Oliver bounced around the kitchen
while I opened a can of tuna. New Year’s
Eve creates a certain excited energy for a 6 year old who’s always been sent to
bed early without even knowing it and is suddenly clue-ing in that there’s an
occasion at hand. Lunch finally on his
plate, I described that tonight we’d each have a chance to share words about
our hopes for the coming new year and he could participate in that, or share a
word that seems important to him for the new year. “How about holy?” he asked. I shouldn’t have been but nonetheless was taken
by surprise and asked him to say more.
“It just makes me think of Jesus” he said. “Is that a word you’d like for the new year?”
I asked. “No, it’s for you,” he replied.
Holy.
For me? A year ago, for the first time, I thought I
might consider a word for the year and unexpectedly heard ‘attend’ come my
way. It has proven a powerful word for
me, the right word, a felt word. On the
face of it, the English suggests active attention but its roots pull on ligaments,
tendons, stretching. On risking, a space
of discomfort yet still one of vital connection. Intention….just beyond the stretch point. I’d thought I might take it with me for
another year.
Holy.
And this might go with it. It shouldn’t surprise me that this is the
word my child might hear. He surprises
me often but in ways that completely make sense. There is something to his spiritual
sensitivity that seems both out of left field and also completely of-course. I suspect this is true of children generally. It is something I have ardently nurtured across
his short life. And it’s his own as
well, something I’ve tried to remember finds its own space for itself regardless
of my nurturing. And here it is,
alongside a can of tuna, unexpected gift for me.
What is holy
attending? This might be a year to
explore that more. The past year has
felt as holy as any I’ve ever lived and I know in my crevices that God
is deeper still, greater yet, closer than I have possibly felt even as much as
every stretch has been toward solid mysteriousness. Holy. I feel very open to
the presences of this word and its reality that I’ve known….and to stretching
them. May it be so.
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