Blessings Galore

I had just stepped off the curb in front of the pharmacy where I had picked up a prescription and purchased things I hoped would relieve the callus on my foot. To my left was a big vehicle, some kind of van, high off the ground, with a man behind the wheel and a young boy in the seat behind him. Their windows were open.

As I took a few steps toward my car on the other side of the parking lot, the man said, “Wait. What’s that on your shirt?”

I was wearing my new long-sleeved black tee, with a rather long message on the front. I paused and pulled on the hem a bit to make the words easier to see, and he read aloud, “Nevertheless, she. . .

Persisted

Resisted

Insisted

Enlisted

Assisted.”

And I said, “This is one of the gifts I got for my 95^th birthday.”

“Your what?”

And I repeated it.

He said, “No way. There is no way you are 95 years old.”

“But I am.”

“Lady, you are a miracle.”

And, since I am not in charge of miracles and am often amazed myself about still being here, I acknowledged that that could be true.

To which he said, a bit illogically, “What’s your secret?”

“There’s no secret,” I told him. “Life is a gift.”

He just sort of stared at me, as though considering, so I added the words my husband loved to say, “What do we have that we were not given?”

I thought he was going to say something then, but he just opened his mouth and closed it again. The boy in the back seat unwrapped further something he was eating, looking at me. And I took a few steps toward my car, just as the man found his tongue and said, “Lady, you are a blessing.”

I paused to say, “Well, if so, it must be because I am blessed.”

And I almost got past his big vehicle before he called me back to ask my name. I told him, and he said, “I am going to remember you. You have blessed my day.”

As I got into my very old Toyota and blew the hot air out, I felt happy and thought that this stranger had made my day.

On the way back to the senior community where I live I remembered the benediction that my daughter Jan wrote and used so frequently at the conclusion of meetings with university students.

 “Accept life as a gift; live life as a way of giving thanks.”

Which reminds me of something I have been meaning to tell you. My daughter Jan has a book, just published by Church Publishing, the Episcopal publishing house, and it is called, Blessings For Your  Students, with the subtitle: Prayers for Interfaith Communities in Higher Education.

This book is a unique and special contribution to the ministries of chaplains all over the country, or maybe I should say the world. And it turns out to be a readable and poetic contribution to all of us.

Jan is the longest serving university chaplain in America, having spent forty years in her profession, and through the years she wrote the prayers she prayed for worship services, for campus occasions (graduations, dedications of buildings, board meetings, national crises), for comforting students whose friends had died, etc. Whatever happened on campus she spoke to God about it. helping others to do the same.  And though she never used one of these prayers again, she saved them all. The book is full but just a sampling.

Individually these prayers could help any of us to talk to the Power we trust about everything: sorrow and anger, injustice, wonder, fun, celebrations and unwanted rain. They ask for hope, for light and enough of whatever we need. They express gratitude for friendship and laughter and wisdom.

They are practical, poetic, comforting, thought-provoking, sometimes even amusing.

I recommend the book:

To anyone who prays publicly

To anyone who prays

To anyone who likes to see the sublime in the ordinary

To parents of college students

To teachers devoted to their students

To people who like books they can read a page or two at a time

To people who like things they can read again and again.

And, of course, former students of Jan Fuller

friends of Jan Fuller

and friends of Frances Fuller who may not know her daughter.

Amazon will have the book on June 4.

Today you can order.

See, life is just full of blessings, mostly unexpected. People living 95 years get to bless strangers, just by wearing their birthday shirts and walking through parking lots. Very old people get blessed by the achievements of their offspring. And ordinary people who order things to read might just open a book and get zapped by something wonderful.