Giving thanks

Lately I have been somewhat in disbelief at how quickly time is passing. Leading up to Thanksgiving I could not wrap my mind around the reality that it was already late in November and just a handful of days until December. I attribute this mostly to the lack of cold weather and snow in Arkansas, as most of my life the entire month of November included cold weather and snow. And while it is getting much cooler, I am yet to see even a single snowflake.

This week we began reading and discussing our new book, Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Quite appropriately, giving thanks daily for small things is major idea in the first chapter.

Bonhoeffer writes, “Only he who gives thanks for little things receives big things. We prevent God from giving us great spiritual gifts He has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts. We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience, and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good.”

I, too, am guilty of looking for something bigger or better to be grateful for. So, as a reminder to myself to remember the small blessings in my life: I am thankful for having a family willing to let me move to Arkansas for a year. I am thankful for having a family, period. I am thankful for the friends that I have. I am thankful that I have been blessed with safe travel for all I have done in the past six months or so. I am thankful for heat, and for waking up morning after morning, for the generosity I have experienced in Booneville, for being a self-sufficient human being and for all the other little things that God has blessed me with that are so mundane and taken for granted that it would bore you to read them all. I hope and pray that from this point forward I can spend my time rejoicing in the small blessings in life rather than get wrapped up in asking for something bigger and better. Everything is a blessing.

I thank you, LORD, with all my heart;
before the gods to you I sing.
I bow low toward your holy temple;
I praise your name for your fidelity and love.
For you have exalted over all
your name and your promise.
--Psalm 138: 1-2

A day late and a buck short... except not really

I feel obligated to tell you that I’ve never really been a fan of prewriting or rough drafts or outlines. I’ve always been a fan of just jumping in and getting going on the writing. Despite that, the following is what came after a hand-written rough draft — so maybe things change sometimes? You be the judge if this is for the better.

Also, on a quick side note: It appears that along with the vanishing of whatever sickness has been ailing me, my writer’s block has lifted as well. Praise God!

But anyway…

In the lull between GreaterWorks assigned books, I’ve found myself with a little more time to spend with a book I’ve literally been trying to read for years. I received my copy of Ilia Delio’s The Humility of God over two years ago during an internship at St. Anthony Messenger Press in the book department. Between school and other books and life I never really got around to starting it until this summer in South Dakota. For anyone who knows anything about YouthWorks!, you might suspect that this is not the best time to start a highly anticipated, long time coming book. Your suspicions would be largely correct. Since then I’ve managed a chapter here or there, usually around bedtime… but nothing too consistent.

So this was the first week I’ve really sat down to read it. I’ve struggled up to this point to really connect with the book despite finding the ideas behind it very interesting. It is funny how God works. The chapter I read this week felt like it was written for me right now. I would read and reread paragraphs just to make sure I hadn’t missed a single point.

I especially appreciated a quote from Thomas Merton (who I may be slightly partial to as he once was a professor at St. Bonaventure):

“What we are asked to do at present is not so much to speak of Christ as to let him live in us so that people may find him by feeling how he lives in us.”

This is how I view what I am doing here in Booneville. At the Boys and Girls Club or the Booneville Human Development Center or wherever else I go, I am not necessarily speaking of Christ so much as I am striving to let him shine through what I am doing.

Today I had the opportunity to travel to Little Rock with the junior high students from my church for a rally, which ended with Mass. During the homily, the priest discussed the idea that everything we do is a testimony to our lives as Christians and our faith — the question is: are our choices and actions a positive or negative testimony?

I feel like in a small town such as Booneville, it is highly likely most of the population has some basic idea of who I am what I am doing here. Now my challenge is to make sure my choices and actions are a positive testimony to Christ and to what I am here for. How am I choosing to live my life? After this year, what will I take with me? I am not exactly sure how to answer the latter question just yet…

But I leave you with a particular passage that caught my interest from The Humility of God and challenge you to think about it in the context of your own life:

“If we truly believed that Christ is the center of our life and world, that each of us is a member of the body of Christ, and that body is incomplete without us, that the fullness of Christ encompasses all peoples, all races, religions and cultures, indeed the entire universe, would we harm our neighbor? Injure or abuse the earth? Kill our enemies? Ignore the poor, the homeless or the outcasts of our society? Pursue wealth, power and control? If we really truly believed that all is Christ, would we continue to crucify Christ? Or would we act according to the law of Jesus: love, mercy and compassion? Would we be willing to lay down our lives out of love for the sake of the other? If we truly believed that Christ is the center of the universe, would we be so private about the good news we hold so sacred?”

