Monday Morning Meditation #14: And They Did As the Lord Commanded

All the (many) chapters I read this week from Exodus and Leviticus had to do with rules for living and worshipping, ranging from childbirth, circumcision, food, and cleansing, to tabernacle design and ways of making offerings. They seem intended for a different time although I know that at least Orthodox Jews follow these instructions carefully even today. Perhaps some day God will send someone to explain to me in what way these rules should be meaningful to me. Quite meaningful, however, was the frequent repetition of one phrase in various versions: "they did as the Lord commanded," "Moses did as God commanded," and so on. Whenever God gives Moses a reason for obedience, it is always some version of "because I am the Lord." It is sort of like a parent saying, "Do it because I told you to." In return, God promises the Israelites, whom He alternately refers to as His people and His servants, that if they obey His commandments, He will provide for all their needs. Further, and more excitingly, He says that He will be with them. ("And I will walk among you and will be your God, and ye shall be My people." Leviticus 26:12)

Reading: Exodus 35-40 and Leviticus.

Meditation: The specific rules aside, what all these passages taken in aggregate say to me is that we are to obey God, without question, in all things for one reason alone: He is God. I assume that since God opened His arms to non-Jews, then we, too, are both His servants and, if we love and obey Him, His people and that His promise to walk among us and provide for us if we obey Him works for us, too.

On a personal level, I have experienced both the requirement and the promise. God has given me a number of taskings, some of them quite difficult. The most difficult, however, was to call my mother. I was angry when I heard the words, "Call your mother."

I did not want to do that. I had not spoken to her for ten years. Asking me to call her seemed terribly unfair. She had been highly abusive to her eight children physically, the details of which I chronicled in my book, Blest Atheist, and when those children became adults, the abuse just changed into emotional abuse. Several of them caught her beating their children (her grandchildren) and ended up sending her away from their homes. Most of my siblings were not speaking to her at the time of my tasking.

I have no idea why God wanted me to call Ma, but while I at first argued, in the long run (it was not that much of a long run -- it took me about a week to find the number and make the call), I put aside my anger, put on my "ruthless trust" (to use Brendan Manning's term to describe The Ragamuffin's Path to God), and did it. I did it for the sole reason that God required it of me. (Explaining that to my mother was rather interesting, to say the least.)

First, I had to track down Ma's phone number. Since nearly no one was talking to her, it took some time to do that. Once I had retrieved the phone number, I still hesitated. I did not know what to say! What would you say to someone to whom you had not spoken for ten years? "How can I call her?" I asked God. "I have no idea what to say!"

A very quiet one word wafted through my mind, indicating an action that had not occurred to me: "Listen." Of course! I could listen. And that is what I did. I listened. For over an hour, I listened -- to a voice full of curiosity, eagerness to relate a decade of happenings, and elation. Perhaps that is about as close as Ma can get to love.

I still do not completely understand the tasking to call Ma. Nor can I directly track any one blessing -- I have received so many! -- to the act of calling her. The only thing I can say is that I "did as the Lord commanded," and I am glad I did so for no other reason than that He is Lord. I love being His servant and hope that one day He will say that I am one of His people.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep on tasking me for His taskings ultimately bring me great satisfaction, to repent for all the taskings I have missed or done poorly, to give thanks for all the ways in which God has indeed provided for me, and to offer praise for the ways in which He orders my world.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any "walking" together with which He is willing to bless me. The joy of His presence surpasses any other happiness I have ever experienced.

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

Have a good day and a week enriched by the presence of God. May you be blessed by opportunities to do His bidding, and may you do that well.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 35-57 and Leviticus or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to copy the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, but to date I remain incompetent at the more sophisticated blog stuff. Yes, I know it has been 14 weeks, but I am exceptionally computer-inept. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Blest Guest Wednesday #2: Like a Dream

Since early August, it has been difficult for me to post regularly although I have somehow managed not to let more than a few days go by between posts. Considering that my crazy travel schedule is definitely going to continue for a few more months, I have been able to bring a little sanity to the blogging part of my life by asking for help. 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 Sarah, who has become an Internet friend and who writes a blog that I follow closely: Cult of Deception. (This is her little dog here, whom I find adorable.) Sarah's abusive childhood has chords that resonate with mine. I think you will find her life, her blog, and her post here interesting. Here goes:

Like a Dream

I never told anyone. I kept it all inside. I started to wonder if it was some crazy dream or if it even happened at all. I thought maybe I made it up? Other times I thought - it wasn't that bad - it was no big deal. But last year people I hadn't seen started surfacing - family, friends - people who knew....

