Please Come Back

Humanness is seen in wisdom teaching to be an exalted role from which much is expected. By contrast, in the thought of the church our humanness is more often an excuse than an opportunity: “After all, I’m only human.” In wisdom such an attitude is not thought to be worthy of our humanness for it is a foolish choice which leads to death. It is an abdication which rejects responsibility and expects someone else (perhaps God) to do our living for us. 

“In Man We Trust” by Walter Brueggemann

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Dear Alex,

Last time at the antique shop, I asked: Why do odd things capture our interest more so than the normal things of daily living?

Sure, it seems natural for us to get excited about things that look unusual or feel sexier, the rarities, spotlights and sparkles. The last time Juniper and Saturn were visibly as close together in the sky 3 dawns ago was in the year 1226. My teen daughter told me she had just seen this millennial magic through the telescope at the porch of our neighbors last night.

I missed the alignment of the Christmas stars. For the past two weeks, I have returned home later than usual from work but not unusually delayed when many others go on laboring unannounced through long hours into the deep night to keep our towers and gutters running. There is no talk of magic or Christmas miracle without our plain conversations about the elemental normality of humanness, common concerns dodging column or cubicle: How was your visit there? Are you cutting down on sugar? I want to listen. Merry Christmas.

Everyday mothers in fleece coats by sunrise and apron by twilight shove, seal and summon dossier and diapers around the block in plain long hours. Graduates scamper to stints unrelated to their diploma of study. Grandpa squints out of the fishbowl window from his commode. The child needs you, loans and prognosis unnerve you, cookies jingling in you, the clerk is you, 3 pots on stovetop, the custody of chores stuck like a love song in us.

Yesterday I helped in a COVID vaccination clinic for my first time, a historical passing just 12 hours ago yet never a passing piece of history. It was not surprising at all. Volunteers who had signed up arrived on time, found their station to serve, greeted incomers with verve and verbs transcending despair and death to cycle back to humanness:

“Thank you for waiting. Congratulations, you are half way done. Please remember to come back for your second and last shot.” For nearly 300 recipients, the volunteering vaccinators repeated in tender timbre the jab of change, not a cure, for normal living, the pain and promise of it all.

To me this is the wisdom of Christmas - when we invert roadblock to staircase, pandemic to opportunity, give out the ordinary goodness entrusted to us, minute after moment, mud over moon, asking them to come back with us please, together on shared paths.

Yours, Kate