Daily Dose (Sept 10 – 13)
TUESDAY SEPT 10 —
This week our invitation: Get In. To live wholehearted and fully alive.
I love the simplicity of the metaphor.
If life is to be lived, and not merely managed, get in.
If life is to pour out from the heart (and to spill to the world around us), and not be solely analyzed from the head, get in.
If life is not just about answers, but about asking the right questions, get in.
Our invitation here is both engagement and investment.
Speaking of the healing powering of “getting in”, please watch Big Sonia. Holocaust Survivor. Grandma. Diva. Sonia is unabashed, “If I reach one heart, I will accomplish something.”
91-year-old Sonia Warshawski is a Holocaust-surviving, public speaking, gefilte fish-cooking grandmother and great-grandmother, who runs the tailor shop she’s owned for more than 30 years. The stories she tells about the Holocaust will chill you. But sporting her leopard print clothing, Big Sonia can be laugh-out-loud-funny. This is a portrait of the power of love to triumph over bigotry, and the power of truth-telling to heal us all. And to inspire each of us to want what we already hold. We see Sonia interact with family members, young students and prisoners and witness the spiritual impression that she makes.
I love this… “I want to reach their hearts and take out the hate,” Sonia says.
And to those of us listening, she adds, “Don’t close your eyes when something is not right.”
Yes. Get in… We do make a difference. One heart and one life at a time.
Rabbi Ted Falcon, a good friend of Sabbath Moment, reminds us, “We seek to remember that blessing comes in meeting the authentic call of the moment with greater compassion. There are always inner voices that focus on what is wrong in ourselves, in others, and in our world. There are always opportunities to act unkindly. But each moment offers us the opportunity to step into our freedom with greater awareness. The Way of One is a Way of deep compassion, healing, and forgiveness. It’s a choice we are challenged to make again and again.”
That authentic call of the moment sounds like Big Sonia, doesn’t it?
“If I reach one heart, I will accomplish something.”
WEDNESDAY SEPT 11 —
This week our invitation: Get In.
Here’s the deal: We make a difference. One heart and life at a time.
And yet… where do we go… when our world feels fractured or frightened or empty?
Maybe, just maybe, we
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in”
I can tell you this; it is a choice that would have been celebrated by Fr. Mychal Judge. On 9/11 2001, when the towers were hit, FDNY Chaplain Father Mychal Judge chose to suit up, and go where he was needed, into the upheaval. To save a life, it cost him his life.
Knowing his sacrifice, it is worth reading these excerpts from his Last Homily, delivered at a Mass for Firefighters on Sept. 10, 2001. “You do what God has called you to do. You get on that rig; you go out and do the job. No matter how big the call, no matter how small, you have no idea of what God is calling you to do, but God needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us. God needs us to keep supporting each other, to be kind to each other, to love each other… We love this job, we all do. What a blessing it is! It’s a difficult, difficult job, but God calls you to do it, and indeed, He gives you a love for it so that a difficult job will be well done… Turn to God each day—put your faith, your trust, your hope and your life in His hands. He’ll take care of you, and you’ll have a good life. And this firehouse will be a great blessing to this neighborhood and to this city. Amen.”
And… if we don’t know what God has called us to do, we know for certain that we are called to “get in”…
Amanda Gorman’s reminder, “For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
So today, as we honor the memory of 9/11, and the lives lost, and the families who grieve, what does it mean to be a spiller of hope?
Even in darkness, can we hear the invitation to be spillers of hope and light?
Because here’s the deal: “The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.” (Thank you, David W. Orr)
THURSDAY SEPT 12 —
This week our invitation: Get In.
Here’s the deal: We make a difference. One heart and life at a time. And I like Michael Gungor’s frame, “Faith comes from listening to the right stories.”
And telling stories is a non-negotiable part of healing and reconciliation. And a reminder of our invitation to “get in”. Today, one more story from 9/11 memories.
