Loaves and Fishes, Library-Style
How to Be Human, with Lari
(I started a 4-part series last week about the parable of the Wounded One from Luke 10. However, I had the immense pleasure of interviewing this lovely young lady and wanted to share her story. So I am bumping the next part of the Wounded One series to next week. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did).
The world is on fire. Gaza and Israel. Ukraine and Russia. Sudan. Ethiopia. The USA making Canadians angry, like the nicest people in the world angry? Every morning the news is a fresh flurry of 💩.
When Covid began sweeping the planet and we were all in the early stages of terror, anxiety, shock, sickness, anger…all the things, I went for a walk with a friend in Djibouti. Don’t worry, we were outside, distanced, all good. I remember looking down at our feet where a little yellow flower was forcing its way up through rocks and debris.
“The world is a 💩 show,” I said to my friend, “but beauty insists on being beautiful.”
That flower spoke hope to me. She was designed to be beautiful and she was going to live into that design even when it meant growing up through a pile of trash in the hottest country on the planet. Her little yellow power transformed that block, in my mind, calling it to be better than trash and rocks and debris, calling the whole street into goodness.
We need this. We always need this. But when I wake up in the morning these days and check the news (after coffee!), I also need a dose of goodness and beauty insisting on being itself: good and beautiful.
Last week I interviewed my third grade niece about a story I’d heard from her mother, my sister, because it was the most precious thing I’ve heard in a long time. Now, I’m sharing it with you.
Here is a story, based on my interview with Lari, of goodness and beauty, reminding us how to be human. Loaves and fishes, library-style.
Lari (not her real name) is a reader, writer, and illustrator. She loves the school library and the librarian, Mrs. Gallagher.
“She helps me pick out books she knows I will like, and if I read a book fast and turn it in early, she lets me take out a new book.”
Lari got a $25.00 gift card for her birthday and started to dream about what she could buy.
Valentine’s Day was approaching, and Lari usually gave Valentine’s cards to her classroom teachers.
“But all of a sudden, I had this idea of giving a book to the librarian. I usually don’t even give cards to the extra teachers like the librarian or the PE teacher. But I had all this money and I thought, I’ll give Mrs. Gallagher a book for the library. I can use my birthday money for it!”
“My mom took me to the bookstore and I picked out two books for the librarian.”
Lari loved a book called A Wolf Called Wander, by Rosanne Parry, a Portland-based writer. The story is based on a true story about a wolf who traveled over 1,000 miles to find a home. There was a sequel to that book that the school library didn’t have yet, so Lari picked up that, A Wolf Called Fire. It had just been released the week before Valentine’s Day.
“There was also another book by Rosanne Parry, so I got that one, too.” Lari laughed and said, “My mom had to add like $2.00 because I didn’t have enough money for both books plus tax.”
Lari brought the books to Mrs. Gallagher, for the library.
“I didn’t read them first, I wanted to give them to her first. She was so surprised. She said, ‘Oh my gosh, these are for the library?! Thank you so much!’”
Later, Lari checked out the books herself. She laughed about that, too, checking out the books she had purchased.
“It felt good to give the books to the librarian and really, that means I gave the books to like 500 kids.”
A month later, Rosanne Parry came to a book event near Lari’s hometown. She and two friends went to meet her.
“But first,” Lari said, “We went to church where it was a a special day to wear our pajamas and bring a stuffy (stuffed animal) and my friend didn’t have time to go home and change, so she came to meet Rosanne Parry in her pjs, with her stuffy, that was funny!”
Parry signed Lari’s book. She made sure to show me the autograph over Zoom.
How many third graders would spend their birthday money on books for everyone? How many of us have the spontaneous generosity or creativity to consider how our abundance can be increased for abundance for everyone?
This is loaves and fishes. One child’s lunch multiplied to feed over 5000 men plus women and children in the New Testament. One child’s birthday money multiplied for 500 other readers.
Lari and I also talked about her writing and illustrating work and here are a few key takeaways for other writers:
Sometimes I feel like my writing isn’t very exciting and I need to put something exciting in there.
I need a punch or a statement point in my stories.
I have a writing group and we share our stories.
We write stories about the same characters from different points of view and help each other figure out better endings.
I have an editor (her older sister). She helps add good words and fixes my mistakes.
My stories now might not be the ones I publish when I’m an adult, but they are helping me practice.
It is hard to erase what I already wrote. Sometimes like three whole pages! But Rosanne Parry told me I should keep it, like put it somewhere else because maybe I’ll use it later.
Wise words!
What is it to be human? In a world of scarcity and fear, isolationism and anxiety, I think it is to be kind. To be generous. To respond to our sudden urges to bring others joy.
It is to insist on goodness and it is to allow that goodness to spread out, like a little yellow flower, like a third-grader using her birthday money to buy two books for a librarian and 500 kids.
Do you have a story about how to be human?
So glad to see another great writer in the family! And another editor, too!