Pruning

I set out to do some yard work on Saturday. I dug out the gloves and clippers, and prepared for some pruning, but was totally startled by the amount of vines covering part of our backyard.

How had it gotten this bad?

At first, it was almost comical how quickly and completely the vines had grown and covered so much ground. Franken-vines. It was funny until it was not -- until I realized that I had to put down the clippers and just start pulling with my hands.

How had I let these vines take over?

I was busy. How was I supposed to have time for things like pruning vines?

Of course that sounded hollow. I thought of Marie Howe's poem entitled "Magdalene -- The Seven Devils" and that first line: "The first was that I was very busy..."

We were all busy. It wasn't just me. But that just sounded like I was looking for someone else to blame, and that wasn't the question that was bothering me. I kept wondering -- as two grasshoppers startled me by landing on my leg -- how had I let it get like this? 

Ouch. My arm had run up against thorns, and I had to bring the clippers out again. I wasn't expecting thorns. I thought we were only dealing with one species of vines here...

I wasn't quite expecting the answer that came to me, a few hours later, as I was finishing up. I slowly became aware of the work I had done, and aware of the fact that if the weather hadn't been so cool, I never would have been able to get all of it finished. Thank God for the weather. 

Ah. There it was. Gratitude. Maybe I was busy. Maybe some of those things were worthwhile. But -- the grateful person takes care of what she has. A grateful person takes time to pause in gratitude and prune away those things that threaten growth and life. More gratitude means fewer vines and thorns.

I stepped back. The vines were bagged. The yard was clear again. Maybe it was a little better than before, actually. I was sore and tired and a little concerned that the poison ivy had gotten on my face (it hadn't). But I resolved that there would be more gratitude in my life. Time to begin again. 

The Waiting Room

Earlier in the week, I was in the doctor's office. Compulsively early as always, I waited while two people went ahead of me. The nurse at the front desk asked them a few questions before escorting them to their appointments. They probably assumed I wasn't listening (which, by the way, is always a bad assumption), and so they asked some questions in front of me.

She asked a woman in her early fifties, "How many pregnancies have you had?"

The woman said with a half-smile, "I had two babies."

"So... two pregnancies?" the nurse corrected.

The woman's smile disappeared, as if it were a sobering thought to realize that the two answers could have been different, and she answered the question directly this time. "Yes. Two pregnancies."

What she said was a piece of medical history, a fact necessary for her file.

What I heard was, "I still think of my grown children as my babies." 

The nurse's fingers typed. "Ok. You can take a seat now. Thank you."

After her, an older man came in, probably in his sixties.

"Back pain."

"How long has it been hurting?"

"I fell about six months ago... And I've been getting older..." He tried to laugh when he said he was getting older, but no laughter came, and the nurse didn't find it funny either.

The nurse spoke aloud, as she typed on the computer, "Back pain. Six months."

What he said was simple. What I heard in the pause between the end of that sentence and the beginning of a laughter that died in his throat was, "Getting old is kind of scary and frustrating." 

You get what I'm saying, right, even if you think I over-analyze? That space between what we say and what we mean, how we speak and how we feel -- that's the space you'll find if you wait long enough.

Limitations

I think we have a funny way of looking at commitments. On one hand, we over-use the word "yes." We hate to say no. On the other hand, we seem to have secret some secret fantasy to pull an Eat, Pray, Love and run off to some other land and forget all of our obligations altogether.

My dad always says that life is a balance, and there certainly is a tension here that must be balanced. On one hand, at times our indifference leads us to be afraid of commitments, afraid of consequences, and we refuse to act at all. On the other hand, sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that we can do it all and have it all and we wind up scattered and unable to simply be. 

Whenever I feel a pull to either extreme, I somehow wind up at my favorite bagel shop. I can't quite explain it, but it's such a wonderful slice of humanity (bagel puns? really, Barbara?) in a world that so often seems un-human.

On Sunday morning I order a Black Russian bagel with cream cheese and a medium coffee and I sit in the corner. I start thinking about the past week. And over the past few weeks, a sneaking suspicion has come over me that maybe this is where we figure out life -- not in running away from it, either by too many obligations or by avoiding obligations, but in really living in the moment. In tasting and savoring the moment -- seriously, those are the best bagels.  In smelling the morning coffee. In listening to the banter of those behind the counter.

And that's all. The experience of the bagel shop is limited to tastes and smells and banter. But that's life, isn't it? It's made up of those little things. It is limited to what we see and hear in the moment; truth comes through the senses, and our senses are limited to a very particular time and place. It is necessary to embrace our limitations, embrace our little piece of time and space, in order to truly know ourselves and to know what things we ought to say "yes" and "no" to. What are the things we need to say "yes" to, even if they are difficult, in order to bring us to true freedom? What are the unnecessary things we need to say "no" to, in order to acknowledge our limitations and truly give not just many things but ourselves? Maybe it's in these little, limited experiences that God creates a space our hearts to begin to answer these questions.

Speaking of which -- I think this is where I have to end my post. A Dallas Cowboys fan has walked in to the room, and the banter has resumed. I think I will enjoy watching what happens next.

Success

As my birthday is coming up, I started thinking about success and what it means and whether or not I have lived a successful life thus far. And upon reflection, I think I've decided that I am still unclear on what success looks like, but I think I have a pretty good working definition of failure.

