A couple days before the holiday is probably the worst time to ask what you can do to help.
Most charitable efforts—small or large–to assist and serve the least fortunate among us are conceived, funded, orchestrated and staffed months prior. You wouldn’t decide to throw a birthday party for your kid a couple days before the big day, would you?
Nonetheless, everyone wants a piece of that giving feeling. Nonprofits and soup kitchens, struggling all year for consistent help and support, often have too many last minute offers to place and fill during the holidays. Every parent strives to find a teaching moment for their kids between Thanksgiving and Christmas, too often walking away disappointed when there’s no room for them at the inn because everyone else also wants to use that holiday inn as their teaching tool.
You know what would help?
Choosing another month during the year for your family. How about March? Or September? Maybe sign up to serve in the heat of mid-July when the kids are out of school and can see first hand what it’s like to be homeless and hungry in the desert heat? Bring money you and the kids have saved for this experience all year long.
You can make any month Thanksgiving or Christmas for those who most need a special meal, good cheer and the hope of the season—every season.
Just an idea from someone on the inside. And not a bad one, methinks.
But hey, anytime you’re willing to spread the love is a good time, sooner or later.
Conjuring Christmas.
You know what really scares me?
Christmas.
Not the holiday itself but that each successive year, despite its ever earlier encroachment, it takes greater effort each year to summon a holiday spirit or conjure up a bright seasonal emotion which for decades was effortless.
Before Halloween has always been unreasonably out of the question, but before Thanksgiving they say, is now increasingly expected if you’re to enjoy the full value of the magic even though 58% of the country is still well over 73 degrees.
I say it’s just a little scary when it takes this much work to get happy.
So I went to WalMart.
If anything says Christmas in October, it’s WalMart, but then I found myself shopping retail for the best buy on a holiday spirit.
Then I turned on the radio station.
If I wasn’t snapping into the season quick enough, 24/7 carols sang the tune, but then I questioned if a song alone could make such an instrumental shift.
Over the weeks, I tried several near misses, disappointing myself every turn. Baking, decorating, bad sweaters, none seemed capable of the transitional trick.
I talked with Mom about it and she shared with me some memories of earlier Christmastimes when the magic didn’t seem so difficult to come by. I called my kids and chatted about it some and we laughed a little at remembering their first Santa Claus moments. But it was when my son away at school said he was coming home for Thanksgiving, I felt things inside me change, much like that moment in the Grinch, and it was then I encountered the obvious truth. Christmas isn’t created by things and stuff and trappings. It’s inside people.
It’s our special stories, our humored histories and the little searches we Google in talks with one another as the season begins to change and we grow just a little bit closer.
And then suddenly one morning, that little something tips the scales just enough to conjure the Spirit we sought all along. And for the first time of the season, and certainly not the last, we utter our first “Merry Christmas” to a stranger, and indeed, it has arrived.
a modest proposal
I have a modest proposal.
Let recovering drug addicts choose our leaders.
We are uniquely qualified for the task.
Having lived years of lies, deceit, thievery, skillful manipulation and faulty reasoning, recovering addicts are the most adept at smelling bullshit before it ever sets foot in a room or on a stage.
We’ve nothing left to lose because our addictions have taken it already. We’re impartial to the party, only to the raw revelation of honesty and good reason and we will go to any lengths necessary to find it in another. Our motto is “principles over personalities” and our goal is to see the emergence of integrity. We don’t acquiesce to emotional appeals or spins on the truth, but call them on the carpet. Our training was perfected while imprisoned, on the streets of selfish coercion, and usually both. Recovery has made all our secrets public with nothing left to hide or to hide behind and we understand what is freedom and what is not. We are all veterans of a war who walked away victors and are among the most vigilant combatants on behalf of others in the world.
We know the enemy because he is who we once were.
By nature, it takes a keen set of skills to become an addict and a ruthless pursuit of humility to escape from it. We know when someone’s under bad influence, on something, onto something, or just needs a few sobering days in jail. We let people be flawed and forgiven but not rescued.
We demand integrity in one another and are the first to recognize when it slips. We are accountable to no special interests but only to the power of the One higher and smarter than ourselves. And most importantly, we know that sometimes losing is winning.
This is my modest proposal.
thoughts & prayers & other non sequiturs.
You march holding signs in vigils without prayer,
News clips and sound bytes from celebrities on air.
Take a moment of silence or a ribbon to wear,
Make appearances in public to show you were there.
Do something symbolic that others will see,
But skirt any substance, lest it benefits thee.
Caught up in your rallies, and causes and claims,
Can’t cough up a dollar, but can divvy up blame.
