Category: Make a Difference

Sometimes I’ve written posts weeks ahead of time; other times I’m working up until the night before a post is scheduled to appear. Right now, I’m in the latter situation. I took the week off work, because a couple of close relatives are in town. They are staying with someone else, so at the beginning of the week I actually told myself I’d work ahead on blog posts when I wasn’t with my loved ones.

That is not, of course, what has actually happened, and I don’t mind that. But it does mean that, as of last night, I had barely worked on this week’s “make a difference” post. This morning I thought I would come home from a fun and busy day at about 8 p.m. and write and schedule my planned post.

Instead, I came home and found that one my family members needed me.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one who sometimes feels pulled in a million different directions by the people in my life. Maybe you have a couple of kids who want help with schoolwork, an aging parent you need to check in on, a spouse who feels neglected… all at a time when work is busy and, oh, yeah, it’s your best friend’s birthday tomorrow. All of these people are also competing with the dishes piling up on your counter, your empty refrigerator, the taxes you really need to do… And when are you going to find time to exercise? Not to mention the fact that, honestly, you just want some time to yourself!

Sometimes you need to say “no.” You may need to say it for sanity’s sake, or you may need to say it because some of the people in your life need to be less dependent on you.

But sometimes you need to do what I did tonight. You ditch your plans and make yourself available to the person who needs you. Yes, I’ve still managed to write something. It’s not the post I had planned, but it’s something, if only because I found that my circumstances inspired a new post that I knew wouldn’t take long to write. But there may a time when I can manage nothing — at best I might post a message noting that I cannot share a planned blog entry.

I don’t like that idea. Consistency is important to me, and I hate the thought of letting a post go for a week. In my ideal world, I’d always be ahead of the game, but with a full-time job and a family, that’s a challenge.

So I’ll do my best to honor my commitment to two blog posts a week… but I’ll also do my best to remember my priorities. Sometimes people need me. At times like that, I may have to drop things, even things that are very important to me, because when I don’t put the people in my life ahead of my to-do list, my priorities are out of whack.

Wow! I didn’t realize smiling mattered. Thank you for your sharing your great wisdom, Kate!

Okay, the importance of smiling is obvious, but how often do you actually smile at others — especially strangers?

I want to be the sort of person who smiles warmly at everyone I pass throughout the day, but that’s not how I usually behave. While I’ve never been told I have “resting bitch face,” I find that, instead of smiling, I often deliberately avoid eye contact with others. Much of this is because I’m too caught up in my interior monologue. Let’s see… I need to stop by the library on the way home from work. And I want to remember to look up that recipe I heard about on the Splendid Table podcast when I get home. Oh! I can’t let myself forget to make that vet appointment for the dog. I’m worn out. I don’t feel like putting much effort into dinner tonight. What can I make instead of what I’d planned?… My thoughts roll on and on. I’m preoccupied with to-do lists, worries, and the perpetual mental chatter that Buddhists call “monkey mind.” I’m so engaged with my own thought life that I fail to pay attention to the people around me.

I’m also an introvert, and there are times that I just can’t muster the energy to interact with strangers. In these situations, I avoid making eye contact with others, because if I pretend I don’t notice someone, I won’t have to deal with them.

And to be truthful, I’m still a junior high school student at heart. I have a feeling I’m not the only one. I’m afraid that if I smile at someone, they will reject me. If I don’t look at them, there’s no risk involved; they can’t reject me if I’m not even glancing their way. It is beyond me why I still let this fear of rejection dominate my behavior. I’m well aware that most people respond to friendliness with… friendliness! And if someone did reject me, I can either assume that they were preoccupied with something else (just as I often am) or I can conclude that how they treat me says far more about them than it does about me.

You may already be that person I want to be — sending everyone you pass a little love with your friendly grin.

But if you, like me, aren’t yet that smiley person, start by asking yourself what’s getting in your way and how you can overcome it. Together, let’s make a commitment to smile more — this week, and every week.

Once upon a time, my mom had a miscarriage. The nurse who attended to her comforted her with the words, “It was God’s will.”

I am not an advocate of violence, but had my mom slapped the nurse, I wouldn’t blame her.

Different people have different beliefs about whether or not everything that happens is God’s will. As fallible humans, none of us knows for sure. But even if you are certain you are right in believing that everything that happens is God’s will — every rape, every act of discrimination, every tornado, every car crash — please consider this before you say “it was God’s will” to a suffering person: They probably won’t be comforted by your statement.

