So much of my blogging here has been reactionary to pain in my relationships--mainly with Todd. But I feel a new birth coming on. The emergence of a more fully integrated me. The reemergence of joy that has always been there, even if it's been squelched.
As I experience renewed freedom, I am able to be myself... and I realize that
I'm weird.
Like today, after dropping my daughter off at her morning class... I pulled into the driveway and looked up at the splashes of light playing as if the leaves and the branches of the trees were a jungle gym. It made me so happy that I had to just sit there for a spell. I thought about Emily's monologue in Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, in which she declares, "Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you!"
How often I feel that wonder, that awe, and love, too... and then I want to share it with someone, but I realize I'm just being --
weird.
The Emily character felt that frustration when she was allowed a brief visit among the living after her death:
EMILY
Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!
But Mama doesn't look. She is in a different dimension. Emily cries out to the Stage Manager (and launches into the part of the monologue most often made fun of for it's melodramatic delivery by high school actresses pretending to understand such depth of emotion just by putting a little quiver in their voices)...
EMILY
...I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye. Good-bye world. Good-bye Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?
The dead-pan stage manager replies:
STAGE MANAGER
No.
(pause)
The saints and poets, maybe they do some.
Okay, I've been in with the mockers, parodying Emily's quivering words... but there is something to that sentiment--if you're weird, like me. What makes "the saints and poets" so different? Maybe that's part of what makes me feel like such a misfit. I was raised by poets -- I thought that was normal.
And who are the "saints"?
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."
Matthew 5:9
Peacemakers. Hmm, "sons of God" ...sounds pretty saintly to me.
Saints and poets and peacemakers understand the importance of looking--really looking. That is odd in our society of disposable everything (including friendships). I've been chided and told I'm weird (or I'm setting myself up to be hurt) when I try to make peace with the playground bully who used to cause my knees to be skinned. Maybe I'm naive, but I was taught to believe in redemption--to believe that the bully's got to have some pretty deep pain issues to go around tripping little girls in dresses. Kind of like the little girl in the movie Hook said to the big bad pirate: "You need a mommy really bad."
Life has taught me that they are right, though--the naysayers, the critics who try to warn me that I'm going to get burned. They are right. A book I was just reading tells me that such an upbringing produces prime targets for "Dangerous Men." But the naysayers are also wrong--because some people do respond to peace-making. Maybe it's a gamble. Or maybe it's an endeavor that you just have to approach with caution and eyes wide open. Looking. Really looking.
I got to thinking about how normal people are so caught up in forward momentum... always moving in a linear manner. "Don't look back!" they cry in fear. "Forget about it; move on." That wiring doesn't feel right to me. My poet parents were also always good letter-writers. We moved a lot, but they didn't leave people behind, so our lives were rich with people from all different places and phases of life. It seemed that everyone liked my parents, and I grew up wanting everyone to like me. I know that's not possible, but I do think some people give up too easily.
Like so many things in life, I think it boils down to finding the right balance.
"Listen! I am sending you out just like sheep to a pack of wolves.
You must be as cautious as snakes and as gentle as doves."
Matthew 10:16 (Good News)
I put emphasis on the word "and" because I think an awful lot of people ignore it. They look at this as an either/or proposition.
Caution is good. It can keep me away from dangerous situations. But caution also kept me from going up to the lady at the post office who I saw commit a random act of kindness, and telling her how much her kindness to a stranger blessed me as an observer. The poet in me wanted to celebrate the act, but I didn't want to be too weird.
How many times do I walk past a sad person and catch his or her eyes, and I'm stuck by the extraordinary color or shape that makes that person's eyes like no one else's... yet I don't take even a few seconds to pause and point out the beauty? To boost someone's self image.
Sometimes the beauty in the texture and variety of people around me in a public place makes me want to cry for joy. How can we ignore the splendor? How can these people not know how beautiful they are? Could it be because no on looks long enough to realize and tell them?
I've been on a peacemaking journey this year. I've seen it work, and I've seen it backfire. But I don't ever want to forget those times it works just because it sometimes backfires. And I don't want to let those times it works cause me to become careless around dangerous wolves.
Balance in weirdness. And weirdness in balance.
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