Easy questions with simple answers, right? Or are they? What would our lives answer?


Becca

I've stood on the highest point in Arkansas

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth vegetation: every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it.” And so it happened: the earth brought forth every kind of plant … and every kind of fruit tree … God saw how good it was.
—Genesis 1:11-12

While I wish I could say I have some deep, profound topic for this reflection … I cannot. To some degree I try to think through what I will write over the course of the week. Sometimes I have the reflection practically written before I touch a single key. This week my thoughts are loose ideas. Unfortunately I’m not quite over last week’s writer’s block.

I have had the opportunity this week to see some of God’s beauty in creation. Last Sunday, thanks to Dave, we observed an unusual comet (although I mostly appreciated being where seeing stars is a 5-10 minute walk up a hill rather than a 20-30 minute drive out of the reach of star-blocking lights).

Saturday we traveled as a team to experience Mt. Magazine for the first time. It was a trip I had been greatly anticipating since a week in Booneville rarely went by that I wasn’t asked if we had been up to the mountain yet. This question was almost always followed up by a reminder that the best time to go is shortly after the leaves start changing. So we decided Saturday would be perfect. Truth be told, it was a little on the cold side, though that became not so apparent while we were hiking to the highest point in Arkansas, and it was beautiful nonetheless. Sometimes I am taken aback by the beauty of trees with their changing leaves in autumn. I am inclined to assume people, not God, were the master inventors of colors. Looking off Mt. Magazine at the greens and the oranges and the yellows and the bright, vibrant reds reminds me that pigments and paints are just man-made attempts to emulate the beauty that God shows us through the beauty of his creation — nature.


I am also blessed with the opportunity, every Monday through Thursday, to see God’s beauty through the smiles of children at the Boys and Girls Club. I feel like I am finally becoming someone they know and look forward to seeing (as opposed to some strange new volunteer). A valuable truth I learned this week: In a gym containing somewhere around 80 children under the age of 10, piggy-back rides are kind of like a Lay’s potato chip — you can’t give just one.

And with that, having surpassed the 300-word reflection quota, I am ready for bed.

God bless and good night,

Becca

I suppose this week comes for everyone sooner or later...

This week as I sit down to write my reflection, I’m sensing a familiar feeling. It is the feeling I used to get in college when Wednesday night rolled around on a week I was supposed to write a column for the opinion page and I had no clue what to write about. I would hope that maybe someone else had felt inspired to write about something so I would be off the hook. Sometimes it would work, and other times I would sit in front of my computer staring at a blank screen until I thought of something I felt passionate about. Columns were notoriously my least favorite part of being on the editorial board of my university’s newspaper.

But alas, here it is, Sunday afternoon, and no one can write my reflection for me … so we’ll see what happens…

It’s not that there’s nothing going on worth writing about, or that God isn’t teaching me anything – because I’m sure he is … it’s just that things are starting to settle into a routine here and almost feel normal. My weeks are somewhat predictable – though not in a bad way. I finally feel confident in my ability to call most of the kids by name that come to the Boys and Girls Club on a regular basis. I can look forward to square dancing every Monday evening, having a Sabbath on Friday, and getting a ride to Mass on Sunday.

And then there are the other little treats that vary from week to week. This week those things were harvest festivals and trick-or-treaters, having a cough as the only remaining evidence of last week’s cold, getting treated to lunch by the children of a woman from my church, celebrating the 7th birthday of a neighbor, learning that the same newly 7-year-old’s little brother likes to call me “Miss Becca” (yet somehow Rachel and Katie are just that – no Miss), the Tour of Tables, petting a cow, and finally having clip art to “kick it up a notch” in the bulletin, as Father Don would say.

So, I suppose if I could pull a common thread or lesson out of my rambling attempt at a reflection, it would be that it is already November. Soon it will be December and time to spend several weeks away from this community that feels more and more like home as time goes on. In realizing that I should cherish all the recurring and surprising events of my weeks before they are all gone and another YouthWorks! summer is here again.

Until next week (when, with any luck, my writer’s block fog will have lifted),

Becca