I sent information for the bulletin to a church where I’m
preaching. They wanted a short Biography
for me. It took me over an hour to put
something together and then I had to call Chris, who’s visiting her mother, to
put it into any kind of order that didn’t sound like a badly cooked egg. Even with the grace and glory she was able to
add, it sounded like an obituary.
How do we communicate to others about ourselves? That, I surmise is something of an art. But to do it in a paragraph, a few sentences,
taking into account the context, then, even art begins to falter. The listing of educational degrees earned
doesn’t say a word about learning. To
speak of years of work says nothing of the people, the accomplishments, the
pain, or the joy rolled into those years.
I was mowing the lawn yesterday. Just within the verge of a bed of orange and
red Canna Lilies, a climbing rose works its way up through a Crepe Myrtle. I didn’t plant it. It’s all the way over by the creek. But there it was, reaching toward the
light. One perfect bloom, deep red,
full, petal after petal rested among all the foliage. I had
to stop, though rain could be coming at any minute, I had to stop.
How many roses bloom, unnoticed? How many bits and pieces of our lives,
revelations, epiphanies of glory and beauty go unrecorded, unlisted, unknown by
any but ourselves? That rose will bloom
for years, allowing me to remember a moment of heat and sweat, and the smell of
mown grass, and the clouds pregnant with thunder and rain. Yet it will never make my bio.
Perhaps if I put that there, instead of my degrees, they’d
know me better. But then they’d think I
was some kind of nut. Well?
I’ve got to go back and visit it today.
