"But you will be more alright if you allow me to do it." 

Then he allowed me, and at the end, he pulled from his pocket a little old photograph of his father.  I said, "You are so like your father."  He was overjoyed.  I blessed the photo, gave it to him, and it went back into the pocket near his heart.

After I cleaned the room I found in the corner a big lamp, full of dirt.  I said, "Don't you light this lamp, such a beautiful lamp?" 

He replied, "For whom?  Months and months nobody has ever come to me.  For whom will I light it?" 

So I said, "Won't you light it if the Sisters come to you?" 

And he said, "Yes." 

So the Sisters started going to visit him for only about 5 to 10 minutes a day.  They started lighting that lamp.  After some time the man got into the habit of lighting the lamp himself.  Slowly, slowly, slowly, the Sisters stopped going to his shack (although they used to go every morning).  I forgot completely about my first visit, and then after two years he sent word, "Tell Mother, my friend, the light she lit in my life is still burning."  (Adapted from Mother Teresa, Come be My Light )

2013 has been a full year for me. People look at my schedule and tell me that I'm nuts (or, that I need to read The Power of Pause).  You don't have to go very far out on a limb to speculate that I'm a little off plumb.  But isn't life more interesting that way? I will concede this: Full schedules and calendars chock-a-block (whether we travel or not) can give way to some sensation that everything is urgent--carrying the weight of obligation, prompting us about our need to hurry, as if we owe someone something yet unnamed. And the purpose of our day is to accomplish the next thing on that list.

Here's the deal: when you live with the tyranny of urgent, it doesn't take long to grow weary and heavy laden.

We are fortunate people.  We do not live in shacks made of tin and old cardboard.  But each one of us knows what it is like to let the light go out, or to leave the lamp unlit, or to bury the lamp (for any number of reasons, whether it be fear or shame or being just plain stuck) in the corner under the debris of disillusionment.

This email from a Sabbath Moment reader,

"Yes," I write her, "it has."  

Which leads me to Mother Teresa's story.   

And why it reignites something inside of me. 

It reminds me that very simple gestures can make a profound difference.

Simple gestures...

...to light a lamp

...to give hope

...to listen

...to embrace

...to empower  

...to reignite 

In the Holocaust Museum there is a story about an exchange in a concentration camp on the Day of Liberation (1945).  The prisoners still alive in concentration camps, were being set free.  A young American Lieutenant, extraordinarily moved by the bleak and foreboding nature of the setting, asked one prisoner to show him the camp.  As they approached a building, the lieutenant opened a door for the young woman, and she collapsed in tears.  Certain he had offended, he did his best to comfort her.  After some time, she told him, "I am weeping because it is the first time in years that someone has done anything kind for me.  Thank you."

With one simple gesture of kindness, a lamp is lit.

Sue Monk Kidd writes the story about her daughter, coming home from school in early December, telling her mother she got one of the great parts in the Nativity Play. 

"What part did you get?"

"I'm the Star of Bethlehem!" the daughter says proudly.

"Well, what will you do?" Sue asks.

"I just stand there and shine."

The little girl gets it. 

At some point, from Star of Bethlehem to adulthood, we obstruct that light.

--with restrictor plates, with armor, with fear, with perfectionism, with prejudice.

I didn't tell the story of the Holocaust Museum as some kind of motivational tool.  As if there is an obligation to "be kind."  I told it as an affirmation and a reminder--mostly to myself--that within each of us there is a light.  And that this light--of hope or dignity or delight or passion or justice or beauty or wonder or grace--still shines, regardless of the dirt that covers it.  Yes, there are times we forget.  However, there are also times when a simple act of kindness, or gift of compassion, rekindles the light in our own spirit.  This gift we give to another, becomes a gift we gratefully receive.  In the story, both--the giver and the receiver--are liberated.

Mother Teresa wasn't in that shack just to be kind.  She was there to shine.  (In reading her book, you realize that she did so at a time when her own life was racked with doubt and frustration and moments of deep despair.  Yes, even from darkness, the light still shines.)  

Today I wander, between reading my NYT, sipping coffee, tending the ubiquitous stack on my desk, leaving it all to putter and futz in my garden, cleaning up debris from another windstorm. It's my least favorite kind of Seattle weather--an ill-omened grey sky cinched close to the earth, stifling the spirit. I stand by my pond watching the trees shake, rattle and roll. And realize how easy it is to let any storm become our lens for everything.  Music is better than therapy so I crank up the sound track from the Broadway play Wicked, about how much easier our life would be if we had no circumstances (people or encounters or events) to rattle our cage.  How much easier it would be if life were black and white. 

Or maybe not. 

As it happens... because with a simple gesture, a light is lit.

And... "because I knew you

I have been changed for good."