Serve God Like a Child, Not Like a Lifeguard

Tasha:

This year, the Black Lives Matter movement has been bringing to the surface your questions about how to attain a life well lived, your anxieties about the tension between public service and a comfortable American dream, and your frustrations with the limitations of an introverted self. Your friend Niya has been moved to pursue a PhD in Public Administration so that she can more effectively challenge systemic racism than she can in her current job as a medical case worker. She is an inspiration to you through her passion for discipleship, her personal history with social justice advocacy, her intolerance for racist policies and practices, her role as a hub of hospitality and authenticity within MiddleTree church, her warmth and openness, and the way she mothers her daughters.

You, like Niya, want to live a life of service to the God who is redeeming the world he created. But you worry that you are whistling away your life sitting on the couch, laboring on your laptop, and cashing checks from Hanover Research - while there is a whole world out there that you are missing out on. A world that is missing out on what you have to offer. The whispers worth of community service you have managed during the STL and DC years humiliate the loud-voiced soul that sings its grandiose intentions into your ears whenever you are brave enough to listen.

You told Zack about it one night when your soul was sounding especially operatic. (There had been another shooting of an innocent, unarmed black man by clearly racist and foolish police officers.) Zack comforted you, which he does so well... but that made you more worried. Do you want this frantic desperation to have change-the-world impact to be quieted and calmed? Isn’t that inertia the problem?

Then you picked up Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning, and Zack’s words of comfort were reiterated.

It is not for you to decide how your efforts will be used by God. Or to wrench a win from your efforts to improve mankind. It is not Natasha Kolar that will, by sheer effort and perseverance usher forth the world as it should be… Rather, the work is to perform small acts of love that are in front of you, to pray for opportunities to serve God, and to be brave when you are given a moment of inspiration. God will use your small donations to His Kingdom however he decides. An action that you thought was groundbreaking will turn out to be no biggie, another that you thought was misguided will turn out to yield blessing upon blessing. Your job is to keep your eyes open and to respond to (not force yourself on) the universe as God leads.

Ultimately, the question you are left with is this: What motivation will you allow to drive you as you strive make the world a better place?

You have a couple of gears. Try to use the gear that leads you to listen for guidance from the Spirit and trust and obey God in the small things. Try to release the gear that pushes you to prove that you have worth because you have made things on Earth better than they were if you didn’t exist. Humility over pride. You are not a lifeguard tasked with single-handedly saving humanity from all the threats to God’s will being done on Earth.

Replace your fear of inefficiency with the peace that God designed you serve him patiently as you: limited by your energy levels, emotionally vulnerable and fragile, and overwhelmingly aware of the great many injustices in the world. He knows the ways you are, and he loves to see you serve him with the inspired confidence of a beloved child.

Be a child, Tasha, not a lifeguard.

-Tasha

Improv Alone

Hello

Helloooooooo

Can you hear me???

Is there and echooooo?

The canyon is so Grand.

Then that is what we should call it!

Hellooooo?

A teenage girl is riding the white water with her aunt and uncle.

They’ve agreed to take her off her parents hands for the summer while they tour national parks.

They are avid bird watchers.

The girl is generally bored. But occasionally there is a cute teenage boy in a national park and she puts those binoculars to use.

On the raft, there is a not so cute teenage boy. But he is beginning to look cuter and cuter the border and border she gets.

She decides to wink at him, because that is something she’s seen happen on TV shows like Fuller House and the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

His face sunburn gets redder.

She does it again.

His face turns red purple.

She does it nonstop.

His face turns blue and then black and then goes up in smoke.

People choking on smoke.

I can’t breathe.

Get me out of here.

Save my cat. I must save my cat.

The family photographs. Don’t forget!

I hope a sexy fireman saves me.

I hope I don’t have third degree burns.

I hope my face still looks pretty.

I hope I don’t inhale too much smoke and get lung cancer.

I hope this causes me to quit smoking.

I hope I get lots of insurance for the barn and I can build a better barn.

I hope…

I hope…

I hope…

I make a million dollars.

Donald, just stop replacing the sunscreen with lotion. It’s not funny.

But it’s the only way you will let me tan, Ma.

Donald, don’t you remember what your father looked like before he had all that skin cancer cut off his damn face?

He was a good looking man, well better looking.

So why ya gotta go and play tricks just to get a tan. You’re gonna end up just like your old man.

I just. I just. I heard the senior girls talking about how nobody likes a pale boy. And I want to ask Maria to prom. And she is very tan. I don’t want to be that pale boy.

Is that all Donald?

Well, yeah. That’s most of it.

What else?

Well, I just. I just heard that girls like scars. In a way. And I thought, well, maybe even though dad’s not as good looking now in a classical way, maybe if I were tan and had some battle wounds from getting cancer surgery more girls would think I was datable.

