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February 29, 2008
Friends,
What a special day! I remember thinking, when I was in elementary school and my February 28th birthday approached, how special it would be to have been born on the 29th.Wow! That would really have made me a celebrity! But I missed it. Instead, I had a regular birthday, occurring annually just like everyone else’s. I always wished that I had waited another 24 hours to be born.
Yesterday I celebrated my birthday with a trip to the dentist first thing in the morning to replace a temporary crown that fell off the night before. No breakfast. That was OK, though, since the dentist’s office was on the way to work. I took a packet of instant oatmeal with me, and when I got to work I popped it into the microwave. It exploded, and oozed all over like the mud pots of Yellowstone Park. I hadn’t seen anything quite like that since the girls were toilet-trained! I left the office at 2:15 for a meeting with one of my professors, just in time to miss my surprise birthday party at 2:30. It really was a surprise party: my co-workers were surprised that I wasn’t there, and I was surprised when Lora brought home a slightly squished cupcake with an unlit candle stuck in it! Meanwhile, my professor didn’t show up for our meeting. I waited in the library for half an hour, and then came home and read the email that she had sent that morning, letting me know that she wouldn’t make it. I spent the evening typing on my dissertation.
But today was extraordinary. It felt like the first day of spring, with misty rain floating like nimble birdsong as Lora and I walked along the river to the office. The leaves of daffodils have started poking up along the southward-facing concrete walls, and occasional moments of long-awaited sunlight glowed shockingly through the sky like slow lightning. Just before sunset I went to campus to pick up Kinsey, and walked a bit on the spring-soft lawns while waiting. Every little cranny in the gnarled tree roots was still filled with tiny rain pools, and the departing clouds, yellow in the sinking sun, were billowing above the silhouetted tree limbs. The little twigs are already knobby with little buds, just waiting to be born. The four of us shared my birthday dinner, a lot of laughter, and a couple of card games. It was a wonderful birthday, all the more memorable because it’s probably the last one that I will celebrate in the United States for years.
So how might we think about these two days? The day designated for festivities turned out to be a sit-com series of misadventures, a story of what almost happened but didn’t. The spare day, the one inserted merely as an accountant’s adjustment to clean up the calendar, was filled with loveliness. No one officially decreed this day mine, but I celebrated the whole day through.
Maybe we should wish less to be special, and simply become special. Maybe we should claim each day as a day of birth, a day not of celebrity but of celebration.
Grace occurs around us, I think, like rain or light. It flows into every cranny of our knotted lives, but we only sometimes take the time to notice. I want to slow down, to see the strong roots that anchor us inescapably in the past, as well as the summer folded tightly within these brittle, winter twigs. I want to live in wholeness and hope.
We too often wish that we had other birthdays, that we had been born in other times. We retreat into historical fiction, a nostalgia for the “good old days” that never were, or into science fiction, a longing for an imagined time that never will be. Or we build walls around us, like a gated community, without realizing that the walls that exclude our brothers and sisters surround and imprison us. The more we are confronted by the problems of today, the stronger our will to escape or hide.
It is a privilege to be alive at any time, a gift beyond imagining, but even more so today. We are called to confront great challenges for our communities, for our nation, and for our planet. I think we think too small. Our challenge is not the current economic downturn, for instance, but about how to provide everyone with meaningful work. It’s not really about mortgage rates, but about providing shelter. It’s not about fighting in Iraq, but about creating a world where no one needs to resort to violence.
What a time to be alive! What a thrill to be called into being in this holy place, this time of wonder!
I’m not sure what the future will look like, what tomorrows lie tightly folded within today, waiting for the warmth of our love to unfold into light. We can guess at the outlines, maybe:
- A lower standard of consumption and a higher standard of living.
- Less violence and more understanding.
- Less selfishness and more sharing.
- Less greed and more sacrifice.
- Less fear and more hope.
I can hardly wait! Let’s start today! It’s a great day for a new world to be born!
Happy birthday!
Love and peace,
Bruce
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer &
Study, p. 223 |
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