7 Quick Takes Friday #25

This has been an odd week. Other than in that way I do not know how to describe the week, but perhaps the quick takes, a meme hosted by Jennifer Futwiler at Conversion Diary, will bring the right adjective to mind.

1. Friday was an odd day. At least, the afternoon was odd. My boss gathered together about a dozen people from various levels of responsibilities in various directorates, sending us a cryptic message about the time and place and stating that the agenda would be shared with us upon arrival. Shades of spy novels! I could make no sense of the listing. Most were rank and file from other directorates. From my directorate were two rank and file and I, the head of the directorate. No other directorate heads were invited. It turned out that we are the people that my boss considers the "visionaries" of our organization. He wants to make some radical changes and especially to build strong junior leadership and thinks that we can provide the insights he needs into doing that. I was pleased that there was no concern on his part that having their "big boss" present would silence my employees. It did not. They are used to speaking up, whether I am present or not. It is an interesting assignment. However, having a few chosen ones may backfire in that the larger group may not accept the work of the smaller group. My most useful recommendation, in my opinion, was to spread the wealth and pull in others in small working groups that are topically based. That seed seems to have fallen on fertile soil. Time will tell.

3. Saturday's world was a considerable distance from Friday's. Family fun with son Shane, his wife Lemony, her father Joaquin, and our grandchildren 8-year-old Nathaniel and 1-year-old Nikolina! We all attended a baseball game in which Nathaniel was playing. Poor Nathaniel! He is destined to be a scientist, not a ball player! He whacked away at a t-ball that was set up to help him and finally bunted the ball straight down from the stand onto the ground. "Run, Nathaniel, run!" everyone cried.

He turned around, confused, and asked the catcher (from the other team), "Should I run?" The umpire urged him to go, and he scampered off to first base, arriving just before the ball, heaved by the catcher, dropped into the mitt of the first baseman. Safe! Ultimately, he managed to trot from base to base, home, and then into the bunker. When he emerged from the bunker, there was no longer a tiny little Nathaniel; there was only a walking pile of catcher's gear.

Nathaniel wandered along the fence, caught sight of Shane, and walked over. "Where do I go now, Dad?" he asked. Shane pointed out the catcher's mound, and Nathaniel walked over to it, looking just as confused as he looked when he came up to bat. The pitcher threw out the ball, the batter let it past, and it plopped onto the ground at Nathaniel's feet. Nathaniel just looked at the ball.

"Throw the ball back to the pitcher, Nathaniel," the umpire/referee/coach guided him. Nathaniel bent down and tossed the ball. It plopped back on the ground not far from where he was standing and rolled slowly a short distance toward first base.

Yep, that kid is going to be a scientist, not a ball player. Meanwhile, aren't parents and coaches who are out there to help kids learn and not pressure them to win games great?!

3. After the baseball game, Donnie and I headed out for lunch at Subway while we had our car detailed next door. What a pleasant hour! Once in a blue moon (that hardly ever seen second full moon in a month), Donnie and I get to do one of the ordinary things of life. In this case, the ordinary thing was cleaning our car and going to lunch. Here I must confess to how dirty my car can and does become. After lunch, it was easy to find our car because of its customized back bumper (a huge dent created when I backed into a tree, a story not necessary to repeat here), which I have not fixed because I have had little time, unwilling to spend much money on a vehicle's looks, and, most important, like being able to find my car in a large parking lot of look-alike cars.

4. Sunday was another play day, this time not with family but with a friend from Washington, DC. B-H is a very famous interpreter, having interpreted for the negotiations of most of the international treaties with the Soviet Union and former Soviet Union. B-H walked all over San Ignatio with me and fell in love with our charming town. We concluded the day with a BBQ on our deck, with Donnie behind the grill tongues. Donnie sears a wicked salmon! Add corn on the cob, baked on the grill, and giant russet potatoes, nestled in the corner of the grill, being infused with heat, top it off with mixed, fresh, local berries, and you have a meal fit for a king,or at least for two hungry San Ignatians and their guest.

5. On Wednesday, I spent lunch with an employee who used to work for me directly but was not promoted in step with me and so is now several levels below me. At his occasional prompting, we have lunch together for old time's sake. Slava suggested an Indian restaurant on the peninsula, about a 30-minute drive, and I drove us there. The Indian buffet was great, and I ate too much naan bread, that's for sure. I had a way to wear off the extra calories, however, because it started to rain during the mail. After the meal, as we were leaving the restaurant, the rain turned into a downpour. We waited enough time for the raindrops to achieve definition, and, considering that we would have only a few minutes before they all started running together again, we dashed between the raindrops the three blocks to my car. Whether the absurdity of returning to work dripping wet -- neither of us had brought an umbrella -- or the adrenaline from running, Slava, a close-mouthed, frequently taciturn, introvert, broke into a 20-minute soliloquy about his wife's last days five years ago, a topic about which he never speaks. Moreover, he told me details of the plans about his own burial in upstate New York. I suppose he occasionally thinks in those terms, given that he is in remission from lung cancer. I realized as I let him out that I am likely now the only person who knows these plans and his preferences. With no Californian relatives, he needs to have someone who knows what those plans are. Now he does. Beyond the pragmatic aspects, I felt touched that he would confide in me. What wonders running among raindrops can produce!

6. This Thursday night, as every other Thursday night, I co-taught catechism to the first-year confirmation teenagers at Old Mission Church. Having found out that our young "atheist" was not truly an atheist but simply angry at God for the murder of his aunt and unwilling to listen to direct discussion, I held a competition. Each teenager was given ten minutes to write down as many reasons as they could think of as to why God might let bad things happen to good people. I motivated them by bringing patches of the NASA-RKA (Russian Space Agency), with the 5 teenagers who wrote the most reasons getting a patch. (All the others got a book mark that said: I am one of a kind; I am God's design. Then we all shared our reasons. It was an attempt to get them indirectly to think about things that they did not want to think about directly, and it seemed to work. Of course, my major concern was with our little atheist, who, I was pleased to note, actually wrote down one reason. Hey, one is a start! After that, I talked about how God's time works differently from ours, giving examples of good coming from bad after 15-25 years, using the story of Shura, Noelle, the son of the INS director, and the blind Russian orphan, about whom I have blogged before -- all of which are interlinked, but the links, all told, took about 35 years to be put together. For the first time all year, the noisy teens turned silent, as silent as a muted movie scene. All of them, including the self-pronounced atheist who always has caustic and challenging comments, simply listened, without uttering one word in response. Yet the silence spoke loudly: these kids wanted someone to answer this question for them. I pulled out some additional reasons from Early's book, 21 Reasons Bad Things Happen to Good People, and they leaned forward, clearly eager to catch every one of those reasons. Many of them left in a clearly reflective states. My co-leaders and I are convinced that this lesson was deeply taken by many, if not most, of the teens. Our atheist, as usual, left his study papers behind, along with the bookmark. Sighing, I picked it up to put it back in the package for someone in the future who might appreciate it when I caught sight of the fact that we have to put it in his homework folder instead so that we can return it to him: he had written his name on the back of it. Hah! Caught in the act of showing a little belief!

