A healthy diet is a balanced diet that includes a wide variety of foods in appropriate proportions. Each food group serves a different purpose – dairy products provide calcium for strong bones, carbohydrates provide energy, and fruits and vegetables provide vitamins and minerals. A body’s immediate needs may fluctuate, but over time all food groups work together to provide the nutrients that a body needs to function properly.
On my birthday, I took our Boxer, Dustin, to the vet because he had a bad cough that had persisted for a day. He hadn’t slept the night before, wandering the house rather aimlessly. This was not in any way keeping with his usual sleep habits that we had grown accustomed to over the past 10 years.
We live in the desert, and our first thought was Valley Fever, a common illness among dogs. I left Dustin at the vet for his exam, and when I went back to pick him up, the look on the vet’s face said it all: something was terribly wrong.
His chest cavity was filled with 400 milliliters of fluid. Worse still, there were spots on his lungs that were indicative of cancer. The doctor said that it would not be inappropriate to ask him to put Dustin to sleep.
In March of 2020, as businesses, churches, and schools began to close, and we started to grasp the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic, our former Rector answered the call to become a Bishop in another diocese.
The grand celebration that we had planned to thank him for his 11 years of service to our parish was scrapped. On his final Sunday, after the 11 AM Mass, there were elbow bumps instead of hugs, tears of sorrow and fear instead of joy, and a sense that something ominous was descending on us.
At first glance, parishes and banks look as different as apples and oranges. Upon a closer look, however, the differences run far deeper than superficial appearances. One institution is a collective — a cooperative—in which individuals pool their treasure, time, and talents to create a social and spiritual community that serves its members and their communities in their search for a deeper relationship with God. The other is a bank. A bank lends money for the purpose of making profit for profit’s sake. The very mission of the bank is to concentrate community wealth in its investors’ hands. Its corporate vision is to grow larger so it can lend more and concentrate more wealth. This is not to say all banks are bad, or that none of them maintain a deep commitment to their communities. But make no mistake, the bank serves the dollar above all else and worships profit.
If you're like me, you feel like you're running around all day, every day. I wake up at 4:15am nearly every day, and then it's work and school and sports practices and cooking and housework and everything else that comes with life.
So this past week on vacation I've been learning to waste time. And if I'm right that your busyness often resembles mine, you might need some help in that area, too. Wasting time this week has helped me reorient my sense of self, build and deepen connection with loved ones, and renew my relationship with God.
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