Earlier today, I talked about 8 whys to pay attention to people in poverty. I promised 8 ways to help. (Lots of other people are offering lots of other ways as well today, looking at Goodwill, and fall housecleaning, and a guy who dropped out of school.)

But here are mine.

1. Give $25 to a foodbank. They need money to pay for food and fuel. In the past, stores would give away expired food. Now those same stores are marking down the price but keeping it at the store. Good for shoppers, bad for food banks.

2. Give two hours to an agency working with teen moms. Training, encouragement, attention, opportunity can help them stay in school. Nancy did this kind of volunteering for three years, three hours every other week. It’s slow. It matters.

3. Print out a poster and put it in a coffee house. These are design professionals giving tools to make a difference.

4. Listen to what Paul says about helping kids in Kenya. He understands. He was there.

5. A church I know about has small groups. Each small group is encouraged to adopt a widow as part of their group.They provide community and attention and hope.

6. Older people can forget to pay bills, can forget to eat, can struggle to care for each other. They may be living across the street, seeming to be grouchy old people. Maybe they are grouchy because they are hungry. Or sick. Or both.

7. The hurricane is past. The world attention has come and gone. Tom Osbeck is still in Haiti. He used to live in Fort Wayne. Now he lives there. His ministry is called “Jesus in Haiti.” They preach. And help an orphanage. And help a school. And take food and water to people living in a garbage dump.

8. Read about ways words make a difference from Joanna Young or this story from Robert Hruzek. And pray.

I always write about 8 ways. I’ll do it again before the end of the day.

But sometimes we need a why. Sometimes we need to understand the value of doing something before we actually do something.

1. because a real person might die. Poverty isn’t numbers and isn’t structures and isn’t concepts. Poverty is what real people live in and are stuck in and are hobbled by and die from.

2. because small actions are really big. 17 cents a pound is what we as a church pay for people to get food at the Community Harvest food bank. The package of pencils that I have because I like them so much would buy 10 pounds of food for someone. 10 pounds of food is five pounds of flour and a bottle of oil and a can of tomatoes. A package of pencils would buy meals.

3. because poverty hides if we don’t pay attention. It hides behind easy answers: “how you doing?” “fine.” It hides behind jobs. It hides behind credit cards. It hides behind one question too few.

4. because marriages shrivel up.

5. because poor in the united states isn’t always. When Nancy and I felt our poorest, eating frugally, looking rather than buying, spending time rather than money, we still had two cars (paid for). We still had a TV. We still had a place to live. Paying attention helps us see what we have. And what we don’t. And what others don’t.

6. because we might see Jesus. He tells a story about paying attention to sick and hungry and imprisoned. He says, “if you take care of them, in my name, you are taking care of me.” So, If we never look at poverty, or, more accurately, at the people who are in the middle of scraping by, we may never see Him?

7. because our kids are watching. If we want them to learn that money is a measure of the value of a person, then we can ignore those without it. If we want them to learn that money solves all problems, then we can throw money at red buckets. If we want them to learn that people help people, then we can hold red buckets and ring bells and deliver food and give attention and help lives.

8. because I want to be like Jesus. Being a Christ follower is what I say I want to be. And He paid attention to the people like Bartimaeus who were begging because the healthcare system and the social security system offered no other alternatives. He paid attention to people like Zacheus who were abusing their authority to collect taxes. He paid attention to a widow whose son died. He paid attention to people who were being abused by every aspect of life.

Why shouldn’t I pay attention? Why don’t I pay attention?

If I could keep this post hidden from the other computer in our home office, the one four feet from me, I would Nancy will sit down at that computer on Tuesday morning and check email and then find out if I wrote anything. And she’ll read this.

And she’ll prefer that I hadn’t told everyone that it’s her birthday.

But I need to tell you a story.

I don’t like to be possessive. I seldom talk about my kids. They are our kids. I shudder when people talk about ‘my staff’. I seldom talk about my car or my house or my things. They are ours.

As a result of this linguistic choice, I also have a hard time saying “my wife”.Clearly she isn’t “our” wife, there isn’t anyone else that gets to be married to her.

Several years ago we were at the groundbreaking for a new building. I’d been part of the team from the university working on the design. We stood in line for the reception. In front of us was the architect. He turned around, I got ready to introduce Nancy…and got stuck. My possessive reticence about “my wife” made that phrase catch in my throat. “The woman I am married with”, “the woman I promised to be completely committed to”, several other options all ran through my head. But time ran out. She was introduced as “Nancy”.

She forgave me.

And loves me.

And we walk together and talk together and try to understand. She reads twitter and blogs and flickr, though she stay pretty invisible. She is constantly and consistently trying to understand what following Jesus looks like. She cares deeply about underdogs and outsiders and the misunderstood. She is modest and quiet which sometimes makes people think that she isn’t someone that is worth attending to.

Ah, but she is.

In truth, though she seldom get attribution, what is written frequently grows out of our conversations, out of her questions.
Happy birthday, Nancy. You do change the world. You are a rockstar.

As you know if you’ve been reading here regularly, I took on the project of changing the boards on our deck. A couple weeks ago, I talked about the challenge of finishing.