You're a miracle they said. How did you survive?

Survive? Miracle? What did they mean? They started to tell me stories of their memories of how bad things were, how thin I had become, how out of control......My older sister who I hadn't seen for a long time returned from living overseas. She needed to talk. She forced me to listen....forced me to remember.

The memories hit. They hit hard. I wrote to get the images out of my head.

I couldn't eat or sleep. I wanted to get in my car, close my eyes and drive. It felt like it was happening all over again - the beatings, the confinement, the rape - throwing up day after day after day even if I had tasted even a small bite of something - shoving needles in my arm - three and four times a day - ripping my arms with jagged rocks to feel something because I felt nothing. I was numb inside.

Why now God? Why are you letting me go through this now? I didn't want to remember and yet in remembering it dawned on me - finally - just how far down God had reached to free me.

Everyday in the heat, rain and cold - I ran - alone in the woods - in the hills near our home. There I felt the gentle touch of God - And I heard His whisper - You're stronger now. It's time to tell the truth of what happened. Tell your story to give someone hope -

How could I have never told anyone what He did. Nothing worked. Nothing could break the chains that kept me in living on the edge. Nothing except the gentleness of His touch.

The power of His gentleness.......

This November, I will publish my story In the Eye of Deception. A True Story. Sarah from www.cultofdeception.blogspot.com

Monday Morning Meditation #11: Our Need for Others

I made it this week into the next chapter of Exodus, chapter 18. Compared to the previous three chapters, how enlightened the key players in this chapter are! Moses has now set himself up as a judge for the people, interpreting God's laws for them. Moses's father-in-law, Jethro, comes to Moses, learns what he is doing and how overworked he is, and makes a wise suggestion. He recommends to Moses that he find a number of wise, honest, God-fearing men and let them handle the smaller matters while he (Moses) takes on just the complicated cases, the ones that he might need to take to God for guidance.

Reading: Exodus 18

Meditation: I could not help but apply this situation to my own life many centuries later. So much is parallel. So little has changed through the ages. My first thought always used to be to try to do everything myself and, like Moses, become overworked, tired, and, in my case, less effective than I could have been.

It has taken much time and experience for me to learn to accomplish my work tasks through others, and indeed, I have been very fortunate, in finding experienced, capable, and loyal junior managers to help me at work. (I am not so sure that it is only good fortune for ALL of my current junior managers are believers -- mostly Catholic, some other Christian denominations, two Muslims, and one Jew. There are no atheists or agnostics among them. I do not believe that this combination would have happened without the hand of God leading the right applicants to my door.) Having such junior managers means that I do have to accept things that might be done differently than I would have done them myself and perhaps even less well than I think I might have been able to do them in the case of junior managers who are still learning the ropes. Far more important, however, having a team of people who live to honor God means that employees are treated in more humane ways than they otherwise might be, that these managers let God's direction lead them in helping employees, that employees are not reluctant to pray for each other, and that people love coming to work because even those individuals perceived as difficult people know that they will usually find love and support there.

Letting others help with my private life has come with a bit more difficulty. Most of my life, I have been a tiger, fighting for survival because I had to as a child, dealing with physical, sexual, and emotional abuse heaped upon me by adult relatives, watching my brother be stabbed, being forced to observe my pet cat being burned alive, and so forth. Cruelty unimaginable to most accompanied me all the days of my youth. So, I became a tiger. I survived.

Then, when my children introduced me to their giftedness, physical handicaps, and mental disabilities and I found not only immense lacks in the system to help them but also some strategically placed professionals who acted as obstacles to their well being, I became like a tiger with cubs: truly vicious at times. I cringe at some of the memories.

It has only been after getting to know God and trying to follow the path He has sent me down and understanding that it was He who led me out of the jungle that I have learned to relax, let Him lead, and, very important, allow, yea, even ask, others to help. What a difference that has made! I feel like I can calmly walk through the valley of the shadow of death, climb any mountain, and walk through any fire for He is with me every step of the way. Nothing else matters. I will probably always have that tiger spirit somewhere in me, but now it obeys the Lord. I guess it would not be unlike the wolf calming down and eating from the hand of St. Francis. My tiger lives, but it is meek for that is how God wants it to be.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep my tiger spirit meek and obedient, to express my regret for times in the past when I have roared and deliberately frightened others, to give thanks for God's great kindness in caring enough about me to tame my spirit, and to offer praise for the the many ways in which He protects me and mine every day so that I no longer feel the need for self-defense.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, hoping and trusting that this great God will continue to abide with and in me, keeping my tiger at peace.