My good friend The Rev. Dan Matthews (former Rector at Trinity Church Wall Street and St. Paul’s Chapel) told me the story about Mike and Jim, the parish property managers.
Opened in 1766, Manhattan’s oldest public building in continuous use, St. Paul’s Chapel not only survived the blast and fallout (astonishing in that it sits across the street from Ground Zero), it eventually become the rest station, where volunteers took shifts as cooks, masseurs, podiatrists, and counselors for first responders. Cots were provided for exhausted rescuers. Many slept on the wooden pews (still marked and scarred from boots and equipment to this day).
On the Friday after the attack, the nation was asked to observe a moment of silence. Mike and Jim asked Rev. Matthews if they could ring the bells at St. Paul’s just before the noon hour, as a call to remembrance. Although a noble gesture, it wouldn’t be possible given the debris in the vicinity, the fact that part of the chapel had been quarantined and the reality that the bells were disabled. Undeterred, they decided to go ahead with their plan, making their way to the top of the bell tower. On the way, amidst the debris they found an old steel pipe. When they reached the top, Mike told Rev. Matthews that he used that piece of steel “to beat the hell out of that bell.”
Looking out at the scene below, they could see that every worker at ground zero had removed their hard hat, and turned to face the bells. Mike said, “It hit me, that even when things get their worst, I know that there is still hope.”
William Sloane Coffin’s affirmation, “It is hope that helps us keep the faith, despite the evidence, knowing that only in doing so has the evidence any chance of changing.”
And yes, sometimes, hope is not easy. Because the real world can be a harsh and uncaring place. So, where do we go… when our world feels fractured or frightened or empty?
Maybe, just maybe, we
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in”
FRIDAY SEPT 13 —
This week our invitation: Get In.
In the Holocaust Museum there is a story about an exchange in a concentration camp on the Day of Liberation (1945). The prisoners still alive in concentration camps, were being set free. A young American Lieutenant, extraordinarily moved by the bleak and foreboding nature of the setting, asked one prisoner to show him the camp. As they approached a building, the lieutenant opened a door for the young woman, and she collapsed in tears. Certain he had offended, he did his best to comfort her. After some time, she told him, “I am weeping because it is the first time in years that someone has done anything kind for me. Thank you.”
With one simple gesture of kindness, light is spilled.
And here’s the deal: when I am inundated with internal and external hubbub, I forget about the heart I can bring, with one small gesture, to this day.
The touch I can give to people around me who are tussling with bleakness.
The gift of welcome I can offer people who are left out and diminished.
The calling I have (to be Tikkun Olam, repairer of the world) to bring pardon and hope and love.
“Get in” indeed.
In the New Testament, Jesus was often in the midst. I love that phrase. So, when you “get in,” get ready for the ride of your life. I am in touch with, and available to… Give, forgive, risk, fail, try, create, offer, feel, see, wonder, build-bridges, cry, laugh, play, grieve, mourn.
Fall-down, get-up-again, offer mercy, receive mercy, paint, write, see poetry in the clouds, lend a helping hand, hold a hand that needs it, and give in to the vulnerability of trusting another who pushes the wheelbarrow.
And this week, I’ve been grateful for this prayer, inviting me to “get in”…
Keep my anger from becoming meanness.
Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity.
Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking.
Keep my anger turned toward justice, not cruelty.
Remind me that all of this, every bit of it, is for love.
Keep me fiercely kind.
Amen.
(Gratitude for the first three lines, borrowed from Laura Jean Truman)
Prayer for our week…
If you listen,
not to the pages or preachers
but to the smallest flower
growing from a crack
in your heart,
you will hear a great song
moving across a wide ocean
whose water is the music
connecting all the islands
of the universe together,
and touching all
you will feel it
touching you
around you…
embracing you
with light.
It is in that Light
that everything lives
and will always be alive.
That is all there is.
John Squadra
Photo… “Good morning Terry, Caterpillar on clover, Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, MO)” Mona Priest… Thank you Mona… I’m so grateful for your photos, please send them to [email protected]
