Considering lilies
The sky is grey, the air, damp. It is an at-home day. And though I might rather be in someone else's home, an older one perhaps, or grander, or one in the country, I am fairly content to be able to be in my apartment "home" when I was going to be driving today up to Maine, in the rain, and in vain because, as it turns out, my mom is not yet going to her home. Because of the skill of the surgeons and the efficacy of prayer, her back surgery has been a success. But because hospitals are full of sick people, she developed complications that delayed her release to the rehab center. Which delays her getting back home. It's a chain thing. Or a crack-the-whip game, with my sister and me at the end, being flung about, not knowing from day to day where we are going to have to be the next day.
Of course, this is always true. Stability of place and certainty about looming events are all part of the construct we cling to, often to our detriment. The illusion of control and the dream of predictability - how completely alluring and seductive they are, and how we love to fall into their beds! I know I do. I always cry out to know what is going to happen, what is going to happen to me, and what God wants me to do. I want it clear, I want it set, I want it now.
Maybe. And... maybe not, actually. What would I have dared if I had known beforehand what was going to happen? How much would I have shut down for fear of the uncontrollable, and missed because of having set expectations, and lost because of wanting wanting wanting?
I lived with dogs for a long time. You'd think I would have learned about this expectation thing from them. They have hopes, which often aren't realized, and what do they do? They chew a stick, or sigh a sigh, or take a nap. But they don't rail against the elements, or demand to have certainty. They know what we really need to know, which is that now is chock-full of now. Or, to quote Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter: "Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain't somethin' else. This is this".
As plain as the nose on your face, as my grandma Elsie Kranendonk used to say. But of course I can't actually see the nose on my face unless someone or something is mirroring it back to me. So I need someone to remind me to let go. I need someone to tell me again that I can't, even with the best planning or worrying skills on the planet, add a single hour to [my] span of life, and "if then, you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?" (Luke 12:25-26). I need to remember to consider the lilies, how they grow. To go see my mom when I can. To learn my lines for the play. To breathe. Pay attention. Chew a stick. Maybe even chase a squirrel (or whatever the spiritual equivalent of that might be. I'm not quite sure). This morning, my spiritual director wrote to me "not knowing/needing God is the safest place to be."
I am going to rest in that tonight, and listen to the rain, and let it fall, as it will, without my help.