7. Thursday night, RO stopped by. She is visiting from Alabama. Her office sent her to look at what my organization is doing. While she was not conferring with me, having been sent primarily to work with another directorate, she did spend some time today with one of my middle managers. Last night, though, was my time, our time, together. Donnie made a tasty (delicioso, as they say around here) spaghetti dinner. I don't know what was more pleasurable, the meal or the company. Oh, of course, I do: the company. However, the dinner was good, too!

Wishing you a week of comidas (meals) that are deliciosas!

Thankful Thursday #8

Just a brief few thoughts today about some of the many things for which I am grateful.

1. Noelle was facing possible amputation of her right leg because of a bone infection. Fortunately, a new doctor showed up on the scene a few weeks ago and pronounced that he might be able to surgically eliminate the infection (and bone?) without amputating the leg. So, Noelle was admitted with the view to saving the leg, if possible, and we were quite hopeful that we might end up with some optimistic news. As things turned out, we ended up with better than good news; we ended up quite surprised and grateful. The infection had abated sufficiently that all the doctor had to do was to insert some tubing so that the remaining infection can be pumped out over the next weeks or months. Noelle will be released tomorrow.

2. I planned to go to the hospital in a nearby city for a routine blood test (cholesterol) this morning before attending daily Mass, then dropping in to see Noelle, whose surgery was done, without our being told, a day earlier than planned, i.e. yesterday. (Given the results, we have no complaints about missing the surgery. The important thing is that the patient and doctor were both there and did not miss the surgery. I, however, missed my blood test. I forgot my paperwork, and no one was in my doctor's office to fax the order. This was after fasting for 12 hours! However, as I discussed the problem with the doctor's assistant, trying to avoid the need to drive all the way back to San Ignatio, she piped up with the information that the little part-time clinic here in San Ignatio draws blood from 8-10 on Friday mornings. I confirmed. Yes! I can go in just a little late to work and get the blood drawn here. That will save me lots of time in the future. I love it when mistakes turn out to be so helpful. That is often the story of my life, and for that I am indeed grateful.

3. Today, Lizzie (oldest daughter, then age 11), now a professor of cognitive neuroscience and psychology, put a note for her students and others on her Facebook page about the value of failure for learning lessons and becoming better. Yes! Many years ago, when she was 11 years old, she was a straight-A student, knowing nothing about failure. She excelled at whatever she touched, especially academically. Then, she and I went to Moscow for almost a year, where she studied in Russian schools. When she returned to her advanced 8th grade classroom (where students were all working in 9th grade subjects), she had six weeks of school left. Once again, she excelled at English, French, and all her social studies and science classes, as if she had never left. Two subjects, though, produced major hiccups: math and band. She had studied algebra in Moscow and was quite good at it. However, Russian students learn how to do the calculations before studying the theory, and American students study the theory first. So, she failed her theory tests, surprising the teacher when she got 100% on the only exam, the last of the year, when he introduced the topic of calculations. She had to go to summer school. As for band,she had been only introduced to the parts of the flute when we left for Moscow in October. In April, when we returned, everyone was already playing band pieces. She failed band and was told that participation in high school band was "out." The band director also advised her that holding out any dream of learning to play music was naive since she clearly had no talent for it. Off Lizzie went to summer school, studying algebra every morning, and acing all her exams. Her A from summer school replaced her F from the school year, and she was placed in the college track geometry course for her freshman year, finishing that course, too, with an A. In the afternoons, she practiced her flute. She really wanted to learn to play it, so I advertised for a tutor. A member of the Marine Corps band replied. (We were fortunate that we were living in the Washington DC area at the time.) That man was truly gifted and truly patient, with an unusual teaching style in which he had Lizzie observe him (smart man -- observation first is her learning style), then try to follow suit. By the end of the summer, not only could she play the flute, but she could play it very well. She approached the high school band director and asked to audition. He agreed, then took her into the band. During her high school years, she played flute in the school band, school orchestra, marching band, and drama club pit orchestra. When the band lost both its saxophone players at the end of her junior year, she and her best friend taught themselves to play the sax and switched instruments. At her graduation ceremony, Lizzie was presented the band's Most Valuable Player award for that year. I am grateful that Lizzie learned the value of failure. I am also grateful -- and delighted -- to see her passing the lesson that she learned as a child along to her college students of today.

For what are you grateful?

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

Time for the Birds

This morning as I set out for one of our departments -- I don't even remember what "mission" I was on -- my forward march was halted by the sight of one of the assistant managers, standing by one of the windows that look out onto our atrium.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Look," he said, pointing to a tiny, newly hatched bird, probably a swallow although I am not good at bird identification. "It hatched a few days ago. The mother built a nest in one of the big potted plants in the atrium."

The little bird had hopped up onto the rim of the tall pot. Then, it spread its wings, ascended upward away from us, and bee-lined straight into the opposite window. Stunned, it fell to the ground, then shook its head and wings, and hopped up onto the ledge, sitting there for some time, seeming to try to get its bearings.

"Do you think it is all right?" I asked.

"I think so," he replied. "The parent birds are over in that other corner, scratching for food. I imagine they will see the little one and help, but we had better wait, just in case."

So, we waited. Every ten seconds or so, someone walked past, stopped, and joined us in watching. Soon, we had a small crowd, cheering the little bird on.

There was a feeling of comradeship in that gathering crowd. There was also a sense of time standing still. Work stopped. People talked to each other about the birds, not about missions and messages, not about stress and due-outs, not about quotas and time constraints, but about the baby bird.

