Monday Morning Meditation #6: Good from Bad

This week, I made it through only one additional verse of Genesis. That's right: not one additional chapter, but one additional verse. Why? Because the content of this particular verse, God turning bad into good, is the theme of my life and as such deserves at least a week's contemplation and probably much, much more time. Here in Genesis, I find this theme in another life, one that is centuries old: Joseph of the many-colored coat. Joseph, in continuing the conversation with his brothers who have come to Egypt to buy grain during a great famine, states: "And as for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive."

Reading: Genesis 50:20

Meditation: After telling his brothers that he has forgiven them, Joseph explains to them that while some very terrible things seem to have happened to him, these events ultimately led to good and without the knowledge, experience, and foundation initially created by them, the good (saving his brothers and the rest of the Middle Eastern world of the time) could not have happened.

On a personal note, as an atheist I never questioned why all the difficult things in my life happened to me, especially three children and two grandchildren with multiple birth defects; I just assumed that it was a matter of an imperfect nature. After coming to faith, however, I asked God why. I did not blame God for anything. I just wanted to know why. I was led to read Job. It took five readings to understand that God does not cause bad things to happen, but free will, freely evolving nature, and Evil itself create those negative things. Our love for God and God's love for us is independent of whether our lives are filled with good or bad. However, God will take the bad that happens to one person and make it good for many people. (For example, because I had the experience of raising an American spina bifida child, along with the ability to speak Russian, I was able to take in a child artist from Siberia, dying from complications of spina bifida, and, with the help of others, find proper treatment to save his life -- as for the money, God led me to a multibillionaire to pay the bill. My life has indeed been filled with miracles, but many of these came from God fixing difficult situations, and some of these could not have happened had not there been a string of bad building upon bad, uh, make that, mathemagenic experience building upon mathemagenic experience.)

The other thing I would point out about the times that God has jumped in to turn bad into good is that the individuals, while they may have been frightened or angry, were never in any danger. God was there with them and had plan for pulling them out of their messes (like God does so often with Mahlou messes). God told Satan that he was not allowed to kill Job. So, Job's life was not in danger; Job just did not know that. There was an angel in the fire with Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego (the good that came from this bad was great testimony to King Nebuchadnezzar and the nation of Babylon) and in the lion's den with Daniel (the good that came from this bad was religious freedom as a result of the testimony to King Darius).

I think we do not always see the good that comes from the bad because we sometimes want it to happen too quickly. (Joseph had to wait many years.) Sometimes our view is too restricted; we see only what is happening immediately to us and not to a larger swath of the population. Sometimes we want it to happen our way only, don't see that God often has unique and much better solutions than we can imagine, and fail to recognize answers to prayers that differ from our requests. And sometimes we don't realize that God uses people as His hands on earth to create the good -- and perhaps we are actually part of His work (or could be if we were to be willing and open).

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God for greater willingness and readiness to be part of His plan for turning bad to good for the people around me, to express my regret for any and all opportunities to do this that I have missed, to give thanks for all the times he has created good from bad in my life, and to offer praise for caring enough and being great enough to create miracles in my life and the lives of my friends and acquaintances.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who has done so many wondrous things for me and mine.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Genesis 50:20 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons. In the interim, perhaps you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Have a good day and a blessed week, filled with all good things -- and let any bad be turned to good for your sake and the sake of all around you!

Ganging Up in Prayer

So many friends, acquaintances, church members, and bloggers have been praying for Nikolina, Shane, and the whole Mahlou family that God must feel like people are ganging up on Him. Many thanks to everyone for those prayers! The Mahlou family is once again not only emerging from the muck but also being washed off and cleaned up. We are almost presentable now.

Thinking about this reminded me about how a colleague and I ganged up in prayer on a senior boss a few years ago, resulting in something very strange (well, not really so strange if one knows the power of prayer) happening at our senior staff meetings. It used to be that the division directors hated gathering together with our boss's boss because he would berate them publicly when production was behind, customer satisfaction was low, or product quality was questionable. Instead of working together to identify and fix the problem, he would verbally abuse the director of the responsible division. Two of the four division directors quit within six months of my arrival. (It had nothing to do with my arrival; they had simply been around longer and were tired of the abuse.) A third talked of quitting. That would leave only me still in place from among the four of us who were on board at the time that I arrived, and I had been there only a few months.

Oddly, I was never berated or otherwise abused. (Moreover, a few weeks ago, on a business trip, I ran into this big boss, and he was genuinely happy to see me.) But, maybe it was not odd at all. God tends to protect me. I don't know why. I guess it has to do with His spoiling me (which I do not take for granted but I do love it).

Maybe it also had to do with prayer. I prayed often for this particular person because he often gave me new reason to pray.

When my former employee was promoted to being my colleague, replacing the third director who did quit, I told him that every time the big boss started turning red, a sign that he was about to sling verbal muck at someone, I would say a silent prayer, asking God to calm him and bring him a sense of peace; always the red would turn back to flesh color and his words would be tempered. Knowing that, my new colleague began to do the same, and we both noticed that meetings became more peaceful and productive. Soon everyone was talking about how the big boss had changed, how much more calm and respectful he had become, and how much easier it now was to attend his meetings.

Maybe all that happened was that our prayers visibly calmed the two of us and that calm spread to others, including the big boss, who sensed a gentling reaction from us. Or maybe God reached straight down into this gruff man's pounding heart or irritated psyche. I do not pretend to understand how God answers prayer. I just know that God does.

What a Wondeful Day It Was!

Yesterday was the most amazing day. Seriously! No tongue-in-cheek intended here.

First thing in the morning, Lemony dropped Nathaniel at school and picked me up in her rental car. (Shane's and her car broke down while Nikolina was hospitalized at Stanford--transmission needs to be replaced.) I could not drive because our battery was not working; Donnie had had to call AAA from the hospital parking lot the day before when the car would not start, and the battery had to be ordered.

While I was waiting for her, I remembered the financial issue that had been hanging around for a few days, jumped online, and discovered a deus ex machina resolution to my financial problem. An amazing solution -- but I am getting so spoiled by God pulling my family out of the muck all the time that I was not even surprised. First, earlier in the week, in order to overcome the sizable deficit caused by my not canceling an automatic payment when I chose to send in a paper check through the mail (thus paying twice and unable to get the money back in any kind of timely fashion), I had made arrangements to use savings and max out the credit cards with advances. That earlier morning, however, when I got up and checked the bank balance before going to the bank for the advances, I found that all the rest of the automatic payments for the month had been sent in and cashed, bringing the negative balance to a level beyond my capacity to make up in the manner I had planned. (I have no idea how the earlier release date got on those checks. I must have made a typo on the automatic payment date for them, but that seems strange. Possible, but truly odd and unlikely.) So, I was left with an impossible situation. What a crazy answer to a prayer for help! But God knows best, so I figured that since I could not catch up the account, anyway, I would not even try, especially since the amount I was able to round up would bring the negative balance to exactly $-666, and I did not like that number. I would just wait and see what would happen. Well, what happened was a bit extraordinary. First, the bank paid everything. Not maxing out the credit cards turned out to be important because we needed to put the car battery on them, as well as some other things that came up associated with Shane's emergency and other unexpected "activities" of this week. (Had my plan to fix matters myself worked, we would really have been stranded.) Then, yesterday, I saw that on Wednesday some per diem I was owed had come in, but for twice (!) the amount I expected. I was then back in the black by a few cents, and of course everything was much better Thursday morning, which was pay day.