It is difficult for me to take a project all the way to the end. I get distracted. I get tense. I get anxious to start something else.

I am pleased to report, however, that on Saturday, October 11, I put the last screw into the deck. Nearly 1000 screws. Parts of several evenings. Sore legs. But done.

I won’t tell you how close I came to shedding a tear when I finished. Or maybe it was that I finished.

I understand that many people would laugh at this feeling. Many people are actually remarkably organized, are great finishers. And I admire you. And on this one project on this one weekend, I’m one of you.

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If you want to read a great collection of posts on productivity, follow this one link to Tim Walker’s blog for Hoover. He’s a Longhorn and a history student and has wonderful insights.

Moses was going about his work.

He was a shepherd, taking care of sheep. He was looking for the green, for the wet, for the temperate.

That’s tough work if you are doing those in the desert. Green and wet and temperate, safety and comfort, pleasantness and pleasantries are seldom found on the backside of the desert.

In the course of his work, in his scanning the horizon, he sees movement where there should be stillness. He sees color where there should be drab. He sees something.

I was reading Ruth Haley Barton yesterday talking about Moses and Sabbath and the soul of leadership.

She writes:

On the Sabbath, body and soul reach out for time of a different sort, time that is full of space rather than activity: time to watch the burning bush in your own back yard…

(Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry, p 135)

She invited me to think.

Moses followed his curiosity, he stopped his pursuit of protection and wondered. And wandered over. And discovered God talking to him.

Of course, being human, when offered an assignment, he argued. Argued that he was unworthy. And argued that he was incompetent. And argued that he was unauthorized. And implied that he was unwilling. Unwilling to take direction from a plant which was demonstrating an unwillingness to be bound by the natural law that fire consumes its fuel.

I realized that I seldom stop long enough to wonder and wander over and listen. When I do, I frequently enumerate my inadequacies, brainstorm excuses, justify failure in advance of effort.

As I write this very early Sunday morning, I’m about to go to bed so I can get up in too few hours. Then I’ll run around getting ready for a sheep gathering. Remind me, if you would, as I’m running up and down stairs, to keep an eye out for flames in unexpected places, holy places, set-apart places, like the burning bush in the back yard.

And then, having seen them, to listen.

Not to my lists, but to the bush.

Nothing.

I’m supposed to write a post for Robert Hruzek’s group writing project. And the theme is “What I learned from stress.”

And I just know that he wants something about how stress helps us find out what we really believe rather than what we say we believe.

Or that stress in life is like the accent in a word…it changes the meaning and helps us understand. (content and content, for example).

Or that stress is a refining process.

But I’m not sure I’ve learned those things from stress.

Here’s what I have discovered, however about stress. I would say learned, but I haven’t learned these because I all too frequently act as if they are brand new:

1. Stress fractures. I am more cranky then usual when stretched. And there is greater likelihood of thoughtless comments, of raised (or lowered) voices, of (more than usual) stupid words uttered. (In fact, I’m feeling cranky now. hmm.)
2. Stress causes (adrenaline) addictions. I have this odd belief that I write better under pressure. It goes way back. As a result, I think I might almost intentionally put things off so I can get the rush.
3. Stress, relieved, leads to migraines. You’ve read about my migraines before if you have been reading this blog. After unusually busy times with poor sleep and poor rest and poor silence and poor balance, my head explodes. Often not in the middle of the chaos, but when there is a moment of stopping. (They used to come on my day off. So I tried not taking one. But that wasn’t particularly helpful.)
4. Stress, good or bad, wears.
5. Stress causes candy corn. Or maybe it just leads to candy corn. Or coffee. Or donuts. Or whatever is around. (Oddly, it hardly ever leads to carrots.)
6. Stress is. Can’t avoid it, it’s not life without it. And it’s existence can’t be denied.
7. Stress is often a result of choices. When I decided to finish this post in a little window of time which suddenly took longer than I planned and means that I am now almost late to the next event, my choice increased the tension in my chest and the sense of needing to rush and the beginning of the excuse-generating mechanism and….i gotta go. I’ll be back later.

   [3.5 hours later, after discovering that the event was at 7:00am not 7:30am]

8. Stress acknowledged and reflected on and managed and released teaches. Stress unexamined or examined trains. Training builds habits. Teaching builds understanding. (I know, oversimplified, optimistic. Deal with it.) We may learn nothing from the stress in our lives and our reactions to it and to other people. However, stress can train us…to avoid certain people, to pursue certain activities, to live in fear.

Now, go read the rest of the posts that Robert will link to. They will tell you all the good stuff that people have learned from stress. I’ll just sit here and relax. And eat candy corn.

Earlier this summer, I started using Mailchimp for an email newsletter. I have enjoyed the results, on a number of levels.

Recently they added the possibility of having posts show up as emails. I know that other services make this possible, but this seems particularly easy to use for you and for me.

But there’s only one way to find out. I need help trying it out.

Click here to sign up for this blog as an email. It should take you to a subscription form. Fill it out and you will start receiving my (almost) daily ports as an (almost) daily email in your box. Everything that I post by 4:00am will be sent as an enewsletter about 8:00am.

