An Alt 10 Commandments
My sister Mary called me earlier this week. She was just back from a trip to Africa as part of the board of a charity that fights human trafficking, Lift Up the Vulnerable (more on the group here). She told me a couple of stories of people she had talked with, folks who are risking their lives to protect others in South Sudan and other countries. Then she said this: “It makes you wonder what you’re doing with your life.”
What am I doing with my life? That seems like the question of the week for me.
It’s a birthday week for me, which always puts me in a mood to reflect and project.
And it was impossible to avoid the same question during a funeral service Sunday for my friend, Doug Gill.
Doug was the person in my life I most admired, a man who gave over his life, wholly and completely, to serve others. And during his memorial service I heard a simple idea of his that changed the way I’ve been approaching the “what do I do with my life?” issue.
Teresa of Avila wrote that ours “are the eyes with which Christ looks out in compassion on the earth.” She would have seen that in Doug Gill’s eyes. He was an inspiration to me for how a life should be lived, but his best advice to me came after he died.
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For years I’ve had a pretty good idea of what I “should” do with my life – I should, in the words of the Hebrew prophet Micah, find a way to “act justly and to have mercy and to walk humbly with (my) God.” I should use one of my gifts (the Apostle Paul gives a partial list: teaching, encouragement, service, leadership, giving) to assist (according to Jesus) the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, strangers and those in prison.
When I was younger, I got in my head that what this meant was that I should leave wherever I was living, move to the poorest place I could find and start helping somehow. And I couldn’t make myself do that. It was too hard.
When I got older and saw Doug living his life, I changed the model. Maybe I wouldn’t have to move. But I would have to give up my me-centered life. Doug showed what that would look like. About 35 years ago, Doug walked away from his job as a patent-winning IBM’er and started giving away his worldly possessions to those he felt like needed them more. He was drawn to help those with developmental and mental disabilities (“There’s lots of disabilities. Some physical, some mental, some intellectual… and everybody’s got ‘em,” he said. “Everybody’s got ‘em…. but not everybody recognizes that.”). He found the Starnes Sunday School class Hayes Barton United Methodist Church and a group called ARC in our community. Both brought those folks together, and Doug just started to help. He’d get up early on Sundays, crank up the church bus, then pick folks up across the county to bring them to worship and get them back home again. Other days he might be serving meals, helping them with paperwork, taking them to doctor’s appointments, or just being their friend. Over time, he found things that needed doing at our church and started doing them, the kind of boring behind-the-scenes work that makes church possible.
One year Doug joined a Bible study my wife and I were leading. For me, having Doug there was like getting a weekly session with a glow lamp.
I remember asking him for advice one night after class when I was considering a career move. I said, “I just don’t know what God needs me to do next.” Doug thought about that for a minute and said, quietly, “I’m not sure God NEEDS us to do anything for Him,” he said. “I think maybe He wants us to be faithful.”
I think what God wanted me to be was to be a lot more like Doug. But I looked at him and his life -- and flinched. I just couldn’t do that either. It was too hard.
It took his funeral for me to realize that maybe there was another way of framing the question I was struggling with.
Rev. Sarah Swandell, the pastor giving the eulogy, shared a list of what she called “Doug’s Ten Commandments,” ten pieces of wisdom his family had found tucked away in his Bible, written in his hand on a yellow sheet of paper – his operating instructions.
If you don’t have time to read the whole book, this is a pretty good summary from Doug.
Together they make up an expansion of the principles of the Hebrew Shema, the central affirmation of Judaism, and Jesus’ “two commandments.” They are also a concise guide for daily living, simple and direct, and a great summary of how Doug lived his life. There’s a sermon to be given about the whole list, and Sarah gave that at Doug’s funeral (link in the notes below). But it’s the seventh one that I heard loudest and clearest at the funeral: “Do the small task nearest to you now.”
We live in a world where we feel pressure to reduce everything to a dialectic. We’re asked to choose: A or B? And that’s how I’d been seeing the “what do I do with my life?” question.
· Doug is doing it the right way.
· I don’t think I can do what Doug is doing.
· So forget it.
But…
Maybe instead of not doing anything because I am not unselfish enough to do everything, I need to just do something.
Maybe I (or you) don’t need to sell everything (right now). Maybe I (or you) can’t devote every waking hour to serving other people (yet). But maybe I (or you) do need to start, by doing one thing, the next thing – the small kindness, the tiny act right in front of me. And maybe doing that one thing will make me (or you) want to do more.
A few months ago, a bit after Doug received his terminal diagnosis, the church held a service to recognize the Starnes Class and Doug’s long-time dedication and profound example. As the minister finally announced his name and asked him to stand, no one could find him. One of his friends from the class had gotten excited and spilled a package of Skittles. She was upset. Doug was on his knees picking them up for her, one by one.
He was doing the small task nearest to him – now. Maybe even I can do that.
Notes:
Teresa of Avila prayer: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/poemsandprayers/3637-Teresa_Of_Avila_Christ_Has_No_Body
The Shema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shema
Jesus’ “two commandments”: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022%3A34-40&version=NIV
The Starnes Class at Hayes Barton United Methodist Church has been around for 50 years: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CWbQM0etNGldYy8R6ewEGVS88C9bmIUI/view
An inspiring tribute to the life of Doug Gill (eulogy begins about 29:00 in): https://vimeo.com/1126645835