Monday Morning Meditation #43: Numbering the Army

I Chronicles, as I continue through it, provides lists and lists of all kinds of various things (actually, people and duties, mostly). I stopped at the enumeration of people for the Army since that seemed appropriate for today, Memorial Day (well, the designated holiday; yesterday was really Memorial Day, and the actual date always stays with my because my daughter, Noelle, was born on that day, making Memorial Day, the real one, a double festivity).

There are two sections to the enumeration of Army personnel: the actual counting in verses 1-22 and then the comment in verses 23-24 that God was not pleased with the counting since He had promised that he would make Israel's numbers great, i.e. David should have trusted that and not felt a need to count. Here are those verses:

David did not take the number of the men twenty years old or less, because the LORD had promised to make Israel as numerous as the stars in the sky. 24 Joab son of Zeruiah began to count the men but did not finish. Wrath came on Israel on account of this numbering, and the number was not entered in the book [a] of the annals of King David.

Now, having reproduced those verses, which are probably the most important two in this passage, for reflection and meditation, I chose not to concentrate on them although to do so would be time valuably spent. Instead, this being Memorial Day, I chose to concentrate on the enumeration of individuals and officers in the Army.

Reading: I Chronicles 27: 1-23.

Meditation: I chose to meditate on the enumeration, beyond noting the fact that this enumeration was not pleasing to God, because it reminded me so much of my Army days, about which I have spoken little in this blog. Today, however, being Memorial Day is an appropriate time, it seems to me, for both reflection on those days and meditation on this listing. Anyone who has served in any Army is likely to have felt like any individual on David's list: one fighting unit among many, the individual himself or herself disappearing into the unit. For safety and effectiveness, that is the way it must be. The unit must be one team, and especially during training, that is the way I felt, the way we all felt: we each had our role but our importance as individuals was secondary to the mission.

Our importance as individuals to each other, however, was significant. Anyone who has served, or anyone who has watched such movies as Saving Private Ryan, understands why many comrades will give their lives to save just one. It is not economical. It is not logical. It is simply the way it is when you live and work together with people upon whom you depend for life, safety, comradeship, and sanity. It has been more than 20 years since I left the Army, but the friendships developed there are just as deep today as they were during the days I was serving. Last year I attended a conference in Austin, Texas where a married couple, both former comrades in arms, literally, now live. We had not seen each other for ten years, but we simply began the conversation where we had left off, as if not a day had parted us. That is the way it is with Army buddies. A dozen years ago, we got a phone call from an Army comrade who was passing through our part of California, had no place to stay with his family while conducting a few days of business in our town, and had heard that we lived there. He found us, called, and within a couple of hours, we had rearranged our house so that he, his wife, and son could have our master bedroom suite for the week, and Donnie and I moved in to bunk with our kids. Indeed, that is the way it is with Army buddies. The experience is never completely in the past.

I never planned to enter the Army. That was an "accident." I accompanied Donnie on a trip to check out the possibilities of his entering the Army as a photographer. Long story short, I ended up in, and he did not. Like most of my life, which I do not seem to get to plan but for which I can tell, later, there has been some Divine plan or intention, my Army days have been very important to me later in my career. Not necessary, but very important for my understanding of many things, including the importance of people (and buddies). God's plan, not my plan, gave me, a T (thinking type, MBTI scale), the emotional softening and the understanding of the importance of being unimportant that would help you in many of my civilian jobs.

When I was 18, I thought I had a plan for my life. None of it has been realized. However, the journey I have been pushed along, dragged along, and enticed along has been far better than anything I could have planned -- including my days in the Army.

That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer to thank God for doing my planning for me, to praise Him for His ability to bring to all of us the experiences we need to have in order to become more like He would have us be, to repent for those times that I have chafed against the directions in which He has pushed me, and to ask Him to watch over every one of our service members on this Memorial Day and bring blessings to the families of the fallen. Now I retire to 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 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 #23: Robbed Again!

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.

Since Padre Julio was recently in town, I happened to look through past posts about him and came across one that might be helpful to share one more time. It is about Padre's being robbed. While living in the USA, he was robbed more than once -- something I understand since that has happened to me, too. I am happy to report, though, that Padre Julio, now in Chula Vista, California, was able to get his school in Palomar, Colombia up and running during his 2009-2010 return there. (You can read more details about that on his website: Por Amor a Los Ninos de Colombia.) Here is the post: Robbed Again!

Wishing you a mundane, calm week without robberies or anything that might cause any perturbation!

7 Quick Takes Friday #29

I have been traveling all day. Actually, more accurately, I have been traveling for 27 hours. It was supposed to be longer, but when I noticed that my London-Los Angeles trip required me to clear customs in San Francisco, then get on the plane, go to LA, wait and get on another plane for San Jose, just minutes from San Francisco, I talked to the United representative about cutting my trip short in San Fran, which is really only one hour from home. (I would have traveled for another 7 hours within the state of California. I think I will have to have a chat with my admin assistant when I see her, which will not be until mid-June because of more travel ahead of me!)

My Jordan

It would be a shame to be here in Jordan and not share something about this remarkable land. The picture above is taken from my hotel window in Sixth Circle. In it, you can see how the white stone buildings stretch on and on and on. No picture, however, can provide the feeling of standing anywhere in the city of Amman and seeing the seven hills strewn with houses that, for the most part, look little different today from what they have looked like for time immemorial. Even more difficult for a photograph to show would be the feeling that many report, the one I felt a little more than six years ago when I came here for the first time: a sense of belonging. Not to the city; the belonging is greater than that. Not to the country; the belonging is greater than that, too. Not to the land, for the belonging is greater than even that. The belonging is more than simply to a place, it is to a time. And it is more than to a time; it is to all time. As I stood for the first time, looking out over the ancient hills that comprise and surround Amman, the sand and dust beyond that will eventually turn into the Wadi Rum desert, the crumbling stone artifacts that represent the old Roman Ampitheater or the Citadel, the modern cars that swoosh past with seeming oblivion to the holiness of this land, and the people dressed in anything from total-cover garb that goes back to the days before those modern cars and modern buildings to Western t-shirts and jeans, one suddenly understands where one belongs in this life. Amman joins the past, the present, and the future into one time. Where one belongs is in the middle of this mixture, in the "now." We all have a place in this universe; it just can be felt a little more strongly and a little more clearly in Amman than in any other place on whose soil I have trod. Many visitors have told me that they have felt the same thing.

I suppose there are other cities in the Middle East that might awaken similar feelings. Damascus is one of them. I have been there. It is a great, ancient city, but the lightness of the stone in Amman and the lightness of being that it awakens is, for me, more comforting, more enticing.

