I’ve spoken to this conference three years in a row, at the same season of the year.  They have seen all my clothes (as if anyone remembers).  Normally,I would have felt the need for something new (and I  did), but everything I  have on was found  in my  own closet.  Congratulations pilgrim!  You have just won a small important victory.

September 2008

Becoming the Change I Want to See in the World: An Extreme Trial

That’s it! I decide on the plane flying back to Chicago from Kenya.  I’m going on a spending fast. I desperately want to make a difference in this world.

On the half-way-around-the-globe trip back home I consider my options.  A typical $35 per month child sponsorship will not break our bank.  But I want to do more and I know that will be a problem.  At mid-life we have many financial commitments.  We want to help our young adult children who are in the hungry years of their lives finishing graduate school, establishing careers, paying back college loans and buying homes.  We are saving for retirement in another ten years or so.  We already tithe 10% from our incomes.  Our paychecks are more than sufficient, but still we are spread thin financially.  Maybe similar financial realities account for why over 50% of evangelicals polled by Barna said they would not give to help AIDS orphans.  With minimal financial margins giving more seems out of reach.

This is the time to get creative financially, I think.  Somehow, we need more access to financial resources.  Before my trip to Africa I had been inspired by Judith Levine’s book, Not Buying It:  My Year Without Shopping. Following her example I decide to go “cold turkey” by instituting a spending fast.

In her book, Judith and her husband vow to buy nothing for a year but the necessities for sustenance, health, and business—groceries, insulin for their diabetic cat, toilet paper, Internet access, office supplies.  The rules shape up with each decision that must be made about whether or not something is a necessity.  They fight.  They bargain.  They compromise and come to agreements.  Finally they decide:  No processed or prepared foods except bread.  No restaurants.  No movies or video rentals.  No coffee and newspaper at the neighborhood hangout spot.  No travel.  Gifts are handmade.

Judith’s description of the year as an “X-treme trial in non-consumption” must have slid by me in my initial reading.  It should have been a clue to the severity of such a plan.  The second tip off should have been when the Levines admit to being temperamentally suited for the task of “Not Buying It.”  Paul claims to be a non-shopper and Judith admits to being an uncommitted consumer at best.  Like perfect-pitch singers, natural athletes, or talented artists, these two were born with a gift—a leaning towards simple living.  They are to a degree “naturals” in the area she is writing about.  In no way does this diminish the difficulty of their accomplishment, but it should have alerted me to a difference in our temperaments.  I am bilingual in both spirituality and beauty.  I am a woman who wants to walk with God while she carries on a love affair with an antique of a certain circa.   Creating beautiful surroundings and a sense of God’s presence are my comforts of choice.  The Levines are outdoorsy, people who care about woolen sports socks—a passion that is easier to afford.  The Levines and I are, humanly speaking, apples and oranges.

But even though I suspect we are not from the same human stock, their process of deciding what is necessary and what is not is fascinating.  What would I edit as unnecessary from my life?  As I’m pondering that challenge, certain words and phrases peppered throughout their book grab my interest:

• the self-medicating American cure-all:  more
• the widening wealth gap
• keeping up not just with the Joneses, but with the Zeta-Joneses through media exposure
• luxury fever
• “affluenza”
• compulsive acquisition-related disorders
• indulging thoughtlessly in the fruits of the world’s poverty
• a purchasable identity of false self
• downshifting
• hyperconsumption
• a society of instant gratification
• impulse buying
• “I Shop, Therefore I Am.”

Judith thoughtfully examines the psychology behind the pull to consume.  She describes shopping as an exercise in hope—hope for more beauty, more status, more fun.  These promises for more release us from needing other people.  As long as you have a credit card in your pocket you can go it alone.

She quotes historian Rosalind Williams who wrote that we are exposed to a Versailles quality of life every time we shop in department stories.  “There, consumers can touch and try on clothes, gaze on luxurious goods, travel in style, and otherwise taste pleasures normally reserved for the fortunate few, all without having to buy.” 1

What Can I Shave From My Life?

What this has done to jack up our quality of life expectations is almost immeasurable.  Tom Beaudoin, writes in Consuming Faith:  Integrating Who We Are with What We Buy, about the findings of researchers in regards to “Affluent Attitude.”  “People with middle-class incomes now have the expectations that were once reserved for the rich, such as spas, designer products and clothing.” 2

Eager to find a new financial balance in life and wanting to fund causes that urgently matter to me, in mid-flight I take out my travel journal and begin to list my own entitlement “overages.”  Remembering a conversation with author and personal finance guru Mary Hunt in which she mentioned that 10% of people’s spending is completely unaccounted for, I ask myself, where is that 10% of my spending that I could relocate for things I care more about?

I decide to begin on the fringes of my spending.  I would not describe the list that follows as deep sacrifices, but more like initial steps to position me away from “unconscious spending” and into a life of sustainable self discipline.  I decide to say no to manicures and pedicures or any spa treatment except hair upkeep.  The regular grabbing of lunch or coffee when running errands is nixed.  Clothes and house upgrades get a no.  Accessories, jewelry, shoes and handbags all go on the fasting list.  Shopping as entertainment is basically out.  Because writing is what I do newspapers and books stay on my “keep” list, but magazine subscriptions (Traditional Home and Bazaar) will be allowed to expire.  Books also had a qualification for purchase; if possible they needed to be located at the Alibris secondhand Web site at a considerable savings.  Furthermore, I limit by book buying so that I can’t buy a new book until I’ve actually read my last purchase.  Additionally, eating out needed to be scaled back to once a week.  “Fast” anything with its convenience and expense will no longer be a part of my life.  This list; though not sacrificial, is still an adjustment—a respositioning away from the perks of suburban lifestyle and into a more considered life that I hope will release me to make a difference for someone else.

Thus began my after-trip inner journey—with determination and what seemed like a workable plan.

Looking back, I hate to admit that my spending fast was marked more by learning curve than significant savings.  For months, I was highly encouraged.  The small cutbacks on my list weren’t that hard.  Buoyed that “non buying” was surprisingly easy to manage I found myself asking, “Africa, or this little perk?”  My answer was consistently, “No choice!  Africa!”  For months I ate at home and did my own nails.  No new clothes hung in my closet, which became much more organized as I learned what was actually hanging in there!  I acquired little beyond basic groceries, toiletries and home supplies.  No problem.  It was smooth sailing.  Small sacrifices were easy for me.

Crash and Burn

But in the fourth month of the fast I experienced a learning curve about desire.  Out of nowhere my good intentions crashed and burned.  Just when the financial margins in my life were widening, I blew every penny I’d saved and more on one huge furniture purchase for our home.  I bought two stylish leather rockers to replace the 20-year-old shabby tan corduroy recliner rockers (the kind decaying on front stoops of shacks all across back-roads America these days!) that had been an eye sore in our home for years.  My appetite to change those ugly twins had been growing since the day they arrived at our home and, at first glance, I’d realized they were a huge mistake.  Now with a bargain in sight, desire was gnawing away.  These two new beautiful leather chairs were already 50% off.  We were able to save another 10% with our first-ever senior citizen discount; plus, the store offered us an additional 10% “savings” for opening a charge card!  Who could say no?