This is why I never worry or even think again about any problem after turning it over to God: because God fixes things so well! (Well, there was that one time that I did worry, and God made it very clear to me that I should not do that; I never have again, at least so far.) My experiences in this vein have, I suppose, turned me into a little kid, always expecting the parent to rush the rescue. Actually, I never ask to escape the bad. I don't even worry about bad things happening; they happen, and that is inescapable life, free will, bad genes, evil-doers, and all that. But I do expect to be rescued. I also know that something good will come from the bad stuff, and I am curious enough to want to see what it is. I do bring the bad stuff to God's attention because I think it never hurts to ask, but generally I only ask once because somehow I am pretty certain, given the complications of our lives, that God must have us on a weekly checklist: "clean up this week's Mahlou mess."

So, Thursday morning started out easy! Little did any of us know what was to come!

After being picked up, I watched Nikolina while Lemony went to visit Shane in the hospital. Shane's appendix, it turned out was not about to rupture as the doctors thought Tuesday evening. It had already ruptured several days earlier, but apparently the concern over Nikolina's spinal surgery and the trips back and forth from Stanford kept him ignoring the pain. Only after Nikolina was home did he realize that something was wrong. Very wrong, as it turns out. He was full of gangrene. The appendix has been removed and his insides scrubbed. He is on mega doses of antibiotics, to which he seems to be responding well. The doctor has maintained a partially open incision because with Shane having a fever that comes and goes, the doctor is not certain that he got all the infection out. So, we wait. Until Monday, we are told. At least, Shane is now allowed visitors (initially restricted), and both we and Lemony have visited although yesterday Lemony's visits were abbreviated and between my babysitting duties and Donnie's trying to get a battery for an older car and wire money to Blaine (whose car had also broken down) -- once again glad that we had not gone ahead and maxed out the credit cards, we were not able to visit at all. But all of that was but a hint of things to come.

Not long after leaving for the hospital, Lemony returned home with Nathaniel in tow. The school had called about ten minutes after she arrived in Shane's room to ask her to pick up Nathaniel who was being sent home with conjunctivitis. She had to take him to the pediatrician, who is in a city south of us by about 20 miles. Most of her afternoon was spent on that while I got to teach Nikolina pattycake and other baby games that her great-great grandmother taught me. (It's interesting to see how, as a grandmother, I instinctively mimic my grandmother, not my mother nor myself as a mother. Odd!)

Lemony returned just in time for me to give Nathaniel a hug, and then both of them went off to open house at school. Donnie showed up at Lemony's with a working car, and we were just beginning to relax from all the stress and trauma of the past week, beginning with Nikolina's surgery, when all the lights went out. A helicopter that was helping to put out a forest fire several miles away had flown into the power lines and knocked out the electricity and cell phone tower for three towns. Lemony came home, left Nathaniel with us, and went to the hospital to confer with Shane on next steps. Nikolina was not tolerating the 100+ degree weather without air conditioning, and not having a working phone in an emergency was a concern.

Shane and Lemony found a hotel for Lemony and the kids about 30 miles north that had electricity and air conditioning -- and space. Off we went in our two-car caravan. (We did not want Lemony driving alone without a working cell phone.)

What fun! After settling Nikolina and Lemony into the hotel (Nikolina immediately perked up), we picked up some snacks for the next morning for Lemony and kids, gas, and dinner at Denny's. (Once again, I was glad I had not maxed out those credit cards.) After dinner, Nathaniel and I had fun splitting a root beer float: I drank the root beer, he sipped the "fuzzy stuff," and we split the ice cream. Then he proudly carried Lemony's dinner that we had ordered for her as take-out back to her at the hotel. As I left, I turned to say goodnight to him, but he was fast asleep in the bed, shoes and all!

We arrived back home at midnight and went straight to bed but not before offering a prayer of gratitude for once again being spoiled. Fixed finances. Car that works. Shane out of danger. Nikolina home (well, hotel, but better than the hospital). A day spent with family, which is hard for me to get, given a job that has me traveling frequently. And important lessons taught (and, hopefully, learned), such as

(1) Family is more important than work;
(2) Family bonds are built through time spent together, even if it is shared trauma;
(3) People have physical limits -- we should keep those in mind and enjoy our family and friends every day, treating them as though we have limited time with them because we truly do;
(4) There is no problem that God cannot fix better than we can try to mend ourselves:
(5) God will come through for us, just perhaps not always at the time or place or in the manner we anticipate;
(6) Cars, modern conveniences, things -- none of these are more important than relationships with family, friends, God;
(7) It is important to stop and smell the roses -- had not all these things happened this week, I would have been at work from 8-8 and would not even have seen the roses, let alone stopped to smell them; it is important to remember that life is for the enjoying, the valuing, the gee-whizzing, and the thank-you-God'ing, not for burying ourselves so deeply into our work that miss out on the wonder of it all;
(8) It is okay not to be fully mature, to run to God whenever help is needed;
(9) We can trust God without reservations of any sort; we don't have to worry (we simply choose to); and
(10) God likes to spoil us.

Yesterday, Lemony asked me rehtorically, "When is this all going to stop?" Ah, she has missed the point. It may not stop. Life is what it is. It is not important that the bad stuff stop because God will fix it, God will use it to teach us important lessons, and in many cases God will use the bad for ultimate good, often widespread good for many people. In the end, if we let Him, God will spoil us.

God, for sure, spoils me and mine. But you don't see me complaining!! As Nathaniel recently said to me, "Grandma Beth, you spoil me, but that's okay because I love it." Likewise, I say, "God, you spoil me, but that's okay because I love it!

It's Raining! It's Pouring!

Nikolina, as I posted elsewhere, came home yesterday evening, and we had a right fine celebration at Pizza Factory with Donnie, Shane (our son), Lemony (his wife), Nathaniel (our grandson), and Nikolina. As we were finishing, Fr. Barry and the staff from the local retreat center quite coincidentally showed up, and they all got to meet Nikolina and be rewarded with her infectious smile and highly social, happy eye contact -- she's an extrovert and already a bit of a flirt. (Fr. Barry, early on in Nikolina's surgical odyssey, celebrated a mass for her and for all of us.) We all left in jolly spirits.

However, the saga is not over, and I am not referring to the fact that Nikolina still has a series of operations ahead of her. Since it never rains, but it pours, we should not have been surprised that Shane ended up in the hospital within an hour of Nikolina's homecoming. We spent about six hours waiting for CT scan results only to learn that my diagnosis was accurate: appendicitis. (I want an honorary medical degree; I think I've earned it!) The appendix is getting close to rupture stage so the doctor would not let Shane, who, like me, has a very high threshold for pain, wait until his day off to do the surgery. It will be done the very first thing in the morning.

Goodness, I never thought I would be doing a post on Shane. He is the perfectly healthy child between two seriously handicapped ones. I cannot remember Shane ever being sick except for about a year with periodic migraines, which he learned to control, using biofeedback. (I control mine that way, too. Surprisingly, we each taught ourselves how to do it, which mightily impressed the doctors in both cases.)

In any event, it looks like life has become just a tad more complicated. I will need to take some time off in order to help Lemony with Nikolina so that she can be at the hospital with Shane and take Nathaniel to school. (Nathaniel was with us after school today.) It is sort of like the game of musical chairs, only its musical kids. Memories of our children's younger years -- musical kids then, too -- flood back these days.

So, it looks like we are going to have to ask for God's help again. I wonder if God ever gets tired of pulling one family out of dilemma after dilemma? I hope not because we are still living in the Land of Splat!, where we really depend upon God to get us out of all that muck that ends up covering us from time to time!

