It's not that I'm not writing at all...

It's not that.

I write in my journal every day.
Actually I'm keeping four journals these days - so I'm journaling a whole lot.

I write papers for school.

I write old fashioned snail mail notes and put them in the mailbox outside the church, with my fingers crossed, hoping they will reach their intended destination.

I write sermons for church.
I write prayers and liturgy for church as well.
I even write posts for the church blog.
I write there about life and death, about community and parades, and about gratitude and hope.
Hope is an unrelenting theme for me, especially in these past few weeks and months. There are too many stories of despair, loss, suicide, sorrow, and suffering to bear. My mind and my heart cling to hope. Let there be hope; no matter what, let there be hope.

So it's not that I'm not writing.
It's just that I haven't been writing here.

I confess that most evenings, I am exhausted.
My brain is tired, and so are my fingers.
The story of my life journey, adventures I've taken of late, inner and outer adventures remain on the pages of my journals, and never migrate here to the blog.

Some of you have reached out to ask if I'm okay,
if my family is okay,
if all is well.

I am doing better than okay.
I am less than six months away from graduating from seminary.
It's hard to believe that I've been in seminary for almost five years.
I have passed the five ordination exams that are required by the denomination.
So the hardest part of this process is behind me.
Thanks be to God.



I have fallen deeper in love with my life than I had been for a long time.
Friendships are more precious - to sit and talk over a cup of tea, to talk on the phone with a beloved one who lives half a country away, to message through WhatsApp with friends who live oceans and continents away, to do a journal exchange with another creative soul sister - truly priceless.

Steve and I went away for a few days to Hilton Head in early October.
Just the two of us.
Bike rides. Staring at the water.
Reading. Conversation. Sunshine.

Getting caught in the rain - having to ride our bikes back to our condo in a downpour.
On two consecutive days.
It was glorious.

I've been up in the mountains as well. Three times this past summer.
I met Valarie Kaur in August. She is beyond inspirational. Beyond!
And I'll head back up there three times in the new year - to speak, lead, teach, and participate at various conferences and seminars.

Life is pretty good.
And it also sucks sometimes.
Illness struck our family again.
Hospitalization. Twice.
Finding new doctors and specialists.
We are on the way to recovery and stability, but it's hard.
So very hard.
Our hearts break over and over.
Our stamina is tested.
Our hope is strained.
I cry myself to sleep.
I cry out and plead for mercy.
This life thing... it is no joke.

But still. But still.
There is so much to be grateful for.

I have learned and grown.
I have yearned and groaned.
I have laughed out loud and cursed under my breath.
All the feels.
All the things.

And as Dr Angelou write years ago - and still I rise.
With hope and strength.
Never giving up or giving in.
Nevertheless we persist.
I persist.
Hope persists.
I simply don't have a choice.
And if there is a choice other than holding on to hope for dear life, I don't even want to know what it is.

Tell me - what do you cling to these days?
What are you holding on to for dear life?
What joyful, life-affirming choices are you making over and over?

Thankful Thursday

It has been far, far, far too long since I've come to this page. Honestly, when I decided to blog tonight, even my computer had forgotten how to navigate to this page. When your browser forgets your blog address, it has been far too long.

These past three months have been ridiculous.
Ridiculously busy.
Ridiculously full.
Ridiculously demanding.

Seminary study.
An internship at a senior living community.
Work at church.
I preached at a "city wide" sunrise Easter service.

I took three ordination exams - each of which took nine hours to complete.
I was the speaker at a women's retreat.
Papers to write.
Sermons to preach.
Meetings to attend.
Class discussions to lead.

A member of my family spent two weeks in the hospital.
Our dog almost died - we still don't know what was making her so sick.
A former neighbor was involved in an extremely serious car accident. He is only 23 years old, but as a result of the accident, he suffered a stroke.
One of my dearest friends lost her son in a tragic drowning incident. He was 13 years old.

Did I mention that these past few months have been ridiculous?
These past four months have been the most challenging four months I have faced since I dealt with kanswer back in 2012 and 2013.