Normally, I would have enjoyed this kind of bargain upgrade, but this purchase left me feeling highly conflicted.  Even as I said “yes” to furniture, I sensed I was saying “no” to Africa.  A strong desire for beautiful personal spaces competed with Africa for my money.  I was no match for the hungry itching urge that made lounge chairs my soul’s desire.  Leather rockers obsessed me completely and Africa lost.

When I realized the result of my choice—that this one large purchase had undone all previous disciplines—I was crestfallen.  Just as I could not desire myself thin, or better-read, or more educated, I could not carve out financial margins with desire alone.

In his charming book, Piano Lessons, Noah Adams describes a year in his life in which he tried to learn to play the piano.  Every page resonates with his longing to become a musician.  In the last chapter, after much trial and heroic endeavor, he dons a tuxedo, ignites the candles in the candelabra, and places a chair to the right of the piano for his wife.  He then sits down at the piano bench of his newly-purchased $11,000 Steinway upright and, with shaking legs and very slow fingers, gives his wife her Christmas gift—a personal concert of beginner carols and a simple Alfred arrangement of “The Entertainer.”  They both cry in response.

Musicians could have warned Noah that the learning curve to accomplished musicianship is steep.  A year would not turn him into a concert pianist, unless he was a natural, no matter how much he wanted it.  The parallels between Noah’s desire to learn the piano and my desire to enter into financial self discipline were clear.  What made me think that without any practice, with pure raw grit alone, I would be morphed into an ascetic who loves self denial and austerity?  I was not a natural in this area.  Just as wanting to be a brain surgeon or an astronaut would not qualify anyone to be one, sheer desire would not morph me into a non-spending expert.

In the final chapter of Piano Lessons, Noah Adams tells of someone asking him if there were anything he would do differently to learn how to play the piano since “life is easier lived backward.”  He said, “Yes.  Instead of the computer course I tried to teach myself with, I think I would take real piano lessons.”

Practice, Practice, Practice

It makes sense.  The way to learn any new discipline is through lessons and lots of practice.  An expert in no-spending could have told me that this skill is learned “one note at a time.”  It could take me years to become proficient.

But even as I tried to encourage myself with those thoughts, my sense was that my spiritual pilgrimage had failed.  I was unsuited for an “unspending” discipline.  With reality staring me in the face, the temptation to drop my whole experiment in financial authenticity was strong.  Mahatma Gandhi’s words resonated at this point, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”  How could I wish for the rest of humanity what I could not bring about in my own life?  I would have to admit to my friends that my spending fast had become a spending slowdown and that I had even blown that out of the water.  The words of a friend’s husband indiscreetly passed on to me early in my journey now haunted me.  “She’ll never do it!”  Insulting?  Yes.  But now I had to admit that he was right.

Still, one thing was undeniable.  Even while wallowing in a strong sense of failure, the desire to engage in the battle against AIDS remained strong.  Maritha still needed her cows.  I still dreamed of helping Nyamalo and others I’d met.  In the midst of those unsatisfied longings a certain truth laid claim on my spirit that had something of God in it.  “If you want to help these people you will have to change.”  Those words haunted and drew me.

With deliberation, against my own wounded pride, I forced myself back to the piano bench of financial discipline to learn note by note, mistake by mistake.

The value of failure is mostly underrated.  For sure, this excellent, though painful, teacher has often been wasted on me.  But now facing a big flop squarely, I decided to open myself up to the upside of being down.  What were the lessons?

First, my values became clear.  Parts of me were stubbornly materialistic.  My value system was about things, not people.  Going cold turkey had revealed my most materialistic stronghold.  Saying no to personal spending:  clothing, upkeep, food-on-the-run was easy.  But my weakness was my home.  Visual stimulation tempts me to spend on my nest.  In the future I would have to carefully protect my spiritual interests against the pull of home magazines, catalogues and HGTV.  Balancing an artistic wiring with a desire to give to Africa will be an ongoing struggle in my soul.

Everyone is bilingual.  Our spirituality coexists with other passions.  Anyone who isn’t sure about that should try a spending fast.  It is a great experiment in learning what other languages are spoken in a person’s value system.  It’s good to know what part of ourselves compete for our hearts and our dollars.

Secondly, a practice for life must be sustainable.  Unlike the Levines, whose experiment lasted for a year, I am trying to find a way to integrate new boundaries for a lifestyle for the remainder of my life.  A spending fast cannot last forever, but it’s a great teacher.  It put a mirror up to my soul and said, “Here you are.  This is the woman you need to get to know.”

And so, the search for less severe approaches to developing financial margins with more sustainable life disciplines began.  Here are the “notes” I am learning, the practices that are helping me reach financial margins in the midst of a regular life.

• Shop In Your Own Closet

When experiencing the urge for something new to wear, before running off to the mall, I shop in my own closet.  Spontaneous buying isn’t a problem if you aren’t in a tempting environment.  Retailers know us well and use well-researched psychology to get our money.  Shoe departments face cosmetic bars.  While we wait to try on shoes we are drawn to the most basic of hopes for beauty promised by creams and lotions and makeup.  Research indicates that cosmetics are, after all, the most spontaneous of all purchases.  Windowless stores erase the real world ala Las Vegas.  Greeters and friendly clerks make it harder to “disappoint” and walk away from without buying.  Even the aisle width is calculated for maximum comfort.  Finding a bathroom means trekking through the entire store of tempting displays of bright new possibilities.  This is the psychology of seduction at its greediest.  Sometimes resisting persuasion is best done at home.

Searching drawers and closets for new combinations has become something of a game to me.  Speaking at a conference the fall after my Africa trip I allowed myself to crow a little to myself.  You have come to this conference three years in a row, at the same season of the year.  They have seen all your clothes (as if anyone remembers).  Normally, you would have felt the need for something new (and you did), but everything you have on was found in your own closet.  Congratulations pilgrim! This small win was a milestone along the road to creating financial margins.  A note at a time is how the music is learned.

I shared that “win” with a friend recently and she challenged me to go a step further.  “Next year,” she said, “why don’t you wear the same exact outfit as an act of humility and explain why you are ‘looking the same’ to the people who come to hear you speak?”  Good idea.

Later that year I faced another situation that normally would have triggered a need for new clothes.  We were invited to a wedding with the same crowd of people who had already seen me three weeks earlier in my “wedding attire.”  This time I “shopped” in my accessory shelves and in my jewelry drawer and found new combinations for the basic dress.  All was well.

Sometimes, when even the most extensive closet search doesn’t yield great results, I consider my friends’ closets.  There is always the possibility of borrowing from a friend.  I know women who, every year, bring their clothes to each other’s homes and get their shopping “fix” from one another’s closets—sharing clothing and accessories that still have tags, or are in like-new condition, or simply aren’t being used.  If you bring five items, you can trade for five other things.  They call it My Sister’s Closet.  Plus, here’s a fun extra:  One person ends up with a boa feather scarf they’re required to wear to church the next Sunday!

Finally, if all else fails, I shop.  Without fasting from spending completely, I’ve still managed to cut back to a more balanced relationship with acquiring and needing.

This approach to more frugal living is contagious.  After complimenting my  husband on his “ensemble” as he left for work the other morning, I smiled  when he replied, “Thank you.  I shopped in my own closet!”  Hmm . .

• Don’t have a thing for clothes?  What else could you learn to share?

