Smell the Onion

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love what Thou dost love,
And do what Thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Until my heart is pure,
Until with Thee I will one will,
To do and to endure.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Blend all my soul with Thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with Thy fire divine.

Breathe on me, breath of God,
So shall I never die,
But live with Thee the perfect life
Of Thine eternity.

–Edwin Hatch

For the past few nights, every time I wake up at night, this song is in my head. I don’t even know all the words.
In other news, I think the baby dropped.

Tim and I buy Kleinpeter milk.  Kleinpeter is a local, family owned dairy that supplies milk to this area of the state.  The cows themselves are here in Louisiana.  The milk is *waaaaay* better than cheap wal-mart milk, or any other milk I’ve purchased except, perhaps, Promised Land milk, which is very good.  A few weeks ago, I ran out of milk, and bought an emergency gallon at the drugstore.  They didn’t carry Kleinpeter, so I got whatever they had.  I regretted it– could barely finish the stuff.  Anyway.  Last night on the way home from dinner we stopped at Target and bought a couple gallons.  The first gallon I opened didn’t expire until Sept 21 (which was fine with me because we go through milk so fast) but it tasted a little off.  So, today I sent the following email to Kleinpeter:

   	  My husband and I moved to Louisiana about two years ago, and about a year ago, we switched from 
whatever the cheapest milk we could find to Kleinpeter skim.  Last week I was out of milk and I forgot to pick
 up my gallon of Kleinpeter before I left the grocery store, so I stopped at a small drugstore on the way home. 
 All they had was another brand of milk, and I bought it thinking that one gallon of another brand of milk would 
be fine.  Holy cow!  (No pun intended).  Stuff was nasty... Anyway...It means a lot to me that I can support a 
local business who treats their animals well and doesn't use RBGH. Thanks for providing such a superior product 
that I can feel good about buying.  All that being said, I got a couple gallons at Target last night, and one of
 them just tastes...off...and not tasty.  I don't want to whine, especially since I've been so pleased with your 
product to this point, but do you have any idea what could be up?  The exp date on it is Sept. 21. and it says 
PKG by AA 8:58...    

So.  About 20 minutes later I get a call from a very apologetic employee of Kleinpeter.  He asked a few questions (which Target did I purchase the milk at, what kind was it, etc.) and then asked if he could send someone out to pick up the bad gallon and replace it.  And throw in some free Kleinpeter orange juice.  A couple of hours later, Jay showed up on my doorstep in a snappy Kleinpeter polo shirt, bearing a half gallon of OJ, and a fresh (as in within 3 days of inside a cow) gallon of millk.  He took the temperature of my refridgerator, gave me the beverages, complimented my daughter and left.

That, my friends, is good customer service.  Drink Kleinpeter.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet
but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ
is to look out on a hurting world Yours are the feet with which he is
to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless
now.  –Saint Teresa of Avila

My whole life I have been haunted by the story of the rich young ruler. I have heard, over and over that the point of the story isn’t that we all should give all we have to the poor, but that we
should be willing to call us to do whatever it is Jesus calls us to do. I can buy that…and still…

I have seen real need in my life. It took leaving this country and being set down in the middle of muddy Tanzania (well, first Croatia…I got a taste there…) for my eyes to be opened to the reality that I have neighbors going without food. I have held children that do not know the love of a family of their
own. I have seen bodies destroyed by things that I could afford to prevent or treat in my own family.

My heart breaks as I remember sister Laura wrestling Justin out of my arms as I left the orphanage…his cries of “Mama” still ring in my ears. I warm myself in the memory of watching Sister Lucy bathe baby Moses in a dishpan…singing softly, scooping water up and over, up and over…It has been five years since I left the mountain and I can still feel the children’s bare feet on my shins, their cheeks buried in my
neck…hear the clamor of breakfast and the shouts and whimpers and laughs. I was not yet a mother then, but I felt as deeply as I could for them. Now that I have borne my own children sometimes I am suffocated by the memory of those.

I treasure the grin of the fingerless man who ate the second half of my huge oatmeal raisin cookie. I remember my embarrassment at the ridiculous gratitude of Pastor Albert, when we gave him our leftover food money for the children.  I remember the overwhelming guilt of returning to this side of the ocean, and walking barefoot on plush carpet and paying six dollars for a glass of orange juice.

The truth is that the fact that my babies are in Africa makes it easier to continue getting and spending with little felt connection. The truth is that I’m sure that there are children going to bed hungry not ten miles from my house. There are children who know only the fear of family. Children who need medical treatment they are not getting.

And the question really is, what in heavens name am I going to do about it? Too often, I think, I get caught up in the knowledge that my money could be helping these children—these families. But is my money the way that God’s work is going to get done in the world? Does the creator of the universe need funding?

I do feel that being a good steward of my financial resources is a cruicial part of my walk with Christ, as he calls us to care for the poor and orphaned.  I need to balance that with the knowledge that, fed or not, all are in desperate need of Christ.  I cannot go to bed satisfied that I have done my job, just because I have sent some money to Kilimanjaro, or donated some school supplies to an inner city school.  I believe we are called to do those things.  But those things are meaningless, in the end, without Christ.  God help me to not
get so caught up in my self righteous enthusiasm of helping those who are needy that I think that it is by my own material efforts that anyone will be “saved.”

I want there to be poetry in me again–
I sit here poking at the ashes of my whimsy
turning one charred bit at a time, searching in vain for a glowing ember–
for that glimpse of orange amongst chalky white
that might be coaxed in to flame
or at least pressed in to paper or flesh
to singe and burn.

It seems my powers of poetry should have increased with the passing of these years–
watching this child I bore meet the world
watching her eyes flash as the universe unfolds before her
surely there is no better muse.

And yet…
here I sit, poetic as a stone,
no whimsy or insight wending its way through me
on to a page.
My bippity boppity boo is gone–
the majestic vehicle that could have been
sits
a lump of orange, organic, unchanged
gourd of my uninspiration.

If you would like to be admitted to my little xanga universe, leave me a comment.  And we’ll see. (You have already been admitted if, when you are signed in to your own account, you can see anything else on this page other than this Welcome post.)