There’s another view on why people suffer that seems equally hurtful: the notion that people create their own reality. I’ve always thought that was a very privileged attitude. I wonder if a person who believes that would dare to say such a thing to a poor person in a developing nation who had just lost everything in a hurricane or earthquake. While I don’t know if anyone has done exactly that (I hope not), it has been said to people in other situations. Grief expert Megan Devine talked about this on Jonathan Fields’ Good Life Project podcast. Her partner drowned when he went for a swim in a river, and people dared to blame her for bringing about his death with her thoughts. (Note: Megan compares this “blame the victim” mode of thinking to Puritanical thought, but from my admittedly imperfect understanding of the Puritans, this is not a good comparison. The Puritans accepted suffering. Megan may be thinking of the modern prosperity gospel, which promotes the idea that suffering comes from displeasing God.)

We humans hate tragedies. We feel fragile and powerless, and we aren’t quite sure what to say to people who are suffering. As Megan points out in her interview, one way we deal with our sense of powerlessness is by blaming the victim. Don’t. Even if the person who is suffering did something to lead to the situation, like accidentally leaving medication where a child could reach it, it’s a good bet that they are lecturing themselves every waking hour, and they do not need you to add to their guilt and sorrow. If you can’t refrain from blaming them, then just keep your mouth shut.

Don’t blame God either, even if, as I mentioned above, you personally believe the tragedy was God’s will. If you want a lesson in how a suffering person deals with God, pick up the Bible and notice the wide range of human emotions it includes.

“Will you never look away from me, or let me alone even for an instant? If I have sinned, what have I done to you, O watcher of men? Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you?” (Job 7:19-20)

“Why, O Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? … You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.” (Psalm 88: 14, 18)

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:32)

If you can’t tolerate someone crying out, “How could God do this to me?” then maybe you shouldn’t bring up God when you comfort a grieving person.

So what do you say?

How about “I’m sorry this happened to you”? How about “I’m here for you”? How about just being willing to listen and to help out as needed?

I feel like I can’t go on!

“I’m here for you. Let me bring you dinner. Is tonight okay?”

How could God do this to me?

“I don’t really understand everything about God and why bad things happen. But I’m here for you.”

It’s my fault he died. He told me he wasn’t feeling well. I should have suspected he was having a heart attack!

“It isn’t your fault. You didn’t know. I’m so sorry this happened. I’m here for you.”

This week’s “Make a Difference” post is overtly Christian. For my readers who are not Christians, I want to assure you that, while this is a study guide focusing on a passage from the Bible, it is full of ways you can make a difference. You may want to go ahead and take a look at it to see if there are any practical suggestions that you’d like to use.

For my Christian readers, here’s a little background to this study guide:

For several years, I used guides from Alternatives for Simple Living to direct my studies and activities during Advent and Lent. In 2011, I decided to create my own, personal guide for Lent based on Isaiah 58:6-14. I mentioned the guide to a friend, and she expressed interest in it, so I later polished the guide and gave it to her as a gift.

After I started this blog, I realized that other people might appreciate having the guide for their own Lenten practices, so I updated and revised the guide for a broader audience, and I am sharing it here with you. Note that, while I encourage you to use Ash Wednesday to reflect on and memorize the passage from Isaiah, this guide has a heavy emphasis on activities. This reflects a personal preference I have for finding ways to apply what I learn as I study the Bible. I assume that you will accompany these activities with prayer and possibly even additional Bible study.

Should you decide to use this guide during Lent, I would value you your feedback.

Enjoy!

Loose the Chains of Injustice

No, this is not another Valentine’s Day post. This is about love letters for strangers that you can leave to be discovered or send to be bundled up and delivered to a hurting person. While I’m posting about this in February, it is something you can do at any time of year.

If you decide right here and now that you want to leave love letters for strangers, you could sit down, write a letter telling the recipient that they matter, go out and leave it on a bus seat or a table at a coffee shop, and not even bother to read the rest of this post.

But if you’re intrigued about sending a letter that will be given to a specific person, or if you want to hear a little bit about the story behind these love letters, read on.

Hannah Brencher, founder of The World Needs More Love Letters, was almost certainly not the first person to leave a positive note for someone to pick up. People have been leaving kind messages in books or on sticky notes placed where people will find them for years. But when she first drafted a letter and left it on the subway, she was unknowingly starting a movement. She felt pulled to leave love letter after love letter for strangers, and then she asked the readers of her blog if anyone would like her to send them one. The requests poured in, until it got to be far more than she could handle. Now her website encourages visitors to leave love letters for others to find or send letters to people who have been nominated to receive a bundle. College students can start a Campus Cursive chapter.

If you want to inspire yourself with the story behind Hannah’s project, pick up a copy of her memoir, If You Find This Letter. I was amused that the book is called “a memoir,” because Hannah is not yet 30 years old. Nevertheless, I enjoyed her story, and I certainly understood her yearning to make a difference. Hannah has found her purpose, at least for now, in The World Needs More Love Letters. Given her age, I wouldn’t be surprised if she found more to do that will touch others’ lives.