If shopping in your sister’s closet is a problem, it might be because you are a man!  Don’t throw out the principle of this idea.  Think about this concept in male terms.  Instead of closet, think garage or workshop or tool shed.  Does every home on your street need its own lawnmower, edger, power washer and leaf blower?  Could a spirit of cooperation be encouraged between neighbors, relatives and friends that would free up money from tools and machinery that are not used 24/7?

• Designate and Protect Funds.

I had a problem protecting my funds.  No matter how much I cut back, or “saved,” actual money seemed to be outside my grasp.  When I complained to a friend that, after all the changes in my life, somehow the money wasn’t designated or in my hands, she suggested that at the beginning of the month I put the money I want to give in an envelope.  When I wanted to spend, I have to take it from the envelope marked “Africa.”  It was much more difficult to spend Africa’s money, than it was to spend undesignated money by check, credit card or cash.  A small trick like this helps to not come to the end of a month asking, “Where’s the money?”

• Establish Personal Matching Funds or a Personal Luxury Tax

I was surprised to learn that the cosmetic surgery business alone in this country is a $15 billion dollar industry, in which two-thirds of its customers are made up of people earning under $50,000.  I’m not sure how that math works.  Actually, it doesn’t.  I’m not saying cosmetic surgery is immoral, or that it is rampant among Christian women, or even that I’m immune to this pull to controlled aging; but developing a little distaste and distance from a culture that chooses Botox over antiretroviral medicines for dying children can’t be a bad thing in my thinking.  Here’s an idea:  set up a “matching fund” for all cosmetic and personal upkeep spending—i.e. a dollar for me, a dollar for my cause, that sort of approach works well.

A personal matching fund can establish boundaries around any personal “perk” that is costly.  If you love skiing, golfing, traveling, horses, sailing . . . that’s great!  Enjoy your blessings.  Savor life.  But if you would like to temper that spending with a cause that could save a life, then a personal matching fund can help keep it all in balance.  Let your conscience guide you.  You can think of it as a “luxury” tax that functions to help keep you balanced.  The definition of “luxury” is highly personal, but the goal is personal integrity, to live a life consistent with your real humanitarian values.

• Explore Ways to Make Extra Money.

Besides cutting back, many people are exploring ways to make extra money for a great cause.  Some are setting aside proceeds from garage sales, stock sales, or extra work assignments.  Others are giving lessons in an area of expertise:  cooking lessons, gardening consultations, woodworking projects, piano lessons, computer services, specialized tutoring of any kind.

The projects can be so creative—a Malawi bake sale, an Ethiopian garage sale.  They educate as they raise funds.  In California recently, I ran into a Gulu Walk.  A young man organized this walk to raise awareness about the 25,000 kidnapped children of northern Uganda (Gulu) who have been brutally forced into becoming child soldiers.  With 150 walkers’ pledges he also raised $15,000 for this cause.  Such out-of-the-box thinking for great causes can go a long way.

• Re-think “gifting.”

Redeeming our giving patterns could release tons of money for better purposes.  Here are a couple of examples:

In a creative twist on giving, Willow Creek Association, decided not to “perk” their banquet guests, all ministry partners, with the usual Willow logo gifts—gym bags, tennis shirts, stadium blankets, mugs.  Instead, they explained they had made an executive decision to use those budgeted monies in their guests’ name to scholarship a worthy Zambian college student.  The money that would have been spent on Willow branded “tchotchkes” for that one event alone was enough to send this young person through college!  The 300 ministry partner guests warmly received and applauded this decision as an excellent choice and money well-spent.  Weeks later this letter from Bright Hope headquarters (who was Willow’s NGO contacts for this scholarship) was addressed to Steve and me.  “The Willow volunteers really ‘caught the vision’ (for scholarships for college education).  In the last few days we have had several people contact us and mail in donations for additional scholarships!”  Good ideas spread.

What if this “gifting” in someone’s name for a good cause, instead of typical business perks, caught on in the corporate world?  It would be amazing.  Corporate America, not-for-profit America, plus much of   the personal giving in our country are generally untapped sources for creative giving.  Go ahead and ask for gifting for your cause, be it cows, antiretroviral treatments, micro enterprise businesses, education, church planting, or medical care.

Here’s one you’ll love:  In 2004, 13-year-old, Kendall Ciesemier, facing a liver transplant asked in lieu of people giving her the usual teddy bears and gifts, that instead people make a financial gift to her on-line charity.  These gifts were then handed over to an organization working with AIDS orphans.  Two liver transplants and an operation for complications later, this 13-year-old raised approximately $50,000 for her cause.  To learn more about Kendall and her cause you can visit her Website at www.Kidscaring4Kids.org.

Then, consider this from corporate America:  At the end of the year, some employees are asking their employers to convert their unused  vacation and sick days into donations for AIDS.  Kudos to business employers and workers willing to apply this kind of creative thinking to a pandemic disease.

When we look at gifting, it would be an oversight not to mention Warren Buffet.  In June 2006, Buffett made a commitment of $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—which primarily funds education and global health needs.  This is the largest charitable donation ever made in U.S. history.  At an estimated worth of $46 billion, Forbes magazine ranks Buffett as the second wealthiest person in the world (second only to Bill Gates).  Yet, despite his wealth, Buffett is famous for his unpretentious lifestyle.  He lives simply on his $100,000 per year salary, which is in great contrast to the average annual salary of Fortune 500 company senior executives of $9,000,000.  Additionally, Buffett is not planning to leave immense wealth to his children when he dies.  He is giving the bulk of his estate away.

Warren Buffett is leaving excellent signage for the rest of us about the real purpose of wealth, whether it is in the billionaire range or well-enough-off by the world’s standards.  I admit to a little envy here.  It would be nice to be so wealthy that one could give in large amounts from the overflow of one’s life, but those financial options are rare.  Most of us must carve dollars out of already financially committed lives.  But Buffett’s money alone will not end AIDS.  Nor can he play my part.  I may have, by comparison, only a widow’s mite to give.  But the spiritual journey traveled to release such small funds is an invaluable one, and one honored by God.

And so I continue trying to alter my lifestyle.  It’s a steep struggle with encouragements and failures.  I try to give as much grace to myself as I would to any other pilgrim.  But, I am also increasingly tough.  Over and over, I return to the practice bench, a little wiser, a little more determined.  Once again, I attempt to play the music to this score of response to AIDS one note at a time.  I am about at the simple Alfred beginner level, but now and then there is a sense that there is a possibility for beautiful music in the days ahead.

Developing A Personal Plan – Financial Steps

• Try a spending fast. Discover your bilingual values and where the fault lines lie in your soul.  Keep a journal with notes of your successes and struggles.  Don’t waste the lessons of failure.  Learn.

• Shop in your own closet. What are you getting out of shopping besides purchases?  Hope?  Relationships?  Perceived status?  Notice what fills the vacuum when it isn’t occupied with acquiring new things. There may be “found” time for calls to friends, reading good books, volunteering, etc.

• Be creative about sharing expensive tools and machinery that are not used 24/7. Put some real power into those testosterone-appealing power tools and share them with the intent of freeing up money not spent there for an urgent AIDS-related cause.

• Designate and protect your funds. Decide how much you want to save each month and put it aside.  When you want to spend you have to take it from that designated fund . . . the Africa envelope, the India or South America envelope . . . Ouch!

