Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Michelle

How to Build a Bigger Table

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I called Angel on a Wednesday morning for a “human interest” article I’d been assigned for my job at The Salvation Army. I had very little information about him, aside from the fact that he and his wife host community dinners every few months for residents in their apartment complex.

I was skeptical. It didn’t sound like much of a story.

Angel answered on the second ring, and when I told him why I was calling, he eagerly began to talk. I pressed my cell phone to my ear and frantically scribbled into my notebook. Angel talked fast, and at times, I struggled to understand his words through his accent. But one thing was immediately clear: Angel had a story.

As a young boy living in San Antonio, Angel had learned to cook in order to survive. Homeless at age seven, he’d lived under a bridge and had panhandled on the streets, pooling his resources with other homeless children and adults, together cooking the food they’d gathered over an open fire.

Today Angel and his wife, Christy, live in a Section 8 apartment in Kearney, where every few months they invite all the residents in their building to a home-cooked dinner. The morning I spoke to Angel he was preparing to make “Mexican goulash.”

The idea for the community dinners was sparked three years ago at Thanksgiving, when Angel realized many of his neighbors didn’t have anyone with whom to share the holiday meal. More than 30 people showed up for that first Thanksgiving dinner, which Angel and Christy, both of whom are disabled, paid for with their food stamps. When staff at their local Salvation Army Corps heard about the community dinners, they donated additional food to help offset the costs.

The dinners are a lot of work, Angel admitted. And they aren’t perfect. Sometimes disagreements break out; people argue. But overall, the rewards are worth the effort.

“I like to watch the faces of the people as they eat,” Angel said. “It warms my heart to see everyone together.” He appreciates that the dinners draw residents, many of whom are elderly and isolated, out of their apartments to connect with one another. “None of us really knew each other before this,” he said.

Nowadays Angel and Christy don’t even have to post notices about upcoming dinners in the elevator or the laundry room. “People just smell the food and they show up,” Angel said.

Last week I sat in a pew at First Plymouth Church and listened as author and pastor John Pavlovitz urged the audience to “build a bigger table.” Pavlovitz was talking about the practice of radical hospitality — of broadening our circles to include people who don’t look like us, vote like we do, practice the same faith, make the same lifestyle choices or celebrate the same cultural traditions.

Hours after Pavlovitz had finished his talk, I was still mulling over his words. The idea of “building a bigger table” sounded promising and inspiring when preached from the pulpit, but the truth was, I had trouble envisioning what it would look like from a practical perspective. “Where would I even start?” I wondered. “What does ‘building a bigger table’ look like in actual, everyday life?”

Then I remembered Angel, who showed me exactly what building a bigger table looks like in actual, everyday life. Fix an enormous pot of Mexican goulash, invite your neighbors — every last one of them — to your table, and eat together.

It really is that simple.

This post first appeared in the Lincoln Journal Star on April 13, 2019.

Filled with the Fullness of Your Own Everyday, Ordinary Life

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A few days ago, as Josie lingered with her snout deep in the weeds – “reading the newspaper,” as a fellow dog-walker once observed – I watched a girl on roller skates sidestep, arms outstretched, down a grassy slope. She wore old-fashioned skates, the kind with four wheels and a rubber stopper like a nose on the end of each boot. Suddenly I was back under a rainbow of disco lights at Interskate 91, Beat It pulsing, skates thumping over the hardwood floor.

Nearby a young man had slung a striped hammock between two white pines. His backpack resting at the base of one tree, bike propped against the trunk of the other, he stood tilting his phone this way and that, angling for the perfect shot, patient as the hammock twirled like a double-dutch jump rope in the early spring breeze.

Making our way through the neighborhood, I caught the almost-familiar scent of something spicy – cumin or maybe curry — wafting through the open window of a basement apartment. The food smelled nearly but not quite like the dishes our Yazidi friends prepare for us when we visit.

