Tag: Patience

Monovision

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

Due to my astigmatism, I wore hard contact lenses early in life, and those darn little things were easy to lose. It took a long time to get a replacement, so I’d wear the remaining lens and become a one-eyed wonder until the new one arrived. This practice trained my brain to be tolerant of monovision—one eye feeds tolerably clear visual information into the brain while the other contributes only fuzzy approximations.

Decades later I had laser surgery and made this arrangement permanent. One eye tells me about things further away. The other allows me to read without glasses. I suspect my brain works overtime to sort this out, but I’m not conscious of that effort.

Monovision is cool. By simply closing one eye, I can remind myself nothing is ever exactly as it seems. My take on reality is based on the way I see things, but it’s not the whole picture. It’s just one view.

“Right on!” God chimed in as I was mulling this recently. “You would not believe how I look to a housefly.”

“True,” I said. “I don’t even believe how you look to me.”

“Is that so?” God asked. “I thought we were on better terms.”

I closed my left eye. Then the right. I tipped my head and considered looking at God upside down, but the thought made me queasy.

“What are you seeing?” God asked.

“Oh, the usual. Needs, vacancies, denial, anger, fear.”

“No, I mean what do I look like?”

“Old. Improbable. Vast. I wish you looked softer and safer, but you’re too vague.”

“Are all your eyes open?”

“I think so.”

“You’re wrong,” the Ultimate Optometrist said. “But I know you’re trying. Let me adjust these lenses for you.”

“No!” I yelled and backed away. Who wants God adjusting the way they see things? In my haste, I failed to glance behind, so I tripped and fell.

God rushed to my side and helped me up. “Are you hurt?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure how to answer. My pride was bruised, my fears, fully activated, my body felt fragile and clumsy, but was I hurt?

“That depends on what you mean by hurt,” I said finally. Then with my two eyes open, I looked straight at what I see to be God and added, “Are you real?”            

“Oh, I love how you set me up,” God chuckled affectionately. “That depends on what you mean by God.”

Shelter from the Storm

Rita Sommers-Flanagan8 Comments

We are all a long way from home, dithering and dallying, trancelike automatons until something small or large loosens a stone in the foundation. Lost, but not completely lost. Found, but not yet found. Half-heartedly seeking what Bob Dylan called a lethal dose of salvation. Always a little messed up, though occasionally well-intended. For instance, I didn’t mean to leave the rice in the microwave overnight or the fish on the counter. I didn’t set out to drink all the cold brew and not start the next batch. But mea culpa—these are among my many thoughtless mistakes, and I hereby offer myself conditional forgiveness. I tell myself You’ve got to stay focused. And I add Straighten up and die right. Or is it lie right? Or fly right?

“I prefer fly right,” God says, settling in on the couch beside me. “And who put you in charge of forgiveness?

“Well, I’ve always assumed it was you,” I say, “And it’s a hell of a job.”

God smiles sympathetically and rifles through the mail, lists, receipts, masks, and rubber bands on the coffee table. I sit quietly, hoping for a bit of advice or assistance. My recent efforts to be more organized have fallen woefully short. The demons of distraction are delighted as I try various methods to get centered: Deep breathing (smoky air); beer (disorienting); garden (needs weeding, watering system not working); sticky notes (they lose their effectiveness when they’re everywhere). Lovingkindness meditation (too hard). I’m full of excuses and self-pity. There’s plenty of blame to go around.

“I wish I lived somewhere that forgiveness wasn’t even a necessary thing,” I say.

“Hmmm,” God says, absorbed in a sale flyer for energy-efficient window replacement. “I doubt it.”

And to top things off, the Text Predictions function in Word has suddenly turned itself on. I hate Word guessing at what I’m trying to say. I hate automatic updates. I hate passwords. I hate warring search engines. I hate smoky air, suicide bombers, drought, rice in the microwave, weeds in the garden, turkeys in the straw, refugees in the ocean, people willing to infect each other with viral hatred, flagrant ignorance, and this long and winding road that always leads me here. To the here and now of an ever-eroding present tense. I’m a child of the 60s.

That prophetic Beatles song locks down in my brain. “Don’t leave me waiting here,” I sing to God. I think I’m being funny, but God and I choke up. The Long and Winding Road was their last number-one single in the USA. So fitting. The unattainable. The end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end. The wandering is the journey. The trying is the failing. The failing reveals grace, and our last job is to die forgiven.

