Rediscovering the blessing that resides in the little things of life has been one of the challenges of every season I’ve lived through. This is the conclusion I always come to when I take a moment to reflect.
My mother had found out it was her friend’s birthday and had decided that the three of us would go out to celebrate: me, her and another of my mother’s friends. Convinced that my day’s agenda was too full to allow for a birthday visit, I decided that I would just help prepare the present and move the meeting so that I could really enjoy it. My mother thought about what she wanted to ask, then addressed it to me: “And if it were God’s birthday, would you go?”
The hour before sunset found all three of us on the path leading to the narrow track, overgrown with shrubs and grassy patches, where her cottage stood. The courtyard of the tiny house had been taken over by the green of willows and wild grasses and the dizzying white of jasmine bushes.
The birthday girl stepped out on the doorstep and scolded my mother’s friend for not telling her she was bringing guests, but it was a joyful scolding, giving with the cheerfulness of a person used to being alone, with only the beating of her heart and the noise of the radio as company. She had another guest, a neighbour, and the little house was suddenly filled with laughter, birthday wishes and merry glances. The birthday girl wore a white blouse, a shade of white that didn’t scream birthday, a blouse as dull as her nights, when she couldn’t sleep peacefully because the dog often let her know that wood was being stolen from the woodpile at the corner of the house. And then all she could do was turn on the radio, if the batteries still worked, and hope that the thief gets scared and runs away.
“And if it were God’s birthday, would you go?”
She never turns on the light. She has no electricity. Only a few candles, lit only when she has a guest in the evening. Otherwise she wouldn’t have any use for them. That’s why the white of her blouse is out of place, like all the knick-knacks that have been washed and hung on a small rack over the stove. It’s the dull white of someone who can no longer see the light streaming in through the room’s one narrow window. Nevertheless, shrouded in a dense darkness, she cooks like any housewife, and if the food doesn’t taste as it should, it’s because the ingredients essential to the recipe are often missing from her cupboard.
She does not tell us about her hardships. She doesn’t tell us how small her pension is and how hard she works to scrape together the money to buy firewood once a year—the firewood she uses to heat her house, to heat her water for washing, and which she guards against thieves at night. She scatters her many questions to the left and right: “How are the children, when are the grandchildren coming, how are the seedlings, has pruning started in the orchard, how did the tests go…?” And then she listens to the answers with an air of festive cheerfulness.
Her cheerfulness doesn’t match anything around her: not the sagging ceiling, which is too low, nor the blanket that acts as a door between two small rooms, nor the clothes nailed to the walls for lack of a wardrobe and the space to accommodate it.
Because my thoughts are always on tomorrow, I forget that I owe a debt of gratitude for today’s blessings.
She speaks little of herself, and the theme of her words is the joy that burst into the depths of her heart on her birthday, where the light still shines. She ate cake and was given a wall hanging; an old-fashioned stag, which she cannot see, stares back at us from the wall hanging, covering a crooked wall—the mirror of a life full of imperfections, now turning seventy.
And as I sit there in the corner of the dark room, I know that life is passing me by, not because I lack resonant projects and achievements, but because I forget to stop and practice small acts. It’s because I follow the trail of the big joys and miss the little ones (which are what the “big” ones are woven from). It’s because I keep thinking about what tomorrow will bring and forget the blessings of today.
It is because I put too little joy into the souls of those who are grateful for every human voice within the walls of their home, for every breath of air they breathe. My mother was right. Sometimes God gets hungry. He is short of firewood. He struggles with loneliness. He has no one to share His joy with. And He longs for the gate to open on His birthday and for a guest to come in with a piece of cake and an old-fashioned wall hanging.
At the heart of simple things
The memory of this atypical birthday celebration flashes vividly in a corner of my mind, often when I stop to take stock of a milestone. It doesn’t usually happen at the end of the year, because my heart has its calendars and its timeline. But I pause to collect and unravel my thoughts about the lessons and challenges encountered when I feel my cup is full of all the lessons learned and unlearned.
The best seasons of life don’t seem to be the ones with spectacular events and changes, but the ones that are the most bland and monotonous—days that look too much like each other, as if I had been cast in the lead role in Groundhog Day. One of the best times of my life went down in my memory as a dull season of “without” (as I would discover on closer inspection): without many outings, without holidays, without special events, without the reading marathons of previous years. A time lived in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, of problems that cyclically arise and are solved. However, if I examine it more closely, probing its every nuance, it might really be a time of re-discovery and reconciliation with acts, words, and pleasures on a smaller scale.