This week, take a look at the website for The World Needs More Love Letters. If a letter request moves you, or if you feel inspired to leave a random love letter, take some time to write your letter, and send a little love into the world.

When my daughter was in elementary school, we stopped at the visitor center for the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, where we checked out a backpack to use as we explored the river. One of the items in the backpack was a trash bag. Unfortunately, it took us little time to fill it with tangled fishing line and other waste.

Our world is awe-inspiring and filled with beauty, but it needs advocates to clean up trash, to fight for the protection of wild places, and to take action in the face of global warming. If we go from car to office to car to store to car to home, hardly spending any time outdoors, we forget about how valuable nature is, and how important it is to protect it.

I started writing this post during a glorious fall, when I took frequent long walks. I set it aside for posts that seemed to be more important at the time, and then, as the days grew shorter and colder and the sidewalks became icy, it felt wrong to blog about something I’d stopped doing. I hate winter. I think Dante must be right — hell is frozen at its core. It’s hard to make myself get in the car to go anywhere, let alone go outside for a walk.

But now the days are lengthening, and we’ve been blessed with a January thaw. I really miss my outdoor time, so I think it’s time to try to venture out for walks again. Nature is good for my soul. This is one of the reasons why we need to get outside: to remind ourselves of what nature can do for us and to give back to it by doing what we can to protect it.

As a working mom, I know how hard it can be to fit in “extras” like walks outdoors. Our days our filled with things that need to be done — work, housework, maybe parenting or tending to aging parents, perhaps taking a class or pursuing a side gig. There never seems to be time to spend just enjoying nature, and when we have time, we’re so tired that we just want to collapse with a book or a screen and escape for a while.

Make the time anyway. Take time this week to walk through a park, ramble in the desert, stand at the edge of a beach… whatever you can do to connect with nature.

And if it’s miserable outside where you are and you have no desire to leave your house, I sympathize. It’s hard to enjoy nature when it’s dark and your cheeks are numb. But on that first nice day, whether it’s tomorrow or a month from now, get outside and breathe in the beauty of nature.

Plastic is wonderful; it’s lightweight and durable.

Unfortunately, its durability is a problem. Throw it away (many of us, myself included, do just that with at least some of the plastic we use), and it just sits around. Plastic in our water is a particular concern, and reports about the amount of plastic in the ocean and the damage it does are alarming.

We even put some plastic directly in the water without throwing anything away. Currently, you can buy facial scrubs with exfoliating microbeads made out of plastic. Rinse your face, and the beads wash down the drain. They can eventually end up in our waterways. The good news is that a law was passed in late 2015 requiring the beads to be phased out by mid-2017, so this should no longer be a problem in the near future.

But that’s not the only source of tiny pieces of plastic entering our water. When we wash synthetic fabrics, microfibers can wash out of our clothes and, since they are not trapped in water treatment plants, they can end up in lakes and rivers.

What do we do about all of that plastic?

Besides recycling what we do use, one of the best things we can do is to move away from using so much plastic in the first place. There are people who are trying to lead completely plastic-free lives, and I admire them for it. It does require a great deal of commitment. But there are small steps you and I can take to at least reduce the amount of plastic in our lives — and if you want to take on the challenge of going completely plastic-free, there are some great online resources to inspire you.

I am far from being a role model for plastic-free living, but here are some things I have done that have made a small difference:

• When I can choose between an item in a glass bottle and an item in a plastic bottle and the items are equal in terms of quality, I choose the item in the glass bottle, even if it costs more.
• Also, I try to give preference to natural fibers when shopping for clothes (not always easy to do).
• I have purchased reusable bags for sandwiches and snacks. They aren’t completely plastic-free, but they reduce our use of plastic baggies in lunches.
• Last year I was very good about cooking up large batches of soup and putting individual servings in glass canning jars. Just thaw the jars ahead of time, and you can heat up the soup when you’re ready for lunch!
• I try to remember to bring reusable cloth bags to the grocery store, and if I forget, I try to request paper bags. If I get plastic bags (including not only shopping bags but also bread and produce bags), I try to reuse them to pick up after my dog. That said, there are plastic-free alternatives to cleaning up dog poop, which I should make it a goal to try.

Something I haven’t tried but recently heard about: alternatives to plastic wrap that use beeswax. I’m also interested in Smile Squared toothbrushes. Although the bristles are nylon, the handles are bamboo, and the company gives away a toothbrush to a child in need for every toothbrush purchased.

I still have many ways to reduce my plastic consumption, but I’ve made a small start. Consider joining me (and maybe surpassing me!) as we work to end the problem of plastic pollution.