Out of the heart, the mouth speaks...

As I was walking into Walmart this week a woman exclaimed, "I am loving that haircut!"

I adore these kinds of compliments. The kind that catch the person who gives them by surprise. You know what I mean? I wasn't expecting to receive the compliment, but neither was she expecting the words to burst from her mouth. And it was her surprise that delighted me.

Because I could tell she wasn't on a mission to compliment people that day. She didn't feel like God brought her to Walmart to look for interesting hairstyles to rave about. She doesn't have a daily quota of compliments to give. She simply saw me, opened her mouth, and let the words that were in her heart roll out.

It is this kind of spontaneous compliment that bolsters my spirit. And helps me stand firm against the negative voices in this world.

It reminds me that we all have a choice. To be the positive, affirming, complimentary voices that can strengthen others and ourselves. Or to be the negative, destructive, critical voices that can ruin someone's day.

Our words carry. Our words serve. And our words say more about what is in our spirits than they do about anyone else.

Let's fill ourselves with gladness, so that when out of the heart the mouth speaks, ours will be words of love and affirmation.

Amazing Grace on the Camino

There were 3 people that Randy and I really connected with at the start of our Camino last year, Jeff ("North Dakota"), Aloys ("Holland"), and Sophie ("Frenchie"). This week we discovered that all 3 of them, plus Randy, have birthdays not only in May but within a 10-day span. 

To honor each of their birthdays, I have posted pictures that I have of them from our walk together. In response to one of those I received the video below. It was taken on one of my favorite days of the entire journey. It was a day filled with conversation, french toast, church bells, and a really long walk. It ended with dinner and more conversation and our very first shots of pacharan.

When we returned to the monastery that evening it was already locked for the night (even though 4 of the 7 of us who were staying there were all on the outside!). The proprietor let us in after a few knocks and took us the "back way" to our bunks, leading us through the balcony overlooking the hall of worship.

It was so beautiful. My heart swelled with this verse:

"SERVE the Lord with gladness:

come before his presence with SINGING" (Psalm 100:2). 

So when Holland asked me to sing Amazing Grace, my heart was already filled with the words.

A Revolutionary Discovery

Rand and I have made a revolutionary discovery: we are tired at night.

Not revolutionary? You are tired at night too?

Then why, when we want to spend "quality time" with our loved ones, do we schedule it at night? If this is the relationship that is supposed to get the "best" of us, why don't we give it the time when we are at our best?

Which is why we went to breakfast yesterday.

And roller skating on the morning of his birthday.

And to happy hour and a matinee the week before.

Because we want to serve one another the best we have, which we can't do if we give our best to everything and everyone else and wait until we're tired to make time for one another.

And yes, we do end our morning dates the same way you end your nighttime ones!

Honor the Sacrifice

Today we honor those who are called to serve in the most profound way -- to lay ones life down for another.

The sacrifice these women and men have made remind us of what Jesus did for all of us. Not just some of us, but all of us.

Jesus didn't stop to ask if we were worthy. Jesus didn't wait until we promised to honor his sacrifice with obedience or gratitude or love. Jesus didn't say I'll only die for the Jews but not the gentiles, or for the men but not the women, or for the kids who make their beds but not the kids who don't, or for the ones whose decisions I'll agree with but not for those who hurt the people I love.

It was an all inclusive sacrifice. And so is that of our servicemen and women. They don't join up just to serve and protect the people who belong to the same religion or political party or bandwagon as them. They serve and protect and die for all of us. For the ones we see as "world-changers", and the ones who seemingly go unnoticed. For the ones who try hard to be good people, and even the ones who make mistakes we think of as unforgivable.

Sacrifice means "to be made sacred". The sacrifice of these men and women says that each one of us is sacred, holy and beloved. What better way to honor their service than to live lives that reflect the worth and value they saw in us. And to see that same worth and value in one another.

The Temptation to Disconnect

I admittedly have a love-hate relationship with social media. A former co-worker reminded me, as I was sharing the daily work that I do on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, that when I left the office 3 years ago I said, “I can’t wait to disconnect.”

Part of that was my natural inclination to compartmentalize my life. To keep work separate from family separate from school separate from my personal life. And social media is the exact opposite of a compartmentalized life.

But the other piece to that was my frustration at the negativity that pervades our tweets and posts and links. I find it so disheartening that I can tend to dwell there. In that negativity. Wondering why I even bother opening my Facebook app, day after day after day. (Twitter is a bit safer for me, as I mostly follow people I don’t know. I follow them for inspiration, and if they stop inspiring, because I don’t know them, they are far easier to delete.)

I want to shout at the negativity: WHO DOES THIS SERVE?

Who does it serve for us to publicly judge one another? Celebrities? The church?

Who does it serve for us to condemn another’s beliefs in defense of our own?

Who does it serve for us to “share” the “train wrecks” all around us?

My disenchantment is not just with the negativity, however. It’s also with the frivolity of it all. The seemingly futile. What is the point of sharing my heart and getting two likes when I can share a photo of my dinner and get 20 times that many? Do we even care any more about the heart?

But I suppose the real question here is: do I have anything worthwhile to say?