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.

Have a good day and a spirit-filled week, and may you find helpers for all your needs. (If I can be one, please let me know!)

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 18 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, but to date I remain incompetent at the more sophisticated blog stuff. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

The Boy in White

For some time, I have wanted to post about the boy in white, but I have hesitated because the story appears in my book, Blest Atheist, and I have generally posted excerpts from that book and my other publications on Mahlou Musings, rather than here. There are differing audiences between the two blogs, but I think the story can also appeal to readers of this blog. So, I will summarize the story here. You can find the longer, more complete story that is closer to the original in the book on Mahlou Musings.

The story of the boy in white intertwines with many of the leitmotifs of this blog. I began this blog with discussions of abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) and blessings, and the story of the boy in white, which comes from my childhood, contains these leitmotifs as well as hints of the supranormal/angelic, which have also been discussed here at various times. Here is the story in brief:

On one bright, cold winter day, I dragged my sled three houses down our New England street to our neighbor’s teton-shaped hill, where all the children in our area of town gathered to race down to the mostly untraveled country road below on sleds, cardboard, or whatever else was available. I pulled my sled up the hill, waving to the other children in the neighborhood but mainly concentrating on the anticipated thrill of the ride. We were a community of children in the sense that we all knew each other, but our sport was an individual one. We did not share adrenaline-spurred shrieks of fun, but rather we quietly felt the thrill that defined the fun of New England downhill sledding.

That afternoon as I was pulling my one-person wooden sled up the hill a third time, I noticed a young boy, clad all in white and definitely not adequately covered for the sub-zero temperature that rosied our noses as they protruded from the scarves wrapped around our necks and faces and tucked into the hoods on our coats. I puzzled over the boy in white only momentarily as I mounted the hill and then the sled and began my third downhill run toward the road. Suddenly, about half-way down the hill, the boy in white, well blended with the surrounding snow in my visual field, began moving across the path over which my sled was about to speed.

“Get out of the way!” I yelled. I was as much annoyed at his being in my path as I was afraid of hurting him. He stepped back, and I briefly caught his sad look as I zipped past.

The memory is old and the details lodged in the mind of an 8-year-old whose perception of the world had moments of extremism. Therefore, I will not insist that every detail was precisely as I remember it today. What I do remember precisely, however, was being shaken by my own unkind words. I hurried home, towing my sled and a bundle of regret and concern. Somebody had to help the boy in white! He was wandering through the New Hampshire cold with no coat! He would freeze on the hill or anywhere else in our neighborhood. He seemed so oblivious to his surroundings and to the cold. He must be poor, indeed, I thought. We did not have much when we were children, but we always had warm clothes, and we were always bundled up, displaying a “cared for” look.

“Ma,” I called as I dropped the rope of the sled and ran into the house. “There is a boy on the hill without a coat. He is going to freeze! We have to help him!”

“Well, let’s go,” she said. I could not point him out through our window, so we set off for the hill. By the time we got there a few minutes later, however, he was nowhere to be found. We looked farther afield, but we saw no lad in white. Ma asked some of the other children, but none remember seeing him. I was at a loss to explain to Ma why he was not there, but she was not angry this time. In spite of her inability to love her children in an altruistic manner -- indeed, she was a highly abusive parent, one frequently emotionally out of control -- whenever someone in the greater community needed help, Ma was always jolly on the spot. Those two seemingly mutually exclusive attitudes — cruelty to her children and kindness to the community — made it difficult for us children to understand Ma. It also made it difficult for the community to understand our reaction to Ma for the community’s experience of her has always been positive.

As for the boy in white, I never saw him again. My friends insisted that he never was there, that he was a figment of my imagination that had frozen in the cold and was hallucinating snow images. Not a boy in white but a boy of snow. Still, I can see him today as clearly as I saw him on the hill so long ago. Today, I wonder if he was not there to teach me a lesson in kindness, in neighborly love — and to reveal perhaps why Ma may, indeed, live in grace, in spite of all her earlier cruelty and self-absorption for when there was a need for a Good Samaritan, Ma was usually the first volunteer. Perhaps God was using her, too? If God could use an atheist, as I was for so many years, then perhaps a believer with a temper, like Ma, might also be a potential instrument.

