Author and Inspired Writer

I’m expecting a delivery of books in a couple days – Rilke’s Book of Hours and Wiman’s Every Riven Thing.  Our beloved church organist gave me a gift card for Chapters a few weeks ago, and I was absolutely astonished!  Why on earth…?

Well, she said, things had not been going well for her lately.  Her daughter had her thesis defense moved up by three weeks, and her computer just crashed.  Mama planned to send her her own computer, but before she could, it crashed too!  This was in the middle of working full-time as a pharmacist, planning our weekly services, and rehearsing a Holy Week Cantata for our church and a Windsor church (combined choirs) – which went very well, by the by.  In the midst of all this stress, she thought “I need to do something nice for someone, right now and change this rather negative stream”.  But who?  And what?

Then she remembered in the sermon I had delivered at the beginning of March when our minister was at the deathbed of her husband and unavailable to preach, I had mentioned something that had taken place years ago when I was listening to the Vinyl Cafe on CBC radio.  Stuart MacLean, the host, had dialed the wrong number and ended up speaking with a young boy, Kyle, who happened to be going through a tough time – his parents were separating and his dad was moving away to find work.  Well Stuart was stunned.  He hadn’t expected anything like this at all.  But as they talked he started to console Kyle, told him things would get better.  Then he gave Kyle his private number and told him to call whenever he needed to talk.  Kyle was grateful.  Stuart offered to send him a CD of the show and Kyle said, “Sweet!”  Finally, Stuart said, “Even better Kyle – we do shows all over the country.  How about next time we’re in Windsor we’ll pick you up for dinner and take you to the show?”  Well, by then Kyle was in orbit!

People started sending in all kinds of letters and emails of encouragement to Kyle after this, and after he collected 100 of them, Stuart sent them on to the boy.  Someone even sent him a gift card for Chapters to help lift his spirits.  At this point in the sermon I joked offhandedly that if anyone ever wanted to make me feel better, a Chapters gift card would be the way to go.  Needless to say, my dear organist took this to heart and presented me with a gift card after choir practise.

It was not only an act of her generosity, but by it she was able to start a positive energy cycle in her own life.  I have taken her lesson to heart, and whenever the negativity gets too great, I think who can I do something for?  The name and the action always come to mind, and there begins a new cycle of blessing.

Well sports fans, we are back online!  Figures the site would be down during one of the busiest months of my life, but so it goes.  There’s a ton to get caught up on, and it ain’t gonna happen all in one post, but I will try to blog a little more often than usual.  (Some of my readers have been getting a tad on the restless side.  Well, who can blame them?  After all, I’ve been back on line for a whole 36 hours now.  What the heck am I waiting for?  Ahem.)

First, my health.  It’s MUCH better, thanks for asking!  I’m maintaining the megadose of Vitamin D on my doctor’s orders until June, but I’ve already noticed some very positive changes.  I’m sleeping better  for one thing, one very BIG thing since sleep is a recurring issue with me.  I fall asleep within minutes and stay asleep for at least a five hour block – not bad!  But lately it’s been stretching to six, seven and even eight hours.  YOWZA!  My energy is up with far fewer crashes during the day, and although I still run out of steam by 8 pm. I am confident I’ll get all the way back soon.  One small downside – since I’ve had to cut back on my workouts for the past three months, I’ve noticed some distressing weight gain.  But I’m slowly increasing the duration and intensity of my exercise and I’m counting this as a temporary blip.  I’ve also added a core program for the fibro-aches as soon as I get out of bed in the morning.  And that is helping immensely.

People have been very understanding about my having to curtail some activities and their support will go a long way toward my full recovery.  And oh yes! I can think now in terms of a full recovery and that is like the sunrise!

…or I’d never do any housework at all!

An editing client is coming by this afternoon to pick up their work and I suddenly find myself strongly motivated to clean up my unconscionably messy office.  But if a cluttered desk indicates a cluttered mind, what does an empty desk mean?  No time to figure that out right now – I gotta hide my bedroom slippers.

Much has happened since my last post.  Turns out a few days after I was removed from the promotional venture I spoke about – at my own rather desperate request – I received an urgent phone call from our church organist who informed me that our minister’s husband was dying, and since she didn’t want to leave the bedside, could I take the Sunday service.  This was late Saturday morning.  Normally I would have deferred to one of the two other ministers in our congregation, but neither could be reached.  So, I said yes.

Consider the timing – I’d already written all six of my summer sermons and was in the process of editing each one, running it off and printing up the bulletins.  I wanted to get this all completed by mid-March so I could put all thoughts of preaching aside for a while and concentrate on the new manuscript.  All I had to do was pull out one of the two sermons already run off, read through it a few times, send up some emergency prayers for help and inspiration and I was good to go.  I told the mister never to make fun of my obsessive-compulsive tendencies again, cuz you never know when they’ll come in handy!

Now the really interesting part – as the time drew closer, I found myself growing calmer.  What? Usually I’m cycling up to the frenzied stage by the time I have to take the pulpit.  But not this time.  And as the service goes on, because I have to expend so much energy in leading worship and singing, I find I have very little energy left for preaching.  It is my lowest ebb in the service – something I struggle with.  But this time, mercy! I felt stronger and stronger as the sermon progressed.  It was a rare moment of grace.  One instant when I knew, maybe for the first time, that I was standing in the will of God.

Almost immediately after the service, all my energy drained away and I spent the rest of the day on the couch, exhausted but blessed.  So blessed!  And if I had not gotten things straightened out with that promotional thing, I don’t think I could have done any of this with a good conscience, and oh! what a loss that would have been.

Well, some dust bunnies are giving me the evil eye.  Back to work for me.

A few days ago I was asked to participate in a promotional venture of which I had serious reservations.  Now, let’s be clear here – I am thirty plus years past the age of majority, no one had a gun to my head, and no one had to contribute if they felt uncomfortable.  On top of that, all my lights were flashing red, but I went ahead and did it anyway.  And even as I did, I knew I had made a mistake.  On the way home in the car, I knew I had made a mistake.  That night when I couldn’t sleep, I knew I had made a dreadful mistake.

The next day I fought with myself, tried to rationalize, convince myself I was blowing it way out of proportion.  It didn’t work.  Early the next morning, I jumped on the computer and begged the organizers to delete my contribution.  Within minutes (which surprised me because this was very early in the morning) one of them wrote back and said “No sweat.  I’ll take you out.”  Within the next hour, the other two organizers contacted me and took care of everything.  And what did I learn from this?

First, I ignore what one of my friends calls “the infallible voice of intuition” at my own peril.  My body, which was just beginning to recover, has been dealt another blow with all the emotional turmoil I put it through.  When my conscience – which sounds scarily like my mother’s voice – says, “This is not for you,” I best listen.

Second, even if everyone else on the planet is fine with something, that does not make it right for me.

And third, I realized as never before that I am surrounded by good people, who, though they might not have understood my negative reaction, showed me respect and kindness and moved quickly to help me.

Oh, and one last thing, if I had waited even just a matter of hours longer before contacting the organizers, it would have been too late to do anything about it.

Intuition.  What a wonderful thing.