• Establish personal matching funds. Consider this a type of personal luxury tax.  Try this self talk, “If you can’t afford the tax, you can’t afford the luxury.”

• Discover ways to create new monies. What is sitting around your house collecting dust that could be sold on EBay or at a garage sale?  What skills can you sell?

There is hidden money in our grocery bills.  Most grocery stores  will total the amount of the savings on sales items.  For instance, this week I “saved” $14.50 by their counting.  By writing a check for the  total amount, including the overage, and getting the $14.50 back, I was able to add that money to my cow fund.  If I shop every week at  that savings that will mount up to $754.00—that’s 1 ½ cows!

• Re-think gifting. Your friends can help you get what you really want for your birthday or for Christmas or for your wedding or operation.  Whatever groups you are a member of can be encouraged to “gift” each other in more causal ways.  Think corporate.  Think workplace. Think neighborhood.  Think church groups and family.

• Sacrifice something of your lifestyle. At Christmastime 2006, Whittier Area Community Church (in Whittier California) took a special offering to raise money for a pediatric hospital in Malawi, Africa.  The original estimate on building the medical facility was $50,000.  They thought that was going to be a stretch for their congregation.  But then they learned that to completely equip the hospital they would actually need to raise $160,000.  On Christmas morning, according to their pastor Dr.Ankerberg, “The mood was electric.  People brought their offerings to the front of the church.  Women cried, children ran up smiling, people gave with the greatest joy we have ever seen.  They were delighted to give God that which cost them something.”

Before taking the offering, the people were asked to write on their envelopes the source of their money.  The Nyasa Times reported,  “Children had sold toys, candy, saved allowances, babysat and gave up Christmas presents to be able to give to the children of Malawi.  Adults had given up physical therapy, Christmas presents, hosted dinners, sold stock, donated savings, sold cars and foregone winter vacations.  One couple gave up money they would have used for fertility drugs in the hopes that even if they couldn’t have a baby,  maybe they could help save the life of someone else’s child.

The church raised a staggering $525, 057 in that one single offering!  They were blown away and are talking about it as the Miracle for  Malawi.

• Keep trying! Don’t be discouraged if your learning curve involves failure.  Your spiritual formation can make a difference in the world.  Keep learning one note at a time.  Don’t let your global spirituality be side-tracked by discouragement.   

• Get expert help. Check out two Web sites that provide outstanding help to boost financial responsibility.  First, the Good Sense Web site at http://www.goodsenseministry.com.  Good Sense is a Willow Creek Association ministry that offers workshops, curriculum and training events for church leaders on money matters. It is an excellent resource and highly recommended for those trying to live with financial integrity.  

 Also, Mary Hunt is the foremost guru for debt-proof living.  Her Web

Site, http://www.cheapskatemonthly.com is a rich resource of archived material with everything from tips of the day to  extremely practical information on saving money and living within your means.  Excellent!  Excellent!

1.  Judith Levine, Not Buying It:  My Year Without Shopping (New York: Free Press, 2006).

2.  David Brooks, “Affluent Attitude.” New York Times, December 28, 2002, p. A15.  As quoted in Consuming Faith: Integrating Who We Are with What We Buy. Tom Beaudoin, (Lanham, MD: Sheed and Ward, 1969), p. 105.

(This chapter is excerpted from An African Awakening:  My Journey Into AIDS Activism by Valerie Bell)

Ah . . . the music began and we reclined our chairs, closed our eyes, touching hands as we surrendered to the buttery sounds of exquisitely executed classical music.  Even the lawn seats, which can sometimes be more chatty than musically appreciative, were enchanted and quiet.  I had no idea who the guest conductor or pianist was that night, but soon wondered about those spellcasters.

I found their bios in the program and read them by candlelight.  The guest conductor was German, Christoph von Dohnanyi, and the piano soloist was Emanuel Ax, American.  I looked at the large screens and realized, surprisingly, that both men were white-haired.  Doing the math it turns out that Dohnanyi was almost 82 and Ax was 62–an age I am not too far from myself.  Amazing! 

With growing appreciation I realized that their grasp of the music was seasoned–not the flashy approach of younger musicians trying to impress–but the subtly expressive and nuanced interpretation of experience and age.  If either man had lost any capacity as he had grown older, it was given back to him in shadings of understated elegance and passions long-known.  John von Rhein, the Chicago Tribune music critic wrote on Monday, ”Dohnanyi’s musical foundations are intelligence, integrity, rigor and firm control.  He does not lapse into Old World stoginess.  The occasional awkwardness of Brahms’ piano writing held no terror for Ax.  No less remarkable than his ability to maintain power and concentration for a two-night marathon were the rich poetic instincts he applied to his collaboration with Dohnanyi.  This was a summit meeting of kindred artistic spirits on a massive playing field.  The audience had much to cheer.”    

Come on John!  While I agree with you, I think you missed the highest compliment of the night.  Maybe it seemed impolite somehow to mention the “A” word, but, this wasn’t just a summit meeting of musical genius.  This was an inspiring defiance to the limitations of aging.   These two white-haired musicians gave the dirty ”A” word a beating that night.     

Bravo!  to the Ravinia concert organizers who recognize the gifts of older talents that younger musicians may lack.   Bravo! to every aging person who engages life, giving up what they can no longer have and accepting the gifts that come with years and a seasoned life.

The next morning Steve and I rode our bikes to a nearby prairie forest preserve–a place of marshy grasses, smooth lakes, long-legged wading birds and sweeps of native wild flowers.  We stopped at the parking lot to drink from our water bottles and an older man got out of his car in front of us.  He was alone, walking with a cane. . . something I hadn’t seen in the preserve before.  We talked with him for a moment.  He told us his knees were gone, but he still came to the preserve four times a week and walked half of it.  He carried his camera so he could capture a shot of a bird or a blooming flower.

Good for you! I thought.  You are alone, but refusing to be lonely.  Your body is betraying you, but you make it do what it doesn’t want to do.  You are still looking for beauty around every corner. 

How to age?   I sense it will have a lot to do with how we manage the limitations of the coming years.  But the weekend made me think I need to become more aware of the compensations that come with aging.  A quote from comedian Gracie Allen in the Sunday paper summed it up for me.  “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.”  A period says it is over.  A comma indicates there is more to come.  There is an artistry to doing life in such a way that the gifts of aging compensate for the necessary losses.  Will I notice and also learn to celebrate those gifts that bring nuance and subtlety to a long-lived life?  Will I think there is always more to come?  Will I keep going, doing life until God puts a period behind my name?

How to age?  For every jar I can’t open, there is a bike path to explore, for every wrinkle and grey hair and extra pound, there is a garden to dig in, for every limitation put on me by myself or others, there is a $10.00 lawn seat at a concert to enjoy.  For everything that is lost, something else can be gained.  Thanks to Dohnanyi and Ax for sharing what they have gained through the years.  Thanks also to the prairie walker who refused to give into despair, withdrawal, or regret.  Thank you for sharing the gifts that compensate for your losses.  Thank you for reminding us who are soon to be there, that aging need not be a period, but a well-placed and appreciated comma.  What’s next?

