Death story (people tend to die the way they live)

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One of the most helpful things I learned when my Mom was dying was in the middle of the night.

Normally the nights were uneventful, but this one was a doozy. She was yelling something about the mama and the baby and the man and it didn’t make sense. I have a pretty good ability at being able to understand people who can’t communicate well, but I was at a loss here. I was alone with her, as I was during most of that year she was sick. When her sickness became terminal, we were even more left by ourselves.

She was under the care of hospice by that time, but that didn’t mean they were there. She was at home, not in a facility. A nurse would come by once a day for about twenty minutes. Towards the end a sitter would come for a few hours as well. A social worker would come out maybe once a week and say useless things like “what do you regret not having done with your life?”

The goal I suspect was to figure out if some of these unfulfilled life goals could be completed. In reality the effect was to drive home how much of her life hadn’t been lived.

This night she was wild. I called the number that hospice had given, asking what to do. The nurse decided to send someone out to the house. That was a long wait, alone in the dark with someone who was hysterical and dying. Somehow things seem more intense at night.

When the nurse came, he talked with her and listened to her and he was just as confused by what she was saying as it was. It was as if she was having a waking nightmare. He gave her ativan, which is really valium. That did the trick. He left me with some and told me how to administer them to her when she got to the point that she couldn’t swallow.

We sat and talked for a bit, and I’m grateful that he saw that part of his field of care involved me. Often the caregiver is ignored in favor of the patient. Both have needs. This was a new and strange thing for both of us.

He said this – “People tend to die the way that they live.”

This has stuck with me all this time, nearly 20 years now.

He asked if she smoked cigarettes. Yes. That was what was killing her. She smoked for half her life, and I remember that she lit up a cigarette every twenty minutes. It had become such an addiction that she didn’t want to go to the movies because she couldn’t imagine an hour or so not smoking.

That is an addiction. That is a desperate need to relax using chemicals.

Being terminal is stressful. Dying at 53 is stressful. Having not fulfilled your life goals is stressful.

It would be a miracle if she learned how to deal with her emotions not using chemicals now. So she didn’t. She was on ativan until she died, as a substitute for nicotine.

I find it funny (not funny ha-ha) that she didn’t want to take her pain medicine because she didn’t want to become an addict, not realizing that she already was one. But socially accepted addictions are different, right?

If people tend to die the way they live, how will you die?

More importantly, how will you live, knowing that you will die?

Who are you?

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Why do we feel a need to change ourselves into something else? White women in America go to a tanning bed to get darker. Women in Thailand and India have bleaching creams to get lighter. Brunettes bleach their hair to be blonde. People with gray hair dye it to be darker. We are forever trying to change ourselves so we look different, but the odd part is that there doesn’t seem to be a middle ground. There isn’t some “perfect” we are aiming at. It is simply that we are trying to not be ourselves.

We’ve been taught that we aren’t beautiful the way we are. This applies to men as well as women, but it seems like the pressure is harder on women. Whatever you are, it isn’t good enough. This is how the cosmetic industry stays in business.

We are taught that you can’t be happy unless you look like someone you are not. The only problem is then when you get there you still aren’t happy. It is a lie upon a lie upon a lie. It is too much to have to keep up with.

How about this? You are beautiful exactly the way you are. You deserve respect exactly the way you are.

Lopsided smile, crooked grin, one eye wobbling over out of kilter, splotchy skin, sagging boobs, frizzy hair – celebrate it all. Your differences makes you special.

If we prop ourselves up and fill in our crevices and straighten our hair and bleach our skin we are all making ourselves into Barbie dolls. We are all making ourselves into some artificial version of reality.

Do we do this to make ourselves feel better, or to make other people feel better?

I’ve long been very self conscious about my eyes. They don’t line up right. One goes one way and one goes another way. It looks really weird in pictures. Sometimes if I smile just right with my eyes, or turn sideways a bit you can’t tell. As for me, I don’t notice anything differently from my perspective. I’ve always seen the world like this, so this is my normal. But I’m very conscious about how weird this looks to other people. For years I wore my glasses all the time when I was out in public. This tends to cut down on the problem.

The deal is though that I don’t like wearing glasses, especially when I read. So when I eat lunch out at a restaurant and the waiter comes up to ask me if I need anything, before I look up from my book, I’d pop my glasses back on to reply.

