Thankful Thursday #5: I Love This Town

Early this evening (New Year's Eve), I arrived home after letting my employees leave early for the day. I stayed on a bit because it is only after the hundreds stream home that I have time to catch up on the introverted tasks that need to be done. (If I were to change my open-door policy, I might get more of that kind of task done during the day; however, on the other hand, it might make no difference at all because many employees think that "open door" policy means "open the door.")

The kinds of things I am dealing with at work these days, as I explained in last week's Thankful Thursday post, are highly visible and highly challenging. To build a new office with various programs, managers, and employees in other states in a matter of one month is nigh onto impossible, but there is no option to fail. The work we are doing is in direct support of the US government efforts to bring peace in place of war. God has blessed me incredibly in putting me in this job and insisting that I stay in it. Now I understand perhaps why: with my many languages and experience in working in 23 countries, including the Middle East, I can bring some expertise to the process. In return, it is such a reward to be among those watching peace develop before the rest of the world sees it. (See my post on the wonder of being in the Soviet Union during the Cold War and perhaps contributing just a tiny bit to changes in that country.)

At my office (perhaps I should say offices, since I travel from one site to another routinely), I deal with the world at large, the international scene, the big cities, the places where one often ends up alone in a crowd, where interactions and relations are highly formal and formularized. (Of course, I do have close friends in the various places where I have lived and worked and a warm working relationship with most of my employees. Nonetheless, the mindset is big picture, process, strategic thinking, and impersonal implementation of programs.)

When I come home to San Ignatio, however, I enter an entirely different life. More than being in a different world, my whole life changes. I drove off the local road entering town and turned into the parking lot where we have our only set of stores, driving past the sign at the edge of town that says "Welcome to History." That sign about sums up our town; we still speak Spanish, we still attend daily Masses at the mission, we still very simply and supportively -- or at least, that is how I imagine people lived here 200 years ago.

I parked in front of the post office, which is a small wooden building with a wooden sign -- we are too small a town to merit home mail delivery. After picking up our mail, I called Donnie to see if he would like to order dinner from Pizza Factory, which is next door to the post office, while I went into the small grocery story, The Windmill Market, a few steps across the parking lot from the Pizza Factory, to pick up some dessert and small items for tomorrow. Yes, he wanted to do that, and so he called in the order.

As I stood in line at The Windmill Market about 15 minutes later, the Pizza Factory manager, one cucumber in hand, jumped into line in front of me. "Hi, Steve," I said, yielding room to him.

"Hey, Beth," he said, "I had to run in to get a cucumber for your salad! I'll see you over there in a few minutes. Your pizza is almost done."

After I put the groceries into the car, I started down the wooden sidewalk that connects all the wooden buildings that make up our tiny shopping complex. (I purposely do not call it the town center because the town center is the Old Mission; even the fire station and city hall, such as it is, are located across from the mission -- all of it walking distance from The Windmill, or perhaps I should say that The Windmill and everything else in town, including my house, is walking distance from the mission.) Rolling down the sidewalk on a scooter was a member of the city council.

"Hi, Beth," she called to get my attention. I walked over to hug her, and we got talking about her latest plan for feral cat rescue, an interest we share. We also both are members of Old Mission church; just about everyone in town is, and Fr. Ed is as much the town's leader as is the mayor, serving as chaplain for the fire department (there is no police department -- we are so blessed as a town not to need a police force) and acquainted, it seems, with every person in town.

After finishing the conversation with the city councilwoman, I finally popped into Pizza Factory to pick up my now-ready pizza. The owner was there along with four employees.

"Hi, Beth," the owner called out.

"Happy New Year," I responded. Elizabeth, the daughter of a woman who co-teaches the First Year Confirmation catechism class at Old Mission church with me, smiled. The other two, who were in the back room and whom I know from birthday parties held at Pizza Factory and many other visits there. (Pizza Factory is the only pizza shop in town and the closest thing we have to fast food -- nope, we have no McDonald's, Burger King, or Wendy's, etc.) As I paid for the food, I handed four $5 bills to Steve, one for each of the employees for New Year's. It is a very small amount, but it goes further here than in some other places. My special tip for the Pizza Factory employees is now a New Year's tradition, and for all of us, it is the thought that counts.

The Windmill is on the south edge of time, and my house is on the north side of town. From The Windmill to my house is a one-minute drive and a ten-minute walk. The one minute, though, is wondrous this time of year. The main street lights are decked out with Christmas wreaths that look like halos at night and pictures of saints. (This year they went up in October because City Hall is being renovated and there was no place to store them. City Hall, which is a two-room building, is still being renovated, and so the decorations may stay up for some time yet. That is okay; they are part of what contributes to the feeling of holiness in this town. (My retarded son, Doah, when he first set foot in town after God clearly led me here, stopped, took assessment, and pronounced, "God here!")

As I was carrying the pizza into the house five minutes later, our next-door neighbor showed up with some apples. I thanked and hugged her. She departed as quickly as she had arrived, leaving Donnie and me to our dinner.

I love this town! I am overwhelmingly thankful to God on this Thursday for putting me here.
More information about the Thankful Thursday meme can be found at the website of Grace Alone.

Sunday Sabbath #6: On the Unwiseness of Taking

Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed Is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often, but now, thanks to Fr. Christian, I get to do it at least once a week.

The older post I chose this week is On the Unwiseness of Taking Things Back. It was a dramatic lesson for me in trusting God completely, and I don't remember taking anything back since the tug-of-war in church that is described in this earlier post or not trusting God without reservation since meeting Him on a path behind the church a few years ago, a meeting that I described yesterday on another of my blogs, Modern Mysticism (Light). I am re-posting the earlier post here to make it easier to access, but the link will take you to the post plus comments.

On the Unwiseness of Taking Things Back

Usually, if I ask God for help, I ask once and go on to other things, finding that God has a way of taking care of things better than we can imagine, especially if we are not asking God to help with our agenda -- which is what I think goes wrong with the prayers of the teenagers in my catechism class (e.g., they want an A on a test without having to study). But sometimes I am foolish enough not to put any worry aside after prayer. Silly me! What an unnecessary waste of energy and emotion!

I had a very dramatic experience with this a couple of years ago, one that came back to mind today through a post about prayer on Kari Brodin's Honest2God blog, to which I responded with the example I am giving here. (Kari, by the way, can use prayers for her health; please check out her site.)

A couple of years ago at work, I had made what could have been a career-ending mistake (even jail time if someone really wanted to press the matter) by signing off on a document without reading it thoroughly. By doing so, I had committed the US government to paying thousands of dollars, and I had no authorization to make the commitment. There needed to have been an authorization document from our resources department, and there was not, and I missed this detail. Still, I was the ultimate, responsible party. Media attention was threatened on Friday by the party not getting the thousands of expected dollars, and all ##$$&&** broke loose. I left the office not knowing what the situation would be, come Monday, but the next-higher office was clearly frightened by the whole situation. And then the day ended.

Needless to say, I fretted all weekend. Of course, I asked God for help right in the beginning, and then I fretted and fretted. On Sunday, as I fretted when I should have been praying, I suddenly saw the image of the kind of rope used in a tug-of-war game, and while I saw no tuggers, I immediately understood that the rope symbolized my work problem. At the same time, I heard the words, very clearly, "Let Me have it!" Startled, I immediately dropped my end of the rope, which went slack, and then the image disappeared. So had the worry disappeared. No more fretting. I could pay attention to real prayer.

