“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” – Mother Theresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories, and Prayers
I used to love summer. I was a kid of the ’90s in a suburban neighborhood where the streets curved into dead-end fields. Our boredom was never our parents responsibility. We were told, “Just be thankful you don’t have to work yet.” Or, “Boredom is the birthplace of creativity. Use it!” So we did. We built forts, had sleepovers in tree-houses, recorded our own radio show on cassette tapes, rode bikes to the country store for candy, played baseball and swam and went camping. Crushes were had, hearts soaring as high as the temperatures, until our summer banquet was devoured as the leaves turned red. I really did have some pretty idyllic summers.
I find myself now, a forty-year-old mother with two boys, in the middle of summer experiencing some whiplash. What I had as a child is kept in the rose colored crystal ball of my memories. The sounds, the feelings, the days and nights unfolding seemingly forever as I became. There was a strong sense of belonging in my family and childhood neighborhood. It allowed me to grow and experience joy because of this rootedness.
But what now? Where am I rooted? Have I stopped becoming? Certainly not, but sometimes I feel like I have. The times I feel this the most is now, during the summer. All of us parents flung out of our kids’ school rhythms into the gaping sweaty mouth of summer. Where everything seems possible and simultaneously too much. Where we might just be swallowed whole. That childhood summer banquet is no longer mine to feast at. Somehow I must create a new banquet. Or some of us might feel we must create new memories with our children because our own were so filled with pain. Either way, the pressure is there to greet us every morning. What are you going to do with your one wild and precious summer? Everything? Or nothing? Surely there must be another way.
In Matthew 6 Jesus instructs the disciples to consider the lilies of the field. These flowers have no choice in what field they were planted or what kind of soil. Is it hard? Is it fertile? Is it watered? Are there thorns? Do they have to fight to survive? They are just … there.
They have no control whether it will be a rainy season or one of drought. Will there be a heat wave this year? Will there be flooding? Will there be war? It seems that all they must do is stay planted and endure. They have no control over what color they are or what shape or what variety. And then Jesus says that not even Solomon in all of his adornments compared to the beauty of these lilies. Which is to say, no matter how many memories we make with our kids or accolades of getting the most out of summer compares to the kind of care and attention God gives in this very moment.
What is hard for most, myself included, is to be in and to welcome this very moment that has already been given. This would involve feeling our feelings about those lost memories. It involves me feeling anxious that I will lose myself in just the span of twelve hot weeks. It is here, into all of our feelings that the Holy Spirit arrives — that mysterious third person transforming from within. And I wonder, how much of my life right now is truly mine? And how much of it is God’s? It’s never one quick fix to live in the moment. It’d be great if we could say, great! I live in the moment now! I see God and accept what He has for me with humility and gratitude.
For those of us who grew up with a tit-for-tat God, it takes a long time to get to know the God who says, “Hey I’m right here. I’ve been here all along. All that I have is yours.” Duty and self-righteous are still in my bones, memories, and nervous system. I’ve recently tried a different way of praying. Instead of my usual practice of intermittent request emails sent to heaven, I now just sit — without my phone — while reading and re-reading a single verse of scripture. The futility of doing this is its own prescription, bypassing whatever need I have to perform. After a few months of this, I find myself repeatedly returning to Jesus’ words to his disciples in the Gospel of John:
My peace I give to you. My peace I leave with you. What I’ve started to notice is a greater acceptance for what is. A security in my belovedness in Christ, and an expanding grace for myself and others. I am starting to taste and see glimpses of the party that the father threw for his prodigal son. I, the older sibling, standing outside, have a really hard time taking part in that banquet. Nobody writes more poignantly about this parable than Robert Farrar Capon in his Parables of Grace. Here’s the father speaking to his older son whom he calls “Mr. Immaculate Twinkletoes,” who is so concerned about not wasting time or resources he barely knows how to have any fun at all.
The only thing that matters is that fun or no fun, your brother finally died to all that and now he’s alive again — whereas you, unfortunately, were hardly alive even the first time around. Look. We’re all dead here and we’re having a terrific time. We’re all lost here and we feel right at home. You, on the other hand, are alive and miserable — and worse yet, you’re standing out here in the yard as if you were some kind of beggar. Why can’t you see? You own this place, INSERT YOUR NAME HERE. And the only reason you’re not enjoying it is because you refuse to be dead to your dumb rules about how it should be enjoyed. So do yourself and everybody else a favor: drop dead. Shut up, forget about your stupid life, go inside, and pour yourself a drink.
So, by the grace of God, instead of being fearful that I’ll lose myself in the banquet of summer, I get to say yes. I am lost. I always have been. The truth is, I have lost myself and all my dumb rules and get to wake up to my true self right here and now. And what kid wants to be with their mom who’s so hard on herself? I get to enter that banquet room and taste and see that the Lord is good. And sometimes, that door is through my children. I get to live right here, right now with my two boys who alternately fight all the time and love all the time. Like an old piece of origami, I get to unfold my old worn out ways of being around my flesh and blood while they fold into something strong and beautiful before my eyes. Sometimes it does feel like too much. What will we become feasting here at the banquet table? I don’t know exactly, but Somebody once told me lilies are quite something to behold.
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2 responses to “Feasting at the Banquet of Summer”
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Janell – That Capon quote – wow! And your whole article is awash in Good News and Grace. Thanks!
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