Sometimes my work can get quite intense. We support missions in far places, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. We have to be in communication and support our offices in multiple states and countries. Some of the work we do requires traveling extensively. Other times it requires working on weekends and always at least part of the evening. My incoming email can exceed 1000 enotes at any given time; I left work today with 974 unanswered notes that I will have to stay late to answer tomorrow and the next several work days. They are routine requests and requirements that had to take second place to urgent requests for specific kinds of support from the team that we just sent to a war zone. Yes, indeed, work can get quite intense.

Today, however, work stopped. Nothing mattered for a few minutes except one new life, that of a tiny bird. Thank you, little bird, for joining our team.

Some days I really love my job!

Monday Morning Meditation #38: The Power of Prayer

back home, well, with a normal morning in front of me, I am able, after a week away, to return to my regular Monday Morning Meditation post. I don't skip the prayer when I am out of town, but making the post is sometimes not possible because of lack of access to the Internet in some cases when I travel.

This week I stopped in the very next chapter of I Chronicles although I had not expected to, given that Chronicles, on the surface, seems to be a listing of genealogy. Slipped in between the lines of genealogy, however, are some real gems, like last week's prayer of Jabez and this week's discussion of how the the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, which had 44,760 men ready for military service—able-bodied men who could handle shield and sword, who could use a bow, and who were trained for battle, waged war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish and Nodab and won because God "answered their prayers because they trusted in him." I found that last comment interesting.

Reading: I Chronicles 5: 18-22

Meditation: Many times I have run into people, including those in my church, who pray because they think they should, it has become habit, prayer is expected of them, or they are following the lead of others. Maybe because I quietly and inconspicuously as possible slid into the church at a later time in life, I never picked up on the "could," "should", "ought", and "everyone is doing it" of prayer. I would not bother to pray if I thought that God was not listening, would not answer, or was untrustworthy. Clearly, based on this passage, trust is a key ingredient in our relationship with God and with our prayer life.

For me, trust is how I began my relationship with God. At the end of my two-week conversion period (yep, I was stubborn enough to fight it for two intensive weeks), I asked for two miracles if God truly wanted me to believe He exists. The prayer (which at the time I would not even have admitted was a prayer) went something like, "I will believe You exist if You find a job for the employee's wife for whom I have been searching unsuccessfully for a job for months while the family remains geographically separated for nearly four years now, and, while You are at it, if You will heal employee X, who has been out sick three days out of every five for the past six months because of a chronic back problem, I will start attending church." I don't know what I expected to happen. The overwhelming sense of God's 24/7 presence, in my mind, either had to be eliminated as a psychological aberration or I had to yield to that presence, admitting its very real existence, but I was not going to yield without a fight. On the one hand, I thought these people deserved divine help should there be a Divinity. On the other hand, I still had my doubts. (I was a strong doubter.) And perhaps there was a subconscious desire to test whether that presence I was feeling, that God I did not want to admit existed, was a kind God (should He exist, that is). It was an odd period of time in my life, one that I had little control over. God's response was near immediate. When I arrived at work, there was an email to me from the director of another division, saying that he had learned that we had someone on our applicant list whom he could use immediately: the wife for whom I had been trying so hard and so unsuccessfully to find a job. At that point, I realized that the presence (Presence) I was dealing with was not only kind but also very powerful. I re-thought my bargaining about attending church and made a promise: "I will start attending church immediately and trust You to heal the employee for whom I requested help." Obviously, yielding was the only way to go, given what I now understood. And I kept my promise. I have only missed two Masses in nearly four years, one because I was sick and one because I was in a highly Islamic land and could not find a Christian church. As for that sick employee, I really did trust God to heal him, and my trust was not misplaced. That employee worked for me for another eight months and never missed a day of work after that prayer. I see him occasionally even now although he is currently working in another division, and his health remains superb. Trust God? You bet!

That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer, to thank God for being so trustworthy that I can give anything over to him no matter how precious to me, to praise Him for all the miracles He continues to pump into my life, and to repent for those (fortunately, rare) times that I have taken a problem back after giving it to Him. Since I have no petitions this morning, God typically giving me help before I have a chance to ask, I will spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves. (I may have a petition tomorrow morning as Noelle undergoes surgery, but God has watched over her for 33 years and pulled her safely through nearly 40 surgeries, the first 29 years without my asking. I trust Him to take care of her this time, too.)

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.

Sabbath Sunday #19: When God Says No, God Means No

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 -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift.

For this week's post, I chose When God Says No, God Means No, a story of a clash of wills: mine and God's. God won. The story seems appropriate for a Sunday. (The priest in that story, by the way, went into cancer remission for three years, but now he needs prayers again because the cancer has returned.)When

Beyond Why Not Me

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 -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift.

For this week's post, I chose When God Says No, God Means No, a story of a clash of wills: mine and God's. God won. The story seems appropriate for a Sunday. (The priest in that story, by the way, went into cancer remission for three years, but now he needs prayers again because the cancer has returned.)

7 Quick Takes Friday #24

This has been the first "slow" week I have had in months. Being sick slowed me down for four days! Yikes! I am not used to staying in one spot for so long. I am better now, thank God! Here are the "takes" on this week, looking back on those events that did occur. After reading them, head on over to Jennifer Futwiler's Conversion Diary, the host site of the 7 Quick Takes meme, for some interesting thoughts and events of this week from some more folks.

1. Saturday we attended Nikolina's first year birthday party. Well, the immediate family minus me attended it since I was sick and Nikolina still needs to avoid germs, especially foreign ones). More pictures from the party can be found on my Clan of Mahlou blog. There was much to celebrate in addition to Nikolina successfully reaching the end of her first year, with a bright little brain and a chipper little attitude, knowing that while she has many more surgeries ahead, her life is as secure as any of our lives are -- nothing life-threatening ahead, just life-enhancing. After the party, Doah went to church with his friend, Bennie, who works in the Old Mission gift shop. Bennie is always kind to Doah, taking him fishing and entertaining him on other ways; with me being sick, it was helpful to have Bennie on Saturday. Doah loves to go to Mass because Fr. Ed is always good to him. He came to Doah's birthday party, involves him, and always has a hug for him. People like Fr. Ed and Bennie are God's little grace (uh, maybe big graces) to us.