Million-Dollar Baby

The first bill for Nikolina has arrived. Definitely, it is only the first since she is still in the hospital following the surgery to put her spine back where it belongs. But the first bill is enough to know that these things are out of our hands. Shane and Lemony now have a million-dollar baby. To be precise, the bill was for $1.3 million.

So, what does one do? Laugh and leave the payment of the vast majority to the insurance company (which may have a cap of $1 million in a lifetime). Then, Shane and Lemony will have to turn the rest over to God. Of course, we will help. We did so unintentionally when Nathaniel had his kidney surgery years ago. The hospital grabbed $14K that I had had Shane put into his account so that we would have moving expenses taken care of upon our return from Jordan. Well, the bottom line is that the hospital got the money I needed for moving, and I ended up with alternatives to a planned, normal move, including living with Shane, Lemony, and Nathaniel until I had earned enough money from my new job to pay all the rent, deposits, and the like while Donnie remained "stuck" in Jordan for six months. ("Stuck" is the wrong word because Jordan is a great place to live, as well as relatively inexpensive, and Donnie was able to maintain a part-time job for four of the six months.) Once back in the USA, we lived without furnishings for a while. No big deal. I had a table and an air mattress. My computer was a laptop, and we had a carpeted floor. So, nothing more was really needed. With time, everything got replaced or moved or turned around, and now we can help Shane and Lemony (and our other kids) a lot more than back in 2006 when we first moved back to the USA and its capitalistic economy, which can sometimes bring people to their knees. (Maybe that's not such a bad thing, either.)

At least, the bill does not have to be paid today, which, considering the $4K Shane needs to fix his car which has broken down just at the wrong time (not sure, though, that there is ever a right time, and certainly my family, like most people, have been through worse days) and the current negative balance in my checking account (see my post on Justice or Mercy, as well as the comments to the post), is simply a laughable thought.

God will provide. We just have to wait - and so will Stanford. Been there, done that, as they say, with our other handicapped kids. It does have the effect of keeping one humble. The only thing one has to show off for one's hard-work-produced-income is that one's kids are alive. Come to think of, I cannot think of anything better to show off. Can you?

Monday Morning Meditation #5: Forgiveness

I made it through another 22 chapters of Genesis this week, almost reaching the very end of this book at last. (It feels like it has been a slow journey, but the stops along the way have been worth it.) This week Chapter 50 halted the smooth flow of my reading. It was something that Joseph said that set me to ruminating.

Reading: Genesis 50:19

Meditation: Joseph met his brothers who had earlier sold him into Egyptian captivity. They feared that he would avenge himself after Jacob's (Israel's) death, but Joseph, who had done well for himself in Egypt, was simply glad to see them. "Fear not," he said, "for am I in the place of God?" In other words, only God can avenge or judge or sentence. We are not in the position of God, and so we must simply forgive.

But forgiveness is not simple, not even when we think we have indeed forgiven. When I first came to faith, God made it clear that I was supposed to learn to forgive, starting with my extremely abusive mother. I reasoned if God had forgiven her, who was I not to do so. Making that first phone call after years of not talking to her was difficult but worth it for both of us. Having made it over this hurdle and into the path of being able to honor one's father and mother, I prided myself (pride goeth before a fall?) on my ability to forgive. God has a way of deflating pride, however, with one prick of the balloon. I clearly had NOT learned the forgiveness lesson well enough, and so God gave me another chance to learn it. (I seem to get lots of second, third, fourth chances -- I am somewhat of a slow learner, being by nature both rebellious and skeptical.)

In the second instance, the person I needed to forgive was the union president who had held up my being hired as a senior manager in the organization where I now work. I forgave him for that. It was pretty easy to do so. After all, I was hired. Without going into all the details here (I will post the full story later), the situation complexified considerably when the union president died unexpectedly. I, of all people, was asked to present a eulogy. Up until the day before the memorial service, I could not write a word. Every time I tried, nothing came to mind. I had convinced myself that I had forgiven this man, but on a long walk around the mission that I took the night before the memorial service, God led me to understand that while I had, on the surface, forgiven this man, I had not forgiven him deeply and completely because I felt no love for him. Understanding this broke the emotional barrier I had thrown up, and I felt much love for him, love I wish I could have expressed to him while he was alive. Out of that flowed a eulogy. Afterward, his family told a mutual acquaintance that the eulogy I gave began a healing process for them. (God is so marvelously capable of using us to help others at the same time that we are being taught -- what an incredible teacher!)

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God for greater willingness and readiness to forgive, to express my regret for not truly forgiving those people I should have by forgetting any transgressions against me and loving the transgressors sincerely, to give thanks for His willingness to love me in spite of my occasions of uncharitable thinking, and to offer praise to a God who cares enough about us to teach us.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who never gives up on me, no matter how slow a learner I am.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Genesis 50:19 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons. In the interim, perhaps you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Have a good day and a blessed week, filled with love and forgiveness!

Who Was Connie?

Last year, I traveled about an hour to the closest city to attend a contemplative prayer group, now, alas, disbanded. (The priest who led it was reassigned and no replacement has arrived.) The group met regularly once a month in the evening. I joined the group close to its day of dissolution. The few meetings I attended I enjoyed, and to the last meeting I took a fellow member of our local mission prayer group, the difference in the two groups being that the city group was focused on contemplative prayer, leading to very quiet meetings, and our local group is focused on pray-aloud prayer, leading to mathemagenic noise and inspirational chaos. Both groups include sharing of personal experience and spiritual growth.

The contemplative group always began with paired discussion about the condition of our personal prayer life. Then, following a scripture reading, 20 minutes (which seemed like never enough time) was allotted to contemplative prayer. After that, we usually sang some songs, followed by announcements, and that was that. It was a group activity experienced individually for the most part.

During the last session, I was paired with a newcomer, named Connie. Shabbily clothed, with downcast eyes and meek demeanor, Connie looked like she had wandered into the wrong group, most of us being middle-class yuppie types, at least to the common eye, and none of us had any idea how she found us or really why she came. She did not want to discuss anything about each other's prayer life during our pair time. Rather, she wanted to talk to me about dying. It seems that Connie was in Stage 4 of esophageal cancer, something I know little about except what Connie told me. Prayer was not her concern. Putting closure to her life was. She did not want my advice. That was good for I had none to give. She wanted only a friend. She wanted to be touched, to be held, to be hugged -- all without words, a difficult task for an extrovert such as I, but I did my best to give her what she requested. I listened. I said little because I needed to say little. She said anything I would have said and far more. I wish I had listened with my memory as well as my ears because I would like to remember now more than I do. I recall that she said that she was ready to die, that she worried about nothing, and wished only that the pain could be less. She said that she knew that God loved her -- and added "more than you could possibly understand right now." That was odd, but I did not remonstrate. I just knew I was supposed to listen. She said she had no relatives or real friends in the world, that few would miss her. She accepted that. She wanted nothing before she died, but she did whisper one thing with some urgency before we were called back into a group for our contemplative prayer session: "Pray for me."

During the prayer session, Connie sat in the pew in front of me and next to the aisle, as I was. What I loved about these particular prayer sessions was the fading of the external world, the loss of outside distractions, and a sense of union with God. As I said, 20 minutes was just far too short a time.

This time, though, after 10-15 minutes, I felt something happening in the pew in front of me and, suddenly quite aware of all my surroundings, I noticed Connie. She was not praying. She was looking around, and, I swear, she did not look like herself. Not shabby anymore. A softness surrounded her. I could not tell whether it was coming from within or from without. I blinked several times, thinking I was somehow in a heretofore unexperienced state of some kind of unusual or at least never-before-described-to-me contemplation, but no, my eyes reported the same odd softness with each blink.

