Daily Dose (July 29 – Aug 1)

TUESDAY JULY 29 — I can still hear Mr. Rogers’ voice, as if he were speaking directly to me through the TV screen, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

I love the story Chris Hedges writes about his father (Losing Moses on the Freeway). It does my heart good.
“But what struck me about him most,” Chris writes, “as I grew older, is that he did not have to embrace difference. Charming, good looking, endowed with an infectious sense of humor, it would have been easier to go along. He could have simply been ‘nice.’ He could have avoided the confrontations that tore him apart. But he understood the message of the gospel, although I suspect his actions were less intellectual than instinctual. I asked him once when I was a teenager what he said to bereaved families when he went to the farmhouses after the funerals of loved ones. Surely, I thought, even my father with his close proximity to disease and death and grief would have some wisdom to impart.’Mostly,’ he answered, ‘I make the coffee.’
It was his presence, more than anything he could say, which mattered.”
That’s it?
Yes, that’s it.
We do find a way to complicate things, no doubt about that—by turning whatever he did (or had, or offered) into a program on “presence.” You know, with a sure-fire title like “Discovering the Five Steps to Presence.” Or requiring “advanced presence certification.” Churches, to be sure, would oblige the formation of a “presence committee.”
But here’s the deal: presence is not a skill set. Presence is what spills from one who is unafraid to be at home in their own skin, even with a sore heart. Or at the very least, one who has given up the need to impress or jump hoops for laurels.
You see, presence does not distinguish.
Or judge.
Presence just is.
Or mostly… just makes the coffee.
I liked this, from Rabbi Dr. Ariel Burger, “My mantra this year has been the Hebrew words, Lev Basar, which means ‘a heart of flesh,’ from the biblical verse, ‘I will take from you a heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.’ Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, ‘There’s nothing as whole as a broken heart.’ In these traditions, you cultivate a broken heart which is very different from depression or sadness. It’s the kind of vulnerability, openness, and acute sensitivity to your own suffering and the suffering of others that becomes an opportunity for connection.”

“The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.” Frederick Buechner

Let us remember than many hearts are sore. People around us, people we know and love. So, this week… can I make you some coffee?
We make space to welcome.
We make space to offer comfort or reprieve or hope.
We make space to be sanctuary in a world of disquiet, disruption and misgiving.​​​​​​​

WEDNESDAY JULY 30 — I can still hear Mr. Rogers’ voice, as if he were speaking directly to me through the TV screen, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”
And I say, “Amen.” But why do I still tend to focus only on the scary parts? You know, the parts where I am certain there is little I can do, to be a helper.
In part because I convince myself I don’t have what it takes—the words or the means—to make a dent. And in that place, I feel stuck (or confined). Gratefully, words do indeed make a difference, and I am grateful for their liberating power. This, from poet John Roedel, did my heart good today…

“I can’t make the
world be peaceful
I can’t stall tanks
from roaring down roads
I can’t prevent children
from having to hide in bunkers
I can’t convince the news to
stop turning war into a video game
I can’t silence the sound of bombs
tearing neighborhoods apart
I can’t turn a guided missile
into a bouquet of flowers
I can’t make a warmonger
have an ounce of empathy
I can’t convince ambassadors
to quit playing truth or dare
I can’t deflect a sniper’s bullet
from turning a wife into a widow
I can’t stave off a country being
reduced to ash and rubble
I can’t do any of that
the only thing I can do
is love the next person I encounter
without any conditions or strings
to love my neighbor
so fearlessly that
it starts a ripple
that stretches from
one horizon to the next
I can’t force peace
on the world
but I can become a force
of peace in the world
because
sometimes all it takes
is a single lit candle
in the darkness
to start a movement
‘Lord, make me a candle
of comfort in this world
let me burn with peace’”
John Roedel

I am writing this back home in Port Ludlow, after a long day of travel, with the (what seems to be) requisite travel glitches. Gratefully, on the flight I watched, with great joy, Dead Poet’s Society. “You must strive to find your own voice, boys, and the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all,” says nonconformist teacher John Keating (played by Robin Williams). He has returned—in 1959—to a prestigious New England boys’ boarding school where he was once a star student, using poetry to embolden his pupils to new summits of self-expression, knowing that words can, and do, make a difference, inviting them to speak the truth from a place where they have absorbed the permission to be at home in their own skin.

