Proving Your Worth

We all need to chat with an old person or at least read some of their wisdom to get the time- tested perspective on life. That's why reading 88 year old, Jesuit Priest Daniel Berrigan's interview in Sojourners Magazine was so helpful as I struggle to make a mark on this world.
For Father Berrigan, a peace activists, fighting for peace was worth the endless rally's, writing 50 books, and even imprisonment. In protesting the Vietnam War he torched draft files with homemade napalm outside a Maryland draft board office. In 1980, he hammered on nuclear missile nose cones which earned him a two-year prison sentence. In this decade, he protested the US Detention Prison in Guantanamo Bay. Between imprisonments he taught university students, lead spiritual retreats, volunteered with AIDS and cancer patients. All of this work and we are not any closer to a peaceful planet.
What would he tell younger activists? "One does what one can and lets the results go. The good that was to be done, was done because it was good, not because it goes somewhere."
I am so result oriented, wanting to accomplish something tangible before my life ends. It's almost as if I have to prove my right to exsist. I have a feeling I am not alone. Many of us think that proving ourselves in our ticket to stay here. We've earned our keep, so to speak.
Rev. Daniel, who now lives in the Kairos Peace Community in Manhattan, leads Bible Studies to people across generational lines and faith traditions. He believes that "The closer we are to Biblical wisdom, the less consumed we will be about proving ourselves and about ego and celebrity."
You can learn a lot from an old person, even when you are one.

A God Story

If you are given the same message twice maybe God is telling you something. So what if I recieved Don Miller's new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and then the DVD a few months later. Like Don, is God wanting me to be more intentional, to take some risks, to create more story in my life?
Don was feeling lost and unproductive, I wasn't. In fact I had been thinking how comfortable life was for me now. Kids are gone. I love the writing and subbing I do. I love the ministries I am involved in. But there are no risks. I wasn't doing anything that only God could do. I wasn't taking risks.
The guys who wanted to make a movie of Don life told him his life was boring. They would probably say that about mine. I needed a story.
I don't mean adventure. Physically. forget it. If I can finish a game of tennis with my back injuries I am happy. Adventure, where you push your body, is satisfying but it is not my story.
I needed an adventure birthed by God that would show his work in my life.
Over the last year I kept thinking about how cool it would be if our family could provide the money for a well in Africa. It costs $4,800 for World Hope to bring this clean water source to an African Village. Every time the thought came to me, I dismissed it. None of us have any extra funds around. In fact, looking at our bank accounts and the word, ludicrous, come to mind. If we were to come up with the money we would have to raise it ourselves. In reality, only God could do it. Then it dawned on me, what a perfect story!
So I have started the story with excitement and fear. I will let you know what happens.