And I haven't even touched on all the mass shootings, flooding, tornadoes, the ongoing immigration crisis in this country, and unprecedented debacles related to international un-diplomacy.

But still.
But still.

There have been hawks and owls and hummingbirds and cardinals hovering near.
Irises bloomed in purple splendor on our front lawn.

I passed all three ordination exams. Four down - one to go!
The busiest term of my seminary career will be over in six days.

Our son graduated from college and was named an All-American tennis player in Division 2.
He is now in Europe on his post-graduation grand tour - having the time of his life.

My friendship with the friend whose son died has deepened even as our tears have flowed.
Three friends and I celebrated the twenty year anniversary of our writing group - four women who met at a continuing education course at a community college in Norwalk, Connecticut.

The sweet little dog is fine.
My loved one is doing much better.
Wholeness and healing actually are possible -
even in the face of what seemed like insurmountable odds a few short weeks ago.

My journal pages overflow with gratitude lists, prayers offered and answered, along with sermon ideas, question-provoking quotes, and email excerpts that remind me that there is reason for hope, joy, and gratitude - even in the face of what has sometimes seemed like insurmountable odds.

Earlier today, I heard someone ask if talking about oneself and focusing on gratitude isn't somewhat self-indulgent, selfish even. I suppose there may be some truth to that - especially if "talking about myself" becomes the center of all my conversations and "focusing on gratitude" becomes an opportunity for me to list all the great new stuff I have acquired. 

But if focusing on gratitude opens space for us to notice the small things - the wagging tail of the dog, the smile on the neighbor's face as he watches his toddler attempt those first steps, and the glow of fireflies in the last spring darkness - then what we may find, what I have found is that none of "the small things" is small. 

The boundless love of a dog is not a small thing. 

The freedom and joy experienced by a child learning to walk is not a small thing. 

The bounty in the supermarket produce department. 

The flow of water from the bathroom faucet. 

The buzzing sound of the hard drive as it backs up my computer. 

The beep of my cell phone when my good friend texts me every night before we both go to sleep.
These are not small things. 

This is the stuff of wonder, of love, of joy, and of hope. 

And I am enormously grateful.

On this last Thursday of spring, I am grateful for ceiling fans, air conditioning in my car, and sunglasses.

I am grateful for ice cubes, lemon slices, and bubbly water.

I am grateful for clementines, watermelon, and Trader Joe's sea salt and black pepper potato chips.

I am grateful for morning walks with my husband, followed by a cup of coffee with him.

I am grateful to be six years kanswer-free.

I am grateful for friendships that cross miles and time zones.

I am grateful for "the wonder of life and the mystery of love."

And tonight, right now, I am grateful that I figured out how to remind my computer that I used to keep a blog. I hope it won't be so hard to find my way back here next time. More than that, I hope my life will never again be so ridiculous - so ridiculously busy, ridiculously full, and ridiculously demanding - that I am compelled to wait four months between blog posts.

Thankful Thursday - Time to Make the Donuts

I am taking a course in seminary this semester called, "Ecology and Worship." We are considering questions related to creation care and the church. Does the church have anything to say about the planet on which we live and the earth that we have done so much damage to? What can we do as the church to acknowledge, own our responsibility, and heal the wounds we have inflicted on our earthly home, this third rock from the sun? What is mine to do?

One of the requirements of the class is to undertake a creation care project. Something tangible that we do every week. We are to document our project with photographs, describe our weekly work, and write a prayer each week - all of which is shared with the class. 

I have chosen picking up garbage in the area surrounding Caldwell as my creation care project. Each time that I head bout to pick up trash, I start on the campus of the church itself. Food wrappers, bottle caps, and cigarette boxes are the things I find most frequently. But last week, I found a pair of sneakers tossed onto the side lawn of the church. I gathered them up and put them next to the curb in case someone came back for them. 

