It seems like the best books I’ve read lately are, at there core, about abandonment, sorrow, and how our hearts ache. And yet, the hearts of the people in those stories also break open with love that defies understanding. All My Puny Sorrows and The Summer of my Amazing Luck by Miriam Toews and The Color of Water and Deacon King Kong by James McBride are stories of redemption and living the lives we’ve been given in great Love.
We all have “holes in our lives,” Miriam Tower writes, and “people like to talk about their pain and loneliness in disguised ways.” Maybe it is that we (I) really can’t honestly say what our holes of longing are but we get a lump in our throat or tears that stay in our eyes, or heaviness in our heart when we encounter that empty place. Pay attention to those tears, or whatever physical manifestation gets your attention.
I wonder if that is what happened to me the other day. I was retreating into an episode of “Escape to the County,” a twist on those house hunting shows. Except in this one I glean a bit more. I learn a little more about the United Kingdom where the episodes are filmed and, instead of the focus on finding the right house, the host explores the features of a community and offers the seekers experiences to get to know the locals. The goal seems to be to get a glimpse of what their life might be like in that place.
In this case, the life change seeking couple were invited to the community Waffle Restaurant where “good food and doing good go hand and hand.” The owner explained that the thrust of the business was to reach out to the lonely and promote opportunities for people to come together, to chat with people they might not otherwise encounter. A sign on the wall of the establishment featured a quote from Mother Theresa, Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. The poster reminded those in the place about their ‘waffle work’. The locals in this community call it “wafflin” a play on the words ‘talking everyday talk’.
I think it was when the owner said, “reach out to the lonely” that the tears in my eyes disguised a hole in my life. Perhaps that is what we all long for, a place to belong and be ourselves. Perhaps, I wished to be part of a community of people that met each other intentionally with that kind of reciprocal care.
Both Miriam Toews and James Mc Bride spin stories of redemption, finding goodness in unlikely places and circumstances, seeing people as God must see them. Or as a member of the street community where I live said in a local documentary, “Sitting with Grace:” “You’d find so many of our negatives would fall away because you’re utilizing our strengths instead of going after us for our weaknesses.”
I believe I did that, maybe, in my life as a teacher; finding the strength and interests of some who were only seen as someone to be fixed, remediated, turned around from whatever path they seemed to be traveling that others didn’t understand or bless. I have a little more trouble giving that acceptance in the general population, to those who might have obvious advantages or even members of my own family. Perhaps, I don’t sometimes give that grace to myself.
In The Color of Water, James McBride concludes that “at the end of the day there are some questions that have no answer and then one answer that has no question: Love rules the day.” In McBride’s Deacon King Kong, the goodbye often used with members of Deacon’s local congregation, “I hope God holds you in the palm of His hand,” is painted on the back wall of the church for the world to hear. Maybe I don’t have a better way to fill our holes.
I hope God holds you in the palm of her hand. And I know what a capacious hand it must be.