Last week in a computer kerfuffle, I lost all my writing from the last month. It was some Advent drafting, some outlining, mostly just free writing. It wasn’t a full tragedy - just a handful of pieces, none of them completed - but it felt bad. I thought about rewriting the Advent drafts, but like Jo March, sometimes it feels just too spiritually unpleasant to go back and re-write what was lost.
I was thinking about this a lot today, and also about my favorite small bowl I got at Goodwill over the summer. It was a blue China bowl that fit perfectly in your hand when you just wanted a little bit of ice cream, or a small bowl of oatmeal. It was lovely, and I just had one. It broke a couple weeks ago. I cried because it was just so - gone. It’s just a bowl. But sometimes small things are very special in particular ways.
I’ve been reading a lot of Pema Chöndrön lately. She tells a story of a monk who had a teacup that he loved. How to love it while knowing it will eventually break or be lost? He said that in his mind, the teacup is already broken. This allows him to love it, but not grip on to it so tightly. He knows that like everything wonderful & everything terrible - this too shall pass.
It’s very hard to hold lightly, but still love fully. It’s very hard to love fully, but still hold lightly. It’s a practice of resilience & humility, and also delight & surprise - because holding lightly means staying open for other new, good things, in our relationships & vocations & religion. We aren’t just running in our trench we’ve dug, surrounded by the good things we’ve collected that we’re trying to protect at all costs, living in panic and scarcity. We’re staying awake to newness. We’re open to surprise. We’re open to grief, too. It’s a vulnerable, and kind of scary, posture.
I think it’s hard to see Jesus clearly, though (the very weird story of God as a local tradesman living paycheck to paycheck) unless we’re cultivating a vulnerable, open way of being - not just about bowls & writing but our theology, too.
May we “hold it all more loosely / and yet somehow much more dearly”1 this Advent season as we live in this holy “already & not yet.”
This is from the Enneagram 1 “Sleeping at Last” song which my Enneagram 1 soul loves dearly