Monday Morning Meditation #19: Let Us Remember

While not feeling well last week, I wandered through the rest of Numbers, feeling very much bonded with the Israelites wandering through the desert. Even more so I enjoyed reading about the various locations because I know them. I lived there from 2004-2006. Some of the places still carry the same names in Arabic. Others have changed but are rather easy to pinpoint if they have been part of your routine life. So, unlike what might have been had I not lived there, I read through these chapters as if reading a travelogue, seeing in my memory the various places as they are today. And then I came to Deuteronomy, Chapter 4, Verse 9, where I found rather interesting order from God to the Israelites as they were about to enter the promised land: "Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but make them known unto thy children and thy children's children."

Reading: Deuteronomy 4:9

Meditation: Are there not times that we, like the Israelites before us, forget all the ways in which God has helped us and provided for us in the past as soon as some new emergency hits when it seems that God is not responding with as much alacrity as we would like to our current need/request? How easy it is to forget the miracles! It is easy to remember that my colleague, Tareq, died this year, but how many people immediately recall the miracle that we all experienced together with Tareq three years ago when he was spared? (Well, yes, of course, we do, when we think about, and it did change us all in important ways; nonetheless, it is not the first thing that always comes to mind. Surprisingly (at least to me), there are even times that I have to remember deliberately God's conk on my head; at times, I still discuss what happened with Jean, still trying to get my head around it and to remember the details. For her, too, it is a special memory that she does not want human brain trace decay to rub away.

I wonder how many other people, once having received a miracle or an answered prayer, continue on their merry way, initially thankful but soon taking it for granted and then nearly forgetting it altogether? (Ones who did not are Stellan's parents who were so overwhelmed by Stellan's miracle that I doubt they will ever forget.)

Likewise, how often do we, caught up in our mundane lives (even the most exciting lives are mundane by comparison with the spiritual adventures that God offers), do we completely forget about God? How often has half a day (or even more) passed without one word of prayer? Advantages to living in the Arab world are the 5-times-a-day call to prayer that sounds throughout every city and town and the ubiquitous prayer rug that silently reminds one and all of a greater purpose than one’s current job or activities.

I, too, have a prayer rug at home and at work, both of which are used by Muslim friends, colleagues, and visitors. Yet, even though they are in front of me, I still forget to close my door and spend a few minutes in prayer, especially at work where I try to maintain an open-door policy for employees. Somehow, when the door is closed, some understand that policy to be an open-the-door policy, and so privacy is limited. Although I do have the power to change that, what I generally do instead is answer the door, and so time and again prayer is put aside, to be remembered next when some crisis hits, major decision is to be made, or someone stopping by needs or asks for prayer.

A visit by a Jordanian colleague to the conference I attended this week in Maryland revealed the limitations of my “memory” on more than one occasion. We spent our free time together, along with a colleague from Morocco. On the first day, as we ate lunch after a brief shopping trip, our Jordanian colleague looked at his watch and noted that we had passed the time for noon prayers, so we needed to return immediately after lunch to the hotel where he had left his prayer rug. I explained to him that American hotel rooms contain no quiblah, the arrow pointing to Mecca, so we used our sense of geography, poor as it might be, to determine the approximate direction. From time to time during the days of the conference, he would remind of us prayer times, quietly and without any thought that we might not be paying attention to the passage of time. When I was late arriving at breakfast Sunday morning because the taxi picking me up from early Morning mass at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Linthicum had arrived late, he smiled in approbation. Of course, he understood missing or being late to some earthly obligation because a spiritual obligation had taken precedence. Were we all to have that attitude I think our days would look (and feel) quite different!

How fickle is human memory! I think it was with reason that God reminded us to remember.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to repent for all those times that I put earthly appeals over spiritual ones, to thank God for patience in not forgetting me even though I sometimes forget Him, to give praise for his steadfastness, and to request Him to continue to clunk me on the head when I need reminding of the more important things of life, such is His presence in mine.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, remembering all the miracles with which I have been blessed. In addition, I am beginning my week with new resolution to remember always not only what God has done but that God is with me every minute of every hour and that I need to close my door more frequently in order to spend time in much-needed prayer.

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

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

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

Have a good day and a good week, remembering always God's past kindnesses to you, current love, and future promises. Let not your memory of the divine ever be fickle!

7 Quick Takes Friday #5

I cannot believe that it is Friday again already and time to contribute to the quick takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary.

1. This week ended in quite a flourish! A call from the main headquarters of our main client indicated major trouble at our Texas branch. No question about it, with a conflagration in those offices, I had to get on a plane immediately, dragging along with me the senior manager who oversees the set of branches to which Texas belongs. (This is an example of the reason why my Twitterlet, Where in the World is Beth, sometimes changes daily!) We rushed down there, my senior manager and I, with his assistant joining us from our Maryland branch where he was conducting some routine business. Together, we made quite a fire team. Out went the fire! The embers are cooling, and we came home this evening. A total of about 18 hours in Texas is what it took. Whew! Well, not really. While we were in Texas, I got word of a small fire at our Hawaii branch. The same senior manager and assistant will need to go there. However, they can use the fire-fighting techniques I showed them in Texas, and I can stay in California, at least for the next three days. Yes!

