Wait and Participate
Dear Friend,
I’m sitting on the back porch in Short Pump. Back home.
It’s chemo week.
Already? Yes, already.
And yes, I plan to do chemo round eleven and see how it goes. Round ten went so well, and by well I mean I didn’t wake up a single morning feeling even a little nauseated, and I was largely able to keep off the ondansetron/Zophran. I felt well. It may have partly been a function of going and being slow and taking long walks in the Nelson County mountains and valleys in the middle of the most pleasant October leaf, deer, and bird season I can ever remember, or it may have been because I was feeling well that the October leaf, deer, bird season was the most pleasant I can remember. I’m not sure if it really matters which led to which. What matters is that last round went well enough that I’ll do it again this week and wait to see what happens, with continuing hope that MLTF continues to rest peacefully, but also letting go of all expectations.
Here is what I notice from the back porch this afternoon. The bluebirds have come out of hiding. I am told the bluebirds frequent the feeders more regularly as it gets colder and the protein they get from bugs and spiders and insects is harder to find. It’s not really getting much colder, but yesterday we replaced the summer suet with winter suet - which is packed with dried grub worms - and the bluebirds took about twelve minutes to find them.
Most of the bluebirds, and there are a lot of them, wait patiently for their turn at the feeders. But not all of them. Some (I want to think they are the youngsters who still haven’t quite learned their manners) try to cut in line. Yet nobody yells at them. None of the bluebirds say much at all. Some birds stubbornly hold their places at the feeder. Some yield. But there isn’t a lot of discussion, and I imagine it’s the older ones, especially, who keep their thoughts to themselves, remembering how hard it is to raise respectful offsprings, and not wanting to shame the parents of the unruly teens.
Also, I notice the blue on the backs and wings is far more vivid this year than I remember it being last year. I love that the word vivid comes from the latin word for “to live.” It makes me wonder if the birds or I might be more alive this year than last. Maybe we both are.
Maybe we all are.
I also noticed the huge shadows cast on the tall trees in our backyard by what I think is a red-shouldered hawk as it circled overhead. I can’t say for sure what kind of hawk it is because I only get quick glimpses of the grand, brownish bird, and only rarely, when it enters, and is then quickly swallowed up in the branches of the Leyland Cypresses. But before that, the shadow was giant and fast and marvelous as it skipped across the leaves, and I honestly don’t care to solve the mystery of the particular type of hawk. It’s better not to know some things. Better not to sort them out, I think. I don’t think that’s my work, anyway.
I’ve been thinking a less about last week, more about today, and almost not at all about the weeks to come. I’ve been looking outside sometimes, and inside of myself at other times. I have been wondering if part of true wisdom might be balancing the turning outward and the looking inward. It’s so easy for me to lose perspective and to quiver in fear and even despair when I look only outside and all I can see is chaos. I wonder if that might be precisely the time to turn inward. To consider less what is happening in the world of circumstances and to consider more what is happening in the world of my soul, and where I may have left a window open for chaos to slip in.
It’s not easy work. It takes time, and there is no guarantee that answers will surface. Yet it’s good work when done with honesty and integrity, and accepting help when it’s offered. This little change of perspective from outward to inward, and re-recognizing that the circumstances in which I am living need not cloud my soul has been liberating, even if this is a lesson learned over and over and over, …, and over again.
I even think it’s okay to keep relearning the lesson, and it even changes my perspective on the chaos. I don’t have to like it, but I can be grateful if chaos comes with the reminder to turn inward. And it usually does come with this reminder, but only if, through grace, I hear the gentle whisper,
“Come with me. Let’s go inside, Chris.”
In God, nothing is wasted, I think. Even the thread of chaos can be part of the stunning fabric He is weaving. Even MLTF can be, and likely is, a part of the tapestry of His grand Love universe. Even the incivility that seems to linger in the air these days. I wonder if God takes these things and turns them around on themselves into something far more beautiful than we can imagine, even in our wildest imaginings. That seems to be the pattern. Chaos and death and despair never quite get the final word, do they? Maybe the center is dying, but that need not, indeed cannot be the end of the story. As a number of friends reminded me last week, another center is being born at this very moment, and it will probably be more robust and stronger than the one that expiring. The old center has done its job and beautifully and lovingly and selflessly, and maybe it’s earned its rest. Maybe instead of lamenting its death, I might celebrate its long and illustrious life.
And maybe my job is simply to wait and to participate in the birth of the new center. I truly believe this. I believe it more today than I did last week.
You might wonder what wait and participate means to me. I think it’s pretty simple, really. To wait is to trust. To wait is to turn away from despair and recognize that my version of time almost certainly bears little, or even no, resemblance whatsoever to the reality of Time (if Time is even real at all.) Maybe measurable time as I perceive it gives some hints to what Time really is, but I’m not going to claim to understand it. So I can accept, once again, that there are mysteries that are far beyond my grasp, take a deep breath, trust that something beautiful is being born, remember that births are always painful, and wait.
Participation is a different matter, but I think waiting and participation grew up in the same neighborhood. Maybe even the same street. Participation to me means standing firm in what I know to be God’s prime directive. To love God and to Love my neighbor as myself while waiting. To refuse to let politics, relationships, my country, my ambition, the security of money, a truly noble cause, or even religion prevent me from adapting Jesus’s strategy for participation in his Father’s work as my own strategy. Not through my own determination, of course, but through capital G Grace.
What strategy? This one:
The strategy of Jesus is not centered in taking the right stand on issues, but rather in standing in the right place—with the outcast and those relegated to the margins.
― Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
A few years ago, I heard a friend say he thought it was going to get more and more challenging to follow Jesus. I don’t know if adapting this strategy, through grace, is what he was referring to. At the time I thought he meant something very different. But now I’m less certain.But if this is what he meant, I think he was spot on.
I think there are many who will find Jesus’s complete and total rejection of the notion that some lives matter less than others to be almost utterly intolerable. They certainly found it intolerable two thousand years ago. Why would it be different today?
But I want to believe, through surrender to Grace, I’m here for more and more challenging. I hope I can stay the course when the challenges come, and I think they are certain to come, often from the most unexpected places. But I also wonder if there might also be some unlikely allies. I hope so. I think so.
How might you feel about waiting and participating, too? It might get lonely, and it will certainly get more difficult, and I think your walk will be, well, different. Fuller. More real. As will the lives of those around you, especially those who have been told to carry their shame to the margins, and to stay there. Lives will be different, I think, not only off in some distant someday and in some faraway place. But also today and right here.
This is a both…and proposition.
And yes, I believe that even more today than last year, last week, or at any other point in my life.
Oremus,
Ć
P.S. I miss you like crazy.
This is so beautiful and so ripe with wisdom I find myself wanting to pick it from the vine and devour it. You are a beautiful soul my dear friend. Thank you for being so bold as to share your wisdom and wonder with all of us.
I needed this today, on a cold, bright fall morning here in the mountains. I especially liked this sentence and have saved it to help me get through days that seem impossible.
“To consider less what is happening in the world of circumstances and to consider more what is happening in the world of my soul, and where I may have left a window open for chaos to slip in.”
My soul thanks you.