An oldie--from September 18, 2008

A shot I took two days later

 Twinkling Eyes

One of the best papers I read in the batch I'm about a return to my students was a story a young woman wrote about going to Africa, where, oddly enough, she saw more poverty--and more happiness--than she was accustomed to seeing here in the affluent west. It was well written and expressive, and I told her as much.

I also told her she had to be really, really careful with how she maintained what she did in the essay--that them poor black folk are just a'dancing and a'singing and a'worshipping the Lord, and isn't that just the sweetest thing! She's courting racism, of course, even though I'm quite sure she didn't mean it. I told her that the black kids in our class wouldn't take kindly to the way she wrote up the subject.

But take color out of the equation, and there's something in what she said that's resoundingly true--at least of me. A few nights ago, I knew we were having a full moon. Despite my conscience's screaming--I had papers to correct, after all, stuff that had to get done!--I got in the car (gas is $3.50 @ gallon!), and went out to watch it come up. Wasn't exactly as awe-inspiring as I thought it would be, but I can't begin to explain how good it was, simply to take an hour out watch the moon rise. Sounds dumb, I know, but the world is, as the poet says, too much with us--or at least me; and even though my student's analysis of happiness on the faces of the poor black folks she met in west Africa may be racist, that doesn't mean that her analysis of her own life--too driven by things in contrast--is far off the mark. Mine too.

"To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything he has given us--and he has given us everything," or so says Thomas Merton somewhere. "Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise the goodness of God."

I'm a leap year into this blogging business now--this is #367, the dashboard tells me. And keeping it up has been good for me in this way especially--it's prompted me to remember gratitude, and it's pushed me to try to be "constantly awakening to new wonder and praise."

But I'll be the first to admit that it's a fight. After all, I've got classes to teach, papers to read. I've got things to do, stuff that just has to be done.

Shoot, it's fall again, and you can hardly smell the roses anymore.

But right now soybeans have turned most all of Siouxland gold once more. I've just got to take the time to look.

This morning, I'm thankful for a young woman's innocent, racist essay, for a harvest moon, and for a single unreferenced line from Thomas Merton.

Somewhere in Gilead, Pastor John Ames claims one of his all-time, favorite lines is "a twinkling of an eye." It's something he says he wishes none of us would ever lose. Me neither. But it takes some work to hold on.