Suddenly Connie stood up, looking much like herself again, and started to walk out. I stood as she passed me and reached out to her with a questioning look. "Good-bye," she said. Nothing more. "I will pray for you," I promised in a whisper. We embraced warmly, and she walked out.

I could not concentrate after that and sat quietly, waiting for the others to finish praying. Then came our group sing-along of fairly short duration, followed by the announcement about the dissolution of the group. Perhaps it was the surprise nature of that announcement or a sense of imminent personal loss that kept anyone from noticing that Connie had left. Whatever the reason, no one said a word about it. The prayer group leader dismissed us for the last time. I interrupted before people scattered and asked if anyone had noticed Connie's departure. No one had paid attention to the fact that we were one less in number at the end than at the beginning. "We don't know who she is," one person said. "We've never seen her before," another volunteered. "Perhaps she realized she was in the wrong place," yet another suggested. Maybe any of those things. Maybe all of those things. Maybe none of those things. I told the group what I knew about Connie (except for the strange vision I had of her during prayer). I told them about her request for prayer. Instinctively, with no one individual taking the lead, we all formed a circle to pray for Connie. The leader look at me, so I said what I hoped were adequate words.

I have many times since wondered what happened there. The person from our mission prayer group who had attended with me said that she got the same feeling from Connie that I had: otherworldly, but she had no idea why. Perhaps when one is close to death, one is close to God.

Brother Charles, on Praise and Bless, wrote in this week's homily something that brought Connie back into focus for me today. He was addressing the question of transsubstation, but I am excerpting some of his words here -- please forgive me, Brother, for using them out of context -- because they immediately made me think of Connie:

"When God reveals himself to the world, what appears? On the one hand a newborn, vulnerable child, born of young, poor parents away from home. On the other hand, God reveals himself as a condemned criminal, tortured and in the midst of his execution. These are the mysteries of the Nativity and the Passion, the revelations of God in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, and they reveal a God who is sublimely humble. "

Could God have been there in Connie, a humble, dying-from-cancer, living-alone, sixty-something, raggedly clothed, obviously poor, weak woman? A reminder to us that whom we consider "the least" among us may not be the least at all? None of us who were there will probably ever know, but at the time and now thinking back, that sense of another dimension that surrounded Connie still gives me pause.

Who was Connie? Does that matter? At the very least, she was someone who needed support, and we gave it the best we could. Isn't that something of what God wants us to do on this journey we call life?

From Grief-Stricken Mom to Real-Life Angel: The Case of Casa do Zezhino

After telling some bad tales about my travels abroad (see, for example, Muggable Me), it seems like it should be time and only fair to tell a remarkably good tale that I learned about during my days of providing consultation to state and private educational programs in Brazil. It is one I have been meaning to tell for a while, and I do at least have a button about it under "Ways to Help Others" over there on the right-hand side of this page: Casa do Zezinho (Little Joe's House).

The following description comes from the English-language site:

"On the outskirts of São Paulo, there is a poor and violent region so dangerous, it is known as the 'death triangle.' Thousands of families live here and don't have the resources to move elsewhere. Children have no access to leisure activities—there are no libraries, no theaters, no museums, no parks to enrich their free time. In fact, on average, three children die in this neighborhood every week by violent means or neglect.

In the middle of this terror is a safe haven called Casa do Zezinho. This daycare and after-school center is a sanctuary for children and teenagers who take part in their educational programs as well as the arts and culture programs they offer. The children are encouraged to explore creative hobbies and engage in cultural activities as well as participate in self-esteem and self-development programs.

Dagmar Garroux, the founder of Casa do Zezinho, and known as Tia Dag, describes it as, 'A house where we learn with children, and children learn with us, how to open the doors which are usually closed by poverty.' Casa do Zezinho provides a sheltered place for the children to play and learn. It is a place where children receive attention, affection, nutrition and education. It is a place where they can find hope.

Their programs include the graphic arts: mosaic, paper recycling art, woodworking, ceramics and silk screening—as well as the performing arts: theater, dance, musical instruments, and singing. Instead of dead end roads, the children are shown the way to make positive choices for their own future."

What the website does not tell you is Dagmar's personal tragedies. I felt an instant bond with Dagmar when I learned that she had had a child with spina bifida, like my Noelle. Unfortunately, unlike Noelle, who has reached the grand age of 33 and counting, Dagmar's daughter died at the age of six. The loss of her daughter prompted Dagmar to found Casa do Zezinho. Instead of losing hope, Dagmar developed an approach to teaching (and life) that she called "hope pedagogy."

Beginning with just a few students, she had reached an enrollment of 300 when her father came to visit this marvelous oasis in the middle of Death Triangle. (I have been to Death Triangle and can personally attest to Dagmar's institution being a real oasis, where hope lives and grows.) Now, Death Triangle has earned its name: it has the highest per capital rate of murder anywhere in Brazil, and deaths come easily, quickly, and voluminously there. Dagmar's father was little more than one tiny number in a large statistic: he was murdered before he ever saw his daughter's triumph. She was heartbroken and angry and stayed away from Casa do Zezinho for a month after her father's death. Then, a group of older students came to her, told her that they missed her and that they had determined who had killed her father. They promised to take revenge -- kill the killers -- if she would come back. As she told me, she realized that this kind of thinking was just the opposite of what she had been trying to teach the next generation, and so she told them that she would only come back if they forgave the killers (and that she would, too). Forgiveness was had all around, and Dagmar came back in full force to build the institution to 1200 children and growing.

Dagmar's Casa do Zezinho is one of many examples of God turning bad into good. Dagmar's losses became a major gain for hundreds of children with some of the worst potential futures in all of Brazil; instead of looking at a life on the street, selling drugs, these children have learned about selling other kinds of things, things that they make, as well as have traveled to Germany to participate in a bi-cultural choir, giving them a perspective on life that ranges far beyond the small triangle in which they were born.

Good from bad is such a common theme with God. How can we we feel sorry at all for ourselves or our kids when God has used their plights to create delights? Because of Doah's experiences, many children who would otherwise have died have lived and a class of autistic children was left far less autistic. (I guess I should blog about the stories behind that statement some day.) Noelle has been a spokesperson for all kinds of disability-related events and campaigns, including being quoted at one point in the Washington Post for her testimony at a Congressman's hearing on special education (the only child to testify). Shura bonded an entire community that had only one desire: that he live (and he did).

And then there are those muggings where in just a few minutes I learned more about cultural aspects of the countries where I was mugged than I could ever have learned (or understood) from university studies. And, of course, there is the story of St. Francis Retreat; the new super-duper digs would never have been undertaken had not the old burned to the ground. Nor is it likely there would have been such a rallying of community support that is likely to last long after the new building opens.

I could go on and on about how many times and ways I have seen God turn bad into good, but I won't. I'll save the discussion for a future post when others can share their experiences, too.

I am, however, reminded every hour of every day of the goodness of God that is poured out upon the children living in a violent neighborhood in the bowels of Brazil through a real-life angel called Dagmar. You see, the clock in my office has the Casa do Zezinho logo, hand-drawn and given to me by a child from Dagmar's oasis.

Justice or Mercy?

This afternoon I was too angry to be angry. Ever had that feeling? Knowing that it is better to say nothing because what you will say will be so awful that it will take forever to make up for it? Yeah, that kind of afternoon. (Let alone that we still do not know Nikolina's surgical status -- all that is still pending. So today was not the best day for bad news.)

