David:      We’re calling this session Cookies, Darts, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But don’t try to figure out that link that connects them. Okay?

Karen:     Yeah, we’re going to do that for everyone. Right?

David:       Yes.

Intro:       Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:      Karen, you did something new this week. You went with me on my cookie rounds.

Karen:     Yes. And you’ve been doing these cookie rounds for, I don’t know, seven or eight years.

David:      A long time.

Karen:     First time you’ve invited me to go along with you.

David:      Well, I don’t know why it happened, but it did. Cheryl’s cookies, they’re in Westerville, Ohio. They make some of the best cookies in the world. Buttercream and their chocolate chip and their snookie doodles and…

Karen:     Snicker doodles.

David:      Snicker doodles, is that what it is? I like them.

Karen:     But Snookie doodles is kind of cute. And I like the oatmeal and raisin cookies. No one else takes after them the way I do.

David:      Oh yeah, the guy at the UPS store, he likes those too.

Karen:     But anyway, the concept of this was as you made your errand runs, running to the UPS store and going to the laundry and the cleaners and the bank, post office, you would take a box of these cookies along with you.

David:      And I would let the teller say at the post office, pick one or two.

Karen:     Yeah.

David:      I’m not going to leave a whole box there.

Karen:     Choose a cookie. Choose a couple of cookies. You know, sort of what your round was. Well, it’s become traditional now. I don’t know how often you do this, probably three times a year maybe.

David:      More than that.

Karen:     More than that.

David:      I would say probably five times a year.

Karen:     So, the new thing for me was that I don’t generally accompany you on these errand runs, not because I have anything against them or the giving out of cookies. I think it’s a fabulous idea. But I just happened to go with you on this cookie run this year.

David:      You realize what joy this brings to me?

Karen:     Absolutely.

David:      The guy at the UPS store said, “Oh yeah, they’re the best cookies in the whole world.”

Karen:     And this time it looked like each person was able to pick three cookies.

David:      I usually limited to two. And then I slap hands. It’s kind of a fun thing that we have to go.

Karen:     So, I’m your wife and in that way of participant, you usually take our little granddaughter with you. She loves this process. She’s under 10. And so, it’s grandpa with white hair and now suspenders. A new item on your interior dress is code and a little girl. Just an adorable little girl. It’s kind of hidden in this whole box of cookies.

David:      I broke the barrier at the bank yesterday really was the cookie run. With the tellers, they’re always happy if I come with cookies. But I gave one out to Norma. She doesn’t work behind the teller thing. But I saw her, and I said, “Oh, I got cookies today, Norma.” She said, “Oh good, I’ll get one to go with the coffee I just made.” And then while that was happening, the head of that bank.

Karen:     He’s sort of new in that position.

David:      Yeah, he has this window to offer.

Karen:      Yeah, he’s glassed off.

David:      So, what do you have out there, Dr. Mains? Did it’s good you said something because I only have three left. He looked, he said, “Oh, that’s a hard choice.” I said, “You only get one now.” Anyway, it’s fun.

Karen:     You sort of presented the atmosphere and the delight of just being neighborly. And you know, David, I think that this is such an unsettled time for people. And it’s such a long haul and we’re still not out of the COVID thing. It looks like it’s recycling and just gruesome. So, people are tired in ways that can’t be changed right at this moment. So, this cookie gift at this moment in time is really brightening people’s moments or brighten their days.

In fact, I said to someone who was mask behind a counter, I said, “Are people crankier during this time?” And she looked up to heaven, rolled her eyes and just shook her head. “Yes.”

These customer service people have been dealing with people’s angst and things are unhappy at home for many people, much more than usual. And so that gets projected onto strangers. So yeah, it’s a time to really look for those little gifts that we can give in special ways to people.

David:      I put it in a scripture here.

Karen:     Oh, good.

David:      Let your light shine before men, said Jesus, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Now, it isn’t always that it gets to that level of praising my Father in heaven, but sometimes it does.

Let’s talk about now the darts, cookies, darts, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Okay? I did something new this last time I went downtown with you. We live in West Chicago, which is…

Karen:     …27,000 people on the far west side of the suburbs.

David:      Yes. I would say it’s over half non-white.

Karen:     52% most of it. I would say the majority, if not the whole 52% is mostly the Hispanic community. I don’t think we have a lot of Asians in the community and very few black people. Immigrant populations sort of gather. And this will be as natural as can be…

David:      Yes.