Two doors down a new scent, the nostalgic smell of hot dogs on the grill, whisking me back to Fourth of July cookouts on the backyard picnic table. Josie smelled it too, stopping to lift her quivering nose in the air.

Tipping my head back to gaze up at an enormous sycamore, I saw that its bare branches were hung with hundreds of seed balls dangling like Christmas ornaments. I picked one up from the ground and carried it like a cherry on a stem, gently so as not to crush it. When I got home from our walk I put the seed ball on a dish and placed it on my desk.

I’m halfway through my Lenten social media fast. After a month away from Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, I feel grounded. My body is grounded. My senses are grounded. My brain is even somehow more grounded. I hadn’t been aware of it until I dialed back the constant noise and distraction, but my thoughts had begun to feel like untethered balloons bumping along with the current, strings dangling.

Being grounded in my own body, in my own environment, in my actual real life, rather than constantly peering into other lives as they are presented on my cell phone screen, has given rise to a keen attentiveness. I notice the girl on the old-fashioned roller skates, the scents whispering through my neighborhood, the regal, whimsical Dr. Seussian sycamore tree.

I see that though it’s April, the magnolia buds are still tightly closed, fuzzed sepals clasping drowsing petals. Even spring’s overachievers, the daffodils, are biding their time, keeping their sunny yellow encased in their papery wraps. Everywhere there is something new and fresh and beautiful to see, to hear, to smell, to touch. Everywhere there is a sense of expectancy.

My life has a different kind of fullness these days – different from the bloated, pants-too-tight-after-a-big-meal fullness created by noise, distraction, input, information, images. Different from the full-of-emptiness one can sometimes feel from ingesting too much of other people’s lives as they are presented online.

These days I am grounded. I am full. Filled with ordinary sights, sounds and smells. Filled with the fullness of my own everyday, ordinary life.

When a Natural Disaster Gets Personal

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Last Friday I drove home from work under a wide blue sky. Squinting against the early evening sun, I lowered the visor and sat ramrod straight in the driver’s seat, trying futilely to align my eyes with the narrow band of shade.

Earlier it had rained long and hard. My husband had called to report that he’d wrestled with the downspouts and gutters in the deluge all morning, attempting to redirect the water that would inevitably weep down the cinder-block walls of our basement.

Meanwhile, at The Salvation Army, where I work part-time, we’d been in preparation mode all day. We created a special flood-relief donation website. Staff were called into emergency meetings. Disaster relief vehicles were fueled and stocked with food, water and supplies. Volunteer operations were put into place.

Still, I was skeptical. The rain didn’t seem that bad. As the day progressed the sky cleared and brightened, and later, when I drove home, I gazed at billowy clouds hanging motionless against a backdrop of cerulean. I assumed the threat had passed.

It was only as I neared the Platte River that I noticed the fields. What had been land in the morning when I’d driven past was now a sea, and I struggled to orient myself amid the suddenly unfamiliar landscape.

Where had all the water come from? Had it simply pooled from the rain, unable to drain into the still-frozen ground? Or was it spilling over from the river?

I sped by three skittish deer grazing too close to the Interstate, forced by the lapping water onto a narrow strip of dry scrub.

As I approached the bridge, my foot instinctively backed off the gas petal, my body seeming to know before my mind that something was not right. The river, plunging in a muddy, roiling tumble under the highway, was higher than I’d ever seen it. As I neared the far side of the bridge, I saw the houses and campers along the riverbank. They were almost completely swallowed by the raging water.

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As I write this on Tuesday the rain is falling in a gentle pitter-patter on the roof. Out the window, water droplets are strung like rhinestones from the river birch’s bare branches. Shallow puddles glimmer on the seats of the metal patio chairs.

It looks and sounds innocuous, this gentle water. But appearances can be deceptive.

Rivers across Nebraska and Iowa are still overflowing, inundating towns, swallowing highways, flooding streets, homes and fields. Thousands of livestock are stranded on tiny islands; many more have already drowned, in spite of farmers’ best efforts to get them to higher land.

