home is where one starts from

this day

“if i could i would break into flower
if i could i’d no longer be barren
this day is filling up my room
is coming through my door
oh, i have not seen this day before”
(-innocence mission. these lyrics are written from my memory so they may be slightly incorrect)

when i was at school in massachusetts i went to discussion my church there was having on the Christian’s role in the environment. all i remember from it is what one woman said when she stood up to share her opinions. she talked about how disgusted she was with Christian families who carelessly breed like rabbits without giving a thought to the strain they are putting on our already over-populated world. i was more than offended. if she only knew i had 12 brothers and sisters. i was mad because she made me feel silly about my family, silly and small and stupid. i was so mad at her. it upset me because my family is one of the most beautiful things that has happened to my life. there is nothing more important to me than the people closest to me. i think that’s the way it should be. God can take care of our over-populating world. i’m going to revel in the blessing of family.

in the last few months 3 of my siblings have had children. it’s the year of the babies. i couldn’t have anticipated how touched i would be by all this new life. i feel a bit like a sappy commercial-crier thinking about it. but it’s true, i’m very touched. my siblings having children is pure delight to me. there is something so fresh and unimaginably wonderful about a brand new life, a new person containing some of their parent’s old qualities, who we get to discover and get to know with time. i’m awed.

most of my sisters will be here this weekend with their new lives and children to share. i am all anticipation. i have plans to steal the babies away from their mothers for the week. i want to know them—their eyes, their expressions, their very short histories. i want the heavenly smell of baby. my arms ache to hold their newness.

this year has probably been the most bizarre one i’ve lived through. i should have known, 22 sounds like its got something hidden under its sleeve. it sounds like it has one coming at you that you can’t escape. it has and i haven’t.

as jamie would say, everything about this year for me has been somewhat “irrelevant,” and i haven’t been entirely comfortable with being out of synch. after graduation, my friends moved off with jobs to different places. i moved home in december and have yet to take a job(though i’m really actually working on it at the moment). i read. i paint. i clean things up, but more often mess them up. i walk in the woods and examine things. i think all too much and all too little. i talk to God. i feel like st. francis in “brother sun sister moon” when he came back from the war sick. he woke up with a new sense of God, with a child-like contentment to watch butterflies all day...except i haven’t been quite so delighted. i’ve been struggling with the butterflies, asking God where he is, if he is.

i came home feeling somewhat broken and not knowing why. i came home wanting to find out the broken part so i could get it fixed. but, as if i needed physical reasons for my internal angst, everything started breaking around me once i was back—things i trusted, things that made me feel safe, my home, people i loved all seemed to be hit by rocks at once and left with shattered glass. it all made me break a little more. and at the same time it healed my brokenness a little to be with other’s in their pain. my prayer at the time for us was simple: Lord, fix us. heal us. i wanted to find out our loose wires and turn our lives back on.

in may my heart broke a little in a way it hadn’t been breaking, and i stopped praying for a fix. i was reading anne lamott at the time and her stories gave me a new prayer. in my brokenness, i began asking for birth, something new and fresh and baby smelling that i had never known before. i asked to be someone i had never been. i wanted life born out of my broken pieces. i didn’t want them glued back as they had been. i prayed having not a clue what i was asking for, and sadly not believing that He’d answer me in a real way. but my desperation for newness kept me asking.

my friend kelly o. recently reminded me of a book i have loved since childhood. i remember it’s story periodically and go on a search for it through the shelves of children’s books in our house. for some reason i never find it. the other night i practically read every book cover before i came across it—the velveteen rabbit. lying on our stomachs on their fluffy carpet i opened it and read it aloud to my three little sisters. marley crawled on my back and snuggled down to listen. the book and their presence created one of those moments where i felt whole and alive.

after i finished the story, i was struck by something new in it. i’ve always loved the boy’s intimate relationship with the stuffed rabbit. the rabbit was real to the boy because of how raw and ratty the boy loved him. i used to be so sad by their separation at the end that i couldn’t find much happiness for the bunny in his new life as a Real rabbit. but when i read it the other night i felt joy for him to be able to live in reality, not just the imagination of one little boy.

i read the velveteen rabbit the next day to my sunday school class of middle school girls. they are distracted and awkward and attention crazy. they interrupt and sometimes have attitude, and i watch them thinking about who they are becoming. maybe they can’t see it now or understand it, but if one word of truth could settle in their hearts—i’d be happy knowing it might flower later. after i read them the story we talked about the power of death, because that was more along the lines of the lesson i was supposed to be teaching. we talked about how you can’t escape death, how it’s final. but Jesus raised people from the dead, and even more, he came back from death himself. it struck me as i talked, that Jesus is made of something of Life that is too great and powerful to imagine. he is so much life. and i am being born with his kind of life, his powerful way of living.

lying in my bed that night i listened to the innocence mission sing “i haven’t seen this day before.” i wish the song was longer—it is all hope and freshness. i realized listening to it that i am living in a new day. it’s filling up my room. it’s coming through my door. it’s new. something is being born in me that i can’t name. i can only call it delight and warmth and sun and sweet, sweet baby.

i’m feeling a tiny bit more like a real rabbit. i’m a little more able to sit still and feel peace enjoying grass and flowers like st. francis. i’m feeling a little like a baby with pure potential. i am becoming a new day.

“i want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead.” (philippians 3:10-11)

Posted by red clay at October 5, 2004 09:39 PM | TrackBack