There are some wonderful places in Jordan besides Amman. Most are fairly well known, but just in case, let me share my favorites and the reason for that.

There is, of course, the Dead Sea. I have a special relationship with the Dead Sea for in 2004, when I first visited it, my arm had had been bleeding every day for more than two years from a dermatofibroma. A cancer surgeon had done a biopsy and declared it benign, but it created a malignant mess on all my blouses. After swimming (or bobbing) in the Dead Sea, I fell asleep under the warm, soothing sun, awakening only when the sun climbed higher into the sky and began to bake me like a pie, literally, for by that time, the salt and minerals had encrusted me. Itching from salt on skin, I walked over to one of the many spigots available on the beach and washed off all the salt I could find. I was still partially encrusted and decided to take a shower in the hotel day room that friends and I had rented on the beach. After a leisurely, cool shower, I noticed quite by chance that there was no blood on the towel. There was always blood on the towel after a shower. I looked at my arm. What the heck! I could not find the dermatofibroma. I trotted over to the mirror for a closer and fuller look. By golly, it was gone. All gone! No sign that it had ever been there. Unbelievable! So, indeed, I will always have a special relationship with the Dead Sea.

Then there is the great desert of Wadi Rum. One can easily understand why the Israelis were lost here for 40 years whether by Divine plan or simply by the nature of the terrain. Watching the Bedouin navigate the sand dunes in their contemporary four-wheeled vehicles is quite a contrast: the land of old and the people of new. Not that new, though. Many old traditions remain. I love Wadi Rum. I have a special relationship with the desert, as well as the sea, for Donnie and I spent a blissful week living with Bedouin desert dwellers during the Eid of 2005. Donnie would spend early morning and evening hours photographing the desert at the time when it was most fully clothed in splendid colors while Sabah, the youngest son in the Bedouin family, would lie on the desert sand, watching him, not moving so as to encourage the birds that would gently settle down near us to stay just a little longer, and marveling at the caravans of riderless camels making their way back home to their Bedouin owners. I particularly adored the baby white camel that Sabah's parents owned. I knew that some day she would grow up to be as ornery, even vicious, as the camels that we were gazing upon from the safety of our piece of desert sand, but for now I enjoyed her willingness to let me sit nearby and observe her relaxing in the sun and chewing on grass, completely oblivious of any needs except those of nature.

Other places for which I have a special fondness in Jordan include some of the expected places: the Red Sea, Jerasch, Mount Nebo, the Madaba Church, but not Petra. That is only because I have not been to Petra (I know; that is scandalous), but Donnie has and is love with that place. I would provide some additional pictures and words for those places, but I am out of time and space, so I will leave to your imagination, if you have not visited this charmed and charming land, just what is so special about each of them. (Oh, uh, yes, there is always Wikipedia if you cannot stand not to know!)

My Secret Failure That No One will Believe

My dirty little secret failure that no one will believe? Procrastination! I suppose no one wants to believe it because I seem to do a lot. Actually, I cannot deny that a lot of things do get done, in some fashion, in my life, especially when I start to tote up totals for Jennifer Fulwiler's 7 Quick Takes Friday. Nonetheless, I, and only I, know that I could tons more if I did not put things off until the last minute and sometimes put them off until they become OBE (overcome by events).

Take this current trip to Jordan, for example. I put off packing until 3:00 of the morning I had to leave. I grabbed my passport without looking at it. When I arrived at the airport in Amman, I looked for a clean page for the visa stamp before handing the passport over to the immigration official. Yikes! Only two pages - one to get me into the country, one to get me out, and no pages for arriving in the USA. Hm. I am curious what will happen upon arrival there! Frankly, I am not that curious. I am going to have to give up Wednesday morning at work and go the US Embassy. Hopefully, my predicament will be sufficient to get them to sew additional pages into my passport overnight. (This is getting ridiculous; my passport is only half-way through its term, and I am on my third set of 26 pages.) If my predicament does not touch hearts, then hopefully my begging and wailing will.

Then today, I could have done all kinds of things, including taking a trip to the Dead Sea with my students, but I put it all off. I kinda like having a day that is truly "off," and I have been to the Dead Sea before, actually experiencing the healing of a long-term dermatofibroma, a benefit of those Dead Sea minerals. However, I missed the day, in general. Oh, yeah, I read personal emails, let my office know that I could not reach my work mail because for some reason my work-assigned Blackberry is not working in this country, got some numbers I will need to deal with the bank tomorrow morning when I have to explain that its ATM machine ate my bank card last night. A few things like that, but nothing significant. Well, I did read and edit the first half of the manuscript a friend gave to me upon arrival. An interesting book, and I am glad I did spend some time with it, but I also spent too much unstructured time to make someone who tests as J on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator satisfied.

If this were just one time, I would pass it off as a small deterrence from normal behavior, but, unfortunately, it is a trait that colors my life. I could have done so much more in the Soviet Union (which no longer even exists) and the other 22 countries where I have worked upon occasion if I had made better use of more of the minutes there. Maybe that is a J talking, and maybe I am just being realistic and honest.

Take my cooking. There's another area where I deceive people. They think that I am a bad cook. That's probably not exactly true. I am a procrastinating cook. I wait until I hear the boiled eggs explode before checking on their progress -- and finding the whites all over the floor, the yolks clinging to the ceiling, and the pan, irregular hole burned in the center, smoking enough to set of the alarm. Oh, yeah, it was the alarm that pulled me away from whatever else I was perseverating with in order to check on the eggs, obviously quite some time after the timer had gone off and I figured it would be "safe" to wait "just a few more seconds." The Christmas ham received similar treatment, ending up with a black crust and no meat. I suppose, then, that I cannot blame my daughter-in-law for not allowing me to be in charge of family Christmas dinners.

And now here is a primary example right in front of my eyes. I have procrastinated long enough in preparing this post that I am going to have to do the actual posting later or I will be late in meeting friends downstairs in the lobby for a night out on Independence Day in Jordan. Oh, wait, it's too late not to be late!

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And now I have returned from a lovely evening of conversation with tried-and-true Jordanian friends at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the city of Amman as the meal was served in measured Arab style, with Jordan Independence Day fireworks exploding in the background somewhere along the outer hills of the city -- seen but not heard. As usual, I lucked out with my tardiness since Arab culture assumes being late as normal, as long as it is not much more than 20 minutes. I was ten minutes late, and my friends arrived five minutes later, so becoming none the wiser about my bad habit of procrastination.