I don’t do that anymore. Why am I trying to change myself to make someone else happy?

Sure, there are plenty of times where we do this and it is a good idea. Being clothed in public is a good idea. Bathing so you don’t stink. Not yelling when you talk to people (except in the event of an emergency). These are all sacrifices we need to make in order to live around other people.

But I think that certain things can go. Shaving legs and pits? I’m still working on that one. There is only so far out there I can go and feel comfortable with it.

But not wearing makeup and not dyeing my hair – easy.

I think real beauty comes from within.

“I don’t read”

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There is a lady who comes in the library who only gets movies. She has started to complain that she has seen all the ones we have. We have a very large collection of movies, but she gets several at a time so it is possible that she has seen them all.

But then she’s limiting herself. She isn’t getting any of the TV series. She isn’t getting anything educational. She isn’t getting anything that is foreign and has subtitles.

Just movies. All the time. Every time.

Somehow I can’t comprehend having this much spare time to throw away on watching movies. It totally goes against my philosophy of being mindful and not wasting your life. But it is my philosophy and not hers, and I’m trying to be here, in the moment, trying to see things from her perspective.

I’m not doing very well.

I can’t relate. I’ve suggested she get some books because we have a lot of these and she’ll never run out. Her reply – “I don’t read”. Perhaps she can’t read. Perhaps she has some sort of learning disability. Perhaps she just doesn’t like to read. She wouldn’t tell me why she only wants movies. I want to know because I want to work around it. Maybe I can talk her into audiobooks.

Maybe I’m trying to make her in my own image. Maybe I need to let her be her and not think she is wrong for not being like me.

And isn’t that really the problem when we try to “fix” someone? Tolkein tells us that “Not all who wander are lost” and we think that sounds cool. We use that as a defense when someone is trying to make us conform. But sometimes we forget it when we are dealing with other people.

Or at least I do.

Because to let someone be different, to let her be herself and not be like me is somehow to say that maybe I’m not ok the way I am. Deep down I know this isn’t true, but I feel that is my unconscious motivation.

We either like ourselves or we don’t. We either are comfortable with other people’s differences from us or we aren’t.

We often compare ourselves to others. She’s taller than me, so I’m too short. She has beautiful hair so mine is mousy. She is larger than me so I’m so proud of the fact that I exercise. She is smaller than me so she is too skinny.

See how bizarre this is? Everything is in relation to ourselves. It is as if we are the center of the world.

Remember how in the Middle Ages people thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system and that the Sun went around it? Never mind the fact that the math didn’t work out to prove this was true. The authorities (the Church) said it was true and it wasn’t questioned.

Until it was.

Galileo discovered the truth and he got excommunicated for it. The Church has an issue with truth. But so does any authority system.

Now it is time to do the same to our view of others. Instead of heliocentric, we are egocentric. It’s time to stop comparing ourselves to others and stop trying to “fix” them because they aren’t broken.

Family secrets

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I realized that it was very freeing to let go of family secrets in a recent post. I’m not sure why they were given to me to hold on to. When I told the story about my brother’s fake military service credentials I felt a weight come off of me that has been there too long.

There was a lot of lying that I was encouraged to do as a child, and that habit went on too long. I was strong-armed into not telling. Something about “family name” and “honor” and “pride” got mixed into there. After I was about 5, the only trips my family went on were of the guilt variety.

There’s nothing healthy about this, but I went along, because that is what you do as a child. I didn’t know better. Here was my family, teaching me something harmful. I was the youngest member, so I didn’t have any perspective. I didn’t know that what they were teaching me was wrong.

There is a lot of shame tied up in lying. It takes a lot of energy to pretend that you are something you are not. It weighs you down, like the proverbial millstone, like the metaphorical concrete shoes. I was drowning in someone else’s stories. I inherited bags of lies and half-truths.

I was told by my brother to not tell anybody the truth for the sake of our family name. The funny thing is that he changed his name. What name? He modified his last name some time when he was in the Air Force for that one year. Did the lies start then? Or was it when he was having “naps” with his girlfriend in the family home and got her pregnant? Did it bloom into full fruition when he somehow forgot to tell wife number four that she was in fact wife number four, and not number two as he’d told her and the county clerk when they got married? Everything started to crumble when the child from the first marriage showed up on their doorstep, 16, and running away from home. Wife number four didn’t know about any other children. Somehow it seems that the person who needs to be concerned about “honor” and “family name” is him, not me. I don’t have anything to hide. Everybody knows my business.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

He threatened me to never tell his girlfriends about him. He realized after our parents died that I was the only person who knew the truth about him. I was the only person who could kick down that house of lies he had built around himself.

