Goodness
a reason to show up and do the things
I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Psalm 27:13
A few weeks ago we had Ben’s great aunt, Sister Janet Stamm, over for dinner. In the 1990s, at age 50, she joined 3 other sisters of Notre Dame to go to Uganda and start an elementary school in a remote village. Hauling water and butchering rabbits, she carved out an institution with the help of the local Diocese and her kin in Christ. She stayed for over a decade, and helped found the Ugandan chapter of her order. She’s 85 now, and living in assisted living in Covington. While at our table she pulled out her Ipad and announced she had news to celebrate. She read a missive from the current school Principal: one of their school graduates, from a very poor family, was elected to Parliament. It was a joy to see her joy. Sister Janet is a woman that showed up and did the things, and that night, from a continent away, she celebrated this victory that had grown roots and wheat in the healthy soil of her work and love.
I’ve been kind of hard on myself as I’ve laid out the steps of cancer treatment, with the continuous “be a grown-up” peptalk. “Do you want to live?,” I ask in my head. “Well, go to all the appointments. Get your body cut up. Be radiated. Take the medications. Check the mychart. Check it again. Show up. Do the things. Don’t worry about the why, just do it.” Cancer is no respecter of persons, as my friend Maria ( a cancer researcher) has reminded me again and again.
So I’m pausing the voice of the internal drill sergeant to extend some grace here and say that showing up and doing the things isn’t an end in itself. A person can, for example, go to work everyday, pay their taxes, mow their lawn, keep their house clean, but those things are just a means to allowing that person to say bigger yes’, to experience bigger joys, to contribute and receive in life giving ways. I know no one that is happy with being faithful to the daily grind alone, and that’s because we were created for more— created to co-create with God, bring life into the world, make it more good, true and beautiful, to love and be loved.
Meridith knew this need for goodness acutely when we started Lydia’s House so she immediately built into our culture a litany of celebration practices and liturgies. Her argument was that getting an apartment or saving $1000 would just feel like a normal thing, an entitlement really, especially when adjacent to an affluent society. Working hard to get what it seems others have without such an endurance odyssey would be a let down.
Alas, what suffering people (or all people) needed, she reasoned, was to be celebrated. So we celebrate and affirm and ring bells for successfully completing a 30 day stay, sobriety anniversaries, getting a GED, new babies, successful moves and more. This relatively simple add lets an otherwise, often un-celebrated person be seen and feel beloved. It’s such a part of our life that one family’s kids call Lydia’s House “the graduation house” and former guests text us to let us know they achieved something, so they can be the recipient of affirmations and special desserts.
When I imagine living longer, or living a normal lifespan, I think too of the future celebrations that I want to be at. I want to see Annie make her own wedding dress (because it will be amazing) and, should Sam’s current vocational aspirations come to fulfillment, I want to watch him take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
I want to live to meet Jacob’s wife, who no doubt will be delightful. I want to fret over the logistics of attending their wedding on a mountaintop of whatever unorthodox venue he cooks up (how will his grandma Diane get up there at age 85? Will a priest even do this?) I want to be at the baptisms of my grandchildren, with hope that one will be a brunette with too many opinions.
We’ve been journeying with a number of families for years, so those kids, too, I want to see to adulthood. I want to attend high school graduations, knowing that I played some part in the milestone. I wonder, will Elonte run for office? Will Larriana become a police officer? And also, the neighborhood kids… I want to see Karis and Lucinda and Riley Jo launch, to hear about their exploits from Annie, who’s been their friend since she was born.
I know that life ends when it ends, death coming like a thief in the night. Which of us, by worrying, can extend it by a day? But I’ve been wondering, “Is it vanity to want to see and know more on this side of heaven?” The apostle Paul said, “To live is Christ, to die is gain,” but I can’t hold the options with such equanimity. Given a regimen for extension, I’ve agreed to follow it because I do, indeed, want to live longer, to celebrate the coming goodness in the land of the living.