Have you been taking those are you datable quizzes in Men’s Health again? I told you that stuff is trash. If you really want to know if you are datable, just ask yourself these three things. 1) Am I nice to my mother? 2) Do I have a stable job? 3) Can I ballroom dance?

Tanness, scars, these things are all superficial. Girls don’t really care about that stuff. That’s just what they talk about. In their heart of hearts, they want to date a boy who has the trifecta of datability - mom, job, waltz.

I don’t know mom.

Well I’d know.

It’s all I could save in the fire Father Benedict.

It’s enough my son.

I feel so guilty, though.

Your sins have already been forgiven, Friar Tucker. You know that.

But when I think of all the alms that have been donated by poor widows - her last mite father. What a waste!

You can’t think of that, son. Remember the prostitute who poured all her perfume on the feet of our lord. Waste is not our Lord’s greatest fear. Fear and worry - now those are the most wretched of sins.

Father, your words speak life to my soul. I have felt so wretched.

It says much about the greatness of your love for the least of these that all you managed to save was a baby mouse, my son.

Yes, well, I couldn’t bear the squeaking.

No?

No. You see, I had a bird when I was a child. And the bird ate nothing but mice. Each morning I had to feed baby mice to the bird one by one. Three mice each morning.

I see.

And the squeaks would haunt my sleep each night. Squeeeeek. Squeeeeek. Like a recurring nightmare but it wasn’t a nightmare, it was real life. My life.

And so the pain you experienced killing these mice each day gave birth to compassion in your soul, is that right?

I’m not sure father, but if that is your assessment I will gladly take this as truth.

I do worry my son that living in this barn until the monastery is rebuilt will be a source of many troubles for you in your sleep. Titmice run rampant in these walls of wood. I will bless you with holy water for protection.

To Albatross Island

The trouble started when I went to the refrigerator the fourth time. Why I kept peeping on that cake I cannot say.

"Miranda! Stop opening the fridge! You'll let all the cold air out and our electric bill will cost as much as your orthodontia!"

"But, Mom, it's so prettttty."

"It will be prettier if you're still alive to eat it tomorrow."

"Fiiiiine."

I took I picture on my phone before swinging the door closed that final time. Zooming in and out of the photo, I admired my handiwork as an expert froster and colorist. Except - oops, missed one spot.

"I'm just going to fix the corner, Mom." I announced this at a decibel Mom was highly unlikely to hear from across the house, while slowly opening the illicit fridge and pulling out the crystal cake plate.

Just at that moment, Charlie ran into the kitchen with Patrick on his heels. Both were waving massive plastic swords.

"Come back here, pirate! The king will have your head on a stake!"

Backing away from the action, I held my breath and lifted the cake high above my brothers' headed. No matter. Patrick's sword came straight across my wrist, breaking my grip and letting loose the cake plate and all that it held dear. Knocked on the head under the tumbling weight of the crystal, Patrick dropped to his knees and then scrambled away rubbing his head and hollering at Charlie.

"Mirandaaaaaa!"

I looked up from the pile of chocolate, frosting, and broken crystal to the sound of my mom's approaching footsteps. And, without even trying, I disapparated.

Five-Minute Writings with Brother

splitsville? he asked.

no, i said. not unless you want our first date to be the last date.

woah woah woah, i like a woman who knows her own mind. my treat.

damn right it's your treat.

can i buy you a night cap next door at Bravo?

i'm good.

ok.

[looking at phone.] my mom's here to pick me up.

your mom?

i don't have a license yet.

oh. why not?

epilepsy. can't drive unless i can go a year with no seizures.

wow, i'm sorry.

it's cool. gotta go.

ok, i'll call you.

don't wait three days.

heh, sure thing.

-

it's after noon by now and she can hear the sun radiating through the thin slats in her closed window blinds, but she hasn't seen it's face today. she will see it before it dies, on the train from her dim flat to the sleepy airport terminal. but right now, as she contemplates a turkey sandwich, she wishes she'd seen it born, watched it grow in size and stature - not just later in it's dusty mid-life planning for an early winter retirement. "i've missed so much," she sighs, not hungry anymore.

-

The culinary machines process pears and nectarines into macarons with sugar and fat. Color glow and juice are now color dye and crunch. The glass case lights fluourescent the puffs’ artificiality and “natural” flavor for the “humans” in line: back to chest, heel to toe, hair to face.

I don't want this to bite into, and swallow, and shit. Give me a prickly barked tree in a frigid forest to climb and pluck sweetly rotting fruit from like beasts. Shivering hot fruit in a Neverland cafeteria, money in my arms and legs, wallet empty.

-

A glowworm inches it's fat body south down the pole that stabs a seahorse through the top of its head and into the muddy gummed up floor of an abandoned carousel. On the saddle of the unridden sea creature lays a stray braid from the long synthetic weave of a black haired carnival goer from years past. In one fell swoop a hawk collects the worm and the weave for his chicks and nest. The bird and prize soar home through the abandoned grounds together, watched by crickets and spiders afraid for the short lives.