The Common Weakness

Sometimes hope boils down to one simple realization: that this time, this moment, is just one moment.

With this realization, we can face the most difficult, nail-biting, neck-breaking hours in the day and see that, yes, if we just keep breathing, it will all pass away. The very nature of time is on our side.

A strong draught of humility and gratitude come along with this temporal hopefulness. Humility whispers to us that in wondrous moments we see that we are not the masters of our stars, and that the good comes along as easily as the bad, greeting us as an unexpected, much anticipated visitor. Gratitude bursts forth from the happy, healthy heart. Gratitude that Spring follows every Winter, gratitude that we have these wonderful moments at all, gratitude that every morning we breathe again and come into the world new.

Rumi writes how every morning is a decided new beginning in relationship with God. And thank God we have new moments, each moment. This Maori woman told me once that her tribe’s view of time and days and nights changed her perception of everything that screams at us to stay busy and stressed. Whereas we perceive the start of the day when we awake each morning (hopefully with the sun already in the sky, or at the very least on its way up) the coastal Maoris see the beginning of the day as the moment they lay down to sleep. She says that each day begins with hours of recharging, and each night closes with the activity of the day. You start the new day the moment you drift off to sleep.


When you look at it that way, I thought, somehow things seem less daunting. By the time you wake up, you’ve already succeeded at the first several hours of the day. You can awake to the light, enter into the day that has already been moving along without your fretting.


The last several days have been, well let’s just say, less than my best travel times. The spontaneity has been wonderful thus far; opportunities presented themselves, and opportunities were taken.  But somehow the End of the Trip snuck up on me, and I found myself scrounging for how to finish the research I came here to do, write up everything before it passed beyond the reach of my memory, and see those whom I love dearly for the last smidgen of time I have on this overgrown island. Whew.

But the beauty of this stage is that my work can travel with me, if only I give it the space and time it needs to breathe. Like a good wine.


And so Cambridge became the last destination, though this time no libraries were to be had, nor C.S. Lewis trails to be followed. A fair bit of work was birthed out of Auntie’s Tea Shop, and out of this coffee shop run by a bunch of Turkish guys (they were not so happy about the Persian genes floating around in my genetic makeup.)  Talk about culture shock: one moment I’m watching a student revolution take place in front of King’s College, listening to a gaggle of old British ladies chatter on about weddings and appointments and aching knees – the next hour I’m listening to the room full of Turkish men (all related, I’m sure) laugh heartily and talk in very un-English loud volumes and blather on in their foreign tongues. Ah yes, the perfect background noise for writing dozens of pages.

But amidst the hubbub of the English broads and the Turkish family reunion, the sneaking about Colleges closed to the public (you can go anywhere so long as you walk with purpose and don’t look about too much), the attempts at filling as many waking hours as possible with productivity, the endless long walks (largely due to never knowing where I was going), and the general increase of my stress levels… I read a snippet from good ol’ George MacDonald.

One character, a young and unsure minister, is speaking with a wise old man:
“‘However unlikely it may seem to you, Mr. Polwarth, I really do share the common weakness of wanting to be taken for exactly what I am, neither more nor less.’
‘It is a noble weakness, and far enough from common, I am sorry to say,’ returned Polwarth.”

The want of being taken for exactly what I am. How novel.

With this very simple statement, Mr. MacDonald called me back to the very simple, straightforward joy of living: namely that we, in our tendencies to fill time with Things to Do, are free to be who we are created to be without any worry of how others’ interpret us when there is a Heavenly Father cheering us onward.  We no longer must be goaded by the stress of success, or the pressure of productivity, or the overwhelming weight of checking everything off the To Do list when everything remains in perspective:

Love God.
Love people.
Love yourself.

When this is our view, we go from looking at the world through the cracks in our fingers to seeing every day in panoramic.

I am nearing the end of today’s hours, and thanking God for merciful passages.

Many more to come…

SO GOOD—

P.S. Cannot wait to be attacked by these goons. Best motivation for leaving England ever.