Right side, left side, back or front?

Way back on the Epistle side of the sanctuary in the very last pew is where you'll find the Johnsons every Sunday. Since Don uses a walker, he sits near the exit with his wife, daughter and grandchildren at his side.

Up front on the Gospel side are the Andersons, behind them the Swansons. Travel straight back to the center of the church and you’ll find the Larsons, next to the Larsons are the Smiths.

Behind the Smiths, the Bensons and clear in the rear on the Gospel side are the Gibsons.
My attention was first drawn to the territorial nature of where people sit in church some years ago on Good Friday. My congregation was producing a play that I wrote entitled "Marys Crossing." We all hoped the edgy Passion drama, which is written from the female perspective, would bring in a crowd of newcomers, and it did just that.

The night of the performance, dozens upon dozens of unfamiliar faces filed into the church, flushing the Johnsons, the Andersons and others out of their galvanized positions. Even the balcony was filled for the first time in decades.

Bernie, whose spot was taken, was miffed. "Hey, someone took my seat," he whispered to me.

"Yes, isn't that grand," I said, ever so pleased with the turn out. "Looks like you'll have to find to a new place tonight."

As I watched Bernie begrudgingly shuffle his way into the sanctuary, I considered the fixed places we assign ourselves and wondered what would happen if we moved around now and then.

I once knew a woman who left her church all because of the seating chart nature of the place.

"When I saw Linda’s picture in the Obituaries, I felt sad and mad at the same time," she fumed. "Linda always sat on the left side and, of course, I always sat on the right. I knew her face, but I never learned her name, never once spoke to her," she continued with tears welling in a sideways glance, her lips pinching back grief.

"There's something wrong," she blurted mournfully. "We are silently segregating ourselves from one another and nothing is being done about it! That's not what church is supposed to be. It's just not the Christian thing to do, so I quit going."

I first experienced an antidote to such self-segregation at a Latino worship service.
During the "Sharing of the Peace," everyone got out of their seats and greeted each other in two processional circles that moved in opposite directions around the perimeter of the sanctuary.

Conscious of my own fixed place in church, I occasionally force myself to sit on the other side. It is a different experience for me. At first, I feel out of place and a little uncomfortable.

But there in the front corner on the Epistle side far from where I usually sit on Sunday morning, my circle widens. I shake hands with and speak to people for the first time. I hear new voices. I experience a new brand of fellowship without even leaving the building.
So I'm wondering, where do you sit in church?

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

How to W.R.A.K. up random acts of kindness

When I first learned about the W.R.A.K. Coffee Club, I whined a bit. You see, W.R.A.K., A.K.A.Weekly Random Acts of Kindness, is a ministry of the First Evangelical Lutheran Church that meets weekly at a Nebraska City coffee shop. This made it almost impossible for me to participate in person.

So the innovator of the group, Vanessa Bremer, Director of Youth and Family Ministry at the church, created a Facebook page, so anyone, anywhere can join.
"W.R.A.K.," Bremer explains, "is a flower that sprouted from two church outreach programs: ARK Almighty and Pay It Forward."

She started W.R.A.K. this past fall to provide opportunities to practice kindness, develop faith and create Christian fellowship and community.

Each week, local participants meet at the coffee shop to pick up a new challenge and share their W.R.A.K. stories. Those of us who are at a distance get the challenges on Facebook or by email.

Each new challenge and correlating Bible verse is increasingly more involved, both spiritually and personally. Participants are not required to finish a challenge before delving into the next one.

"Some are easier to complete than others," Bremer admits.

One challenge was based on Proverbs 11:25 "A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed." We were to make an effort to allow others go first through the door, in conversation, while waiting in line and so on.
Another was to treat others when we treating ourselves. We were to buy an extra coffee, candy bar, apple or soda and offer it to someone. else This one was rooted in Hebrews 13:16, which states "And do not forget to do good and to share with others...."

What surprised me the most about W.R.A.K. is that the weekly tasks are becoming more natural and routine in my daily life.

W.R.A.K. now has more than 75 participants from across the U.S. and continues to grow each week.

If you want to "W.R.A.K." up some random acts of kindness, become a friend on Facebook or email Bremer at vanessafelcyouth@yahoo.com to start receiving the weekly challenges by email.

For more information, contact Vanessa Bremer 402.873.5424.

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

If there's no room at the inn, where shall they go?

