T.S. Tuesday: More Than Enough
I’m back to reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. So today is my Voskamp/Eliot mashup, if such a thing is possible.
I huddle in my sheets, drinking my coffee as I read,
“I awake to I AM here. When I’m present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still…and holy.
Here is the only place I can love Him.”
When I say,
I don’t want this day
I don’t want this moment
I don’t want these tasks or this conversation or this job
I am saying, I don’t want this God.
This I AM that is present in the moment. That is Himself the present tense.
I start. I flinch. My coffee jolts.
Is that what I’m saying?
When I reject the present, I reject the I AM.
The I AM in the moment.
He is present in every one. In every moment.
My very breath proof of His presence.
I flash to Eliot, a phrase from Burnt Norton that caught my heart many years ago: “Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.”
I am the unwholesome and He is the wind. In and out. In and out. In the rhythm of I AM.
All day I try to embrace the moment. I really try. I write notecard reminders. I consecrate my desk and my space and my tasks.
Dissatisfaction oozes in.
They can’t occupy the same space: gratitude and discontent.
I can only see the NOT ENOUGH.
Ann has a cure for this too.
She recounts the story of Jesus feeding the masses with the not enough of loaves and fishes. A phrase jumps out to her, this woman “sleuthing for glory.” She sees right there in the text that before the miracle, before the full bellies, before the multiplication of the not enough, HE GAVE THANKS.
She writes,
“Gave thanks…I’d missed it and all of my life?
I’d never considered those two words, the bridge words there in the middle, the crossing over that took the not enough and made it enough.”
Gave thanks.
Counted gifts.
But, I protest, I can’t give thanks until I know what the future holds. Thankfulness is bondage to complacency. Saying things are okay right now ensures certain paralysis, right?
I am born to move and grow and learn and leave. Where does thanks fit in?
I don’t give thanks because I feel this moment, this circumstance, is not enough.
But wait. Isn’t that what Ann just said? The moment of not enough is precisely when Jesus gives thanks.
“Jesus embraces his not enough…He gives thanks…And there is more than enough.”
Later that day I am at the beach. Saved by daylight savings and one more hour of sun and surf and life. I run, I splash, sand wedges its stubborn way into my shoes. Children erupt in squeals of cold and glee, emerging from the emerald waves with strands of shimmering seaweed.
I reach a doggy beach painted with doggy paw prints with doggy yips and doggy paddles under a piercing blue sky of endless doggy summer. I stop my body, but my breath pants on, the wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.
And at last I gasp, give thanks, “It is more than enough.”
I am born to move and grow and learn and leave. This gratitude in motion is second nature. It's the sedentary thankfulness that will require more discipline.
Today I write more notecards. I consecrate my desk and space and time once again. Calm in my-not-so-ergonomically-designed desk chair, I force myself to notice my quiet breaths: wind in and out of unwholesome lungs.
And give thanks, waiting for the more than enough.
You Are Still Loved
Turns out your warranty is not up.
You are STILL loved.
I needed to hear this today and I thought you may need to as well.
Nothing's changed.
You have been loved for a very long time. And you will be loved for a very long time.
Good news, huh?
It's Complicated
With all of the #kony2012 and Invisible Children hubbub and hero worship and criticism and rebuttals (have you ever wondered what a ‘buttal’ is that we could retort it?) it’s enough to make your head spin.
The one thing that it seems everyone in the twittersphere and the blogosphere and hipstersphere can agree on is that IT’S COMPLICATED.
We don’t want it to be. We’d rather have easy answers and tangible results.
We’d rather be seduced.
As my favorite snarky aid blogger (his blog is no longer public access which is why there is no link) put it, “we’ve become totally seduced by the belief that solving the basic problems of the world can be done cheaply and easily.”
And the seducer?
NGOs. Charities that flaunt such irresistible slogans as “ ‘98 cents of your dollar goes directly to beneficiaries’, ‘your $100 buys a poor family a cow and gets them out of poverty’, or ‘feel good about making a difference while on vacation.’ ”
Saving the world is just one click—and your credit card information—away.
It’s not just Invisible Children.
We’ve fallen head over heels with programs that boast of tangible results, low overhead, and flashy campaigns to end the world’s problems, but the truth is, it’s complicated.
As a staff member of an NGO that writes about the difference our organization is making in the lives of the rural poor, I can’t figure out if I’m the seducer or the seducee (not to be confused with the Sadducees of the New Testament). When I report on the use of grant funds I want to tell funders that we’ve met all of our objectives, that lives are being transformed, that their money is already making a difference. I want to say X number of families no longer live in poverty or have hardships.
But it’s just not true. Sometimes we don’t meet all of our objectives because of drought or economic downturn or political unrest. Sometimes responding to immediate needs or adapting to a rapidly changing environment is just more important. Sometimes we make mistakes, but we learn valuable lessons from our mistakes as well.
This last week I’ve been frustrated with much of the Invisible Children tactics, but I’ve also been impressed with their willingness to engage in conversation. Their willingness to learn from their mistakes.
If the conversation ends with pitching in $30 to IC and settling back into our self-centered, materialistic ways, we’ve missed the point. If we cynically write off Kony and Uganda and how we can make a difference merely because IC has the marketing prowess to create a movement, we’ve also missed the point.
Unsuspecting or cynical, we haven’t really engaged. That’s what gets me.
In my recent post Sound Bites of Justice, I wrote about the complications of speaking on behalf of the voiceless, wondering if in my own small scale work of marketing and social media advocating is really building up the dignity of those I seek to serve.
This last week the question resurfaced, “are we giving voice to the voiceless or shouting so loudly that even those with a voice are being drowned out?”
I don’t know the answer.
But I’m glad the aid world and the hipster world and the celebrity world are asking it.
In a culture of quick fixes and seduction, that question is something I think we should fall in love with.
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For more resources on the Invisible Children controversy check out Rachel Held Evans’ grace-filled and encompassing post: http://rachelheldevans.com/invisible-children-kony-2012-resources.
To read my post on Solidarity and Advocating for the Voiceless, click here.