From the first day, we came together on a farm, Maria and I agreed that we would never eat before the animals do, and so far, we have kept the pledge. It reminds us as stewards that animals must be respected and treated well. Our animals have never been neglected, put behind us, or left hungry.
I have a plan. Sarah told me this morning that the food pantry is experiencing a Canned Corn Crisis. Corn is the pantry’s most popular vegetable, and the pantry has none.
“We are out of corn for the first time,” she said. Usually, we get it from the food bank. I had ordered four cases of 24 cans, but none arrived yesterday. It’s too bad. Corn is the most popular canned vegetable.”
It is too bad, but we can help. Sarah ordered 96 cans from the food bank. I love challenges.
On Amazon, Canned Corn costs $5.34 for a Pack of 6. If the Army of Good (including me) purchased 16 Amazon Packs of Canned Corn (Pack of 6), we would have the 96 cans needed.
I’ll kick it off with five orders of Canned Corn. With my purchase, we would only need 11 six-packs of corn for $5.34 each.
It’s something we can try to do. The idea behind the Army of Good was asking large numbers of people to do small things together. This would be a good one to carry out the mission. No one gets hurt; lots of people get helped.
Sarah was upset about having no cans of corn, but I told her we were not into failing. We can at least try. Thanks. I know a lot is happening in the outside world, but the need to do good has rarely been higher.
(My research: Canned Corn is a good source of fiber, which aids in digestion and helps maintain bowel regularity. It also contains vitamins such as vitamin C, B6, folate (vitamin B9), and minerals like potassium and magnesium.)
Sarah’s urgent request:
Amazon Fresh, Canned Whole Kernel Corn, No Salt Added, 15.5 Oz (Pack of 6), $5.34.
Canned corn is understandably the urgent item of the day.
Sarah also asked for help in getting more Diapers, six 3 and 6. We sent a huge load a few days ago, thanks, but these two sizes are still short.
Huggies Size 6 Diapers, Size 6, (35 plus lbs) Size 6, $9.94.
Baby Diapers Size 3 (18-28 lbs, 26 ct. Huggies, $9.94.
Thanks for sending these diapers; we need two more sizes.
The Amazon Cambridge Pantry Urgent Wish List is accessible anytime, day or night.
Click on the links here or use the green button at the bottom of every blog post. Every item on the wish list is urgent and updated several times daily. Some people are adopting favored items and sending them when they can. Thanks for the messages; the pantry volunteers greatly appreciate them, and many are poring through them in search of foods to “adopt.” Today, it might be Canned Corn.
Sarah’s new pet food shelf is very successful.
From Pete, a blog reader, thanks:
Jon: “I came across this from Franz Kafka, of all people, and I thought you might appreciate it: “Youth is happy because it can see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.” – Pete.
I do appreciate it, very much.
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Fighting worry. Worry is different from fear in my mind. Fear is sometimes helpful for fending off danger and sounding an alarm. Worry seems almost entirely useless and pointless to me, especially worrying about a future that is never really predictable. It is suitable for sleeplessness if anyone is looking for it.
To eliminate worry, which is necessary to eliminate fear, its sister, I began a series of meditations that have been almost shockingly effective.
Meditations always seem too woo-woo for me, and I could rarely be still enough to focus on a thought. I was worrying too much. I meditate in different places at varying times.
I didn’t realize that worrying is a choice, not a necessary part of life. The birds are helping me do it this week. Nature is an astonishing thing.
My meditations vary, depending on my mood. Lately, I’ve been pulling up a chair to look out the window on cold days and watch the birds stop by for breakfast. They are beautiful to watch and perfect for meditation. They also have more energy than teenagers.
They are almost hypnotic to look at. Kafka is correct; you are not old if you can see beauty in the world.
I’ve discovered that birds are, like flowers, worry-killers. Like flowers, most people see birds so often that they don’t see them. It’s too bad; looking at them for too long without smiling and/or feeling good about life is impossible.
It was just too cold this morning to go outside with my camera, and yesterday’s Shingle vaccine left me tired and sore in my arm. I know people who had shingles, and I don’t care what people who miss the Dark Ages have to say; I don’t intend to get them.
The birds seem to be worry killers; who would have thought it? Come along on my bird meditation, pay attention, and see if it doesn’t work for you these days when worrying is a disease of its own. Come along to an anti-worrying meditation. I hardly ever worry any longer.
My birds are a theater of the morning. In warmer weather, their colors seem to come up.
I’m edging towards the end of my life and coming to terms with the truth: I won’t get to see or know God if there is such a thing in my lifetime. When I set out on a spiritual path years ago, conventional wisdom had the idea of spirituality as closely associated with religion; for Thomas Merton, it was a simple idea, if not easy. Spirituality was loving God.
“The only certainty is Faith in Jesus and love for God, ” said a priest I knew as a friend when I asked him about God. “I go back and forth on other things, but I am certain of that.”
Well, that let me out, and in my floundering, unhappiness, and research, I realized that spiritual life was not just about religion but the desire to know myself, to be kind, and to help those with nowhere else to go. Jesus said that without requiring membership for people like me.
Many of you have shared my spiritual journey from the beginning; I thank you for that.
The kind people—Sheila and Jim—wrote to thank me for extending the love of Jesus through my work (see message below) at the local food pantry. They called me one of “God’s angels here on earth.” I can’t say I was displeased by the message hanging on my office wall, but I couldn’t entirely accept the praise.
I don’t want anyone of any faith telling me what to believe. I can take advice, though, and Jesus inspired me to do so. I’m done with other people telling me what to do.
Lately, I’ve been deep into the works of Evelyn Underhill, a famous mystic who saw a spiritual life as wholly connected to Christ and faith and accepting him as a God. I doubt she would be as rigid today; she was a brilliant, thoughtful, fantastic writer and radical philosopher. She didn’t preach dogma and witchcraft.
“The life of this planet, and especially its human life,” Underhill wrote, “is a life in which something has gone wrong, and badly wrong (she died in 1941). Every time we see an unhappy face, an unhealthy body, or hear a bitter or despairing word, we are reminded of that. The occasional dazzling flashes of pure beauty, pure goodness, and pure love, which show us what God wants and what He is, only throw into more vivid belief the horror of cruelty, greed, oppression, hatred, and ugliness…Unless we put on blinkers, we can hardly avoid seeing all this, and unless we are warmly wrapped in our interests, we surely cannot help feeling the sense of obligation, the shame of acquiescence, the call to do something about. it.”
Sounds familiar in modern-day America. Underhill, like many mystics and free thinkers, called the future.
Underhill was an activist who challenged people of faith to put up or shut up. Jesus, she wrote, was really only about one thing—worshiping God and helping people who needed help. Those were brand new ideas of his time, and his plea swept and changed the world.
Here’s where I fit in: not in a Church or Temple but in my own life. Time passed, and religion changed in one way; spirituality became a journey of the soul, not something in a Bible someone else wrote. That’s what my priest friend told me—go inward, not outward. So I did.
“The action,” she wrote, “maybe almost anything: from the ceaseless, self-offering of the enclosed nun to the creation of beauty or the clearance of slums. “Here am I! Send me!” means going anyhow, anywhere, at any time.”
The Church, she wrote, is a tool to save the world, a tool of Good especially for that purpose, wrote Underhill, not a comfortable religious club established on grand historical premises. Love is a tool for everyone.
I don’t need a Church, Temple, or Mosque to do what Jesus said or what I believe to be good and even sacred. And I want to be about much more than me.
My spiritual life is internal and private, and I understand enough about myself to do good for others. I did it alone, and no rab or priest was there to guide me. I see my God in the touch of my wife, a cat’s eyes, and a dog’s loyalty.
Evelyn Underhill is guiding me in new and different ways. The challenge, she said, is not dogma or glorious buildings; the challenge is to be self-given to the purposes of the Spirit, to be passed not by stained glass but by the Divine passion of saving love, on the danger of fading away in her time and now. The challenge is to take my place in the grand army of rescuing souls. That was the call of Christ.
A famous Christian philosopher wrote that every quality or virtue the Holy Spirit produces in (women and) men’s souls is also starkly simple: Tranquility, Gentleness, and Strength. It’s a tough challenge; I’m still working at it, and it will probably be for the rest of my life.
The call I hear in our country now is the rescue of love and souls.
I can love and admire Christ. I don’t need to be worshipping him. I like to think of him as the God of Good; that’s all he stood for. That’s enough for me.
Flowers are my friends, and I discovered them later in life. They bring color to my world, and hope.” – Me.
