Thursday, March 27, 2014

Tieing together our lives

I recently read that some people become overwhelmed by the intolerable monotony of life. That all the little glories of each passing day become a drudgery to them. I doubt that those people have children.  Each new change in my children is a constant reminder of the passing of days, and I am one step closer to the end of the plank, the day when I step off this little ship of life into the vast ocean of forever.

"My days are swifter then a weaver's shuttle...
 For my days are but a breath."
 (Job 7:6a, 16b)
It is the daily miracles of the rising sun and the sparkle of the light playing on the stream outside my kitchen window, that hold me together. It is lifes little consistencies and small comforts that hold me down and keep my mind from reeling in the immensity of it all; a universe with no end, being beyond time, beholding the face of God.

When I put on my cozy brown wrap-around sweater, I wrap myself in this present moment, this temporary physical reality. It is cotton moss-stitch with flecks of red woven in which has become covered with little pilly spots. These show the wear I have put it through in the two short months I have owned it. It has a pleasant texture despite the pilling, its shawl collar folded up to warm my neck.
My pair of red linen Birkenstock clogs which I wear like slippers but which also find their way with me to grocery stores and walks to school are also getting worn from daily use. I enjoy them so much that I am tempted to put them away, to preserve them for later. But I decide I need them now and when they are all worn out I will not regret the years of fine service they have rendered.
Our white Corning ware peculator belonged to my husband's parental grandmother. Corning ware stopped making peculators and they were all recalled by the company because of a construction defect years before I was even born.  Yet it still works and my husband's father can remember his mother making coffee in it when he still lived at home, over 40 years ago. I love the green medallions printed on the sides, the shiny medal pouring spout and the glass knob top which the coffee "perc, perc, perc"s into so I can watch it splatter inside the roof of the transparent glass knob. At some point in its storied history the glass top must have fallen on the floor, because the sharp broken edge is covered over with clear plastic packing tape, an imperfection that adds the human touch of Grandma Marchese to my kitchen and links me to her in some tangible but sadly impersonal way. I wonder about it. When it fell and part of the glass shattered did she curse? Was she relieved to see that it could still be used? Did she use it anyway and cut herself, or did she think to put on the tape right away? The stuff of stories, my kind of stories at least. The small seemingly meaningless events that tie our days together into a lifetime. There may be grief in our heart but there is also coffee to be made and dishes to be done and probobly a pile of dirty laundry hiding somewhere. For some of us, it is in the doing of these tasks that our redemption from sorrow lies. We are not overcome when we keep order to our homes, rhythm in our daily routine and hope in our hearts.
"I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord."
(Psalm 27:13-14)

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