Truly, I left the problem behind. In fact, I completely forgot about it and went on peacefully with the rest of Sunday since now God really did have the problem, and on Monday went to work, still in a peaceful mood.

I had nearly completely forgotten about the whole issue when I got a call from one of my boss's assistants who said he had been asked to come in early and work on "my" problem. In so doing, he found this major glitch in the system that could cause all kinds of unauthorized spending. It was being fixed, the party expecting payment was actually going to get paid, along with a dozen parties who were discovered to have performed services and not been paid in the past! Not only that, I was so not in trouble that I was being lauded because my mistake uncovered a serious problem with the system government-wide.

I was not going to go to jail! I was not going to lose my job! I was a hero!

And now I had another example of God knowing best, of God turning bad into good, and of the fact that we can, and should, trust God with anything and everything AND NOT FRET! As they say, just "let go, and let God..." :)

Christmas Solitude

I never thought I would be blogging on Christmas Day. However, like so many of my days, this one has not panned out as planned.

Last night, Noelle and Doah came to the mission church to sing carols and attend the Christmas Eve mass which is always beautiful in our old mission where the structure is a bit more sophisticated than a barn might be, thanks to some primitive frescoes, the paintings of the stations of the cross up and down the aisles, and, behind the altar, the inset statues of nine saints who are locally important to us. At the same time, one has only to look down to see animal footprints pressed into the floor as the earthen tiles were drying 200 years ago.

My view of the mass differed from the usual since normally I sit near the back of the church but with Noelle present needed to sit up front where there is space for wheelchairs. As Fr. Ed stopped partway down the center aisle to place baby Jesus in the creche, we could see that Suli, the feral white cat adopted several years ago by the parish, had curled up beside the sheep and was sleeping, oblivious to what was happening around her. Later, during Fr. Ed's homily, when the unheated church had been warmed up by the tightly packed congregation, she awoke, sauntered down the aisle, and brushed past Fr. Ed, who included her in his homily. Then, tail held high, she danced past the dozens of poinsettias and candles surrounding the altar and out of the church through the sacristy door. Suli is a great reminder of the Franciscan founders of the mission.

After mass, Donnie took Noelle home, her medical needs not permitting her to stay overnight, and I tumbled into bed after a long day that had included eight hours of highly stressful crises at work followed by the beautiful but late evening mass.

When I woke up this morning, a cold of some import clutched me tightly, making it difficult to crawl out from under the warm covers. Unfortunately, having a cold precludes me from participating in Christmas dinner with Shane and Lemony, our new tradition since the kids grew up, because Nikolina's health is still too fragile for exposure to external germs. Home for Christmas took on a new meaning today.

Donnie and Doah (called by some "Me and Mini-me") pranced out the door in their in look-alike Santa hats several hours ago, and I have been left alone with the cats: Murjan, Intrepid, and Simone. Pre-conversion, being alone would not have been a desirable state for this extrovert. The reason I have disliked assignments to megapolises has been because I generally feel alone in a crowd in these places. There is a very special kind of loneliness that comes from being surrounded by people who neither know you nor care about you. Nowadays I find solitude to be a gift for when I am by myself I am rarely alone. At those times, whether it is in a crowded airport or here at home with sleeping cats, God is palpably with me. Solitude at home is even more special because it means I can spend time in contemplative prayer, which I did today. I did not feel alone even for one minute today; I had the best visitor possible. So, I have had a very blessed day, dressed in the infamous pink pajamas that I wore to a business casual party some years ago.

Wishing all of you a blessed Christmas Day and season!

Thankful Thursday #4

This week has been full of high drama, trauma, and, of course, stress. As we move forward rapidly at work to fill the 100 new positions (yes! in this economy, this is great!) created in fields where it is very difficult to find people with the rare skills needed for somewhat esoteric positions, my boss, in very uncharacteristic fashion, has been attempting a level of micromanagement that I have never seen from him before. The most difficult part is that he will make a decision, step in and do the work, and then we will have to re-do it appropriately because he does not know all the needed details and makes mistakes that would put egg on his face if we did not quietly smooth out the wrinkles. He also took one of my subordinate supervisors to task for a relatively small error in judgment. I stepped in, told my subordinate not to respond, and then finessed the situation with my boss and afterward calmed the anxiety of my subordinate. I understand my boss's need for a sense of control right now: in the last five working days, we have had three videoconferences about the new, high-profile projects with our headquarters in Washington. Whether we succeed or fail, the international fallout will be significant. I prefer, of course, to succeed, and I feel confident that my folks can manage things if we are allowed the breathing space to get done what we need to do. At least, I thought that until I found out this morning that two key players had gone on leave without pushing through the hiring papers for people who need to begin work on January 4, leaving only a new semi-senior manager without the know-how to finish them up. I had no alternative: I called them both in off leave. Yep, drama, trauma, and stress!

God has blessed me with a great deputy and great senior managers -- people who are both competent and with whom I can speak freely and share both my emotional state and my spiritual dependence on God. I told my deputy this morning that sometimes these days the only way I make it through the day with my sanity, compassion (most of the time), and humor intact is through constant prayer. "Unceasing prayer," he responded. "Me, too."

That is precisely what I am grateful for this week: the people God has put into my life. Not only do I have competent people at work to whom I can delegate work and with whom I can defuse stress, not add to it, but also people who love and obey God and with whom, even in a secular work environment, I can talk about spiritual matters. They all are just fine with God coming to work with us -- and God does. I/we otherwise would not be able to accomplish what I/we do.

Beyond work, there are many wonderful people in my life who help God to keep me focused on the important things, including you, my blogger friends. Among the "locals" in my life are the members of my Monday night prayer group at the mission. The founder of the prayer group retired from directing it last year and asked me to take it over. Not feeling sufficiently competent to do so, I approached a friend who is a spiritual director to co-direct. I manage the logistics for which my extroversion is useful in organizing people, motivating them, and keeping them involved. He handles the content, and I learn from him just as much as everyone else does.

Then there is my life itself, for which I am highly grateful to God (even for the "messy" stuff like the horrific abuse during my early years for all that made me what I am today and developed an attitude of fortitude that I needed for the years I spent providing consultation in 23 countries to ministries of education, institutions, and organizations, for all the advocacy I had to do for my own children and the others, such as Shura, who came into my life, and for adequately supporting my subordinates in times like these when they are treated less kindly than one would like by nervous leaders in our organization.) The film, Joyex noel (highly recommended for Christmas season watching), which our prayer group, having gathered at my house for potluck, prayer, and a movie, watched this past Monday made me realize how God has filled my life with wonderfully special moments. In the movie, soldiers from three warring countries, who are dug into trenches a few hundred yards from each other, call a truce in order to celebrate Christmas with songs, mass (conducted by the Scottish chaplain), and burial of their dead. Sworn to be enemies by their governments, they become friends.