Nonetheless, bad news forced itself into my happy little day. And it all happened so innocently. I had taken time off work to be available to help Shane with any family needs before, during, and after Nikolina's surgery and decided to use some of my found time to balance my checking account. I opened the online version, figuring it would only take a few minutes since I was pretty much caught up, having balanced everything last week, which was pay day. And then a thunderstorm overtook my sunny day. To my horror, I saw that a $1500 payment to the IRS that I had put into my list of checks-by-mail account as a temporary place holder had not been removed when I sent the paper check on pay day to the IRS (my bad) and the bank had gone merrily on its little way and already mailed it, with an arrival date of today. Needless to say, I do not live in that echelon of society that can swallow an extra $1500. Trying to get the $$ back from either the bank or the IRS will take weeks; that much is for certain. The first payment already cleared, and now the second payment, unless something happens, will bounce (or all my other pay-bills-by-mail will bounce and cost a fortune in bounced check fees and quite a bit of embarrassment and paperwork with the companies that are expecting paper, not rubber, checks.) Putting a stop-payment on an IRS check was a nervous-making thought. So, the only reasonable approach seemed to be to find the extra money somewhere -- and I knew where. I could take out an advance on one of my credit cards that would cover half of it, and the rest could be taken from savings for now. We had put that amount of money into a savings account six months ago for an expense we had anticipated (and still anticipate); that could be borrowed temporarily. So, off I went to ask Donnie to go take it out of the bank while I worked on getting the credit card advance.

And then that little bubble of perpetual happiness that seems to bounce up and down around me wherever I go got a leak. Donnie became very quiet. He had that little-boy-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar look on his face. Finally, he admitted that (1) he had never put the full amount into the savings account and (2) over the past six months he had been removing the money bit by bit to buy himself comfort things (like foods that I don't buy because they are bad for his diabetes and little gadgets that I don't quite understand the need for). Now, there is nearly nothing in the account. My happiness bubble was leaking pretty fast, and I decided I had better do something to get out of the house -- uh, I could pick up the mail -- before I totally lost it and said those forever-type things.

On the way to the mail, all kinds of things went through my head, most of which centered around divorcing the "freeloader" (Donnie has not been able to find a full-time job since we returned to the USA from Jordan three years ago and brings in small amounts of money through freelance graphics, which he typically keeps for his own use unless there is an unexpected urgency), divorcing the "thief" (Donnie has emptied one or another account in the past without telling me -- the only joint account left is the savings), or putting the "child" on a short leash (making him turn over his checks to me and then giving him an allowance). Clemency was not among any of my thoughts.

Of course, divorce won't solve the current problem. However, the leash might take care of things in the long run! And then there is the real situation. We have been married 40 years, definitely have a quiet but deep bond of love (when I am not angry), survived all kinds of trauma and drama (more than a dozen families together would be expected to survive), parented a bunch of kids, serve actively and happily as grandparents to Nathaniel and Nikolina, and stability is needed now more than ever for Shane and his wife Lemony, given the situation with their children, for Doah who will need to have a united front to solve his addictive-medicine dilemma on Monday and beyond, for Lizzie and Blaine who have just moved to South Carolina on a shoestring and both about to start new jobs who will need a little financial support for a short while, and for Noelle who herself is trying to provide emotional support to her significant other who will likely be in a care facility for the rest of his life due to total renal failure. Shura has returned to Russia to be with his natural parents, has had Julie for support anyway, and has not needed us for a while. Ksenya is busy becoming famous in Hollywood and has her natural mother here now. Nonetheless, at least a half-dozen members of the successive generations do not need to have their parents losing their cool at this moment in their history. Still, the thought of total freedom, just walking away into the sunset, enticed me, well, at least for 5-10 seconds.

In real life, away from my thought-life, I guess it boils down to the one thing I did not consider on the way to the post office: clemency. (Not that the post office trip helped much: there in my post office box lay a demand for payment for $650 for a bill that we have sent evidence twice that we have paid in full! Argh! Is anyone in the billing office capable of reading?) Sigh! Clemency...That is not the choice I feel like making right now. It was not even the choice that came out in the two daily mass readings that I heard this morning. One was the post-battle sacrifice of the king's daughter and the other was the binding and ejection of the guest who came improperly attired to the banquet. Sheesh!

I am going to go walk around the mission grounds in just a little bit and talk to God. I am pretty sure God will hand me back my happiness bubble and teach me more about mercy, my initial reaction always being oriented toward justice rather than mercy. And then life will go on - because it has to and because God always makes my boo-boos stop hurting.

Oh, the money? I sort of forgot about that, didn't I? Nothing to worry about - I already asked God for help, so I have indeed forgotten about that problem other than being ready to follow any guidance that comes along. Actually, after today's thunderstorm, I am looking forward to tomorrow's rainbow, just one of those many gifts from God!

Prayers for Nikolina

We knew the day would come that Nikolina would need to return to Stanford for some serious neurosurgery. It is here, and we are asking for your prayers.

Donnie and I have enjoyed the past several weeks, being able to visit our son, Shane, and his family and play with both our grandchildren, Nathaniel and Nikolina. Nathaniel is a great big brother, not jealous, just loves his sister, and understands some of what is happening because he himself had a serious kidney problem when he was born (now just a bad memory).

We have some better pictures of Nikolina now, and I have managed to add her history to my family site, The Clan of Mahlou. Pictures and short bios of both the grandkids can be found there.

Nikolina's surgery is scheduled for Wednesday. She has a lipomeningeomylocele that has to be repaired. The most unnerving part is that nerves run through the area that has to be cut open. Right now, it looks like Nikolina, unlike her aunt who also has spina bifida, will be able to walk. She moves her legs and feet in all the right ways. However, any nerves that get in the way of the laser may result in some form of paraplegia. Please pray for steady hands and strong eyes of the neurosurgical team. I know that God is watching over Nikolina or she would not have made it this far, but I think it never hurts to let God know that we care, too.

Monday Morning Meditation #4: Awareness of God's Presence

I continue along the path I started a month ago, reading through Genesis sequentially and stopping when something strikes me as needing greater attention. This week I got as far as the 28th chapter of Genesis. (Yep, it's going to take years at this rate to make it all the way through the Bible, but then, I'm in no hurry. The journey is more important than the destination, as I blogged in an earlier post.)

Reading: Genesis 28:16

Meditation: As I meandered through Genesis, a few things blipped on my radar screen momentarily: where we get government taxes (Joseph required all to give back 1/5 of the produce to the Pharaoh), where we get tithing (Jacob/Israel promised God 1/10 of all he owned and acquired), how often angels appeared to people in those days (probably today, too, a topic of some interest to me, considering that I just made a series of posts about angels), and how often barren women, especially quite old ones, were blessed with children.

What truly jumped out at me, though, was verse 16 in chapter 28: "And Jacob awakened out of his sleep, and he said: 'Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.'" I wonder how many times God is in a place where we are and we know it not. Because we are too busy tending to matters at hand, whatever they may be. Because we are too focused on ourselves. Because we are tired. Because we are not alone. Because we just don't think that way. And then I recall how Doah, in visiting the old mission town where I live for the first time, said to me quite simply in his limited, mentally-challenged language, "God here," and nodded his head in great satisfaction. He knew. In his great limitation of mental faculty, he knew. In his naivete, he knew. He knew what people of much greater intellectual prowess do not know. It causes one to stop and wonder, doesn't it?