Even in the realm of writing, things have for some time been confined to issues and concerns that seem insignificant in times of crisis (and which, if we are honest with ourselves, we too often neglect even in good times). How we spend our free time or deal with unpleasant memories. Closeness to family stories. How we make ourselves heard by those around us. Ways of slowing down to enjoy life. The art of choosing words that ease another’s suffering. The joy of embracing the ordinary things in life. Plans to read or memorise Bible verses. Simple choices that keep the brain healthy. The tools we have to face our fears and shame. The simplicity of Christian witness, which is nothing more than turning your story into God’s story.
Our words have no more powerful effect on others than the effect we have allowed His words to have on our hearts.
When I focus the magnifying glass on the act of writing, from one end of this experience to the other, I discover that I have often found it difficult to use the right tone in articles about the crises we are experiencing on both a macro level and on an inner level. But I realise that the difficulty has always come from the turmoil that suddenly arises within me—that I won’t be able to say everything, not even the essence, that everything that matters has already been said, that anything less than excellence is a waste of time, and that perhaps this is not even my job, but that of someone else who is more gifted. However, He is always at the end of our resources and limitations, and what has helped me to remember this truth is a special kind of feedback—for example, when I reluctantly finished an article I was not happy with, only to be told later by someone that since reading it they had been able to sleep better, and by someone else that their recent suffocating anxieties had dissipated. There is, of course, a “little” secret at the heart of this paradox: our words have no more powerful effect on others than the effect we have allowed His words to have on our hearts.
The joy of sharing kindness
After a long time of being dominated by the size of successes and impressive deeds, the glimmer of joy I found hidden in people who had little to rejoice about made me step into the sparkling world of shared experiences, of small joys. So many people were my teachers. With my eyes fixed on these people, whose compass is always set on hope and optimism, I counted my simple joys and reviewed them with a shiver of gratitude, even though I knew there was not a single one missing.
The glimmer of joy I found in people who didn’t have much to be happy about made me step into the sparkling world of shared experiences.
To listen to the whisper of the wind, to snuggle up in the soft sheets as the wood crackles lazily in the blazing fireplace. The aroma of freshly baked bread which gathers the family around the table. A dog who’s over the moon to see you again, even if you’ve been away for a day or a few hours. Getting in the car and going wherever you want—to the chemist’s, to a field of lavender in full bloom, or to a friend’s house. Walking through the park without fear of the air-raid alarm going off. Or wearing a pure white blouse and having the windows lit up in the evening. Rejoicing in every day that is His anniversary, and seeing His needs and sorrows in the flesh of His humblest brothers and sisters.
No act of kindness is too small—and if I were to examine all the corners of the past, this truth would reveal itself in its myriad facets. At times I have been in the position of the one performing small acts of kindness, at other times I have been the recipient of them, and in both I have seen their brilliance. The significance of small acts is not an excuse for us to give too little of what we could give in abundance, but the impetus we need to fight the inertia in which we are held by the belief that our resources are too small in the equation of great needs.
Even a hot water bottle can mean the difference between life and death for someone living on the streets, says Pete Wentland. A former rough sleeper, Wentland now co-ordinates a team of volunteers in Bristol who hang hot water bottles from trees in winter, with instructions on where to refill them.
The list of small things that can change the colour of a day (or a lifetime) is so long that each of us can tick off at least one.
A bottle of water, a bowl of soup, a sim card, a full gas cylinder, a handshake, a kind word, a prayer—the list of small things that can change the colour or direction of a day (or sometimes a lifetime) is so extensive that each of us can tick off at least one.
Even if it doesn’t save the world, kindness can certainly change the course of some lives. I keep in my archives conversations from a very difficult time, with friends or near strangers, and whenever I re-read them I realise that I owe more to those “small” acts and words than I could ever repay.
Perhaps the belief that we live in the midst of too small acts, too ordinary joys or too insignificant changes comes from the habit of projecting ourselves only within the horizon of things immediately apparent. But when we focus on the depths of a Love that does not let us go, no matter how unworthy we may be, our hearts are filled with miracles every day. And instead of keeping them all, we allow them to flow to other hearts hungry for good news.
Carmen Lăiu is editor of Signs of the Times Romania and ST Network.
