Thank You Day

I have to take care of a couple of housekeeping chores before we start on today’s wisdom. First, if you want to see a picture of Terry, the homeless guy I wrote about last week, go to Colleen’s blog. She posted a picture of them together. She also has her own account of the gumbo story there. http://ceotoole.blogspot.com/ Crescent City Chronicles

Secondly, I just have to tell you that I’ve been thinking a lot about OJ Simpson lately. You should remember that I spent last winter at PDA. So when I got in my car for the first cold morning this week it had been over two years since I put my gloves on. My black leather gloves. And they don’t fit anymore. They are decidedly too small. I will admit that I may have gained some weight in the last couple of years but not in my fingers. No sireee. My fingers are the same size as the day Beaven put a ring on my left hand almost 40 years ago. If anything, sometimes that ring is too big for the finger. The only possible explanation is that the gloves shrank. I rest my case.

Now to today’s business:

A couple of years ago I met a lady who sings the Doxology when she wakes up every morning. She said she sings it softly so she doesn’t wake her husband if he’s still in the bed beside her.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Today is my 61st birthday. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Given the arrangement of Thanksgiving on the calendar, every seven years or so my birthday falls on Turkey Day. Giving thanks has been built into my life. I don’t think that’s an accident.

Somewhere I heard that the name Jane means “God’s Grace.” And God has been very gracious to me. When I was young my family had just a whole heap of troubles. Everybody in our house was addicted to one thing or another. I’m talking falling down and passing out addictions, not the wimpy addictions like shopping or gambling. I was the only one to emerge relatively unscathed from this horrible circus. I don’t know why or how this happened unless you use the phrase “by the grace of God.”

I understand Grace. I know how much I have to be grateful for. I know how bad it could have been. I never felt an obligation to be thankful, it just happened.

A year ago when I was thinking how I would spend the milestone of my 60th birthday, I decided I wanted to spend the day in thankful fellowship with God. I wanted to do something physical to celebrate a healthy body that still works, albeit with a few rusty joints here and there in the morning. I ended up spending the day driving to the Gulf Coast to my assignment with the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. I spent the next four months managing work sites in Mississippi. I was in close communion with my Creator and it was very physical work. Then I went home on April Fools Day. I love the quiet symbolism of being a Fool for Christ. There are worse ways to celebrate your 61st year. Then I went back in August and spent another two months or so doing the same thing again and loved every minute.

I calculated that I spent over half of my 61st year working for God. And that’s just the way I wanted it. Beaven and I celebrated the completion our 39th year of marriage a couple of weeks ago and hope to spend a good chunk of our 40th year working for PDA together. Is that the poetry of life, or what? Can you tell I was an accountant for a living?

Last night I had a small celebratory fire out in the field by the kids’ playhouse. (Yes, I know I have a bad reputation but this one was harmless. See my August 23, 2005 posting.) It was strong enough to come back to life this morning with just the addition of a few pieces of wood. It’s mostly cedar and makes the most wonderful crackling sound. The perfect backdrop for a reverent and quiet “Thank You.”

In the meantime, I’ve got pies to bake for tomorrow. I will leave you with one of my favorite songs from the Veggie Tales movie, “Madame Blueberry.” If you every get a chance to see this movie, especially with a grandchild, be sure to watch it. Especially in the light of our current economic challenges, the show speaks of the dangers of having too much “stuff” and how we should be grateful for just what we have.

I thank God for this day,
For the sun in the sky,
For my mom and my dad,
For my piece of apple pie,
For our home on the ground,
For God’s love that’s all around.
That’s why I give thanks every day.

'Cause a thankful heart is a happy heart
I’m glad for all I have, that’s an easy way to start.
For the love that He shares
'Cause He listens to our prayers
That’s why I give thanks every day.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Bread for the Journey

I am convinced that sometimes Jesus dresses up like a homeless person and goes around to his churches to check on how we’re doing. So I always try to pay attention to any homeless person I’m around. I try to be attentive but not a suck-up. I’m pretty sure Jesus can spot a suck-up a mile away.

