Anderson, South Carolina
I once strutted around with a strange kind of arrogance, saying I would never lower myself to acquiring and using a cell phone. There simply could be no merit to having this disrupting and expensive little toy in my life. There simply could not be anything so important that it could not wait until one eventually got within range of a conventional land phone. Experience has proven this to be dead wrong. There are plenty of wondrous opportunities in life that present themselves, if we can be found in time.
It proved to be an amazingly complex day containing a week’s worth of chapters. This given Saturday started out with my calling Don, wanting to borrow his truck to haul a dozen of my recycled ‘green’ book cabinets over to church for an alternative Christmas fund raising sale. It was grand to get the den cleared of all these book cabinets that have been accumulating there all year. I can only hope these will sell and the disenfranchised and marginalized in Haiti will not have to keep walking miles to get safe water.
Far more important than hauling furniture was an opportunity to listen to Don as he described a life of challenge that is inconceivable to me. This dear gentle man has already had a heart attack because of severe life stresses, yet he found the strength to help me haul cabinets. My sanity would last about five minutes with the stressors he has been called on to endure. It seems his capacity for love and forbearance exceeds the inconceivable demands made on him on a daily basis. It was a sacred privilege to listen to his story and to make small attempts to commiserate with him. We sat in his truck and I listened. It felt sacred, much like a confessional booth, yet he was merely unloading mountains of personal struggles he needed to share with someone. My concept of intimacy took on a greatly expanded understanding.
Don’s wife, Mable, invited me to join them at a nearby church for a fund raising soup luncheon. This proved rather pleasing in that I knew a lot of people in the dining hall and had affirming hugs and snippets of conversation with many of those present, despite not having been in this church but a couple times in twenty years. There is quite a sense of community deriving from this sprinkle of encounters.
A group of women was in one corner knitting warm fuzzy colorful things for resale; the money being used for local charities. When certain phone numbers show up on my cell phone, it means that one of these women has just cooked up a reminder that the universe really is a friendly place. If I am fast enough, I can make it to one of their kitchens before the plate gets cold. These women can create warm colorful things on their stoves that will warm me from the inside out. Sometimes they warm me up from the outside in with their fluffy scarves and blankets.
While dining on delectable soups, a phone call from Martha revealed her to be frantic and frustrated with some computer issues. After lunch I went to her house and was able to easily help her get a book manuscript into printable form. A journey with her husband to a local office supply shop to get materials and computer parts enabled her to soon begin printing copies of this book for binding to give as Christmas gifts. She acted as though she had won the power ball lottery or if I had saved the life of one of her seventeen grand children. She was elated. Going to this particular house is most gratifying - a powerful sense of connection is always present. The dynamics that exist in Martha’s family and in Don’s family could not be more opposite in every respect. Martha’s family is an exceedingly rare example of a family that works well at every level across four generations. Yet, both houses operate on the premise that God’s promise is true. “I know the thought I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, plans that will give you home and a future.”
While in Martha’s house, another call came from a new friend seeking to start a new life in a new house in a new state after her marriage collapsed, her husband having just been sent off to federal prison. While making the journey across town in late afternoon to unload the furnishings of a new life in a new house, I was reminded of the many times I moved to a new house in a new state to begin a new chapter, always with a grand sense of expectation. My friend will persevere and those crusty boxes of uncertain content will somehow be transformed into a new beginning for her. My friend found her way ahead to make a first meal, served at sunset on a table and chairs that had come into her life via the benevolence of strangers who do not even know her name. The universe has a certain sense of order to it that is re-assuring. It is friendly.
Daniel called from India to tell me that he had used the money to buy new stainless steel plates and cups for the street orphans. Each of the leprous widows received a bolt of beautiful cloth to make new dresses. I am always amazed this tiny little piece of plastic in my pocket is somehow connected to a little cement block orphanage on the east coast of India
Dusk was one of those magical times demanding to be remembered for posterity with photos. Taking a camera and tripod downtown, I ‘collected’ the newly installed Christmas decorations on the courthouse square and assorted nearby storefronts. The cozy holiday ambience was akin to that found in a Thomas Kincaide painting. One does not have to go overseas to find magic in the night. It is right here in our hometown square. Shivering in the crispness of very late autumn I was soon looking forward to some ‘inside’ work. While downtown an inbound phone call sought assurance that I was going to make a cameo appearance and do some inside work.
Leadership at the local playhouse likes it when I show up to conduct a fifty-fifty raffle each performance night as a fund raiser; wandering around with an old aluminum champagne bucket, shamelessly extracting money from the patrons, giving them my diatribe about community building and supporting the local cultural arts. It works every time. Tonight I had the bonus of warmth of several kinds as I sought refuge from the front edge of winter. I even got down on my knees to facilitate the extraction of a twenty dollar bill from a patron. What we will do in the name of charity. Imagine the delight of an old lady with a man on both knees in front of her, begging. She had a grand time at the theater, laughing about it with her friends. I got hugs and kisses from most of the women in the building. I got the money.
After finishing my revenue enhancement gimmick at intermission, a call from a friend in another state gave me a chance to commiserate with someone shivering in an RV in 25 degree weather. One of the glories of technology has been the advent of ubiquitous cell phones, allowing me to keep up with people, irrespective of what state or country they might be in at any given moment. Reaching out and touching someone has never been easier. While talking to my wandering friend as I was driving from the theater to my house, another call came in. It is a good thing I have figured out how to handle a second call without losing the first. Caller ID told me I was going to have an instantaneous change of destination. I signed off with Ruth and headed east instead of north.
In a mere five minutes I was in a different galaxy, leaving a place of grand frivolity and good fun and crossing over into a place of great sacredness and privilege. Entering Room 13 of the Hospice, I was admitted into the most intimate space in the universe, that private interior of a family’s grief, when a husband and his children say farewell to a dear wife and mother of fifty-four years. It is stunning to me that an adult son from another state would get a hold of his father’s cell phone and call me in the night and invite me into an ultimate place of honor. Little did he know how important it is for me to properly say my own farewell to one who committed a powerful act of community and love towards me years ago when I was in the midst of a severe journey through my own ebony darkness.
Answer your phone. It just might make all the difference in the world.
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