My friend Tim Hansel wrote a book on parenting. He asked his young sons, "Boys, how do you know Dad loves you?"
He figured that they would say, "Daaaad, remember when you took us to Disneyworld, like for 10 days!" They didn't say that, so he knew he wasted all that money.
He figured they'd say, "Daaaad, remember Christmas and you bought us all that great stuff!"
They didn't say that. They said,
"Dad, we know you love us, when you wrestle with us."
He remembered two times. He had come home, hungry, tired, late, and he didn't care. But these urchins were yanking on his pant leg. "So I rolled with them on the floor. Toward the kitchen." He said, "just to get them out of my way."
And then it hit him. In the middle of that very ordinary, boring, mundane experience, real life was happening. Unfeigned joy, love, intimacy, connection, grace, sacrament--the really good stuff--all woven into the commonplace.
"But," Tim laments, "I missed it. Because I was only tuned into Disneyworld and Christmas."
There is nothing wrong with Disneyworld or Christmas. But they have meaning, only because of the sacred in the ordinary. Because of the wrestling times.
I love telling this story whenever I'm invited to speak or lead retreats. It's a good reminder. It came to mind this past week when someone asked me about New Year resolutions. (They were still equivocating and wondered what great plans I had made. Well, I had just come off of a truly bad week, and wondered out loud what it means when the first few weeks of your new year don't go as planned; do you get a do-over when it comes to resolutions? The look on their face told me they had hoped for a more cheerful response.)
Which all reinforced to me how easy it is to buy the myth that life proceeds according to our specifications and designs. My ability to handle chaos, disarray and disappointment is not too different from my son. Have I had enough sleep? Have I had too much sugar?
Or, in my case, at this moment, am I bonding with the incompetent idiot at the customer service counter? (Oops. That slipped out inadvertently.) So in the airport--this past week--I was looking for that room where I could stew in the invigorating juices of exasperation and irascibility.
Speaking of Disneyworld, there is this hope--scarcely disguised--that the New Year offers a cleansing. As if we wipe the slate clean of last year's tumult or disorder or blunders. I get it. I do... we want to eliminate worry. But it doesn't help if we see our freedom from interruption as linked to luck or goodness or faith. That's just another variation of control. Or closure.
Where was I? Oh yes, standing in the airport stewing. And Bruce saved my emotional bacon. I cranked up Springsteen's This Little Light of Mine. And though I didn't know how my day was going to end I realized (stewing in a departure lounge) that this day, this moment, is a lot like wrestling time.
In the Bible, God is real in small gifts and simple pleasures. God is present in the commonplace, the weak, the flawed, the compromised. The profane is not the antithesis of the sacred, but the bearer of it.
We are so bent on removing ourselves from the mundane, that we miss miracles. Not surprisingly, once we see it, we do our best to turn it into a project: five steps to creating wrestling times. We do not rest in the solace that God is present, having nothing to do with our faith, or our effort to invest the moment with meaning.
In other words, there is freedom in this gift of wrestling times.
I don't need to craft the moment, I can live it.
I don't need to read-into the moment, I can receive it.
I don't need to find control over the moment, I can let it be.
I don't need to orchestrate closure in the moment, I can pay it forward.
When the Shawnee and Chippewa (and other early people) went on hunts or vision quests or long journeys, each traveler would carry in a small rawhide pouch various tokens of spiritual power--perhaps a feather, a bit of fur, a claw, a carved root, a pinch of tobacco, a pebble or a shell. These were not simple magical charms; they were reminders of the energies that sustain all of life. By gathering these talismans into a medicine pouch, the hunter, traveler, or visionary seeker was recollecting the sources of healing and bounty and beauty. (Adapted from Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope)
I like the image. And if wouldn't hurt us if we carried a medicine pouch. Or at least asked the question, What am I carrying with me today?
Knowing that these elements of the ordinary, nourish and heal and sustain... offering hope, a will to live, wonder, fortitude and a generosity of spirit.
Wrestling time... let's call it a whiff of the holy, in the muddle of ordinary life. Can we see the gift there?
Back to Bruce and This Little Light of Mine, it reminds me that...
My light can shine even when I don't have all the answers.
My light can shine even when everything doesn't add up.
My light can shine even when the pieces of the puzzle don't make any sense.
Dad, we know you love us when you wrestle with us.
Yes. This little light... there are gifts in the ordinary, the boring, and the mundane... gifts to embrace, gifts to receive, gifts to give.
My mind was given to football today. I had my lucky beer and lucky snacks and did my best to keep my heart from cardiac arrest. It turns out I needed more than one lucky beer. (Football fans will understand.)
After the game I sat in the living room (figuring out a way to get to the Super Bowl), watched the flames in the fireplace and waited for my pulse to return to normal. I stepped outside to look up at the moon, but the sky is murky tonight. Last night, the moon rested, as if sitting on an upper branch of a large fir tree, and the entire garden posed, an old fashioned photo in sepia tone. I smiled. Glad to be alive.
Everything has already been given.
What we need is to live into it.
Thomas Merton
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