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God for enlightenment to know when I am in His presence, to express my regret for any opportunities to be with Him that I missed, to give thanks for His willingness to be with me (with us all), to offer praise to a God who cares enough about us to be present to us, and to tell Him how I revel in His presence now that the shock I felt the first time I knew He was present with me has turned to joy. (I know God knows all of that since He knows me better than I know myself, but I still like to tell Him -- the telling may be more for me than for Him, but I suspect that He does not mind.)

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who came after me, brought me into His flock, and has never abandoned me.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Genesis 28:16.

Have a good day and a good week!

Destiny!??

Just one more angel story from Sufi (Islamic) wisdom, please. I just cannot help myself. I love these stories.

This story is called "Escaping the Design."

A man who lived in Baghdad once saw the angel of death in the market. It was obvious that the angel of death was staring at him.

"He must have come to take me," the man said to himself. "I must escape!"

And so the man went quickly to the governor's house who was his friend. "You must help me. The angel of death is here in Baghdad. He has come to take me."

The governor said, "How would you like me to help you my friend?"

"Send me, send me away on your fastest horse to Damascus."

And so the governor ordered that the fastest horse in Baghdad was to be given to his friend. In only three days, a record speed, the man arrived in Damascus! No sooner had he arrived, however, than he saw the angel of death near the eastern gate.

"You actually are here," the angel said.

"What could you possibly mean?"

"Well, I was very surprised to see you in a market in Baghdad because I knew that I was supposed to take your soul three days later in Damascus. How you managed to get here this fast is beyond my comprehension!"




Many thanks to the bilingual author, Dr. Omar Imady, who translated them from the original Arabic and published them in a wonderful little book, Metaphors of Islamic Humanism, so an English speaking world can read them.


EM: The man tried to escape his destiny but could not. Predestination is a view held by Sufis and some others. What, if anything, do you think is pre-destined? I had to look up Catholic dogma on that question (obviously, I am still new to Catholicism). I was happy to see that it did not depart from my own understanding.

The Angel in the Desert

As promised yesterday, here is the Islamic angel story. It was published in a book, called Metaphors of Islamic Humanism (subtitle) by Dr. Omar Imady and is re-printed here with permission.

The title of the story is "The Angel's Instructions."

There once was a man who was traveling through the desert. The journey took longer than he expected and soon all his provisions were gone except for a small jug of water and a loaf of bread. An angel carrying water and food was sent with this command: "When he drinks the rest of his water and eats his last loaf of bread, give him the water and food."

And so the angel observed the man from a distance, waiting for him to drink his water and eat his loaf of bread. But the man was so afraid of finishing his supplies and being left with nothing that he simply couldn't get himself to do so. Whenever he was about to drink or eat, he would say to himself, "But what will happen to me if I were to finish my water or eat my last loaf of bread? I must hold on to them, they are all I have left."

And so he would continue to walk and the angel would continue to observe from a distance.

Sometime before sunset, the man collapsed on the sand. In one hand, he held that very last loaf of bread, and in the other, that small jug of water. The angel, still carrying the food and water, kept on observing until it was clear that the man had died.

"How strange are the children of Adam," the angel said as it ascended to the sky.


EM note: It all boils down to trust, doesn't it?

Lizzie's Angel Story

The lives of my children and me have been filled with blessings (e.g., my miraculous healings and the miracles experienced by Shura and a benefactor). We have also been been helped by real-life angels, i.e. God's kind and talented professionals, as in the case with Noelle and Doah, whose bios can be found here.

Most puzzling and heart-warming was the rescue of my oldest daughter by what appears to be a bona fide angel. Lizzie at the time was living, working, and attending school in San Diego. Coming home late one night after babysitting, she was hit by a drunk driver. The small truck she was driving was totaled. The drunk driver, who did not stop to help, had pushed her into a concrete retaining wall near a place where the highway was being repaired, and that had caused the truck to roll, coming to rest on the passenger door. Lizzie could not get the driver's door open, so she tried to escape via the window between the cab and the truck bed. As she started to squeeze through, she heard a male voice telling her to stop and let him help her. A brawny man, whom she assumed to be one of the road workers, kicked in the window, helped her out of the truck, and carried her across the highway, pointing out that her truck was right in the middle of Highway 5 and she could easily have been hit by approaching traffic because drivers would have had trouble seeing her in the dark. He stayed with her at the construction side until the ambulance that he said had been called showed up, helped her onto the ambulance, then left. She was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors examined her and found her in perfect shape and the police showed up to take a statement. When she told them about the kind construction worker who had helped her onto the ambulance, the police interrupted her. "Ma'am," one of them said, "the ambulance attendants told us that they found you wandering dazed by yourself at the construction site." (The ambulance had been called by a passing truck driver.) Confused as to what could possibly have happened, Lizzie called Caltrans. No, they had no one working that site on that night, but they put the story on the front page of the Caltrans newspaper, asking for the unknown hero to step forward. No one did. Lizzie, being a psychologist, then determined that perhaps she had dreamt up the incident and had simply exited the truck on her own. She went to the place where the truck had been towed. It was so demolished that it would have been difficult for her to get out -- and the window was broken where someone had kicked it open! Perhaps she kicked in the window on her own and did not know it. However, there were no scratches on her body, and the angle was difficult (directly over her head because the truck had been on its side). So, no evidence of any sort. No clear answer. And there ends Lizzie's story.

I have room only for a summary here, but I wrote about Lizzie's angel in detail in two places. The first was published in a book by L. A. Justice in a fairly straightforward story called "Angel on the Highway." Later, I wrote a more artistic version of the experience in a story called "The Merging," which was published in a collection of short stories from the Middle East. (I was living in the Middle East at the time that I wrote it.)

Tomorrow, I would like to share an Islamic angel story with a very interesting twist. I hope you will return here to read it.

In the meanwhile, Lizzie now collects angel memorabilia - dolls, pins, cards, you name it!

Fishes and Loaves for Colombia

Almost two years ago, I met a young priest from Colombia, Padre (Fr.) Julio. Padre Julio substituted for our noon Spanish mass one Sunday and mesmerized the congregation. Shortly thereafter I came to know Padre better (1) as he traveled more than an hour to Stanford University Hospital to pray for my daughter Noelle who was having brain surgery, (2) after he accepted my offer as a volunteer tutor of English when his duties were changed from the Spanish mass to the English mass (a mutually beneficial activity -- as I helped him convert his homilies from Spanish to English, I learned a lot of theology from him and a little more Spanish, too), and (3) during web design working sessions with my family (which consists of graphic artists, computer programmers, web designers, and me, a writer and translator) as we constructed a website for the organization that he founded: Por Amor a los Ninos de Colombia (for love of the children of Colombia). Padre's dream was to help the children of his native Colombia, a beautiful, rural region, full of potential that was being replaced by violence. Padre describes the situation as follows:

In recent years, violence and illiteracy have affected the communities of the village of Palomar and surrounding hamlets. The distance between the school and the houses where the children live can be between one and six hours, making school attendance impossible.

Because their families live in poverty, these children cannot afford transport to nearby towns or cities either. This has resulted in young people between the ages of 12 and 18 having no other choice than to join guerrilla or paramilitary groups, commit petty crimes, work in the fields without the possibility of an education, or worse yet, becoming addicted to drugs.

The need to provide alternatives to solve the many problems this school-age population is facing is an urgent one. They have neither the economic nor the material means to do it themselves.