Karen:     …where there are people of their race or country that have families who have already settled or immigrated to the States. They’ve got their green cards, or they’re getting their US citizenship, or they’ve gotten their citizenship. So, we have a lot of Hispanic people who live in West Chicago. In fact, this is one of the reasons we moved here 40 some years ago. Moved out of the city, we were so exposed to multicultural things that I just didn’t want the kids growing up in an all-white Anglo-Saxon community. And they went to school here. Jeremy, our youngest, was born with international genes. He picked up Spanish in high school. Just loved it. He was wonderful. So paid off in a lot of ways for us.

David:      This last weekend they had the first multicultural.

Karen:     Food festival. West Chicago Food Festival.

David:      And we decided that we would attend and we did. It was fun.

Karen:     There was a big loud, noisy band gathering people. And it was, I don’t know, maybe eight, nine, 10 food trucks. Now that’s not a big festival compared to some of the other things that were going on. But it was a start. And so, we kind of got to communicate with some of our Hispanic neighbors or people who live in our community. And it was nice.

David:      And you and Joel, he was with us. Joel was our son. You said, “Follow us.” And you went walking right into a bar. Now I don’t normally go walking into bars. But I either had to wait outside and knowing you guys are talkers. I would be outside for a long time, or I had to plow it.

Karen:     This may have been my second or third trip into a bar. Joel and I realized that you can live in a community and not really know your community very well. I mean, you have your work is in another place. Your friends may be scattered all over and it’s just easy not to get to know your community. West Chicago doesn’t have anything dramatic. You have to find what is good and beautiful and wonderful about this community beneath the surface of it.

Now they’re working hard to improve that. So, he and I were exploring downtown before this little trip that we took and said, “Well, let’s just go into some of the places we’ve never gone into.” And one was the neighborhood bar. So, I went in with Joel and we sat down at the counter, and I said, “What can I order here?” And so, he ordered a mixed drink for me that did not have a lot of alcohol. And I have never done this before in my life. But was for the purpose of sitting at the counter with the people who were sitting at the counter. And sure enough, we struck up conversation with them. And there was a lot of joy and happiness and getting, you know, “Where do you live and where are you from?” And, you know, just sharing on a superficial level. But I began to see why people would go into bars. I mean, you go into bars, you make connections. There was a shuffleboard on the floor in the next room, which was very empty.

David:      And also, a dart game.  Which is where darts come in.

Karen:     Where darts come in. So, we dragged you back with us. We figured that you needed to.

David:      Well first of all, you never said anything about going to the bar. And secondly, you never said when we go to this festival, we may walk into the bar.

Karen:     Well, because we hadn’t planned on it, but we were downtown at the festival. So, we went into the bar which was just full this time because they had this food festival going on in the streets.

David:      And there were probably 35 people at the place where the bar itself was.

Karen:     In that room. It was a narrow room. Yeah.

David:      But in lots of people and they were very friendly. And there was a dart game. And while we were playing the dart game, a woman came up.

Karen:     It was an electronic dart game. So, I’m throwing darts and thinking “How did I get into this?” I came in the bar was curious and interesting. It was a demographic study in a way. And behind me is this woman who’s cleaning and she’s bustling around and wiping down tables and I said “Well, thank you so much for cleaning up here. Do you work here?” She said No.” She had a cleaning business, and she did clean in this bar. I said, “Well where else do you work?” And so, she named a bunch of the communities around and the corporations or the little individual places she cleaned for and she made the comment to the effect of “I just love to clean.” Well, that’s to me an invitation to conversation. I said “Well, tell me about that.” And she used the word, “I like to just be a blessing to people.”

Now that’s church language as far as I’m concerned. So, I said “Well are you believer? Are you faith based?” And she said, “Yes, I am. I am a believer, and this is one of the ways I serve God in the world by doing this kind of work.”

So, we kept on talking and found her to be absolutely delightful. I thought it was such a wonderful application of a faith life.

Now, think about that-cleaning up after other people. And so, we had a lovely conversation in the midst of this. My turn comes up regularly. We went on and on. I’m throwing three darts at the electronified dart board not carrying much where they go but I don’t want them to go all over the wall. I want them to hit the dart board.

David:      Which several of yours didn’t. They were behind the radiator, but you didn’t hit the bonus pocket. Which had a bullet’s chew.

Karen:     Way over that. I don’t care if I win or not. No personal inclination to achieve a dart board.

David:      It was a fascinating experience for me. And I thought I’m not going to start a church here in West Chicago but if I were interested in doing that, I think I would go visit a bar.

Karen:     Visit all of the little shops and openings there that are open in town.

David:      Maybe even should have taken a box of cookies.

