The Power of Your Story

One day, last week, the doorbell rang.  It was about one o’clock in the afternoon, and my visitors were both a surprise and yet not entirely unexpected.  It was the same girl who has been to my door several times over the last few weeks, offering me a handmade bracelet for a buck, offering me a smells-good-stick for three bucks—she and other children in the neighborhood have been frequent visitors. 

I was a little surprised to see them in the afternoon.  Normally, they come much later, like when I am fast asleep on the couch or in the recliner.

But the other day, they came in the afternoon and the little girl, there with her two little brothers and an older girl who I think was just a friend, asked me if I had a stroller she could borrow so she could take her little sister out.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that every time this girl comes to my door I have about a dozen questions for her and this time was no different, though I kept the questions to myself.

Like, why don’t you have a stroller?  Where is your little sister now?  Who is watching her?  Who is watching you?  Are you going from house to house asking for a stroller?  What made you think I might have one?  Where are you taking your sister in this stroller?

But instead of asking these questions, I simply told the girl that I was sorry but I didn’t have a stroller.

“We’d bring it back,” the girl said, as if realizing her ask might be too much.  “We just need to borrow it.”

Again, the questions—I wanted so desperately to know what was going on and, while I repeated I didn’t have a stroller, I was stalling some, hoping she might tell me more of what was happening.

But she didn’t.  And she and the other children walked off.

And I was left to wonder.

I have always been fascinated by people’s stories.  Consequently, I get frustrated when people send me texts with no context, or when someone tells me something and when I have follow up questions, they have no answers.  I want the full picture.

This past Monday, I was at the tire store, getting four new tires—yay—except that I hadn’t planned on being there.  I had planned on just popping in for a quote and then setting up an appointment later in the week, but the quote they gave was good and they said they could put the new tires on right then—it would only take about two hours.

Well, why not? I said to myself.

So I sat down in the waiting area resigning myself to sit there for the next two hours inhaling tire fumes, but not only that—I hadn’t brought a book to read.  The tire place didn’t even have a TV on.  What in the world was I going to do for two hours?

I texted my dad, told him where I was and that I was bookless.  I mentioned maybe walking across the street to Target to buy a book and then said, surely I could handle sitting alone with my thoughts for the next two hours.

Haha.  Hahaha.

We, as humans, especially in this day and age, are not wired for alone time.  For silence.  For nothing but the company of our own thoughts.

Now, you might wonder why I couldn’t simply get on my phone for the next two hours, get on Facebook or go shopping on Amazon for more books—or why I simply couldn’t read a book on my phone.

And to that I say, I have a very tiny phone, with a tiny screen and I have bad eyes, so that in order to read a book on my phone, I would need to enlarge the font so that it was basically one word at a time.

Twas swipe the swipe night swipe before swipe Christmas swipe.

I tried to read on my phone.  I truly did.  But after a few minutes, I gave up.

And then it was just me and my thoughts in a waiting room with other people and their thoughts and their phones.

The boredom, the ennui, was crushing.

And then I started writing a story—in my head.  The man sitting across from me had a bandage on his arm, inside his elbow.  I started Sherlock Holmesian him.  He had had bloodwork.  What was the bloodwork for?  Was it routine?  Had he missed work?  How had he wound up here?  Were those Nikes he was wearing real or knock-offs?

Don’t tell me you’ve never made up stories about strangers you see in the doctor’s office or at the airport.

There is a reason that reading stories with children is so important—there are many reasons—but the most important reason is that reading stories with children builds empathy, that it is important for all of humanity to be exposed to other people’s stories from the very start of our lives so that we know that the world does not revolve around us, so that we know that while we are the main character in our own stories, there are millions of other stories out there most of which we won’t even grace the page as a background character.

Stories connect us to each other.

Stories help us be less self-centered and more world-centered.

This past Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he would not be running for re-election.  Joe Biden has been in politics for a very long time, longer than I have been alive.  My mom loved him—I never knew why but I think she was drawn, like so many, to his bumbling, goofy self.  Joe always had a story to tell.  Sometimes it wasn’t his story.  Sometimes he borrowed that story from someone else, but he was like that uncle we all had, that family member at the holidays that always had some whopper of a tale to tell that you knew was not remotely true, but couldn’t help yourself from being drawn in.