The long-ago lessons of the boy in white, unspoken lessons that allowed my subconscious, rather than conscious, mind to develop a morals-based value system, also showed me two important things that have dramatically shaped my life. First, I realized that day that there were two faces to Ma. That provided the foundation for the forgiveness that God required of me years later and which came easily once God pulled me out of my beloved bramble bushes. What God forgave me, I can certainly forgive others. Where God took me back, I can certainly take back others. Tit for tat gains nothing for no one. Forgiveness heals. That is one of the great lessons God has taught me on more than one occasion.

The second conclusion I came to all those years ago on the hill was that unless I was careful I would grow up to be the same hothead as Ma: my instinct had been to yell at the boy in white. Certainly, I did not want that. From then on, I worked hard to be the opposite of Ma. (Of course, I would tell her so from time to time when she was in the middle of beating, kicking, biting, or otherwise abusing me, and that did nothing to endear me to her; rather, I usually got an extra helping of the physical abuse as a result of my “big mouth.”)

How young I was when the boy in white crossed my path! Decades later, I can only conclude that God has always been with me. I have just been slow in seeing the linkages. I am grateful that now I can see them. Once again, God is spoiling me (and I love it).

Today's Drama

Ah, Saturday! Yes, I can sleep in! I rolled into bed rather late last night, or more accurately, early this morning, secure in the knowledge that I could get an unusual full night's sleep. Well, no, apparently. Just a few hours later, a ringing intruded into my dreams, whatever they were, and soon I was emerging into the not-yet-daylight. Fumbling for the alarm I had forgotten to turn off, I finally realized that it was the phone ringing--just as the caller hung up. I turned on the light and saw that it was Lizzie (my daughter) and Blaine (the young man we had raised from teenage years who ultimately became Lizzie's husband and our son/son-in-law), calling from Illinois.

Lizzie and Blaine! Something must be terribly wrong because they never call; they always send an enote. By now, Donnie was awake, as well, and called them back. Blaine answered. Yes, something was terribly wrong. His cousin, Alana, had just reached him. Her husband had arrived home drunk and had beaten her to the point that she had difficulty walking and was in pain. She needed some place to stay for the day and perhaps night while she was sorting through her options.

We made arrangements for her to be dropped off near our mission church. In a plan reminiscent of my experiences in eluding the KGB during the Cold War days in Moscow, I walked up as the taxi dropped off Alana and all the possessions she had been able to pack in a hurry while her husband was out of the house. She had to leave behind her beloved bike. (I suggested to her that she not give that a second thought. After all, bikes can be replaced; people cannot.) She did manage to bring a favorite cactus house plant and four suitcases of clothing and other possessions. We waited on the sidewalk until the taxi disappeared, and then I called Donnie who had been parked out of sight nearby. He drove up, and we put all the possessions and a very traumatized Alana into the car, then, learning that she had not had breakfast, had her pick out what she wanted at the local deli. We returned an hour later for pain medication. (I am probably the only mother in the entire country who raised seven children and never seemed to need an aspirin for them or for myself! Someone should give the condition a name: HPTS, as in High Pain Threshold Syndrome.)

At our house, she made some calls, often tearfully. Finally, a plan emerged to stay overnight for a few days with a cousin in northern California and then move in with her mother in Nevada, in order to begin to put her life back together and to shake her husband (hopefully, about to become her ex) off the trail. We drove her to her cousin's house this evening. It was a two-hour trip one-way, and we have just returned with sore bottoms from four hours of car-seat-sitting. We think the calluses-to-appear were for a good cause.

I tried to get her to see a doctor because the bruises and limp were obvious. She did not want to do that. I also tried to get her to turn her husband into the police; battery in California is mandatory imprisonment. She did not want to do that, either. Since she did not know us (but she knows several of our children), accepting guidance from me was not a natural thing to do. I left her with the story of my sister, Victoria, who kept going back to a husband who beat her, blaming herself for "pushing his buttons," until the day that he took a knife to her. Then, after the police jailed him, she divorced him and raised her two sons, happily, as a single mother. I take hope in the fact that after our discussion, Alana asked to borrow the computer and researched battered-wife sites. That was a reasonable, unemotional thing to do in response to a very emotional experience.

Some things are slow to change, however, or so it seems. Women are still blaming themselves for abuse. They are still afraid to tell doctors what has happened for fear it will make them look bad or be embarrassing. They are also afraid to pursue their beaters and molesters legally for fear that when they get out of jail, they will look up the person who put them in and beat them even harder. Somehow, women and we as a nation, not just those who comprise the group of the abused, have to learn to face down those who act in base ways and just stop the beatings, not with temerity but with reasoned courage. (See my post on abuse.)