What was, just a few days ago, an endless unspooling of dried corn stalks and not-yet-plowed-and-planted soil is now an ocean of river water. Much of the eastern part of Nebraska is submerged. As of this writing, 74 cities and towns, 64 counties and four tribal areas have declared a state of emergency, and some of the rivers are still rising.

Even The Salvation Army, which is organizing relief efforts across a broad geographic area, has been directly impacted. The photo immediately below is an aerial picture of a Salvation Army youth camp near Omaha, which over the past several decades has served thousands of kids. For many who lived in the inner city, their experience at Camp Gene Eppley was their first introduction to the great outdoors and summertime activities like fishing, swimming and hiking.

Where I live, in Lincoln, Nebraska, only a handful of miles from the devastation, we are safe and unscathed. My home, neighborhood and city are intact. And yet, what is distant is also so close.

I’ve felt a sense of helplessness in the face of other natural disasters – the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, the flooding in Houston. But this feels different. This time an acquaintance – a colleague who stops by my desk at work to chat from time to time — has lost her house to the flood.

This time I remember the summer afternoon I browsed antique shops and bought an old wood table in a town that is now completely submerged in river water.

This time I work for an organization that is on the front lines of disaster-relief efforts.

This time it’s personal.

And yet, in spite of the heartache I feel for those who have lost everything, I also can’t help but be heartened by the outpouring of love, compassion and support I’ve heard about and witnessed over the last few days. Our volunteer coordination center is overwhelmed with people calling and emailing from around the region and across the country to commit their time and energy to help. Neighbors are sheltering and feeding neighbors. Local businesses are donating goods and services and hosting fundraisers. Donations of cleaning supplies, food, water and money are flowing into the local Salvation Army corps, other non-profits and emergency distribution centers around the state.

As is often the case with large-scale disasters or tragedies, we are witnessing ordinary human beings rise to the challenges facing them with remarkable resilience, courage and hope. As one state official said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon, “Even in the worst of times, we can see the best of people.”

There is hardship, shock and sorrow here, to be sure. But there also something beautiful happening here, too.

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Thank you for praying for those in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa who have lost their homes, businesses, farms and livelihood to flooding. If you would like to make a donation to support victims of the flood, you can do so HERE. Thank you!

Photos courtesy of The Salvation Army Western Division. 

Fasting Makes Space for God

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When I was a kid it was my family’s tradition to give up something for Lent. This 40-day sacrifice, I learned in my weekly catechism class, was a gesture intended to emulate the 40-day fast Jesus endured and the temptations he overcame during his time in the wilderness.

I had complicated feelings about this Lenten practice of giving something up. On one hand, the overachiever in me eagerly embraced the challenge, optimistic at the start of each Lent that this would surely be the year I triumphed over temptation.

On the other hand, I typically awoke on Ash Wednesday morning with a pit in my stomach, knowing that in addition to surviving my mother’s desiccated scrod for supper on six consecutive Fridays, I was also staring down six long weeks without chocolate. Aside from the one wildly ambitious year I vowed to give up desserts altogether, chocolate was my annual Lenten sacrifice.

Despite my good intentions, I never completed the full 40 days without cheating. Some years I stayed strong for two or three weeks with nary a nibble. Other years my resolve crumbled within days like a stale Oreo, the lingering taste of chocolate in my mouth a palpable reminder of my weakness.

Finally one year, disappointed and frustrated by my persistent inability to resist the siren songs of Hershey, Tollhouse and Breyers, I abandoned my Lenten efforts entirely. Giving up chocolate for the six weeks of Lent was silly, I determined – a meaningless, fruitless practice.

Turns out I’d missed something important during all those years of zealously trying to prove my worthiness to God by resisting temptation. Fasting, I’ve since come to understand, is more about addition than subtraction. In other words, giving something up – particularly something that occupies a lot of mental or emotional space in our lives – can help us make more space for God.

