Song du Jour: "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"

ABBA, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!"

A few years ago I visited a hermitage in the mountains overlooking Big Sur, California. More serious pilgrims than I milled about, bussing dishes from their cabins and then, with nary a glance towards the outsiders, returned to their silence retreat, away from the rest of humanity and its gray noise.

I went into the bookstore, browsed, and grabbed a couple titles that looked interesting, including David Steindel-Rast and Sharon Lebell's Music Of Silence, a paean to the grounding that meditation and solitude bring. In the introduction, Kathleen Norris writes:

"I once met a woman who said she didn't like the island of Kauai, surely one of the most spectacular islands on the face of the earth, because, as she put it, 'there weren't enough places to shop.' Music Of Silence challenges us to recognize the poverty of our affluence in the face of God's overflowing generosity and accept that so much of what we take for granted, even the ordinary rhythm of day and night, has something to say to us. It has nothing to do with shopping. It speaks to silence, not noise. Its power is revealed not in money or consumption, but in the unseen, steady growth of seeds into grasses, plants, trees. It is the voice of nature. God's creation, which remains when the electric power has failed and it is too dark to read."

I brought my books to the check-out counter, where a young monk stood. The place was almost perfectly still; only a few other quiet souls loitered, with only their thoughts to keep them company. The young monk greeted me warmly, looked at my books, then touched his finger his to lips as he moved to the cash register. He was so thoughtful and peaceful that it almost startled me when he said, "Will you please hold on for one moment?"

He disappeared into the back room and was gone for a long time. I was excited. He obviously had seen something in my books or me that inspired special attention; a particularly revelatory author or collection, perhaps, that would unlock the secrets of the universe for me: We've been waiting for you, brother.

When he returned, there was an old monk accompanying him. The old monk smiled and nodded at me. Then he moved to the cash register and said to the young monk, "First you press the 'cash' button, and then hit the 'return,' like this."

I thought about that story yesterday, while waiting for my wife's aunt to visit. She's a nun from Iowa, and she and her longtime nun companion had spent the day shopping. When they got to our house, the shopping nun-aunt couldn't wait to show us what she'd bought.

Turns out she's a lot like my eight-year-old daughter, for whom I bought a dress earlier in the day. She flipped over it, but 20 minutes later she was asking for something else that cost money -- I can't remember exactly what at the moment, because they all blur together -- and I lectured about being in the moment, being thankful for what you have, and not always wanting for the next big thing, because it creates an emptiness in you that you can never fill.

Basically, I told her to knock it off with the gimmes or else.

She was quiet for 15 minutes. Finally, she came up to me. Sheepishly.

"Dad?"

Yeah?

"I was born with the gimmes."

I laughed and picked her up and kissed her all over her face until she laughed and I thought about all the great songs that begin or end with "I want" or "Give me" or "Gimme" and said to her, "Aren't we all, baby?"

Aren't we all.