reasons not to help people, and more importantly, it didn’t matter if Leonora and I didn’t have help, it was our calling. I have all the scriptural reasons to help feed the hungry, Ruth 2, Matthew 25, … The bottom line, however, is that this is our calling.

When you read through scripture, there are only a handful of cases where people needed to qualify to receive help, and those were centered around their refusing to work or help out, being disruptive yet still wanting a prime seat at the table (2 Thessalonians 10) In every other case, you give and help those in need without judgement or merit. We all fall short of grace and none are deserving, but God loves us anyway. We are called to help and encourage, not judge need.

We are now facing the next chapter. It’s been on our hearts for a long time that Christian communities can be functional and effective, without being holier than thou. A key component is taking care of those in need, especially the poor, widows, orphans and others without support. The first step in our hearts, is to have a community garden where the food is given away. No preaching, no judging, no qualification. If you feel you need food, come and get it. The response from the community, however, has be tepid at best. We were feeling a little discouraged, but one of our friends, a former “kid we helped” pointed out that it’s tough for people to visualize what we’re trying to do. With this friend, his girlfriend, and the two of us, it will be enough to tend the garden, albeit a lot of work. My Archbishop observed that we are new in our small town, and this is OUR calling. As we work and pray, we should be asking for God to send helpers whose heart is similarly inclined and that He wants to help. Sure enough, the day after I approached my prayers for help that way, a neighbor came to the house eager to help and wondering how soon we could put him to work in the community garden.

I share all of this as an encouragement. While 1 Corinthians 12 has a list of spiritual gifts, Galatians 2 enumerates fruits of the Spirit, the proof of good works. So whether you are called to pray for others, teach Sunday school, serve meals, visit prisons, or work a garden to feed the hungry, prayerfully approach your calling. Ask our Heavenly Father to guide you, lead you, and show you the work to be done. And as you do the work you are called to do, prayerfully ask Him to send those He needs to work with you. Do not be discouraged if others don’t “catch your vision.” The right people will, and we’re not trying to make our fortune with the newest doodad, we are disciples serving in the Kingdom of God.