‘‘Tis the season for New Years resolutions or at least conversation and synicism about new years resolutions.
I’ve always made resolutions - goals as I prefer to call them. I like the idea of fresh starts and my disposition is such that I crave an objective. I like dreaming big dreams. Just ask my husband - I have some wild and crazy ideas. I’ve always been this way.
I remember as a kid spending an entire morning dreaming up a backyard carnival. This wasn’t a daydream - this was a plan. I devised exactly what kind of attractions my carnival would offer, where we would place them, how we would advertise, and what we would charge for admission. There were sketches and notes involved, if I recall correctly. My idea didn’t receive that much traction from the rest of my family… but I just dreamed up something else instead.
I’ve made extravagant goals over the years - noble and not unachievable, but big. For a long time, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I would have answered that I wanted to open an orphan home in a foreign country. When I was in college, I studied education but I was certain I was going to use my degree to change the world by changing the lives of children. When I was fresh out of college I thought I wanted to get a masters degree in developmental education and go to work for the United Nations, rebuilding broken education systems.
I vividly remember looking at adults in my life and wondering when they gave up. I know, I was an arrogant child. But, when did they stop dreaming big dreams? When did they become ok with their lives consisting of mortgages, carpool, retirement plans, etc.? It is always arrogant to assume one knows what another person is living for, even more so to judge what we assume about that person’s life. But I was young and naive. I told myself, “I won’t be like that.” I’ll never stop dreaming big dreams.
My generation was taught this ethos - and still is.
Dream big dreams!
Dare greatly!
Carpe deum!
Don’t waste your life!
The last one scared me the most. I couldn’t have defined it, but I had clear (and, as I said, naive) notions about what it meant to “waste” one’s life - the nagging fear of it haunted me. I therefore longed for every aspect of my life to mean something, to have significance (in my own narrow definition), to add value, to be extraordinary.
The difficult part of grown up life for me has always been that there is a large portion of life that is, by necessity, ordinary.
Some of you who are pragmatists may roll your eyes at me thinking, “Well, of course that’s true.” But, I had spent years paying very little attention to the ordinary while I was in search of the extraordinary. In fact, I even scorned the ordinary. I remember the first time I tried to read Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter I was bored to tears. I remember wondering, “What’s the point?” Yes, I’m ashamed of this now, but I was only interested in stories with quests, with grand movements, sweeping romances, and epic battles. What I failed to see were the movements between the climaxes. I didn’t pay attention to poor Frodo putting one foot in front of the other day after day as he plodded towards Mordor. I didn’t recognize that Jane Eyre spent many a day quietly tutoring her charge. Or, to borrow a real life example, I had never bothered to think that my childhood hero Amy Carmichael probably spent much of her day balancing budgets, fundraising, washing dishes, folding clothes, and breaking up disputes between children. And the problem is that because I failed to see these things, I failed to recognize the need for and the value in these small gestures. They added no value. At most, they were necessary evils. If it were possible not to do them, I wouldn’t.
But what I’ve come to realize, ever so slowly, is that perhaps life’s greatest challenge and deepest value lies in the mundane.
I recall William Carlos William’s famous poem:
so much depends
upona red wheel
barrowglazed with rain
waterbeside the white
chickens
Don’t ask my what Williams intended with his poem. Many wiser than I have ventured to guess. But the vivid image it conjures up - that red wheelbarrow sealed and shining because of the rain - is a mundane thing, frozen in time and imbued with value. “So much depends,” the poet says.
Similarly, while mine is a mind that gravitates towards the big picture, the grand scene, there is much to be learned from the microscopic and the seemingly insignificant.
My mother used to say ALL the time, “Discipline, not desire, determines your destiny.” As a kid I rolled my eyes, assuming she just meant I needed to work harder or stop complaining. But, the phrase has taken on a deeper meaning to me now. It is, after all, in the simple disciplines, in the daily habits, that a life is made. We all know this on some level, don’t we? Yet, it is precisely in the mundane that we fail to exercise discipline. We imagine that if we were given some grand calling that we would certainly rise to the occasion. But making my bed? Changing another diaper? Simply putting one foot before the other, doing what is required to me today as faithfully as I possibly can? Where is the glamour in that? Where is the value in that?
I am slowly learning that EVERY value is in those microscopic moments. Just as Jesus himself ascribed great metaphoric value to the small, seemingly wasteful act of a shame-filled woman pouring expensive perfume on his feet. Just as infinite significance was given to the simple act of a Samaritan woman drawing water for a Jewish man. In the same way, the incarnation has given the daily, mundane acts of our bodies and minds value. “Whatever you do,” we are told, “do it as unto the Lord.”
“So much depends upon” … the way I respond to that text message, the tone in which I speak to my child, the meal I prepare, the clothes I fold, the dollars I spend, the life I make, step by step, moment by moment. In fact, it may be taboo to say so, but I have recently begun to wonder if, while we glorify mighty acts of courage and sacrifice, the martyr and the missionary (and we should), it takes just as much courage (in smaller doses perhaps) to daily live each difficult moment with eternity in our hearts. To faithfully “put our hands to the plow” and walk forwards, straining with the weight, struggling with loneliness, despair, insignificance, discontent, is heroic. It isn’t often sung about by poets or awarded prizes by international organizations. But some of the most heroic people I know are those who’s life is comprised of faithful and beautiful small gestures.
To my friends who faithfully serve your families and communities, who show up to work every day, who kiss booboos, write music, fold laundry, dust furniture, enter numbers in a database, and do all kinds of small things to make order and beauty in this chaotic world, your actions may go unnoticed, but in them is a world of meaning. In them we see a glimpse of the “steadfast love” of the divine.
It was Van Gogh who said, "Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” I love this because it brings to mind his paintings. A series of small, intentional, textured brush strokes eventually make up a breathtaking composition. I remember the first Van Gogh painting I saw in person. I stood inches away form the canvas and stared, mesmerized by the colors and texture. I remember noticing that the tree trunks seemed to contain every color except brown. Up close, they are only brush strokes, even seemingly meaningless and haphazard ones. But they make up a masterpiece.
So this year I choose to make much of small gestures, to celebrate them in the lives of others and to faithfully carry them out in my own life. I will never stop dreaming big and crazy dreams (and I don’t think I should), but I will choose to honor the habits and chores that make up my days. I will choose to see them for the transcendent movements they are.