There is help for me, I think. I could ask God to help me get over this procrastination problem, but I keep forgetting to do that, uh, putting off making that request, uh, procrasting about it!

Monday Morning Meditation #42: Chosen To Prophesy

I Chronicles is an interesting litany (chronicling, if you will) of the tribes and people of Israel and the generations of off-spring and what they did. In all these listings, one in particular caught my eye. I found it in Chapter 25, Verse 1:

"David, together with the commanders of the army, set apart some of the sons of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun for the ministry of prophesying, accompanied by harps, lyres and cymbals."

The rest of the chapter lists the individuals selected and their families. Few details are given about them or any indication provided as to why they were the chosen ones.

Reading: I Chronicles 25:1

Meditation: This was truly a puzzling verse for me, and after reflection, it remains puzzling. Up until this point in the Bible, it seems that God selected the prophets, sometimes not even in keeping with what they would have preferred to do. Now, we are told that David selected individuals for the ministry of prophesying. That raises some questions for me that I do not know how to begin to go about answering, including

(1) How did David know whom to select?

(2) How was it that these three families were prolific producers of prophets?

(3) Were these really prophets or some other ministry related to prophesizing that was part of a worship serve?

Asking these questions led me to another set of questions related not to David's time, but to our own:

(1) Leading evangelists, especially those with large congregations, are often taken as modern day prophets; are they really? (The Oh, God! Movie comes to mind here, where God instructs John Denver to tell what of the leading evangelists that He is not happy with his profit-oriented "ministry.")

(2) How can we tell when the word that is coming to us through others is the Word of God and not a result of someone being human, misled, or deliberately used by a negative power?

(3) How can we, as individual believers, know that what we sometimes "hear" from what we think is the Holy Spirit or even that locutions (for those who receive them) are truly from God? (In the absence of any other confirmation, the latter always send me scrambling to a priest for interpretation.)

So, I will pass along these questions to you and hope for some enlightenment from the blogging world. I clearly understand not clearly this time and especially with this verse.

That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer to thank God that He does send prophets to us and in other ways shares with us what He would have us know and do, to praise Him for His ability to reach through the "cloud of unknowing" to His often confused people walking the earth, to repent for those times that I have been deceived by false prophecy and my willingness to listen without questioning (fortunately, that does not happen often since I am a skeptic by nature), and to ask Him to help me see and understand more clearly what it is He would have me know and do. Now I retire to 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 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 #22: Stand Back and Let God Work

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.

The post I chose for this one was not written by me but by a guest poster, Anne Bander. I was touched by the post at the time that she wrote it. It still touches me, and I hope it will touch you. Here it is: Stand Back and Let God Work.

Let us all commit to doing as Anne recommends at least for the coming week -- stand back and let God work.

God's Inscrutable Timing

As promised in the Quick Takes two weeks ago, here are the details on the "medical event" that took place with Fr. D. It happened partially during and then after the daily Mass in San Ignatio.

I had taken the day off from work, but that does not mean that the day was quiet. In the middle of running around, I acquired a modicum of quiet, at least initially, by taking time out to attend noon Mass.

Fr. Ed was out of town, so Fr. D, who is assigned to a parish in a town about 15 miles away, came to celebrate Mass. When Fr. D came into Mass, he seemed to be having some difficulties moving and breathing, but since he has some kind of impairment (from childhood polio, I think), we did not pay much attention to it until he could not hold the wine still. Sr. Maria was present and went forward to help him. He apologized for not feeling well, and let Sr. Maria and one of the parishioners finish the Eucharist.

He then finished Mass and disappeared into the sacristy. Two people followed him in. One was an out-of-towner who had attended Mass with a group of school children visiting the mission. It turned out that he was an EMT. He was concerned, but not local, and when Fr. D insisted he was okay, the EMT emerged from the sacristy, saying that Fr. D did not want help. He left.

Theresa was right behind him, and I was right behind her. Two mothers. They are more difficult to push away than an EMT. Theresa offered to take Fr. D to Hollister to the hospital. He declined her offer, saying that he felt okay, that it was just a pinched nerve or something that was causing the left side of his body to be temporarily paralyzed. (That is "feeling okay"???!!!)

Theresa was about to leave when I spoke up, saying that I would take his car back to his parish if he let her take him to the hospital. He said that he did not want to be a bother. Well, mothers don't listen to those kinds of answers. They have heard them lots of times before with their little boys (and big boys). "That's why you have a parish," I objected.

He hesitated at my words, and I knew I had him. I held out my hand. "Please, let me have your keys," I insisted as only a mother can. He dutifully handed them over to me, explained what his car looked like and how to work it. I left to go home to get Donnie, so that he could drive Fr. D's car and I could follow in our car so that I had a way to get home. When we got back to the mission, the ambulance had arrived for Fr. D. Apparently, he had had another episode. As it turned out, he needed surgery.

I shudder to think what would have happened if he had driven back on his own. The chances of him making it back safely were pretty close to nil. Thank God I was off work and was there to help. (Oh, that was probably God's plan all along!)

I was off because Noelle was having surgery. The surgery had been planned for Thursday, the day that all of this happened. However, the surgery had been done successfully on Wednesday (details can be found at Clan of Mahlou), so I had time to attend Mass and then visit Noelle -- and Donnie and I did, after helping out with Fr. D's needs (something we would not have been able to do had the surgery taken place on the day planned).

That kind of remarkable timing is something I have seen on many occasions. Sometimes it is on a far grander scale for God's time is not our time. His timing, however, is impeccable. This is something I have tried to explain to the teens in my catechism class who figure that a prayer not answered five minutes after it has been made is an unanswered prayer. I like to use the real life example of Shura to help them understand the scope upon which God works. (Of course, they are only teens with an even more limited understanding of time than adults, so it is difficult for them to grasp the concept of limitless and unboundaried time, but some do).

Fifteen years ago I became aware of the needs of Shura, a dying child artist in Siberia. He had spina bifida, which could not be cared for in there. So, through the intercession of many people, I brought him to live with me in the USA and found a billionaire to pay for his medical care. (Easier said than done, as you can probably imagine -- lots of miracles along the way made it possible.)

I was able to open my home to Shura because I understood spina bifida and spoke Russian. That is because fifteen years before Shura came to live us, my daughter Noelle was born with spina bifida, and ten years before that I had been somehow "drawn" to begin studying Russian, becoming quite fluent by the time Shura came into our lives.