2. On Sunday, I was finally able to drag myself out of bed in the early afternoon. Actually, I started to feel almost normal. I attended our SFO (Secular Franciscan Order) monthly meeting feeling a little guilty because I have pretty much made the decision not to profess. In fact, I have been invited to attend the Carmelites. They meet quite a distance away, and SFO is only a five-minute drive up the hill on the edge of town, but there is a considerable story behind this. I told Part I recently on my Modern Mysticism blog. Part II is still coming because I am still trying to discern where I can better serve God and develop in ways that God would like, and that is not yet clear. After the meeting, I took off (at nearly midnight) for Omaha, where I spent a day of work and then, as I explained in my Tuesday post, commuted back to California. One of my friends wrote the following comment, which I found quite funny, on my Facebook: "Using simple math, you are in constant motion, traveling more than 1 city block every minute of the day. I have to take a nap just thinking about this."

3. In addition to the slow days of Saturday and Sunday, life slowed down again on Tuesday and Wednesday when I found myself sick once again. It was the same germ, coming back for another visit. I did have time to enjoy Fr. Ed's homily at Wednesday Mass, followed by the rosary. That was supposed to be followed by a cholesterol test at the hospital, but I forgot about fasting, so, oops, I will have to go at another time.

4. Wednesday night, after attending Bible Study class, I returned home to find a neighbor visiting. She told us that two gang members from Salts where the police are beginning to round up gangs, which are currently out of control, drove into San Ignatio and took a pot shot at a man walking down the street, hitting him in the leg. We have no local police force, but one of our residents is a deputy sheriff for the county and patrols our streets a couple of times a day. He happened (happened?) to be in the right place at the right time to see what happened and chased the gang members at 100 miles an hour all the way back to Salts a half-hour away (well, I guess it became a lot closer at 100 miles an hour). He ultimately forced them to crash, and when they got out of the car, he arrested them! That will teach them to mess with San Ignatio! It is interesting that the deputy was right where he needed to be. It makes me wonder if God was perhaps protecting His prayer-saturated town.

5. Today was a two-course day (lunches, that is). I first had lunch with a friend from UCLA who happened to be passing through town on the way to a professional meeting in Santa Clara. Several other colleagues from local colleges joined us, as did a former Foreign Service Officer who has recently retired here. We met at the Red House Cafe near the ocean. It was great fun!

6. I rushed away from that lunch to join my staff and our administrative assistant to celebrate Administrative Assistants' Day. One more meal! Now, there's a slow day -- one does not have to be home to have a slow day! It was really a pleasure to be able to take our assistant to lunch, buy her flowers and chocolates, and otherwise spoil her on this one special day since she spoils all of us on the other 364 days of the year.

7. One of the advantages to a slow week is that I got the grading done for the students I taught this semester in Lithuania. They did their finals by Skype (an interesting and successful experience for them -- it is not the first time that I have conducted exams over the Internet). I had been trying to find time to read through their projects, papers, and exams, and finally I had it. I think being sick may have made me somewhat generous. I seem to have ended up with a class with higher grades than the students at the same university in the same course last year.

I wish you all a slow week this coming week. It is a marvelous thing. But I hope you will get the slow-down without the accompanying illness!!

Thankful Thursday #7

Today my brother sent me a story that had been sent to him. Obviously, it originated somewhere on the Internet, but I cannot find it in order to give proper credit. Nonetheless, I will repeat because it is a perfect example of what Thankful Thursday is all about.

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"

"It was great, Dad."

"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.

"Oh, yeah," said the son.

"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.

The son answered:

"I saw that:

- We have one dog, and they had four.

- We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden, and they have a creek that has no end.

- We have imported lanterns in our garden, and they have the stars at night.

- Our patio reaches to the front yard, and they have the whole horizon.

- We have a small piece of land to live on, and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

- We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.

- We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

- We have walls around our property to protect us; they have friends to protect them."

The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are."

Isn't perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have.

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

The Good Side of Being Sick

I guess I was born a Pollyanna. I cannot help myself. Whatever happens, I always see a good side to it, the proverbial silver lining in the dark cloud. So, I suppose it should come as no surprise that I have had a delightful time being sick this past week (other than being annoyed at the physical symptoms that get in my way of completing daily work that requires me to be a human whirlwind).

I apparently caught some kind of foreign bug that would not respond to American medication in the middle of last week. I thought it might have accompanied me on the plane back from Hawaii, but I have learned from one of my managers who recently spent time in Korea and was sick upon return that it looks and acts just like the bug she imported from Korea. So, that may explain why American medicines did not work. I gave up taking them and enjoyed the drama of being sick, something that rarely happens to me. Friday I dragged myself to work and paid the price: I was in bed all day Saturday and most of Sunday. I got better in time to go to our SFO meeting, then catch the midnight plane to Omaha, do a day's work (the human whirlwind kind), and return to California. I got sick again just as the plane landed and spent Tuesday and half of today in bed again. (There seems to be a 36-hour cycle here.) Now, I am well again -- at least as well as I was on Monday.

Some wonderful things happened while I was sick. Among them were the following:

- I got sleep, deep and delicious sleep, a dessert of a kind I rarely taste.

- I got pampered; Donnie went to the store for me; I am usually the one going to the store for everyone else.

- I got pampered again; my managers did all my work for me; every single report got turned in; all the preparations for our team for Afghanistan got taken care of without my involvement; our new organizational chart got produced and forwarded; two of my managers took care of a video conference that I would otherwise have had to attend (together, they were able to cover what I would have contributed); several business trips were arranged; several visitors were briefed; my meetings were convened by others. I was dialed into a couple of policy-changing discussions, and I did run my eyes over that org chart, but for the most part, the senior managers did it all, keeping my informed by email so that I could interact only when awake, aware, and willing.

- With my energy sources replenished as of the middle of the day today, I was able to attend noon Mass and afterward say the rosary with Sr. Maria and some of the retired members of our parish who stay after Mass on Wednesdays for the rosary. (This was the first time they had invited me to join them because they know that whenever I do go to noon Mass, I usually have to run quickly off to work or to some kind of appointment. It is rare that I take a day of vacation, even rarer that I take it on a Wednesday, and even rarer yet that I have not planned it chock-full of errands.)

- I even got my hair cut, and that only happens once every couple of months. When you have a job as a human whirlwind, you have a changing hairstyle as the weeks go on: short, medium, long, longer. I am back to short now, ready for another two-month stint of tilting at windmills and breezing through our distance offices!

