Since the last post here, I have been wrapped up in the business of life. And at the same time, I've felt awkwardly removed from it. This week there were the moments of being born and of dying all around me. Lots of my friends are having babies. This week there are three. Count it. Three. And last week my grandpa died. It felt like a lot of things beginning and ending and in general just passing by.
So you know what happened with things like paperwork or NOT friendly parents at conferences (who ask me to explain that ONE question on that ONE test I wrote 5 years ago....)? All of it was put in perspective and in its place in 2 seconds flat.
Some things matter. Some things so DON'T that it's almost laughable. It's good practice for the times when life feels more ordinary. The air clears faster. But this may just be a sign of the times, or the recognition of growing up. Like REALLY growing up. I feel this week that I have really lived. And, as usual, my head cleared a little more when I thought about things through quotes. Things like...
'When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate and when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.' - Shauna Niequist
'May you live every day of your life.' - Jonathan Swift
'I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.' - Agatha Christie
And of course, forever....
'No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.' -Robert Frost
...which makes the living of life, and the recording of it, richer to me. Not everything was sad, even though I referenced a lot of sad moments. Not everything was frustrating, even though sometimes I legitimately felt that way. Instead it was all things, or at least a lot of them, coming down the pike. At the same time. A lot of interesting and lovely and wonderful things are showing up in life too. Really really. I feel grateful and intrigued and astonished by the goodness of God. As far as grandpas and babies and the business of life goes....there we all were. In the thick of it.
Not 85 yet, not some one's grandma, not even some one's mother, not assured of a long life at all, not sure how to process the jolting moment of death, even when you come to expect it. I saw this. And then in contrast, the conversations that anticipate and celebrate new life happened one right after the other too. Beginnings, and finally seeing these babies we've been wondering about. The recognition of nine months, which ave felt, while so excited with my friends for such great life change, sometimes fairly significantly long.
How can decades and months sometimes feel like they're the same thing in the same way?
I live so firmly in the middle. Not just by age, not just because I teach middle school, but by common daily practice. We all do. You say hi and good bye to daily tasks and thousands of people throughout the course of the year and they say it back to you. And it's generally NOT hi for the first time and good bye for the last. Not like death and birth. But those things live closely anyway. I think people are delusional if they think they don't. Or at least in real and true denial.
This week I thought about childhoods starting now (hello, new babies) and childhoods which began in the late 20s for people like my grandpa. Things which belonged to people right now who are old and other decades I know nothing about. I know, I know, of course my weird little mind thought of it like that. But what am I supposed to do? Deny the comparative thought? It comes to me and I do wonder. About lots of things. Entire lifetimes. Even though here I am, and happy to be here, in the middle.
Life is big, and sometimes, even when it's relieving to not be so extremely dramatic in the day to day, it is still special and precious and not to only be thought of lightly. That's why I like to celebrate birthdays and why I pray the Psalms and why knowing people who REALLY aren't like me can be rich. And of COURSE why history is interesting. Of course. ever that. I could go on here, but I think you get the idea. Besides, if you and I know each other, conversations of this nature have probably happened in person and gone on for a while.
I was reminded of grace this week, in the form of walking. It made so much sense to me and it hit me in an instant. And it was humbling. To be honest with you (HELLO, conversational mannerism from JTB...ha ha), it made so much sense because I notice how people walk. Do you notice the gait of other people, and how they move and bend and carry themselves from far away? I do. All the time. So this week the compassion and humility of the Christian life, the deep NEED for both things in such a weary and broken world, was explained to me through walking.
I saw myself in this....that's why it got to me. You take one step and you need and receive grace. You take another and you repent. It's a back and forth kind of shuffling movement, as Brennan Manning says 'on clay feet' and you're not exempt from it. Walking is so known to the human condition. Aside from disabilities, it's simple yet complex, and movement literally brings us to new places.
But the idea was that you need grace and you need to repent, as often as you walk using two feet. So often...SO often...the grace is addressed. The wrestling with this is more comfortable. But the repenting part of a transformed life gets overlooked. I needed to repent this week (let's omit the very obvious, incriminating example of it though for the purpose casual anonymity on this blog, shall we?) and I sure didn't want to. And then I heard about moving through life to 'grace' and 'repent', and I was, in a word, undone.
It was very good, but in the way that stretches you and makes you wonder about yourself aside from God. So I guess I'm also saying it can be painful.
Once, in college, in the year I was an RA, we talked about the significance of walking closely. With rabbis like Jesus on dusty trails. In places like Jerusalem. Of course this wasn't my world...and I know far less about Jewish culture in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus compared to others....
But I do know that when you followed a rabbi, you wanted to be so committed and zealous for their teaching that you would have dust on your clothes. Their feet kicked up the dirt behind them and it covered you. It had to. You were walking that closely.
Grace, repentance, grace, repentance, dusty trails, covered clothes.
This 'following the rabbi' reflects an expression from a LONG time ago....one from old, old traditions in rabbinic Jewish culture that I love. I love too how Rob Bell puts it, which is how I heard of this at all, back in the day, in the year I was an RA.
'May you come to be.....a person of love and compassion and truth. A person of forgiveness, and peace, and grace, and joy, and hope. And may you be covered in the dust of your rabbi, Jesus.'
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