One of the people to help Shura was the then-overseer of the INS, who just happened to show up at a pre-surgery moleibin (special Russian Orthodox prayer service) and was subsequently able to help us in some times of definite need. He was there because many years earlier (30 or so), his son's blindness was miraculously cured on the spot by a weeping icon and the whole family converted to Orthodoxy.

Now, exactly 15 years after Zhenya came into our lives, the director of Orphan Cry, an American organization helping orphans in Russia, learned about Shura's story from stumbling across it when he did a search for my name on the Internet. Now, that does not typically happen. I tried the same search and finally found the article on the 40th page of results! The director had found it right off. Odd? As it turned out, Katya, a 19-year-old orphan, was losing her eyesight to brain tumors and wanted to die with her brothers who had been adopted by a family in New Hampshire. I was able to provide some help with getting a visa -- again, miraculous timing with all key players being in Moscow on the same day in August without any one of us conferring with the others in advance -- and the director was able to find medical care for free; the doctors involved, after looking at Katya's CT scans, confidently told the director that they were pretty sure that they could operate successfully on the tumors and Katya would be coming here to live, not to die. This plan is now being put into place one step at a time.

Analyzing all those amazingly interlocked actions and people numbs the mind. If any one of them had been out of place, either or both of these two Russian teens might well have died.

And then there was today. Everyone in the right place at the right time with the right skills to take care of people God whom is watching after. What human being could ever organize such microcosmic elements on such a macrocosmic scale?

7 Quick Takes Friday #28

Oh, my, it is time already for some quick takes to share with you and with Jennifer Futwiler, who hosts this meme over at Conversion Diary. Rather than share the events of my life this week, I thought, given that the events were rather sporadically clustered, that I would introduce the people in my life who were associated with the events of the week. Most of them pop up periodically in my life. So, here goes, in alphabetical (sort of) order:

Anne is my neighbor in San Ignatio. She is a retired high school English teacher with a a master's degree in theology, among other things. She is also a good cook, who knows her way around my kitchen better than I do! When she is part of any group we are entertaining, Donnie typically cooks and Anne serves. (I am spoiled.) I don't remember how Anne and I first met, but it was through Old Mission somehow. We are both members of the Old Mission prayer group, and she, like me, is a candidate in the SFO (Secular Franciscan Order). The SFO was on our minds on Sunday because we had the regular monthly fraternity meeting at our local St. Francis Retreat Center, as well as breakfast at a local cafe with two members of the Council prior to their Council meeting. There are some difficult issues that Anne and I -- and the Council -- are dealing with in recent months. Rather than give full details here, I will refer you to a series of posts I wrote about the events from a spiritual perspective and uploaded to my Modern Mysticism site: Tasked.

Doah has developed an allergy to cats this past year. Or, perhaps more accurately described, we discovered this year that he has an allergy to cats; he may have had it for a long time. Since we have three of that kind of critter, instead of bringing Doah to San Ignatio for the weekend, we have been going to visit him where he lives in Santa Clara. This weekend was no different. Late Saturday afternoon, we drove up to spend some time with Doah at his favorite restaurant: KFC. (He is a cheap date.) Then we took him on a mini-shopping trip at the local CVS (yep, cheap date). Happy to have had at least a few hours with us, he returned to his group home with a smile and a bag of recyclables (we save them for him) in one hand and his just-purchased goodies in the other.

Fr. Daniel is our parish priest. Although he has passed the age of 50, he still loves parties. I remember one time, when he returned from out of town, I told him after Mass that we had missed him the week before, and he asked, "Did I miss a party?" "No, Fr. Daniel," I replied. "You missed Mass." We can always count on him to celebrate with us. This time, though, he was the host. For Saturday mid-day, he put together a BBQ at the former restaurant that belongs to the church. The "casa" has a veranda and a patio area, both quite large, with wonderful views of the valley, as well as four indoor large seating areas. He wanted to bring together some folks who had contributed to an Old Mission project. By chance, Donnie and I were the fortunate ones to end up with Fr. Daniel as our table mate. However, it did put a crimp on our plan to eat and run off to another engagement prior to going to Santa Clara to see Doah. So, we ate. We did not run. The other engagement slipped past while we enjoyed our time with Fr. Daniel at the casa.

Jack is the leader of our Bible Studies group that meets at Old Mission. Somewhere in his 80s, he has been slowed down by all kinds of events in life, but his knowledge is the exercise in patient listening. His wife, Ruby, comes with him. She is wheelchair bound but otherwise an active participant. They have been married 50 years, and we have celebrated three of their anniversaries, leading up to this year's big 5-0, over the past three years that we have been studying together. Jack worked as some sort of scientist; I have long ago forgotten the details. They parented five children, who have seen a fair amount of trauma, including one being shot as a child (he survived) and another losing a child of her own (Jack's granddaughter) in a car accident. Through it all, Jack and Ruby have maintained a sense of peace. Jack, like me, is a former atheist who had a dramatic conversion experience, lasting for two weeks, as did mine. So, he is like a big brother in faith to me, and I like forward to our Wednesday evenings.

President Karzai and General McChrystal showed up on Friday, unexpected and unannounced, at my Kentucky branch. They wanted to observe the language and culture training that we were providing for people who will be going to Afghanistan. Truly, the US government's emphasis is turning toward the tongue as weapon of first choice, and given my background as a language teacher, this warms the proverbial cockles of my heart. (Anyone know what a cockle is?) The one day I take off, a rather important personage shows up, and I am not even around to hear about it until the end of the day when the email, having crawled through the chain from Kentucky to California, finally reached me. My boss was a bit taken aback, especially since no one, including our local manager, had any idea that this was going to happen. (I imagine that was intentional for security reasons.) The president expressed pleasure in being able to converse with our people in his own language. You know, sometimes it takes very little to make friends and create peace. Caring enough to step across the culture divide and communicate in the language of the other is all that it takes to initiate that process.

Marie I met when I enrolled in the RCIA. She was Fr. Terry's helper at our sessions. She has been the mainstay of all the priests who have led the RCIA. I still learn from her. A retired elementary school teacher, she has taught nearly all the adults in San Ignatio, their children, and grandchildren. She seemed to know more about the members of our RCIA group (except me since I am a new resident) than they knew or remembered about themselves. She read the pre-publication manuscript of my book, Blest Atheist, and continues to be a mentor to me. Although professed as a Third Order Carmelite, she appears at home among the Franciscans, our local community having been founded by the Franciscans and sporting a retreat center, convent, and monastery, all Franciscan. So, having taken Friday off work for some medical tests and attending noon Mass, I was not surprised to have Marie invite me to the rosary that a handful of retired residents who don't have to trot off to work like I do say after Mass 2-3 times a week. As a converted Catholic, there are things I am still learning, and Marie is gentle and instructive in guiding me through them. After the rosary, we relaxed with coffee for her and milk for me at the local bakery. Ah, a totally laid-back day! Not! That was the day that Karzai came to play!

