Gordon professor Dorothy Boorse gave up Facebook for Lent, but checks in on Sundays. When I read her post on Palm Sunday, I asked her if we could share it at The Well.
Checking in. Palm Sunday. The Lenten season has been odd without Facebook. I've checked on you all periodically, occasionally liking or Happy Birthday-ing, but I miss you. However, I've spent less time thinking, "Now what is a humorous way to say that on Facebook?" so that's probably a good thing. I am so wildly behind on grading that I'm numb from it. The salamander and wood frog masses are out, and the woods are ALIVE. Alive and real and so worth being lost in.
I love and don't love my job. Every minute I spend with people and ideas — I love. Teaching — I love. Helping —I love. Visioning the future of the institution — I love. Being in a world with all of you — I love.
But then, when I realize I could be outside, could be wandering around looking at things and exclaiming over them, or alternatively, I realize with a shock how short life is, and how much I want to accomplish one super duper important thing and how that gets drowned in the everyday, or how I want to raise Action Boy with animals and farming, (I've given up on that working for Math Boy), I feel restive and fussy. Please don't tell me that what I do is important (in case you were tempted). I know that. It is a huge blessing to know that.
This is me trying to describe the ambivalence of someone with enough life dreams for several lives. I am pulling at the end of the leash, ready to run. There are piles of grading, enough to swallow me up, and details of lab, and who will buy the boots we need, and do I have something to send in lunches for this week, and can we change that orthodontist appointment, and, and — all of it — the white noise of our lives.
Somewhere in the middle is Palm Sunday and I am reminded — it's not about me. Even my life. Even my dreams. Even my settling for lesser things, and worrying about stupid stuff, and not doing some grand gesture, in fact especially not doing some grand gesture — it isn't about me, or it shouldn't be.
It's about Love, coming down to our flawed world and lifting us up, asking us to Come Along, to Follow, to Love.
Love to you all.