People tell me all the time that I should write a book. Sometimes they even tell me what it should be about. But I’m of that generation that doesn’t want to just do something; I want to do MY thing, and I want it to make a difference.

But even as I ask the question: Who does it serve for me to write this blog or that post or this tweet, I also have to ask the question: who does it serve if I don’t? And I already know the answer to that one: an unwritten word will always go unnoticed, an unwritten book will never change the world. So keep writing. Keep posting. Keep blogging and tweeting and posing for selfies. Because it has a better chance of changing the world than disconnecting. 

When Others Serve

Jovi and I took a trip to Starbucks this morning. It's not part of our regular routine. But that's precisely why we did it. To break out of routine. To shake things up. Because we needed a change of pace to get us inspired for the day ahead. Out of our heads and into the world for a little while. (Granted we can get to Starbucks and back home in 15 minutes so it wasn't a long while, but it was something!)

When I got up to the drive-thru window, the young man with the black eyeliner and bleach blonde hair said, "The woman ahead of you bought your coffee." "That is so sweet!" I said. "She really is the sweetest," he said, making me think that this isn't the first time she has bought coffee for the car behind her.

Don't you just love it when you get to see other people respond to that nudge to serve someone else! And sometimes you even get to be that someone else!

I'm so grateful that Jovi and I changed up our routine this morning. And not just because I got free coffee out of the deal. But because I got to see that others are out there who are also doing their best to live into this call to serve.

And Jovi was just happy to get to go along for the ride!

A Beer, A First Kiss, and A Lesson in Serving

When I was on a layover at the airport in Chicago last week, my bartender Manfred told me about his first kiss. "The ice cream truck drove by our house during the summer," he said. "There was a little girl who lived next door and I wanted to buy her an ice cream cone. I asked Mother for the money but she said 'no.' She went into the other room and left her purse out on the table. I knew it was wrong, but those dollar bills were right there. So I grabbed that money and ran after the ice cream truck. That girl kissed me the next day. My first kiss. I think she knew I had done something daring to get her that ice cream."

Isn't that just an adorable story! I have thought of it every day this week as the ice cream truck sings past our house.

But what captured me about Manfred was not how cute his story was our how thirst quenching his beer. What captured me was that he had so clearly discovered the secret to serving. That to serve is to go beyond your job description.

When I worked as editor of Quaker Life magazine in Indiana, my co-workers and I would occasionally be asked to update our job descriptions. And we always found it impossible. Because so much of our jobs went beyond "duties". To "work as editor" meant proofreading and organizing and publishing a magazine every other month. But to "serve as editor" meant to listen to the woman who wondered if it was okay that she always brought pie to the potluck dinner or if this was preventing someone else from using their gifts. To serve meant visiting churches across the U.S. just to sit in worship. To serve meant growing up -- learning that I didn't always have to have my way and I didn't always have to get the credit (deserved or undeserved) -- so that I could better respect the authority of those I worked with. To serve meant telling my own story and calling out the story in others. To serve as editor was so much more than commas and titles and one space after periods or two.

In some of our professions it is easy to see how in our work we serve others, simply by performing the duties on our job description. But in all of our professions, to serve as Jesus would is to go beyond those tasks. To do them joyfully. To seek additional ways to lighten someone's load. To truly connect with others.

The choice is ours. Will we work at our jobs? Or serve up more than is asked of us?

St Patrick's Prayer

I came across St. Patrick's prayer this week in some material I was going over for work. A minister I am working with had used it in one of her messages. It is a long prayer, but this is the most popular portion of it and the excerpt she used:

Christ with me,

Christ before me,

Christ behind me,

Christ in me,

Christ beneath me,

Christ above me,

Christ on my right,

Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down,

Christ when I sit down,

Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

It's a cool prayer, though not one that I was familiar with, but that isn't why it stood out to me. It stood out to me because a friend of mine read the exact same section of the prayer during worship last week when I happened to be visiting Xenia Friends Church. When normally I wouldn't have given this prayer a second thought (because prayers to me are like poetry - most of the time I just don't get it), these kinds of "coincidences" always alert me to stop and pay attention.

It is presumed that St. Patrick wrote this prayer to ask God's protection over him as he was trying to convert the people of Ireland to Christianity. Patrick had been taken into slavery by the Irish as a teenager, escaped, but later felt God lead him back to Ireland to bring the message of God's salvation. During his enslavement, Patrick had no one but God to talk to, so they became pretty tight.

So what is this prayer saying and why did God want me to read it?

To me it says that Jesus is with us wherever we go. He's bushwhacked the path in front of us. And he's got our back. He doesn't sleep on the job, even when we're sleeping. And whether what is going on in our lives feels like the absolute worst of times or the absolute best of times, he's still there with us.

This prayer tells me that when I spend time with God, and fill myself up with his words and his desires and his promises, then I will be a reflection of Christ. Others will see Christ in me, and hear Christ in me when I speak (or write!). Which in turn places the responsibility on me to treat people as Jesus would, to love people as Jesus would, to speak to people as Jesus would, to look at people as Jesus would. To actually reflect Jesus. That is a lot of responsibility. But I think it's what my word of the year -- SERVE -- is all about.