What’s a bit of pain and an unsightly red welt when I could help to feed the eaglets? It’s a small price to pay to live amid this natural wonder and beauty in a setting that would resemble a photo in the L.L. Bean catalogue if only we had nice lawn furniture and professional landscaping.
There is a sense that what others do is their business. Although watching and discussing “neighbor TV” is the favorite sport, there is quite a bit of space for living as one wishes as long as you don’t tell others how to live their lives. However, when a great need arises all this independence and isolation vanishes.
About one-third of our students are married; all of them paid the traditional bride price for their tribe and clan. None of them can understand why we in the United States do not do this. When I tell them that paying for a bride in America is not only not part of our tradition, but also could be considered illegal – “We don’t pay for people in America; we outlawed that in the 1860s.” – the students here are appalled.
How powerful is this need to see with our own eyes, to feel, to taste, to hear, to smell. Though the aural evidence of the presence of peepers was overwhelming, a sound I’ve welcomed every spring of my life, the urge to actually see one and – better still – to hold one for a few seconds was strong. It was strong enough to compel me to get my shoes and jeans soaking wet in the chill of a spring evening.
As I contemplated in awe the beauty of the little girl’s innocence, a horrifying thought suddenly came to my mind: “where are her parents?” I was not the only one to wonder where they were; within seconds the little child also realized that she was alone in the midst of strangers. Immediately the smile was erased from her face, and I she began to yell “Mommy, Mommy!”
As I said the words and moved my hand in the familiar shape of the cross, something caught my eye. One of the first grade boys seated in the second row was moving his arm with mine. His face was scrunched in concentration, his little fingers shaped just as mine were, his arm also tracing the shape of the cross through the air. He was mimicking me.
I saw it again yesterday. Side by side in the Lansing State Journal’s obituary section, three separate obituaries announced that no services were planned for the departed. One said this was in accordance with the deceased’s wishes. The others were silent on the reason. Since I am in the “service industry,” as it were, I began to wonder about this.
For many years I’ve been writing essays that start with simple moments of modern life and wend their way to matters of faith. And what a hypocrite I’ve felt each time I’ve written about reconciliation. And here’s why: Since 2000, with the exception of one phone conversation when she had by-pass surgery, I haven’t seen or spoken to my sister nor have I made an effort to do so.
On Maundy Thursday we had a service in the evening. So I decided to try the Thursday morning spin class instead. Little did I know, the Thursday morning class is “Devotion in Motion,” an hour-long spin class during which the instructor plays praise and worship music and talks about God, using the idea of a bike ride as a metaphor for the spiritual life.
But it was not just the music I loved when I played the cello in those days. I loved the sheer feel of the instrument in my hands. The shape of it, the sheen, the exquisite purfling, the absurdity of that scrollwork at the top, the flaming wood grain on the back, the miraculous way that inert slice of board could burst into the sound of a living voice. I didn’t play it so much as cling to it. That clinging almost undid me.