Likewise, years ago, during the Cold War, of which my daughter Lizzie and I are veterans, I contributed one drop in the river of peace that we now somewhat tentatively enjoy, or so I would like to think. At the time, being an American Army officer, I was the sworn enemy of the USSR. Over time, I came to know the Russians well and ultimately completed my PhD in Moscow. Ironically, it was the Russians, not the Americans, who enabled me to finish my education. So, sitting at a table with the vice-president of the Humanities University in Minsk, Belarus in 1993, I was flabbergasted to meet an enemy. Yes, truly, an enemy. You see, the vice-president had been an officer in the Red Army during the Cold War and, as such, was my sworn enemy. After the shock wore off, just like the soldiers in the film, Joyeux noel, the vice-president and I became friends. (A fuller version of the story is here on my Mahlou Musings blog.) To be allowed that encounter was extraordinary. The two of us found ourselves in one of those moments that can only be described as "larger than life." God has a way of moving us beyond the narrow confines of our daily routines, giving us a glimpse of His humanity untouched by the taint of human selfishness, governments' focus on self-continuation, or the silly-but-destructive hatred borne from fear of people who are not like us ethnically, racially, or religiously. For a brief moment in 1993, God let the two of us sense something beyond limited human existence; he let us see a bit of the divine in each other, that little God-seed that Meister Eckhart says is within each of us. That is something we both will remember forever and for which we will be eternally grateful.

More information about the Thankful Thursday meme can be found at the website of Grace Alone.

Monday Morning Meditation #21: Let's Remember to Grant God Full Credit

I continued through the book of Deuteronomy this week, I did not make great progress, but progress, measured in speed, is not what I am after, anyway. It was the following chapter (from last week's MMM) that caught my attention. There the Israelites are promised wealth and power and easy lives compared to what they had been living in the desert once they reach the Promised Land. At the same time, they are cautioned to remember that it is thanks to God that they will achieve this and that they should not later attribute it to their own talent, power, and "might of hand."

Reading: Deuteronomy 8:6-18

Meditation: I wonder how many people pray desperately for help from God and when it arrives attribute it to something else -- surgical skill in the case of medical urgencies, a lucky break in the case of finances, their own actions when it comes to professional success.

In reflecting upon the application of this Deuteronomic theme to my own life, I did not have to go far. Last Monday night's confession provides a clear example. (I know that what is said at confession is not for public consumption. Nonetheless, I think God won't mind if I "go public" about just this one thing because it is such a clear-cut example of what He is admonishing us to do in Deuteronomy.)

Right before leaving work for the day on Monday, I had had to cancel an appointment with a former junior manager (let's call her Suzie) whom I occasioned to be demoted because she psychologically abused her employees. She, of course, was not happy with me for that, but something worse from both my point of view and hers happened a couple of months. I needed some work for her on a project that she felt was moving too fast to ensure high quality, but what she did not understand was that the requirement was coming from higher headquarters and lack of the product, even if it was only a C+ product, was creating a major dilemma for people in need of it. I was doing a relatively poor job of damming up my exasperation when her supervisor returned to find my note about the specifics of what was needed for the project. He responded, saying that the project would have to be delayed, giving me word for word Suzie's arguments. At that point, my exasperation broke through the dam and flooded every fiber in my body. "That is not you talking," I wrote to the supervisor. "That is Suzie. If she cannot do the job, I will. However, if I end up doing her job for her, I will find a replacement for her. In fact, I am looking now."

It was not the nicest letter I have ever written, but it was confidential, just to Suzie's supervisor, or so I thought. I had missed -- I tend to see the forest and miss the trees until I smack into one -- was that Suzie's supervisor had cc'd her on his original letter, and I had accidentally pushed "reply all" rather than "reply." So, off danced my poisonous little missive right into the e-mail box of Suzie, who quickly beat a path to the door of her supervisor -- and then to me.

I got what I needed. The project was done quickly and actually quite well. Suzie, however, was understandably distressed about what I had written. We talked about it on several occasions, with her constantly trying to justify what I considered unjustifiable. In one of her less defensive moments, she admitted to being scared of me. Ouch! You cannot help someone grow if they are scared of you, and unless Suzie could grow, in spite of having unique talents and skills that nearly no one else had, she would not be that useful to us. Last Monday, as I was heading home, having re-scheduled appointments that were OBE (i.e. had been Overcome By Events, in this case, a mandatory meeting with my supervisor and his peers), Suzie told me that she was working on a portfolio (!) of proof that I undervalued her contribution to the organization and that my assessment of individual instances in which her subordinates had complained about her abuse was wrong: she had done nothing wrong and could prove that in many instances she had acted brilliantly. She condemned my use of a reverse evaluation (she fared poorly in two of them), and finally she handed me a card about what to do when someone "sins against" you, telling me that she would like to talk about "my sins" the next time we met. Well, obviously, things were getting worse, not better, from our communications even though I thought that I had done a very good job of providing rationales and examples for my assessments, had responsibly established parameters for work, and had laid a foundation for her development and a way to improve relationships. Here, though, she was now telling me that I had "sinned against" her. (She belongs to a branch of Christianity with which I am unfamiliar, and so much in the little brochure was not entirely comprehensible to me. Although I did try to read it with understanding, the best I achieved was an open mind.)

I brought up this situation in confession, wondering if I was being too proud, arrogant, self-assured, or whatever in the matter, keeping in mind her insistence that I had committed some sort of sin as far as she was concerned. Fr. M. suggested that I pray for her. Now that surprised me. I had not thought of doing that, and I did it with pleasure, daily, until I met with her on Thursday.

At that meeting, the most marvelous thing occurred. She came in quietly, not defensively, and said to me, using the Middle Eastern, Latin American, and Asian form of address that many of my employees hailing from those parts of the world tend to use, "Dr. Beth, I would like to change the content of this meeting from what we had planned. I would like to ask you to mentor me, to show me where I can improve, and to help me do it." I could not believe my ears! Of course, I am willing to mentor her and to give her a zillion more chances if she wants to try to become a good and caring team player and employee -- and if she is successful, I will be happy to consider promoting her back to a management position.

After she left, I sat stunned for a few minutes. And here is where Deuteronomy 8:17 came into play for me. I could have considered that I personally had been such an effective supervisor that I had turned her around. I could have congratulated myself with great complacency and marveled at my own skill. However, I knew that it was the prayer that Fr. M told me to say that made the difference. Nothing I had done could have effected such an incredible, overnight, complete change in attitude. Only God could have done that. I know not to ascribe to myself that which He does, has done, and will do. And if I forget? I have Deuteronomy 8:17 to remind me.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for any and all times that I may have taken credit for that which God has done in my life and the lives of my family and colleagues, to thank God for all the many blessings He has given to me and to those who share some aspect of my life, to give praise for His incredible ways of turning people inside out for the better, and to ask Him to help me always see His hand in any success I might have. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, which brings me deep comfort and joy.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Since a great day will arrive before my next MMM, I will wish all of you a blessed Christmas! May joy, comfort, peace, and all good things be yours that day and throughout the new year!

Sabbath Sunday #5: Loving Impossible People

Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed Is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often, but now, thanks to Fr. Christian, I get to do it at least once a week.

The older post I have chosen is Loving Impossible People. I chose it because yesterday I wrote about supervisors. It seems fair, then, that today I write about employees. Here is the post, and here is where you can click to read it with the original comments.

We all have them in our lives: the “impossible” people. They are cranky; nothing is ever right; we are a bad relative or bad boss or bad neighbor whenever we do something that is not quite to their liking; they don’t seem to bond well with colleagues in the work place; they resist new ideas or assignments that they do not like; they may approach us in passive-aggressive ways. I am sure that you have met your share of such people, as have I.