One week I found 75 pennies under some leaves and a candy wrapper. I know there were 75 because I picked them up, cleaned them off, counted them, and put them into the church offering plate that week. 

I have found items of clothing, a broken doll, a small pink lock in the shape of a heart, a magnifying glass, and lots of other interesting and unexpected things. 

There have also been broken things. Empty things. Abandoned things. Like beer bottles and soda cans. Straws - so many straws. Cigarette butts. 

We leave a lot of garbage behind, people. Tons of it. 

During the first weeks of this practice, I spent a lot of my time out there angry. I was angry about how much trash there is on the streets of this city I live in. Angry about the wasted opportunities to recycle bottles and cans a paper. Angry that people didn't have enough mental and intellectual bandwidth to take their trash home with them and dispose of it properly. 

But then as a class we began to think and talk about people who are homeless. Living in public parks. In parking lots. Under trees. In places where there are no garbage containers. At moments in their lives when they are hoping to make it through the night alive, they are not likely to be worried about the trash they leave behind when they wake up and have to move along in the morning. As a class, we are increasingly aware of the fact that there aren't enough garbage containers or recycling bins in public places. We talk about single use plastics. We talk about plastic bags - they are everywhere. Blown up into trees high above our homes and our streets. They are in gutters. In bushes. In sewer grates. My professor commented that we are choking ourselves and our planet with plastic bags.

My anger morphed into sadness. I simply cannot unsee all the trash that is all around me. When I drive back and forth to work, there is one stretch of Providence Road that is so littered that I have begun to look around for a place where I can park my car one day and try to pick up a bag or two of garbage. It's awful. Yesterday, my husband and I drove just to a college two hours away to watch our son play tennis. As we sped down the highways and wound down the two lane roads, I was dumbstruck by the enormity of our litter problem. The grassy median was horrendous. The roadside shoulders were horrific. I had to force myself to look away or I would have wept. I am brokenhearted about the ways in which we are killing our planet and ourselves with all our stuff and our unwillingness to take proper care of this world in which we live. 

Along with the anger and the sadness, I have felt a certain amount of hopelessness too. How on earth can we pick it all up? There are only eight of us in the class. And only half of us are picking up garbage as our creation care project. Three students are creating or revitalizing gardens. Our professor is clearing an overgrown area where he lives. "But if there is no way that we can fix it all or clean it all or clear it all or grow enough food for everyone," I have wondered in my journal, "what's the use? Woe is me. Woe is us." As it turns out, my journal pages are covered with thoughts and questions, commentary and complaints right alongside the reports of answered prayer and joyful praise. 

In response to one of the rants I shared in our online classroom space, my professor wrote this: "Lots of people (perhaps most) labor in menial, repetitive jobs day after day.  A baker wakes up at 2 every morning to go make the dough and bake the bread for the store - day after day after day.  There is no expectation that this task will end.  One of the things that I have been considering when I get discouraged by picking up other people's trash is why I think that my life should be different.  Why am I driven by accomplishment or completion?  Why do I think that I should have an ending for my work?"

That comment hit me right between the eyes. 
Who am I to think that I can solve the trash problem in the neighborhood around my church?
How much power do I think I have? Me? Alone? All by my lonesome?
Why is it not enough for me to put on my rubber gloves, grab my garbage bags, and head out - joining the many thousands, perhaps millions, who have been involved in the work of creation care for decades, for centuries?
I'm one of the new members of this earth care team. How can I possibly think I am or I have the answer everyone has been waiting for?


My professor's comment about the baker took me back to that old Dunkin Donuts television commercial - "time to make the donuts." Day in and day out. Day and night. Making donuts. People buy them and eat them. People come back and buy more and eat more. He may have been tired, hot, cold, or wet, but he kept making the donuts. No end in sight.

For some, baking is their calling.
For others, it is teaching.
For still others, the call is nursing.
Day after day. Day and night. Doing the work. No end in sing.

