Last night was beautiful.
It might not have been. I very nearly got in the way.
You see, earlier in the afternoon, we’d had a little bit of a fiasco with a closed grocery store. I’d made a long list, and organized the Spouse and the family. But with the store closed, dinner had to be a little more makeshift than I’d hoped. Just a simple rice supper actually, and the planned cake went unbaked. Still the kids happily cleared their plates, and then the Spouse dreamed up a dessert of ice cream, bananas and home-made salted caramel sauce. (I love him.) Blue and Plum set to work slicing bananas, the Spouse concocted the caramel and, in the pause before it was ready, we had time to read a few pages of our Lent book Make Room by Laura Alary.
Maybe the Kingdom of God starts very small
But grows bigger and bigger
So slowly we hardly notice.
We took turns reading the words aloud, and Plum wanted a turn, too, so the Spouse held the book out for him and he told us all about the pictures. The sun set, the sky faded and the kitchen grew darker. I lit candles and set them on the table where they made the children’s faces shine. It was a gentle evening – makeshift, beautiful, comforting.
Maybe the Kingdom of God happens right around us.
Maybe it is happening now.
Last night, somewhere in the space between the details of weekend and the week ahead, there was a little room for gentleness to creep in.
In a poem called My Own Heart, Gerard Manley Hopkins writes of our need for gentleness and comfort. He suggests that our own hearts need our compassion – love as God loves, perhaps, and what God loves, too. Hopkins suggests that we “leave comfort root-room.” Isn’t that a lovely line? I found his poem in Between Midnight and Dawn, compiled by Sarah Arthur.
In our backyard, there is a passionflower vine against a trellis on the fence. Since we arrived at this house at the beginning of last August, we’ve been amazed by the growth of this vine with its strange and beautiful purple flowers. It was so abundant, extravagant even. In the autumn, green fruit appeared, grew heavy and turned a bright and startling orange. Then, the leaves browned and blew away, and the vines also turned woody and brittle. This past week, Plum and I have been in the garden more, enjoying the warming sun. The vine is turning green again, and now with the leaves not yet emerged, I can see its structure more clearly. Each tendril sets off small, curling fingers to root and to cling, sometimes to the fence or the lattice, sometimes to other branches. It climbs and weaves into itself, finding space, making room. Sure, the person who planted the vine against the fence provided it with space to grow, soil and support, but beyond all that, the vine itself finds root-room everywhere. I imagine God’s comfort and gentleness work like this, too. With our efforts and beyond our efforts, too.
And for that, I am so very grateful.
