LIFE WITH A CAPITAL "L" Chapter One, section two

LINGER TO DISCOVER OUR SETTING, DISCOVER OUR WORLD

Sometimes my journal is kept well, sometimes poorly. In it I frequently note my setting, like noticing the antics of a cocky blue jay I see outside now as I write. How well I describe him is less important than what the activity of description requires. It demands that I pause to pay attention, and paying attention is tricky.

My hunch is that most people remain keenly aware of the terrors and dangers in our world, but too rarely do we remember its abundant kindnesses. Harsh realities of experience can be pleasantly relieved by the antics of a river otter or by a cat stalking a grasshopper. Only, we must deliberately watch for such things. We must be willing to be beneficially distracted. A spider’s web, jeweled by dew, is always beautiful whether it is found in an exotic jungle or a cluttered alley. Only, we must pause and pay attention if we hope to receive the gift. 

We moderns live in our world like the kid who frantically digs through a Christmas stocking, grabbing the contents, working hard to get to the end. And when he gets there? The experience is over, as our lives will be. Did he see the stocking? Was it made especially for him by someone who loves him? Did he notice? What do we see, hear, touch, savor, smell, or learn from that which holds our life? Will me miss the texture and shape of our world? Whether we carelessly neglect setting depends on whether we have learned to value the “place” provided us for getting to the end of things, of experiences, of relationships, of life.

Lingering to discover setting does not require an ideal place. Numerous people, including Corrie Ten Boom and Victor Frankl learned beneficial lingering in concentration camps. Disease, too, can be a setting for great sculpting of character. Loss dares us to linger and learn. Setting is.Just is. It can be fierce or fine. All situations allow for careless attitudes, any can lend to being real. 

My friend Linda died last year. She hoped to reach her fiftieth birthday but she did not. As she lived, in the midst of busyness and not waiting for ideal moments, Linda embraced her world. 

Years ago we painted the front of my house while our combined six children ran circles around us—squealing, laughing, crying, fighting, and making demands. In the midst of our task and the distractions, Linda noticed an abandoned bird’s nest. She promptly set brushes and efficiency aside, brought the next down, sat on a porch step and touched it, turned it, tested its strength, examined its structural wonders, mused aloud about its possible history, and exhibited to our children the value of lingering over natural things, of feeling the wonderful impatience required in waiting for spring and eggs and baby birds. She shared the reality of worrying about predators and wind and all the things that are able to threaten our treasures and our dearest hopes. But treasures and dear hopes do not die because the can be threatened. Ah. How real she was.

Linda’s flower beds held an arrangement of smooth rocks which she gathered in bulging pockets (“just one more”) during our walks on the beaches near my house, or from the Colorado mountains which she love and near which she lived. Those rocks were heavy with setting and worthy of being toted in suitcases between states in order to be enjoyed, briefly lingered over after work or between the many obligations that filled her days.

Now, myless-than-perfect flower beds hold Shasta daisies, some Brow-eyed Susans, and a rock or two from the beach. From a hospital bed, Linda followed in her mind the progress of daisies in her yard, the ones growing around the rocks from California beaches. She knew they would bloom on the Fourth of July and they did. We took some to her.

A few days later when she died, I spent the day in my yard digging in earth she loved so fervently, arranging rocks and planting daisies to remind me, next spring, of our years of friendship, and as a way of lingering in memory before I knew how to linger in grief. Finding gifts of goodness in our setting brings nobility to our lives. Only, we must pause. 

A small white feather in one of my journals reminds me of a mean-spirited parakeet, Caspian, who for years ruled my desk and chewed on my books. Stroking the feather brings delight. I loved the way that arrogant creature pulled me away from thought and suggested that the world was not all inside my head. I cannot live without noticing natural things, without sensing my setting. It quiets my pace and distracts my sorrow; it heightens my joy, and moderates my extremes. It reminds me of how much I do not know, how much mystery remains in being human.

I still do occasionally stretch out under a blossoming orange tree or under the massive pine in the corner of our yard; especially, if I feel sorry for myself. When my eyes are closed and I smell the fragrances, I fret less readily over a harsh exchange, rooms that need painting, or the possibility of a manuscript being rejected. I may weep stretched out under a tree, but there I do so differently than when lying on my bed or closed privately in a room. There are relationships I cannot seem to fix, deaths of people I Iove, and a passel of dashed dreams. I cannot avoid the impact of such real things.

Thank goodness for clouds that resemble Aunt Edna’s scowl, for the tide, a star, the boggling and wonderfully distractive task of figuring the path of the moon, a breeze in a bush, the journey of a pill-bug across a porch, the wait and the weight involved in a drop of water about to fall, the way a horse or cow can shimmy their skin and we cannot, warm dirt under bare feet, mud, the safe and silly company of dogs. For hot tea or coffee in a special mug, for letters, books, and favorite tables in a special restaurant. Yes, indeed. Authentic life in a highly artificial world calls for the discovery of setting.

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COMING NEXT—LINGERING IN ORDER TO DISCOVER OTHERS

A World of Information

To function well in our crowded world, we need to know things about people. But we have little time, thank you . . .