It feels strange to put this in writing, but I think I have experienced something of a call to pick up garbage. I go out two or three times each week and fill bags with things that others have thrown away. I have discovered that my anger, sadness, and hopelessness related to the enormity of the task are being combined with gratitude these days.

I am grateful for this class and the fantastic professor who teaches it.
I am thankful for my classmates and their ability to listen to me complain about the sense of futility I have sometimes felt.
I am thankful for the chance to do something meaningful every week, even a small thing.
I am thankful for the garbage trucks that pick up the bags I have filled during these past seven weeks - not only for this class project, but also from my home.
I am thankful for the therapeutic work of what I now refer to as "street therapy."
And I am grateful for all the stories that have arisen in my mind and soul since beginning this class, some of which I hope and plan to share here.

There is a lot of trash out there, my friends.
But there are also a lot of treasures too.
The most priceless of which is Planet Earth itself.
Thanks be to God for this marvelous, mysterious, and messy earth, the sacred and beautiful mother of us all.

A letter to an old friend on the occasion of his birthday

In my lifetime, I have written at least two letters to Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
The first was when I was in high school.
The second when I returned to the same school as a teacher.
I believe I wrote a third one when I was invited to return to my high school alma mater to give a speech for alumni, but I can't prove that. I know I was invited to speak to alumni, but I can't remember if I wrote a third letter to Dr King or only referred to the first two.
In any case, I wrote another letter to the good doctor today. From my office at church.

Dear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,

My name is Gail. You probably don’t recall, but I wrote to you many years ago when I was a high school student in Brooklyn, NY.

I told you some of my story, about how I ended up graduating from that predominantly white private school. I shared with you the ways in which your dream, the dream that “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers,” had come true in my own life and in the life of that school. After being there for six years, from seventh grade until twelfth grade, I was the first black girl to graduate from that school.

A few years have passed since then, Dr. King. Today I write to you from the offices of Caldwell Presbyterian Church, a congregation in Charlotte, North Carolina, that sits just outside of center city. As you recall, back in 1960, black college students, joined by others in the community, staged sit-ins at various stores and restaurants here to protest against racial segregation. Stores were soon integrated, as were schools and other establishments. In fact, it was a member of this church, a restaurateur, who proposed how Charlotte would integrate its restaurants, though, admittedly, his interests were as much commercial as they were civic.

I wish I could tell you that Charlotte has only progressed from there. But the truth is that there is deep division in our city and our nation. Our school system is in need of restructuring. The fault lines around race, socio-economic status, and immigration are deep here. There are acts of injustice and violence almost daily here and across this country.

But, as I said, I write to you today from Caldwell, a community of faith that works every day to bring life to your dream. We walk together, work together, and worship together as people of many colors, many nations, many languages, many gender expressions and many religious backgrounds. We long to open our doors even wider to welcome all of the people of God – because all people are God’s people.

We laugh together. We cry together. We sing together. We fight for others, together, too. We walk in unity most of the time, and we have had times of strong disagreement. But we keep coming back. We come back together to forgive one another and start again. We come back together to pray and worship, to serve and love one another. I thank God for these folks and for bringing us together here.

Back when I was in high school, Dr. King, your dream of true community opened my eyes and my heart to the work of faith, love, racial justice, and equality. That dream is alive and well here at Caldwell. Let me rephrase that – the dream that our Triune God laid on your heart back in the 1950s and 1960s is alive and well here at Caldwell. In fact, God’s dream of freedom, peace, love, and community for all people everywhere existed before the foundation of the world. It is my honor, my privilege, and my joy to be here with these beautiful children of God, working, praying, marching, serving, and dreaming our own dreams of beloved community.

Thank you for the life you lived, the work you did, the example you set, and the hope you planted when you were here among us. Thank you for the words that you left us to read and ponder. Thank you for the work you left us to do. May we continue to honor your legacy here and live into your dream at Caldwell. More than that, may we continue to honor and serve the One in whose name you lived and for whose sake you died, Jesus, our Crucified and Risen Lord.

Your sister in Christ, Gail Henderson-Belsito