accounts receivable. food made with love

hwubby says, grace has invited us to her house for dinner. i say, o yeah i remember her coconut rice, so fragrant. hwubby says, yeah, that's all you remember, food. i say, that's not true, i remember grace is a great person, she has a good and kind heart. hwubby says, wait till you know what's her job at the dental school. i say, what does she do? hwubby says, she's in accounts receivable for twenty-five years. now that really grabs my attention. i have experience in customer service in a newspaper agency, meaning i have to deal with, shall i say, difficult, instead of, irate, customers. and that was when i wasn't so connected with my own true nature. i took it personally. i judged and criticized those people who i thought gave me a hard time for what i thought petty things like, how come my papers are not on my front porch, my coffee is getting cold and i'm not getting my sunday papers and you made mistakes in the bill. now i can see that such situations are opportunities to practice seeing divinity in myself and the other while sorting out the tangle of mundane details.

back to the present. back to grace. so as i am sipping a juice of guava and pineapple and working through chicken, salmon, mushroom sauce over rice - a spread of food that are made with love - i ask grace, your job is kind of like what the president's, if it's not difficult it won't go to your desk, you are the last person on the line, so how do you approach it? in her calm voice and even tone grace says, with a sweet smile, listen, let them talk, and then i pick out pieces, i don't forget the goal is to collect but i want them to pay willingly. she goes on to tell me a case. to cut a long story short, she tries all that she can to move the bill dispute forward, she shows this customer what she has done and what she is going to do in a methodical and thorough manner. and then she says, this bill has been around for a very long time, it may go into third party - meaning collections - and it will damage your credit, why don't you pay it while we work with you to get to the bottom of it. surprise. the customer says yes and hands her his credit card. hwubby says, you let go of any expectation and only focus on helping him. i say, and not letting her eye off the ball as well. and that is the state of equanimity in action.

i slowly chew on the layers of wisdom and pour some more of those fantastic raspberry sauce over a nice and big bowl of ice cream and fruit salad. hunger in the body and soul are satisfied all at once. really you never know when you come in the presence of a great being who live the highest teachings.