I attended the wedding reception of two dear friends his past weekend. They are a young Ghanaian couple who did a distinctive first dance as husband and wife. Afterward we had fun toasting them and dancing to Ghanaian music. The best man, who supplied the music from his ipod play list, kept it playing as we piled into cars to take bridal party photos at various D.C. landmarks. He told me that if we had been in Ghana, the celebration would have gone on until 4 a.m. the next morning. That sounded like—fun.
Fun is not a word you will find in The Rule of St. Benedict. I looked. It’s not there. Life and times in the 6th century were probably too hard for common people to think about what today we call fun. Fun is probably more of a 20th century concept. Actually, according to Oxford Dictionary Online (yes, word nerd that I am, I looked it up), the word is:
late 17th century (denoting a trick or hoax): from obsolete fun 'to cheat or hoax', dialect variant of late Middle English fon 'make a fool of, be a fool', related to fon 'a fool', of unknown origin. http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1249505
I remember fun being a watchword among my more bohemian friends in the 70s at my conservative Christian university. Other friends couldn’t understand why everything had to be fun or why fun even needed to be pursued. Still most of us were convinced that the administration did everything in their power to intercept any fun our young minds could devise.
So I was surprised when my spiritual director, an associate of a monastery and a married vowed solitary who had previously been an attorney and most likely had much fun in her day, looked over my emerging Rule of Life, and said, “There’s no fun in it.”
Oh. I had thought cultivating friendships and seeking beauty covered fun. Under that part of my rule I had had lunches with friends, gone to a couple of concerts with my cousin and seen a play with an erstwhile prayer partner. I thought those were fun.
I had been accused of being too serious or taking myself too seriously in the past, but I’ve laughed more—mostly at myself—within that last 10 years than I have my whole life. Ask the community; I’m a veritable crackup during our weekly meetings. Maybe funny doesn’t come under fun. Maybe only you can decide what’s fun.
So I thought about my past experiences of fun: Being swept across campus by my friend, Randy, as we sang the lyrics to the Follow the Yellow Brick Road; trying to learn card tricks from my floor residents; playing hand games with my students from the Caribbean; FYD and I playing a board game on a blanket on the lawn on a lazy summer afternoon when she was six; her sister, Favorite Oldest Daughter (FOD), inviting her whole sophomore class to our apartment for a dance party after vespers (don’t tell their parents, please); the three of us singing along to 70s tunes during road trips. And, of course, playing with my Favorite Only Granddaughter (FOG) has always been fun. (Hmmmm, fun often seemed to involve people younger than I. Without them, apparently very little fun would be had by me.)
I was looking forward to having fun with FOG, for a couple of days this past May, but due to a confluence of circumstances I saw her for only about 45 minutes.
FOG was soaking wet after their long drive from Tennessee. Her mother was hungry, overwhelmed by the heat and disappointed that I wasn’t ready or able to go. FOG’s father was annoyed that he’d had to come into the city and lose their driving momentum. I was angry at myself for miscalculating my readiness for both the move and spending the holiday weekend with them. FYD was nowhere to be found.
My apartment was full of half packed boxes and everything else was everywhere but where it should be. It really wasn’t a safe environment for a toddler. Since we needed to get FOG washed and changed, I carried her through the mess to the bathroom. Meanwhile FYD had arrived to help carry things I was giving (back) to FOD to the car. She was the only person happy about us not spending the weekend with them. She had thought doing so would spoil her weekend fun.
As we walked back through the living room, my granddaughter looked down and spotted, in midst of the chaos, a tiny orange basketball I had unearthed from some box. "Ball," she said (the first word she had spoken since she arrived) reaching for it. So I gave it to her. I marveled at how quickly and easily she had found an object associated with fun among the physical and emotional chaos that threatened to bury the four people who loved her most.
FOG held onto the ball as she was carried to her stroller, as I hugged her good-bye and as she was lifted back into her car seat. Her mother said she played with it until their dog claimed it as his own.
At the car FOG’s mother, father, FYD and I smiled and hugged each other—something we hadn’t done when they first rolled up. (It’s amazing what a little fun will do.)
If fun is the “enjoyment, amusement or lighthearted pleasure” that the Oxford Dictionary defines it as, I know of four adults who, led by a two-year-old, experienced a bit of fun on that last Friday in May.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Moved; Un-settled
Two weeks and two days ago I discovered that moving day was in 24, not 48 hours. I switched into panic mode—which for me is instant mental and physical paralysis. According to my Favorite Youngest Daughter (or FYD, introduced in the Teen Travails post), I would slowly pick up something, stare at it and set it down. Apparently I did this several times.
When FYD told me this I did what I do best: initiated a plea for help. “Janice,” I cried into the phone, “Remember when you said you could help me with packing?” Janice is a colleague and the mother of seven who had moved several times including while pregnant, with all seven children and/or without her husband present.
Janice came in, surveyed the apartment, and perceiving my nearly catatonic state, asked my permission to pack boxes. Her energy broke my paralysis. Seemingly within minutes the kitchen, the bedroom and the closets were packed. In addition, she helped me decide that:
1. FYD could be responsible for her own things.
2. The items in my plastic stackable drawers (my kitchen had no drawers and little storage space) could be taped closed rather than removed and boxed.
