Decisions, III
Ben and I attended church together this morning. No mom or dad. No Adam. We sat next to each other in the rear pew and share a hymnal now and then. He and I left the service right after I sang with the choir to teach our rotation of Sunday School. The third graders and fourth graders have their classes together. I lead third grade; he leads fourth.
Every few months, he, my mom, and my dad are the offering counters for four weeks. This means that they spend about an hour after second service crediting each congregation family for their contribution that week, counting up the currency, stamping checks, and preparing the deposit slip. We try to make it a four-person job, but there really isn't enough to do. During their last rotation, I discovered our church's library.
Before the new addition, it was a small cart in our fellowship hall. Now it has a room. Unfortunately, there's no more organization or expression of its purpose than there was before. A bookworm like myself just has to be bold and dig in. That's where I found and read I Kissed Dating Goodbye in its entirety over a few weeks. Now I'm reading C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. I shared my enthusiasm for discovering the library with a member of the board of trustees, and he has since encouraged me to step into the role of the current library committee--a husband and wife, both of whom look and act as though they hail from the Civil War era. Knowing them only by their reputation as purported by Adam, who graduated with their only daughter, I'm intimidated by stepping in directly by approaching them and envision taking on the project in the more quiet manner of just gradually organizing the books week by week.
I feel like I'm meant to be where I'm at right now. When I get offers for cheap places to rent, closer places to my work and my favorite man, and consider may intention to live alone for at least a year, I don't really think they are worth leaving quite yet. I am learning so much about my role as adult---not just a young adult, an adult like my parent, my mentors, and former teachers--in the church. I feel peace and purpose it in.
On Friday, I was walking back to the break room at work with a heavy, 4" 3-ring binder with miscellaneous medical records stacked upon it. My cordless phone--from which I manage six lines--was strapped in its holster at my hip. The cardinal rule of my position is to answer the phone after one ring. The phone rang, I tossed the whole stack to one arm, whisk the phone from its loop, clicked "Line 1", and blurted "Good afternoon-- [2-syllable name], [3-syllable name] and Associates." I talked with the caller for a moment before learning to whom I would transfer the call. The call needed to go to voicemail. The cordless can't transfer to voicemail. I need to transfer the call to a regular phone first. This involved pressing "Flash" + * + 70 + the extension number of the closest available normal phone. Once the normal phone starts ringing, I press "Line 1" on the cordless to hang up there and pick up the receiver on the normal phone, immediately press "Feature" and then 987 before entering the extension number of the person's whose voicemail will be receiving the call. Then I hang up. This process, from last word with the caller to completion, should be pulled off in about eight seconds. I did all this with the huge binder in my arm.
The wife of the main attorney there--the one who hired me--was in the break room at the time. She and her husband are the first Jewish people with whom I've ever been closely acquainted. They are more outspoken about their circumstances as a Jewish family in our country than any others I have ever met. They help me remember that anti-Semitism still is fairly prevalent. They helped me realize that Christmas can kind of be a awkward time of year for those who don't celebrate it. Whenever I happen mentioned something indirectly unique to my religious upbringing or Lutheran education, my boss has encourage conversation in that area when I might otherwise would have tried to avoid mentioning religion in his presence. I think he is more interest in entering such conversation like this with me than perhaps others since he and his wife thought I was Jewish when they hired me (My last name and some aspects of my physical appearance have resulted in that before).
"You look so peaceful when you answer the phone," his wife said after I transferred the call.
Inside I had felt anything but peaceful, still whirling from that process of transferring that one of my coworkers compared to dismantling a time bomb after she witnessed me in action.
"What?" I asked--I honestly hadn't had a chance to process what she said.
"When you answered the phone, you looked peaceful, spiritual. Almost religious."
I still felt like I was catching my breath. Even if answering the phone doesn't involved 50-meter sprints, it feels like it sometimes when I'm hold something heavy or walking quickly and trying to keep my breathing from sounding like I'm doing anything but sitting quietly at my desk. I didn't know how to respond because the comment was so unusual.
"That's a little surprising because I didn't feel that way inside," was my only reply.
But yet later, I thought differently. Yes, that exact moment of answering the phone was a moment of pressure. But compared to the rest of the world in that 13-room office, I feel like I am peace. I don't know how else to say it, and I wish saying that didn't sound so conceited.. It makes me think of an Annie Dillard quotation from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which I read in a religion class--to paraphrase: "It's good to have a healthy sense of poverty because then finding a penny makes you feel rich." Lately, I feeling like I'm living blissful from metaphorical penny to penny. My life is so rich, but I have experienced occasions of feeling like I could lose everything in it--and realized that life could still carry incomprehensibly bliss. As the lowest paid employee in my office and more highly educated than all but the attorneys and a legal assistant, I think I surprise my coworkers with my day-to-day attitude and demeanor. Sometimes, I think it surprises others as well. E once said that if he had to come up with one word to describe my "essence" (We were talking philosophy at the time.), he would choose "living joy." "I know that's two words, but I'm sure in some language it's one." Sometimes, I wonder if despite all my ambitions and all the visions of potential within me, if the most happy and giving life would be continuing in this path that maintains this healthy sense of poverty and gives me so much gratitude and peace.
