There comes a time in each week when the universe tempts you to step back, put your hands on your hips, nod at that clean pile of dishes and utterly vacuumed carpet and neatly arranged bookshelf, to nod and smile and bless the whole thing—it is good, I see that it is good, it is good and so it shall remain—and, importantly, to let your guard down. That’s the temptation, that there: letting your guard down, forgetting about those mismatched sneakers and flip flops and tennis shoes and the whole pile of them neatly arranged—for now—whispering about you, holding their secrets because, and this is it, the secret, one is missing. The other shoe. It will fall, it will cascade, it will tumble. It will inevitably drop—you know this, you’ve lived long enough, those dishes won’t stay clean or uncracked or whatever color they’re supposed to be for long. And so you stare angrily at that pile of shoes, at the one that’s not there—or maybe it is, maybe it’s waiting for you—but either way it will drop, the other shoe always does. And so you don’t sit down, you remain standing—out of respect for the inevitable, ready to leap into action, inevitably—and you’re never ready or in the right place and how were you going to keep the air conditioning unit from leaking or the pipe from backing up, never in a million years, or that nail from finding its way into the tire—no the other one, that was last month—or the cat from clawing up that last remaining respectable piece of furniture in your house. And now it feels less like a shoe dropping and more like a constant tap tap tap, like water is dripping or more likely leaking, almost like the shoes are mocking you with their incessant incessant noise, that tap tap tap like an old man waiting for soup but then you realize, maybe, the shoes are saying something. They’re not dropping, per say, they’re tapping out a tune, a melody, something you could dance to. And the old man is up, his soup forgotten, and suddenly you wonder if it’s the shoes making those sounds or the beating heart of the universe itself. Tap tap tap and maybe you can sit down after all because the melody is so constant and beautiful and inevitable and sometimes you feel like dancing, but right now you just want to rest.
And still God worries about the sparrows.
Thanks for reading my not-a-poem-or-an-essay. I’d love to hear what you think…or even what you think it is!
And just to round out the week with some Star Wars, check out my reflection on “Ahsoka the White” over at DorksideoftheForce.com!