Why the Push?

Perhaps this knotted-up way of living commences with how doctors and midwives usher us into this world. Yes, I wonder if that first word the cosmos urges to our waking consciousness, that initial directive, permanently scars this business of living: PUSH. And so it goes. We inhale, fill our virgin lungs with the air of this planet and begin: pushing, straining, tangling, knotting. Hurrying.

I saw another way the other day, in a different world that orbits a few gravel roads to the north of here. Coming down that hill facing to the west, clouds floating in silence overhead, even the way the oxygen inflates your chest cavity feels different… peaceful, deliberate. The gnarled orchard suns itself in the noonday heat. Young girls, bonneted and barefoot, cluster in the shade of ancient limbs. Boys in straw hats and suspenders scatter throughout a farmyard, the lazy windmill graciously serving as the home base anchor for their game of baseball. I breathe deeply, exhaling long and completely. The red geraniums greet cheerfully as I park near the hitching post next to the back door.

Two steps up take me up past the corn bristle broom hanging on the clapboard and into the cool dark of the shop. Eyes adjust to the still dimness. Feet shuffle across the worn wood floors. Then hands, old and well-used, dig into apron’s pocket in search of a pencil.

“Yes?” the hunched-back Mennonite man quietly asks, pencil nub ready. Glancing around the farmhouse store, no bigger than my mudroom, at its gray wooden shelves of recycled tins marked with masking tape labels of “baking soda,” “cornstarch,” and “chicken bouillon,” I humbly nod my hello, and offer a pondered, “Well….” This air slows…

Nodding understanding, he steps into the room’s only beam of light streaming through the four paned window and patiently waits. Thoughtfully, I select a 25 kilogram box of raisins stacked in a darkened corner, a 5 gallon pail of honey, a 25 kilogram bag of oats. Soundlessly and in perfectly executed scrolls, the shopkeeper itemizes each in his coil notebook along with corresponding price. He conscientiously weighs the bag of cornstarch I set on the butcher top counter, marking down precisely what the scale hands pronounce.

“Might you have larger bag of flax?” I inquire, softly so as not to break the peace of this place.

He nods and shuffles into the windowless black of a side room. I finger jars of oil reflecting the room’s sole sunray, lean to smell baby food jars of cloves, pick up one of the fragile glass flutes of a lantern. And wait. There is no clock in this room. I do not know how long I just simply am before he returns carrying a bag tied at the top with fraying twine.

He cradles the bag closer to eye level and makes mention: “Found a little hole here in the corner so the flax seeds were trickling out. I just tied it up with some baler twine.”

Unexpectedly, he turns his face directly towards mine, gentle eyes locking. “This isn’t one of those big good stores,” he apologizes. It takes me a moment to know what he means, to find words ready to respond, the silence of the space so complete. Finally words stir and I assure, “Oh, I find this place good. Very good.”

Taking the double tied flax bag in hand, I can feel it deep within: I have unwound and let go. There has come an end to the unraveling. I already am, already here, already born. There is no need to push.

He smiles gratitude and tallies the flax to my list. There is only the sound of his pencil slow scratching out the math of my total. What is hurry in this world that has let the world go on ahead?

On my way down the lane I notice collections of women in the long waving grasses of the pasture, their black aprons blowing too in the breeze. A line of men parallel the fence, leaning on the cedar rails. Here, there is no compulsion. They have found time. And each other.

In that moment it comes to me, that story of a well-known pastor who was once asked what was the most profound regret of his life. Recalling the expansive and chaotic landscape of a life of sins and wounds, he thought for a moment, then answered, “Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I’ve ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing. Through all that haste, I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.”

Pushing, hurrying, rushing to gather and store…as it trickles out a corner.

The cord was tied moments after our birth. There is no need to push anymore.

Listen. Hear Jesus soothing his children with another word, one that massages life into this business of living?

Rest.