2. While we were in Texas my boss's supervisor, who will be going to Korea next week with the same senior manager who was with me in Texas, asked for talking points for his speech there to be sent to him immediately. My boss nervously kept a dialogue going between me and his supervisor because there was no way anyone could send him the data that was needed from a blackberry, our only means of communication. The last email I got, as I was sitting on a plane waiting to depart on the leg into California, was a copy of a note sent to my boss's supervisor, explaining why the request could not be offered immediately: we were on a plane traveling back to the main office. And then, as so often happens in my life, everything changed. I quickly typed and sent an enote to my boss before the plane doors closed: "Your boss just literally ran onto this plane enroute back from Washington. Quite coincidentally he is sitting in the seat beside the senior manager he needs the information from. I think we don't need to pass any more messages. Odd world we live in, isn't it?" When I reached California, I had a relieved LOL note waiting for me from my boss on my Blackberry. Now, just what are the chances of that happening??!! I am rescued so often that I just cannot say that all of it could possibly be happy coincidence unless "coincidence" has another name.

3. And speaking of Korea, I was reminded of my trip there as the lady who sat beside me on the plane to Texas coughed, and spit up, and, prior to taking off, complained to someone on the phone about how sick she felt! Sheesh! Don't people have any conscience about spreading germs? In Korea, temperatures are taken upon boarding and debarking planes, and the sick are not allowed to travel. Perhaps the USA should follow suit. I generally don't worry, but since I have to travel a lot and cannot take the flu shot (allergy to its growth medium) during flu season, I have to leave my health up to God's protection more consciously than I usually do. (I hope God heals that lady traveler, too, before others get sick.)

4. Staying on the theme of Korea a bit longer -- yes, I know it happened two months ago, not two days ago -- I am still having trouble getting my mind to understand the kind of time travel I experienced. I left Korea Tuesday afternoon and arrived in California Tuesday morning. I am still trying to figure out what I did Tuesday morning, should anyone ask. Did I do the things that I experienced in Korea or the ones I experienced in California? Will the real Tuesday morning please stand up? (I am glad I don't keep a diary; it would be hard to make an entry for that day.)

5. Speaking of illness, I have a very elderly friend whose doctor refused to allow her to live alone following a stroke. So, she moved south to live with a relative who has since decided that she is too costly and has returned her here. Now, while there is more to the story and some help is available, much of the responsibility to make sure she is okay has fallen to me. No one asked, but that is okay. A friend is a friend. However, I live 30 miles away, and when I call and there is no answer, I do not know whether she has fallen, is away from the phone, or gone to sleep. Plus, I travel. The morning that I left for Texas, I called and she told me she was on the floor. I called a neighbor who checked on her -- had to dismantle her lock to get in -- and found her naked on the floor. She had fallen, was not hurt, but was unable to get up. We are very perplexed about how to handle this situation. We have the telephone for the relative down south, but there are no answers to our phone calls. I wonder if any readers have ideas about how to handle this better than we are doing?

6. "Haste makes waste," as Benjamin Franklin said, but, in my experience, it does worse. While traveling to Texas, I learned through the grapevine that a junior manager had unilaterally canceled a meeting that I had set up. I found out through an organization-wide email. I reacted immediately. Patience is not one of my virtues; that is something that I am still working on, often successfully. So, I sent a very terse message to our operations person who had sent out the message, cc'ing the junior manager who is the ops persons's boss, stating that this person had no authority to undo any of my decisions or scheduled events and needed to have checked with my assistant who was in charge in my absence. Then, through my assistant, I found out that it was my assistant who had made the decision, based on good reasons. Oh, my. Once again, it was time for a piece of humble pie! I wrote a letter of apology to the junior manager. He replied that he had not taken offense. Since he should have, given my words, I am now worried that he did not take offense because he has become used to my impatience! Ooh! Not good!

7. This past week sometime I lost my journal, the one where I keep my notes for things I am working on, including posts to this website. I did not mislay. I know where it was left, and it is long gone! This only goes to show that the only sure thing is my memory. Oh, wait! I forgot: I suffer from CRS Syndrome. (CRS: Can't Remember Shit -- sorry about the rough acronym; it was invented by a nurse friend of mine.) I gave up on trying to remember or piece together the notes that were in the journal. Time to move on to new notes. Or, maybe, time to write less, pray more, and prioritize a bit differently. Do you think that maybe God yanked the journal out of my hands? Hm...dunno...I will have to pray about that...

Wishing you all a glorious weekend -- a happy Halloween and celebration of All Saints' Day, and more!