Last Wednesday, my forehead marked with an ashy cross, I began a six-week fast from my temptation of choice these days: social media.

The truth is, I spend a lot of my free time on social media.

My index finger swipes image after image on Instagram as I wait, my car engine idling, for the middle school dismissal bell.

I scroll Facebook and Twitter in the check-out line at the grocery store, while I wait for the dental hygienist to call my name, as I linger at the stove for the pasta water to boil.

Often I find myself only half listening to my kids or my husband, murmuring “Hmmm,” and “Huh” in response to their statements or questions, my eyes fixed on the small screen in my palm.

Even more than my time, though, social media also occupies a lot of my mental and emotional space. I craft clever retorts in my mind in response to snarky Facebook commenters. I dwell on the number of followers this or that author has on Instagram. Spending time on social media often leaves me feeling envious, empty and anxious.

It was time, I knew, for some space.

In some ways, returning to the practice of giving up something for Lent has brought me full-circle from the chocolate fasts of my childhood. Now, though, I understand that abstention is a valuable discipline, not because it proves my worth to God, but because I know God will meet me with grace and love in the space that opens.

The practice of fasting, it turns out, is not only about what we turn away from, it’s also about who we turn toward.

The Value of Doing Your Work Well…Even When It Goes Unnoticed

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Last June on our family vacation to Maui, I started my days on the balcony. Each morning before the boys awoke, I slipped into one of the plush hotel robes that hung in the closet, poured a cup of coffee, slid open the glass door and settled into a patio chair, my bare feet propped on the metal railing still damp with dew. I listened to the exotic cackles and calls of unfamiliar tropical birds, luxuriated in the humid breeze on my face and let myself awaken.

I loved observing the early morning buzz of activity taking place four stories below. As the rising sun painted the palm fronds golden, I watched the attendants in their crisp polo shirts and belted shorts navigate carts towering with clean, folded towels along the resort’s pathways, stopping to distribute neat stacks beneath the canvas cabanas.

Across the way, a shop keeper raised the metal shutter of the dive store, announcing with a clatter that they were open for business.

A gardener hosed down the concrete, while another attendant dutifully lined up the lounge chairs, one after the other in undulating rows alongside the curving edge of the pool.

My first morning on the balcony, I watched a trim, older woman bend low over the shorn grass and use a small straw hand broom to whisk spent blossoms and browned, crinkled leaves into a dustpan. When she completed one small section of the garden, she pushed her wheeled barrel to the next section and began again, crouching low over the ground, whisking and sweeping, leaving the emerald carpet of grass pristine in her wake.

Every morning of our week-long stay in Maui I sat on the balcony in my hotel robe, white mug in hand, and watched the groundskeeper in her neatly pressed uniform and her wide-brimmed woven hat, cord cinched under her neck, as she methodically tidied the garden. Every morning the grass was littered anew with spent blossoms and leaves, and every morning she set to work, crouching, whisking, gathering, disposing.

She moved like a Tai Chi master – slowly and fluidly, but with absolute precision. In the six mornings I watched her, she never missed a single errant petal or leaf.

The groundskeeper’s job was not glamorous, and I don’t want to make the mistake of romanticizing her work. It was back-breaking labor, done day in and day out under the searing Maui sun, undoubtedly for little more than minimum wage, if that. Yet in observing her carefully over several days, I could see from her scrupulous care and meticulous attention to every detail that she took pride in her work. I suspect few people noticed her or recognized the impact of her labor, but that didn’t seem to matter to her. What mattered, it seemed, was the work itself and doing it well. She was committed to her work, regardless of whether anyone noticed the results of her labor or not.

Seven months after our trip to Maui, I still think about the island’s fragrant air, its unceasing tropical breezes, the tumbling Pacific waves, the sea turtle that swam so close to me when I was snorkeling, I almost could have grazed its barnacled back with my fingertips.

Strangely, though, what I think about most often is the groundskeeper in her wide-brimmed woven hat, bending low, whisking and sweeping the lush garden clean.