Last night my husband said to me, “I found a dime today…and a hat.” We have a small thing in one part of my family about finding dimes. My brother and sister-in-law are often finding dimes. It has become a little sign that there is always good lurking around if we have the eyes to see. So when my husband found the dime he remarked that he should call our other dime-finding family members. It could be something evolving in the family DNA.
Today’s Word-a-day-for-Lent is ‘found’. Found is one of those words that almost immediately conjures up an opposite…lost. We have places in most buildings, a place of ‘lost and found’, in which you can search for that one glove left behind, dropped in the hallway or the snow. In order for something to be found, it often needs to be lost first. It happens with objects and with people, with our dreams and our hopes, our intentions and our desires. 

I have to confess to feeling a little lost in the political climate of our culture these days. I feel a bit bumped between pillar and post unable to find a place to rest and allow my heart and mind to find their wisdom, their True North. Perhaps this is just me but maybe you are in the same place. Last night when we were driving to our local high school for caucusing, we came to an almost complete standstill in a line of traffic that stretched as far as the eye could see. The school sits at a crossroads and we could see that the headlights of the cars were forming perfect right angles as lines of cars inched toward the school, east & west, north & south, converging. The clock was ticking and it became clear that the parking lot would already likely be full and so people began pulling over, parking safely along the roads that led to the school. We got out and began walking with determination and a lightness of being toward a place of lost and found.

As we arrived at the school, the lines were long and made up of people of all ages. Babies rested in backpacks and front packs. Toddlers and young children held the hands of their parents. Young adults and older adults stood side by side. There was a climate of graciousness and hope that enveloped us all. Though we might eventually write the name of different people on our ballot, there was a sense that we were all in this together. 

We had been found…found by a spirit of hope, of opportunity, of love for a country that has shaped us and made us who we are. The individual, lifetime losses may have been great among those who waited patiently while volunteers improvised what was clearly a system that had been overwhelmed with people and with promise. But in that place and time we were all a people who had found our commitment and our voice and were determined to be heard. 

Over the next weeks and months there will be many things lost, no doubt. And words will fly fast and furious that will seek to divide us. But at least for last night and in the flow of this morning after, I have ‘found’ a renewed sense of optimism and hope. I found it sitting in a long line of cars re-creating a scene from the movie Field of Dreams…”if you build it, they will come.” And we did. And we will. 

Last night, what was found was worth more than a dime and for that I have a full and grateful heart.