Nathaniel is finishing up his baseball season. His last game will be tomorrow, but at that time I will be on a plane, winging my way to Jordan. So, on Monday, instead of going to prayer group, I watched him play for the penultimate time this year. Surprisingly, given his scientific proclivities and frequent oblivion to his surroundings, he played well at first base and actually hit the ball (well, once the T was brought out). It is progress, though, and more important, he enjoys the sport, which is really all that matters. I also like the side benefit of watching his games: I get to see Shane, Lemony, and always-laughing Nikolina more often.

And now I am going to go to bed. If you are already up, have a great day ahead!

Animals for Iraq (Stuffed, That Is)

I have only a few minutes before leaving for work but thought that some of you might like to participate in a fun and charitable project: sending stuffed toys to the kids of Iraq. More information can be found on the Change Becomes Change website. What I discovered there, I am copying here as is. Go there, though, for the links and other interesting information.

Here is the initial post:

Do you have a few stuffies, loveys or other gently loved soft animals that your children no longer enjoy? Need to make room for new things from the holidays or upcoming birthdays? We clean out our toys, clothes and items usually with the season's change, so guess what we're doing this week?

We're doing one thing different this season though. Our no-longer-beloved stuffed animals will be shared with the youngest victims of war in Iraq: the children. It's impossible for me to see the joy and comfort that special stuffed friends bring my own children and not want to give that opportunity to every child.

My friend Asha at Parent Hacks and Heather at Rookie Moms introduced me to Edmay Mayers, a member of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers who is currently stationed in Iraq. She's bringing a little love and hope to children in the villages of Iraq who might not have either, in the form of stuffed animals. It's important work that she's doing and we're ready to help...you in?

So, clean out your closets, purses, cars and drawers (we know they like to hide) to find those gently loved stuffies to share.

Instructions from the Parent Hacks website are:

You can request a FREE mailing supply kit for sending items to military personnel. The kit includes boxes, tape, labels, and customs forms. This will allow you arrive at the post office ready to ship. Please note the the supplies are free, but you must still pay for postage.

Via the USPS website, here is how you can request this kit:

Call 1-800-610-8734 (Packing Supply)
Choose your language (1 for English, 2 for Spanish)
Choose option 1 (For Express Mail, Priority Mail, and Global Express)
When you reach an agent, request CAREKIT04.
The agent will get your address, and the kit should arrive in 7-10 days.

Thanks for the inspiration and introduction, Asha & Heather.

UPDATE: You're going to need the following APO Address for the post office when you request your kit.


Chaplain – Camp Warrior
FOB Warrior – Kirkuk
Toys for the Iraqi Children
APO AE 09359

Now let's go find some stuffed toys! What fun!

Blest Guest Wednesday #11: Why Is Love the Greatest of All the Gifts from God? (Kathleen Smith)

At times, my crazy travel schedule interferes with my ability to post regularly, and I have to bring a little sanity to the blogging part of my life by asking for help. I am now entering one such crazy period. Some wonderful fellow bloggers have been willing to write guest posts for me on Wednesdays, hence the name "Blest Guest Wednesday."

As today's "Blest Guest," I asked Kathleen Smith (Heart 2 Heart), who comments on Blest Atheist frequently, to share something she thought would be interesting to BA readers. I think you will find her post interesting, so here goes:

Why Is Love the Greatest of All the Gifts from God?

I was reading tonight a book about Heaven and what it's actually going to be like. After all, it is where me and my family know for certain we are going when we die, so wouldn't you like to know a little bit about what it's like? I will discuss some of those things with you tomorrow but it isn't really about a tunnel of light either!

So the question that presented itself in my readings pertains to the chapter in the Bible known as the chapter about love. 1 Corinthians 13:13, which reads, in case you don't happen to have a Bible handy, is " and now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

So why is love the greatest? To figure this out, you need to go back to the Bible in Genesis to when God originally created a sin free world with Adam and Eve. The garden and world in which God created was perfect! No sin, or sinful thoughts or any evil. Adam was having conversations with God in the garden so there was a sense of an intimate relationship with God. Adam didn't pray to God, but he actually talked to him like we do with close friends and relatives. So if you are living in a sin free world, it's easy to see why love remains the greatest.

Remember that the world we live in today is filled with sin and a sin filled nature. Which is why, even after we are saved, we will continue to struggle and often times go back to things we know we shouldn't, like books, movies, TV shows, language and other things. God never said once you give your life to him, becoming a Christian, that your life would be carefree and easy. In fact, the opposite is true. We are faced with more struggles because the enemy, the devil, does not want us to wind up with God in Heaven. His goal is to take out as many of us as possible before his time is up.

But God when he returns promises to destroy the earth as we know it and will create a new heaven and a new earth in which sin will be removed. Imagine that! No pain or suffering is easy to believe along with no more death. We will never have to face the fact of losing someone close to us ever again. The other thing is we will restore that intimate relationship with God and Jesus Christ. We will see them face to face. So there will not be a need to pray anymore. We won't need anything which is why we pray. We will have it all.

Our sinful nature and thoughts will go away as well. No more doubting things, no more evil thoughts ever!!!

So now that that relationship with God was severed on the initimate level we have to have faith. What is faith?

Let's define that. The dictionary states that faith is

1a: allegiance to duty or a person;

1b loyalty (1): fidelity to one's promises; (2)sincerity of intentions;

2a (1) belief and trust in and loyalty to God; (2) belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion;

2b (1) firm belief in something for which there is no proof; (2) complete trust;

3: something that is believed especially with strong conviction, especially a system of religious beliefs.

Basically, in a nutshell, faith is believing in something you don't see but believe is there.

Since we will be in heaven and everything we wanted to know will be revealed, we don't need faith anymore. God won't allow disbelievers of God or Jesus into heaven so the only people there are the ones who believed when they didn't see. Remember the Beatitudes? Blessed are those that are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

So with no needing of faith, that one is gone. Now we have hope left, so let's define hope.

Here is the definition according to Webster's:

intransitive verb
1: to cherish a desire with anticipation
2 (archaic): trust

transitive verb
1: to desire with expectation of obtainment
2: to expect with confidence : trust

Well, for now we can hope for a better life. We can hope to be reunited with our loved ones. It, again, is something we want and trust but can't be sure will happen until it does or doesn't. So, back to the new heaven and earth, if all our desires are provided for and given to us, what else is there to want?

