When December days are warmer
than they should be, and no one is home,
everyone scattered like dust in different corners
of this city, I sit on the porch and wait
for you.
Arriving without any
of our five children (God bless my mother),
you lead me hand-in-hand into the empty house
that now feels more like a church, a holy space
made up of diagonal light and quiet.
Marriage is a sacrament, they say, a sign
of the sacred.
Outside the house, cars roll down James
Street. Outside the house, people leave the barber’s
smelling of after-shave, the wind pulling at
their new hair. Outside the house, December takes
the last leaf from the ancient sycamore. Is there
anything outside the house that knows
of the holy space between us? The way diagonal
light gently rests on rounded sheets? Or
how, later, you hold my hand and we slip inside
a merciful sleep?
Marriage is a sacrament, they say, a sign
of the sacred.
Today, I’m over at the wonderful site You Are Here writing about how we found home again:
As the months passed, I found work. We settled into a routine and made new friends. We found a church to call home. The things we had lost in Virginia would not be replaced, but there were good things to be found, even in that new place.
It can sometimes be hard to believe there is still good in the world. It can be so hard to find, especially after The Move or The Diagnosis or The Divorce. But it’s still there. We might not be ready to discover it right away, but the world will thaw, and the good will appear in the most unlikely of places.
I’ve been a Christian since I was old enough to pass the communion wine, so sweet, and taste the salty crackers that were His body. My dad was a pastor for almost forty years. I know how churches work. I know what most of them are trying to do.
But I still don’t like being a visitor. I don’t like when strangers talk to me – I mostly want to be left alone. I don’t like the feeling that the stakes are suddenly very high for these people – I don’t like feeling as if they feel that any small thing they might do could determine whether or not I come back. It’s all rather strange.
So, to all you folks who are interested in spirituality or learning more about God but just can’t get into the idea of visiting a church: I get it. Church people can be strange.
But in spite of my hesitancy, I woke up on Sunday at my in-laws place in North Carolina and really wanted to go to church. The main reason being, it was the first Sunday of Advent, my favorite time of the year. We’ve been attending St. James Episcopal Church for about a year and a half, so we’ve been through the Liturgical calendar once, and some of my favorite services took place on the Sundays leading up to Christmas.
The slowness.
The candles.
The anticipation.
So I found the closest Episcopal Church, which happened to be All Saints in Gastonia, NC. Lucy said she’d come with me, bless her cotton socks, and the two of us headed out for an adventure. The front door wasn’t clearly marked, so we kind of wandered around outside the small building for a little while and Lucy held my hand until someone told us which way to go.
Someone met us at the door and shook my hand. Of course, in my nervousness I couldn’t speak very well.
“Hi,” I said, “My name is Shawn. This is my wife…er…my daughter, Lucy.”
Well, that was embarrassing.
The sanctuary was small, maybe ten pews on each side, and there were only a handful of people there when we arrived. It was a new experience for this northern guy, hearing the confession and the prayers and the scriptures read in that deep, southern drawl. It was good.
The first thing I noticed though, the first thing I was looking for, was the lone candle lit at the front of the church, the first candle of Advent. It was like everything else was still and waiting, but that candle? It was alive and moving and powerful. Strange, I know, that a tiny little candle would seem that way, but it did.
Powerful. Alive.
* * * * *
It’s been a little over a month since I met with Church World Service and asked if I could help them tell the stories of the refugees they are working with here in central Pennsylvania. It’s been three weeks since I met Miriam. Last week I spoke with Ahmed (and will tell you his story soon). I hope to keep meeting more refugees who have relocated here. I want to keep sharing their stories with you because it feels like such important work, especially in these days of fear and suspicion.
But sometimes the work feels so, so small. Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever wonder, What difference am I actually making? Instead of taking the time to meet all these new people, listening to their stories, and writing them down, wouldn’t it be easier to stay at home? Watch television. Hang out with my family. Anything really. I have plenty of other things to do.