A few weeks ago, I hopped on the metro and was unable to find a seat. Metro travelers know that this is a tragedy. I had not had breakfast yet, so I was already feeling a little weak, but I decided that even this moment of mini-tragedy could be a moment of love. The Catholic saying is "Offer it up" but sometimes we say it stoically, as if means the same thing as "Suck it up," and it can't be that. "Offer it up" means to love fully in the moment and to ask God to help you love even the worst parts of that moment. So I stood.

And as I stood, I noticed something. There was a young man with a secret smile, a smile to himself that he probably thought no one else had noticed. My curiosity was piqued -- what was he smiling at? I followed his gaze and saw a young mother with a baby girl. There was joy in her face as she interacted with her baby, even though she was standing and had not gotten a seat. My eye went back to the young man's smile which betrayed a hint of desire, as if he wanted to be a father himself.

Another young woman saw the baby and smiled, but couldn't keep her smile to herself. She started playing with the baby, making goofy faces, unaware of anyone else watching. The mother and she enjoyed a moment of laughter and the baby laughed before the other woman got off at another metro stop.

Another older woman saw the baby, too, and I saw again a secret smile from someplace far away, perhaps from a memory of her own baby.

Then something wonderful occurred. An older gentleman, about three rows behind the mother, suddenly noticed her and stood up, gesturing and offering his seat. He had a huge smile on his face as she gently and politely accepted. He knew he had done something good, and was proud of it, as if that may be the most important thing he would do all day. It was one of those moments on the metro where you want to cheer for all of humanity, for the simple ordinary heroic action of offering up a seat out of love for a stranger and her baby. But when I turned around to cheer with someone else, there was only a sea of faces buried in cell phones and ears plugged with iPods. There was no one to cheer with because no one around me had noticed.

I don't think I know what success is, but now I know what failure is. Failure is to miss the moments of humanity and joy that are surrounding us every day... "We had the experience but missed the meaning..." that is failure.

Success must be something like really living.

Walking on Water

For the past few weeks, there has been an image from the Gospel stuck in my head. It is Peter, walking on water, suddenly sinking, desperately crying out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus, reaching out his hand – “Why did you doubt?” We wonder at Peter’s lack of faith in Jesus, but we also wonder, “What made Peter think he could walk on water in the first place?”

What kind of friendship is this that draws us out into the deep, that calls us to ask, “Can I walk with you, Jesus?"  What made us think we could walk on water in the first place? Why do we feel called further into the deep? What kind of friendship pulls us into the storm, onto the water – and then seems to ask us to remember who we are, to know ourselves for the first time? We cannot walk on water. Suddenly we become aware of our vulnerability, aware that we are in space and time and subject to the laws of gravity – and we call out to Christ to save us.

About a week ago, I was walking home from work on my usual route from the metro stop. I have passed a certain tree every day for the past six months. It’s an ordinary tree, and underneath is a faded picture of a teenage boy with the words, “We will miss you, John.” When I first saw the sign, I wondered about John and then forgot about him.

But on this particular day, I saw two young girls under the tree. I ignored them at first, thinking of the rent that was due and the bills to be paid and things I needed to do. I heard one of them say, “I don’t really cry anymore…” And suddenly I heard something – not her voice, which I had barely noticed, but the silence that followed, which seemed to call me out of my daily routine and into their moment. I recognized that silence – it startled me because I recognized it as clearly as if I had recognized a friend’s voice. It was a silence bursting with meaning and vulnerability. In a flash I saw it – the tree, the conversation, the boy – it must have been the anniversary of his death or his birthday, and the two friends sat there alone, remembering together. I turned back, as if out of my daze and into reality, and saw her placing flowers by the tree.

There was this silence between these two girls that seemed to wake me from my daily routine and call me. A silence that calls – that sounds contradictory, but that’s the only way I can describe it. I could do nothing but pass by in silent awe and say a prayer for them. And in the silent awe I became aware of a deep longing, a strange desire to walk on water, to pass the invisible membrane separating strangers from each others’ woundedness. I couldn’t, of course. But the longing for something more was there, even as I wanted to look away from the suffering.

And I wondered at it. And it got stuck in my head so that days later, I still wondered at it. Why should such an experience make me feel a longing for something more? Something more than my house, my job, my family and friends? What more could there be? I wondered again “What was it that made Peter think he could walk on water? And this time, thinking of all that I had, I wondered, Was it a lack of gratitude for what he already had that made him think he could walk on water?”

I don’t think so. It might have been ungratefulness if he were asking for something concrete – a new house, a new job – but what he asks Christ for is something more than safety, more than security, for a closeness to Christ’s love that goes beyond space and time. And it might have been ungratefulness except that I don’t think it was really Peter that was asking. He does ask, of course, but Christ is the one on the water, pursuing Peter. Have we ever thought of the love of Christ in this way – not something that we grasp for and earn, but something desperately pursuing us, beckoning us to desire more than safety and security, showing us that we can ask for and long for more? Something beckoning us to reach beyond our safety and silence and into the presence of strangers and truly encounter them?

I wish I had a nice, tidy ending to the story – I realize that these are very unfinished and unpolished thoughts – but maybe some thoughts take a long time to be polished and maybe I'm just arriving where I started and knowing the place for the first time. I find that maybe all I have is what Peter had – a small, vulnerable, weak voice that cries in the middle of the storm – Lord, save me as I realize that alone I can’t walk on water. And maybe the response is the same for us as it is for Peter – an outstretched hand and a gentle voice, “Why did you doubt?”