Part of the reason, President Biden lasted so long in politics was because of his ability to empathize with everyone.  He knew the power of a person’s story.  He knew the power of his story.

President Biden was elected to the senate at the age of 29—the youngest ever, and shortly after his wife and his children were in a horrible car accident that took the lives of his wife and daughter.

Jon Meacham, noted historian, speech-writer and fellow Episcopalian recently wrote of Biden, that after the death of his wife and daughter, Biden “endured, found purpose in his pain, became deeper, wiser, more empathetic.”

Stories, when we read them, help us find meaning in others’ pain.

Stories, when we write them, can help us find purpose in our own pain.

Suffering is universal.

Empathy, unfortunately, is not.

It’s a skill that needs to be learned and strengthened and renewed over time.

We should always, always strive to know people better, to understand them better, to recognize their pain in our own lives, to make that connection to them.

A few days after that little girl came by, asking if I had a stroller, I watched her and several other kids walking past my house.  The little girl was pushing a shopping cart.  One of her brothers was in the basket of the cart and, what I can only assume was her sister, was sitting in the child’s seat of the cart.

They had found their stroller.

And I had a dozen more unanswered questions.

I share the stories of these children with you because every time I do, I make them real to everyone who reads about them, to everyone who hears about them.  They are not statistics.  They are not numbers.  They are real, living and breathing human beings, who exist and love and hurt and laugh and together, with us, are all children of God.

Amen.

 

 

 

Always Remember

Some years ago, I was on the phone with my mom when her doorbell rang.  She put the phone down to answer the door and a minute later, came back.  I asked her who was at the door and without missing a beat, she said, “Jesus.”

As it turns out, the man was homeless and regularly came to her door asking if she had any work for him to do.  I don’t think she ever did, but she always gave him whatever cash she had on hand, usually just a few dollars.

I was thinking, of course, of this story when looking at today’s reading from Matthew 25:31-46 where we hear one of Jesus’s most famous lines that whatever you do for the least of His people, that you do unto Him.

And here like with many stories in the Bible, I like to sometimes imagine what happened next.  And I imagine that one of the disciples, taking careful notes, said something along the lines of, “Okay, Jesus so I got, hungry, thirsty, sick, naked, stranger—I guess you mean homeless here—but who else are the least of these?”

And I imagine Jesus looking at the disciple the same way He looked at the lawyer who asked Him “Who is my neighbor?” after which Jesus shared the Good Samaritan parable basically telling the lawyer—everyone, everyone is your neighbor.

I imagine Jesus looking at His disciple over the question of who are the “least” and saying directly to him, “Everyone.  Everyone is the least.”

Today’s reading is important because Jesus is asking His disciples to see Him, Jesus, in everyone they meet, and by doing so to treat everyone with Love and Kindness.

We are all suffering.  We can’t look at today’s reading and think that we are somehow better if we have food and a roof over our head.  We must understand that we are all suffering and in need.  And it is our responsibility to look after and care for and love one another.

We must see Jesus in everyone we meet in order to do this.

We must humble ourselves.

As you know, I have put a Little Free Library in my front yard for the children in the neighborhood.  I have done this because when they have knocked on my door, I have heard Jesus knocking.  I have done this because I want to saturate the ground surrounding my house with love.  I can hardly keep the books in my library.  As soon as I put a new book out, it is gone in a day or two, but my library is not a lending library, it’s a giving library and I am more than happy that the books never come back.  I want those books to find a new home.

The other night, while I was sleeping, two little girls came to my door.  I know this because my Ring doorbell recorded them.  They knew they were being recorded because they addressed me through the camera, telling me to check my mailbox and then I saw them slide a card into the mailbox.

As soon as I saw the video the next day, I hurried to the mailbox and found a card that read this: “Always remember: You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you know.”  And then on the other side, “Believe in love.  She believed she could so she did.”

