A couple of years ago, I was walked from the Marriott
Marquis in Atlanta to Georgia State
University to attend stations of the cross during Lent. My walk earned me some chastisement from the
good Father in charge of the college chaplaincy, as doing so requires
transiting a slightly sketchy part of town.
Perhaps he is right, as on my way, a scruffy fellow—tattered clothes, long
and unkempt beard, odiferous, and a little wild-eyed but with a broad smile--
approached me, grabbed my arm and pressed a scrap of paper in my hand.
“Gift,” he said and
hurried on before I could become alarmed by his familiarity, let alone respond
to it.
It was the bottom half of an old flyer on which he had
written in blue ballpoint, legible and surprisingly neat, a series of pithy
little thoughts. I read them right there
on the sidewalk. Somehow I have managed
to keep track of that bit of paper for more than two years. It’s Lent again and I’ve been spending a
great deal of time thinking about God and how I encounter Him.
How too often I miss Him because He surprises me, showing
up, like Alan Funt, where and when I least expect Him. But isn’t that His way? A God who acts through history is a God who
continues to do so and a God who turns expectations upside down in the beginning
will upset the applecart still. The King
is still found in the manger and on the cross, not in the palace.
And this surprising God speaks to me in my own history through
those to whom I am related, however briefly.
I am made different by every relationship; my life, the one God is
making for me whether I acknowledge it or not, whether I particularly like it
or not, is both changed and created by those with whom I am in relationship. I cannot even exist without relationship,
creature that I am; and I cannot know who I am except against the mirror of
others. Relationship is of God, whose
very life is relationship in the mystery of the Trinity.
This business of relationship is something quite different
than mere interaction. Interaction is a
sterile, impersonal term, transactional and commercial. Relating, on the other hand, implies that the
encounter leaves something of me with the other and something of the other with
me. It is certainly, true for this evanescent
and random encounter: I’ve picked up that paper over and over in the past two
years and when I do, the moment comes back and I smile. Surely, that man left more with me than a bit
of paper with a few lines written on it.
In this case, I am related by a that walk, that street, that
day, that time, to a perfect stranger on a sunny street in Atlanta in almost
springtime. I’ve come to think of that
little encounter as something of a living fortune cookie, with that scrap the
paper filling that God sent playfully my way that morning. Here’s what He said to me on that particular day; tiny thoughts that
make me smile and make me think…
A hero is a man who
does what he can.
Rule your desires lest
your desires rule you.
Any song that moves
you to joy or tears has greatness.
The most difficult
meal for a wife to get is breakfast in bed.
The more laws the less
justice.
Jealousy is the fear
we have no value.
Beauty is a lover’s
gift. Exuberance is beauty.
And the best of all:
Freedom is a universal
license to be good.
Except for the comment about breakfast in bed (which I can
no longer endorse, given that my groom brings me coffee every morning), that
list contains a pretty good summary of the things I—maybe most of us- struggle
with most.
And what strikes me is that it was pressed in my hand with
the assurance that the paper, the thoughts, the realities that underlie them,
the relationship that reminded me of them, even the struggles I have with them--are
gift.
This started out as a most difficult read, Barb, for when I read the description of the passing stranger I was struck with the thought: "I don't recall being in Atlanta then?" But I read on.
ReplyDeleteCertainly by you, I am changed. Thoughts which parallel ours make us realize that we are not "strange" in our thinking, nor alone. And ideas, like water on a flat surface, can flow this way or that --- and as we drift in one direction of flow, it is good to be reminded that their are other directions flowing from the same idea. And, perhaps, on rare occasions, to be lifted up off the floor and look down at the whole flow, and all its streams, and see the beauty which sometimes flows from a single idea. Relationships make that possible. Good ones are rare and few; treasures.