- I got to walk in the rain; I suppose I should not have done that, but it so rarely rains here, and I so love to walk in the rain and splash about like a little kid that I gave myself permission to do so! And while I was walking in the rain, I got to hear the town's roosters crow.

Yes, there is indeed a good side to being sick. I found it. Tomorrow I have to return to zipping and twisting through mounds of work, including whatever number of emails have been added to the 1143 that left unanswered when I left, ill, on Friday afternoon. But for today, for me, the world stood still!

Image from ImageChan.com

The Stories of Everyday People

Stuck at home today with a foreign germ picked up recently on travels that I had seemed to tame enough yesterday for my one-day commute to Omaha from California but that raged back full-force this morning after a sufficient amount of sleep to reconstitute my entire body (I went to bed significantly earlier than usual), I have found my mind doing the traveling, instead of my body. So many stories I have accumulated through my travels that I could probably write a multi-volume compendium of them, but I have no time for that. Therefore, I will share just one of those stories, one of many like it that keep me collecting them.

On a recent flight out of the San Jose airport, which is undergoing extensive remodeling, I found myself the only person in line at security. Now, there’s a disconcerting feeling! Where had everyone gone, and if everyone had gone somewhere else, why was I here? I smiled at the TSA agents, who smiled back. (I had my choice of three!) I have often said hello to TSA agents, and they always seem surprised. Not so in San Jose where almost all of them are very friendly.

“Hi,” I said, “Where is everyone?”

“We’re all here just for you,” he responded with a grin. Then he went on to explain the empty airport. They had just that morning moved about 90% of the flights to the newly re-built Terminal A and were in the process of shutting down Terminal C, where I was. My flight was one of the few still flying out of Terminal C, and I had come a bit early, hence, my isolated status.

An incurable extrovert, I talk to all who cross my path —- the guards, the homeless, the janitors. I smile at them all. Maybe that makes me weak-minded. The Russians would say that. In Russian culture, anyone who smiles at a stranger or smiles without cause is considered “legkomyslennyj” (weak-minded, or lit. light-thoughted). Weak-minded or not, I have met some interesting people that way.

Nearly two decades ago, I was waiting for Donnie to pick me up at the small airport near to where we live (not the San Jose International Airport, which is a bit farther down the road), and, learning that he had forgotten about my return, as was his wont at the time, I called a friend to while away the time that I would have to wait for Donnie. My friend being a Russian immigrant, I chatted with her in Russian. As I talked, a janitor remained not far away, sweeping an already clean floor. When I finally hung up, he walked over to me and said in Russian, “Excuse me, I did not mean to eavesdrop, but I could not help doing so. I was wondering when you moved here.”

“In 1989,” I told him.

“Ah-hah, from where?”

I started to see where this might be going, but not quite sure, I answered, “Well, I have lived many places, but I grew up in Maine.”

He looked a little surprised at that and then asked where my parents had come from. Now I was sure that I knew where this was going.

“I am not Russian,” I told him. “I just happen to speak Russian.”

Well, we talked for the remaining 20 minutes until Donnie finally showed up. I learned that his name was Volodya (nickname for Vladimir), that he had a family, and that he had been working as a janitor at the airport for a few months. At the time, I was traveling internationally on a frequent basis (as in every week) to provide consultation on various innovations and problem-solving strategies to ministers of education in a couple dozen countries. Every week upon departure and arrival, I would run into Volodya, and we would chat.

Volodya’s jobs changed at the airport periodically. He was promoted from janitor to baggage handler to ticket agent. Through it all, over the years, our relationship, too, changed. At some point – I don’t recall when – we moved from the “vy” (formal form of address) to “ty” (informal form of address). (In Russian, one is said to be “on vy” or “on ty,” indicating the closeness of the relationship and the amount of impersonality or friendship.)

Then Donnie and I moved to Jordan for 2.5 years, and I did not see Volodya again. Not until Donnie flew home through that same airport. His flight was delayed, and as I was waiting for him, Volodya, now a bigger whig (if one can say that), walked up to me, surprised to see me. I explained where I had been, and we sat down and chatted for the 45 minutes until Donnie showed up.

When I told Volodya that I was traveling less (although one look at my current travel schedule might make one think that this could not possibly be the case), he asked where I was working. When I answered, he gasped, “My wife works there.”

“Well, it is a pretty big place,” I said. “There are nearly 2000 people working there, and only a few hundred work for me. I doubt that I would know her.”

“She works in a special program,” he answered, and named one of the myriad programs I supervise.

“That is in my division,” I responded, somewhat flabbergasted. “What is your last name?” In the ten years that I had been talking to Volodya, I had never thought to ask his last name.

The next day I went to the program office and asked for his wife. I told her that I had known Volodya for ten years and was curious to meet her.

She smiled and said, “Yes, he told me. In fact, he has been telling me for ten years that he knows this American who speaks Russian like a Russian. Now I know who you are.” Then she added, “He is tickled that he is on ty with my boss. He said to me, ‘you two are on vy, but we two are on ty!” We both laughed.

So, I will continue to talk to all who cross my path. They all have stories.

Sabbath Sunday #18: Happy Birthday, Nikolina!

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 -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift.

For this week's post, I chose not an old post, but a new one. Yesterday I posted pictures of Nikolina's first birthday party on the Clan of Mahlou site and thought that BA readers might enjoy them, too. Here you go: Happy Birthday, Nikolina!

Have a blessed Sunday!

God's Lesson on Impatience and Irritation

Yesterday, one of my British friends wrote the following on her Facebook page: "In connection with the dust cloud that has closed UK airports, I have been arrested as police discovered I cleaned my house last week." I can relate to that, considering how poorly adept I am at housework!

I can also relate to the long lines that are going to face all of us who will at one point soon need to travel to Europe and through Europe. I seem to have gotten out of the trip to Jordan next week, but I will be going there in May and others from my office will, for certain, be traveling there this weekend...well, for certain, if the airports in Germany and Amsterdam are open again. One hears that the volcano eruption may continue for weeks, disturbing air traffic for even longer.

So, in anticipation of some jammed planes and resultant long lines, I will try to remember the lesson I was taught recently about impatience and irritation, two emotions that generally accompany long lines, especially in connection with disrupted plane traffic. It came as a result of having to disembark from a plane that had just loaded due to a mechanical problem. The plane was destined for Phoenix, and from there I was to catch another plane to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Everyone had to be rescheduled, and most of us were making connections that we would miss, so the line was long and slow, a couple of hours (!) slow.