At least in the workplace, I adore them! I seek challenge, and they give me what I seek. Meister Eckhart says that there is a God-seed (a little bit of God) in everyone, and I can see that buried deep down in these “impossible” people. I love watching that seed take root and grow. It makes me feel part of a miracle.

For example, one day at work I noticed that some of my favorite “impossible” people were extra cranky. Food and attention, I have found, usually help in these situations (just as they do with cranky kids – I am convinced that mothering 7 children has immensely helped me to mother my current 307-and-expanding staff). So, I ran out and bought several packages of oreo cookies, dumped them into a big bowl, and began the management-by-walking-about effort to deliver the cookies to each employee personally – not just the cranky ones, but everyone who happened to be in the office and not traveling (60% or more of my staff travels regularly). It took all morning, and my paperwork languished, but I enjoyed catching up on all their stories as they munched on their cookies. First, I enjoy stories – the more the better. Second, their stories tell me a lot about them, and especially with the “impossible” variety of employee, I find some insight into how best to manage them. On the oreo morning, we had a very important visitor from our headquarters, who had dropped in to work with one of our teams. Oops! I had forgotten about that, so when I came upon that team, I offered him a cookie, too. At the end of the day, I ran into him as he was leaving and asked him how his day had been. He offered that it had become “much better after the cookie!”

The “impossible” people returned the favor, as they generally do. One of the teams invited me to their ethnic lunch, in this case, some of my favorite Arabic food. These “impossible” people (and a lot of “possible” people) regularly bring me food (I think that they are convinced that I cannot cook, and they are not far from wrong), invite me to their social events (weddings, birthdays, picnics), scold me when I am ill and don’t see a doctor, and jump in without asking to help when I am attempting some physical work that looks to be beyond my capacity. “Why are you so good to me?” I have asked them upon occasion, and the answer is always the same: “Because you love us.”

Once a middle manager who worked for me asked me how I dealt with difficult people, and I told him that he would not like the answer: you have to love them – sincerely, not just pretend to love them (although sometimes initial pretense leads to eventual sincerity). I was right. He did not like the answer. He looked at me sadly and said, “I cannot do that.” In that case, I fear that he will always be surrounded by difficult people.

There have been times when I ignore my own advice, when I get caught off-guard, when I stupidly forget about the God-seed. That happened recently. A very troublesome employee had signed up to see my boss during his open-door hours. He called and asked if I knew what might be the topic. I could guess at a dozen possibilities since she was always complaining about her manager (who worked for me), her assignments, her seemingly slow raises and promotions, concern that management did not understand how far superior she was to everyone else in her division, even the fact that she was expected to come to work on time and put in a full day. I suggested to my boss all the things that came to mind and added several negative comments about the difficulty of supervising her. My boss called after the meeting and told me in a somewhat curious tone, “All she wanted to talk to me about was to tell me how kind you are.” I am glad it was a phone call because I know my face was red with shame.

The most important thing about that event? I lost out on being part of the miracle of seeing the God-seed grow a little more. My boss saw it, but my head had been in the sand that day – and when our heads are down in the sand, all we can see is dirt.

Vengeance Is Mine! Yes!! No?

Each year every person in our organization is evaluated for the possibility of being given a performance bonus. The bonuses range from a few dollars to a few thousand dollars, depending upon the points given by the supervisor. There is a limited number of points spread throughout any unit within the organization, so obviously the competition is fierce. Sometimes I wish we did not have annual bonuses because in many cases employees are dissatisfied with the bonus, wanting to have had more money rather than being grateful for getting any at all. The bonuses, in my opinion, build a climate of avarice, fortunately in my division for only a few weeks. Is this a case of money being a root of evil? I misspeak. The bonuses are needed and welcome, especially for the lower-paid employees.

Normally, the only stress in the system for us senior managers is the junior managers' lament about limited points for some of their high-performing units. There is an average number of points (i.e. average bonus) granted for each employee. Immediate supervisors then have to shift the points, giving more (higher bonuses) to higher-performing employees, the granted amount to average employees, and a lower number (lower bonus) to employees whose performance is lacking in some way. It is a difficult balance to achieve, but we all try honestly to achieve it.

Or so I thought until a couple of days ago. A junior manager rushed into my office, incensed. It turns out that the Human Relations office, HR, had put one of his employees on the list for another unit. To be fair to HR, our employee had been loaned to that unit for a few months, but he had long ago returned to us. So, that was an HR error. While it would seem to be an easy error to fix, without going into details about how our cumbersome personnel system with its rules and regulations works, at that point in the process, it was nearly impossible to fix without causing the HR staff a lot of embarrassment and an incredible amount of paperwork, including reconvening at least two pay panels, inconveniencing at least a dozen people for about as many hours. The HR director's response to my plea for equitable treatment for all was that the process is not perfect and it is working pretty good actually if only a few people get less than they might deserve.

Now, being on the wrong list would not really have been a problem had the immediate supervisor of the unit to which my employee had been assigned played fair. She had only two employees, and she could have given an equal number of points to both since both had performed equally well. In fact, she had written my employee's supervisor on several occasions about how wonderful this employee was and twice asked to keep him longer. So, one would think that she would give him a good bonus, but no. She took away as many points as allowed from him and gave them to the remaining (her) employee, creating a 2-1 difference in bonus for equal work.

I was furious. I complained to HR. HR would not budge on the matter of who got to make the decision on the points. I finally complained to the local head of our organization, my immediate supervisor, and he weighed in on my side. (He also made an interesting comment about the horrible little manager of the other unit: "She did what any supervisor would have done: grabbed as much as she could for her unit without regard for the larger organization. You don't treat people that way, but most supervisors do.") He directed the HR office to move my employee to our list.

HR still did not budge. I offered to provide additional points from my division since I had saved points for this particular employee. I even began exploring how I might pass on any points that would be given to me personally even though I really wanted/needed my bonus to help meet my pledge to St. Francis Retreat; certainly, though, if my money would go to help someone, then God would help me find more elsewhere for my pledge as He has done ever since I made it. Neither brilliant idea worked: HR insisted that points could not be transferred across divisions.

My prayers for a deus ex machina way out of the situation and especially for serenity and the ability to love someone I really just wanted to kill went unanswered. Actually, I was so occupied with wielding my wrathful sword of righteous indignation as I rushed into the fray that I suspect I might have blindly brushed aside any gift of peace held out toward me. The object of my attack was the unit supervisor in the other division. A level of selfishness that deliberately hurts another being, especially one who has helped you, lies beyond my capacity to understand. I had one thought only: "Off with her head!"

And then it seemed like perhaps a prayer had been answered. I was called to my supervisor's office, together with a couple peers, to decide how to divide up the bonus money for the 200 or so supervisors in our organization. Eureka! My little selfish opponent was on the list! I could do to her what she had done to my employee. Yes! Oh, yes! I was ready for the kill! Vengeance is so sweet! And it had been placed into my hands so easily!

Or had it? The brief sweet taste of payback slid across my tongue at the same time that a repetitive refrain started ringing through my head along the lines of "'vengeance is mine,' saith the Lord." Darn! I really wanted it to be mine!

Yowie! What had I been about to do? Something that Romans 12:19, citing Deuteronomy 32:35, warns against? I have since checked. The Bible is full of references to vengeance but always, from what I have seen, in reference to God's vengeance, not man's against man.