“I do know how hard it is, honey,” God says. I nod. We sit, staring out the recycled windows at the waning but beautiful garden.

Comfort

Rita Sommers-Flanagan8 Comments

God is thick like a down quilt this morning. Thick in the air, thick in the snow, thick in the garden dirt, thick in the fire, thick in sadness, thick in my chest.

Maybe lingering, maybe gone, is a loved one of such large heart and honest soul that the world has a hollow sound right now. An empty echo. The long vibration of the gong. The bell that tolls. I could look to the blackbirds for comfort or the white hills with their dusting of snow, but I don’t want comfort. I want wisdom. It eludes me.

Yesterday was warmer. I found evidence that the raspberry roots are taking life seriously and have begun to send up dark green signs of hope. We could have a bright red harvest next year and maybe even a few berries later this year. The long arc of transplantation requires patience and faith. I sat back on my haunches and gave thanks. But as the day ended, black doubts took hold, and I went to bed hungry.

“Good morning, little one,” God says gently as she shakes off the majesty of thickness and shrinks into human view. A gift. God’s body thrown across the railroad tracks of fear and despair. God, willing to be a slender apparition, glowing in momentary light. I’m torn. I know God is dead and alive, here and there, atomic and cosmic. But I’m no longer sure I speak the right language to be fully understood, and I have these wounds that open in the night. I use whatever pressure I can muster to close them, but they will never heal.

“Good morning, God,” I answer, staring out the one unshaded window. “I don’t feel like moving, or I’d offer you some coffee. Sorry.”

“No worries, honey,” God says. “I know where you keep the cups.”

Did We Begin on the Seventh Day, When God Dozed Off?

Rita Sommers-Flanagan3 Comments

God’s creative management style is not one I’d recommend for small or even large businesses. And I am not saying that behind her back; she’s sitting right here, watching me examine the dust on the mirror. I like mirrors, but they get very dusty. She listens with rapt attention as I mutter about hatred and cruelty and offer critical analysis of her most irritating creatures. The marvel and madness of God is that she is patient, permissive, and absolute. She cares little about insults, greatly about suffering, and allows all things and beings to spin on their wobbly, narcissistic axes until they’ve spun themselves out.

I offer her the keyboard. She refuses. I offer her the day. She laughs.

 “Nah,” she says. “I have so many days I don’t know what to do with them all. And anyway, the day you’re offering is already mine.” This is true, but also it isn’t. I blow on the mirror and watch a few particles of dust shift around. She looks on, hands folded in her enviable lap–a lap that is a cave, a womb–a lap that’s a luxury apartment in Manhattan, a well-built hut in the Congo, the cab of a semi with an alert and friendly driver capable of backing up without a second thought.

“And she’s off,” God says, making fun of my fantasies. This time, I laugh, delighted at the twinkle in God’s eye.

“Laps are great, aren’t they?” I say. “My friend had a dream that she had a horse on her lap. Imagine that.” God already knows this dream, but we enjoy the story anyway.

Once in a long while, when God’s in a tough place, I hold her on my lap and let her be small, but I’ve never held a full-grown horse.

“It’s always what you can handle,” God says. “Until you can’t.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Dreams are some other language. Flying dreams are the best, but mostly, I fall off ledges, try to save helpless children, and find hidden rooms in buildings I’m remodeling.”

“I know,” God says. “It’s confusing.”

I consider that for minute and then ask, “Well, why don’t you let people dream what they want to dream?”

“Oh, I do,” God says. “I absolutely do.” I look skeptical but say nothing. The inner, the outer; the brain, the mind. At the heart of the great mystery, is it simply random synaptic firings? Did God invent evolution for fun? Did we begin on the seventh day, when God dozed off? Are we the dream? The particles of dust on my mirror? The coming and going of migratory birds?

“Yes!” God says. And the twinkle in her eye explodes into blinding light. I fumble my way to that lap where I know I am being dreamed and settle in, migratory and alert.

