Filing Cabinet Find

¹ My heart is not proud, Lord,
    my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
    or things too wonderful for me.
² But I have calmed and quieted myself,
    I am like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child I am content. (Psalm 131:1,2)

Here we are, a few days into this new year and I was beginning to plan the further ongoing wisdom which might inscribe itself into these freshly self-assigned blog posts.  Thoughts were percolating, along with a bit of my usual self reproach.  Who do I think I am anyway - the usual cloud for those of us blessed with seasonally affected depression (SAD).  This morning, however, first things first; I needed to collect some stuff for the recycle bin. So into one of my file cabinets to do a little purging - downsizing in preparation for the end, like everybody else my age.  This requires a bit of perusal - another one of my lifetime habits. You most certainly must not throw away anything useful! I happened upon a personal Journal file, and began reading.  One caught my attention immediately.  Heady stuff written well before those 155 articles in my computer as referenced in my previous post (Jan. 1).  Not only written on paper, but lined out in my hand scratch of those years. Not as pretty as these formatted blog posts, but I rather liked what I saw.

It was an account of a memory I had at that time, mid-1999, just before turn of the century.  This particular journal entry was written during my trucker tenure one evening in small town Ohio somewhere. It was about a hospital visit about five years prior when I was serving as a pastor in Calgary. [Yes, while enjoying the open highways of my alter-ego career, many times especially just before bedtime I would recall those pastoring experiences] This sentimental recall was me visiting another pastor, an esteemed American gentleman who had come to provide some interim leadership in one of our neighboring churches. It would be his last assignment. Shortly after he and his wife arrived he became terminally ill.

 

Although I had not known Rev. Yordy for long, I already had a deep appreciation for him.  He spoke slowly and honorably, always with kindness as though he was pleased to be in conversation with you.  So this visit was somewhat emotional for me, and it was not lost on him.  As we spoke of his imminent departure, including the irony that he would die up here in western Canada even though almost his whole extended family and all of his ministering years had been in the U.S.A. or eastern Canada. He was just fine with that, joking that the distance to heaven was likely the same whether from Illinois or from Alberta! I in turn told him I was not in favor of him dying. We enjoyed being with one another.

 

In course of this conversation he told me of a Bible passage which he had recently chosen as his 'present theme.'  It is the one posted above.  When we read the short Psalm together I started crying. He also was moved, and turned to his son who witnessed this tender exchange between this pastor and his old dad, "I would like it if you arrange for this brother to speak at the funeral".  I still remember that funeral with the local congregants and his immediate family only. Missing were the community and large family connections from back home .

I write this simply in context of my latest post.  This morning's find in my filing cabinet was providential.  Within an ordinary downsizing project I am again reminded of a perspective which is hugely important. Personal peacefulness. No need to concern myself too much about "great matters or things too wonderful for me" (:1), like books written or not written, education achieved (or not), or significant events complete with pictures to either prove the point or distract from the life just lived.  This is very similar to the theme of one of my favorite authors, Father Richard Rohr,  Falling Upward (Wiley Publishing, 2011), in the second half of life bless even the things not achieved. 😐

 

Today I am grateful for friends now gone before me. They are indeed my cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1). From them is the invite to "calm and quiet myself" (:2).  Things done or not done are in the divine data base. Do not fret.  And for heaven's sake do not worry about whether it shows up in Memoirs or in Blog.