Parents of America, I ask you, what did I do to deserve this patronization? I, who went to the gates of hell to deliver him to this world, can’t make sense of it.  It’s not like I’m showing signs of early-onset senility.  My clothes aren’t spotted with coffee spots or fruit juice drool.  I haven’t stopped changing my underwear.  I don’t ramble on about flatulance or age spots or post-menopausal memory loss . . . uh, what was I saying?  Oh yes.  Building my case.  I’ve never been known to cackle in public so that people get whiplash trying to locate the donkey who broke the sound barrier.   

No my transgressions run far deeper. They are unforgivably embarrasing to an adult son.  I have become, apparently, the worst mother in the world.  My sin?  I have dared to venture into his territory by mentioning an original story line for a movie I thought he could make millions on.  “You know Just, I’ve been reading this fascinating book on the building of the Transcontinental railroad.  Talk about blockbuster potential!  It was a human feat that rivaled the 7 wonders of the world.  A cast of thousands!  Indians and Chinese workers and Irishmen!  Avalanches and blasting accidents and record-breaking winters.  There are even archtypal ties to Enron.  You know, those railroad barons were the original corporate profiteers, don’t you?  Did you ever hear the phrase Hell on Wheels?  Well, that’s from the railroad.  It was a seedy tent city that followed the workers to the end of the line supplying them with whisky and gambling and women.  But the accomplishment can’t be overshadowed by those subplots.  It’s pure Americana because we Americans did it before anyone else.  It couldn’t have been done without our ingenuity and unbelievable work ethic.”  

I look at my adult son.  He is glazed over.  I’ve seen this look before.  It’s classic Charlie Brown.  To him I sound like the adults on the Peanuts’ TV special.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I admit, in the years my son has been developing his movie credentials, I have also been developing a movie-related speciality of my own.  I have become a non-stop pitch woman.  Not only is he pursuing his dreams, but it seems, mine as well. 

I can’t help wanting a piece of this action.  Quiet on the set!  Roll sound!  Roll camera!  Take 107!  Action!  Cut!  I’m sure I could have been a player if I had only been younger, maybe his sister, instead of his mother. 

No kidding, I have never-ending ideas for virtually any genre of movie-making.  Just ask Justin.  If only I could get someone to take me seriously.  There is money to be made here folks.  I delve easily into unexplored areas of romantic comedy.  “Hey, Just.  How about a movie on virtual dating?  You know the guy is sitting in a restaurant in Seattle, she’s in Miami and they’re on their iPhones sharing the night even though they’re thousands of miles away from each other.  They’re at the same chain restuarant, they order the same food, play the same iPod downloaded music.  Isn’t that cutting edge and hysterical, don’t you think?  I think it would be perfect for Zack Ephron.”  “What’s that?  Who would be the female lead?  Who cares, if he’s in it?”

I tell you the air just seems to effortlessly waft with creativity when I’m with him.  I can’t help wanting to have a part of his brainstorm, development, see-it-on-the big screen community.

 I even imagine scenes complete with their sound tracks, lighting and foley work.  ”Just, you should do a movie that has a scene with a chiropractor.  I just had an appointment today and you can’t believe the whackos sitting in his waiting room.  Someone should immortalize them.  And here’s the kicker:  Flesh and Bones by Paul Simon could be the sound track.” 

I fairly burst with genius casting suggestions too.  “You should do a comedy with Bob Newhart, he hasn’t done anything in ages.”  “Mom, I think he died.”  “Well, that would make it even more interesting, wouldn’t it?”

But then, I sense sometimes I go a bit too far.  Even I wished I had a sock for my mouth today.  Justin introduced me to the producer of The Amazing Race, with whom he shares an office building.  I opened my mouth to say, “Hi! Nice to meet you!”  but instead found myself pitching an idea for a reality show based on The Bachelor, except the guy has to go with the woman America votes for instead of the grown-up Barbie dolls (complete with all their enhanced plastic female parts) they usually choose on their own.  Do these young men need our help, or what?

I was feeling good about my spontaneous creativity.  I promise you I had never given this concept a thought until the second I met this guy.  Talk about fresh off the press!

But then, I noticed something familiar about him.  Who did he remind me of?  His eyes were someone else’s.  The volume of the sound track running in his head was being turned up.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. . .

I’m sitting in the Act One, Inc. offices today.  Act One is a training program for creative people wanting to break into the film industry.  They teach screen writing and creative producing.  Justin works here.  They’re talking about how people constantly pitch ideas to them.  Apparently, this is a cross they all bear.  Everyone they meet goes into pitch mode when they find out they work in Hollywood.  The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker all have media blockbuster ideas in their heads if they could just get someone to listen to them.  But, according to these young creatives, mothers are the worst offenders.

I’m empathetic to their plights, I listen, I nod, but then, without trying at all, my brain switches into creative gear again.  I promise,  the idea had never crossed my mind until that moment.  I open my mouth to sympathize, but instead find myself saying, ”That’s hysterical.  How about a whole movie of vignets suggested by your mothers?  They could be lame, or overly romantic, off-beat, or totally dull.  It would just be funny to see what moms think would make good movies.  Now that’s a movie concept you haven’t heard before!”

I am too late to save myself.  I look at their faces and hear the familiar sound track in their minds.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah . . .

Well, too bad for them.  Children of America.  I’m telling you something really important here.  Listen to your mothers.  They could help make you rich old men some day.

Like yesterday.  My husband and I went to hear a young man who was speaking at our church’s high school ministry.  Doc Hendley is an early 30-year-old who is receiving a lot of press around his work to provide clean water for some of the world’s 2.1 billion who are without it.  His story is that he was bartending, struggling to stick with college, pretty far from the evangelical faith in which he was raised when he heard about the world’s water crisis.  He knew he had to do something about it, even it if would only amount to a “drop in a bucket.”

He started throwing “wine to water” parties in bars, asking his marginalized, tattooed, Hog-riding friends if they could help him make a difference.  That’s how his organization, Wine to Water, was started.   His regular-guy-making-a-difference-in-the-world story has caused NPR radio, Larry King ,and Anderson Cooper to interview him—and CNN to nominate him for ”hero of the year.”  All this hoopla is a surprise to him and something he never sought.

But for me, the irony runs deeper.  One of the pictures accompanying his talk, shows him deep in the belly of a well somewhere in Sudan.  Why Sudan?  After raising $40,000 in “bar money,” he took it to an NGO.  He said he wanted to invest it in the worst place in the world.  The NGO executive said, “Well, that would either be Afghanistan or Sudan.”  So, resourced by his bar friends, Doc Hendley went to Sudan and spent a year digging wells in the midst of the worst kind of tribal/government wars on earth today.

Normally, this wouldn’t make anyone smile, but the private irony I was experiencing found me grinning broadly at that picture.  It made me remember two blond boys—baby buddies in pre-school and fast friends in the pre-teen years.  One was nick-named Doc and the other was our youngest son, Justin.  They were two wild beautiful boys.  For several summers they went to a wilderness-style camp that, no kidding,  court judges often sentenced incorrigible kids to to straighten them out.  Bootcamp.  For two weeks they roughed it.  There were no tents, there was no changing of underwear or clothes, no camp cook and then, of course, there were the other campers, some “incorrigibles” ordered there by the courts.  Adults were not always there to protect and guide them.  They were learning survival skills in the Wisconsin upper wilderness.  It required a kind of “wilderness street smarts,” resourcefulness, bravery, and being there for each other. 