That leaves love. To see why that is the greatest goes beyond the initial love, the romantic feel-good, emotional love that comes and goes. What I am talking about is the act of love. Unconditional love with expecting nothing in return when you give it. That is the love God gave us.

Imagine you are a parent and you have a child. No matter what your child does in life, you will always love him or her unconditionally. But let's say you had a child that was perfect in every way. Yes, to some parents, we would love a child like that. But a child that never talked back, never did anything wrong, always listened. Perfect in every way.

You go to a city one day with your child and find yourself in the middle of the courtyard that is filled with people who are about to be put to death based on their horrible, evil crimes: mass murderers, liars, thieves, rapists, (you fill in the blank with any crime that makes you sick or cringe). The men are ready to receive their just punishments. After all, we punish our children when they doing something that is wrong. Then, you hear about the worst one there, the evilest of all the criminals and he is about to be put to death by the executioner unless someone steps forward to take his place. You hear laughsfrom the crowd around you. People begin to shout for the execution to take place, and some in the crowd throw things at the man. Then you step forward and offer your child to take the man's place.

People in the crowd begin to whisper about how you could sacrifice your child for one of this city's most notorious and evil criminals. But you say I am glad I could do this for you. You owe me nothing. You watch the criminal walk away without being executed. How would you think the criminal should react?

If I were the criminal, I would be eternally grateful, offering to work for you or do something for you as payment.

Or would you say thanks or not say thanks perhaps and simply walk away?

The story is real!

The child as you may have guessed is Jesus Christ, and the parent who gives up his perfect child is God our Father. We deserve the punishment we should receive for all of our evil doings in the world. True, we may not be the most notorious and evil criminal or ever think of doing those things but the Bible says all fall short of the glory of God! Every one of us was doomed to be executed, but Jesus took it all for us so that we may have eternal life if we simply believe in Him. It is by His grace to offer us the gift of His son, that we can have faith and hope while we wait to return to Heaven when our lives are over.

Will you simply choose to be like the criminal and just say thanks and walk away! The great thing is that even though we would want to give that guy the world, he wanted nothing from us, but our love. That is why I believe that love remains the greatest.

Now that you know, what will you do with this gift?

Monday Morning Meditation #41: They Drew Up in Battle Formation

I barely stumbled past one additional chapter in I Chronicles this week before coming to sudden rest at a passage that speaks so much to the world situation today. The battle line described in chapter 19, verses 1-9 is not unlike the one I find myself constantly straddling in my work around the world, especially in my two previous jobs. In this passage, Nahash, King of the Ammonites, died and was succeeded by his son, Hanun. King David, to whom Nahash had shown kindness while alive, wanted to honor Nahash. So, he sent a delegation of men to Hanun to express condolences. Hanun, however, was suspicious, accused the men of being spies, dishonored them, and sent them back to Israeli territory. Thus, the Ammonites became a "stench in David's nostrils." Soon, both sides had drawn up in battle formation.



Reading: I Chronicles 19: 1-9.



Meditation: Oh, how well I understand the kind of misunderstanding that the Hanun and the Ammonites exhibited and the resultant dismay of David! I have felt this kind of dismay "on my hide," to use a Russian expression, which in this case is quite apropros.



Let's go back to the year 1984. At that time, the world was frozen into a state of Cold War between two super powers: the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Neither side trusted the other. On the USA side, we spoke of balance of power -- and we worked on ways of spying from the outside: from space. On the USSR, they spoke of parity -- and they worked on ways of spying from the inside: through seeding informants into American society. Battle lines were formed in spite of the rhetoric of peace and parity.



Most Americans are not aware that the Russians were as much concerned about America attacking it as Americans were about Russian attacks. I had the unique opportunity to be in Russia during the Cold War (multiple times and for long periods of time). I heard a Red Army general espouse the concepts of parity. I interacted with various peace committees; the vice president of one, Pyotr Volkovich, became a professional colleague and personal friend, and together we established one of the very first student exchanges and the very first one between Belarus and an American school district, in this case, Portland, Oregon. These were positive, learning experiences for me.



I also had a negative experience, one that immediately came to mind when I came across this Scripture reading. In the early 1980s, I was one of only a handful of American scholars allowed into the USSR for research and study. As Fulbright and IREX scholars, we were allowed foreign language classes. While I had already achieved an easy fluency in Russian, I was eager to take advantage of this wonderful benefit, especially since the University of Moscow language classes are some of the most effective in the world. The Department of Russian As a Foreign Language welcomed me and set me up for a placement test. Part of that test was a written essay on any topic of our choosing. Since my research project was Siberian dialects of Russian, about which I had already done as much research as possible in the USA, I decided to write about that. I quickly sketched out the relationship between the main dialectal groups and linguistic theories underlying dialect development, maturation, and deviation from the standard language over time. As I dashed off this information, the proctor's face took on a stormy expression that grew darker the more I wrote. As I approached the middle of the page, she suddenly grabbed the paper and ripped it away from me. To this day, I vividly remember the scratch my pen made across the rest of the paper as the paper flew out from under my hand. "A vy shto," she demanded to know, "shpionka?" (What are you, a spy?) While I considered the comment to be a compliment to my language skills, the reaction reflected the thinking of the times: any American totally fluent in Russian must be a spy. (We had similar concerns about Russians.) And there I sat looking at a battle line being drawn up and being very innocent of anything of which I might be accused. I was no more guilty than were David's men.



In my travels and jobs, I have lived primarily among America's so-called enemies. It was not always easy for me to see them as such. When I completed my dissertation defense in Moscow, I said something that people who were present have remembered to this day: "Ya snachala priekhala v Soyuz, chtoby posmotret' na litso vraga, no v techenie 20 let, ya ne nashla ni odnogo vraga, tol'ko druzej." (I first came to the Soviet Union to look upon the face of the enemy, but in 20 years I have not found one enemy, only friends.) That people would remember those words tells me how eager they were to be friends, not enemies.



One of my favorite memories from Russia (post-Soviet days) was dinner with the vice president of one university in Belarus. In the course of the dinner, we discovered that we had been counterparts during the Cold War. I had worked in the US Army as an officer specializing in USSR Order of Battle, and he had worked in the Red Army as an officer specializing in USA Order of Battle. Startled, he gasped, "You were my enemy," to which I replied, "and you were mine." He demurred, saying that he had been no one's enemy, to which I pointed out that neither had been I. (I have related the story, along with a couple similar ones, in greater detail here: Three Vignettes and One Thought about an Enemy.)