I have never felt so loved.

That is Jesus love right there.

If you had asked me prior to that if I needed to hear those words, I would have said, “No, I’m good.  I know I’m loved.”

But when it’s two little girls leaving you the message, you realize just how much you needed to hear those words.

That’s the Jesus in them speaking to the Jesus in me.

We lift each other up.

Because we are all the same.

We are all in need.

Amen.

 

 

Smells Good Stick

I was doing my laundry at my dad and Barb’s house last week and we were all sitting in the kitchen.  I was at the kitchen table and they were both sitting at the counter.  We were chatting, but at some point my dad got tired of the fact that both Barb and I were on our phones, and he made like he was going to get up and leave.

“No, wait,” I said.  “I’m done.  I was just taking a picture of your lovely centerpiece,” and I waved my hand across the table.

Now I admit to exaggerating slightly, but both of them looked at me like I had lost my mind.

And for a second, I doubted myself.  Had I used the wrong word, centerpiece?

So, I pointed.  “You know your flower vase … sitting here … in the center of the table.”

“It’s a vase filled with fake dead flowers,” Barb said.

“If you think it’s ugly,” I argued, “why do you have it out?”

She shrugged.  “Something needed to go there.”

“Well let me explain what I saw.”

You see, it had been cloudy all morning and threatening rain, but for just a moment, the sun broke through the clouds and this one skinny beam of light appeared, first falling on the cat, curled up and sleeping under the window and then the kitchen table, hitting the flower vase, so that shadows of the flowers appeared on the table.  I took out my phone, set it to portrait mode because everything looks fancier in portrait mode as it blurs the background to create the illusion of depth of field, and I propped my phone up on the table so that it was level with the vase … and I took the picture.

I sent the picture then to both my dad and Barb to show them what I had seen, and they conceded that it did look nice. 

“Artsy,” my dad said, “still-life of flowers.”

I think one of the most important things we can do every day is find beauty in the ugly.

For the past few weeks, we have been following (in our Old Testament readings) the journey of the Israelites after leaving Egypt.  The Israelites are the heroes in the Bible.  We want to root for them, but, my goodness, they can be a difficult people to love.  They complain a lot.  They’re very immature.  And they are at times, what my southern grandmother would call, flat out ugly.  That’s an ugly on the inside.

And yet, God never abandons them.  There are times when you just know God is closing His eyes and counting to ten to keep Himself from losing it with them.

But He continues to fight for them.  Continues to protect them.  He does this out of love and because I believe that God looks at us all, even during our ugliest times and sees us as He made us, something that is beautiful beyond imagination.  He knows us not as what we could be, but what we already are, deep within our spirits.  We are creatures of love and beauty.  We are reflections of the most High.  We look our best when we stand in His light.  Like that flower vase my step-mother placed on the kitchen table.  We need a certain slant of light, as poet Emily Dickinson once wrote, to see things the way they truly are.

We need God’s light.

Last week, a little girl knocked on my door.

I opened it and she held up two sticks (one in each hand) to me. 

“Do you want a smells-good-stick?” she asked me. 

I stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out just what she was offering.  Each stick had what appeared to be a chewed up wad of gum on the end or perhaps a sampling from the Horror movie “The Blob.”

“Three dollars,” the girl added.

She could tell she was having a hard time with the sell, so she offered me one of the sticks.  “Here smell.”

What else is there to do in this moment but smell the stick?  So, I did and that’s when I realized the glob at the end was neither chewing gum nor an alien blob.  It was some melted candle wax.  And honestly, the smell was not displeasing.  It reminded me of childhood.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the girl, “but I don’t have any money to give you.”

She smiled.  “That’s okay.  Just keep it.”

“Really?” I said, smiling myself.  “For free?”

She nodded.

“Thank you,” I said and meant it.

The smells-good-stick is currently sitting in a plastic baggie in my closet and let me tell you the closet smells wonderful.  And every time I open the closet door, and catch a whiff of my smells-good-stick, I am reminded of the gift that little girl gave me.

She gave me a glimpse of God’s light.

Amen.