Labor Day for many is a time of adjustment – adjustment to a new daily routine, adjustment to an empty or emptier nest for those with college bound or leave-taking family members, adjustment to retirement for some and adjustment to a change of seasons both in nature and in life. This idea of adjustment is on my mind these days as since I last sat to write my column my own father was born into eternal life.
I understand now more clearly when friends would say to me that even at 96+ years I would still not be prepared for his death and I concur. Although I knew he was in decline healthwise and spent the last week of his life on earth with him – when the moment came it was startling in that he stopped breathing and that was it. In an instant, a life’s story was completed by the Divine Author and a new part of mine and my siblings had begun.
These days as a family, we find ourselves discussing what’s next; and in its course find ourselves saying we are not getting any younger and using such phrases as “downsizing” and “getting our affairs in order.” Yet, we realize also that my parents and many of their kin lived or are living full lives into their 90s. Although I do not take those genes for granted, I am cognizant of how my parents and their relatives lived the life given them to the fullest. So besides taking an account of my life in the present moment, I am also asking where do I go from here with life in general?
Such reflection is not meant to create a five-year plan or a vision for my life as I shared in my last column concerning my episcopal ministry in the diocese. This reflection is rather a more personal one asking myself what kind of person I want to be on a daily basis, what do I consider important and not so important in life, and where is God in this moment? Sometimes I get the impression that folks think I have the answers like looking into a crystal ball – I don’t! However, a word that has become important to me is, “attentiveness.” I have noticed more and more in my life that being attentive to the persons around me is what gives meaning to my life. Therefore, the real question I keep asking is how can I be more attentive in my daily living?
During the last week of my father’s earthly life, I found meaning in the events going on around me by being attentive to my father, my family and those who were caring for him. I noticed the difference this conscientiousness made both with my Dad and those seeking to assist him.
It reminds me of the gospel passage – Matthew 20:1-16a – that was found in the daily Lectionary for last Wednesday during the 20th Week in Ordinary Time. It was the parable of the laborers who were hired by the landowner at different hours of the day, but at the end of the day all received the same wage. I know that for many years of my life, I sympathized wholeheartedly with the laborers who felt they were getting the raw end of the deal by working all day; and then to find out those who worked only a couple of hours received the same pay. This does not take away from the landowner’s generosity or his right to do with his money as he pleases. However, fair is fair!
Yet, as I reflected on this passage last week, I found myself asking, “Is the landowner being more than fair?” What I mean by this question is that I was struck by the landowner’s attentiveness to those hired last in the sense that the usual daily wage would mean whether their families would have enough to eat today since they were getting by hand to mouth. What struck me in particular is that the landowner was allaying this fear by paying them first. He was attentive to the anxiety and pressure they must be feeling and went out of his way to alleviate their stress.
When I consider this parable from this perspective, I find my own attitude changes and I am not so much concerned about myself as the other. This does not mean that in the present moment – in some manner or fashion – I can deny the desire to go away to an out of the way place to mourn my loss and collect my thoughts. Nonetheless, it is not a place I can stay at because to be attentive means to engage in life, and in the lives of those who walk the path of life with me. For me, that is living life to the full!
Sr. Joyce Rupp, OSM, in a book of poems entitled, Praying our Good-byes (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2009) offers this advice in her prayer for “One Who Feels Lost”:
I want to be more but I fight the growing.
I want to be new but I hang unto the old.
I want to live but I won’t face the dying.
I want to be whole but cannot bear
to gather up the pieces into one …
… Now is the time. You call to me,
begging me to let you have my life,
inviting me to taste the darkness
so I can be filled with the light,
allowing me to lose my direction
so that I will find my way home to you.
