Accepting Mercy On the Supermarket Line

I am watching the cashier at the local supermarket ring up my purchase.  $25.72. I pass over my singles, one at a time, then the two five dollar bills, then the four dollars worth of quarters I found in various nooks in my car. And I realize I am 72 cents short.

I am buying tonight's dinner - a full chicken for roasting, a bag of carrots and four sweet potatoes.

I am also buying a half gallon of soy milk, a dozen eggs, and a jar of applesauce because I plan to bake oatmeal raisin cookies on this rainy November night. I glance over my purchase. What don't we need tonight?

"Oh, let me put two of those sweet potatoes back," I tell the cashier.

The woman behind me in line smiles. She offers the cashier three quarters. "This happens to me all the time, " she says to me

For a split second, I feel embarrassed. I want to explain to her that my husband's paycheck clears at midnight tonight, that we are solidly middle class family with two jobs, a mortgage that is paid on time. Truly, I could have found those quarters on the floor of my sedan, I want to say.

But she's smiling and I realize none of that matters: whether I am temporarily without three quarters, or whether this is a daily occurrence.

She wants me to buy those two extra sweet potatoes and she was put in front of me so I could be humble and accept her gesture.

How often our pride gets in the way of seeing the hand of Our Creator. I like to think of myself as the giver, not the receiver: I'd spent part of my afternoon at the wake of a friend's father, a man who had had an often difficult life. I had actually been trying to list the  seven - is it seven? - corporal works of mercy on my drive home, patting myself on the back (figuratively of course) for driving to the wake and comforting this friend and never considering that I might be in need of mercy, too.

A world so free and profligate reveals your loving hand, O Lord. With dawn and all the gifts of day we praise you, Abba, breath and word.  
– Lauds and Vespers, Camaldolese Monks, OSB

Immigration Reform and "The Undocumented"

 Clemencia holds up a photo of her husband, Josefat. He disappeared in the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona. 

photo courtesy of www.theundocumented.com

It's a safe bet that as the United States Senate considers a bipartisan bill this week to reform the nation's immigration laws, a Mexican national will die in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona in an effort to walk into the United States.

According to the human rights group, No More Deaths/No Mas Muertas, 179 migrants' remains were found last year in Arizona's border counties. These are men, women and children who risked everything for the American Dream, including their lives. While fewer Mexicans are attempting to enter the United States, the number of people perishing in the desert while trying is on the rise.

A Priest's Prayer Opens the Door to A Conversation about Mercy

As you might know, my husband is a trauma survivor who faces post-traumatic stress disorder. Greg somehow survived the Sept. 11 terror attacks and he also lost dozens of colleagues. He and I continue to consider what it all means.

We both have what we call "trauma fatigue" meaning we are not able to immerse ourselves in the details of other acts of inhumanity, such as the deadly violence that occurred in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater last week. We haven't watched the nonstop cable news reports, or read any of the extensive newspaper coverage.

He and I were not able to have the conversations that our sons wanted to have about it. I had to explain that discussing the details of the shootings brought up far too many troubling feelings for their father and me.

But a comment by one of my pastors at Sunday morning Mass made possible a small conversation  about the Colorado shootings with our older son.

Divine Mercy: I'm Not OK, Neither Are You, And That's OK

I stole the title of this blog post directly from the homily one of our pastors, Very Rev. Peter R. Cebulka, CO, on Divine Mercy Sunday. Anyone remember this book from the 1960s? It is one of the top-selling self-help books ever; in 1972, when I was 10, it rose to the top of the New York Times' best seller list and remained there for two years. My parents had a copy and I perused its pages, looking for wisdom.

But, as Father Peter pointed out, the premise of the book is bogus. I am not OK; you are not OK and that is perfectly OK because God, in His infinite love and immeasurable wisdom, loves us, watches us stumble, helps us to get off the ground and keep walking.

The pastor's words are staying with me throughout this week when already I have encountered: a good friend contemplating the end of her marriage, a student who completed a slew of last-minute work over spring break so he wouldn't fail my class for the marking period and my own limitations as an overweight woman trying to improve my health. None of us is OK; each of us struggles in our own ways with our limitations. But that is all right, right?

God didn't summon us into being so we could be perfect. His expectations are that we try to follow Him as best we can.

I was hard pressed and was falling,
but the LORD helped me.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
and he has been my savior.
The joyful shout of victory
in the tents of the just:
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, his love is everlasting.

At the Supermarket: Encountering a Old Friend Soon To Be A Prisoner

This afternoon in the tea aisle at an HMart, I spotted an old colleague from behind, wearing his yarmulke. I called him by name "Isaac?" (not his real name) He turned around and we smiled at one another and chatted for several minutes. He said he was looking for a certain kind of tea, but he only knew its name in Korean. I found a Korean-speaking employee for him and we figured out it was barley tea he was looking for.

I hadn't seen Isaac, a married father of three, in months. We stopped working together years ago. In March, he was charged with sexually assaulting two teenaged girls.

At the Dog Park, Encountering the Wounds of Christ

I took our puggle to the dog park near the river today, passing by a group of young men with vulgar language and scary tattoos. On their necks were tattoos of guns and bullets and blood.  

I took a seat on the bench beside a pregnant woman, pregnant, I learned in our conversation, by one of the young men in the group and to whom she referred to as her husband. Our dogs frolicked and she and I shared some laughs. Then, she started to talk to me, really talk to me.  I am not sure why she shared so much, and yet, as she spoke,  I felt I was being asked to listen. And so I did.

Looking for Justice From TV Shows

I’m a crime-show addict. You name it, I’ll watch it: Criminal Minds, Law and Order, NCIS, Bones, CSI Miami, The Closer, The Killing, Without a Trace, In Plain Sight. What is it about my heart makes me seek out such creepiness?  I think it has to do with a longing for justice.