At least, I listen eventually -- usually! So, I had to be fair to her, but how? I really couldn't in my emotional state. So, I recused myself from the decision and explained why to my two counterparts, telling them that I considered her unethical and uncollegial, using a few other choice words that one grants oneself the liberty to use when among friends. Obviously, given that negative view of someone whom I had never met except through a couple of e-notes, I would be poorly equipped to make an objective decision, I confided in my counterparts.

"I am going to recuse myself, too," one of them told me. "I am dating her." Ouch! Clearly, I continue to suffer from foot-in-mouth disease.

So, the horrible manager's bonus was decided by our remaining counterpart. This is, obviously, as it should have been.

I had really wanted the chance to settle the score, to let her feel what it is like to get an unfairly low bonus. I had wanted to be the arbiter of ethics. And then an incredible opportunity had presented itself, but somehow I didn't think that this opportunity had come from God.

I am so glad that I had removed myself from making a decision while under the influence of negative emotions. Yesterday, this little horror of a manager called me and, while unwilling to split the bonus between our employee and hers, offered to scratch our employee off the list she had received from HR. I then could write him into our list for the amount I wanted him to have. I don't know whether or not her moral courage was prompted by her boyfriend. The source does not matter. Rather, her willingness to risk getting into trouble for the benefit of an employee made her an instant ally. We did as she suggested, and HR is going to have to deal with it.

Now I will pray a more appropriate prayer -- for a change of heart in our HR director! Or at least for him to have a heart! (And perhaps for a change in heart in me, too. Where did that to-the-death desire for vengeance come from?)

7 Quick Takes Friday #10

Time again already to contribute to the 7 Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary! This time, I will not do a day-by-day review since the days were so full as to blur one into another in retrospect. So, instead, I will share the seven events that I best remember.

(1) Early in the flip between last week and this one, one of the most senior people from headquarters appeared in town without much notice. After an all-day meeting, he left behind a staggering new budget to manage and an overwhelming amount of work, including the need to set up three new branches next month and several more worldwide later in the year and to hire about 100 new people immediately and more later in the year. My head is still spinning; so are the heads of the senior managers to whom I will delegate much of this work. One is currently on Christmas break in Germany; he says he is glad he made it there before all this came down on us. Not to fear -- he will get to share our stress when he returns; we will be sure to save a fair amount for him!

(2) Nathaniel's birthday is Christmas day (December 25). Back in 2001, he was quite a Christmas present! To avoid dividing attention between the two events, Shane and Lemony celebrate his birthday earlier in the month, and he gets to choose the location. This year, we celebrated Nathaniel's birthday this past Saturday, and Nathaniel chose Sapporo Restaurant. He loves sushi and delights in the hibachi cooking.

(3) Sunday was such a restful day, and I needed it! Fr. Kevin, priest at a parish 45 miles north of where I live, teaches contemplative prayer "for busy people" once a month. His deep spirituality and talent at teaching has helped me understand much about my contemplative experiences. We use Ursula King's helpful book, Christian Mystics, but Fr. Kevin's ability to distill essential information from throughout the ages is even more helpful.

(4) Another priest cusped my horizon this week. Fr. Terry called me to thank me for some Russian chocolates I dropped off for him for Christmas and mentioned that he would be leaving the St. Francis Retreat Center in January for a parish about three hours away. Having a big mouth, I spread the word to our prayer group, and, devastated to think that Fr. Terry, who has been a de facto spiritual advisor to many of us and who was instrumental in the establishment of our group a few years ago, would not be in our immediate environs for long, we planned a potluck at my house for him next week. As it turned out, I had misunderstood. (I need to practice speaking English more often.) Fr. Terry was only going to the central-state parish on an interim basis, to fill behind an ill priest. So, now we are all happy -- and we are going to have the potluck, anyway, because we will latch onto any opportunity to let Fr. Terry know we love him!

(5) Our prayer group meeting was curtailed by our parish's penitence service that began a half-hour later that same evening. So, we went to confession as a group. Fr. E had brought in several local priests, including two who speak multiple languages, a necessity in our community. I patiently waited my turn to confess to either Fr. E. or Fr. Terry, when they suddenly walked out, there being more priests than were needed. That left me with a choice of three priests whom I knew only on a hello-goodbye basis, with no idea of what kind of confessors they were. The first one who had an empty chair was Fr. M., our Latin priest. I approached with some trepidation because I barely know him at all but knew him to be traditional and strict. He generally prefers to use the screen, and it was set up in his corner of the church. However, he did not require that of me. (I am not a confessional/screen type.) In fact, he was so gentle and kind that I immediately felt comfortable with him -- and I saw him in a new light. I am so glad that I went and that I had the opportunity to confess to Fr. M.

(6) One evening this week we ran out to a Kohl's store in the nearest large town. We needed some mattress straps. Finding them seemed to be an easy enough task. However, we could find no sales person who spoke English, and I did not know the name of the item we wanted in Spanish. Donnie quickly became frustrated, commenting that this was America, so where were the English speakers?! I lamented the limits of my Spanish! (We are two very different people.) As we walked toward the exit, having given up, we passed a Mexican friend with excellent English. (How does that sort of thing happen just about every time I need it??) My friend told us the name of the item, and that ended that problem. However, along with improving my English, I think I need to improve my Spanish!

(7) Today, when I arrived home, I found a surprise: flowers. Now safely ensconced on a table in Donnie's office where Intrepid, our herbivore cat, cannot eat them, they had been sent from a professor in Michigan, whom I mentored through her dissertation-writing years. She just began a new position this year as an assistant professor, and she wanted to thank me for my support that she attributed to landing her current job. She would have gotten it without my help and with her talent, but expressions of gratitude are always pleasant.

And now, may you find your weekend strewn with flowers!

What Is Better Than Money? Merry Christmas!

We cannot put up a Christmas tree (real or artificial) because one of our cats, Intrepid, eats all kinds of plants and nearly died once from ingesting a lot of plastic branches. (Thanks to a concerned vet who rushed to our house, he is a wonderfully fine herbivore today.) We can, though, note Christmas in many other ways with decorations outdoors, Christmas cookery, finding fun gifts for colleagues, and shopping for the kids and the grandkids.

Ah, shopping for the kids! That is a relatively new and wonderfully pleasant experience. When they were growing up, we never had money for shopping for them. Medical expenses for Doah and Noelle always robbed us of that particular pleasure, and visiting them in the hospital -- Noelle was there Christmas day for a number of years in a row -- meant little time for shopping of any kind had we had any money to engage in that popular activity.

Nonetheless, we have many pleasant memories from Christmases past. For example, one year we had moved into a new place with a fireplace. Donnie had built a warm fire on a cold Virginia night, and we sat together, enjoying the evening while the kids were sleeping. Five-year-old Doah, however, woke up and crept downstairs. Seeing the fire, he began crying loudly.

"What's the matter, Doah?" we asked.

"Ho-ho burn butt!" he sobbed.

For the sake of Santa Claus's posterior, we put out the fire. Doah went off to bed quite happily, satisfied that he had finished his task of ensuring a safe entrance for the deliverer of gifts.

