Let's put it this way: I wanted to write about the miracle of ordinary, and at first, a thousand and one things came to mind. I wanted to tell you about all the ways I have come to believe in the holiness of flesh and blood, the glory of the incarnation. I wanted to tell you about e.e. cummings (how should tasting touching hearing seeing/breathing any-lifted from the no/of all nothing-human merely being/doubt unimaginably You?) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (The world is charged with the granduer of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil) I wanted to tell you about how my heart was broken and healed, a hundred times over, by "the touch of the holy once more" (Annie Dillard).
My heart burned. Words tumbled in my head, wrestling to come out first. The idea grew grand. I will write a book. This is a call from God. It is a message to our nation - a call to simplicity of lifestyle during a time of financial crisis.
I did not write them down, and as time passed, I felt the burning no longer. I tried to resurrect them a few weeks ago, but they tumbled into a pile of dry bones.
Silence speaks loudly. In the past few months, ordinary life has been a bane, not a blessing. The expectations placed on me at work have felt oppressive, and the work that awaits me at home has seemed never-ending. Disorder breeds in cupboards, paperwork procreates while I sleep, dust bunnies multiply at an alarming rate. It is a veritable flood of chaos.
I fling aside my goal of a fit, trim body by summer. I toss my dream of writing into the pile of dirty clothes hanging from my grandmother's rocking chair. I grab a bucket, and fight the chaos with all my strength. My bucket has a hole. It is a loosing battle.
This morning, my husband asks me to sit on the back porch with him and pray. Prayer is the last thing I want to do. I can't stop now. I'm in a battle against chaos. I've got to keep bailing. Got to keep moving. I slump heavily into the chair next to him. I cross my arms and scowl like a teenager. Anne, you've got to find those papers today that we need to reapply for the kid's visas. I snap at him. I know. Don't tell me any more things I have to do. If you want to pray, let's pray. He reads a Psalm. I look around and see that the grass is high from all the rain and needs mowing. He prays. I think how I have to move the apple tree I planted last summer to a new position. It is too close to the house. It is my turn. I don't want to pray.
I break my silence. God, I'm not in a good place. God, I am tired of giving. Tired of serving. Tired of cooking and cleaning and vacuuming up animal hair. I am tired of people. I am tired of working. Every where I look there is something or something that needs something from me. I can't relax. I can't stop. My heart is a dirty rag, reeking of anger and bitterness. I can't change the things around me, or remove the things that need to be done. But I can't live this way anymore. Please change my perspective. Please change my heart.
Craig and I are very much alike. We are both busy people, prone to do too much and take on too much. As a result, life often feels chaotic for us. We aren't very good at stopping. After hearing me, my dear husband said, Anne. I am going to tell you what to do today. Right now, I want you to go for a bikeride for 15 minutes. And then I want you to come back and write. I began to cry. I don't want to stop. I don't want to go for a bikeride. I don't want to write. But then again, I do. I do. I looked up, and there, on a nearby rope I had tied to keep the dogs from racing through my flowers, a beautiful yellow bird had landed. Brillliant yellow, with a bit of black.
I have gone on my bikeride. And, in true Anne fashion, I spent my time daydreaming. I daydreamed about how cool it would be to buy the fields behind the college and get grants to turn them into nature trails for children. I wondered who owned them, and how I could contact them, and if the charter school could be involved in planting trees along the trail. More ideas. More projects. More things to do.
I enjoyed the daydream, but when I came home, I tossed it into the wind. I sat down, and turned on the computer. It had been so long I couldn't remember the password to even enter my blog. Eventually, I found my way home, and I broke my silence.
The storm is passed, the air is clear, and I feel much calmer now. My delusions of grandeur are spent. I will probably never write a book. My body will reflect my 45 years of life on this earth this summer. Most days, ordinary life seems a far cry from miraculous. I am humbled by my inability to live out my own ideals.
But here's the thing. Can I extend the same grace to myself that I am seeking to extend to the world? Can I believe that though I am broken and incomplete, shabby in body and soul, I am a miracle of grace? Can I believe that the grandeur of God flames out, like shining from shook foil, from this imperfect family in this insignificant little town in the middle of Kansas? If so, then I can believe, once again, in the miracle of ordinary.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins.