Karen:     Next time you take a box of cookies to West Chicago people. Just limit it for right there.

David:      So, we still haven’t gotten to Arnold Schwarzenegger. We’re talking the darts and before that we’re talking about cookies and we’re talking about good deeds that lead people to know Jesus. This is a story. There are several stories. I chose this one because it kind of fits the topic of where we’re going.

I had the opportunity. I’ve been on radio for a number of years and then I had the opportunity of also going on television. There was a Chicago station that afforded that for me on a daily, Karen, and Monday through Friday.

Karen:     Half hour.

David:      Half hour every day and they would take care of most of the costs of that which was very interesting. And as I was thinking about it my teeth were not straight and I thought I should get my teeth fixed. I need to check this out and see how long it would take. I ended up with an orthodontist and established a friendship with him. In fact, he came down to the television studio and just watched what was going on. Just a really nice person.

Karen:     You started meeting with him I think once.

David:     Well, you know what I did that because he would ask me questions. He knew I was a minister, and he would have all this stuff in my mouth. He would say “And now I don’t understand sin. What is that?” And said, We need to have breakfast together.”

Karen:     We need to stop meeting like this right?

David:      That’s so funny. That’s funny. Can’t go on meeting like this. Anyway, we established a time and over a period of time which climax in the story now with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was more and more interested. He was not a church person. He had been burned some about religious things earlier in his life. And when he called, he said “They’re still playing a film down in the town.” He was in Wheaton, which is a nearby suburb two away from where we were. And he said, “I wish we could see it with me.” He said, “I always cry at this one part.” And I said, “Well, okay. What time is it?” And there wasn’t that much time. “Let me call Karen. I’ll call your wife we’ll see if they’ll join us.”

So, I called you and you said, “Fine.” And you came down. And in the meantime, he called his wife and she had already seen that.

Karen:     Didn’t want to go again.

David:      I couldn’t get back to you to tell you, but we went to it, and I didn’t tell you that it was an Arnold Schwarzenegger film called Terminator 2 because my friend said he always cried when he saw this picture. Probably we should just a simple synopsis of what Terminator 2 is about.

Karen:     Well, the Terminator does star Arnold Schwarzenegger. And the Terminators are machine like humans that are populating the earth. And one mother has a child who has destiny has been prophesied over their child. And so she’s trying to protect him from these killers actually really is what they are. I can’t remember the twist, but this Terminator becomes a protector to this child. There’s a line in the film that she says “He’s more of a father to you than any real father ever could be. He won’t abandon you he will not leave you behind he will always be with you.” And I think that’s where your friend.

David:      No, it’s a little later where the Terminator actually gives his life.

Karen:     Oh, that’s right. The Terminator gives his life for the child to preserve the child and is destroyed. For people who understand this it is almost a Christ figure. It’s certainly Christic. So, I went to the film just to see what was happening. And when we went out to eat, I said, “Well…”

David:      … afterward we want a debrief.

Karen:     I said “It feels to me like you have a deep father hunger and that’s why you’re moved emotionally by this film.” And that opened up then a conversation about yes, indeed he had a father hunger. And then our true father even when we haven’t had inadequate fathers or fathers have not been there or they’ve been abusive, our true father is the perfect father. And he will never be quoting the lines from “he will never leave us nor forsake us.” I mean it’s just an extraordinary parallel.

David:      And his whole life has changed in such a phenomenal way.

Karen:     Yeah.

David:      It was wonderful. He is now a churchman.

Karen:     He’s a leader in his church.

David:      He’s been here for years. We still meet. I mean, I would say every month and a half we have breakfast together. We talk about things a bit. It’s just extraordinary.

Karen:     This is a simple thing to do. I think that’s our point. Our stories are a little bit long, but we can all offer to be with people when they’ve seen something that moves them and go visit whatever it is that they want us to see or bring along the way or whatever simple thing it is. These are showing our gifts that God has given to us to the world.

David:      I would say there’s simple acts of kindness quickly open people to who you are and eventually hopefully to what you believe. That kind of encapsulates in a sentence what it is we’re sharing.

Let’s say it again, okay? I have found that simple acts of kindness quickly open people to who you are and eventually hopefully to what you believe simple acts of kindness.

I want to add real quickly, Karen, that I have some negative stories of bars that I had to go into to get people out of. And I know that there are people who have negative stories regarding alcoholism. So, we’re not saying this is what you need to do, we’re just trying to demonstrate that there are times when reaching out to people in kindness get most beneficial to the other individual and to oneself. But basically, concentrate in terms of what we said on the simple acts of kindness. Okay?

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