What responsible mother would expose a pre-teen to such extremes?  I’m just saying.

Every year, when camp was over, they returned home, bloody, scratched to pieces, bug-bitten, and filthy—but full of adventurous stories of bear encounters, miraculous interventions of candy-throwing motorists that saved them from starvation, and weather traumas they’d survived.  I believed their stories no matter how close-to-death they appeared to be.  And I sent them back to camp anyway—three or four years in a row!

Every year it sounded worse than before.  But every year one thing remained the same.  The final report always went like this:  “It’s not tough enough.  They should make it harder!”

Those wild beautiful boys are grown up now.  Listening to Doc share his story and thinking about their adult lives—one beautiful, tattooed and digging wells in Sudan while he gives interviews to NPR radio;  the other beautiful, but on a different path—well-educated, navigating the highly-competitive Hollywood waters to emerge as a film producer—I remember how they both gravitated to the road less-traveled. 

I should have known they would both grow up to be marines—but marines by their own definitions.

Ah!  The long view.  I can’t assure anyone that tomorrow will cooperate with today’s plans, but this I do know.  There are some amazing surprises in life.  Surprises that make you smile down to your toes.  Surprises that go Bang! and fill you with wonder at God’s faithfulness, creativity and goodness.

That’s what I experienced in church yesterday . . . the blessing of the long view.  I had that sure sense of  God’s good intentions for all of our lives.   It was plain and in view.   It made me smile.

Some of these creatures have acclimated to humans so convincingly that they’ve become pets of sorts.  I’ve popped marshmallows into the toothy mouth of a nurse shark that had taken to waiting in the surf for treats.  One of my friends lived in a subdivision with a 4-foot alligator they called Uncle Charlie.  He had been there for a decade and had never been a pest.

It is hard to remember that such creatures are still wild and capable of reverting to instinctive behavior.  DON’T FEED THE ALLIGATORS!  were posted signs that warned us that no matter how acclimated, a hungry-enough alligator could see any of us as “groceries.”

Farther north, by our North Carolina cabin in the Smokies, wildlife experts warn us not to feed the bears.  And though I have rarely seen one in our area (I did play with a baby bear in Cherokee once and had such a great time petting it’s bristly fur, I didn’t realize my arms were scratched up until it was all over!) a couple years ago one bear became a little too friendly for comfort.  He forced us to take down the hummingbird feeders on our deck when he began to regularly visit them around 8:30 PM before we were even in bed. 

Experts warn us:  If you feed something that is wild, something tragic could happen; if not to you, then to someone else.  And who is responsible if violence ensues? 

It made me think about public posts in the times in which we’re living.  It’s popular to blast away on Facebook with little sparks of incivility like, “I think I’m going to be nauseus” posted by a Christian leader after President Obama’s State of the Union speech; or the frequent alarming newsfeeds that prophesy national doom due to the passing of the health care reform bill; or the public posting of  a politician who targeted political opponents with military “kill” symbolism; or a Vice President who speaks gutter publicly.  I want to say, “Be very careful of inflammatory rhetoric in times such as these.  Your spark of anger could ignite the native wild things among us.  These are not just private words among “friends,” they are public postings.  It’s possible “Armageddon” could be ushered in, not by a piece of legislation (as has been popularly posited) but by your neighbor with a military-grade assault rifle whose soul has gone feral, even though he still calls himself “Christian.”

If you feed wild things crumbs of disdain, contempt, hatred and baseness—and the consequences are tragic—who will be responsible?  The answer: everyone who ramped up the hatred, that’s who.  Even if you didn’t actually pull the trigger—or ended up personally experiencing the consequences—if you fed the hatred, you hold some responsibility for how it plays out in our country. 

Yes, it’s an American right and tradition to be opinionated, to join the public debate and to try to sway others.  But . . . if opinion turns into rigid personal orthodoxy, a  belief that only you and “yours” are 100% right and all others are 100% wrong, if you can’t tolerate the opinion of others without publicly calling them “nauseus,” then realize there are radicalized versions of you out there.  They have built arsenals, convinced that the depth of their feelings indicates the degree of their rightness. 

The current national news indicates the real possibility that some believe any means justifies their ends, including terrorism.  An angry-enough home-grown terrorist—like a hungry-enough alligator—will not ask you what you believe before he randomly chooses you or someone you love as his victim.

In this time of intense political division in our nation, we need Christian leaders with measured responses, civil public debate, and political leaders who don’t ramp up the issues with vulgarity or irresponsibility. 

So I’m posting this warning:  DON’T FEED THE ALLIGATORS, BEARS OR MILITIA MEN!—particularly the later.  Feed a soul turned radical and feral with small crumbs of disdain and your words may be taken as justification for an unthinkable act.  Connect the dots.  Understand the consequences.  And temper your nastier impulses.

And yes, I admit it.  Many times I’ve been tempted to say what I really think, with a wordsmith’s well-chosen morsel of sarcasm.  But then I ask questions like:  Do I want to be a part of something that could turn out to be dangerous?  Am I raising the bar or lowering the bar?  Is my character Christian?  Or am I behaving like a Christian-militia man of sorts? 

I’ve decided not to feed any wild thing if I can help it—including my lesser self.  But that said, don’t even try to convince me otherwise about armadillos.  No matter what you say, those crawling, armored, mud-nosed, bottom-feeders still creep me out—though I’ll be careful not to go so far as to call them nauseus.

Their first suggestion seemed a little curious. For God and Country: Patriotism Under Fire by James Yee.  It is the author’s story, Captain James Yee, who, in 2001, was commissioned as the first Muslim chaplain in the United States Army.  After 9/11 he became a spokesman to help educate the military about Islam and build bridges of understanding between the two faith groups. 

Hmmm . . . not sure I would have actually picked that on my own, but I have been reading a lot about Muslim women in the past few years.  Still, a Muslim chaplain in the US Army seems a far shot from the courageous and persecuted women behind the shrouds I came to know in Reading Lolita in Tehran.  My gut reaction is that it is a little tame and self-promoting for my taste, but on the other hand, it could be an interesting perspective. 

Though the first suggestion seems a “miss,” I admit I’m feeling smuggly satisfied that Alibris has not suggested a romance novel or a biography of Pamela Anderson with fascinating (and sleazy) inside details of her life in the Hollywood fast lane.  Phew!  Looks like I’ll be escaping those stereotypical female reading bullets.

Next, the mind readers at Alibris thought I would enjoy The Shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro: On Foot Across East Africa.  Okay they got me this time!  I laugh.  This is so me!  I love travel books, but would much rather read about someone else climbing mountains and trekking across parts of Africa that are “as they were before the incursion of the European civilization” than to actually experience such an arduous journey myself.  This is not a guide book, or a “how to” book, it is just a read for an armchair adventuress who hates to sweat.  So me!

The third book is Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott.  Yes, I agree, that is a good book.  But . . . I read it years ago and I’ve so moved on. . . Please try to keep up with me, Alibris!  I like to read on the edge, not the backside of thought.  Hmmf!

The last suggestion is a real mystery to me.  Love, Sex and Tractors by Robert “the tractor guy” Welsch.  Alibris bills this book as a collection of essays guaranteed to help the discriminating male reader recognize and straddle the fine line between a happy significant other and several sheds of well-oiled machinery.  WHAAAA?????  Are they kidding me?  Maybe they’re just testing me to see if I’m still paying attention.  Welsch is a humorist and self-proclaimed sex therapist for the male reader.  How can I give it a pass?  Easy. 

