How Does He Do That?

David and I have become entranced with Sophia Sayed, the adorable child actress used by AWS in their television ads. (AWS, if you didn’t know—until recently, I didn’t have a clue—is Amazon Web Services.)

“How did you learn to play like that?” she asks a guitarist on the street. Her childlike earnestness is captivating.

“How do you always find the best stuff to watch?” she wonders aloud, lying on her prone mother’s back, both on the floor, faces turned to the television screen.

The questions proceed. “How do they make shoes like that?” “How do you know that?” “How do they know this stuff?” “How does it know where we’re going?” Coming out of the bakery with a donut in her hand: “How did they know I like sprinkles?”

The curiosity is enchanting. Amazement is captivating. We all remember either being a child filled with curiosity or raising or teaching a child with curiosity. Sometimes the endless questions are annoying, but mostly, they’re entrancing. Her last question seems to be one that my husband and I are adapting around the house: “How do they do that?”

How do they do that?, we wonder when someone tells a story of accomplishment, something difficult that took energy and planning and determination. We question this often regarding our daughter-in-law, now a widow after our son died 5 years ago from a rare and aggressive lymphoma. She works—in fact, she’s the director of her community-outreach program. She parents three children—Eliana, 12 years of age, Nehem, 10 years of age, and Anelise, 7 years of age—all by herself. She also completed her doctorate in adult education. You too may be wondering with us, watching all of this, How does she do that?

When the little grandchildren, who we keep twice a week and are the stand-ins when emergencies interrupt and Angela needs an extra hand, when they do something special like bringing home a really good report card, or create a make-believe city in the basement from saved tin cans and cardboards and miniature cars and felt-tip-marker and ruler streets. (All of which occupies several days and multiple hours of intense creativity.) “How did you do that?” we exclaim—not necessarily manufacturing a response of grandparently amazement.

And in moments of personal pride, we address the quote, grandly, toward ourselves: “How did we do all that?”

Recently, our question has taken on grander implications. We have started to ask, when overcome with some obvious evidence of God’s work in our lives, “How does He do that?”

My prayer journals (some forty years of them) are filled with lists of ways God has intervened in our everyday lives. David I termed this effort of recording daily divine activity “The God Hunt.” Using this well-know metaphor of hide-and-seek, we taught our own four children—now adults—to be on an existential watch, to expect God to jump out from His hiding place and exclaim, “BOO!” At any moment. Anywhere. At any time. And generally, though we can’t always hear it, the interventions are always accompanied by a rollicking and divine belly-laugh.

So this is how David and I have organized our thinking; there are four main categories. (1) God intervenes through answered prayers. (Remember, I have recorded four decades of answered prayers! Proof enough for me.). (2) We see Him interacting through how He helps us to do His work in the world. (3) We don’t believe that anything is coincidental, though many proclaim, “What an incredible coincidence!” Instead, we believe God can be identified in any unusual linkage or timing. For the Christian, there is no such thing as coincidence. (4) Lastly, we see Him in abundant evidences of His loving care.

“How does He do all this?”

My lists include such commonplace things as having enough leftovers to create a lovely dinner on those busy, busy days when I haven’t had time to write out a menu, check the fridge/freezer/cupboards for what’s on hand. Enough for this evening, I discover, and by the way, there are overlooked leftovers that will do for lunch tomorrow.

Our children’s books, the “Tales of the Kingdom” Trilogy, have been in the marketplace for over 35 years. That is a record worthy of any author’s satisfaction; most books don’t last a decade, few make the 5-year mark—this considered to be a mark of a classic. When the books were declared out of print, we offered them to all the religious publishing houses that existed, and not a single one snapped them up. In some ways, we understood; they are expensive books, hardcover with glossy pages that include 12 full-color illustrations. So we kept the rights, and decades ago, made them available in the marketplace under our own imprint. Beloved by many readers, both young and old; proclaimed by others (not ourselves) as “classics comparable to C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series; the recipients of overwhelming five-star ratings on Amazon, we are pleased with our decision to keep these properties in the marketplace. This is due mostly to the efforts of our eldest son, Randall, and his determination not to let the products die.