Sometimes these beautiful things we are called to do seem so inconsequential.
How can this one small thing ever make a difference?
* * * * *
The service was comforting because it was mostly the same as our service back in Lancaster, and I realized that’s one of the nice things about the traditional churches: you kind of know what to expect. We prayed the same prayers as our friends back home. We said the same confession. We recited the same creed. We read the same scriptures. I imagined what Father David would have chosen to pull out of those passages. I imagined the stories Father Rob would have told.
Lucy and I sat there and she held my hand, my little daughter of light, and the singing was nice and the sermon was good but I couldn’t take my eyes off of that Advent wreath with its one, solitary candle burning. Such a small thing in such a wide world, that tiny candle.
So inconsequential.
Like me.
Like the things I try to do.
And in that moment I felt an immense peace. The world does not hinge on my good works. Thank God. The world will not rise or fall based on the popularity of my blog posts, the perfection of my parenting, or the amount of things I manage to acquire. There is a much greater hope, a far greater anticipation. This is what the season of Advent has to offer us. This is the peace that comes in a quiet, expectant waiting.
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Let me start with the honest part, the part that’s difficult for me to admit: This has been a rough week for parenting in our house. I would use the word disastrous but you might think I am exaggerating. I went to bed the other night and couldn’t sleep because of a huge parenting fail. There may be a few angelic souls out there who ace this gig, but none of them live in this house, and they probably don’t live in yours either. We are, many of us, going to have children who end up in therapy. This is not to say that we are terrible people; this is just to say that this is the world. Besides, going to therapy is one of the best things anyone can do for themselves and the ones they love, so I guess a little nudge in that direction isn’t a terrible thing.
Anyway, after a particularly disastrous day, the elephant of worry sat down on my chest and kept me awake, watching the hours. Has that every happened to you? Have you ever stretched out in bed, so tired but unable to sleep because of that monstrous weight of anxiety? Breathe in, breathe out.
Then, a realization. While I had long thought the sleepless nights and blown-out diapers were the worst that parenting had to throw at me, I saw with clarity that the most difficult part of raising these five kids is now approaching. Puberty, emotional development, leading a still-small human being into their interests and calling. What have I gotten myself into? What have I gotten these poor, five little humans into?
Midnight.
I think the thing about realizing that I will fail my kids, and experiencing one of these major failures, is that I now have such a deep humility and empathy towards other parents. My judgy-ness has fallen away like an old skin. I confess to having harbored scathing opinions towards parents, perhaps even you, who did not do things the way that I thought things should be done. Now? In the wake of these shadows?
I am so sorry for judging your parenting. We are all in this thing together, every single one of us, and we are all doing the absolute best we can with the tools we’ve been given. Some of us have been given crappier tools than others. Some have been handed an entire tool chest with 37 different sized screw drivers and 17 socket wrenches, while others, perhaps because of their own parents or perhaps because of the way this world has weighed on them, having nothing to use but a chisel. Or a measuring tape. Or a hammer.
Use your tools well, my friends, and use them creatively. I once used the prying end of hammer to turn the tiniest screw. I once used the handle of a screw driver to (kind of) bang in a nail. If your tool set is limited, consider fresh uses. Maybe kinder ones?
1am.
At this point, following that failure, I became acutely aware of the fact that I have five children. Wait. I have five children. Five children. I was overwhelmed by the variety of ways that I might screw them up. The possibilities are endless!
I know this is 1am talking. I know I am overjoyed to have five children. I know in the morning, these voices will have evaporated with the slanted lines of light drifting through the blinds.
2am.
I fell asleep at some point during this non-hour and, bless the Lord, dreamed of nothing.
3am.