Before I embarked on my first-ever mission experience last weekend, I envisioned homeless adults, not homeless babies. I was on short-term mission trip called Urban Plunge to the gang-ridden, low-income part of Omaha, Nebraska, commonly referred to as North O. There are homeless babies in North Omaha.

Seven out of 10 residents there are considered poor, and this area has one of the highest number of children living in poverty in the U.S. Urban Plunge is an inner city immersion experience in which teams of people volunteer at shelters and missions to feed the hungry, pray for the needy, break bread with the homeless and serve the poor. I encountered homeless men and women who are not really that different from you and me, who have life stories, goals and families of their own.

I discovered numerous ministries operating day and night to make a difference, such as Angels on Wheels, a large team of individuals from a dozen churches, who minister to the physical and spiritual needs of the homeless. Angels on Wheels vans transport people from shelters and darkened streets to a warm welcoming center, where they eat home-cooked food, watch movies, interact with volunteers, receive job training and take GED prep classes.

The Hope Center, a defender of children from neglect and gang violence, serves as a home-away-from-home for inner city youth, ages seven to19. This is an after-school program providing hot meals, recreation, mentoring and help with school work in a safe, nurturing environment. Hope Center volunteers act as surrogate parents, who are involved in children’s lives. They even attend school programs and go to parent-teacher conferences for children whose parents are absent or unavailable. The high school graduation rate in the North Omaha Public School District is approximately 48 percent, while Hope Center youth attending the same schools have a 93 percent high school graduation rate.

Deep within one impoverished neighborhood, where gang signs abound and the sound of gunfire can be heard, is the Mission for All Nations, another faith-based charitable organization. This program exists for the sole purpose of preventing homelessness and hunger. It represents the largest food pantry in Nebraska, feeding some 22,500 individuals nearly 500,000 meals annually. At this mission, there’s free food, clothing and shelter for people of all ethnic backgrounds who are on the fringes of poverty. Here, Urban Plungers prepared food boxes, sorted used clothing and processed applicants for pantry items. We also contributed blankets and hundreds of personal hygiene necessities donated by our churches.

On the way to Omaha’s Eppley Airfield is the Open Door Mission, a Gospel Rescue Mission that meets the basic needs of the homeless and provides life-changing programs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This place never closes, as it serves more than 300 people daily with emergency temporary housing, long-term rehabilitation, recovery programs and transitional housing. At Open Door Mission, we sorted used clothes, stocked a free thrift store and ate lunch with homeless women and children.

We also went to Release Ministries, which resides inside the Douglas County Youth Jail, behind towering fences topped with coiled barbed wire and razorblades. This is where Chaplain Ron reaches out to incarcerated high-risk youth who are in the Juvenile Justice System. Through prayer, Bible study and mentoring, Chaplain Ron, a former inmate himself, ministers to young men and women with the goal of turning their lives around. Before I went on my first-ever mission trip last weekend, I envisioned homeless adults, but not homeless babies. There are homeless babies in North Omaha. I held them, fed them, talked to them, played with them, strolled them and danced with them. I even sang to them....

If you or your church group would like to learn more about Urban Plunge, please call 402-592-8332 or visit www.urbanplunge.net.
　
2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email
pauladamon@iw.net and find her on Facebook.

I'm giving it all away – the rest of the story

The week after I signed up to be an organ donor, a letter came in the mail from the Department of Public Safety.

Fingering the thick envelope, I thought it must be a big thank you with some sort of certificate of appreciation.

Eager to open it, I wondered aloud, "Hm-mm, maybe I am the one-hundredth donor this month and I've won the grand prize."

Since I decided to give away all my organs, I had been floating on a cloud of satisfaction, knowing that I could help as many as 60 people.

When my number is up, maybe, just maybe, one of the 16 who die every day waiting for an organ transplant will live.
Wow, did donating my organs make me a wonderful person or what?

I’m no Mother Theresa, but definitely a qualifier for one of the lesser saints. I could see it in lights: "The deceased Paula Bosco Damon enters candidacy for sainthood." Talk about helping others. It doesn’t get any better than this.

In my usual fashion of exuberance over getting real mail in a real envelope that's glued shut, I ripped that baby open. As I quickly read the header "Department of Public Safety, 118 W. Capitol, Pierre, South Dakota 57501-2000," I totally expected praise for my selfless act of generosity.