After the Cold War, I began to spend time in the "hot war" countries of the Middle East. Very quickly, the presence of similar misunderstandings became obvious. Our societies' structure, values, and expectations are so different that not having misunderstandings would be unusual. Add misunderstanding to distrust, and suddenly we have just what the situation is today: countries drawn up in battle formation.



These experiences -- those from today and the ones from the Old Testament -- point to the fact that our entire world needs to learn to trust. That trust is not going to spring up at the international level, however, unless it is cultivated at the interpersonal level, within families, within social organizations, even within our churches. In all of these places, one can find an astonishing lack of trust among people who are relatives, colleagues, and/or friends. If we cannot cultivate trust at the friend/colleague/relative level, how on earth are nations supposed to cultivate it at the foreigner/stranger level.



That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer to thank God for holding our world together for so long in spite of our attempts to pull it apart, to praise Him for all the examples of trust, mistrust, and love He has given us through His Word -- and His words of guidance to us, to repent for those times that I may have contributed to the development of mistrust on any level, and to ask Him to lead all of us into a world where people trust people and no battle lines are to be found. Now I retire to 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 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 #21: God Took Care of Me Again

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.

Yesterday I blogged about a young lady in need of help whom God placed in my path. I was delighted to be able to help her and am always grateful when God lets me help. There is a reason for that, you see. Often I am the one needing the help. In those cases, God puts me in someone's path. One such case is the story of my arrival in Kiev last fall. Here is the link to the post: God Took Care of Me Again.

Have a great day and week, knowing that when in need God will take care of you!

7 Quick Takes Friday #27

In reviewing this week, looking for some quick takes to share with you and with Jennifer Futwiler, who hosts this meme over at Conversion Diary, I realized that for the first time in a long, long time, I had a fairly normal week. Oops, come to think of it, I didn't. I just think I did. But, heck, wait a minute, you judge!

1. On Friday, I cut work and spent the morning at First Friday (Day of Recollection) at St. Francis Retreat Center in the morning, where the co-director presented us with a history of the Virgin Mary that contained much that was new to me. I love it when I learn new things! In fact, much of the history was new to many people there. We were all enthralled. Mass was simple and special, as always. Then I had to leave. I wish I could have stayed for lunch and the afternoon session, but at least I had a morning reprieve. I am grateful to have had those special hours because even though I returned to work, the spirit of the morning stayed with me the rest of the day.

2. Donnie and I joined Shane, Lemony, and Nikolina for Nathaniel's baseball game on Saturday. Our little budding scientist is definitely not a budding sportsman, but he likes the game and has fun at it. I posted some pictures from the game over on The Clan of Mahlou: Life Goes On - In Pictures. It was a modern, city game, with real bases. I remember my childhood games. Let's see: the clothesline was first base; second base was the swing set; third base was the apple tree; and home was a flat piece of wood we threw down on the grass at the appropriate spot. My, how times have changed! Or, maybe it is just the location that has changed. Following the ball game, Shane left for work. The rest of us went to Jerry's, a local diner-style restaurant for a relaxing lunch and time to talk. Lemony told us that Nikolina is finally starting to crawl. Her legs are very weak, but the doctor has said that it is possible that she may walk; Lemony is betting on that. (See The Clan of Mahlou: The Awesome Power of a Mother's Love for details.) Nathaniel forgot all about his baseball game when I told him I had bought him a glow-in-the-dark jigsaw puzzle of a tiger. In fact, he badgered Shane about it for two days until Shane brought him to our house to pick it up. Now, the question is, will he be able to sit still long enough to finish it?

3. Sunday. Mother's Day. I woke to the thought of being pampered and spending a day bathed in a calm spirit and pleasant thoughts. Well, that last just about 20 minutes. Before I had struggled all the way out of bed, Noelle called in tears. Her best friend from college, also a young woman with spina bifida, had not woken up Sunday morning. At 4:00 a.m., her husband had found her dead. He called Noelle because he knew she would want to know. (More details are posted on The Clan of Mahlou: Boueversee.) So, on Sunday, I skipped my plans for being pampered; I broke my promise to attend the renewal vows of friends who were celebrating their 50th year of marriage; I drove to Salts with to do what mothers do: console her disconsolate child. Indeed, Sunday was Mother's Day.

4. On Monday, our prayer group met as we usually do on the second Monday of every month: at my house to watch an inspirational movie. Various people bring munchies. We share some updates on our life and our history of the movie. Then we watch the movie and end the evening with prayer. Agnostic Donnie typically joins us for the munchies and the movie. During our prayer her retires to our office. This week we watched Padre Pro, a Cristero martyr. We preceded the movie with reading about the events of 1917-1930 in Mexico, the revolution, the communist influence (including Trotsky's exile to Mexico from Russia) and the Christian martyrs, many of them priests, who fought back. Two of Padre Pro's brothers were jailed with him: Humberto and Roberto. Humberto was shot, as was Pro. Roberto, however, survived to tell the story. I highly recommend then movie to anyone with an interest in maryrs or Mexican history. (Note: the film is in Spanish, but it does have subtitles; we tend to be a bilingual group.) After the movie, something unusual happened. Donnie stayed for our prayer. An awesome statement in its simplicity. (See Modern Mysticism: Promises for a description of the significance.)

5. I came home right after work on Tuesday, as opposed to mid-evening as usual. Within minutes, one of our neighbors knocked on our door. He was gathering information for the census. Given the size of our town and how well he knows everyone, our neighbor could probably have answered most of the questions without dropping by. Nonetheless, this way the details are accurate. Following the few questions on the census form, we talked a bit. I suppose that is what happened at all the houses: a little data gathering and a little chatting. That is what happens in small towns. One of the oddities about the very small size of our town is that no one got the census forms in the mail. There is no home delivery of mail here, so when the forms were mailed to our homes, the post office sent them back because it would have taken far too many hours to sort them out (more than the two people who work there could manage). As a result, our entire town had to be canvassed in person. Just one more unique thing about San Ignatio...