Then there was the year that we had no money at all. Christmas celebrations of the traditional variety were seriously out of the question, especially since we were moving at the end of December. The day after Christmas, as we were taking our first load of household goods to our new residence, we happened to drive past a Christmas tree lot and noticed that the lot had been abandoned. In the back of the lot was a lone, sickly-looking, leftover Christmas tree. Lizzie and Shane jumped out of the car and delightedly dragged it over to Donnie, who lashed it to the roof. Off we went, pleased with our acquisition, although we got strange stares from passing cars. We later decorated our puny little tree with our traditional ornaments, turning it into a festively proud fir. Homemade gifts in the form of food items were the theme of that year. We decorated the tree with cookies, fudge, and other favorite items of the kids that they removed and ate New Year's morning, the day we had decided would be "Christmas" that year.

Other examples of special Christmas events abound. I will share some of them:

(1) Our introduction to Christmas with kids came when Lizzie, our oldest and at barely two years old too young to know anything about Christmas yet -- or so we assumed -- stood in her pajamas at the window as dark settled around our apartment on Christmas eve and suddenly announced, "Santa Claus is coming tonight!" Oh, no! There were no plans for Santa to come that night! Donnie dashed to the car. It was nearly 9:00. The only store still open was a Five-and-Dime, and all Donnie could find in it were little socks for Lizzie's doll. It was enough to make her happy, and from that day we began the practice of one present per child for Christmas.

(2) We tried to make the one gift something very special, but we could never predict our children's strange requests. For example, Lizzie at the age of eight, a precocious fourth grader (she had skipped second grade), asked for a college textbook on genetics. Her interest came from attending the university Russian courses I taught on those days when she had no school and spending the hour in my intermediate Russian course solving problems passed along to her by one of my students who was majoring in genetics. (He also proudly dragged her to the honors program director, who invited her to attend some lecture-form university courses, where she promptly fell asleep. Nonetheless, the director offered to "enroll" her in the honors program as an aspiring college student, but doing so became too complicated. She had to wait another four years before taking her first college course for credit.) When Lizzie, who did become a genetics major for about three years before changing her major to cognitive neuroscience, received her Santa-delivered genetics textbook, she ecstatically raced from house to house in our small neighborhood to display her treasure, then returned home, plopped down beside me on the sofa, and mourned, "None of my friends like my gift! They think it's dumb."

"Well," I asked her, "What do you think? Are you happy with the book?"

"Yes. It's exactly what I wanted, and I really like all the problems at the end of the chapters."

"What did your friends get?"

"They got dolls. That's dumb!" I don't remember Lizzie ever playing with dolls other than the one that needed socks when she was little, a soft pink lamb that my grandmother gave her as a toddler and that she has to this day, and a monkey that my grandmother made for her out of a sock that she eventually wore out.

(3) One year, no one had been in the hospital all year, and we had money for Christmas! It was enough to buy bikes for Shane and Lizzie, pre-teen and teen at the time. Donnie and I were as excited as children to be able to get those bikes for our kids. (Noelle, who is paraplegic, and Doah, who is mentally retarded, never were able to ride a bike, but they got gifts that they had asked for.) That year, Shane and Lizzie had made no particular gift request, and we played a very cruel trick on them. We hung only the bike-lock keys on the tree and hid the bikes behind the house. The keys blended into the ornaments, and after the other gifts had been given out, Shane and Lizzie had nothing. In true Shane and Lizzie fashion, they looked around the tree one more time and said nothing.

"Did all the gifts get passed out?" I asked innocently.

"It seems so," said Lizzie. "Shane and I don't have anything, but that's okay. We don't really need anything. We didn't ask for anything this year."

"Really?" I asked. "Are you sure there is nothing else?" Donnie pulled one of the keys off the tree and handed it to them.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Shane exclaimed, "We have a bike!" Clearly, he assumed that Lizzie and he would be sharing.

"Go look out behind the house," Donnie suggested, and they took off running. We regretted not taking a camera with us when we saw the look on their faces when they caught sight of TWO bikes! They were extraordinarily understanding kids. They knew what it had taken for us to gather the money for two bikes, and they were grateful to us every time they rode them. That was a special Christmas. Donnie got a bike the following Christmas, and for years the three of them would ride together on Saturdays while I spent the day with Noelle and Doah.

The most special Christmas, though, was not one when we had money for gifts but one when we did not. It came two years after the bike Christmas. That year, multiple surgeries drained our coffers dry. Fortunately, we had an artificial Christmas tree with which a relative had gifted us a few years earlier, so we put up the tree and decorated it. Christmas eve ultimately came, and we knew we had nothing for the children. Donnie and I contemplated another year of cookies and fudge, but before Donnie got down to cooking (something he had to do alone -- I am such a bad cook, I would have wasted the ingredients in preparing inedible foodstuffs), one of us -- I don't remember which -- had a scathingly brilliant idea, to quote Hayley Mills' character in The Trouble with Angels. Donnie had by then begun working as a computer graphist, and we conceived of making coupons for each of the kids for one-on-one activities with Mom or Dad: a snack at McDonald's, a special lesson in one of our specialties, private walks, an activity that the child would choose, and so on. Each child received a book of twelve coupons that could be redeemed at will during the year. They loved them, and they used every one of those coupons! That year remains our favorite. In spite of our annually increasingly brighter financial status, no year matched that one for that year Christmas lasted not one day but twelve months.

The end: As I was writing this post, nostalgia made me turn to Donnie and start reminiscing about that very special Christmas. We want to repeat it. So, we have just decided to give our children and grandkids coupons for future joint activities this year. As for the money we had set aside for gifts, we are now excitedly planning how to get rid of it and have scads of ideas about where to distribute it. I will add a PS later, once we have decided where it will go.

Oh, this year is going to be such a great Christmas!

Monday Morning Meditation #20: Be Not Afraid of Intimacy with God

Continuing through the book of Deuteronomy, I was stopped -- I cannot say that the action was reflexive: I did not stop myself -- and while I could not figure out what I could possibly write for a MMM on the verse, somehow I could not get past the 21st verse of chapter 7: "Thou shalt not be affrighted at them; for the LORD thy God is in the midst of thee, a God great and awful." The verse referred to God's tasking of the Israelites to take on the tribes living in the Promised Land, and I assume the translation of the original Hebrew word as "awful" might be better translated today as "awesome."

Reading: Deuteronomy 7:21

Meditation: For the life of me, at midnight, which is when I usually write the MMM, I could not figure out what the significance of this verse was. I thought about all the times I have championed a minority group or an individual in trouble. "Lord, are you stopping me because there is something important to say about moral courage, about the willingness to take on the tasks that you give, no matter how large, unpopular, or frightening they appear to be?" I asked. That seemed liked a good theme to me, one completely related to what was being asked of the Israelites and one that reflected their seeming state of mind. But no, whenever I started thinking in that direction, I encountered a mental block. So, I asked God to enlighten me while I slept, slipped into contemplative prayer briefly, and then slipped into a deep sleep. (That happens to me often during contemplative prayer, and I just hope that God will take me in whatever way He can get me -- conscious or unconscious!)

When the alarm woke me up this morning, my brain was every bit as addled as the night before although my body was quite rested. I fed the cats while Donnie slept, and then settled into the Jesus prayer that I sometimes use for contemplation, especially in the morning. For me, this prayer is less an action and more a way of being together with God. Usually, very quickly my concentration on words disappears (as do the words themselves), and I find myself in a state of contemplation that is difficult to describe in words.

