Ten-Finger Exercises

forgive us for coming for pardon and not renewal

The title is taken from a line of the book of Common Prayer directed to all of us who are getting ready to receive Eucharist. I used it because, especially at this change of season, it's also time for change for me.

I've been awake since 3:30--so unlike me. I'm usually the sleep-in queen, happy to be up before 9. So I lay in bed and prayed for people I know, and ones I hardly know anymore, and ones who need a friend. I read a few chapters of Exodus, the old book by Leon Uris that I picked up for some soft history of the Jews between the concentration camps of Germany and then on to Israel. Am learning a lot I didn't know, about the detention camps on Cyprus where British sent Jews who were trying to escape to Palestine. It's prompted my reading some actual history and would welcome some more suggestions.

The chapter I'm in deals with a Jewish girl smuggled out to Denmark and raised by a Christian family. I've never read anything about Denmark's fate during WWII either, and it's illuminating. I wonder if it is and will be like that for the Ukraine. Similar tactics to start with anyway. And then I hadn't thought about the homeless people in Denmark: Germans who fled there to get away from Allied bombs and were not welcomed. They came in stealing food and occupying homes when they could. Then there were the giant numbers of homeless in Germany after the liberation: people freed from concentration camps, people who had fled the country and came back to look for families, not to mention those bombed out and those who simply couldn't find work and still weren't taken back with entirely open arms after the German people realized what had been happening. Mind-boggling.

When I read of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced in the war zones now, I simply can't imagine what it is like. They and their needs feel so foreign to my experience. Hearing about the homeless Germans hits closer to home, leads me into a space where maybe I can think of our American homeless in a different way.

I realized this morning that I've had three women friends, all very intelligent, all connected to the church in some way, who now, wherever they are, could be homeless. They are strong, talented, outspoken women who have done a lot of good but who can't keep jobs, can't get along with people on a long term basis. I found one on Facebook, but with no entries in the past year. The other two probably couldn't afford the technology, the hardware or software. Oh, and there's another I just thought of, equally poor and out of physical range of technology.She lost her license to practice due to lack of personal boundaries. She gave too much, virtually moved in to help someone dying, and even though she refused anything from his will, was charged with unprofessional conflict of interest.

I wonder how many other intelligent, gifted women would I find at our local homeless shelter? Just a thought. I'm not sure if I'm ready to go looking. For one thing, I fracture my back this summer and have been having to take it easy. That means I haven't even gotten the weeds out of my garden, which I like doing, or the vacuuming done inside. Still, maybe it's another direction I should explore.