Every few months, he, my mom, and my dad are the offering counters for four weeks. This means that they spend about an hour after second service crediting each congregation family for their contribution that week, counting up the currency, stamping checks, and preparing the deposit slip. We try to make it a four-person job, but there really isn't enough to do. During their last rotation, I discovered our church's library.
Before the new addition, it was a small cart in our fellowship hall. Now it has a room. Unfortunately, there's no more organization or expression of its purpose than there was before. A bookworm like myself just has to be bold and dig in. That's where I found and read I Kissed Dating Goodbye in its entirety over a few weeks. Now I'm reading C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. I shared my enthusiasm for discovering the library with a member of the board of trustees, and he has since encouraged me to step into the role of the current library committee--a husband and wife, both of whom look and act as though they hail from the Civil War era. Knowing them only by their reputation as purported by Adam, who graduated with their only daughter, I'm intimidated by stepping in directly by approaching them and envision taking on the project in the more quiet manner of just gradually organizing the books week by week.
I feel like I'm meant to be where I'm at right now. When I get offers for cheap places to rent, closer places to my work and my favorite man, and consider may intention to live alone for at least a year, I don't really think they are worth leaving quite yet. I am learning so much about my role as adult---not just a young adult, an adult like my parent, my mentors, and former teachers--in the church. I feel peace and purpose it in.
On Friday, I was walking back to the break room at work with a heavy, 4" 3-ring binder with miscellaneous medical records stacked upon it. My cordless phone--from which I manage six lines--was strapped in its holster at my hip. The cardinal rule of my position is to answer the phone after one ring. The phone rang, I tossed the whole stack to one arm, whisk the phone from its loop, clicked "Line 1", and blurted "Good afternoon-- [2-syllable name], [3-syllable name] and Associates." I talked with the caller for a moment before learning to whom I would transfer the call. The call needed to go to voicemail. The cordless can't transfer to voicemail. I need to transfer the call to a regular phone first. This involved pressing "Flash" + * + 70 + the extension number of the closest available normal phone. Once the normal phone starts ringing, I press "Line 1" on the cordless to hang up there and pick up the receiver on the normal phone, immediately press "Feature" and then 987 before entering the extension number of the person's whose voicemail will be receiving the call. Then I hang up. This process, from last word with the caller to completion, should be pulled off in about eight seconds. I did all this with the huge binder in my arm.
The wife of the main attorney there--the one who hired me--was in the break room at the time. She and her husband are the first Jewish people with whom I've ever been closely acquainted. They are more outspoken about their circumstances as a Jewish family in our country than any others I have ever met. They help me remember that anti-Semitism still is fairly prevalent. They helped me realize that Christmas can kind of be a awkward time of year for those who don't celebrate it. Whenever I happen mentioned something indirectly unique to my religious upbringing or Lutheran education, my boss has encourage conversation in that area when I might otherwise would have tried to avoid mentioning religion in his presence. I think he is more interest in entering such conversation like this with me than perhaps others since he and his wife thought I was Jewish when they hired me (My last name and some aspects of my physical appearance have resulted in that before).
"You look so peaceful when you answer the phone," his wife said after I transferred the call.
Inside I had felt anything but peaceful, still whirling from that process of transferring that one of my coworkers compared to dismantling a time bomb after she witnessed me in action.
"What?" I asked--I honestly hadn't had a chance to process what she said.
"When you answered the phone, you looked peaceful, spiritual. Almost religious."
I still felt like I was catching my breath. Even if answering the phone doesn't involved 50-meter sprints, it feels like it sometimes when I'm hold something heavy or walking quickly and trying to keep my breathing from sounding like I'm doing anything but sitting quietly at my desk. I didn't know how to respond because the comment was so unusual.
"That's a little surprising because I didn't feel that way inside," was my only reply.
But yet later, I thought differently. Yes, that exact moment of answering the phone was a moment of pressure. But compared to the rest of the world in that 13-room office, I feel like I am peace. I don't know how else to say it, and I wish saying that didn't sound so conceited.. It makes me think of an Annie Dillard quotation from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which I read in a religion class--to paraphrase: "It's good to have a healthy sense of poverty because then finding a penny makes you feel rich." Lately, I feeling like I'm living blissful from metaphorical penny to penny. My life is so rich, but I have experienced occasions of feeling like I could lose everything in it--and realized that life could still carry incomprehensibly bliss. As the lowest paid employee in my office and more highly educated than all but the attorneys and a legal assistant, I think I surprise my coworkers with my day-to-day attitude and demeanor. Sometimes, I think it surprises others as well. E once said that if he had to come up with one word to describe my "essence" (We were talking philosophy at the time.), he would choose "living joy." "I know that's two words, but I'm sure in some language it's one." Sometimes, I wonder if despite all my ambitions and all the visions of potential within me, if the most happy and giving life would be continuing in this path that maintains this healthy sense of poverty and gives me so much gratitude and peace.