3. Things that needed to be sorted or tossed (less actual garbage) could be packed and reorganized later.
Before the point at which paralysis set in, I had been so overwhelmed that I was ready to either set everything on fire (but that would have made me an arsonist—not a good thing for a chaplain) or walk a way from it all (umm, not good stewardship).
Suddenly I began to see the wisdom of Saint B, who wrote:
… without an order from the abbot no members may presume to give, receive, or retain anything as their own, nothing at all—not a book, writing tablets or stylus—in short not a single item … For their needs, they are to look to the prioress or abbot of the monastery, and are not allowed anything which the prioress or abbot has not given or permitted. (RB 1980 The Rule of St. Benedict in English, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1982, Chapter 33, p.56)
I outlined in green and surrounded the above passage with huge question marks in my copy of The Rule. I hadn’t liked it when I first read it in seminary nor when I bought the book in 2007.
Still as I attempt to sort through the boxes that came with me (most of my things—I hope, it’s most—are in storage until my final move), not having to be responsible for material objects seems like a great idea.
Not only do I have sort through my things, now I also have to find different places for them. FYD and I are constantly reconfiguring arrangements of things. We’ve moved the electric coffee maker three times. She’s put things away; I’ve pulled them out and rearranged them. I’ve decided not to hang the art objects I thought I couldn’t live with out, so I’ve arranged them on a dresser that’s been moved within this apartment three times. FYD has zipped together and hung two hoodies to block the light that glares through her window at night. I’m on my second arrangement of window dressings for the same reason. Some things we simply can’t find to arrange. We also have to adjust to new routes and routines for laundry, trash disposal, banking, transportation and grocery shopping. And we’ve moved less than a city block away!
I’m not complaining; I’m grateful for the change and the added space (I can now look up at pictures of my granddaughter from God’s lap. I had never thought of putting them directly across from me rather than beside me). I’ve just forgotten what an enormous amount of energy it takes to move and settle in.
That’s probably what Saint B knew even in the 6th century. Just moving yourself and the clothes on your back was simpler than having to sort through, pack and unpack your possessions. New monks could more easily slip into the routine of the monastery with no things to rearrange.
Since I don’t have an abbot to direct me, my sorting and repacking will have be executed with settling in as my goal. I might just accept Janice’s offer to help again too!
When FYD told me this I did what I do best: initiated a plea for help. “Janice,” I cried into the phone, “Remember when you said you could help me with packing?” Janice is a colleague and the mother of seven who had moved several times including while pregnant, with all seven children and/or without her husband present.
Janice came in, surveyed the apartment, and perceiving my nearly catatonic state, asked my permission to pack boxes. Her energy broke my paralysis. Seemingly within minutes the kitchen, the bedroom and the closets were packed. In addition, she helped me decide that:
1. FYD could be responsible for her own things.
2. The items in my plastic stackable drawers (my kitchen had no drawers and little storage space) could be taped closed rather than removed and boxed.
3. Things that needed to be sorted or tossed (less actual garbage) could be packed and reorganized later.
Before the point at which paralysis set in, I had been so overwhelmed that I was ready to either set everything on fire (but that would have made me an arsonist—not a good thing for a chaplain) or walk a way from it all (umm, not good stewardship).
Suddenly I began to see the wisdom of Saint B, who wrote:
… without an order from the abbot no members may presume to give, receive, or retain anything as their own, nothing at all—not a book, writing tablets or stylus—in short not a single item … For their needs, they are to look to the prioress or abbot of the monastery, and are not allowed anything which the prioress or abbot has not given or permitted. (RB 1980 The Rule of St. Benedict in English, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1982, Chapter 33, p.56)
I outlined in green and surrounded the above passage with huge question marks in my copy of The Rule. I hadn’t liked it when I first read it in seminary nor when I bought the book in 2007.
Still as I attempt to sort through the boxes that came with me (most of my things—I hope, it’s most—are in storage until my final move), not having to be responsible for material objects seems like a great idea.
Not only do I have sort through my things, now I also have to find different places for them. FYD and I are constantly reconfiguring arrangements of things. We’ve moved the electric coffee maker three times. She’s put things away; I’ve pulled them out and rearranged them. I’ve decided not to hang the art objects I thought I couldn’t live with out, so I’ve arranged them on a dresser that’s been moved within this apartment three times. FYD has zipped together and hung two hoodies to block the light that glares through her window at night. I’m on my second arrangement of window dressings for the same reason. Some things we simply can’t find to arrange. We also have to adjust to new routes and routines for laundry, trash disposal, banking, transportation and grocery shopping. And we’ve moved less than a city block away!
I’m not complaining; I’m grateful for the change and the added space (I can now look up at pictures of my granddaughter from God’s lap. I had never thought of putting them directly across from me rather than beside me). I’ve just forgotten what an enormous amount of energy it takes to move and settle in.
That’s probably what Saint B knew even in the 6th century. Just moving yourself and the clothes on your back was simpler than having to sort through, pack and unpack your possessions. New monks could more easily slip into the routine of the monastery with no things to rearrange.
Since I don’t have an abbot to direct me, my sorting and repacking will have be executed with settling in as my goal. I might just accept Janice’s offer to help again too!
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