I’d love to offer you a real coffee every morning (or hot chocolate for Chuck), but I can’t. I will do my best, however, to give you something worth reading with your coffee.

So, can some of you help?

Click here to sign up for this blog as an email.

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This is an opt-in and opt-out service. I will not use this list for anything other than this particular project. No other mailing. No Sunday offerings. No offers of free bowling trophies. On the other hand, if so many of you sign up that I have to start paying (more than 100), I’ll probably write to ask you to opt-out for a bit. Until I can afford to pay.

The boat was still almost full of water.

After the storm stopped, I mean.

The waves had been high, the wind had been strong.
It would have been loud.
It would have been rough.
It would have been terrifying.

There were guys on the boat who bought more boats than they ever sailed. Matthew was far better at collecting taxes than tacking into the wind. But there were guys on the boat who knew wind, who knew waves, who knew what to do to do when everyone else turned green.

And they couldn’t do anything.

The wind and the waves were so bad that the best were baffled.

So they told God that he was trying to kill them. That he was clueless. That he was out of touch with what was happening to them That he didn’t understand anything about what is was like to live down here. That he didn’t care.

They told him that to his face.
Because he was sleeping in the back of the boat.
Their boat.

The boat that was almost full of water.

And so he said, “Peace. Be still.”
Not to them.
To the wind.
To the lake water pouring over the side of the boat.

To them he said, “So how come you don’t trust me yet?”

And, of course, he had a good point. He was, after all, sitting in the boat that was almost full of water. If it had gone down, if they had gone down, he would have gone down. And they had discussed the fact from time to time that he could do amazing tricks. Like making people live.

But it’s easy to think miracles cool and trust obvious when you aren’t up to your hips in water in a boat that is almost full of water.

So the wind stopped. And the waves stopped. And the silence pressed against their ears. And the immensity of authority pressed against their hearts.

And the boat was still almost full of water. .

Sometimes, without a reminder that it really happened, disciples forget the storm.And think they weren’t all that scared. And leave a tip for the miracle-worker on the table on the way out.

But when you have to row a boat full of water to the other side of the lake (because Someone stopped the wind), you tend to remember the danger you were in. And maybe, just maybe, you ask him how he did that.

And if he can make waves of fear stop, too.

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From the book of Mark, the end of chapter four.

There are lots of ways to say, “I love you.” Nancy often says it by doing things. Last spring, she said “I love you” to a few hundred people by making a few hundred cookies.

Yes, she gave them kisses. And bars. And filled cookies. And cake mix cookies.

Tonight I was looking through the card on my camera and found pictures of the kisses. I realized that although I had thought about writing, I hadn’t followed through.

Following through is another way of saying, “I love you.” It says to the person we are helping, that we are promising, that we are agreeing to help that we are willing to value their priorities and our word.

I hadn’t ever told Nancy that I would write, but what I know is that one of the ways that I say, “I love you” is by saying, “I love you.” I also write posts like this that tell her, and you, that she matters.

In a couple minutes, when I finish writing this, I’ll go sit on the sofa (or the couch) and rub her feet as we watch TV. Actually, she’ll fall asleep and I’ll watch. And keep rubbing her feet. Until I fall asleep, too. Then Hope will laugh at us.

Between now and next week, we’ll probably head to Kohl’s. It’s her birthday next week and we’ll get her gift. Together. It’s smarter that way, at least some of the time.

Why am I telling you all this? To brag?

Not really. Mostly, it’s because we all have lots of difference ways to say “I love you” and we all hear it differently and maybe someone needs to be reminded that we need to think about how our loved one needs to ‘hear’ it.

I mean, someone besides me.

A former student of mine lives in Poland. He’s been there for a long time. A few years ago, he was back in this country visiting family. We talked for a bit.

Steve talked about a typical day: riding on the train, waiting in lines at the grocery, at government offices, for utilities. As he talked about the amount of time he spent on just living, I wondered how he got any working done. Everything was, to my ears, unproductive.

A friend of mine lived in Sierra Leone for several years. His work was translating. His time was spent fixing things, pulling people out of ditches, solving resource issues. As he talked about the amount of time he spent on just living, I wondered how he got anything done.

One day last week, I went to pick up food for the people I work with. Kim had tried faxing our order for 30 minutes, the time it took for me to get to the restaurant. I ended up having Kim read me the order over the phone as I repeated each item for the person at the counter. I then had to wait for the order to be prepared. My whole morning ended up shifting becaused o get food from that particular place.

I didn’t get frustrated with the waiting as I thought about the waiting that my two friends have done, the sheer volume of time spent in line at places offering little choice. I also realized that what I was doing was spending the time as a way of saying to the people in our office that people matter. For someone’s birthday, for the opportunity to choose this restaurant, offering my time seems to have been a very good thing to do.

I realized as well that my friends were spending all that time on living because they believe deeply that investing your time, your self, your life in offering people hope is a pretty good investment of time. For them, and for me for a few minutes last Thursday, the only productive way to demonstrate that you care is to not produce anything. It is to invest time.

It is to actually live love.

Maybe it is worth the waiting.