16-month-old Leo woke up during the cloudy hours, those hours from three to five when sleep and waking blend into one. I followed the sounds of his crying, went and stood beside his crib. He was standing against the rail, cheeks wet with tears, so I bent down and put my arm around his little body. He stuck his head up into the crook of my neck, and we passed the time like that in the silence of a whirring fan, clinging to each other, letting each other know it would be okay. The night would end. Sleep would come. We promised each other those things were true. I kept kissing the sweet smell of his hair.
In my mind, I apologized to him in advance for all the various and inevitable ways I will screw him up and let him down, and his little arm came up around my neck at that very moment as if to say,
It’s okay, Dad. We all screw up. I forgive you in advance. Everyone is doing the best with what they got.
And then, just like that, he laid back down in his crib. I covered him with a warm blanket and went back to bed.
Oh, friends.
I hope this post is like Leo’s little arm around your neck. I hope you will accept it for what it is: an invitation to generously dole out and receive forgiveness for misdeeds past, present, and future. Or maybe it’s a little warmth on a cold night, a little assurance that you are doing enough. That you are enough.
Then a Jesuit pal asked me, quite simply, What would you write if you weren’t afraid?
– Mark Karr, The Art of Memoir
When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” John 5:6
I think a lot about this unnamed man in the Bible, a man who had been disabled for nearly four decades. I often wonder how I would respond if I was him and a man walked up to me and asked if I wanted to get well. Do I want to get well? Are you kidding me?
This experience with Jesus brings questions into my mind, deep questions about myself and the things I long for. I hesitantly turn my eyes towards my many and varied illnesses.
Do I want to overcome my addictions? Or do I enjoy the numbness they deliver?
Do I want to finish writing that book? Or am I afraid of the potential apathy?
Do I want to live a simple life? Or is all this noise keeping me comfortably distracted?
Do I want…?
Of course I do.
But then a still, small voice asks again.
…but do you really?
* * * * *
At the core of what Jesus was asking this man was this: Do you dare to imagine being recreated? Do you dare to engage in a new adventure, a new way of being? Do you dare to stand when all you have done up until now is sit and wait by the water?
Which brings me back around to the Mary Karr quote: “Then a Jesuit pal asked me, quite simply, What would you write if you weren’t afraid?”
The two questions are strikingly similar:
“Do you want to be made well?”
“What would you write if you weren’t afraid?”
* * * * *
Who would you be, who would you really be, if you dared to hope again?
It’s certainly a question worth considering during these days when fear rules most of us, when companies and individuals around us stand to profit from our insecurity, our uncertainty.
Do you want to get well?
What would you do, how would you live, if you weren’t afraid?
Across the street, barbers
do pull-ups under the fire escape,
tattoo artists stand on
their stoop, smoking, staring
at their phones, and cars
drive down Prince Street, deeper
into the city.
A man stands on the corner with his standard-
issue cardboard sign
HOMELESS VET
FOOD OR CLOTHING
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Driving along the sidewalk
towards him are construction
vehicles worth more than my house. The men
in hardhats stand in a semi-circle, savages
discerning the will of demanding gods,
then peel back the crumbling macadam, lay
the pipes, and cover it with more debris.
Always more debris.
The barbers cheer and count their strength.
The artists breathe in and sigh out their smoke.
The construction beeps its backwards movement.
And in the middle of all this, in the middle
of this city, this construction, this noise, these
sad and weary people, these begrudging
celebrants, these conquering barbers,
these smoldering artists, I cannot get the image
of that refugee boy out of my mind, the boy
drowned on the beach.
Rag doll limp, waterlogged, his face planted in the sand
like a castle, or a seashell, the sound of the waves always
in his ears. I try to imagine him, or the essence
of him, rising up and walking into the water, leaving
his body behind, his hands
gliding over the waves, ripples rolling
outward from his movement.
I am tired of talking.
Cars are always driving down Prince Street, always
driving. There is no end to them.
There is no end to the number of us
who will sleep well tonight on soft pillows, who
will eat too much, watch too much television,
who will wake up tomorrow with that
same gnawing ache that says
nothing is quite
as it should be.
