Convergence

Convergence is the place where God always seems to find me.

That intersection of happenings and thoughts and truth and experience. This is the place where Incarnation is made real to me: in the inter-connectedness of living.

Where the book I am reading echos a conversation which replays a natural law. Or a theme of redemption in a novel reminds me of a Biblical principle which I see played out amongst my children. This epitome, this light-bulb moment is always God calling out to me. It is as if he has been trying to get my attention over the course of several days, and then suddenly I see it! And all things echo this great truth, and my eyes have been opened.

Lately I have had fewer moments of convergence. It has been months, really. I don't necessarily attribute this to God's silence. I'm sure, theologically speaking, that it has more to do with my own blindness. Yet it still doesn't soften the distance that I feel in my soul.

But last week, some things converged, and I have spent days trying to synthesize the inputs into a concise outpouring that could roll from my pen and provide me with a proverb to live with down the line. But the more time that passes, the more my connections grow fuzzy and faint. The faster I write things down, the more solid they seem to be. Now time has done its erosion.

I happened upon a performance of a song that I had not heard before. Leaven Bread by Rain for Roots. The song is a retelling of Jesus' parable of the Kingdom of Heaven being like leaven, working its way through a loaf of bread. And the people in the song (and in the parable; and in life, too) are doing two things: they are working, and they are waiting. They do the work: she kneads the dough; we love the people; we plant the seeds; we care for the poor; we sweep the floor. And then we wait. The dough rises up; the people go on their way to be transformed--or not; the seeds split open in the dirt and bring forth new life--or not; the floor inevitably gets dirty again. We work and we wait. That is it.

And then I bought my kids an old toy I used to play with, a Spirograph. I opened it up and explained to them how it worked, and I got out the open circle and put the football shaped piece inside, and tried to show them the neat design it would make. But I kept getting distracted. I know the principle--that I should keep my pen in the hole and focus on staying in the ridges of the circle. I know my pen will do the work. But I made the mistake of looking at the lines and my eyes balked and my hands swerved and I tried to make the pen go where I thought it needed to go. Rather than trusting the ridges themselves. Rather than holding steady.

And then I was reminded of a poem I read by Malcolm Guite during Lent, and the devotion he had written alongside of it. The poem is about the "uselesness" and the "beauty" of Mary's gesture of anointing Jesus. Then he tells of a mother of a child with an incredible amount of brain damage. He speaks of the mother spending year after year doing the most sacrificial acts of love for a child who cannot and will not be able to respond to them. A child who may not even realize, in fact, that she is being loved. And the woman said that sometimes her mind rebels against this, but she realizes that, like Mary, she is, "pouring out every day the unreturnable love and care that so many in society might think, like Judas, was a 'waste,' but was somehow, in spite of everything, renewing a beauty and a hope."  I can see that in her unremembered and worthwhile actions is the Kingdom of God.

And then I thought of a poem that I had written before, called "Osmosis". (Posted at bottom.) But perhaps I should change the name to "Leaven." My question then--and maybe the question of all of us now--is,"What happens to the love that is unrecognized? The love that isn't noticed? The sacrifices no one sees?" And now, during this quarantine, where the course of my days have very little to show by way of achievement, even if we were to measure relationally, I'm not sure I would have a large sum to offer-- Where does this leave us?

As I sweep my floors yet again today, and gather up more dirty socks, and read another chapter of the book to my children, these acts seem to drift into the ether. They seem to bypass the memory and notice of everyone around me, and yet. . . Who am I? One who believes in the cleanliness of floors, one who attempts to bring order into chaos, one who believes that reading aloud day after day after day will mold the minds and language of my children. I work. And then I wait. Can I toss up all these quotidian acts and call them "leaven"? Can I change the urine-soaked sheets and bite back all the bitterness that rises in my mouth and call it "good"? Can I repeat the directions for the schooling assignment one more time and call this moment "Heaven?" Can I live into this Kingdom of God?

Osmosis

What happens to the love that memory bypasses?

Surely it settles

Deep in the porous belly of our souls

Like sediment

Tangible matter deposited into ethereal walls

Is that it?

Are we born with a void in our middle?

Expectant?

Or are we born whole—

And every slight

Every heavy sigh

Every pain realized in isolation

Chips it away?

Sticks whittled out of a branch

Weapons grafted into our hands

I remember when I realized if I were to go

You would have no memory of me

And the mental scurry:

Panic

Was it worth it?

If no one recognizes it as love

If no one can see it

If you don’t remember the nights I woke and fed you through tears
and held you upright so you could breathe and hid behind your high chair
and peeked around the side just to hear you laugh and how I worried over
every milestone and every sickness and it seemed like I got it all wrong
and took you to the doctor when you were fine and kept you home
when you were sick like that time you had bronchitis and they gave you
breathing treatments and the doctor said, I’m not going to hospitalize him this time.
And I cried driving home, tears of shame because I didn’t know and I never know
and that’s the thing about motherhood—it’s guesswork and estimates and
inference always and always and I held you so close trying to comfort you
for my failings, trying to breathe life to you through the thick hot magma shame in my throat.

But you know nothing of this.

You will grow and remember things 

That have yet to happen

The fights we will have about cell phones

And dating

And what things are worthwhile.

My memory spotty, too.

All those things I don’t remember. 

All that love I received and cannot name.

I pray it worked its way 

Out of my soul

Into yours somehow

Through the work of my hands;

Osmosis.