A Vietnamese couple in line several people behind me kept pushing, trying to get ahead of those in front of them. “How not American,” I thought, determined to make them take their turn in good American style and sense of rightness.

There were three of them, actually, the elderly couple and a young woman, whom I assumed to be their granddaughter. They chatted away in an Asian language that I did not recognize but later learned was Vietnamese.

As they pushed forward, the elderly man actually elbowed me aside, trying to slide around me as the line began to inch around the twists and turns leading to the ticket counter. I had watched him use this maneuver to leapfrog successfully in front of about a dozen people, one at a time. Now I separated him from his wife and the young woman, and, having stood in line for close to 90 minutes already, knowing that each passing minute lowered the chances of finding a flight from Phoenix to the East Coast, I was decidedly impatient with the process and irritated with someone who felt he deserved to go first. (Of course, I did realize that this was simply his culture; he probably had no idea how Americans, who are raised to take turns, are annoyed by what was a normal jockeying for position in his own land.) Still, having spent time in countries where one must jockey for position or never make it to the counter, I was determined to hold my own place and did, continuing to separate him from the two who were with him.

Feeling uncomfortable about the whole situation, I did what extroverts always do. I struck up a conversation. The elderly couple did not speak English. However, Twi, the young woman, who, it turns out was not their granddaughter but just another line-stander, did, albeit almost unintelligibly. She spoke to the couple in Vietnamese and me in bad English and slowly a picture of each other emerged.

The elderly couple stopped pushing. The four of us were now a group and could proceed through the line together until we were separated into two groups at the ticket counter. The elderly couple took the first open ticket agent. Twi, who had asked me to interpret for her, and I took the second. It is not the first time that someone whose language I do not speak has asked me to interpret. You see, if you work with foreigners a lot, you learn how to speak broken English in a way that they can understand when they cannot understand grammatically correct and well enunciated English, and you learn how to understand what they are trying to say when they know only 1-2 words out of the dozen that they need. So, I interpreted for Twi and got her all set up for her new flight. Since she would have a 6-hour wait, she called her husband to meet for lunch. He would meet her at the baggage claim, where all our bags had been sent.

As for me, I had to go pick up my bag, as well, because my new flight was leaving from another terminal. San Jose Airport is easy to navigate, but Twi was new both to the airport and to the English language, so I offered to walk her over to the baggage claim area and get her on the right curb to meet her husband. After that, I could catch the bus to the other terminal.

As we left the ticket counter, I saw the elderly couple standing by, looking confused. They had just received their new tickets but clearly had not understood anything about what their next step should be. I looked at their tickets; they were on my flight. Twi explained to them that they would have to get their luggage and take a bus to the other terminal. They panicked until they understood that I was on their flight and would accompany them the whole way.

Having crossed the overpass, obtained our luggage, and dropped Twi at the right curb, the couple and I were ready to clamber on the shuttle bus. I stepped up first and threw my bag onto the shelving. Then, I noticed the elderly, stereotypically small, Asian man struggling to lift his bag. Equally small but a farm-raised girl with eight years of military duty under her belt, today I can lift and swing heavy suitcases much the same way as I used to life and swing bales of hay. I hopped back out and grabbed the two suitcases and swung them onto the rack.

We stayed together, minimally communicating, given the lack of a common language, until flight time. They got off first in Phoenix and were muddling through an interpretation of the airport signs when I disembarked, being rewarded with a second chance to help them.

I am sure that day I received a heaven-sent lesson: be kind, be helpful; irritation & impatience are not traits to be developed. I was given a chance to become acquainted with two people whom otherwise would have been only faces in a crowd. How interesting that once we know someone, our attitude dramatically changes for the better. As for them, they were very grateful. “Thank you” was the one American expression they did know, and they used it over and over with me. In spite of the aggravation of disrupted travel, I arrived cheerful, thanks to two people I did not know and whose language I did not speak.

Next time, when faced with long lines at the airport, as is sure to happen in the upcoming weeks, I will try to remember this lesson. I have often been the recipient of the kindness of strangers when I travel. I like it when the shoe is on the other foot, when I can be the stranger who shows kindness. At the end of the day, we are all God's children; we should work together and play together in ways that evidence that we know this to be true.

Monday Morning Meditation #37: The Prayer of Jabez

I moved forward into I Chronicles this week and immediately became somewhat bogged down in the copious genealogy there until I came across the two-verse description of Jabez made famous by Bruce Wilkerson in various publications, e.g., The Prayer of Jabez (Bruce Wilkerson with David Kopp):

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, "I gave birth to him in pain."
Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." And God granted his request.

Reading I Chronicles 4:9

Meditation: I almost hesitate to provide any thoughtful consideration of these verses, given how wildly popular Wilkerson has made the prayer of Jabez. So, what I would like to do is throw out some ideas for consideration to readers and ask for your interpretation.

Q1. Can we take Jabez's prayer out of the context in which it was prayed? Jabez was "more honorable" than his brothers; that seems to be the reason he is mentioned in more detail than the others listed in the genealogy and that may be the reason his prayer was answered. It was a prayer that he would not experience a life that matched the meaning of his name, "pain." We are told that God granted that prayer. I wonder if we can assume, then, that God will answer the prayer of any "honorable" person. There is a thought in the back of my mind that says that this prayer was prayed by this particular person for a particular reason and that God likely answered the plea of this particular person for reasons that He alone know. So, we know that when an honorable man prays, his prayer avails much. Does it make sense to expand beyond this and say that when anyone prays this same prayer, it will avail as much?

Q2. A related question is can we generalize the contents of Jabez's prayer? Jabez asked for a blessing; certainly, I think we can generalize the request for a blessing -- we do it all the time. After that, though, Jabez wants more territory, and in those old days that likely meant land. I wonder if it is really possible, as Wilkerson suggests, to extrapolate from that our right to ask for greater opportunities, power, riches or whatever else we would like to have.

Q3. Does anyone else see something rather selfish in this prayer once it is generalized to the situations of today? At least, as it is presented in much of the popular literature, Jabez's prayer is seen as a good way to "get" something from God. Or am I misunderstanding what Wilkerson is saying? Wilkerson aside, the prayer is all about the self, what Jabez wants, and, if we extrapolate to ourselves, what each "I" wants. It is not about what the group needs or about God's will being done or anything much that would indicate that this prayer is anything more than Jabez wanting to escape a limited future, one filled with pain, based on his name. If Jabez was an honorable man, there were probably many other prayers he said as well, ones less concerned with his own self-interests.