I first met Terry about a week after I arrived at the PDA camp in New Orleans. I got there the day after the last manager went home. The previous manager left me a whole sheet of instructions on when the dumpster gets emptied, computer passwords, and helpful hints like that. At the bottom of the list was a note about a homeless guy who came around about once a week or so. Spencer didn’t tell me much more about him, other than that he was pretty harmless and just needed a sandwich once in a while. But the note didn’t tell me the guy’s name.

So the day I looked out the window and saw a skinny black man in dreadlocks walking to the door I had an idea that who he was and one of the first things I asked him was his name. After telling me his name he went on to say that he’s a house painter by trade but can’t find any work. He said he lives in a van parked in his sister’s driveway near the camp. I think later her told me the house is Katrina damaged and the sister hadn’t come back yet. I tried to believe this story and was pretty successful at it most of the time.

He wasn’t the first homeless person I’ve met in my life. If I said some of my best friends are homeless it would be pretty accurate. My best friend in high school ended up homeless. But that’s a story for another day.

For years we’ve had a homeless guy who roamed around the town in Garland. I would see him at the bank where I worked or he might come by our church to look through the trash. As a bank employee I knew that he was the beneficiary of a trust fund set up by his family when they realized his mental illness would trap him in this life. He didn’t interact with people very much and I don’t know of anyone who ever had an actual conversation with him. But he got around enough that pretty much everybody in town knew him by name. Every once in a while someone will still ask if they’ve seen Leo and usually somebody has.

Then there was Mitchell. He was a homeless guy our church worked with for over a year. He would come around on Sunday mornings for a bite to eat and a nap on the back pew. It was interesting to watch the many different reactions the congregation had to him. Sometimes we would put him up in a motel if the weather was bad. The story ended badly with the church eventually asking him to move on. But we gave it our best effort. If Jesus was checking us out we probably got a pretty solid “C”. We weren’t great but we weren’t horrible.

By the time I had to evacuate the camp for Hurricane Gustav I guess I’d seen Terry three or four times. He didn’t come every day but when he did come he was obviously hungry. He didn’t mince words but was polite in his request for something to eat. We had become pretty comfortable with each other by then. I knew he didn’t like peanut butter but didn’t care at all whether he had mustard or mayonnaise on his ham sandwich. I knew he preferred water to fruit drinks but what he really appreciated was having ice in his water. For the first couple of visits he told me the same story about not being able to find work. And I knew he had horror stories from being in New Orleans during Katrina. I had to wonder how much damage Katrina had done to his mind. He told me that it changed him.

When I got a call from the boss to evacuate all I had to do was follow the detailed instructions in the village manager’s notebook. One of the things on the list besides packing up all the office equipment and files was to pack up the food. This sounds pretty easy until you realize our camp had three refrigerators and three big freezers.

I could leave the staples in the pantry but I had to pack up all the frozen food and go through the refrigerators item by item. Keep or throw? Keep or throw? At the time I wasn’t sure exactly what we were going to do with the stuff I kept. It turned out that we packed an entire freezer in a Budget Rent-a-truck and put the refrigerated stuff in coolers full of ice. But I didn’t know it at the time and was having a hard time deciding on the refrigerated foods.

While I was elbow deep in the salad dressings Terry came by. I was throwing food away left and right. Opened packages of lunch meat, hamburger buns, breakfast muffins. Terry had hit the mother lode.

As I started bagging up stuff for him we realized he wouldn’t be able to carry it all. I thought I might just leave him a stash in a box outside the camp and he could help himself. But then the thought came and stopped me cold. I went limp bending into the refrigerator and stood up, “Terry, where will you go?” They were predicting a hurricane as dangerous as Katrina. He had no shelter other than the van he was living in. I had begun to doubt that there was a sister.

He told me he wasn’t leaving. But you have to leave, I told him. There was a mandatory evacuation. He had to go. His life was in danger. After all, that’s why I was going wasn’t it? Everyone needed to get out of New Orleans. Every time he gave me a negative answer all I could think of to say was “You have to go.”

