Grocery Shopping

I feel like I should give one of those disclaimers that speakers at conventions say, you know the whole "this speaker doesn't in any way represent endorsement or quality assurance or have any financial investments in the aforementioned products;" because let me just say I'm a huge fan of Trader Joe's (maybe the biggest). There, it's out.

So, I usually write about living in Africa and.... newsflash, there are no Trader Joe's in Africa.

So, where are we? Well, exactly a month ago it was Christmas, and 13 days ago it was my birthday, but today...today was like both of those all rolled into one because I got TWO packages in the mail! Yes, two long-awaited packages that (due to African mail service) didn't come on Christmas and didn't come on my birthday. So today, the 25th of January was a special day.

Getting a package here is fun because it means:

1.) Hearing from a friends or family back home

2.) Knowing that you haven't been completely forgotten living all the way across the world, and

3.) Getting something uniquely American and unobtainable in Africa, like chocolate chips or something.

The first world-weary package arrived frayed and tattered after 39 days of traveling. It was from my dear (not to mention super-cool, amazingly-talented, and slightly ghetto rockstar) friend Michelle. She sent me a box full of wrapped packages and let me tell you, I felt like a little kid getting his first red flyer wagon for Christmas.

About halfway through happily tearing paper though, I got teary-eyed. Every single little gift was something I would have picked out myself, familiar favorites that were my Trader Joe's staples of "yesterday."

Here's the funny thing. The other package was from my family (packed, and I'm sure sealed with a kiss from my mother) and (coincidentally?) contained some of those same loved TJ items....honey whole wheat pretzels, trail mix, cinnamon almonds, gorilla munch cereal (!!!)....do I have good taste or what?

Clearly, I'm excited about having a stash of a taste of home, but they really mean so much more to me...

Either,

a.) I'm a pretty transparent person making it easy to know what I would pick off the shelves at Trader Joe's

b.) My friends and family have gone shopping with me one too many times, or

c.) These were people who love and care enough to notice the small details that make me happy, like my favorite kind of trail mix.

I think I'll go with “c.”

The other night I was up late watching the movie "Marley and Me" by myself. I had heard it was one of those family-friendly tear-jerkers but those rarely work on me (I promised my steely heart...). I'll sheepishly admit that there were tears in my eyes as the film ended, but it was really the last lines of the movie that caught my attention:

"How many people can make you feel rare and pure and special? How many people can make you feel extraordinary?"

I think that's what those packages really represented for me...

…and how much I want to go about my days helping the people I'm with feel the same way. Far too often I go about my ordinary day, doing ordinary things, having ordinary conversations and end up treating people as if they are, well… ordinary.

I don’t know if that makes sense or if you’re tracking with me anymore, but I think the best way I can elucidate what I’m feeling and thinking is to have you read through this excerpt from “The Weight of Glory” by C.S. Lewis:

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

And that’s just it. That if the love of Christ has radically transformed my life, and I believe that this life is only temporary and will be followed by eternity with God, then I will see, in you, the image of God….something that cannot (indeed refuses to) be seen as or treated as ordinary.

I pray that as you go about your day doing things that seem unexceptional, unremarkable and ordinary – putting in another day at the office, changing another diaper, teaching another class, seeing another patient, cleaning the house, grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s….you would see the people around you for what they really are – rare, pure, special and extraordinary. Because that’s what you are.