Phone Calls

In the last week or so I've been anxious about answering the phone. It doesn't matter that I can look at the little screen (squinting, if I don't have my glasses on!) and see what number has connected with my number. Some of the anxiety is well placed, some anxiety has no basis for existence.

It probably started in February when my friend Gena and my Aunt Amy died. That news was unexpected and hard to assimilate. Since then I've had calls about a friend's cancer diagnosis, a beloved dog's final day, several car problems and some good news/bad news calls about people moving.

Balancing all this irrational fear about what people will say after "hello," are the happy calls. The call from 16-month-old Hannah who was playing with the phone and dialed Grammy. The message from my sister Kathy, calling just to say hi! The call announcing a wedding. The dreaded 11:00 at night call that woke me from my sound on-the-couch sleep which turned out to be Dominican friends singing Happy Birthday, complete with guitar!

I will keep answering my phone. I will keep hoping that it's all good news. I know that bad news will be relayed now and again. I will keep praying in the words of Julian of Norwich that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."



Courtesy of Satucket Software, here is a write-up about Julian from their Lectionary Site...

Julian of Norwich
Her book is a tender meditation on God's eternal and all-embracing love, as expressed to us in the Passion of Christ.

She describes seeing God holding a tiny thing in his hand, like a small brown nut, which seemed so fragile and insignificant that she wondered why it did not crumble before her eyes. She understood that the thing was the entire created universe, which is as nothing compared to its Creator, and she was told, "God made it, God loves it, God keeps it."

She was concerned that sometimes when we are faced wiith a difficult moral decision, it seems that no matter which way we decide, we will have acted from motives that are less then completely pure, so that neither decision is defensible. She finally wrote: "It is enough to be sure of the deed. Our courteous Lord will deign to redeem the motive."

A matter that greatly troubled her was the fate of those who through no fault of their own had never heard the Gospel. She never received a direct answer to her questions about them, except to be told that whatever God does is done in Love, and therefore "that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."