Grace on the Bus

If you don’t know the kind of person I am and I don’t know the kind of person you are, a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home, we may miss our star. --William Stafford

Do we really know the people around us? Do we even know ourselves for that matter? This week I returned to riding the bus amidst the previous week’s headlines of increased assaults and overcrowding.

It was one of those Seattle mornings where it’s hard to tell if the sky is going to break wide open into sunshine or burst into a deluge of rain. What would the day look like? After a bit of seat shifting between bus stops a middle-aged man landed in the seat next to me. He said, “good morning” which is something different in itself. Most riders just plug into their media (headphones, newspapers, books) and pretend the person next to them doesn’t exist. Soon we were sharing a bit of conversation as he relayed pieces of local good news—a lost runner had been found, baby falcons had hatched. Hmmm. I thought, this doesn’t feel like the bus described in last week’s paper.

The bus felt even lighter on the afternoon ride home even though it was five o’clock traffic and the coach was really crowded. The bus driver was amazing. The word ‘grace’ comes to mind. He let people exit from the back door rather than push through to the front. I witnessed riders offer seats to mothers and children. I saw strangers engage in light-hearted conversation. I saw a woman exit through the back door and deliberately walk around to the front and pay her fare (others had not done this) and then I watched that pattern repeated over and over with no real expectation from the driver.

The bus driver was our guardian for that short period of time and he did an amazing job. He was a keeper of peace, not with enforcement of rules but with kindness and a lightness in the air. Grace. He could have insisted everyone push through the crowd. Instead, he opened another door.

Through what door will I enter the world today? In what small ways might I hope to alleviate someone else’s burden—possibly their need to push and shove to be seen or heard? How will I see goodness and seek to know the person who stands before me or sits beside me? How will I follow my own star and not the headlines of another? How will you?

Pay Attention

"Our purpose is that which we most passionately are when we pay attention to our deepest selves." --humanitarian, Carol Hegedus

photo by lucy

Bus Headlines

“Reports of trouble on buses rise”
“Rider-on-rider “assaults” up 30% in a Year”
“Stats define incidents broadly, but rudeness noted”

These were the headlines of The Seattle Times Local News section on Saturday. Having missed my weekly bus rides for about a month now, I was naturally drawn to this piece. Ironically, the continuation page of the article landed right next to the “Faith and Values” section of the paper. Hmmm. Coincidence?

I began to ponder these topics together. What if we responded to rudeness with kindness? What if we reported stories of good deeds rather than angry words? What if we wondered what might be happening personally to people rather than blaming the metro system? What if we offered each other a cup of kindness rather than a shove and push? If we offered our seat rather than turned away in indifference? If we looked with compassion rather than judgment?

What if we did something different? Paid our love forward? “Unplugged” our i-pods and cell phones? Considered people rather than systems? What if we stayed in our seat and let the sleeping man rest? If we offered comfort rather than contempt?

Do you think we could change the headlines?

“Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other.”
--Henri Nouwen

Remnants of Childhood

Remnants of childhood. Mudpies. Dandelion & purple flower soup. Feather beds. Legos abandoned in the yard. Cows on the farm. A hint of manure. Generations of childhood memories woven together. Playing in the dirt. Connecting to the earth. A child’s sandbox. Digging and building. The simplicity of life.

"Whoever inquires about our childhood wants to know something about our soul." --Erika Burkhart

Compost

Yesterday I worked hard. I tended my garden, both literally and figuratively. I inhaled the clean, spring Seattle air mixed with the smell of fresh mulch that held just a hint of manure. A pile of dark earth was delivered to my home. Who knew that a mound of dirt could hold so many opportunities for discovery, such as tiny rocks and other things that somehow survived the composting process?

Is life on earth simply a composting process? Before yesterday I thought of the composting process as only a breaking down or decaying procedure, but interestingly enough the root word ‘compositum’ actually means ‘something put together’. So, I ask the question again, is life simply a composting process?

I wonder, will we allow ourselves to be broken down until only our true self is left, like the pebbles that arrived in my heap of compost? Will we stay in the process until there is no more space for barriers and defenses? Until what you see is what you get? A life as pure as a pebble.

We are called to be true to our nature. A rock is a rock. A bird is a bird. Water is water. People are people. We cannot be anything else. Yet maybe we are most like water as we take on the colors and reflections of the world around us. But when we try to reflect what is not our nature, there is disharmony and confusion. If water reflects a flame, it does not become fire. It is still water. We, too, can reflect many things, but to be at peace—to be whole and true to ourselves and to God—we need only be who we naturally and truly are at our very core.

Some of us resemble rocks and some are free as birds, others are beautiful flowers blossoming anew each day. And, me? Well, I am simply a child playing in this magnificent garden.