Editing

Rita Sommers-Flanagan14 Comments

Few writers love the editing process, but it’s a necessary tedium. The English professor on my dissertation committee marked ninety-three comma errors in my first draft, but as my co-author, God rarely has the patience to look for comma errors even though the need remains. She excuses herself, citing the liberating Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi: the mistake, the flaw, the imperfection becomes the passageway to a deeper understanding of perfection. I don’t like it. There are things I need to articulate, and I could use some skilled but kindly help to do it well.

The grandchildren visited for the weekend. The youngest fought the haze of sleep while I sat on a stack of pillows, providing what safety I could. In a voice softened by the mystical quality of those entering the other realm, she murmured her final conscious thought. “I want my mommy,” she said.

It wasn’t a full-throated protest or a ploy to stay awake. It was the final whisper that defines us all. Her eyes closed, and her body relaxed. My heart ached as I watched her sleep. I want my mommy, too. Not my real, deceased mother—the one who tried hard but sometimes failed. No, I want the perfect mommy.

“But what about me?” God said as she slipped into my head. “Am I not the mother of which you speak?” She was joking around like people do when they’re sure of themselves.

“No,” I told her. “No, you’re not.” I felt mean as I said it, but honestly, I have no time for this.

She might be perfect, but the way we interact is not. Her editing is whimsical, her grip on reality questionable, her motives often unclear. Not the mothering I imagine at all. “It’s complicated,” I hastened to add. “It’s not entirely your fault.” But it was too late. Her indignation seethed, and a torrent of grief swept over the face of the earth. Sea levels rose, and the dark wings of the birds of prey covered the sun. A bitter ending was palpable on the near horizon.

“Wait!” I said, “I’m sorry. I meant to say that you’re not what I expected, but you’ll do. You’re a pretty decent mother as mothers go. You’ll do.”

“But you can imagine better?” God countered, eyes boring through my body to the eternity at my back.

Ah, what to say. What to say. What to think. Could I imagine better? Was this a trick question? Was there any way out? I froze.

“C’mere,” God said. The waters receded. “Enough. You need some rest.” She motioned me to a soft, dark place.

I don’t know what I whispered as I fell asleep, but I know God stayed awake, sitting uncomfortably nearby. And honestly, what more can I ask?

Placebo

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

God outright refused to help edit my first run of the godblog for this week. As Co-Author, that’s God’s prerogative, so I have bowed to the forces within and without and shelved the draft about death and composting until God’s in a better mood. I may have to chew my left thumb off, but I will work until at least three hundred words have coalesced into what God and I mutually agree we should say this week. I have the vague notion that God wants to focus on hope.

“Vague notion?” God says. “C’mon. Do you think the placebo effect is an accident?”

This makes me laugh out loud. God knows how much I adore the placebo effect–the authoritative administration of an inert nothingness that, by virtue of belief, triggers healing. Good medical research is designed to factor out the placebo effect. This tickles me. Faith has to be factored out because it is such a powerful force in and of itself.

Humans have evolved to believe in things. It isn’t an afterthought or a design flaw. The leaps of faith we make are sometimes comical, sometimes tragic, often pure magic. But they all point to the nature of the Grand Leaper, my friend God, whose greatest leap of faith ever was giving us some skin in the game. Giving us a say in the matter. Giving us choice. The stakes are high. Will we poison ourselves to extinction? Will we make war until there’s no one left to kill? Will greed remain ascendant and poverty continue to be viewed as deserved?

“Ah hem.” God clears his raspy old throat and hands me a cue card with the word “Hope” scrawled across the entire surface, which is sky. Which is my face reflected in all that I have. Which is you, reading. Which is a child eating a steaming bowl of sustaining gruel. That child will arise. Her name is Enough. Her name is Charity. Her name is Least Among You, and her first words are always, “Do not be afraid.” God surrounds her malnourished frame in his huge hands. The child relaxes and falls asleep, curled in the soft flesh of tomorrow. I’m surprised that such a tiny little thing can make God cry.

“It’s your move,” God whispers a little choked up. My heart skips a beat. I know it’s a trick. I take a deep breath and the right response comes to me.

“No,” I whisper back, “It’s our move. I’ll wait until she’s rested.” God grins and wipes his nose, and I add, “I know what you’re thinking. Old dog learns new trick.”  I give my own chest a congratulatory thump.

God’s grin widens until his face cracks into the full day ahead. My temporal self is sorely tempted to react and run amok, but I don’t. God will wait, and I will wait. The child will sleep.