As happens far too often, as the moment of pure intimacy with God slipped over me, I pulled back, and I instantly realized that this is what the verse I could not get past was saying to me. It had nothing to do with the literal meaning of encouraging the Israelites to be brave, given the presence of God among them. Likewise, it had nothing to do with what I first thought about having moral courage to speak up and take on battles today that challenge unethical, unkind, and immoral situations we find in our lives, given that God will be with us during the battle. That which seemed to make sense is not what was stopping me at that verse but rather a different kind of fear that sometimes creeps into my life: the fear of losing control of my conscious self through greater intimacy with God.

I could guess at the psychological reasons behind my withdrawal from God at the moments of greatest intimacy, and I might actually be right. I wonder how other adults who were physically and sexually abused as children accept spiritual intimacy? When I do fully accept it, I usually find later that I have had tears running down my face. So, I now understand that verse in Deuteronomy not as literal or even parallel to similar situations today, but as allegorical, educating me, in this case, about my own reaction to those times when I am very aware that a "great and awful [awesome] God" is "in my midst." As much as I trust God to take care of my life -- I truly do for He always has -- I sometimes (too often, given all God's kindness to me) throw up a protective barrier when He approaches very, very close. I hope that this interpretation (or allegorical application) of today's verse was meant to be as instructive to others as it was to me, for certainly I have been led to a non-literal understanding, but an important one for me: God in our midst should not frighten us, but encourage us; we should welcome, not reject, God's desire to be in our lives and of our lives.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for all those times that I have pulled back, to thank God for patience in continuing to bless me with His presence in spite of my reticence sometimes in fully accepting it, especially physically, to give praise for His incredible desire and willingness to be with me/us, no matter how insignificant or even sinful we are (the penitence service tonight will help), and to request God to give me greater trust when it comes to intimacy with Him.

After that, I will again spend some time in contemplation (briefly for I am now working on being late for work, but often in such cases where I have to cut contemplation short, I end up in a contemplative state from time to time throughout the working day, and that, for certain, is not bad).

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a good week, remembering that God is with us always -- and that should bring us not fear but great joy!

Sabbath Sunday #4: The Extra Manager at Today's Meeting

Fr. Christian Mathis (Blessed Is the Kingdom) has made the suggestion that we "rest" on the Sabbath by taking a break from our normal blogging and sharing an older post of which we are particularly fond. Rest? Gladly! I don't get to do that very often!

The older post was titled "The Extra Manager at Today's Meeting." I am copying it here for ease in reading. The reason I chose this post is because the employee involved will retire on Thursday; we had his retirement party on Friday.

The Extra Manager at Today's Meeting

We are reading 1 Samuel in our Bible Studies class through an interdenominational scripture class published by SEEK. Tonight, we discussed chapter 23, in which David twice seeks the counsel of the Lord. One of the personalizing questions posed in the SEEK study materials is "When was the last occasion that you went before the Lord with a decision that needed to be made? Did you have a sense that God did lead and guide you?" (For me, that would be, ah, like, every day, given the life complications that I routinely run up against.)

The question immediately brought to mind the first meeting I had had this morning. Without revealing confidential information, I can share that two senior managers and I, their supervisor, had been called by our Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office to a pre-mediation discussion with our organization's attorney and Human Resource director about an age discrimination complaint that had been filed by an employee from one of our branch offices who had been fired for absenteeism and poor performance by his first-line supervisor, Shirley. Prior to this meeting, I had, as usual with such meetings, asked God for guidance. (I don't like to play with people's lives without that kind of assistance.)

Once assembled, we introduced ourselves and our roles since our organization is quite large and not everyone knew everyone. The role of most of the members of the assembled group was clear. Roger was Shirley's supervisor, and I was Roger's supervisor. However, why Marvin had been called in was a puzzle to everyone, including to the EEO specialist who had set up the meeting and sent out the meeting invitations. Marvin, like Roger, was a senior manager, but he was not in Shirley's chain of command. We all agreed that it looked like an accident that Marvin was there, but he might as well stay because he had ridden there with Roger and me and would be stranded until we were ready to leave, anyway.

It appeared that Shirley had done an adequate enough job of counseling the employee and had some documentation to back up the firing. Curiously, the employee had only asked for reinstatement for six months as a redress for discrimination. I moved the discussion away from whether or not we could give a non-discriminatory reason for the firing (we could) and whether or not we could back that up with documentation (we could) to why the employee would only ask for a 6-month reinstatement. Well, it turned out that this was the amount of time he needs to be in the organization in order to qualify for retirement -- and, having started with us pretty late in life, he is already of retirement age. Based on this information, I ventured that we not look at this complaint as one in which we could justify whether we had done things right (all the correct documentation, following the rule book) but rather as one in which we could justify whether we had done the right thing (the humane approach to a person's life). Doing the right thing rather than always doing things right, a leadership concept introduced by Warren Bennis in his book, On Becoming a Leader, is an approach that I vigorously advocate for all the supervisors within my division.

Now, the problem with doing the right thing -- retaining the employee long enough for him to be able to retire (Where else, at an advanced age, would he be able to start the whole process all over again so that he would enough time to earn a pension?) -- is that continuing to work for his current first-line supervisor would be very problematic and probably impossible for a number of reasons that I cannot share. Hmm...Just as it started to seem that there would be no choice except to support the first-line supervisor's decision to cut the cord in advance of retirement and the lawyer and HR officer began moving in that direction, I looked at Marvin and got a "scathingly brilliant idea" as Hayley Mills in the lead role of Mary in the movie, The Trouble with Angels, was wont to say. Marvin is the senior manager of our Internet products, one for which the employee could work from his current branch office location on a flexi-place, short-term basis. Marvin acknowledged that he could probably find six months of work on a special project for the employee and stated that he would be willing to take him on. Voila! A chance to the right thing!

"Now I think we all know why you were called to this meeting!" I told Marvin.

Oh, yes, to answer the question from tonight's Bible Study class, I did indeed get a sense that God did lead and guide me today!

Friends Are God's Way of Taking Care of Us

A friend sent me the following story. It is too good not to share even though neither of us knows the source other than that it is reputed to have been written by a Denver hospice physician. (The quote in the title is by Eeichido Oda, author of One Piece, in which Monkey D. Luffi, the protoganist, makes this comment about friends.)

Here is the physician's story:

"I was driving home from a meeting this evening about 5, stuck in traffic on Colorado Blvd., and the car started to choke and splutter and die - I barely managed to coast, cursing, into a gas station, glad only that I would not be blocking traffic and would have a somewhat warm spot to wait for the tow truck. It wouldn't even turn over. Before I could make the call, I saw a woman walking out of the quickie mart building, and it looked like she slipped on some ice and fell into a gas pump, so I got out to see if she was okay.

When I got there, it looked more like she had been overcome by sobs than that she had fallen; she was a young woman who looked really haggard with dark circles under her eyes. She dropped something as I helped her up, and I picked it up to give it to her. It was a nickel.

At that moment, everything came into focus for me: the crying woman, the ancient Suburban crammed full of stuff with 3 kids in the back (1 in a car seat), and the gas pump reading $4.95.

I asked her if she was okay and if she needed help, and she just kept saying 'I don't want my kids to see me crying! ,' so we stood on the other side of the pump from her car. She said she was driving to California and that things were very hard for her right now. So I asked, 'And you were praying?' That made her back away from me a little, but I assured her I was not a crazy person and said, 'He heard you, and He sent me.'