6. Wednesday, day of joyful surprise! Padre Julio came to town. He had wanted to be assigned to one of our local parishes after his year back home in Colombia, but local politics prevented that. (Read local politics as disagreements with the bishop who apparently was opposed to Padre's work with Por Amor a Los Ninos de Colombia, the organization that Padre founded to help children of Colombia who were in danger of being pulled into the insurgency and criminal activity). Therefore, after returning from his home country of Colombia, he settled in Chula Vista, just 30 minutes from where his brother is living in San Diego. (In every cloud there is a silver lining.) Although we received word of Padre's arrival at the last minute, all of us who had been part of his work while here showed up for a party and prayer. Padre told us that the school supported by Por Amor is now operational and the self-sustaining farm is coming into being. Dreams realized! Before sharing all this news, Padre introduced me to the group. While I knew those of them associated with Por Amor, there were other folks who had come from distant towns who had been in one or another of Padre's parishes. Padre expressed so much gratitude for my family's design of Por Amor's website and for my teaching him English that I did not know how to respond. Fortunately, after a bit he moved on to other topics, information sharing, and prayer. There were a number of children there, and I loved watching Padre move among them, blessing each of them and even taking one of the teenagers aside for confession. For me, Padre is the quintessential priest. He is that for many, I am certain. That is why some traveled nearly 100 hours to be present and why no one complained about cramming dozens of people into a small house. What a wonderfully special ending to what started out as a very ordinary day.

7. Thursday brought such a wonderful bill. That's right: a bill! In fact, a bill from the IRS. Now, I suppose that ordinarily not many people would be looking forward to getting a bill from the IRS, but then my life is not particularly ordinary. In this case, the bill was for the last payment on a 5-year payment plan for miscalculated taxes from the nineties. Four years ago, I had no idea that the IRS could go back that many years and re-calculate taxes, then charge late fees and fines covering the in-between years. It was a nightmare, and we had to turn to a tax accountant for help. However, it all worked out in the long run, and, except for the unpleasantness of finding old calculations re-figured and having to pay whopping fines because of the number of years that passed, the IRS has been generally kind throughout the process (well, at least the people of the IRS have been kind; I am not sure that I would consider the regulations of the IRS have been kind -- moreover, the timing was such that we did not qualify for any of the special reduction or forgiveness plans that the IRS has offered others). Thursday's bill was for the last few dollars on the payment plan, which, thanks to some bonuses at work and some healthy tax refunds, we have been able to pay off a year in advance. So, happy ending to the day; happy ending to the week; happy ending to the near-half decade! Meanwhile, lesson learned: I no longer attempt to do my own taxes, given my proclivity for miscalculation. I turn everything over to the tax accountant (and get better refunds, too). As for that final bill, I cannot yet imagine what it will be like not having the hefty monthly payment over our head!

With that happy ending energizing me, I am going to head over to Jen's blog and take a look at others' quick takes. And yours? What has happened in your life this week?

Thankful Thursday #9

This Thursday I am thankful for gratitude and thanks. Does this sound strange? Well, let me tell you about three short conversations I had this week.

Dana, a young woman who approached me about five years ago to pick my brain on language learning and over the years came back for more information, finished her PhD and passed her dissertation this past week. During the five years between start and finish, she has helped me out with all sorts of projects related to her dissertation topic. She was a joy to have in my life -- I love to see the new generation taking on the tasks of the current generation, to come to know well those who will one day be replacing us "fixtures" of the profession. And then there were those tasks, including book editing, that I just did not have time for and she stepped forward and helped with. What a blessing! Well, two days ago, she sent me a thank you note! In it, she included a copy of the introduction to her dissertation in which she acknowledges my contribution to her work, something that is typically done, but she goes on to express an embarrassing amount of gratitude. It made me do a quick assessment of whether I have adequately thanked those who have helped me in my career. And that answer is? Yes, in a few cases. No, in too many cases, unfortunately in some cases where the person is no longer alive. Lesson: remember to thank everyone for everything, even the little stuff because we do not know when it will become big stuff.

Randa (one of the leading professors in my field) sent me a letter out of the blue thanking me for helping a couple of her grad students and for mentoring her. Mentoring her? I facilitated a few consultations for her that she herself was able to parlay into more consultations because of her own competence and what she is able to give to a client. I wrote a letter of reference for her current position, but she would have been selected for the position without my reference; she was a perfect match for the job. I was stunned that she would think that she owed me any debt of gratitude. Au contraire, I am grateful to her for the co-publications, including one that won the best publication of 2003 award, including the journal issue that we co-edited that contains some of the most cited articles in the field in the last ten years. I am grateful that she joined me in making presentations at several training workshops in other countries and thus made the training richer. So, I read her note with surprise. I hadad never known she looked at me in this way; I do not look at me in this way. I am simply grateful to have cut my teeth together with her and to have learned a number of things from her. Lesson: remember to say thank you to those we work with even if the work is mutually beneficial and mathemagenic.

Yesterday, in walking to a meeting, I passed an employee, working in another division, who knows V, one of the junior managers in my division. V was faring poorly in his previous division, and, knowing his capability, I brought him into my division as long as he met my conditions: no drinking at hours that would lead to hangovers at work and cleaning up his disheveled look to give the appearance of a manager engaged with his employees. Of his actual ability to engage, I had no doubt. I had worked with him before, and he takes care of his employees -- as long as he is not around the bottle. V really wanted to work for me again, so he agreed. He got a haircut and some new suits. He brought competence to the workplace. Then he passed out at work. He refused to go to the hospital with the ambulance. He agreed to let his immediate supervisor take him there, but I knew that he would talk the supervisor into dropping him at home. Intuition told me that this would not be the best thing for him, so I asked one of our security guards to go with them and not to leave the hospital until the doctors released V. At midnight, the guard called and asked me if he could go home since the hospital had admitted V. It turns out that he has diabetes and lung cancer. The lung cancer was caught early enough that the surgery completely took care of it. This employee I had run into from V's previous division called out to me and came over, wanting to thank me for taking care of V. "Bez Vas," he said, "on umer by" (he would have died had it not been for you). Lesson: taking a risk on someone is always worth it. While I still work to keep V sober -- and usually he is -- V is now a contributing member of my division rather than the disgruntled, non-contributing, non-team-playing employee that he once was. I am so grateful to God for insisting that I take and keep my current job. If V's former colleague is correct, and likely he is, V would not be alive today. When I wonder why God wanted me in this job, I don't have to think long. I can list a number of reasons. V is one of them.

Three expressions of gratitude in one week? (There were actually at least four, the fourth being from Padre Julio who was back in town on Wednesday, but I will include that information in tomorrow's 7 Quick Takes.) Perhaps God thinks I need some positive feedback to balance out some of the stresses and sadnesses of the past week. If so, then, Lord, please hear this: THANK YOU -- for the kind thoughts coming my way, yes, but more important for the opportunity to have made a small difference in the lives of some of Your people, for trusting me with them, for putting me in a position where I could help them. For that, I am thankful every Thursday -- and Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday!

For what are you grateful this Thursday?

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