Bucket List Number 58. First Draft
What's on your bucket list? Is it time for a revision?
Inspired by Andrea Gibson.
Dear Friends,
Do you ever think about the relationship between being and doing? Like a lot of things, I’m not sure that it makes perfect sense to suggest that one is primary - the other derivative, or even that the distinction between the two is that easy to make. Nonetheless, I am coming to believe that it’s an important question to consider. For me. Perhaps for you.
For most of my life, I think I’ve assumed that what I do defines who I am. Or maybe not assumed, but simply accepted this idea that seems to run through almost all of our culture. Am I the only one who answers the question, “Tell me about yourself” with a well-rehearsed elevator speech that includes my professional, my physical, my educational, and sometimes, my financial accomplishments. Sometimes I might share some of the accomplishments of my kids, but even that, if I am being transparent, is actually me saying, “I raised my children well.” Again - a thing that I do, or did.
I’ve been wondering about the danger in this way of thinking. For all of us - and I mean all of us - there is coming a day when we will not longer be able to do any of the things that we have convinced ourselves define us - that give us value. And if-when we can no longer do those things, then well, things can get pretty dark pretty quickly.
It’s not hard to see why this question has my attention.
But what if we are more than what we do? What if there is some intrinsic value in each of us that transcends our list of accomplishments? What if there is something to the idea that we are, all of us, at our very cores, image bearers of the divine, and what if that, all by itself, is enough? What if we didn’t have to spend our time trying to make up for our perceived shortcomings by working harder and doing more? What if we were able to silence the inner and outer critics, and live into our birthrights of image bearers? What might that look like?
A few days ago, a friend shared with me her notion of the difference between an icon and an idol. She was, of course, speaking from a faith perspective and not necessarily, a cultural one.
An icon, she suggests, is a lens through which we look to see something greater, a telescope pointing at the moon, perhaps, while an idol is a thing that demands all of the attention for itself. A telescope with the lens caps attached that screams, “Look at me!” when we dare to rest our gaze on the moon.
Then I wondered if, in this context, what it might mean to be an icon, and what that would look like in a new bucket list.
Here is where I landed. How about you?
Oremus,
Chris
Icon
To be a beholder of sunrises, and only an occasional painter of them. For my occasional paintings to invite children to rise from their beds in the dark so that they might behold, with their very own child-eyes, the day's first sunbeam skipping across the bay. Might hear, with their very own child-ears, that same beam singing, "Hallelujah!" and might sing, "Yes!" in response in their very own child-voices, even as they forget the painting that invited them to rise in the first place.
To be a baker of bread with yeast that comes not from a brick, but from the air that flows into and out of our lungs when we are intentional about noticing our breath, and when we are not. Bread that invites people to hold their yeasty breath once a day and everyday for the rest of their lives until they forget about the bread that invited them to do it in the first place.
To be a curator of un-striving moments that remind friends and enemies alike that some days don't fully exist and that we can, without even trying, mock our very own souls with endless to-do lists.
To be
grace that points to Grace,
love that points to Love,
hope that points to Hope,
beauty that points to Beauty,
and faith.
To be a frameless mirror that reflects the loveliness of everyone who dares to gaze into it.
To be the aroma of a blush-rose that lingers in a young man's downtown loft, softly-silently reminding him to pick up a bouquet of stock and sweet peas from Christopher’s on his way home from his Carytown law office...then quietly slips out early next morning, in the dark, to behold the next sunrise.