The letter reads...

Dear Ms. Damon:
Thank you for sending your Organ and Tissue Donor Registry Form. In checking it, I noticed that you had put your doctor’s name in the "Donor's Name" field.

Therefore, I am returning the Form to you, along with a new Form so that you may enter the correct information and return it to me.

Thank you! If you have any questions, please contact me.

Sincerely,
Geneva Barkley
In disbelief, I flipped to the next page and quickly scanned my completed Form. At the bottom, Geneva marked with a yellow highlighter exactly where I had screwed up. The Form reads "Donor's Name," not "Doctor's Name"!

I could not believe it! I had donated my doctors organs, every last one of them, along with all of his tissue without even knowing it!
I donated his heart and heart valves, his lungs and liver, his kidneys and pancreas, his intestines and corneas, even his skin and bones, and I didn’t even ask him.

As every ounce of pride drained out of me, I felt dejected, deflated and disappointed by my silly mistake. I tried to laugh it off –ha, ha, ha. I laughed some more, ha, ha, ha, but I felt so embarrassed. Way to go, Paula.

I had to quickly blame my mistake on something. My eyestrain! That’s it! My job as a writer and editor made me donate my doctor’s organs. Plus, who in the world could read that teeny-weeny 10-point-size font on the Form.

I couldn’t find one of my gazillion pairs of reading glasses and filled it out in a blur. I was so distracted by CNN that it’s a wonder I didn’t donate Wolf Blitzer’s organs.

Prior to receiving this piece of news, I had been strutting around with an interior glow, and outwardly, I was clipping along with gleeful lilt in my step.

Similar to being baptized, confirmed and married, by agreeing to devote my organs had changed me in an indefinable way.

I have learned in life, and in golf, that a do-over can be healthy for your game. So I put on my reading glasses, got out my 4-inch diameter, 3-X power magnifying glass, filled out the Form and mailed it, again. Now, I thought, this time I hope it's official.

(For more information about organ donation, please call 1-888-5-DONATE or 1-888-5-366-2833, or visit www.organdonor.gov.)


2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

It's going to be a great day because I'm giving it all away

There's a note on my driver's license that says, "Donor." It used to say "Eye Donor," but I have graduated to donating all of my organs to someone in need when I kick the bucket. Nothing to lose. Everything to gain.

I know it might sound a little odd, but I'm excited about being an organ donor. I like the idea of someone else seeing better, feeling better or living better when my time comes.

Now that I'm giving it all away, I have a warm fuzzy feeling knowing others will have my heart, heart valves, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, intestines, corneas, skin, bone and/or connective tissue; although, they may not want my heart with its murmur, leaky valve and aneurismal aorta.
　
What made me decide? My brother-in-law Tony is alive today because of an organ donor. That convinced me to be a donor, too.

I went online to organdonor.gov and I learned some amazing facts – like donating my organs, bones and tissue could save or improve the lives of as many as 50 to 60 people. Wow, who would have thought I had that much life in me?

I also learned that at any given time nearly 80,000 people are waiting for organs. Every 13 minutes, a new name is added to the national waiting list and 16 people die every day waiting for organs.

On the website organdonor.gov, I registered with my state's donor registry by printing the South Dakota Resident Organ and Tissue Donor Form. I filled it out and mailed it to Department of Public Safety, Driver Licensing Program, 118 West Capitol Avenue, Pierre, SD 57501-2000. It was that simple!

I printed a donor card at www.organdonor.gov, and with Brian as my witness, I signed it and kept it in my wallet.

If you don't have a Brian to be your witness, ask around: a family member, a friend, the mail carrier, the UPS driver, the garbage man, your next door neighbor, a Jehovah’s Witness at your door, the kids playing street football out front, your Avon lady, the meter reader, your Mary Kay representative or the Boy Scout selling popcorn.

Next, I designated my decision on my driver’s license when I renewed it.

Signing this form means when I die, a donation coordinator will obtain my medical history from my family and conduct tests to see if my organs will work in someone else’s body? Then, all my good stuff - organs, bones and tissue - will go to someone in need. (Yee haw!)

The second best part of this gift of life is that it will not cost me a penny, since all organ donation expenses are covered by the transplanting geniuses. I am not cheap, but I like a good bargain.

