Mindful Living: Making Deals with God

Did you ever make a deal with God? Maybe you were scared that the electricity would be turned off, or maybe you didn't know where your child was, or maybe you yourself were sick, so sick that you thought you might die. In my way of thinking, deals (God if you'll fix this I'll do such and such), or things like petitionary prayers (Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz) aren't much part of the deal. These things don't work because Spirit is part of us as human beings, intrinsic not separate. It's a sort of pantheism, where God is in me, you and in all living things. It's also why I don't kill spiders, but that's another story.

Even though I don't officially believe in dealmaking, I made a deal with God a while back. I was scared, darn scared about a financial situation I was in. In my desperation, I asked God for a stable income, and in exchange I promised to donate $75 a month to something that fed my spirit, and $50 in food each month to the Chittenden County Food Shelf. In a way I was making the promise to myself, since I too am Spirit, but really when it all comes down to it, it doesn’t matter; I made the promise.

This funny thing happened though, just as my income was about to plummet, two things came along that gave me financial stability - at least for a little while. It was really quite amazing, and another way for the universe to show me that I am being taken care of every minute, even those minutes when I'm having a crisis of faith - something I'd been struggling with for about a month. In just a few days my financial situation was reversed and my faith was restored. It took a few weeks for me to feel fully safe again, so deep was my fear. People always say that if your faith doesn't hold when times are tough, then it isn't faith at all, and I suppose that's true. Still, I didn't so much lose my faith as spend a lot of time questioning it, which is not so bad a thing in the big picture. A strong faith can stand up to strong questioning. More importantly, I got the answers I needed.

One day while I was cogitating on these answers, I saw a biography of Cat Stevens on TV. He explained that he had given up his musical career to become a wholly religious seeker because he too had made a promise to God. He had been swimming in the ocean and nearly drowned. Just as he was about to go under the last time, he told God that he would devote his life to spiritual pursuits if God would save him. He said he felt the current lift him up, and suddenly he had the strength to swim to shore. Listening to him, I realized that I had not yet lived up to my promises made. So, I wrote a check to a place that makes my heart sing, and started thinking about canned goods.

I've always given a few items to the Food Shelf during the holidays, pretty much like everyone else whose guilt was wafting out from our own full larders. But I'd heard that they were serving ever more families despite a shortage of donations. I thought about years ago when I was unemployed for a stretch and went there myself. I felt pretty scared and humiliated about the whole thing so my friend Pamela was kind enough to go with me. I suppose I felt that if I couldn't buy food for myself, I had pretty much failed somehow. Pamela was gentle with me, and it turned out that the people at the Food Shelf were gentle with me too. They didn't make me feel worthless. They were friendly and straightforward, and they made the process as good as it could be, considering the circumstances.

When I first considered my donation, I thought along the lines of canned chili and ravioli and whatnot. After all, it was that and about 8000 boxes of no-brand macaroni and cheese that fill up the shelves of the Burlington Food Shelf. I also remembered the few times when I went there and there was something special like hams from Harringtons or a turtle brownie mix - and how wonderful getting those made me feel. My mother always said that much of being poor wasn't the actual fact of being poor, but the shame you felt because of it. She said that people don't just need real food like chili and ravioli, they also need "soul" food - foods that make you feel good inside and give you a bit of pride. So, instead of buying all the usual canned stuff, I bought $50 worth of desserts. Snowbound white cocoa mixes. Almond Roca. Sour gummy worms. Chocolate caramels. All kinds of stuff - the good stuff. I dropped them off at the donations box, and figured that was that.

The funny part came next. I wanted to tell my friends about this experience, but in a way I didn't. This was because I was brought up with the belief that it's important to do good works, but that it's equally important not to tell about them. I guess the idea was that something of the spirit and magic of the good deed would be lost in the telling. Around when I was in high school I found out that my father had been anonymously paying tuition for a young woman to attend college. I only found out because I overheard a conversation about some detail about it, and when I questioned my parents later they made it pretty clear that talking about it constituted some kind of arrogance, a showing off of generosity. A definite no no.

Even so, I still wanted to share this story of making promises and giving chocolate to the food shelf. I wanted to share it because I want other people to know that they too can follow their heart and give in a way that moves them. I think now that my parents didn't quite hit the mark on that one. Showing off is wrong, and it does spoil some of the magic of giving. But sharing the experience is not wrong if your intent is to make change in the world. Your action doesn't have to be something profound like donating to the Red Cross; sharing your lunch with a lonely co-worker can be just as meaningful. The idea is to give of yourself to the thing that moves your spirit - whether it be money, time, or goods.

It isn't always easy to keep a promise to support a good cause, especially when the phone bill is overdue. Still, I'm pretty sure that in fifty years when I'm rocking on my back porch, laptop in hand, it will be the image of a child eating those sour gummy worms on a steaming summer day that sticks with me - not whether or not the phone bill was paid this week or that. And so I'll be keeping my promises for a while, even if it turns out they were only to myself.

Copyright July, 2001

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