I took out my card and swiped it through the card reader on the pump so she could fill up her car completely, and while it was fueling, walked to the next door McDonald's and bought 2 big bags of food, some gift certificates for more, and a big cup of coffee. She gave the food to the kids in the car, who attacked it like wolves, and we stood by the pump eating fries and talking a little.

She told me her name, and that she lived in Kansas City . Her boyfriend left 2 months ago and she had not been able to make ends meet. She knew she wouldn't have money to pay rent Jan. 1, and finally, in desperation, had called her parents, with whom she had not spoken in about 5 years. They lived in California and said she could come live with them and try to get on her feet there.

So she packed up everything she owned in the car. She told the kids they were going to California for Christmas, but not that they were going to live there.

I gave her my gloves, a little hug and said a quick prayer with her for safety on the road. As I was walking over to my car, she said, 'So, are you like an angel or something?'

This definitely made me cry. I said, 'Sweetie, at this time of year angels are really busy, so sometimes God uses regular people.'

It was so incredible to be a part of someone else's miracle. And of course, you guessed it, when I got in my car it started right away and got me home with no problem. I'll put it in the shop tomorrow to check, but I suspect the mechanic won't find anything wrong.

Sometimes the angels fly close enough to you that you can hear the flutter of their wings."

I know how the writer feels every time God calls upon me to use His credit card.

7 Quick Takes Friday #9

This has been another week of tripping. So much has sped by so fast that I cannot believe that it is time again already to contribute to the 7 Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary. So, here goes with a quick review of this compellingly full week.

1. I spent Saturday at a conference in Maryland. In contrast to the balmy weather of the first day of the conference on Friday, where I moderated a professional discussion, snow arrived Saturday morning, enthralling participants from warm climes such as Jordan and the Philippines, but nonplussing me because I had hope to get together with Shura, who was in Charlottesville, Virginia, staying with Julie, the nurse with whom he lived there during his various hospitalizations and for a number of years following, had come from Russia for only one week. As the snow deepened and travel advisories popped up, our plans to meet mid-point in Washington DC became at first dubious and then unimplementable. Shura will be back in June, thank God, so Julie, he, and I will meet in California, where a no-snow week can be guaranteed.

2. On Sunday, I attended St. Philip Neri Church in Linthicum. Whether it was the disappointment from missing Shura, unrecognized stress from knowing that I was "supposed" to be at breakfast at 9:00 and the 8:00 mass was the only one therefore I could attend, or the discomfort of waiting a long time in the cold, I was quite impatient with the cab driver when he showed up too late for me to arrive at mass on time and immediately announced that he did not know the Linthicum area and was prepared only to take me to Baltimore. I sent him away dismissively, contacted the hotel front desk, and learned that another cab was in the area. The second cab driver, a pleasant enough person, got me to the church promptly, so I was only a little late, and I made a deal with him to pick me up afterward. I handed him a $20 bill for the $10 fare and told him I would settle the bill with him when he returned. I had some difficulty concentrating during mass because, having finally reached my destination, I realized how rude I had been with the first driver. One of the blogs I read this week (sorry, I don't remember which at this late hour) made the comment that regret is not the same as penitence. Indeed! God is wonderful in such circumstances. I got a chance to make up for my rash behavior, when, on the trip back, the second driver told me he had called the first driver and chewed him out. I admitted that I might have reacted in anger, without trying to work out a solution, that it takes two people to differ. So, hopefully the first driver did not get into trouble. Then, splendidly, I learned that the second driver was in his final week of work and was returning to Haiti to try to help develop some of the infrastructure of that country that was lacking, especially for children. Not only had God given me an opportunity to undo what I had done with the first driver, but He had also provided a second driver whom I could help. Rather than "settling" the bill for the drive to the church, I let him keep the change, and I gave him a second $20 bill for the ride back to the hotel. I am not floating in money, but I was on per diem and could eat one less meal or whatever was needed to balance my own financial accounts. One should not pass up opportunities put before one by God to help another of His children do some good in the world!

3. Monday I was back to work in California. Yes! Home is where my heart is, and being home brought a sense of gratitude and comfort. In spite of a hectic work day that left my desk piled high with documents that needed attention at the end of the stay, I did not stay to complete the work, but rather dashed off to my Monday night prayer group. I assist the spiritual director who leads the group, and he had called to let me know that he was driving in from out of town and might be late, so I would need to start the activities. However, he arrived early, as did I and Sr. M, who helped us get set up. What a pleasant ending to the day: discussion, sharing, bonding, singing (I can usually read sheet music well enough to play nearly any song), and prayer.

4. Tuesday overwhelmed me in many ways. At work, we had representatives and managers arriving from all our branch offices to take part in our annual reverse evaluation, workshops, and meetings. I believe that every single one dropped by my office to give me a hug. (We are a hugging organization.) In the evening, I had to attend a mandatory community leaders' holiday party. That made me miss the mass for Tuesday's holy day of obligation. Goodness, this week I have been rapidly building quite a confession list!

5. Wednesday started inauspiciously. I briefed a visiting Army colonel from San Diego. An easy task, the briefing simply had to be transferred from my computer to the computer in the conference room, since we had updated our organizational briefing recently. No, not an easy task! My computer told me bluntly that I was not authorized to download anything. I called the tech to work on the problem, but for the briefing I had to borrow slides from one of the managers who works for me. Thank goodness, he had them easily accessible. No, nothing thankful about that, either, it turned out. The slides were the wrong ones. Not only were they dated, but they also did not include one entire division. I ended up briefing that from memory, using markers and the easel that was in the room. Fortunately, the colonel wanted company for lunch, and the easy conversation that flowed from that not only made her 30 minutes late for her next appointment but also built rapport between us that made up for the briefing. Yes! God takes care of me. Every time that i get myself into trouble, God provides a way to crawl out of it.

6. Yesterday, Thursday, was great. I always immensely enjoy our annual reverse evaluations. While they can be uncomfortable for new managers, since they are a collection of problems that get in the way of effective work accomplishment, presented publicly by employees who are selected by their colleagues as representatives from each office, they provide me with extremely useful information about how happy employees are, what policies are needed, what practices are effective or ineffective, and how employee-management relationships are faring. I, too, am a target for complaints, but that is fine. That is what the day is all about. To keep me honest, I bring in an outside facilitator from the local community, someone skilled at facilitation. We have used the same person for three years now. He says he likes facilitating our reverse evaluation more than any other facilitation work he does because our reverse evaluation tends to be a love-in. We end up with taskings for improvement. To each task, I assign an action officer who is responsible to ensure that agree-upon changes are actually accomplished, and progress is shared with all employees at all our branch offices and our main office through an Internet site. Employees enjoy the reverse evaluation, too, because they get a chance to change the organization in ways in which they would like to see it work.

7. Friday is here! I need to go to bed! I have to get up in three hours to ready myself to attend a very important meeting at the set of offices that is 15 minutes farther away from my house than my set of offices. We have one of our most senior people arriving from Washington. At least, I don't have to do the briefing! I also have to make a lunch to take with me because we will have a working lunch. Following that, though, I get to go back to my own office where we are having a holiday party. Yes! As Doah would say, "Par-tee, par-tee!"

I hope you have had as enjoyable a week as I have had. Certainly, ending it with a party is a great way for a week to go out. I have an even greater way post-party to end the week...Sleep!!!!!