He blamed me for marriage number four falling apart, saying I told her something. I never talked to her. The problem was, neither did he. It isn’t my fault that he forgot to tell her really important facts about himself. But his habit of blaming me for his failure is very common.

And I took this for years. I’m now seeing the lies that I was fed. This may not be pretty to read, but it is very healing for me to write this. I’ve held this in for a very long time. It is like I finally noticed that there was a festering boil, and I’ve lanced it open. A lot of gross stuff is coming out, but better to get it out than keep it in.

He stole money from me on a regular basis when I was a child. I started to notice something was wrong and I started to keep a tally of money in and out in a separate place. When I saw what was happening, I told our Mom. She confronted him and it stopped – but he never apologized and never paid me back.

So he started stealing from me in other ways.

There was a time in my childhood that I remember intentionally forgetting about things. There was something so bad that happened that I made a point of not remembering it. Apparently I was successful, because all I can remember is that I chose to forget. It is like having a spraypaint outline of a stencil. You can see that something happened there, but you don’t have the full picture.

He blamed me for going into debt. A few years ago he was a quarter of a million dollars in debt. The real estate business he was in had taken a nose dive, and he’d borrowed money to start up some get-rich-quick plan. It failed, and he borrowed more money, for another stupid plan. He had to declare bankruptcy and moved into a friend’s green house.

He actually said that he thought that the reason he was a quarter of a million dollars in debt was that I had “prayed for his downfall.”

How’s that for a guilt trip? That’s an express trip to crazytown. If my prayers are that powerful, I’m pretty connected.

He didn’t want to admit that it was the fact that he kept borrowing money for yet another hare-brained idea that got him in the hole he was. Once again he wasn’t taking responsibility for his own actions.

Then his new girlfriend asked to be my friend on Facebook, and he freaked out. I got numerous messages from him begging me to not tell her anything. I said that was his responsibility. I didn’t contact her, but just watched what was going to happen. Then she posted a picture of her engagement ring. So she was going to be wife number 5. I asked him if she knew about the others. He fudged on the answer. I suggested they go to premarital counseling. He got very angry and said how dare I not wish them happiness together. My point was that with counseling there would be a chance of happiness.

You won’t get good fruit from a rotten tree.

And he’s pretty rotten. Time to dig out the root of it all, the reasons for the lies and the deceit. Time to dig down deep and clean things up and out.

Things got pretty ugly there, right after they got engaged and we were still communicating. I was reading a lot of self-help books and ones on better dialogue in difficult situations, but unfortunately he wasn’t. I tried to tell him how I felt, and like always he twisted what I said.

My brother is the kind of person who you can say “It is a pretty day outside.” to and he will reply “What do you mean – are you telling me it is time to mow the yard again!?”

When you are raised with crazy as your normal, it is kind of hard to know what normal is.

I know crazy. I admit that I’ve hospitalized myself twice. Bipolar disorder runs in my family. Both times I knew something was wrong and I asked for help. Both times I needed to get my medications adjusted. I’ve heard it is very rare to realize that you aren’t well mentally and ask for help.

When Ian went crazy, he certainly didn’t know that he needed help. At the time was living just 45 minutes away from where I lived with our Mom. She was dying, and he’d been in denial of it. He’d ignored the fact that we were living on Social Security and disability for one. I’d quit my job so I could take care of her and drive her to her appointments. Dad sent money to us when he could. He was living in Birmingham with his Mom, who had Alzheimer’s. Our parents had separated a few years earlier.

Instead of being a help, he’d send letters to us with clippings from the paper showing how much money he had made off a commission. He’d send a copy of his planner, showing how busy he was, to “prove” why he couldn’t come and help or visit. During the year she was sick, he visited twice. He sent only $100. Most of his energy was devoted to harassing me on the phone, telling me that I “could do more” to help her. I was 24, had quit my job, was buying food with food stamps, and doing all the cooking and cleaning and caregiving. He was 30, and was being a jerk.

When it finally became clear that she was dying, he lost his mind.