“Lord, make me a candle
of comfort in this world
let me burn with peace”

THURSDAY JULY 31 —

I can still hear Mr. Rogers’ voice, as if he were speaking directly to me through the TV screen, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”
And here’s the deal: at our core—in our DNA—we are wired to be helpers. Because inside, there is a light, a light to spill to the world around us. And when the world feels scary—like it does now—it is no surprise that our light goes “under a bushel.”
We need Albert Schweitzer’s reminder, “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

Scary news is heavy. And inundating. And exhausting. So. How do we “help”?
And where do we begin?
We begin here: Let us stay emotionally and spiritually hydrated.
We are all wired to be replenished. And care of any kind begins with self-care.
I stand by that, more than ever. Depletion and exhaustion are rampant.
Not that many years ago, I spoke to a group of hospice care workers, about emotional and spiritual hydration. I started this way, “What I’m about to tell you is very selfish. I want you to be replenished. Because one day I will need one of you.”
No one of us is on this journey alone. And we need one another not only for care and comfort, but to pick up the pieces and find ways to create spaces in our world that do not diminish, belittle or devastate.
What can I do to create that kind of world?
Rear Admiral Thornton Miller Chief was the Chaplain at Normandy in WWII. Someone asked him, “Up and down the beach, with the shells going everywhere, why did you do that?”
“Because I’m a minister.”
“But didn’t you ask if they were Catholic or Protestant or Jew?”
“If you’re a minister, the only question you ask is, ‘Can I help you?'”
Gratefully, we are all wounded healers (where our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing). No, this is not a strategy. This is a fact. It spills from those parts of our life that have been broken open, from those parts of us flawed and imperfect.
So. What if this is not about accepting imperfection as some kind of divine teaching moment? What if the gift is in the inimitability of our humanity?
When we embrace what is already inside, we live from the power of sufficiency, and let it spill. I am (quite literally) here today because of people who let light (kindness, compassion, healing) spill in my life, at times when bleakness was too much to carry.
This day, I do want to be on the lookout (on the ready to show up), to be gentle and kind, and honestly, on the lookout for gentleness and kindness in return. And there’s not a person alive who doesn’t need a splash of gentleness and kindness and grace. Let’s begin there, shall we? It fills our depleted tanks. Enabling us to join the fight to make our world habitable and humane.
And I will continue to write Sabbath Moment because I want to live in our real world, with a soft heart. Where hope is still real. I want to create places for sanctuary, empathy, inclusion, compassion, kindness, and healing… spaces where we are refueled to make a difference.

FRIDAY AUGUST 1 — I can still hear Mr. Rogers’ voice, as if he were speaking directly to me through the TV screen, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

But here’s the deal: Care of any kind begins with self-care.
We too easily don’t see or make the connection. We see shifts and threats to our life and our world, and then we set out, mentally and emotionally and behaviorally, to make changes, as if we need to find “the precise script”. Wondering, where should we be (instead of where we are)?
Forgetting that even when life is catawampus, our choices—to care and give and make a difference—spill from our replenished self. From that replenished place we can see, listen, relinquish assumptions, and choose to make the world—our small world that we touch—a safe, compassionate, inclusive, kindhearted, healing place.

Relative to replenishment self-care, I have always found this helpful. When the Shawnee and Chippewa (and other early people) went on hunts or vision quests or long journeys, each traveler would carry in a small rawhide pouch, various tokens of spiritual power—perhaps a feather, a bit of fur, a claw, a carved root, a pinch of tobacco, a pebble or a shell. These were not simply magical charms; they were reminders of the energies that sustain all of life. By gathering these talismans into a medicine pouch, the hunter, traveler, or visionary seeker was recollecting the sources of healing and bounty and beauty. (Adapted from Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope)
I do know that if my medicine pouch is filled with a need for control and answers (for closure), I can easily be seized with fear, panic, rage, despair, depression, exasperation, and frustration. (You get the picture?)
But what if? What if the “tokens” in that pouch are not a magic wand to undo life, but instead, the power and the freedom to embrace the life we have been given. And to see in this life, this day, even in the very muddle of the ordinary, even in the very chaos of the ordinary gone awry, the permission to experience a whiff of the holy.
That God is not waiting until we have it all figured out.
The gift of life is in this present moment.
Yes. That’s it. We can choose.
This is an invitation to participate in this life.
This invitation to bring all that I am to the table of this moment.
This invitation to invest my heart.
This invitation to spill light where I can. What Barbara Kingsolver calls a “conspiracy with life”.

Do not get lost in a sea of despair,” John Lewis tweeted almost exactly a year before his death. “Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.”

Prayer for our week…
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever.
Amen.
New Zealand Prayer Book

Photo… “Good morning Terry, It was so heartwarming to see you at the Burton church. And to hear you share your stories. That congregation is so precious… you just automatically feel loved there. My husband and I are staying at Point Robinson (Vashon Island, WA) this week and this was the Sunset last evening! Breath of Heaven for certain. God bless you and your family always,” Marguerite Gerontis… Thank you Marguerite… and thank you for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com