Absurdity and Wisdom

When it comes to the business of how do you become a human being, how do you manage to believe, how do you have faith in a world that gives you 14,000 reasons every week not to believe, how do you survive . . . at that level we all have the same story, and therefore anybody’s story can illuminate our own.

Frederick Buechner, The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life

A dream. I’m at the grand opening of the architecturally award-winning building I used to work at in Federal Way, WA. The CEO is doing some hiring, and he wants my dad. I’m working with Dad to get him onboarded. He doesn’t recognize me as his daughter because, in his world, I’m only twelve years old.

Wakefulness comes softly. I linger in the sweet space of the dream, not ready to let go of what I am seeing, touching, hearing, and feeling, I ponder time: how it constrains me now, how that won’t always be the case, and how it has never limited the reach of my Creator.

I slip back into sleep for a minute or an hour—one never can tell about these things—and have a pleasing-but-unpleasant dream in which I stand my ground.

Coffee arrives, husband goes to men’s meeting, and I sit in the dark pondering the absurdity and the wisdom of it all. I remember something I read last night, and return to it. There I find a goal.

And so begins another day as we continue to wait. We light candles to help us, and others, find our way. We inch ever closer.

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I’m a writer, reader, and creative. I thought by now I’d have things figured out, but I keep coming up with more questions. I think that’s okay. I’m here most mornings pondering ordinary things and the thin places where faith intersects.

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