The Unbearable Brightness of Being

by Karen Mains

The all-too-familiar instinct kept nagging at me, Don't do it, Karen. Don't do it! You're trying to shove too much into the afternoon. You're going to greet your guests tonight with an aching back and hostess' anxiety.

But I did it anyway. Because I really wanted to attend the Naperville Art Festival, and because a friend really wanted me to spend some time with her, I crowded my Sunday afternoon. Ten people were coming for a "Bag Team" brainstorming dinner that evening. The table was set, guests were bringing parts of the meal, but I still had to pick up the special kluski noodles I use and some whipped cream at Jewel-Osco, and the homemade chicken noodle soup (that my family loves) was not in the pot yet!

Obviously, I was hurriedly making a choice that I was not carefully considering. Now I was on my way as my friend drove down Warrenville Road toward Naperville to see this remarkable exhibit of artists' works about which she had been so exultant. The time was 12:30. While stopped at a traffic light, I finally began to do the calculations. It would take a half-hour to get to Naperville: I would have to leave by 2:00, run to the store, get home, debone the chicken, make the soup, mix blackberry liqueur into the whipped cream and create a sauce for the blackberry buckle, the recipe taken from my Cooking French book. If I returned home by 3 o'clock, would I get everything done by the time people arrived? Read more...

Weather Financial Blowouts Rule #2

by Karen Mains

Financial blowouts can create the kind of community we have forgotten and yet long for in the deepest part of our beings.

I suspect we Christians need to lead the way in breaking up our government dependency. We need to increase our God-given Body of Christ interdependency. We need to explode the myth that unless we have money we can't solve problems. What a deception that is! (My personal mantra learned during these years in God's School of Finance is: We don't need money. we don't need money. We only need Him, the Provider and Sustainer.)

Creativity and ingenuity are our best currencies. So, let’s brainstorm together all the ways we can solve our personal, citywide, regional and national problems We need to develop neighborhood architectures for helping one another; we need to joyfully explore the alternate barter, recycle and trade economies. I do most of my clothes-shopping at Goodwill. I bought a pair of Ralph Lauren pants ($400 online) for $4. I got a great black leather jacket with a furred hood for $30. “You look terrific!” said some younger women I’ve mentored but hadn’t seen for a year. Well, losing 22 of the 30 pounds I gained during our season of financial discontent helped, but letting my hair go white (consequently, $22 for a haircut at the JCPenney Salon—no styling, walking out with my hair wet—instead of $160 for cut, color, styling, blow-dry and tip) not only saves money, it honors the fact that I have achieved these older years. A Daisy Fuentes tunic and Tommy Hilfiger black jeans, $4 apiece from Goodwill, finished the look.

Too bad the concept of community organizer came under such disapprobation in the last election, because God is the original Community Organizer. His platform always includes pulling together a group of unlikely folk who are willing to be inspired by the Holy Spirit to make amazing differences in the world. What a wonderful thing—to create neighborhoods where we actually feel free to borrow sugar, not to mention a car, where we can chat over fences, reinstitute the coffee klatch, tend to those who are feeble, and even know one another’s names and what we each do in the world. Together, we can change the environment around us. Together, we can learn that the meaning of the word “stranger” is not “the neighbor I don’t know who lives next door.”

On one sub-zero day this winter, my African-American neighbor, new to our community, phoned. “How are you doing over there?” she asked. “Is your furnace OK? Are you warm?” I have never had another neighbor, in all the years we’ve lived in the Chicago-area inquire as to our being warm! Needing one another in financial hard times, we can learn again the gift of helping one another. Last summer at Home Depot I bought some clearance table burnished brass lamps for outside our home. My daughter-in-law’s father is a handyman, so he graciously came to teach me how to install the lights—he mounted one with me acting as an assistant apprentice, passing tools and carefully watching over his shoulder. I installed the remaining two without his help and proudly bragged to everyone who came in the front door, “I did it myself.” Six Rules for Weathering Financial Blowouts