Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

Among the things I am not known for is having a tidy office! It tends to range from looking like a herd of capybaras lives there or a natural disaster that may or may not be covered by insurance came through.

I tend to know where everything is though. In the piles and boxes I can usually find what I’m looking for with relative ease. Where some people have a meticulous kind of card catalog type organization mine tends to be more like the organization of images in our mind—I remember where I touched something or the feeling of reading something else standing in a particular spot or that I prayed in a specific chair with someone out of a book that lives just over my shoulder.

Our outer world often becomes a manifestation of our inner world. My office is a kind of ramshackle hodgepodge of antiquities, technology, and mid-century modern aesthetics I guess because my internal world, my memory palace as Matteo Ricci popularized, might be a similar hodgepodge.

I think also though that our external world shapes our internal. Our tactile, spiritual, aesthetic, emotional, and intellectual lives are always in dialogue.

I generally do feel better when my work space is organized and sorted, with art that I’ve collected, curated books I think fondly of, and gifts of all sorts that call to mind so many different people.

Now, why this bit of rambling discourse on space?

Well, because my office became quite a nightmare by the end of the last program year. It was jammed with boxes of books, artwork, files, vestments, and much more. Throughout the year, people offered to help organize it but I was too embarrassed to let anybody wade through it all. I kept saying to myself, when I get some free time I’ll get to it—but it arrived at that state because free time is scarce and tidying hits the bottom of priorities when stuff comes up as stuff always does.

However, while I was on sabbatical, Myron and Daniel took on this Sisyphean task because I wasn’t there to object! The office now is pristine, organized, and still feels like I want it to feel—but better. I can take meetings in it and invite people in without making them sign an insurance waiver because a box might fall on them or they might trip and fall on a sword!

I’m so grateful to them for the countless hours this took. And it was a lesson to me in accepting help. Most of us are too embarrassed to accept it or too proud to think we need it. We’ll get to it. We can manage. Right?

But the people who care for us can see when that’s not quite true—and they’re often just itching to help if we’ll let pride get out of the way. I had to literally get out of the way this summer so it could happen—but it’s more often the metaphorical getting out of the way that’s most needed.

Frequently in church it seems like we’re talking about what we can do for somebody, we like to help and be useful, but I’m thinking that sometimes we need a reminder that the hardest form of service is often to let somebody lend us a hand.

It’s a bit like the footwashing on Maundy Thursday. Most of us are far more comfortable washing rather than being washed—but Christ reminds us that he came to serve and to show love in such a simple act of love for his disciples—and for us.

How can you let someone show you love this week?

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert