Rightly Recognize Your Life ~ Holy Experience

I walk on eggshells.

Quite literally, there, down the trio of back stairs, with the potato sack there in the corner, this carpet of cracked shells rolls out the back door, a welcome mat of brokenness.

Fitting for the day.

Malakai’s howling his refusal to gather the finger puppets, Shalom’s sonorously wailing through the house the lament of the lost purple marker, Hope’s pleasantly forgotten her piano book at her teacher’s, so now pounds jovially her own improvisation and Levi’s grieving the necessity of writing sentences with direct objects.

The house quakes with life-noise and I step out. I need potatoes.

Yukon golds still carrying dirt from their dark growing times. The hands on the clock warns lunch hour’s imminent arrival and I’m not yet prepared and there, stepping out on the back stoop for a basket of potatoes, stepping out on this rug of egg remnants, something deep inside me cracks. (This fragile shell of sanity?)

Didn’t the little person who hauled out the compost pail with enamel lid notice they were leaving behind a trail of brown and white shell? How did they not notice this shattering when they traipsed back into the house?

I kneel down. Winter cold creeps up through the concrete floor, into my bent knees. I sweep along each wood step, fill the palm of my hand with shards and pieces, bits of frail fragments, and I reach through and into what has broken inside of me.

It’s just an instant, and maybe it’s the way the sun’s slanting, refracting, through the ice-crusted window pane, maybe just the way these brittle flakes of calcium carbonate chip and break in my hand, and I cup the fragility of life, but I wake up.

The ugly becomes startling beautiful.

The hard scales break off and I see. I break out of dark and recognize the now for the wonder that it is. We’re alive! The world whirls and we spin too and this house rumbles and shakes with sounds of being, in all its angst and joy, and I can throw my head back and revel in the ride. We are!

It’s just an instant, and I wish I knew what inverted it all, but I’ve recognized… re-cognized. Re-thought. Transformed my thinking from the sag of weariness to the invigoration of gratefulness.

Re-cognizing the God-beauty in this moment -- re-thinking and re-framing now -- ushers me into thankfulness. Shouldn’t it always? The very words themselves are closely related in origin: thinking and thanking. Originally, “to thank” meant plainly: to think. To think of a gift. Now “to thank” refers to the emotions generated by the thinking of a gift. We cannot thank without thinking, specifically about a gift or the Giver.

Does it then follow: if I’m always rightly re-cognizing the world and time for what it is in reality, genuinely and deeply thinking … would I not too always be in a state of thanking?

The French have a way with words, this thought, and I whisper the expression often: “Je suis reconnaissant.” A jewel of a phrase, a trinity of meaning. One faucet means: I recognize. I see. Like a military exploration, I’ve explored my own life for its true landscape and I see.

But too, the phrase means I have discovered and seen for the purposes of gathering right information. I have scouted things out to acknowledge reality. I see… and I think clearly. Je suis reconnaissant.

And turn the gem of a phrase again and it means I am thankful. I am full of thanks.

“Je suis reconnaissant”…
I recognize, see…
I recognize, re-think…
I recognize, thank.

Thanking and thinking and recognition etymologically entwine in French, and when all three braid in our lives, we grab onto the rope and climb into the rarified air of joy-thanks.

I’m gathering broken egg shells and “je suis reconaissant.” A flash of recognition transforms daily life into a blaze of gratitude.

And it occurs to me, kneeling on a garage floor sweeping up spilled compost: To initially enter into thankfulness requires purposeful intent, a daily, proactive effort to maintain. To recognize our life for what it is --- recognize: see, re-think, thank -- we’ll have to have the mental and spiritual fortitude to cognitively re-create the world. To re-cognize how God continually creates beauty good in all things, the ugly too.

We can’t blankly, inattentively, stumble through the day – mindlessly moving from one mechanical task to the next – and maintain habitual gratefulness.

And that’s what we endeavor. Not simply the feeling of gratefulness -- fleeting, that -- but the virtue of gratefulness – a lifestyle of giving thanks in all things.

The emotion of gratitude flaps about according to the weather. Obliging, sunny hours, and it basks. Stormy days and it hangs, limp and beaten. The vulnerable feeling of gratefulness falls prone to circumstances.

The virtue of gratitude, however, determines its own weather. Regardless of forecasts, skies or daily events, virtuous gratitude gives wholesale thanks. “In everything, give thanks!” The robust virtue of gratefulness rises above circumstances.

And the virtue of gratitude necessitates vigilance. We’ll have to take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

In the mess of my day, it’s clear: a lifestyle of thanks isn’t the realm of dim-witted pollyannas. Only the spiritually attentive and mentally robust can re-cognate their days, see their day with God-eyes, and hike their way to the heights of life-gratitude. Isn’t the joy worth the daily effort of the journey?

Because re-cognizing ourselves into gratitude is to enter into the exploration of God right here.

I haven’t gotten the potatoes yet, but I’ve knelt and gathered up the brokenness and cracked open to the beauty of now, this daily, wild spin of splendor. With handful of broken eggshells, I step back into the swirl of my life.

Wasn’t there a moment at Emmaus when a hand broke bread and recognition blazed?

I see Him here too.