Thumbs up on a post or a heart if you dare,
Stopping short of much more lest they think you might care.
Scrolling you stop at the internet kittens,
But don’t linger too long or they’ll see you are smitten.
The best we have mustered was never enough,
To make any difference for all of this fluff.
It’s time we got dirty, dug in, made a difference,
Instead of performing this charade of indifference.
Now go get all butt hurt and claim I attack,
But let’s turn the tables and I’ll give it right back.
We lie and we know we will likely do nothing,
While conversely proclaiming “It’s time we did something!”
A teaching moment.
Randomly ran into an old therapy client the other day.
Though 25 years had passed since he’d sat in my office tearful and broken, admitting his litany of infidelities, he introduced me to his wife I’d never met, acknowledging how much help I’d been to him way back then. “I’m a different man these days because of you.” I said “Thank God, aren’t we all?” It was a brief encounter for him, but as we parted ways, I carried it into my afternoon, remembering how genuinely contrite he’d been those few times in my office. Moreso, how–unbeknownst to him–his confessions and epiphanies in the room those days 20+ years ago had birthed for me a personal model of genuine repentance. Having used it myself more than a couple times since, I considered finding him in the crowd again to share with him the same words he’d shared with me: “I’m a different man these days because of you.”
There are moments in life when every student is a teacher, and every teacher, a student.
Memorial Day.
They never considered it a question of worth but always counted themselves lesser than the greater gain. Now free from a nation they freed, and lost to the lives they saved, they must wonder from the heavens in silent valor at those in this barbecuing, forgetful nation who merely consider the day another occupational fringe benefit.
Memorial Day isn’t so much about being happy, but about taking a thankful moment of silent honor away from the pool and grill to recall their merits of sacrifice paid at full price.
Then go eat your burger, jump in your pool and be very, very happy that a complete stranger once believed you were worth it.
If graves could speak if you should visit
They’d tell you how their resting isn’t
In nor under dirt and stone
But in hearts of those they’ve left at home.
And ask today you be so kind
To hug on those they left behind.
I wonder.
I wonder if they’ll wonder why
I never ever said good bye.
I’m not around and out of touch
Nothing nowhere, not so much.
I wonder if they’ll wonder where
I’ve clearly vanished to thin air.
Or look and see I’m not around
And hear me not, and can’t be found.
I wonder if they’ll wonder how
I took my leave without a bow.
Or disappeared without a trace
And left no tear on no one’s face.
I wonder if they’ll wonder when
I might be coming back again.
Like absences that reappear,
Not very likely, this is clear.
I wonder if they’ll wonder if
At six feet under when I’m stiff
I’ve gone away to heaven’s gate
With earnest hope for them to wait.
I wonder who will wonder then
Or think of things which might have been
Or wonder not, their life resume
To wonder things they just presume.
I wonder if I’ll even wonder
In that sleep to think and ponder
Thoughts like these I left behind
Or in their slumber never mind.
Or if and when and how and why
It even matters when I die?
But wonder not where I have gone,
Rejoice instead I’m finally home.
Stories of ode.
They’re rickety,
some finicky,
and most hard of hearing,
a bit batty
but chatty
with stories endearing.
Of back then
and back when
and decades before,
when life was
much simpler
and no one kept score.
So sit back,
you won’t lack
of tales as you listen,
for before long,
they’ll be gone
and you will have missed them.
Every passing day buries another lifetime of fascinating untold tales and memories. Spend a little more time to make and old friend with someone new or a new friend with someone old before they become buried treasures.
that defining moment
Talk all you want about how you’ve lived a full and meaningful life, done more good than bad, got right with God and the universe, and how you’re in good stead with yourself and others. But I suspect at the very end, when shown the light toward which we all must walk, all the artfully articulated words of your peace and readiness become instantly and utterly vain and meaningless, eagerly traded in a panic for just one more day, hour or minute that might just make the bigger difference you always dreamed about but had never yet found.
Things that make me cry
Things that make me cry:
Cutting onions
Remembering my dad
Fishing a stream at dawn
Watching poor people surviving
Watching very hungry old people
Underdogs
Puppies
Flash mob proposals
Compassion acting without audience
Epiphanies
More puppies
Endings of most novels
Irreconcilable regrets
People kissing
Things I can’t change
People who do
Total surprises from God
Songs at just the right moment
Every kind of cancer
Hopeless addicts
Soulless people
New regrets I just remembered
Cuddling no one
Writing stories that will long outlive me
Serendipity
A really, really good laugh
Lists like this.