Every day is a great day, knowing my organ donor status is marked on the bottom right-hand corner of my driver’s license. Is yours?
　
(For more information about organ donation, please call 1-888-5-DONATE or 1-888-5-366-2833 and follow the prompts.)

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

It's gotta hurt so good to be real

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. – George Eliot

At the risk of looking tacky, I'm thinking about putting up my Christmas lights in October, while temperatures are pretty close to perfect.

With the mercury rising to about 65 degrees by day and dipping to only 48 or 50 in the evening, I could decorate the whole house in Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless shirt.

Since the sun does not set until 8 p.m. or so, I'd have all day to twist garland, tie bows and string lights, while sipping lemonade and wiping sweat from my brow.

Why not? Retail stores are stocked for Christmas, and I heard holiday music on the radio the other day. I even thought I saw jolly old Saint Nick on TV. No, wait a minute...that was former Senator Tom Delay in his jump suit on Dancing with the Stars.

Every year at this time, as each day slips by, I think about how I should be dragging out boxes marked "XMAS."

But then I wonder how will I get into the spirit of Christmas if I have to douse myself with bug repellent before venturing outside.

It's just that stringing holiday lights in the warmth of long harvest days seems way too painless for me.

In my opinion, it has to hurt to be genuine holiday decorating.

When is the right time to decorate, you ask? Well, let me count the ways.

You know it’s time to put up outdoor decorations when...

You anticipate spending four hours or more fumbling around in cheerless darkness searching for every gosh darn plastic wreath and all those little hooks to hang lights from the eaves.

You put on three or four layers of thermal clothing, you can hardly walk, fall down, can't get back up and cry for help.

Your Christmas cards shatter when you accidentally drop them.

Your nose is running and it takes four blocks to catch it.

A glacier begins to pass by your house.

Your grandmother's dentures chatter all by themselves.

You actually don't mind spilling your cup of coffee all over you lap.

And you immediately regret waiting until the cold dark reaches of December to decorate.

Even after all of this, you know for certain it’s time to put up your outdoor decorations when you have an unexplainable feeling of peace as you string lights, tie bows, hang wreaths and so on....

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.

Finding my way to Saint Eusebius

MapQuest takes me along I-80 from Indiana, east past Youngstown, Ohio, and then onto Pennsylvania Highway 38. I turn right on Emlenton Clintonville Road, left on Main Street and onto Main Hill Road, which becomes Queenstown Road. I veer left onto PA 68, which becomes Clarion Street and left again on East 2nd Street.

I am trying to find Saint Eusebius Cemetery in East Brady, Pennsylvania, where my parents are buried.

On my way through the Allegheny Mountains, I experience recurring bouts of grief. This is the closest physically I will be to my parents since their ashes were transported here from California a little more than a year ago. This is my first visit.

East Brady is an unassuming little town in Western Pennsylvania, hidden away down several winding roads. It possess all the amenities of not-so-remote places. Quick shops, pizza places, bars and beauty salons busily line Main Street, which skirts a mountain ridge along the broad and meandering Allegheny River.

Not far from here, my dad and mom were born: Dad in Rimersburg, Pennsylvania, Mom in Punxsutawney. It is in this area they went to school, married, started our family, and this is where they wanted to be buried.

As I look for signs for the cemetery, I imagine every adult child at one time or another doing this: searching for that final resting place of their parents.

After getting lost, backtracking, stopping for directions and calling my uncle for the exact location, I finally arrive at Saint Eusebius Cemetery, a medium-sized stretch perched on a hillside with pastoral views below.

Once inside the iron gates, and finally locating their plot, I slowly read their names, dates of birth, dates of death and cannot imagine how 85 years of life passed through them so quickly.

I kneel as close as I can get to their headstones, stroking their names, running my fingers along the rough edges of the granite marker. It is now clear that this is where they had been journeying to all along and I am overwhelmed.

I have traveled to this place more than 1,000 miles from my home in South Dakota.
I want them to see me, a dutiful middle child of six, paying homage to all their work in bringing me life.

I want them to see me here, missing them while honoring their wishes to be placed side-by-side near where they started life. I am here.

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a national award-winning columnist. Her columns have won first-place in National Federation of Press Women, South Dakota Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. In the 2009 South Dakota Press Women Communications Contest, Paula's columns took three first-place awards. To contact Paula, email pauladamon@iw.net, follow her blog at www.my-story-your-story.blogspot.com and find her on Facebook.