He called once and was talking very excitedly. He went away for a little bit and I could hear coughing in the background. He said “Mom is going to feel a lot better now!” When I asked what he meant, he said that he had just coughed up some of her cancer.

This was not helping. This is insane.

A few days later he trapped his girlfriend in their house and took the distributor cap off her car so she couldn’t leave. He painted crosses on the windows with wine. He said that “she was pregnant with the next Christ” and that “demons were going to come to take the baby away.” Now that is off the charts crazy. That is certifiable. That is a danger to others crazy. And so he got committed against his will. A judge got involved. He spent two weeks in. He simply learned what not to say to appear normal, but he didn’t ever admit that he was sick.

Six weeks after Mom died, Dad died suddenly. I had to handle both estates. Ian’s name wasn’t on the will. Turns out Dad created the will after Ian threatened to kill him, and the situation never improved.

Ian insisted on getting the Rembrandt etching that had always hung over the mantelpiece. It was entitled “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” He said that Dad had always wanted him to have it, because it symbolized their relationship. I think I’d have heard about something as earth-shaking as reconciliation between them. I let him have it, because it wasn’t worth arguing about. But in reality, he was just propping up his house of lies. The son had not returned to the father. The son was adrift in a sea of deceit.

Sometime around then I also insisted that we communicate only in written form, because he had that habit of twisting what I said. I’d write letters to him and save a copy for myself. That way when he said “you said this (insert hateful comment)” I could point out that I didn’t.

It is tiring to communicate with someone like this. I wonder how tiring it is to be him, to have to constantly be checking up to see how his lie-house is doing. Nobody is perfect, and nobody is awesome. It is far healthier to admit your mistakes and move on. When you have to lie to cover up a lie, then you are getting into really deep trouble. Maybe one day he’ll figure that out. I’ve had to admit that I’m not the one to help him. I tried, and it only got worse. For my own mental health and for his, I left.

Our last conversation was a message on Facebook. He told me to read Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. He told me that I had to read that before I talked to him again. That seemed to make it easy on me – I chose to not read that book. Ever.

I unfriended and blocked him and everyone directly associated with him. I can’t take the lies anymore. I can’t take him or any of his drama. I don’t know what is real about him, and I don’t think even he knows anymore.

So I’ve honored his request. I’ve not told his girlfriend (possibly now wife) about him.

I’ve told everyone.

Kindergarten 8-7-13

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Today was my first day in kindergarten for this school year. This makes my third year to tutor with this same teacher. Every year there is a new group of smiling faces and new things to learn.

Sure, the students are learning, but so am I. Sometimes you have to see life from the perspective of a kindergartner to really understand things. There is nothing more honest or unvarnished than a five year old.

This class is composed of children from all around the world, living right here in this little suburb of Nashville. That is part of what I like about my adopted home. People from all walks of life and all cultures and all faiths make this home. It is a welcoming place that in its own little way is a bit like what I think Heaven is like.

This class is just like the other two I have helped with. There is a mixture of language ability, with some native English speakers and some children who will only hear English in this classroom. There are kids from Uzbekistan, the Congo, and Mexico, as well as ones who were born and raised right here.

That is part of why I am here. I have a degree in English. I have tutored students with learning difficulties in college. I speak English clearly with no accent. I think being able to read and write is one of the most important things you can do.

The Mayor of Nashville has made it possible for Metro employees to volunteer in the schools during work time for an hour every week. There’s a little bit of schedule wrangling and a background check and you are in.

Plus, I wanted to make a difference. I don’t have children. I feel this is a way to help out my community.

Today was hard. Today was only the third full day. Kindergarten is a big deal if you’ve never been to day care or pre-k. This is also the earliest I’ve been there. Normally it takes a while to get all the paperwork done to get started.

Today they were working with foam blocks, learning about color and shapes and counting. One little girl’s creation got knocked over. I suspect that it was an accident. But for her it was the end of the world.

She wailed. She said she wanted her Mommy. She said she didn’t want to come back. She’s four, and four is a hard age. Four is a bit young to be in school.

I wasn’t sure what to do. You can’t talk reason into a four year old. You can’t talk it into anybody when they are in the middle of grief.

Because this is grief. This is being upset that things aren’t going the way you want or need. This is reality not meshing up with want. She might be an only child, and has never had anything taken from her, and has never suffered loss before.

She’s not been taught her how to self-soothe yet. Nobody has taught her how to deal with her feelings. Four or forty, grief is grief. And sometimes the only way to learn how to deal with it is to live through it.