Q4. If God thought that this was the ideal prayer for us to use, why did Jesus give us the "Our Father" prayer to use? The Lord's Prayer is quite different from the prayer of Jabez. It focuses on all of us as a body; it looks to seeing God's will done; it asks for basic survival but we also promise a few things that would make us "honorable," such as forgiving those who trespass against us.

So, then those are my questions to you, which is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to a different kind of prayer, the only kind I am comfortable praying, to ask God to guide me in becoming "honorable," to thank Him for all that I have, to praise Him for the wonderful gifts He gives to all of us, including, at times, miracles, and to repent for those times that I may have been selfish in my prayers. After that, I will spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

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.

Sabbath Sunday #17: Beautiful Churches

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 -- and it gives me more time to spend with God, which is a wonderful gift.

For this week's post, I chose share again some pictures of churches I have been able to visit in my travels. Thank God for churches (and congregations) that are welcoming to visitors for probably about 25% of the time I would miss Mass if I were not to be able to join friends and strangers at other churches. You can read view the pictures here: Falling in Love with Some Special Churches.

Have a blessed Sunday!

7 Quick Takes Friday #22

Amazingly, two weeks have passed since I last posted Quick Takes. Where did they go? This week's 7 Quick Takes, a meme hosted by Jennifer Futwiler at Conversion Diary, will therefore include events from the past week as well as from last week.

(1) The week (not this past week, but last week, the one I did not blog about because I was taking a week off from blogging for Easter) began on Monday with a near-deja vu experience. As I drove into the parking lot in my office a parade of five wild turkeys marched across the intersection where I was stopped at a stop sign. As I patiently waited for them to finish crossing -- all of them proud males -- from the skies parachuted a flock of hens, like fans following movie stars. The females landed and landed, and then scampered and scampered, chasing after the handsomely attired males, who seductively spread their tails so expansively that all but their legs were hidden. The experience reminded me of the rooster in San Ignatio the previous week who had held me up for several minutes. In both cases, I was late to a meeting. I can certainly come up with unique excuses. More important, these kinds of things slow down my life, and that is a good thing.

(2) The highlight of the past two weeks was attending Good Friday Mass at Old Mission, where I belong. I was supposed to go to San Antonio on Maundy Thursday. On Friday, I was to attend Mass at San Fernando Cathedral. I was supposed to, and I was resigned to doing it. Somehow, though, my travel schedule had devolved into working on Good Friday. I was not happy about it, but, as I told the senior manager traveling with me, as long as I could get away for Good Friday Mass, I was willing to limit the amount of my complaints, or at least the volume of them.

That was before he was told by our local director that the only time she could gather staff to meet with me was during one or another Mass time. This was definitely not going to work, and I did not limit either the amount or volume of my complaints. “Look,” I told the senior manager, “you are going to be combining business and pleasure there, anyway, since your family lives there, so why don’t you do the briefing for me. That provides legitimacy to your trip, and it allows me to return Thursday night from Ohio and be home on Good Friday, where I can attend Mass at Old Mission.”

He agreed. He agreed! I knew the briefing would be difficult for him, and I, as his supervisor, may still have to go back to field questions that arose and to prove that I do care about the people at our satellite offices, but I got to spend Good Friday at Old Mission.

I felt so gifted! I wanted to lift up my eyes unto the green hills that surround San Ignatio. I want to hear the local roosters voluntarily participating in the passion play as they do every year, right on cue with their crowing. I wanted to kneel on the uneven floor of the 200-year-old mission with its paw-printed tiles that took so long to bake in the sun that foxes, bears, rabbits, and all manner of God’s animals scampered across them and were memorialized in the floor, as were a couple of people buried under the floor whose stories are no longer known but whose names and years are printed on special tiles inset into the floor. That’s where I wanted to be. Large, beautiful cathedrals with huge crowds do not attract me. Our simple church with our parish cat, Sula, sitting on a pew between parishioners (whichever ones she deigns to grace with her presence that day), the feeling of being in a place that has been soaked in prayer, and sharing the sorrow and exultancy of the Triduum with friends are what attracts me. And I was able, after all, to be there.

And there is always Phinean, Fr. Ed's adopted, previously feral, black cat. On Good Friday, as if on cue, Phinean appeared from nowhere, trotted down the aisle before anyone had a chance to stand up and move forward for the veneration of the cross, approached the cross and, really truly he did this, crouched beside it, as if he he were venerating it, then turned and faced the congregation. (People talked about that all weekend; obviously, we do not live in a high-crime or politically exciting area!) Fr. Ed did not say anything. He has come to expect such behavior from Phinean, who also spends entire days sleeping in the Christmas creche every December. He told us long ago that Phinean has a right to attend Mass because he is a Catholic cat! (Not to be outdone, Sula attended Easter vigil, sitting quietly and humbly in one of the back pews beside some chosen parishioners.)

(3) Last week, before Easter, I spent the week on a business trip at Ohio State University in Columbus. I was accompanied by two peers, my counterparts who direct other divisions in our organization. One of them, a woman about my age whom I will call Patricia (not her real name), was on the same flights with me, so we had the rare opportunity to pass the time in chatting, rather than involved in work tasks. She and I have known each other for 20 years but have never talked about anything of a spiritual nature. I guess the topic came up because of my refusal to travel to San Antonio, it being Good Friday. It turns out that she is also Catholic, but more than that, she is a Third Order Carmelite and Formation Director for the local Carmelites. Now, to understand how amazing this is, one needs to know that I have been in formation with the Secular Franciscan Order for three years but have not professed. My personal spiritual experiences have been more Theresian than Franciscan. Moreover, I had just come out of an intensive period of discernment and what I believe to be divine tasking with the Franciscans, a story that is too long to share here but about which I am preparing a post for my Modern Mysticism blog. Just two weeks earlier, I had achieved peace with the situation, deciding to leave the Franciscans -- thank God, I had not professed because any profession would have been my choice alone under the pressure of friends; I have not felt God leading me to profess -- and explore an association with the Carmelites. That is where I really think God is leading me in spite of my comfort with the modest Franciscan lifestyle. However, at first I had some doubts because I could not find any local Carmelites. I tracked down the coordinates of a group 20-30 minutes north. The phone numbers did not work out. So, it was quite extraordinary for me just to happen into this conversation with Patricia, whose group is located 30 minutes south of where I live and in the same place where I work. I should have learned by now that very little truly just "happens." I will be attending my first Carmelite meeting in two weeks!