But let me step back just a bit in time. When I first became acquainted with Padre as a result of his describing Por Amor during mass, I wanted to donate a little something -- and "little" was the right label for any monetary amount I could hope to scrape together. Having come from an impoverished farm family and then spending most of a lifetime raising children with serious medical needs, even spare change was hard to find. I reasoned, however, that I could offer family skill in lieu of money, and Padre and I began a conversation about how the website would look. In the midst of this conversation, I ended up being sent to work in Bahrain for three weeks, just as Padre was beginning a push to raise the initial funds for Por Amor. Padre and I maintained a running e-mail conversation, he in Spanish and I in English, about the website plans, but somewhere in the back of my mind was the understanding that most of our work would be in vain if he could not get together a reasonable fund in a reasonable amount of time. I would have liked to help with that, too, but I am no fundraiser. So, on both counts -- giving money and raising money -- I was not much help to Padre until a marvelous thing happened.

As soon as I had arrived in Bahrain, a friend, who knew I was coming, showed up in my hotel room and dragged me to dinner, in good Arab fashion refusing to allow me to pay. But I had per diem for my meals, one thousand dollars, in fact, to cover the time I would be abroad. As I walked up to my room, an idea flew into my mind (from where?). There would certainly be another friend or two who would react in the same way over the next three weeks and the Ministry of Education would also likely host me for at least one meal, so I might have a hundred or even a little more than a hundred dollars left over from unspent per diem. I made a promise to God that whatever amount I did not spend on food in Bahrain, I would give to Padre for His children in Colombia. After that, friends and colleagues appeared out of the woodwork, and none would allow me to pay my own way (it does not fit with the culture there). In addition, the Ministry of Education had several socials and formal dinners which were also free to me. When I left Bahrain at the end of the three weeks, I had not had to purchase even one meal. When I reached the USA, I handed all $1000 of my per diem over to Padre for his children.

Bahrain might be little more than a desert to some, but it does have the famous tree of life that flourishes in sand. How symbolic for what had just happened! I was living in a philanthropic desert and yet out of that wasteland tumbled one thousand dollars for children in need half a world away. Would God re-create the fishes and loaves miracle today? You bet!

Monday Morning Meditation #3: Legacies from the Tower of Babel

I have made it as far as Genesis, Chapter 11 (yep, I decided to continue in a sequential fashion, which is very unlike random me) before coming across the story of the Tower of Babel. I had to stop and reflect on that story because had there been no destruction of the tower and scattering of the people, along with confusion of tongues, I would have no employment today. You see, I have worked in 24 (about to be 25) countries as an interpreter, translator, foreign-language teacher, cross-cultural consultant, and language-program administrator. My repertoire of foreign languages exceeds 20 and continues to grow. So, of course, the story of the Tower of Babel caught my attention. Post-Babel, in the world in which we live and the one where I try to bridge cultures, our biggest problem internationally is understanding each other well enough to stop killing each other, or, better, not to start the killing to begin with.

Reading: Genesis 11:1-9

Meditation: In re-reading this passage, I noticed something beyond the outcome, i.e. the scattering of people across the world and the rise of a myriad languages. Something else speaks out from these verses: hubris. One hears overweaning pride and conceit in the words of the people: "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name." God's response was to prevent this, scattering the people, and making it difficult for them to communicate with each other. It would seem that "making a name" for oneself is not what God considers important, yet how often do we want to do just that? How often do we want our children to do that? How often do we admire those who have done that? How often do we congratulate friends whose offspring have done that? Making a name, it would seem, is very important in American culture.

One of the people I would like to emulate is our former landlord, Ernie Camacho. Anyone who knows baseball probably recognizes that name from World Series XIV, which he pitched, as well as his former pitching for more than one national baseball team. Ernie was a small-city boy, the son of immigrants (friends of ours), who had made a name for himself. The question is: Does anyone know where Ernie is now? He finished his career in the early '90s and returned to the town of his youth, living with his Mexican-Catholic parents (our friends), and working as a high school school janitor. Yes, as a janitor. Why? He started out as a school counselor, but took on the janitor's job because, as he told me, the students opened up more to a janitor than to a counselor; they had nothing to fear or prove with a janitor. As an international educator, I have a long way to go to reach the level of janitor. Maybe I won't make it, but I try. I have come to know many janitors worldwide; they have been good teachers for me. Some day maybe I will be as good a teacher as they. For that, I pray. I suppose I could quit my job and seek one as a janitor, but (1) I am not ready for that because I like what I do and I know that God is able to use us wherever we are (it is, in fact, a job that God has permitted after obviously closing doors to alternatives) and (2) I am not good enough at the skills required of janitors for anyone to consider offering me a job.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God for guidance as I continue to try to be an adequate conduit for Him and for my organization in bridging cultural and linguistic differences, to express my regret for each of those instances where I "blew it" because I was not ready to understand "the other" or failed to do my homework in advance of meetings, to give thanks for a lifetime of unexpected and undeserved opportunities to meet representatives of the scattered tribes descending from the days of Babel, and to offer praise to God who understands us even without words. Yes, that is what I will pray for to begin with, but then, I will take up the more important theme, to ask God to show me how to be His janitor, to sweep any sense of my own self-importance under the carpet of fraternal love, and to trash any pride that may remain hidden within me for I do not need it. The latter is, unfortunately, not a one-time prayer. I need to have long, periodic conversations with God about that -- and do.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who loves me in spite of my pride and failures.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Genesis 11: 1-9.

Have a good day and a good week!

Shura's Miracles

Next on the list of my children who have benefitted from the kindness of angels in the garb of professionals is Shura. (I don't know whether to include him among our children or not since he was with us for such a short while, but in the broader meaning of the word, he is our child even though Donnie could not even communicate with him in the beginning, Shura speaking no English and Donnie speaking no Russian.) Anyone who has read my book, Blest Atheist, knows the story of Shura in grand and glorious detail. I include it here in very brief form for everyone else and as part of the series of the positive things that other people have done for my children.

About Shura:
Shura was a dying child artist from Akademgorodok, Siberia, a place where I had done research, consulting, and teaching, and my second most favorite place in the world, the first being the little mission town I live in right now. (The picture on the left was drawn by Shura following his first surgery in the United States.) He was remarkably talented. As a very young teenager he had had two exhibits at Dom uchenykh (House of Scientists, which recognizes the leading academicians and artists in Russia, at that time the Soviet Union), poetry published in a collective volume, and a television documentary on his life. Shura was unusual in Siberia in that he was alive. Born with spina bifida during the Soviet era in a region with a paucity of antibiotics and no experience with these kinds of neurologic defects, accompanied by extremely harsh winters with temperatures dipping lower than 75 degrees below zero, and into a family of seven children (nearly unheard of in the USSR - the family required two side-by-side apartments in order to accommodate all its members), Shura grew up homeschooled by necessity in a country where such a thing was not only unheard of but also rejected out of hand. To make a long story somewhat shorter, through actions taken by Shura's godmother and me, Shura ended up in the USA for life-saving surgery. Here I was his guardian, and then he moved in with Julie Trudell (see Shura's caregivers below), and then began to live independently in Charlottesvile, Virginia as a chef and artist. While recuperating from his surgeries as a teenager, he was granted a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the youngest person ever so honored. Last January he returned to be with his Russian family, now living in Moscow in the new Russia where antibiotics are more readily available and where Shura hopes to devote full time efforts to his art.

