Here at the end of the day I come crawling to a stop. I taught all day and lost my voice again and am wondering what’s to become of this lately chronic malady. A doctor’s appointment is clearly pressing, but other things press harder, and it’s to these things I attend.
So today I attended to my students and some Julius Caesar, to papers that must be graded and students who are struggling and e-mails that fill the inbox and are in danger of disappearing from the window before I’ve had a chance to remember what they are about. The ride home today meant a stop at the church for Everett (who left his backpack there on Tuesday) and another at the grocery store (for tortillas and juice and bubblegum), and I folded the enchiladas into their pan and left the children with their instructions and darted out into the cold, cold evening air for a walk just before dark.
The sky was empty tonight except for the moon and except for the empty branches pasted around the edge. My mind was not empty, however, and I found myself chasing my thoughts before me. A crowd of mourning doves abandoned a tree and flew across my path in search of another. I hurried home.
Dinner and the ensuing dishes, a freshly scubbed bathtub and the ensuing freshly scrubbed daughter. The chores are wrapped up and the children tucked in and a window of time unfolds before me and here I sit, and the two loads of laundry waiting for me upstairs are also Not Folded.
What to do with a day like this one, the sort of day when– here at the end– there is Nothing Left of Me?
They won’t be adding hours to the day. I’ve thought it through and it can’t be done. Meanwhile my personal e-mail inbox is Far Past the level of my comfort in terms of Unread Mail, my Facebook account is Sorely Wanting Attention, and there they are– can you hear them, O Reader?– my students’ papers, calling, calling to me.
I would like, for a while, for my life to be like tonight’s sky: clear and quiet, with only one shining Presence to draw any attention to itself. Empty branches, arms aloft, content, expectant.
Instead, the day drives my thoughts before it and scatters them in all directions. I find myself looking for Life in the narrowest places: dark and congested and stale. I grow tired of myself. I forget things.
St. Augustine was with me on my walk this evening. He has been with me of late, you know, pacing around at the back of my mind, reminding me of things that are True. And here they are again, the thoughts he voiced 1500 years before now, pulling me out of myself and the crowded corner of my life:
The house of my soul is narrow, too narrow for You to come into it; enter it, and make it wider.
And this one, too:
You are not dispersed, but rather You gather us together.
I would like, this evening, to be pulled from my narrow places and gathered into that spacious Lap, a place of forgiveness and sweet rest and, I am sure, a wonderful view of the Sky.