Recently, I had the desire to create a stage production of the first book, Tales of the Kingdom, for children’s theatre using a participation methodology that would involve the audience, the actors on the stage and every child in the theatre (or every adult with a childlike heart). This is not an easy task, and I am not a playwright. Since each book contains 12 standalone stories (36 in all), there are a plethora of characters who move along the overall narrative arc (or theme) of the books. Just adapting Book One would take skills beyond my own.

While organizing my file-cabinet (or perhaps more accurately, “pile cabinet”) drawer of “Tales Stuff,” I came across a script written for a production put on by the drama department of a seminary in Canada—talk about obscure. I had totally forgotten that it existed. The playwright, Rob Riddell, has beautifully composed a stage treatment for Book One that adheres to the principles of stagecraft without disordering the construction of the narrative arc—no small feat.

Indeed, “How does He do this kind of thing?”

How did He orchestrate this creative project, in this far-off seminary with people I’d never met, that rested for decades in the dark caverns of my messy organizational systems? How did He bring it to light seemingly serendipitously at the very moment when I seemed inspired to finally create a stage treatment, knowing I was nearly incapable of doing so?

Indeed, how does He do it?

The psalmist in the Old Testament recorded similar moments of great gasps at the recognition of God’s involvement in the everyday world, in the commonplace events. Look at these how-does-He-do-that remarks just from Psalm 34.

• I will extol the Lord at all times/ his praise will always be on my lips.
• My soul will boast in the Lord/let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
• I sought the Lord and he answered me.
• The poor man called, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
• The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and he delivers them.

How does He do that?

• Fear the Lord, you his saints/ for those who fear him lack nothing
• The lions grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
• The Lord is close to the brokenhearted/ and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
• A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.
• The Lord redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.

So let us, all together now, ask in joyous wonderment, “How in the world, how in the great expanse of the universe, how in all heaven above, does    He    do    all    this?”

How, indeed, does He do that?

Karen Mains

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Karen Mains

BOOK CORNER

A Listening Heart:
The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness
by David Steindl-Rast

Our youngest grandchildren are attending a Catholic private school. Their father, our son Jeremy, died five years ago this past November, and their mother, Angela, has valiantly provided a stable home environment for them while holding down a full-time job and working to earn a doctorate in adult education—all at the same time.

We love this little private school. It is not only providing the kind of excellent schooling parochial schools are known for, but it is including and embracing my semi-orphaned grandchildren in love and community and joy and healthy learning—but it is uniquely Catholic!

For instance, the 12-year-old has a habit of procrastinating in regards to turning in her homework on time. So she was scheduled detention—not for a one-time infraction but for a habit of infractions. However, this was not called a detention but an “Hour for Self-Reflection”! HAH!

Our twelve-year-old actually enjoyed answering the searching questions and seriously took them to heart. Let’s hear it for the educators who understand that real education is not just mastering information but mastering ourselves!

This Book Corner is dedicated to one of my favorite Catholic writers, Brother David Steindl-Rast. His book A Listening Heart: The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness is really about learning to attend with all our senses. My copy is highlighted through all the pages. The word “lovely” is often hand-written in the borders. Here are a couple quotes. The first begins with Moses’ experience at the burning bush.

This “strange sight” (Exodus 3:3) signals a central theme of the whole Bible: God’s presence in our midst, the co-existence, even more than that, the inter-penetration between what is accessible to our senses and what goes altogether beyond them. These two “suffer no confusion, but permit no separation” (non confusionem passus, neque divisionem) as a Christmas antiphon puts it, full of wonderment and awe. The vision of the Burning Bush boldly proclaims: Divine Reality is accessible through the senses. This is quite a claim.

If you are lacking in the ability to attend to the Presence of the Holy in your everyday world, I strongly suggest you procure a copy of A Listening Heart and get your highlighter ready to underline and your pen ready to take notes.