Well, one ”hit” out of four suggestions isn’t so great, even if I leave room for my eclectic reading tastes.  So for advice on some great reads, I might want to look elsewhere, like to other readers I trust, for example.  So if you trust me, here’s my starter list of “reads” that opened my eyes, mind and heart to women living under Muslim law.  Can’t read your mind, but I predict, you will not be able to stop reading at just one of these titles. . . even if your male tastes run more to the humor of  “the tractor guy,” I promise you’ll appreciate these “reads.”  Enjoy the learn!  If you have other suggestions go ahead and attach them to your comments on this blog.

READING LIST-MUSLIM FAITH AND CULTURE

 From Beirut to Jerusalem- Thomas Friedman

THE book that helped me understand the tensions and perspectives of both sides of the Middle East conflict.  This book contains important broad historical, political, information on the area. 

 Reading Lolita in Tehran- Azar Nafisi  A personal account of the cost to women under the fundamentalist Islamic reign of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 Kite Runner-Khaled Hosseini  A novel set in Afghanistan during the last days of the monarch just before the revolution and invasion by
Russia.

 Inside the Kingdom – My Life in Saudi Arabia- Carmen bin Ladin.  The author is Osama bin Ladin’s sister-in-law and lived for many years in the family compound in Saudi Arabia. A scary and revealing look at a man who is radicalized by his religious beliefs.

 Mini-skirts, Mothers and Muslims-Christine Mallouhi.  A Christian woman’s account of living in a Muslim culture.  Very interesting “inside’ information from a Christian perspective.

 Blood Brothers-Elias Chacour.  Dr. Chacour is a Christian Palestinian who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

 The Bookseller of Kabul – Asne Seierstad.  The author spent a year living with this Afghani family and writes of the difficulties of women in the household and in their culture.

 Desert Queen-Janet Wallach  Besides the interesting look into a fascinating woman’s life, it is an inside look at how the lands of the middle east were divided up and made into countries and why we are still struggling with some of these decisions today.

So I’m thinking Irish thoughts today.  A couple of years ago I enjoyed a wonderful visit there. . . stayed in a beautifully restored castle once owned by Eric Clapton, visited a verdant race horsing farm where our brogue-lilted guide revealed that the price breeders paid for mares to spend one night with a champion stallion could buy a small home back in Chicago!  Horse racing is a sport that is not for the thin of wallet!

I explored ancient Christian cemeteries where the famous Irish high crosses point to the heavens.  But I was surprised when I realized my guide needed a little help to identify the biblical stories carved into the cross’ weathering faces.  (Sadly, I find this to be true everywhere I travel: the biblical images on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, the importance of the room in the Wartburg castle where an ex-communicated Martin Luther translated the New Terstament into German, the stories behind Chagall’s fabulous biblical paintings in the Chagall Museum in Nice, France and others–all seem to be in need of translation for so many people who’ve lost the stories.)

But it seems a particular irony that so many Irish, torn apart for generations by religious war, now seem to be thoroughly secular, having lost their sacred stories completely.  After all, it was the Irish who preserved the biblical traditions when, during the barbarian invasions, the civilized world’s libraries were sacked and burned.  The roles of their oral filiad poetry and their monastic traditions in preserving religious thought is well-chronicled in Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization.

Most disturbing was what had happened to the story of an ancient sacred hill called Tara.  A gentle rising hill these days, Tara was once a powerful pagan center.  It was thought that the doors of the Otherworld were thrown open here for contact between mortals and those of the spiritual realms.  For centuries the druistic belief system practiced at Tara centered on a mother-earth goddess who was symbolically married to the soverign high king at his inaugural.  There is also a passage tomb under the 4,500 year old (but more modernly named) Mound of the Hostages.  Roman eye-witness accounts report celtic rites that  ”dripped with the blood of human sacrifices.”   Undoubtedly, this was such a place.

But it was here in the 5th century, where St. Patrick, an escaped former Welsh slave of the Irish, returned to confront and defeat the powers of the old order.  Has there been a more daunting and dangerous mission?  He was the first missionary to barbarians beyond the reach of Roman law.  No wonder St. Patrick’s breastplate prayer begins, “Before Tara, I arise today through a mighty strength.”  Patrick then asks God for protection from “every cruel and merciless power which may come against my body and my soul; against incantations of false prophets, against black laws of heathenry, against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry, against spells of women and smiths and wizards.”

We know that St. Patrick’s mission succeeded beyond the wildest measure.  He found favor without using a sword.  Besides introducing Christianity to the Irish, he holds another ”first” in the world.  His voice was the first to speak out unequivocably against slavery.  Within his lifetime Christianity spread in Ireland to the point that the Irish slave trade ended.

But the role St. Patrick played in significant world change at Tara seemed lost on my guide.  His version was that St. Patrick cleverly assimilated Tara’s pagan symbols into Christianity to convince the pagans  that they had actually been Christians all along!

Seems weak to me!  I like my version better.  My guess is that when Patrick told the Irish that God had sent his own son so that they would never have to sacrifice one of their own again, they were so relieved and grateful to finally have a way out of the whole gory mess that they came running to a God who showed them an Exit they’d only been able to dream of before.  They put down their sharp bloody knives, closed down their fetid drowning bogs and extinguished the high hills lit by the torches of human bonfires. . . . and they did so with relieved tears running down their faces!

So even though Patrick didn’t actually drive the snakes out of Ireland (sorry), or probably didn’t use a shamrock to describe the Trinity (sorrier), or probably wasn’t the originator of the prayer ascribed to him (sorriest)–I’m sticking to my story.  Something supernatural happened the day he visited Tara; God showed Himself good and that’s why we aren’t offering our childrens’ lives to appease an angry God anymore.

Nope.  God is good.  St. Patrick knew it.  His gospel was the end of slavery of all kinds.  It freed the pagan world.  Whatever has got itself wrapped around your soul can be released.  That’s Patrick’s great gospel.  It’s the good news that changed me.  It set me free and keeps freeing me every day.  That’s my story and this St. Patrick’s Day, I’m definitely sticking with it.

I was particularly struck one night when we gathered to hear Theary Seng’s story.  As a child she was orphaned by the brutal Khmer Rouge, whose genocidal persecution of Cambodia in the 1970’s was captured in the 1984 movie, The Killing Fields. 

 I distinctly remember the impact that film had on my life.  I didn’t want to see it.  I knew the violence would sicken me.  At one point I wanted to walk out of the theatre or at least close my eyes.   But I forced myself to sit there with eyes and emotions wide open.  I was strongly convicted that the least I could do was to be an intentional witness to the incredible suffering of that land.  It was a small attempt to honor their incredible losses.  And so, for a few minutes, I bore witness to their lives and deaths and have carried the knowledge of their suffering through the years.  It was a first step into social consciousness.  I was in my early 30’s.  I have been an intentional witness to the world’s suffering ever since.

Theary Seng’s story has a long arc.  Today it is a story of hope over adversity.  She fled to the United States where she studied law.  She currently heads the Center for Social Development and resides in Cambodia promoting human rights.

