Set an intention

Make room for

more light in your life and

more joy in your heart.

Set an intention for

peace and love to flourish

and chaos and fear to diminish.

Let generosity grow and scarcity shrink.

Count how many times a day

you say thank you or

offer a compliment.

Notice the abundance in your life and

act for those who have less.

Pray for those in your family or neighborhood

who face challenges and are struggling, and

those around the world who face tyrants.

Remember those who are grieving.

Reach out to those who are lonely or lost.

Every act of kindness ripples out into the world and

then comes back to us,

bridging the space between us and

reminding us that we are one.

Love heals

Love healed me.

Sometimes poured out generously,

like the snow that covers everything in its path as it falls,

until what was there before has been transformed into

something unrecognizable,

something pure.

Love healed me.

Sometimes with strings attached,

doled out sparingly

as though there is not enough,

as though the love that is given to me robs someone else.

I snatched those bits of love tossed my way and

gathered them together until there was enough to cover me and my brokenness.

Love healed me.

Imperfect love.

Whether abundant or scant,

overwhelming me or nibbling at the edges of my brokenness,

all love heals.

Don’t be cheap

I had flown to the East Coast to visit a friend for the weekend, and as she and I were leaving her house for a trip to the Shore, her husband said to her, “Don’t be cheap.” Of all the adjectives I might ascribe to this friend, cheap is not one of them. She is one of the most generous people I know. Already on this visit, she had gifted me with a box of chocolates, a sweater and a poncho.

To be fair, her husband is perhaps even more generous than she. I remember once when she and I were going out to dinner and he was meeting up with friends. We all ended up at the same restaurant, and he put his credit card on our table and said, “Order whatever you want. This is on me.”

I sometimes wonder if this is their competition—to see who can be the most generous. There are worse couple-competitions, and I am often the happy recipient of their big-heartedness, so I am not complaining.

Anyway, his comment came back to me a few days later after I had flown home and was on the parking shuttle. I had meant to get change for a tip for the shuttle driver but had forgotten. Normally, I would give a $3-$5 tip (which I think is the going rate), but a $10 bill was the smallest denomination I had. My interior conversation went something like this, “Ugh, I forgot to get change. Well, that’s on me; this will be an early Christmas gift for the driver,” and I decided to give him the $10 bill.

Just then, the man across from me said to his companion, “A $5 bill is the smallest thing I have for a tip.” His companion reached into her wallet and pulled out two singles.

“Don’t be cheap,” I wanted to say, but didn’t.

I know there are times when I can be cheap, when I act out of a sense of scarcity instead of abundance. I often catch myself after, but by then it is too late.

I shared this lesson with my spiritual director, and she suggested I expand my understanding of the admonition “don’t be cheap” to all the talents and gifts God has given to me freely and abundantly.

I am deeply grateful for all the many good things in my life; my life is rich beyond anything I could ever have asked or imagined.

The admonition “don’t be cheap” will hopefully be a reminder to catch myself when I am tempted toward living out of scarcity and fear—financial or otherwise—so that I can instead live out of abundance and generosity.

undance

More than enough

During my morning prayer on Christmas day, I asked, what is being birthed in me? Where is God inviting me to grow? In what ways am I being called to live more fully alive?

I went through a list of new projects I am pondering for the future or already working on, of my dreams to visit distant friends and my hopes to travel in Europe for an extended time. I thought about my writing and considered attending a workshop on writing a memoir.

As I let these ideas play out in my imagination, though, another thought popped into my head: Heal your need to please others.  

What? Is this the secret to my being able to live more fully? To give greater glory to God? Do I need to move past my fear of disappointing people and my need to please in order to give birth to my true calling?

Ugh, I sighed. It is so much easier to work on external projects than to deal with my old nemesis, that voice inside my head that tells me that I am bound to disappoint people, that I am not enough and that whatever I do is not enough.

It is a message I heard from early childhood through my teens, this idea that I am not enough. For many years, I have worked on erasing that message and replacing it with more affirming words, reassuring phrases that shift parenting from my mom to God or to my adult self, changing the messages in my head to ones that remind me that I am not only enough, but that I am more than enough—I am plenty.

But every once in a while, my you-are-not-enough button gets pushed. It happened just before Christmas when two people made demands on me that I could not meet.

Their needs were real, but I was already taxed by other responsibilities and could not do what they asked of me.

My internal critic spoke up, telling me that I was not enough, because if I were enough, I would be able to do what these people want.

I was in a snit all day and night, feeling guilty and angry. The next day, after talking it out with a friend, I got a different perspective.

That is the thing about those old messages—they are powerful and can take control in a blink of an eye.

Maybe it is time to tape up affirmations around my house and read them multiple times a day to remind myself that I am enough. Things like:

I am good enough.

I am loved.

I respect myself.

I honor my own needs and desires.

And perhaps it is time to return to Scripture passages that affirm that I am precious to God, that remind me that I am wonderfully made (Psalm 139) and a royal diadem (Isaiah 62:3).

Maybe I need to create a screen saver that says, I am an exquisite gem, and God delights in me.

House of love, house of fear

Henri Nouwen was a Catholic priest and theologian. Shortly after he moved to a l’Arche community, he wrote a book about living in the house of love or in the house of fear. I, too, was living in l’Arche at that time, and his message resonated.

Living in l’Arche was an intense experience. Community members were together almost all the time, and I remember after my first week telling some of the other assistants that I felt like I had known them my whole life.

In that context, I could so easily see when I was living in love or in fear, when I was being generous or stingy; compassionate or judgmental; accepting or corrective.

The image of those two houses—one of love and the other of fear—has stayed with me all these years and often comes to mind. I try to live in the house of love, that place where I am aware of my blessings and living in gratitude. My God is a God of love—of abundance, generosity, compassion and acceptance. God’s house is a house of love. That is the house I want to live in.

Sometimes, though, I move into the house of fear.

The move can be caused by major things—like when Jim was diagnosed with brain cancer—or by minor things—like hearing unfamiliar night noises in my new house.

I am not always sure of why I have moved into the house of fear, but I have come to recognize some signs of the shift. One sign is when I am seeing things through a lens of scarcity, fearing that there is not enough.

I can fear I don’t have enough money or enough compassion. I can be stingy with the stash of chocolates in my desk or with compliments.

I usually become aware that I have been thinking there is not enough when something happens to show me abundance. Yesterday at work, for example, I was taking a few extra cookies at the end of a meeting (as if there were not enough cookies and this would be my last chance to grab some) when a donor came in with notebooks for our students—fifty cases of notebooks! How generous, how abundant.

The stacks of notebooks are a sign to me that there are plenty of notebooks to go around—and a reminder that there are enough cookies, too.