Coffee Convictions

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Stephanie Smith

Last week my husband and I were suffering from cabin fever after a few rainy days, and we decided to get out of the house and grab some coffee and a good book somewhere. Wheeling into the parking lot of Barnes and Noble, we noticed a family of three walking toward their car.

They had just come out of the all-you-can-eat buffet in the strip mall, two parents and a son who looked about eight years old, and all of them a doctor would diagnose with obesity.

So sad, Zach and I said to each other. I wondered what kind of future that child would have, would he be teased? Would he feel like he wouldn’t amount to anything? And what about the parents? What is it they are trying to escape through food? Do they eat here all the time? Do they care that their kid is severely overweight and inheriting their own unhealthiness?

All sorts of disapproving and critical thoughts ran through my head. And then I walked into the bookstore café and bought a $4 espresso drink.

“Are you sure you don’t want a venti, it’s only 60 cents more?” The barista lobbied, as they are trained to do with every customer. I declined. “Do you want a pastry or a sandwich to go with that?” No thanks. They definitely know how to capitalize on the classic impulse buy.

It was only after I was catered to at the coffee bar that I realized I was choosing the same gluttony I had just condemned. I didn’t need an espresso drink topped with whipped cream, I was just indulging. I was paying $4 for something that I knew was overpriced and nonessential.

This year I have been discovering a new way of eating, exploring where my food comes from, the ethics of my culinary choices, such as fair labor treatment and environmental responsibility, and trying to make better food choices in general. And while I am privileged American to be able to choose between pricey organic meat or canned green beans, not everyone has that privilege. Hunger is a real issue in the world just as much as obesity is, and both claim lives.

I’m not against caramel macchiatos, but I hope I don’t consume them ignorantly, as this last experience taught me. I hope I will realize the weight of my food choices, and if I’m going to exercise my privileges, I hope I will also donate to world hunger relief organizations, contribute to my church’s food pantry, and pray for and remember those who don’t have the same privileges God has so graciously given.

Acts of Kindness

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Bonnie Ponce

Bonnie shares about how an act of kindness can really impact a life. I was standing in line at the grocery store and I noticed how rude the person in front of me was acting to the cashier.  Talking on her cell phone and ignoring the cashier’s attempts at conversational pleasantries, she was too busy to be polite.   On the other side, waiting on people who are angry or impatient can be tough.  In college I worked for the university’s Information Resources and answered the help desk phones.  Some people were patient as I walked them through the steps to fix their computer problems.  Other people would almost reduce me to tears.  I remember one particularly conversation in which a faculty member accused me of trying to delete all of her emails!

It doesn’t take a lot to be nice – a smile, a casual, how are you doing? or a complement can make someone’s day.  We often take for granted the people that serve us throughout the day – a waiter, janitorial people, cashiers at Starbucks, toll booth workers, or secretaries.  It only takes a small gesture of kindness to brighten someones day.  But often times it is the rude people we encounter or bad experiences that stick with us an color our whole day.  Which is why I want to share a story about how much it can affect someone or even a whole entity when consideration for others is lacking.  Sam Davidson shares an experience with a non-profit that led him to stop donating.

At Relief, we know that you are the life-blood of what we do. We want to thank you for your donations, for buying subscriptions, for supporting great literature and being loyal to our mission. We want to know what your experience has been with Relief.  We ask for your support so we can continue to provide new stories, poetry, and inspirational creative fiction for you to read. Share your experience with us! If you connect with us, share why you gave or consider giving a gift if you have been encouraged or inspired by Relief.

Bear Witness as I Experience My First Time…

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Travis Griffith

It seems we’re born into a world where everyone is blind.

We don’t know who we are; so we search, arms outstretched, wandering, hoping we run into some form of ourselves that might know the answers.

It’s during that journey through the darkness that many people turn to religion.

Religion provides millions of people with the answers they seek, but for countless others it only raises more questions that outweigh the faith required to believe.

My journey is about to take a turn that every fiber of my being tells me not to follow. And I’m going to need your help.

First, though, a little history.

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“O thinke mee worth thine anger”

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Brad Fruhauff

Brad Fruhauff invites you to connect with the darkness of Good Friday.

In college, we used to complain that we didn’t get Good Friday off. I went to Calvin College, a Christian school, and wasn’t Easter really the most important Christian holiday? Instead, they gave us like half a day and had something they called a “Tenebræ Service.”

Truth be told, I had never seen Good Friday as anything other than  a day to get off of school. Thus, had I not had to stay on campus, I may never have gone to Tenebræ, and that would have been a shame.

“Tenebræ” means something like “shadows” or “darknesses,” and it seems to have ancient origins as a kind of funeral service sung during the last three days of Holy Week, and as it usually came at the end of the mass it was accompanied by extinguishing candles, leaving everyone in darkness.

It’s a dark service full of meditations on the death of God, a kind of attempt to inhabit the disciples’ despair on Golgotha. It was the first time I had really thought about how strange it is to “celebrate” the crucifixion of Jesus as a “good” Friday.

John Donne

Attending Tenebræ helped me understand one of the few Good Friday poems I’m aware of: John Donne’s “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.” The poem begins with some metaphysical musings about devotion’s effect on the body, and thus on how, though his body faces West, his soul faces East (to Jerusalem). Then Donne expresses relief that he did not witness the crucifixion himself, feeling it would be much more dramatic than the already painful death of self in the encounter with God. But then the poem becomes almost masochistic:

I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,

If you’ve ever read “Batter my heart,” you know there’s this strain in Donne of imagining God as a violent lover – a metaphor we use less nowadays than that of “friend” or “father.” But the poem is written in context of God’s act of saving grace, the Atonement and Reconciliation, achieved through violence. How can reflection on such an act produce anything but contrition and a desire for purification? Donne feels small and unworthy of God’s sacrifice, so it is not, in fact, masochism, but deep spiritual humility and longing that cries, “O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee.”

His cry is to be made right, to be thought worthy to be made worthy of the sacrifice itself. Of course, the whole point is that we weren’t and aren’t worthy, but Donne doesn’t write as a theologian, here, but simply as a disciple feeling the tragedy of the Cross before the triumph of the Resurrection.

The goal of this purification, for Donne, is the restoration of the image of God within him, which becomes synonymous with his very self, for it is this restored self that God will recognize or know and enable Donne to turn toward Him:

Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face.

There is a time for laughing and a time for mourning. On Sunday we’ll celebrate the triumph of laughter over our tears, but today is a good day to remember the cost, paid once and for all but extorted from our brothers and sisters across the globe every day, of that joy.

Brad Fruhauff is Interim Editor-in-Chief of Relief. He holds a PhD in English from Loyola University Chicago and is currently an adjunct instructor in the Chicago area where he lives with his wife and 2-year old son. He has published fiction in The Ankeny Briefcase, poetry in Relief, Salt, and *catapult, and reviews in Burnside Writers’ Collective and The Englewood Review of Books.