As her story unfolded, images projected on the wide-screen provided glimpses into mass graves, starving children and cities turned into ghost towns by the Khmer Rouge.  Most disturbing to me was realizing that the men on trial at the international tribunal, the ones who had master-minded the killing fields, were all old men.  They had managed to survive into their 80’s without experiencing the justice they and the Cambodian people deserved.  Their accusers were old now, though they had been young children at the time the crimes of the Khmer Rouge were committed against them.  Would they ever see justice?

I glanced at the women in the room.  How were they taking this?  Most of us were greatly impacted by the Viet Nam war.  Maybe some of those women, too, had lost someone they loved in the killing fields. . . a brother, a fiance, a friend.

What I saw made me proud to be in that group.  There was a distinct lean towards the screen.  It struck me that each woman’s eyes were wide-open as if to take in every detail of inhumanity, injustice and pain.  

They didn’t flinch or turn away.  They bore witness to the lives of Cambodia’s children, now grown, but still waiting for their justice. 

It seems the least we can do as we journey through a world that is grossly evil and injust at times.  Frustratingly, sometimes it is also the only thing we can do. . . to witness human suffering with our eyes and hearts wide open, believing that, in the end, a good God will have the final and just word.     

I’ve noticed adults rarely use it, having ditched it for stronger expressions of alarm and frustration.  (You fill in the blank here—only you know how far you have crossed to the dark side.)  But Rowan’s “Uh-oh!” was a song; gentle, lilting and sweet, wrapped in a smile and first-words-accomplishment.  “Uh-oh!” the baby’s soft voice cooed.  His mother, Kailey, coaxed a few more “Uh-ohs” out of him and then finished the call, “OK, thought this would make your day.  We’re hanging up now because he’s starting to lick the phone.”

It made me smile . . . and more.  It filled me with a strong longing that somehow Rowan’s world would always be so safe—that none of the “Uh-ohs” of his future life would be edged in anxiety and alarm.  He is a well-loved baby, the first grandchild on both sides of his family, the long-awaited child of a 10-year-marriage.  He is too young and too doted on to have experienced anything going too deeply south or off track.  His frustrations are small and solvable: a ball that rolls outside his reach under a couch is quickly retrieved by parent or grandparent; hunger or thirst is met pronto with pretzel snacks and juice-filled sippy cups; play times are interrupted by much protested, but necessary diaper changes.  He is happy and secure.  He goes to bed without crying, his arms around his love objects, a turquoise polka-dotted sock lion named Leo and another brown striped one called Charles.  He has a mountain of soothing “pacies” within reach at all times.  Baby Einstein loops through his DVD player.  Even his cat, Tennyson, caters to him, sitting beside him acting interested while Rowan “reads” books to his feline friend, turning the pages, pointing and grunting—a joyful picture of camaraderie and non-verbal enthusiasm.  Life is good!

And undoubtedly, the stark contrast with Baby Rowan’s life is why the Chicago Tribune headline on the Nation & World page shouted a giant “UH-OH!” disturbing my sense of family serenity:  Guardians missing for 1 million Haiti kids it shouted.  A million children suddenly and completely alone! I can hardly get my mind around it.  The article continued, “There are an estimated 1 million unaccompanied children or orphaned children or children who lost one parent…” (according to Kate Conradt, a spokeswoman for the aid group Save the Children)  “They are extremely vulnerable.”  It continued by stressing that the plight of these children is especially poignant as they are in danger of falling prey to predators and sexual traffickers.  “Children left alone are everywhere.”

The maternal part of me that is keen to protect, cries out for Haiti’s children.  If there ever were children anywhere who needed angelic protection, it is these.  If it were Rowan who was defenseless and vulnerable at the hands of evil, how my heart would break.  How would he survive if one seismic shake tore him from all who love and know him?  Without intervention he would surely die.

The world can be a dark place . . . especially for children.  I believe our prayers matter in such cases.  It is our strongest weapon against evil intent.  “Oh God, establish safe places for the children of Haiti who are ‘alone and everywhere.’  Help them find food, water, and adults who will care for them.  Sustain their lives.  Show them your love.  Amen.”

I visited Haiti many years ago.  They explained how they dealt with crime back then.  The suspect was taken to the scene of the crime and was then beaten all the way to the police station.  The only law protecting suspects was that they had to arrive alive, but could die minutes later without consequence to the police authorities.  There was no due process, no trial.

It seemed cruel and primitive to me then.  But today, in the face of real evil towards children, I confess, it hardly seems strong enough.

I plan to hold my babies closer today.  I’m going to tell my grown kids how much I love them.  And while I will pray my “Uh-ohs” for Haiti’s children to my Heavenly Father I take my blessings much less for granted.

Her kindergartners piled into the family van and saw her crying.  She explained why she was sad in the most age-appropriate way she could, but the twins were full of questions,

“Mommy, are there babies without their mommies in Haiti?”

“Yes.”

“Are there mommies without their babies?”

“Yes.”  She answered again.

“Mommy, peoples’ bones are broken!”  Broken bones is a most sobering measurement of disaster when you are a small child.

“And people are hungry too,” mom added thinking that surely they could understand that.

While the children took in the impact of human suffering, it was quiet in the car for a moment and then Caleb said, “We have to do something.  Maybe we could send them tons of food.”

“That’s a good idea,” Zoë replied.  “Maybe we could start a program!  You know, Mom should go to the churches and tell everyone and get help from people.”

That night Aimee spoke to her husband.  “I think we are going to have to do something.  The kids really want to help, but what?”

What can one already overwhelmed mom with five-and-a-half-year-old twins and a 20-month-old do in the face of such overwhelming need?  Most would shrug and take a pass on that one.

But Aimee recognized the teachable moment that was happening with her kids.  She saw that doing something for Haiti was as much about helping her children form to caring and loving others as it was about helping Haiti.

On Thursday she posted a note on her Facebook page announcing the Fritz family bake sale for Haiti.  In 48 hours she had received $1, 168 worth of cookie orders.  As of January 30 they had received $2,091 towards cookie orders for:

-20 dozen peanut butter cookies

-18 dozen snickerdoodle cookies

- 25 frosted valentine cookies

- 21 loaves of cinnamon swirl bread

- 99 valentine’s ornaments

Additionally the Fritz family received matching gifts for the money they raised in cookie sales, bringing the grand total to $6273.

70 pounds of flour, 50 pounds of sugar later the cookie orders for Haiti have been closed.  The Fritz family bakery will be busy through Valentine’s Day, at least!

When I look at the Fritz kids’ picture I see a pig-tailed princess and her tow-headed brother holding a thank you sign.  And I see more.  I see two extremely happy children.  They look happier than a lot of kids I’ve seen at Disney World, or playing on sports teams, or shopping in the American Girl store.   I’d call that the glow of giving.  It is contagious.  After the flour dust settles, their mom will have the satisfaction of knowing that when the question arises (as it will with regularity in her kids’ future lives) “But what can we do?”  Her kids will know the answer to it, “Something.  We can definitely do something.”

Good job mom!  Way to listen to your kids!  I love it when parents recognize the teachable moment and seize it.  I love the faith of children and how God responds by answering their prayers with fireworks and over-abundance.

But most of all, I love the reminder that helping others is more about resourcefulness than resources.  Now if we could just send those two five-year-olds to Washington, D.C., maybe we could get more done up there on the hill!