I wondered if PDA would let him come with me but immediately knew they wouldn’t. I knew better than to even ask. Or maybe I was afraid to ask. Maybe I was afraid they would say yes. Homeless people can be complicated. But I’ve come to appreciate that Christianity, when done correctly, is just very complicated.

The conversation came to a standoff and my guilt was enormous. I gave him as much food as he could carry and he left. As he walked out the door into the coming storm I was sure that I would never see Terry again. And, even worse, I would never know what happened to him.

But I did. And it was glorious to see him a few weeks later when we came back to reopen camp. I was so relieved to see him alive I gave him a huge hug and didn’t want to let go of him. He said he ended up getting on a bus the city sent around and eventually he claimed they sent him to Kentucky on an airplane. I have to admit I don’t have a clue about the accuracy of the story. While everyone in America was watching and reading all about the hurricane I was living in a church basement with one ancient rabbit-eared TV filled with snowy shadows. No one on earth knew less about Hurricane Gustav than the people who fled from it.

By now I had a co-manager, Colleen. And she cared about Terry as much as I did. The volunteers we had over the next few weeks cooked some great meals but Terry never came around as much when there were a lot of people around. And while we had many great left-overs with volunteers in camp, Terry still preferred a simple sandwich and an apple.

I warned Colleen to not let her guard down around him and to not be surprised if he pressed his luck too far. The memory of our experience with Mitchell back home was still fresh on my mind. Even in my parting words to Colleen I left warnings about Terry.

About a month after I left New Orleans Colleen called me to say that I wouldn’t believe what Terry had done. And in all my experience and reading about homeless people I still wasn’t prepared for what Terry had done for Colleen. He had brought her dinner.

She had lost her keys in the street in front of the camp and he spotted her walking around looking for them. Colleen, who never, ever gets flustered was flustered that day. And Terry not only joined in the search but he did a very selfless thing. He worried about her. Worrying about other people is just another one of those luxuries the homeless can’t afford. That’s why it was remarkable when he came by the next day with a simple cup of Gumbo in a take out cup from the place across the street.

She couldn’t accept it, she told him and tried to argue with him. He needed that money for himself. She couldn’t let him buy food for her. But he finally made her understand that the greatest gift she could give to him would be to accept it.

I can’t tell the story as well as Colleen; mostly because it’s her story. But I can offer you a moral to the story, though. If you are ever offered a cup of gumbo from a homeless guy—take note. It might be Jesus wanting to make sure you have food for the journey.

Government Class Today

I’ve had a little trouble coming up with words of wisdom and wit for this week. Just when I thought I could settle down enough for the spirit to move within me I realized that I still haven’t been paid for my last week with PDA. That sent me to sifting through all my papers which led me to cleaning off my desk then I caught a few notes I had scribbled down on scraps of paper which led me on several trips down the rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland. The story ends with me sitting in the living room at 6 a.m. this morning reading the constitution.

Don’t ask me how I got there. I think it was something I heard on TV about the tenth amendment. Suffice it to say that I don’t have much for you today.

However, it does bring me to the question of how many average people understand what the constitution actually says. It’s really not too hard to understand if you take your time and read carefully. Certainly it’s not as complicated as the papers you have to sign to get a mammogram but, still, it could use some work. If we can get a guy like Eugene Peterson to put the Holy Bible into words you can understand why can’t we get someone to do that for the constitution for goodness sakes?

My friend Colleen O’Toole who managed the New Orleans camp with me for a few glorious weeks send me an email the other day asking me to send her a copy of the US News when it came out. It is supposed to have an article about “the proposed U S Public Service Academy” in it. Colleen is returning to the AmeriCorps after she leaves PDA. Well, she’s going to Costa Rico first but then she’s going to the AmeriCorps. I assumed the article she wanted had something to do with that. But, "no", she told me, it was a “piece of legislation” she had been following for a long time.

Now, how many 23 year-olds do you know who follow legislation? This is one of the things I find so delightful about this kid. That, plus our shared love for Mid-Eastern food. We can share an appetizer plate perfectly: She loves the hummus more than I do and I prefer the babaganouj, which she doesn’t. Together we make one perfect diner.

