“Both shoulders turned toward me” our friend Peg has said, over our simple breakfast, our Eucharist of coffee and toast, describing the way a person she once knew sat in conversation with her. Peg had done just that; while sitting diagonally across the table from me; she had turned her far shoulder toward me, turning her back on the rest of the world, letting me know she was present to me. So I looked at this young girl’s shirt, and recalled Peg’s words and gesture, and found myself recognizing my curse...and my call.
There are a few times in the Good Stories where Jesus is said to have looked intensely at someone, when the writer finds it insufficient to simply say that Jesus looked them, but looked hard. It was not a harsh look, a “dirty look” as we used to say, but maybe just this both-shoulders-turned- toward, this way of being so completely present. One such time was when the “rich young man” asked Jesus how he could enter the kingdom. Jesus had told him that marginal charity was not enough, that he needed to give everything away and follow him. Jesus looked hard at him as he walked away. He turned both shoulders toward the young man, hoping that he would turn around; that he would reconsider and find what he was looking for. But instead he saw the writing on his back: no time to waste.
Kathy and I share our meals, all three of them most days, sitting across from each other at a little window table. It is like a half table, with places for three to sit looking at the view, and looking at each other. The middle chair is there, for Elijah, perhaps, or for a guest, as it was in our empty nest in Detroit. It is generally occupied by the week’s fliers, church bulletin, and perhaps a magazine or two that we sometimes read during lunch. The arrangement has us sitting at an angle to each other, much like that at Peg’s square table. And often I find myself looking out, and not at Kathy. Looking out at the world together can be a romantic idea, but it is not equal to looking at each other. I know, because when I thought that death was near, I could not take my eyes from her face.
I am here now with my very energetic and generous-spirited brother Dave and my very energetic and generous sister Darlene. Dave and his wife have come from Phoenix to meet us here in Chicago at Dar and her husband Joe’s house, to have a little reunion. There is a sweet providence in this mini-reunion. Kathy and I had planned this trip to go to Mayo Clinic, and this stopover at Dar’s. The Mayo visit was to be a consultation for heart surgery that has been put on the shelf. And in that awareness of the gift of time, we realized that this visit, this mini-reunion, was the best use of our time, when we can turn our shoulders toward each other, our backs to all of our other compulsions and preoccupations, when we can get rid of everything we have and follow each other, and enter, for these days, the kingdom. The Kingdom of God - where people move around with both shoulders turned toward each other, with “All the Time in the World” printed on the front of their tee shirts.
FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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