Growing up I often watched The Gong Show, a television talent show where contestants would perform often dubious acts. When celebrity judges were unimpressed with a performance it forced its end by clanging a gong. I always felt sorry for the people who were gonged no matter how absurd their act. After all, it took a lot of courage to sing about having a lizard on your head while actually having a lizard on your head.
I guess it’s because of the indelible mark that The Gong Show left on my juvenile psyche that when I think of the biblical passage warning against the boasting of good deeds, I remember the cautionary instrument as a gong. “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Matthew 6:2) When I realized the scripture referred to a trumpet, not a gong, I couldn’t help but feel as disappointed as a contestant reprimanded by the merciless vibrations of a rubber mallet’s clash on metal.
Regardless of the instrument used, I believe in clanging the gong. And before you swing the rubber mallet at me, please hear me out. I understand that this passage warns against bragging about our good deeds with the intention of building up our own ego or esteem with others. Clearly, if that is our motivation, we are not acting out of love. “If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal,” (1 Corinthians 13:1). (Finally, a bible verse with a gong in it!) Love, as always, makes the difference. It’s out of love and with the intention of love that I find that the occasional clanging of a gong a powerful instrument to spread more love.
For instance, I typically offer mass for people who I know are going through a difficult time. Doing this gives me inexplicable satisfaction. Through the gift of the holy mass, I can share the incomparable peace of prayer with someone who is hurting. Its power exceeds an army of clanging gongs. Not only does offering my mass motivate me to attend additional masses as a means of helping others, but it also offers a source of comfort for the recipient. Particularly when we are going through difficult situations it is important for others to know they are being prayed for, thought of, and held up. I know when anyone has ever told me that they would pray for me it fills me with tremendous hope. Hence, I clang the gong. I don’t do this by telling everyone I know or posting on social media. But I do usually tell the person that I offered a mass for them.
Recently, a friend told me how she paid for an employee to have a hair cut in a salon. The employee was not used to such a luxury and was incredibly grateful for the kind act. My friend apologized for telling me about her good deed. “I know I shouldn’t be telling you this because we aren’t supposed to do nice things and brag about it but it made me feel so good.” Her joy was manifest from love, not vain conceit. It was the joy of the Lord — of living her faith. Who doesn’t want to share that?
I told her I was glad she told me — that it inspired me and reminded me of the countless ways there are to show love for our neighbor. The gong is an instrument mostly associated with a reprimand for empty acts. But there are creative ways to use it as a different kind of symbol – that of love.
Hi friends~ I think sharing our acts of mercy with the intention to inspire, evangelize, or comfort others can be very meaningful. I would love to hear what small acts you have done for others. Please share – not to be boastful but because these acts are beautiful and on this bitterly cold day, I think we can all use a little beauty!
Also, if you would like to watch the segment of the Gong Show where the man sings about a lizard while he has a lizard on his head, here you go! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwEXSQXfBWc
Read more: If/then: God Loves You
I’ve tried to have a good attitude about the necessary sacrifices of living during a pandemic. I considered mask-wearing a clever and inexpensive way to hide wrinkles, with the added benefit of no longer worrying about whether bits of salad were caught in my teeth. I pretended my stint at homeschooling was like a long (albeit dysfunctional) episode of Little House on the Prairie. I put away the Pinterest worthy tchotchkes on the desk so my now work-from-home husband can actually use it. I’ve done the FaceTime happy hour, the social distanced visits in the sweltering back yard, and the scavenger hunt for mundanities like toilet paper, disinfectant, and flour. But when I went through the McDonalds drive-thru and was told that they are currently not serving ice cream cones because of COVID-19, I was done. I tried to keep the hysteria out of my voice when I asked the cashier what the who-ha she was talking about. No ice cream cones?
In the bathroom, I noticed that the small vase on the pedestal sink had broken. It lay in pieces while the plant it once held in water splayed like a dying fish whose gills move in slow silent puffs of suffocation. I asked my son who was just outside the room staring at his phone or iPad or another electronic brainwasher if he knew what happened to the vase. Brilliant as he is, he told me it broke. I asked him if he broke it and indeed, he had. When I inquired as to why he didn’t clean up the broken glass he responded with a casual, “I forgot.”
As a Floridian, I’m used to the rush and rumble of hurricane season. Being quarantined feels like a similar drill: gathering supplies, overconsumption of snacks, board games, and boredom. There is also the obsession with news updates, the what-ifs that cyclone through conversation, fear of the unknown, and the prayers that calm the storm of anxieties within.
I was subbing for a first-grade class when I received a text message from an unknown number. It was from a family friend’s college-aged daughter seeking help for her friend considering an abortion. She knew that I had volunteered at the Women’s Help Center, a pro-life organization that supports women throughout pregnancy, and asked if I would be willing to speak to her friend so that she understood all her options.
During my senior year in high school, I had a small part in the school play, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. My role was of the scandalous secretary who was presumably having an affair with her boss. I wore a tiny off the shoulder black dress and slung my waist-length hair around with a flick of my wrist while hinting to the more dutiful office employee about my clandestine relations. That was almost 30 years ago and the only flicking of the wrists I do now is after washing my hands in the kitchen sink when I’m too hurried to use a dishtowel.
The color black is symbolic of funerals, representing everything from the heavy grief that overshadows the bereaved to the most common color-choice for attire. How strange then that the decision on whether to attend a funeral isn’t always as clear as the delineation between black and white. Many people fall into a gray area of not knowing the deceased well, but still wanting to support the grieving. It can feel like an awkward palette from which to draw — blending the darkness of death with the comfort of light.
I remember exactly where I was when a plane crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It was a profoundly sad day. It changed lives and an entire nation. I will never forget the unthinkable, unimaginable horror as I huddled around the television watching the ash of innocence unite a country in anguished grief. As the morning went on, the plane crashes went from one to four, each one an almost unrecoverable blow of terror, multiplying devastation into exponential heartache.
I know songs have been written about the ease of Sunday morning, but I wish someone would write one about the angst of a Sunday evening. That’s the twitchiest night of the week for me as I transition from the charms of the weekend to the schisms of the work week. I feel like the amiable comic book character, Pig Pen, created by Charles Shultz, traveling in my own dust storm with all the to-do’s swirling around me making a filthy mess of what was once a peaceful mind. The more I do, the more I realize how far behind I really am and the dirt cakes on — further muddying my panic.
When I was little, I loved to watch Popeye the Sailor Man. There was something so good about the one-eyed spinach-eating sailor. He was gruff and marbled his raspy words. His body was disproportionate with massive forearms, and legs that bowed out in curvy clumps. He had a tattoo on his arm, a pipe in his twisted mouth, and Olive Oyl, his waif of a love interest, on his arm.