She wailed and cried. She left her table and went to her spot on the rainbow rug. Each child has a square on the rainbow rug that she or he sits on when the teacher is instructing at the front of the class. I thought this was a good choice. It was away, but not running away. She could have chosen to leave the room, to escape by running down the hallway.

Being in school for the first time is a lot like being in a mental hospital.

All the rules are different. The people are acting weird. Nothing makes sense. You can’t do what you want to do.

And you can’t leave. Well, you can, but it is difficult.

I went to her. I sat next to her on the rug and patted her shoulder. I spoke calmly to her, that it was an accident, that she could make another one. She calmed down a little bit. I don’t think it was my words or my presence, so much as she had cried enough for right then.

She got up and went back to her table. She pushed the blocks around, away from her, quickly, forcefully. Her pitch was going up. She’d calmed down while away from the table, but being back reminded her of the reason for being upset.

Several of the other students came over to help her. One was a sweet girl I’d worked with last year who was repeating the class. She is from India and has a cleft palate. She just needs some extra work with language, but her kindness needed no words.

This is what we do, we humans. We come nearby, to help. But we can’t fix the problem, and we can’t take away the pain. We can try to clean up the mess. We can try to distract each other. But mostly we just bear witness to pain. Mostly we sit with each other in our suffering.

And that is enough.

They say that time heals all wounds. We can’t save each other from pain. We can’t insulate our children and our friends from the hurts of life. But we can be there. We can listen. Sometimes we can heal just by our presence.

It takes time to learn how to deal with hard emotions. I was having quite a few myself. What do I do? How do I help?

I prayed. I listened. I didn’t say “it’s going to be all right” because that is a total cop-out.

Just like with learning English, the students have to do the work. I just have to be there.

Together we are learning.

Identity thief

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I have realized have a problem with people who use their military ID instead of their driver’s license when I ask for it at work. I have thought about this with my new technique of digging down to the root of the feeling and discovered something interesting.

I’d felt that people who were using their military ID were showing off. I’d felt that they wanted to point out that they had been in the military, like I should be impressed. This is a library. You don’t get a military discount. There is no advantage for using your military ID.

So I dug down. I rooted out the source of it. Where have I felt that someone was using a military ID to get something he wasn’t entitled to?

Then it came to me. My brother. My brother left home to join the Air Force. He tried to leave in the middle of the night but made sure to tell me. He was running away from home and his problems. But I’m not a priest. Confessions don’t stick with me when you are about to do something stupid.

I woke up our parents and they stopped him.

He was talked into waiting until the morning, and when he still wanted to go after a night’s sleep, they drove him to the bus station.

He lasted a year.

He got drug tested after Christmas leave and failed. He had only made it up one rank from when he’d enlisted by then. He was offered two choices. Be demoted back to the beginning, or leave.

He chose to leave.

Yet every Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day he posted a picture of himself on his Facebook page in his dress blues. He also had his Air Force training certificates hanging in his office. He was so proud.

He isn’t a veteran, not really. He didn’t serve his full term. He never was sent into combat. He made a mistake and left rather than making it right.

So that is where that resentment comes from.

Serve honorably, and you deserve honor.

Expect honor when you haven’t earned it? Busted.

Death sentence (or paragraph…)

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You never know when you are going to die. Until you do. Then you start pulling yourself together. Then you start cleaning up and hunkering down. Then life develops a clarity it never had before.

But you always knew. You always knew that this day would come. This day, the day the doctor told you that you were going to die. How long do you have? Three months? Three weeks? Three years?

Perhaps your first clue that you were mortal came from when your parents died. You were young, just out of college. Or you were middle aged, with children of your own to manage. You didn’t have time then to deal with it, but you did. You somehow managed to work in the extra work that is involved in handling an estate. You just did it, because it had to be done.

Perhaps your second clue came when you found that spot – that spot that made you go to the doctor. You thought it might be cancer, and you started wondering what you were going to do, how you were going to manage. You found out it was something simple – for now. It could be cut out or burned off or you could take a course of medicine and you were done.

But now, now there is no turning back. Now it is for real. You’ve had your second opinion. You’ve had your third opinion. Now you can’t turn away from this because it is in your face and it is holding you hostage and you feel like you can’t breathe.

And all you want to do is live.

But that is all you have done. You’ve had your life to live, and you’ve wasted it. You’ve spent it up. You’ve decorated your house and gone to tea parties and read your books and that is it. What have you done that made a difference? What have you done that has made the world better? What change have you made? Who will remember you when you were gone? Whose life was made better because of you?

Have you spent your life for yourself, or for others? Have you been true to the person you were born to be? Have you really lived, I mean really?

Because there is a difference between being alive, and living.

You say you don’t have time, but that is all you have had. Too late now to cry about it. Too late now to feel cheated. The only person who has cheated you is yourself.

Wait. Here is a reprieve. They were wrong. For now. What will you do? Back to the same old habits?

Start, right where you are. Begin. Begin again. Renew. Revive. Reassess. Strip down everything to the bare bones. Look at now, and the future.

Where do you want to be? Start heading there.

Life is short. Death is coming. Be mindful. Be awake. Be alive, really alive. Live every day with intention and meaning. Leave nothing undone. Enjoy your food and your friendships. Work on that project you’ve been putting off. Make peace.

Because one day, there won’t be a tomorrow.

Instead of this filling you with fear, let it add savor to your life. Make it add meaning. Aim for your goals.

Lay vs. Ordained

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I once saw a photo of a lay person distributing the ashes for Ash Wednesday. Now, the lay person was Sara Miles, so there is that. She is part of an Episcopal congregation in San Francisco and she is a writer about religious matters. This congregation also distributes the sermons on podcasts, so I’ve learned that she has delivered many sermons.

Wait. A lay person, someone who isn’t ordained, distributing ashes, and delivering sermons? This is in a denomination that licenses people to be able to distribute the wine at communion. In order to distribute the wine at communion, you have to be an adult member in good standing. That translates to showing up for service weekly, and paying tithes. Then the priest has to send a letter to the Bishop nominating you, and then you get a certificate signed by the Bishop to do this.

There are a lot of control issues in the Episcopal church. I suspect the same is true in a lot of churches.

Note this is just for the wine. Regular, un-ordained people can’t distribute the bread unless there is something pretty severe going on like the priest has hurt his back. And they certainly can’t bless it. You have to go to seminary to learn that trick.

Jesus didn’t go to seminary, and neither did his disciples. And they weren’t ordained either.

There is definitely a hierarchy of us and them. The lay people are told that they are ministers too, but they certainly aren’t seen as equal, and they certainly aren’t encouraged or taught how to deepen their ministry.

So this lady, doing priest things, really woke me up. I first thought how dare she? I then thought, I wonder if the Bishop knows? Then I thought why not? Then I was jealous.

It reminded me of all the micro managing that my old priest did. And that my old manager did. And it makes me wonder why I keep getting myself into situations with controlling supervisors.

And it makes me think that the worst kind of controlling person is one who acts like they aren’t controlling you at all.

We’ve been bamboozled. We’ve been deceived. We’ve voluntarily given over the care and feeding of our souls to people we thought we could trust. Even if the priest / pastor / minister is a decent human being and not secretly embroiled in a scandal involving money or sex, you are still being led astray.

Consider a teacher. You’ll only learn what the teacher wants to show you. You won’t learn anything about what you are interested in. The teacher won’t be able to answer all your questions and if you ask a lot of questions (as I did) you’ll get some surly reactions from said teacher.

People in authority don’t like it when you ask questions. It undermines their authority. It reveals what they don’t know. It proves they are fallible. It unmasks the guy behind the curtain. You may learn it is all smoke and mirrors.

Don’t give them your power. Don’t entrust the care and feeding of your soul to another person. Question everything and everyone, and if they resist your questions, get as far away as you can. Worse, if they welcome your questions but distract you and don’t answer them or show you how to answer them for yourself.

I was lulled into a sense of complacency with the church I was in. It was pretty progressive. Big on women’s rights, gay rights, equality for all. Open to other faith traditions. But there is still that division of lay versus ordained. There is still the training that ordained people get that lay people don’t.

The priest can’t be everywhere. Remember the idea of don’t put all your eggs into one basket? Don’t put all your ministry into the hands of one person.

What would it be like if Jesus had fed only his disciples with that bread and fish?

He didn’t. He gave thanks for it, and broke it, and it was distributed and fed thousands. This is what we are do with everything. This isn’t just about food, or money, or power. Nothing is for keeping or hoarding. If we build up for ourselves treasures on earth, we are missing the point.

