The "We" of Me

 

Yesterday, I shared a few of my favorite quotes from Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights.  Here is one more:

 

“The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking.”

 

That single sentence stops me in my tracks.  Who am I caretaking?  Who is caretaking me?  These tangled and twisted threads of our lives are like the back of a quilt.  We assume and preach an individualistic gospel, and yet we are more interconnected than we care to admit or accept.  When do I hold the mystery that there is no me without “we”?  The “we” of my past ~ the family and friends and formational moments that accompanied me to this place, this day.  The “we” of the present that I see in the smudges of fingerprints on our refrigerator door and dirty plate left for someone else to put in the dishwasher or the person at the meeting who seems to delight in saying the opposite of what I am trying to suggest.  The “we” of the future, people who I do not even know exist but will cross my path in the road ahead and the creatures I might encounter on the hiking trip out to New Mexico in September or see on the sidewalks as I make my way down the street.   The “we” who will become our new Director of Music at some point – we pray – in the future.

 

The “we” that gathers every Sunday.

The “we” that includes voices of saints woven into the woodwork and walls of the church.

The “we” of people who tentatively cross the threshold of the entry way door because they are unsure that the church of a warm welcome really means it, lives it.

The “we” of voices that rumble around my mind that might sound like my mother at one time and my professor at another and in those still small moments like my own authentic voice.

 

The “we” of me…and the me that is a “we”.  This committee work of life that you and I are about in our lives, our church, our community, our country, and with creation that is singing in the choir with us.  May caretaking be the vocation that I pour my energy and effort into this day.  Amen.