Beyond hope for celebration there is co-creation. There’s more to the Lydia’s House compound yet to be built. Meridith and I imagine commissioning a series of live/ work spaces where guests can do their side hustles and care for kids at home ( running a daycare, a nail salon, catering)… these are the things they dream of, the “more” they hope for. We have plans for a deaconate of former guests, to let them create more of the ministry.
When my kids are grown, I’ve wanted to teach Catechesis of the Good Shepherd in prisons, and maybe also at our church or its school. I’ve started the materials and they are in a closet, waiting to be put into action.
Does God need me to see such plans to completion, to bring about the Kin-dom in these small ways? This too I’m pondering. I think God’s needs all of us, or wants all of us, to participate. There’s an odd paradox that each of us are both incredibly important to this redemption story, but also insignificant relative to eternity. Vital or not, I still want to be here to do the work for as long as I can because of the joy in the process. All the way to heaven is heaven, or a lot of the way, a lot of the time.
There is beauty, too, yet to come and be experienced. I’ve imagined a Peaceful Kingdom mural painted on the garage by the Lydia’s House playground, and I’m hoping my old friend Joyce can come mastermind the implementation. Adjacent to the Stations of the Cross we want to put a memorial garden for guests’ ashes when they die and, in the small garage, a chapel. Amber Lapp’s son and Ben are soon to design it, and of course, I want to pray in it at completion and experience the goodness of something beautiful added to a world desperately in need of it.
The way my life works, in the community ecosystem that I’m part of, I find myself hopeful to know volunteers that will come into our circle. Who will come from the Bruderhof? From Germany? From our neighborhood? Who will we meet in Church or through Meridith’s tango class or Ben’s next project? Will Anne move back? Will Annie? There are companions in this redemption story, some waiting to come closer, others yet to be known.
It seems grateful to want to live, and to want that because I have more to contribute and more people to love and more beauty to see and make. When my mom was dying she went back again and again for more chemo, more blood transfusions, more hospital stays. Her skin turned to boils, he spine ached from being tapped. I didn’t understand her willingness to suffer such cruel treatments at the time, but 2 years after she passed Annie was born. I am not a crier, but when I was alone with that fresh, bald baby in the UC hospital room, I cried for my mother because she would never meet this little wonder and experience her goodness. I knew better, then, why she’d refused to stop treatment, even when the odds were slim.
The cycle of lent, of life really, is crucifixion before resurrection. We don’t choose our crosses, but we endure them, gracefully as we are able, for the sake of the new life that follows. This current cross I’m enduring for the hope of knowing my grown children, observing their beautiful milestones, embracing still to be met friends. I’m enduring it for the hope of good work yet to be completed, yet to be imagined.
I’ll finish with a few updates:
-I’ve felt pretty subpar this week. My injection site feels like I got punched in the stomach, I want to succumb to malaise, and I’m sore in strange places. Is this just February or the giant shot of medicine pulsing through my system?
-On the note of beautiful additions, I’ve really loved this song lately and taught it to the kids in the my religious education class, so wanted to share it. It’s been a light
-We hosted my niece for 5 days and Sam taught her how to make bread, carefully explaining how yeast works and getting excited to show her the dough rising. Then he (mostly) with some help from her and Jacob cooked a Valentines Day feast… So I also want to live because day-to-day life can be so sweet.
And, the update everyone is waiting for. Annie is home from scholarship weekend and described it as “Achiever Survivor.” We won’t know if she got the scholarship for 3 more weeks, but in the mean time she did a full write up of the 48 hour whirlwind here.
What a beautiful piece. You had me in tears. I pray and hope you get to live a long ife, Mary Ellen. What you and your team are doing at Lydia's house is beautiful...that sense of belonging to a community that affirms each other and looks out for one another is so much needed. Your daughter is an amazing writer, too.
I totally get this! I used to pray for God to know when I was ready, and not before, to take me home. Now I just trust that he will. I too want to see weddings and great grand kids and for my life to have purpose. Your beautiful words describe these desires we all have so well. I want to appreciate the gift of each day.