But I don’t have time…

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You say you don’t have time to exercise or write that book. But you do. You have exactly as much time as everyone else. The only difference is how you choose to spend your time.

Video games? Facebook? Reading fiction? Getting drunk? Watching TV?

Time is time is time.

Notice how fast it goes by. It is already August. It is 2013. Every day, every minute counts.

You can’t get out of that 40 hour a week job. But you can write and exercise at lunch. Even 10 minutes of each is better than nothing. You can use your phone and write a “note” while you walk at lunch and be even more efficient.

You can get up an hour earlier and do 30 minutes of each.

Time is limited. Our lives are limited. Choose wisely.

Take all the “I can’t” excuses and look at what you can do, and do it. Start small. Don’t say you will exercise and write every day. You’ll get overwhelmed. This is like going from juggling three balls to six. Aim for once a week. Commit to that. . Then you will eventually work up to every day.

Everything worth doing has to start somewhere. Good habits are like bad habits. You just have to remember to choose wisely. Don’t let the bad habits win.

Meditation on snake charming – the eye of the storm.

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There are several people who complain, gossip, whine, kvetch, etc. at work. This is every day, all day. All day long, if they are saying anything to anyone who is not a patron, they are complaining. It is very tedious, because I can’t escape it.

One was in the habit of gossiping, all the time. I’ve told her repeatedly to not do this because I don’t like listening to it. Gossip is displaced communication. When you don’t feel safe talking to person A about your issues with them, you talk to person B. Meanwhile, the problem still exists with person A and you, and now person B looks at person A differently. Also, you have just spread your negativity around. It is very hard to carry around someone else’s burdens, especially when they keep pushing them off on to you.

If this was any other environment, I could leave. I could walk away. But I’m stuck with these people for 40 hours a week, every week, for what feels like forever. I’ve told them that their negativity is bringing me down, and one of them agrees. She said she’d try to do better. It hasn’t happened yet.

One, years ago, when one of them asked if I minded her complaints about another coworker (simply a prelude to a complaint, not really asking permission), I said, “Yes, I do mind” and she got really huffy. You have to establish boundaries – what you will and will not accept. This is the same coworker who thought it was OK to come up behind me and hit me (lightly) on the head every day. When I stood up to her then, she was indignant, and my boss laughed at me. She has a lot of issues too.

This environment is a little messed up. But it isn’t a hard job, and it pays OK, and there is health insurance and a pension. And I’ve realized that it provides raw material for this blog, so I’m using this as a transformative experience.

Somewhere in the middle of a rant last night, I had an epiphany. I remember the story where Jesus says that if you are in alignment with God, if you are doing God’s will, then snakes and poison cannot harm you. I also remember in Pastoral Care class that you can’t fix another person’s problems. Your goal is to just let them vent. Let them talk it out.

I’m a little torn at times about this, because I feel that I’m enabling the problem. If they continue to vent to me, then they aren’t facing their problems head on. But, then, it took me years to get strong enough to look at them head on. But their rants and complaints are like poison to me. I’ve told them I can’t handle it, and yet it goes on. It is a bad habit for them, and I can’t escape.

So in my meditation last night, I thought, perhaps this is part of the plan. I need to be able to endure this. I need to learn how to stand in the middle of the storm. I need to learn how to be Daniel in the lion’s den. I need to be calm and with God in the middle of this, and not let their poison affect me. Their poison isn’t directed at me. I’m just a captive audience.

Maybe it is healing for them to vent. Maybe they’d be better off going to a counselor or a therapist. Maybe they already do, and it isn’t helping.

But I can use this as a pathway to healing for myself. I can learn to pray and meditate during their rants. I can learn to stand there and not really be there, because they don’t really care what I think about their complaints. They just want to complain. I can see every time they complain as a reminder to ask Jesus into the situation, to be there, with me and with them, in that moment, in that painful time.

Why do I call this snake charming? Because their rants, their complaints, their gossip is poison to me. It is like sitting down at a park bench to enjoy your lunch, only to find out that stick next to you is a snake. When they come up to me, I actually wince, because I expect another tirade.

But using this time as an opportunity to pray transforms that snake back into a stick. It is yet another reminder to seek God in all situations, and to try to see God in all people. I’m now going to try to look differently at these times. It won’t be easy. But I’ll do it, with God’s help.