All Saints: Generous Heart, Columbus
“In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a pocket handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints…
Many people think of saints as plaster saints, men and women of such paralyzing virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or did an evil deed their whole lives long. As far as I know, real saints never even come close to characterizing themselves that way.”–Frederick Buechner originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words .
Buechner reminds us that being a saint is less about ourselves but more about the way God, for some reason, works through and redeems the mess of our lives. Today On All Saints Day I cannot help but remember “Columbus,” someone well known by all in the recovery community in Little Rock, Arkansas, only by his first name. Every year, usually early in the morning on the birthday of your sobriety, you got a phone call from Columbus. You waited in anticipation for that call, celebrating one more year of an alternative life with someone you knew only over the phone lines.
Columbus’ wife of forty-six years would leave him three times before he went into his last rehabilitation, after many DWIs and missed work, and days when she admitted not knowing where he was. Columbus died in the thirty-eighth year of his sobriety and was credited with having led to sobriety thousands of men and women all over the world.
Columbus made 15,000 calls a year and almost half a million calls before his death. He also called people he knew were no longer in recovery and told them he cared about them. Many people say they returned to recovery because of Columbus.
Columbus’ wife described his change when he went into recovery as “truly unbelievable. He became a dedicated and involved father and grandfather after he came so close to losing his family.”
When I hear people wonder what they could possibly do to make a difference in the world, I tell them Columbus’ story: one man with a generous heart, picking up the phone every day, and changing lives with a simple phone call. One day at a time.
This may be the way saints live. They are resurrection people. They know all too well what Good Friday is like. God continues to change them and the world one day, one phone call, at a time.
Joanna. Joannaseibert.com