Committee Work

This morning, like many February mornings at our farmhouse in Northern Michigan, brings the discovery of fresh fallen snow. The world outside is layered like some extravagant but oddly monochromatic cake, everything now rounded, softer, the hard edges not taken away but at least beautifully obscured. Out our front window I watch the woods across the road: the snow accumulates on a pine branch until the burden becomes too great; the branch bows gently, lets the snow go, and recovers. I watch this and sip on my espresso and think: "that would preach."

I am always amazed by the differences a morning can bring. I think of all the times over the years when I have been chased into the night by fears, anxieties, my mistakes, an unpleasant reminder of the fragility of life, a worry about a loved one, the haunting sense that--to paraphrase the great David Carr--I am a terrible fraud whose only hope is that the caper doesn't end too soon. Then I've awoken the next morning to discover that, somehow, in the course of the night those demons fled--or, at least, that they've taken a temporary leave of absence. Sometimes the trick is to be sure I don't forget them too soon; they had something to tell me or teach me that I needed to hear. But there is clearly something else--maybe within me, maybe without, maybe both--that helps me bow and let them go.

I think it was John Steinbeck who said "It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after a committee of sleep has worked on it." In my own unsystematic theology, I have long suspected that God provides us with these committees, assemblages of angels, if you like, who will work diligently but silently on our behalf if we will give them space to do it. This is tough when our minds are abuzz with so much static and racket. It is as though these holy co-conspirators in the interest of our own sanity and purposefulness have to wait for us to spend ourselves into sleep before they can really get to work.

There is a lot to do in the season of Lent. Some of us will give things up. Some of us will take things on. Some of us will do both. Maybe it is also important for us to rest as well, to give the formative forces God sends our way an opportunity to whisper to us when we're not busy chattering and doing. Maybe it is an important time for us to be still, to feel and own the burdens that have come upon us, and then--waking or sleeping--to bow and let them go.

Amen.