Dusting our lives.
She was standing on those steps, reaching up to pull out a book from the top shelf which she wiped and returned. And the next one,…and the next one. I had just come down from my desk, wanting to sit with a book of Mary Oliver’s poems in the bay window of the history room and there she was. She returned later and rubbed the brass door knob and lock vigorously on both sides of the door. A previous morning she had walked past me with a feather duster in hand, again cheerful and diligent.
I spent yesterday evening with the old library to myself, the lamps casting their cones of warm light, bathing the honeyed wood of pillar and balcony and the intricate carvings and the harmony of design, all washed in years of care. And the lady this morning, mature in her beauty and bearing, a person of substance in her apron and calling, quietly (it is a library after all) and unobtrusively carries on that caring and tending. Last night I had written of this library as a sacrament, a place imbued with faith and searching for the deep down truth of things, an outward sign of an invisible grace, the vastness of lives and mystery and God. The thousands upon thousands of books and the struggles that lay behind them, each hard won, speak of the challenges and horizons and visions of their day. With the glow of the wood and the beauty of setting all we are invited into slowness and hush, reverence and openness, attention and humility.
And yet someone needs to clean the books, to wipe the brass and dust the shelves. The daily round and the regular caring for things builds and crests over decades so that more than 110 years later this place remains the treasure it is. And of course all the good stuff in life that lasts the distance needs regular dusting. Marriages, families, communities, schools, churches, friendships, even nations need that regular attention to detail, to be looked after with diligence and loyalty. It’s neglecting the small stuff which unhinges things over time. We’re on the lookout for the big ticket items: affairs, addictions, bad health news, big arguments, church splits, bankruptcy, headline issues of the day and so on. We are, most of us, not undone by those.
Only in realising the preciousness of what we have and how easy it can be lost will we give the small things the attention they need. The courtesies, the regular checking in, the keeping of promises, the phone calls and visits, that long put off letter, the thankyou card and patient listening, the eye contact and offer to meet for coffee, the prayer meeting of MP’s, the honouring of difference, the encouraging word and speaking of truth in love, the biting of your tongue when you’re tired, the hug when it is needed and so on.
One of the poems I read while all was being dusted and cared for around me was written after Mary Oliver lost her partner of 40 years. I hope it will inspire us to treasure and dust the good things in our lives:
Those Days
When I think of her I think of long summer days she lay in the sun, how she loved the sun, how we spread our blanket, and friends came, and
the dogs played, and then I would get restless and get up and go off to the woods and the fields, and the afternoon would
soften gradually and finally I would come home, through the long shadows, and into the house where she would be
my gloriously welcoming, tan and hungry and ready to tell the hurtless gossips of the day and how I listened leisurely while I put
around the room flowers in jars of water- daisies, butter-and-eggs, and everlasting- until like our lives they trembled and shimmered everywhere.
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