Fortunately, unlike many other women in similar circumstances, Alana has a support system--the cousins, friends, mother, father. I have to hope that this will make the difference that will keep her from returning to an abusive situation.

After we dropped Alana off this evening, I said a prayer for her. She will need God's love in order to accept herself as a lovable person, and she will need God to give her strength as she takes one new step after another toward a saner and safer environment. I will continue to pray for her in the days ahead, and I ask anyone reading this blog to add her and all abused women and children to your prayer list.

Abuse, Abused, Abusers

I have met with some interesting reactions to my chapter on "Ma and Dad." I assume that they come from three groups: (1) those who have never been abused and are not abusers, (2) those who have been abused, and (3) those who are abusers.

The first group seems completely mystified by how, after a long childhood of extensive abuse, I can in clear conscience say that my parents were not monsters. Not having been abused themselves, they have likely not had to do the soul-searching and deep analysis that is implicit in forgiving anyone who harms you. With abuse, the harm is severe and multifaceted and affects not only one's physical well-being, but, as well, one's mental state, sense of self-efficacy, security, willingness to take risks, self-confidence, compassion, and even reason and ability to love. Let alone, of course, the ability to forgive. Certainly, my optimism and self-confidence did not come from my parents but evolved from the positive input of others and a sense of well-being and protection that was internal and irrational. Whence came this "salvation?" In retrospect, I can come to only one conclusion: God's protection of the Almighty's least mighty children. If, speaking in terms of reason alone, I conclude that God was the source of my protection, then I am required, at least in my understanding of morality (and fairness/honesty), to accept God's requirement to honor one's parents and to forgive those who offend us ("seventy times seven"). When one forgives, a healing process begins, again at least in my experience, and once that healing process has reached a level where one can confidently move beyond the childhood pain, one can begin to analyze why these sorts of bad things happened. In fact, one feels compel to ask "why" and to try to answer that question. That is what I did, and in the analysis, I finally understood that my parents were not evil creatures who wanted to do bad, but stressed-out, impoverished, "human" (and therefore fallible) individuals who wanted to do right but through their fallibility and status in life were pushed by external forces (the "need" to look good before the community, hormones out of control, a sense of helplessness to improve their comfort level) to lash out in anger and frustration -- all it took was very simple, normal, innocuous-but-undesired behaviors on the part of their children to unleash the emotions that their sense of morality (yes, they had a sense of morality) held at bay all too unsuccessfully. Seeing my parents as victims as much as they were abusers has helped me to understand that they were not monsters although their behavior was monstrous. I am not alone in this experience. Dave Pelzer (A Boy Called It) was treated as abusively by his mother, perhaps even more abusively, and ultimately he found himself able to forgive her. In that forgiveness lay much healing. That is likely why God requires us to forgive.

Those who have been abused (second group) do understand and do empathize. If their abuse was lesser, they realize that any amount of abuse is frightening, and the amount that my siblings and I received is even more frightening in that there was nothing special about them or me or my parents -- such abuse potentially could happen at any time to anyone. The fact that it does not happen more often is perhaps as a miracle, too.

The third group puzzles me. They are the abusers. I assume that the physical abusers, like my parents, have some kind of unmet need, deep-set insecurity, or hormonal/drug-induced chemical imbalance that leads them to do things that in a rational moment they themselves would conclude is wrong. To some extent, I do understand them, but I do not accept their behavior. No one should, and no, I do not condone those neighbors, teachers, and religious leaders who looked the other way in my childhood. I have been reviled by some book reviewers for taking these groups to task, but I stand by my conviction that those who look on and do nothing deserve to be taken to task.

I would hope that readers would realize that we never would have survived if everyone in our lives had been unconcerned, incompetent, and/or abusive. I do point out some who gave us succor in difficult moment. We had some brilliant doctors. Without them, my children would not have lived. Among those brilliant doctors were amazingly compassionate ones, with whom we developed life-long friendships. Likewise, there were a few teachers and educational administrators who did make a difference in our handicapped and gifted children's access to learning (but it would have been nice had these been the majority not the distinct minority). The rote application of learned treatment to all situations regardless of need (typically over the objection of knowledgeable parents) I truly have never understood -- not from the educators and doctors out of whose grasp I have wrestled my children for the sake of their mental development in some cases and lives in other cases.

I would love to hear from those of you who have survived any kind of abusive situation, whether at the hands of relatives, doctors, or teachers, either yourselves or as advocates for your children. What have been your experiences?