Ahh - the memory has returned.  The other theme of yesterday...family.  Although it is actually much larger than that.  I was asked a few days ago why I do what I do?  Why am I so driven to do the things I do - the things that I think matter.   I seem driven and why is it that the 2 or three important things that I do don't seem to be enough?  Well, I've been asked that many times before...I've been asked if I think I'm not good enough or if I have to do more for God to love me...  I've thought about that on many occasions...over time, through the years.  I've never really been able fully understand what or why I do - only that when an opportunity to give, to serve, to be there for others is set before me, then I respond. Yes, I know, I don't need to save the world.  Trust me - I've gotten over that.  But if there is something I can do in my  little corner of it, then I want to do it.  Why?  Because I believe that we are called to "bear one another's burdens", to "do justice, love mercy, & walk humbly with God", and to "proclaim the year of the Lord's favor...."   No, I am not called to save the world, but when God puts a call upon my heart then aren't I to answer it.  Lofty isn't it? I don't mean to be.  All I can say is that it is cellular - this need to respond when a need is expressed.  I have pared down, I do say no, I don't expect that I am the answer to all the questions but yes to some.

And then there is the real essence of why I do what I do - why I am who I am.  It came to me today - not in an epiphany moment - no, that would be too easy...but as the culmination of years and years of trying to answer the question that was put to me again earlier this week - what drives me?  Why do I do what I do, be who I be?  Because - after years of not wanting to be like my mom and dad - and then years of respecting them, I find I do indeed want to be like them. Not a carbon copy -that's never going to happen but to live out the values that they embodied and lived.  Those values which echo or reflect the values I espouse and have sought to live out through my life.  And why are they my values?  Not from going to Sunday school or church so much although I did hear of them and was taught them on a spiritual level but because Mom & Dad lived this way...because of who they were created to be. They weren't "believers"...they just lived out hospitality as is taught was the way of our spiritual ancestors,  They lived a life that sometimes looked more Christian than those who spend their lives professing their faith.

I want to be like Mom & Dad...in that I have sought to re-create family - re-create hospitality to the stranger - (perhaps entertaining angels, unaware.)  I came from a created family - adopted at birth, but loved no differently than a child born to her parents.  I lived with these people who opened their hearts and their home to the people who needed to be welcomed or to find respite from the upheavals of life.  I didn't always appreciate the effort they made to make the world a little less of a harsh place - especially when it seemed to interfere with my personal wants and desires. Ultimately whether by osmosis, patterning, or whatever element it was, I did come to own the essence that when there is a need, I can be someone who responds to meet it.  Not for self-aggrandizement although have also wondered whether there is anything as pure altruism,  as it does feel good to be there for others.  It does...can't ignore or deny that reality.  But when I was asked, again, I wanted to discover the answer and I think I have.