A seminary student body participated in a day of recollection and reflection. As the Seminary President introduced the guest retreat leader--on a beautiful Saturday morning in spring--he apologized to the seminarians, "I'm very sorry for the distraction and the noise."
This Saturday--on the seminary grounds sports field--happened to be youth soccer day. It seems that the President had forgotten to arrange for the local youth soccer program to play their games elsewhere on the day of the retreat. Which meant hundreds of children on the seminary grounds, and the sounds of play and laughter could easily be heard, echoing and reverberating inside the lecture hall.
But when the retreat leader stood up to begin his first talk of the day, he said to the seminarians, "I think it's wonderful that the children are here with us this morning. I will not have done my job, if you aren't able to have a good retreat while you see and hear the sights and sounds of children playing on our soccer fields today."
It sounds good, doesn't it?
I'm not sure how easy it is to believe. Or practice.
Even so, it is important. . .
Did you see the movie The Shawshank Redemption? Andy Defresne is serving a life sentence for a crime he didn't commit. In one scene, after a stint in solitary confinement, Andy is quizzed by his prison mates, "How did you make it?" "Music," he told them.
Andy: That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you... Haven't you ever felt that way about music?
Red (Andy's best friend at Shawshank): I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here. Andy: Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget. Red: Forget? Andy: Forget that there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside that they can't get to, that they can't touch. That's yours. Red: What're you talking about? Andy: Hope.
I received a call this week about a job. Would I be willing to give a motivational talk to a professional organization? The woman explained, "Our people are very busy. Their life can be crazy. They juggle and multi-task. So your pause message sounds just right," she tells me.
"Thank you," I tell her.
"But," she asks (and this is always the caveat), "How do we actually practice it? The pause part? What's the secret?"
First, (I want to tell her), you buy two cases of my DVD. I wish it were so.
That is the issue, though, isn't it? Life tips and tilts and turns left when we least expect it. And. . .
We want someone to give us the answers.
Someone to balance it all.
We want someone to give us the "how." The list.
And on a day when we expect inspiration, motivation and reflection, we are told that it is enough to take delight in the play and laughter--the noise--of children.
Excuse me?
Am I hearing you correctly?
Here's the deal: Living intentionally and fully alive is not a technique. There is no list.
And chances are, we pass by life--the exquisite, the messy, the enchanting, the untidy, the inexplicable--on our way to some place we think we ought to be.
Okay. If we need a list, here's number one: We need to get rid of the notion of perfection. We try so hard to get it right. And in the end, we make it fairly complicated.
There are some words (notions, concepts, phrases)--like morality or theology or Christian behavior--that can seem too wide-ranging and ambiguous. We nod our heads, knowingly, when the meaning is not in the schooling or in the line of reasoning, but in the laughter of children that wafts through the window. There is meaning--consequence, value, and import--only when what we believe or teach touches this moment. In other words, it's the small (and specific) stuff that really does matter.
Belief is all well and good. But there has to be skin on it--something we touch, see, hear, taste and smell.
Which brings us back to the movie The Shawshank Redemption. There is a scene in the movie when Andy locks himself in the warden's office, puts a record on the turntable and sets the prison intercom microphone near the speaker. The music pervades and suffuses the entire prison. Red, the narrator, says, "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I'll tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."
So. It's a good thing that we never really know where insight or awareness or understanding will come from. Life really is, after all, a gift. Tonight, on my deck, I listen to the water in my stream gurgle and spill, like the sound of the children on the soccer field. Van Morrison fills an evening sky, and I smile at the satisfaction that comes from muscle ache after garden work. The Cedar Waxwings are at the feeder now. Serendipity indeed.
(1) For the seminary story, my thanks to Sabbath Moment Friend, Randy Wakitsch
"I believe that each of us possesses, inside ourselves...one true Authentic Swing that is ours alone. It is a folly to try to teach us another, or mold us to some ideal version of the perfect swing. Each player possesses only that one swing that he was born with, that swing which existed within him before he ever picked up a club. Like the statue of David, our Authentic Swing already exists, concealed within the stone, so to speak."
Bagger Vance, caddy for Rannulph Junah
in the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance.
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