I’m still a little high from the election. Maybe now we’ll have more young people who feel a connection with public service. On one of my journeys into the rabbit hole yesterday I was looking for a contact for Nancy2. Her family wants to go to the Gulf to help with hurricane recovery over the Thanksgiving holidays. Their kids are in high school but PDA won’t let anyone under 18 in their camps. And I was able to find a link to UMCOR, the United Methodists version of PDA, and they don’t have any of those pesky rules about kids. In fact, the lady I talked to on the phone said “if we don’t get them before they’re 18 it gets harder to get them involved in mission work.”

I love it. And I love the idea of helping with the recovery over the Thanksgiving holiday. We looked into it ourselves but one of us (and I won’t say who) wasn’t excited about the idea of passing up a long weekend with eight pies in order to work his guts out and sleep on the floor with a bunch of strangers.

I love this idea of celebrating Thanksgiving with dynamic acts of Thanks in Action. I wish I had found this contact sooner so more people could plan their holiday. I’ll leave you with the information so you can make your own arrangements or pass the idea along to someone else. And if anyone out there understands the Tenth Amendment, please let me know.

UMCOR
Beverly Antilley
Volunteer Coordinator for Disaster Recovery-Southeast Texas
409-223-0118
b50wabit@sbcglobal.net
She even answers the phone herself.

A New Day Begun

I woke up this morning and my first thought was, “Boy, my president has a really funny name.”

You always like your president to have a solid, simple decidedly strong name reminiscent of John Wayne. You want him to be a John or Tom or Steve. Even the name George fits this bill. Certainly never in my wildest imagination did I ever think the American president would be named something like Barack Obama.

But here we are and I’m estatic.

I had one tiny surprise along the way. The moment when I closed the door of the mailbox to send my absentee ballot racing up Highway 49 from Louisiana a thought came from nowhere and startled me. I thought of John F Kennedy. When November 22 arrives this year it will be 45 years since he was killed. I was in high school. Ever since we’ve been waiting for someone to finish out his term of office.

I was startled at this thought. I had never thought of having unfinished business but it may have been in the back of my mind for all these years. We’ve been waiting for someone young and vibrant who will speak to us in plain language. Someone who will reach out to the world and be a partner to other countries. Finally, the other shoe has dropped.

I could go on but it’s early and I still have a few more cups of coffee to go. And I know a lot of my friends won’t wake up happy this morning. My Jewish friend, Nancy2 (see August 5th posting) never came around to voting for him. The Muslim thing was just too real in her mind and she voted Republican for the first time in her life.

But my young friend Colleen who is going back to the AmeriCorps in a couple of months will get to serve under a President who values her service. I am thrilled for her. There was a young kid in Thailand who told the television reporter that we have “our first global president.” Most of my European travel has been in the last eight years and I saw the grafitti first-hand. We became more and more unpopular around the world with Bush’s egocentric attitude.

One of the things that made this campaign different was the use of cyberspace. After I got my Obama bumper sticker I found myself on the mailing list. Then I was offered the chance to get the VP selection news first and fast. So I sent in my cell phone number and permission to receive text messages. Naturally, I’ve been getting texts periodically over the last couple of months. It was kind of cool to look at my phone and see I had a message from Michelle or Barack or Joe. Kind of like we were close buddies. I'm not stupid enough to deny this was just another campaign tool. But this morning I got one purportedly from Barack Obama himself that said in part:

“We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next.”

Could it be that simple? Our government sending me a text to invite me to join in the work of our country?

I remember the Sunday I sat in the pew at the Greater Mt. Zion AME Church in Pearlington, Mississippi. We sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and at the end of the sermon the preacher held high the latest copy of Ebony magazine with Obama on the cover with the caption asking/declaring: “In Our Lifetime.” Blacks had long been promised that we would someday have a black president but they didn’t really believe it could happen.

Today, a lot of promises are kept but there is still unfinished business before us. I can’t imagine anyone wanting this job. But this morning it looks like we just might be able to work together.

At any rate, I hope they will have a good choir sing the song sometime during the inauguration.

Lift every voice and sing,
till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the
dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
let us march on till victory is won.