“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”— Leonard Cohen from his song Anthem.
Beth and I rang the bell for the Salvation Army’s Christmas donation kettle at Olerud’s grocery store all day. Well, actually our shift was from 10-2, which was basically all of the daylight hours. We had planned to split it, but realized it would be better to have a friend when you ring the bell, than go it alone.
As I tied on my red apron and Beth shook the jingle bells, she said her morning meditation included a line she thought came from Eleanor Roosevelt: You should do something you don’t want to do everyday. It’s good for you.
It’s hard to ask people to give money when money is tight and it is Christmas. I wish we didn’t need to raise money for the Salvation Army. That all of the families in our town had enough. That no one was hungry or cold or lonely. In the meantime, Beth rings the bell and I stand by the kettle hoping that matters.
We both noticed how having a happy baby help her dad bag groceries for his customers changed everyone’s mood for the better.
Fresh produce came in yesterday, and people from town and Klukwan were so happy to have broccoli, eggs, milk and the sliders-to-go the meat department made for lunch today, that most dropped something in our bucket or told us they had already donated –or were ringing the bells themselves this week.
We also had plenty of time (four hours) to hear about a successful first term in college, a local boy’s wedding in Anchorage that including sledding, Bonnie’s new granddaughter back east, named Riley, after Mt. Riley. A house that was sold to a young family “as is” with everything in it, including the owner’s dog who was too old to move. A social worker who has been up north reported on the terrible Bethel area floods. The trauma and heartache. “Imagine sitting on your sofa, with little children, as water rose to your knees—and then the house comes loose and spins and you float out toward the Bering Sea— ” she said. Most eventually landed on sand bars, but not all. Many lost everything and are being housed in Anchorage this winter, which might as well be Paris to them. She said being home, seeing the mountains and the sunset from her house, gives her strength to return to her work up there.
There is so much more I could tell you about light and darkness and taking care of each other, but I bet you know what I mean—about helping, and kindness, and paying attention and how it was a good day, a great day even on many levels —but there was a book club supper and a bell choir rehearsal tonight, and it is late.
Since all of this reminds me of the joy of being useful, in our own ways, where we are — here is one of my favorite poems, “To Be of Use”, by Marge Piercy. I couldn’t get it all in one photo, so I scribbled the last stanza—
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry,
and a person, for work that’s real.
