Saturday, October 6, 2018

do few things but do them well...

This week has become a humbling swirl of challenges and affirmations: the showdown on Kavanaugh, slipping on a wet porch and bruising my back, my beloved grandson's fifth birthday, awakening one day to a draining encounter with vertigo, baking bread that never quite rose. In the midst of it all was the Feast Day of St. Francis and I found myself listening to this prayer/song over and over...


If you want your dream to be, take your time, go slowly
Do few things but do them well, heartfelt work grows purely
If you want to live life free, take your time, go slowly
Do few things but do them well, heartfelt work grows purely
Day by day, stone by stone, build your secret slowly
Day by day, you'll grow too, you'll know heaven's glory
If you want to live life free, take your time go slowly
If you want your dream to be, take your time, go slowly...

The whole mix of my joys and sorrows, the celebration and lament as well as the physical pain and anxiety, took on a new level of insight when I went back to these words from Jean Vanier. He was speaking with Krista Tippett in an interview from 2013: 

We are very fragile in front of the future. Accidents and sicknesses is the reality. We are born in extreme weakness and our life will end in extreme weakness. So this, people don't want to hold on to that. They want to prove something. They want security. They want to have big bank accounts and all that sort of stuff. But then also, (they) hold lots of fears within us.

For me, certainly, and perhaps for our fragile and frightened culture, too this is a season for going slowly. I want to do a few things - love those who are closest to me, bake bread and share its earthy goodness, play some music that's encouraging and true - and I want to do these few things well. With tenderness and integrity, with beauty and commitment. No more trying to multi-task for me. I need to watch my step and pay attention so I don't fall again. Like Ram Dass told us back in the day, "Be here now!" Perhaps that's the charism of growing old: I no longer need to prove anything to myself or others. I can rest into the mystery of loving relationships.

And in relationships, its the small things done well, that matter. Listening. Being present. Taking the other seriously and without judgment. Nourishing trust. In this same interview, Vanier discloses another mystery revealed in L'Arche: small and slow is how we stay compassionate for small and slow is how God is revealed to the world in Jesus. He puts it like this: people and truths we can touch keep us grounded in the blessing and sacrifice of love. In our techno-culture that is so fast and massive, we see all the problems around the world but we can't touch them:

So you look at that Iraqi child (for example) and you were wounded and wanted to do something, yet, you were confronted by your incapacity because the child was not in front of you. If that child was in front of you, you could have taken the child in your arms. So we're going into a world where the imagination, the virtual, the long distance, see things far away, they appear as close. But you can't touch them. They're close to the imagination, but they're not close to the body. So let's come back to the reality of the small. There, we can touch them, we can be with them. The difficulty with L'Arche, which is also a beauty — I say it's our difficulty, it's our beauty - is that it's small and it's just very little.

Vanier goes on to say that L'Arche must stay small and slow to give shape and form to the counter cultural love of God. "The reality of every day is sometimes quite painful in this smallness (because we live) in a world where people are being pushed to pretend that they're big." (Read more of the interview here @

Today my body hurts - not terribly - but honestly. I'll get over it in a week or so, but I'm limping a bit and my head still feels a bit woozy and nauseous. That means I have to go slowly and do small things - even on this feast day of my grandson's fifth birthday. I want to go to the pumpkin fest with him tomorrow, too. But I'll have to take it slowly. Small, I continue to learn, is holy. It is where I can touch another - and make a difference. It is where my limitations have a place, too. A place that is safe for me and those I love. This week I began to own something else Vanier said: "I'm human - and I have my weakliness." 

I have my fragility, physical ailments of the heart, I have to take things quietly. And intellectually, I get tired much more quickly. So it's just the acceptance of reality. And you see, the big thing for me is to love reality and not live in the imagination, not live in what could have been or what should have been or what can be to this reality, and somewhere to love reality and then discover that God is present in the reality. That doesn't mean to say that we're just to be passive to welcome reality, because we also have to know how to react in front of reality. Reality is a beautiful reality, but how to just live that reality and live it with my own body, my own weaknesses, my own need for greater sleep, to get to sleep after lunch and all the rest of — this is my reality... I mean I am somebody who's moving towards that ultimate reality, which is much closer, which is death. 

Earlier, when one of my colleagues suggested that I consult with my local council on aging to learn new ways of taking care of myself, I was embarrassed. Then annoyed. I'm not old I said to myself. But that's not true. I'm not yet powerless, but I get tired easily and need a nap. My balance is more wobbly that I like. My eyes are weaker and my hearing diminished. Hell, my hair is white and I'm ready to call it a day by 10 pm! This is reality and it is beautiful albeit small. In ways that I needed to embrace, this week told me it is time, "not to live in the imagination... or in what or might have been," but to live in the truth of what I can touch right now. Namely, my loved ones, my friends in community at L'Arche Ottawa, my partners in music making. Clearly, I was not able to do much to stop the runaway train in the US Senate. That angers and worries me but it, too, is now a reality and I need to slowly see what this will mean.

Mostly, I think it means that I can live in my small, slow way as an alternative to the cruelty and lies. So, after my nap, that's what we'll do as we gather at the kids farm house to open gifts, eat chocolate birthday cake and feast together with love and trust. Next week I'll be with my community again in Ottawa. I'll bake another batch of bread soon, too. And then, God willing, in the middle of the month, we'll make some sweet music at another farmers market.

If you want to live life free, take your time, go slowly
Do few things but do them well, heartfelt work grows purely
Day by day, stone by stone, build your secret slowly
Day by day, you'll grow too, you'll know heaven's glory
If you want to live life free, take your time go slowly
If you want your dream to be, take your time, go slowly...

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