Shura's challenges:
Shura was born with lipomyelomeningeocele, a form of spina bifida, resulting in mild paraplegia (limited to no movement below the knee). He ambulated with crutches and, when allowed, on his knees. Over time, as result of untreated ulcerations that are typically for enervated skin, he developed gangrene in both legs, requiring an amputation of both. Ambulation is now accomplished with prostheses. Although he has a neurogenic bladder, he has refused to self-catheterize. Doctors were able to improve on his bladder functioning sufficiently to allow Shura close to normal bladder control. The lipomyeloneningeocele was not repaired at birth, as is usual in the USA, and until this day remains, now by choice, unrepaired; it has so far created no health damage. Concerns are that repair would result in hydrocephalus, which Shura does not currently have.

Shura's special caregivers:

Shura's family: These were the caregivers who kept Shura alive against all odds and then, when there was no longer any hope of keeping him alive in Siberia, handed him over to a stranger (me), fully trusting God to watch over him. (That faith was surely not in vain!) Shura's mother was a teacher, and she taught Shura at home; he is highly educated in spite of never having attended a regular school. She was also the faith center of the family. She knew that Shura was God's special child, and she made sure that Shura knew: he came to me full of faith. Shura's father, wounded in the war, walked with an energetic limp. A dreamer and printing press owner, he worked tirelessly on behalf of getting his son to the USA, gathering in money from visitors to Akademgorodok world-wide. When he delivered Shura to me, he handed me a large bag of coins and bills from many different countries, not enough to pay for anything of a medical nature but enough to help with clothing and feeding Shura. (Turning that sack of foreign money into dollars took an entire afternoon at Salts Bank, where foreign meant only Mexican -- everything had to be looked up in a book to ensure that the money was real.) A third member of Shura's family was his godmother, who had come to know me when I was lecturing in Krasnoyarsk. Ironically, she herself later developed cancer, and the doctors at the University of Virginia Hospital stepped in to take care of her, too.

Dr. Ronald Uscinski. Yes, the same doctor who played a vital role in the health and well-being of Noelle. Ron read Shura's x-rays and medical records originally and gave me guidance in how to proceed and what was needed medically. He then tirelessly filled out all the paperwork that the US Embassy in Moscow required to bring Shura to the USA three times. It seems that the embassy kept losing it. I had some doubts as to why the paperwork was getting lost, and the final time I noted that a copy of the fax was being sent to a resident of Moscow who could bring hard copy if needed. That took care of that. Hard copy was not needed. After examining Shura himself, Ron also stood by me and Shura when we made the decision not to repair the lipomyelomeningeocele for fear of causing greater damage, considering that Shura had already stabilized with the sac in place.

Julie Trudell. I first "met" Julie when she called me from UVA Hospital to tell me that she had tickets for Shura and me to come to UVA for Shura's surgery and a $500K for his care, all compliments of John Kluge. A mother of a son Shura's age, after our attempt at post-surgical follow-up from California (flying to appointments, instead of driving), she offered to take Shura into her house. Instantly, we had a triumvirate of motherhood: Siberian mother, Californian mother, Virginian mother. Early on, there was transcontinental, transatlantic communication among the three of us. Over time, Julie took on most of the late-teenage parenting. She and I have become like sisters over the past 15 years since that first phone call.

Dr. Vladimir Kryzhanovski. Vladimir simply appeared on the radar one day, telling us he had heard about a young Russian undergoing surgery at UVA. Vladimir was a cardiac surgeon on some type of exchange program at UVA Hospital, and he wanted to help. He was a ready interpreter in the beginning when Shura could not speak English. He inserted himself into the medical decision-making, e.g., insisting that the best kinds of prostheses, not the simplest (considered easier to maintain in Siberia), be made just in case Shura remained in the USA for a while (which he did -- 15 years). He spent hours talking to Shura about Russian and Ukrainian literature and other cultural phenomena, making sure that Shura never forgot his own culture (something he could do far better than I). Later, he helped Julie with parenting issues. (Oh, yes, Vladimir is still in Virginia.) My most vivid memory of Vladimir is the poignant picture of him walking beside Shura's gurney on the way to Shura's first surgery (the double amputation). I had to stop at the point that all parents have to say good-bye to their children, but Vladimir did not. He walked the rest of the way to the operating room with Shura.

John Kluge. Most of John Kluge's contribution is described above. I never met him. Shura never met him. He is now 94 years old and, the last we heard, suffering from cancer. I doubt that we will ever meet him, but Shura did paint a picture just for him. To give and not expect anything in return is true giving. The only requirement that John Kluge made of Shura was that the medical care was to be given at UVA and Shura followed by the Kluge Rehabilitation Center. You see, Mr. Kluge had given money to the hospital before and quite a bit of it. Mr. Kluge not only paid for the medical expenses, he also asked Dr. Gillenwater, who had just retired from the urology staff, to return for one purpose: to coordinate Shura's care. And then, to make sure that Shura was fully taken care of as time went on, he provided periodic money for clothes and painting supplies.


Shura's life has been full of miracles. The first was that he survived. A tethered cord, highly painful and if untreated highly damaging, typically accompanies a lipomyelomeningeocele. That was the second miracle; he has never had a tethered cord. The third miracle occurred when I happened to meet Shura's godmother in Krasnoyarsk and together set into place the series of events that would bring Shura to the USA at a time when the US Embassy was opposed to granting such visas. The fourth miracle was finding John Kluge as benefactor for we had no idea where to get the $50K upfront money that hospitals were requiring, let alone the $500K estimated total medical expenses (actual expenses have been nearly double that). Finding John Kluge was not easy: I had an address given to me my someone quite by chance from Charlottesville, Virginia, home of John Kluge -- except that was not his home; he lived in NYC. Nonetheless, the package and plea I sent to Charlottesville somehow found him in NYC within 72 hours of sending. The fifth miracle was the appearance of Vladimir in Shura's life -- who would have thought that there would be a visiting doctor from the Ukraine (in the former Soviet Union) just at a time when Shura needed translator, doctor-guide, and father figure in his life. The sixth and highly potent miracle was finding the overseer of the INS after a moleibin (Russian Orthodox prayer service) for Shura, a person who no longer attended that church, did not know about Shura's moleibin, and was 100% situated such that he could help with all visa and green card issues (and did); only later did we find out that this person was a convert who had been the recipient of a miracle himself (see Miracles in Real Life).

In the case of Shura, I often wondered, given all the miracles, anyway, why they did not happen faster. (Remember, I was still an atheist at the time, so I just considered it all serendipity, assuming that if there were a God, it would all have happened instantly.) Only now I understand. The journey was clearly more important than the destination. It was not the time for miracles that was needed. It was the time for people to see the miracles and to be part of them, the time to expand Shura's blessings beyond one young man to dozens of people worldwide.

Yes, indeed, Shura’s life has been full of miracles. Where there could have been great sadness, there has been great hope and joy. There has been only one stain on all of this: me. As an atheist at the time that all of this was taking place (Boy, could I make up excuses and shaky explanations for the series of miracles that rolled out before my very own eyes!), I set a poor role model for Shura, and I was, for him, a role model. As a result, he chose to abandon his faith for my atheism. There was logic, in both our minds at the time, for his choice. I was the one, in his mind, who had pulled him from Siberia and saved his life. He really did not understand that I was only the conduit that God chose and that God could have chosen another. Why would God send a strong believer to an atheist or allow that atheist to discourage the faith of His believer? That question, I suspect, will never be answered. I don’t really need an answer. I am just trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to deal with the regret. (It is one of those situations where we know that God forgives us but we find it difficult to forgive ourselves – at least, that’s the way it works for me.) Shura knows of my conversion, and that has puzzled him. Perhaps there is hope for a reversion for him. (Please pray for that.) More important, now that Shura has returned to Russia, where care is at last sufficient for him, he will be living near his parents. I imagine that once again his real mother will take care of his faith.