Where It Lands Is Where It Stays

While I was digging up the foundation of my house, I had to find someplace to put the 'dirt.' It wasn't dirt. It was clay, and the reason my basement was leeching water. Though I am perfectly capable of setting up a kiln and a pottery studio, I was too busy to launch another career. Very invested in the survival of my back, I did what seemed simpliest, I dumped it in the front yard. This began a long reconfiguring, from grass to raised gardens. Landscaping in bushes, bulbs, small trees and flower beds. To top it all off, I took my dutiful dump truck to the river where four men used a crane to load a rock that I had been eyeing for months. These guys had been repouring a concrete dam and placing a walking bridge over the top of it. We had become friends over many years. It actually took them nearly five years to do this job. More stories emerged from trying to work over an aged and decayed system of rushing water than I could ever retell. I went there every morning and they thought I was there to walk my dogs. I was there to watch them.

They didn't blink once when I asked for this rock. And they certainly did not ask any questions. Every weird thing in the world had happened to them already and one more weird thing, did not phase them.

I arrived to the front yard with this rock, backed the truck up and said, "Where it lands, is where it stays." It had four perfectly sheared planes. I imagined that it would land square, and one of these large, flat planes would host a perfect pot of flowers. It would be a table of sorts. However, it did not land like that. It landed on a corner, and shot into the air an opposite corner, making its position cut a diagonal pose. A large point jutted into the air. All I could say was, 'Wow, I never thought of that." It had found its most perfect presentation. Its weight had dug itself into the ground. Something better than I could have imagined, happened.

I walked away, parked the dump truck on the street.

"Okay," I said to myself and repeated the "Wow."

Of late, in the chaplaincy program, I have been asked to root around in my past. Locate and write about my formation, take off, and life ventures. Focus on the wounds and shadows of my development and personality. Focus on relationships. Focus on themes. Focus on ... Focus on...

I know I am probably moving from my house when I complete this program. I have already started thinking about upending and moving the rock in the front yard. Can you believe that? I have thought of many plans as to how to accomplish this. A case of where it lands is NOT where it stays, it seems.

Why then do I think that the difficulties of my childhood, the pain and struggle of my adult life are non-fluid, stationary, fixed or permanet aspects of my life? If I have already moved a rock that weighs four ton, and am already planning to move it again, why do I resonate on, 'this is who I am, and this is why' tending toward a harsh, sour and fixed appraisal?

Right now, I am struggling to know my soft spots, my vulnerabilities, my losses, my hurts, my tendencies, my deepest longings, my hopes, dreams and wishes, my sum total. Who I am is not a static deal. I am not fixed in a permanet state. Like the dam project going on over the top of a raging, rushing river. There is progress, and there is forward.

I just have to go to work everyday, and work with what I have. No matter the start-overs, the bad weather, the ice, the mud, the crazy city and federal officials, the bugs, the snakes, the floating dead-wood, the erosion, the high water and the flooding.

I am remembering, this morning, what I learned from watching four men work for a long time.

And I can't really say that there has not been progress on this Linda project. Where it lands is not where it stays.

Something better than I could have imagined is happening. At 58, much has already happened.

And that is the presence of God in my life, and across my life.

I believe they call this: The Holy Spirit.

And whatever guardian angels were assigned to this bridge and dam project.

By the way, the front gardens are spectacular.

Something better than what I could have imagined, happened.