(4) Columbus was a great place for me to be because my brother Rollie and his family (three sons, two of them married with children) live there and in the outlying rural area around Columbus. My sister Victoria lives in nearby Michigan, so she brought her younger son and came to Columbus (the rural part) for a family cookout, hosted by one of my nephews. I met both nephews' wives for the first time and their children (two little boys and a girl). Both wives are named Jane! And they are both delightful people. My nephews chose well. My niece once removed, 5-year-old August, was delighted to meet a new, big-kid, relative, and we chased together around the house and yard, playing. I found interesting differences in political opinion with my brother and sister who represent middle America much better than I do, but we are the 8-pack. Those differences are unimportant. We laughed a lot, reminisced, and enjoyed each other's presence for the first time in, ulp!, seven years!

(5) On Easter Sunday, it was time with the immediate family. Shane and Lemony had already made plans to celebrate with Lemony's family, so Donnie and I gathered up Noelle and Doah, and off we went to Hometown Buffet in Salts for Easter brunch, which was bound to be a better deal than trying to eat something I might attempt to cook. Although we had not been there in two years, mainly because Doah, the most inveterate Hometown Buffet fan, moved to San Jose two years ago. Nonetheless, Doah and Donnie are unforgettable (compared to easily forgettable me who blends in with any group anywhere), and the manager very seriously told Doah that macaroni and cheese, Doah's downfall, had been removed from the menu. When he saw Doah's crestfallen face, he exclaimed, "April Fool's!" Doah carries April Fool jokes well into the ensuing next months, and the manager had remembered that. Needless to say, it was a pleasant experience, even for Noelle, who has been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster since Ray died. Of course, we killed our diets, but I am sure we will recover. Interestingly, we all take different approaches. Doah walks; I count calories; Lizzie (living and working now in South Carolina) spends hours at the gym with a trainer; Donnie does a lot of techno voodoo in determining foods and amounts; and Noelle just shakes her head in wonderment. However, all of us have lost weight, so we shall continue on our separate paths toward the same goal.

(6) Back at work on Monday (for one day before leaving for Hawaii), I confirmed that I had not been fired for refusing to go to San Antonio on Good Friday. I also found out that the world goes on without me. The presentation in San Antonio was fine without me. While I was out, we had to find three people to send to Afghanistan immediately to help with some work there. My assistants identified one already working for us who was willing to go and found two among applicants to work for us who would also be willing to go there. Actually, we all have to be willing to go there. One of my senior managers went there last month, and once we get an office in place there, I will also need to go there. I am not the one who sets up these things; my senior managers do that. However, I do have to provide quality control, so ultimately I get to travel (willingly or unwillingly) to all our remote locations. Actually, Afghanistan sounds interesting, and I have already started to learn a few Pashto words. (At least, I can read the alphabet; it is the Arabic alphabet plus three letters.)

(7) Now I write from Hawaii, where the rain has been playing havoc with the Internet. As the plane lifted off from San Francisco on Tuesday, we left behind the scalloped coastline of California, passed over a seemingly endless expanse of blue -- not sky but ocean, and then finally descended into thick mounds of white cotton candy, which turned into a white stew with whispy vapors and ultimately gave way to sparkling ground covered in and surrounded by water. Yes, we had landed on the currently wet island of Oahu. Given the rain that has had me stepping in a lot of puddles, a fickle Internet, and the fact that I left my briefing material back in California, I have had every right to be very frustrated, but something happened when I gave up frustration for Lent. I learned the triggers that cause me to become frustrated and for the most part I can now avoid them or refuse to let them be triggers. So, I did not become frustrated, but washed my shoes in puddles, took a long walk for health reasons while trying to find my way to my room and getting hopelessly lost, recalled how one briefed without powerpoint in the old days, and otherwise felt grateful for the opportunity to be more creative and more health-oriented. Yeah!

For a Few Silver Coins

Once a man heard about a place where people worshipped a tree.

"These people are under a delusion. They have replaced the glory of the transcendent God, the secret of all that is alive, with a mere tree? I must save them from this path. I must cut down this tree."

And so the man climbed on his horse and headed towards the tree. When he got there, he picked up his ax and began to strike at it. People ran to him, yelling:

"Stop. This is our most sacred tree."

But everyone who tried to push him away from the tree failed. He was simply too strong and too determined. When everyone was about to give up, an old man approached him and said:

"Listen my friend. The truth is that you have severely surprised these people. They are all very devoted to this tree and they will be very hurt if they see it cut down today. However, if you were to wait just till tomorrow, they will be far more prepared mentally to see their special tree cut down. Meanwhile, here is a bag of silver coins. It's not a bribe of course. Give it away in charity or use it for some good purpose. Then come back tomorrow and you can cut down the tree. I promise it will still be here waiting for you."

The old man's words seemed very convincing. After all, what would a day possibly change? And as for the silver coins, it's true, he could think of many good ways to spend them.

And so he returned to his town. First, he used a few silver coins to help an old widow he knew. But later, he began to use the coins to buy meat, milk and honey.

"Its ok," he would comfort himself, "I'm simply trying to stay strong and fit so I can perform good deeds."

When the last silver coin was spent, ten days after he had taken them from the old man, he decided he would now return and cut down the tree. When he arrived, he found the old man along with others prostrating to the tree.

"Move away," he screamed. "The time has come for your tree to be cut down."

But no sooner had he said these words, when a woman approached him and pushed him to the ground. Surprised, the man stood up again and waked towards the tree. This time, a child, no older than seven, approached him and pushed him to the ground. Suddenly, everyone appeared to be stronger than him, far stronger than him. The faces that only ten days ago were full of fear were now full of contempt.

"Cut down our tree? Who do you think you are to cut down our tree?"

"We'll cut your head off if you try this again!"

But the words of the old man echoed within him the most:

"There is nothing weaker than that which can be stopped with silver!"

-----------------------
The above story is excerpted from a book, Metaphors of Islamic Humanism, by my friend, Dr. Omar Imady, copyright 2005. I have previously shared excerpts from this book: Destiny!?? and The Angel in the Desert.