Laundry Days

   

"It is tempting to say that what you do with this time you save is your own business. Briefly stated, however, the Christian position is that there's no such thing as your own business."

-Frederick Buechner

"The more you fulfill yourself the less you will seek God."

-Oswald Chambers

     Lately, I feel my life is what happens between laundry days- the moments I spend between the moments I stop to remove the world from my clothing.

The Call

Watercolor

Samuel Carter

"The place God calls you to is the place where

your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

Frederick Buechner

Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

     The 17th Century poet, George Herbert, said, "Life is half spent before we know what it is." E.E. Cummings said, "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." 

     My life is surrounded with words of prophets and poets- the storytellers and imaginators who flavor my conversations, the men and women who share dreams and impart to me a title- Dreamer. At age ten I was an astronaut. By sixteen it was music. When my twentieth birthday arrived, I was a painter. But, musical astronauts who paint are an odd lot- too odd for most. In my twenties I was a part of the family business- a maker of tombstones... a storyteller of a different sort. Then something happened, something I did not expect. God called me to teach.

     We hear through the filter of our history. The distant voices cry, "You must ..." and "You cannot ..." 

     As I walk in the place where God calls the voices din. And it is good.

     

An Apologetic Thank You

"... our neediness is also the source of our greatest strength,

for our need requires the cooperation and love

of others from which derives our ability not only

to live but to flourish." 

Stanley Hauerwas

     Standing there, at the Walmart checkout, I realized I owe an apology and a 'Thank You' to my third-grade teacher. The clerk helping me was a young man. All went well until he scanned the paint can. $17.94 appeared on the screen. "Will that be all?" he asked.

     "The paint is 50% off," I said.

     "Oh?" 

     I pointed to the large, black lettering on the lid. He looked around for a manager.

     "Let me see if I can do this." After several buttons were pushed, he said, "There, I think I can override now." He looked around again. "If only I had a calculator."

     "I could do it on paper, if that's O.K.," I offered. The young man watched me divide 17.94 by 2 as though I was solving the 47th Problem of Euclid. I held the answer up- $8.97, but when he typed the numbers in, he added them instead of subtracting them. "Uh, that's higher than it was," I said.

     "Oh, sorry. Let me get a manager." 

     A woman soon arrived and said, "Let's start over." When she scanned the paint the original $17.94 appeared.

     "It's 50% off."

     "And that is...?"

     I held the paper up. "$8.97." I noticed the young man was smiling.

     My third-grade teacher introduced me to division. I hated it. I didn't believe I would ever have a need for the ability to solve a division problem. But my teacher persisted, and as I walked toward the Walmart exit I looked at the paint can and smiled.