One of the things my Aunt Sharon loves is working jigsaw puzzles. When she's over for holiday gatherings or family dinners, after we've eaten and watched the requisite Elvis DVD, I'll set up a TV tray and get out one of the Disney or Peanuts puzzles we keep for her on a closet shelf in the den. Sharon is what some people would now call "intellectually disabled." Our family tends not to use that term because despite having autistic tendences from a bout of encephalitis as a toddler and then sustaining a traumatic head injury a year or so later that left her brain damaged (and at the time labeled mentally retarded) there's nothing wrong with her intellect. Sure-- each Thanksgiving we need to prompt her to turn her knife over because she can't figure out which side to use to cut her turkey, but in many respects she's more on the ball than many so called "normal" people.
During one of her regular progress meetings a few years ago, the head of her vocational program mentioned what a good worker Sharon was and said they'd like to give her more responsibility than just stuffing envelopes or sorting nuts and bolts, the sort of tasks that sheltered workshop participants often do. As the counselors and my mother began to discuss this, Sharon piped up and asked, "What does responsibility mean?" It was explained to her that in this case, it meant getting a larger volume and more complex tasks at work, to which she replied, "Sharon does NOT want any more responsibility." More work for the same pay-- who can blame her?
Sharon also has a great sense of humor and delights in making my brother and I laugh. One evening as we were leaving a crowded restaurant my parents had gone ahead and C. and I were preparing to walk our aunt out to the car. As we got up from the table she leaned over to us and, in a conspiratorial whisper said, "Okay now don't act suspicious." She then proceeded to walk out of the restaurant flapping her arms like a chicken and squawking, "I'm a baby bird!" at the top of her lungs. If you think about it, it was ingenious. The best way to not act suspicious is to make yourself conspicuous and she certainly did that. Although to this day we don't know why it was important to her that we not look suspicious.
It used to be when Sharon worked a puzzle, if she came across a piece that didn't quite fit,she'd spit on it to soften the edges and forcibly shove it into the place she thought it should go. She saw this as a great short term solution, although in terms of the big picture and the fate of the puzzle piece in question, it wasn't exactly ideal. I was thinking today as I was taking a shower (I often do my best thinking in the shower or bath tub) about experiences in my life where I've felt like a puzzle piece that's been manipulated to fit a certain space or place. Sometimes it's been an uncomfortable process from the beginning but I put up with it because of my own insecurities and need to fit somewhere. At other times, it seems okay at first. There are pieces of me that slide fairly easily into place, often when there's enough wiggle room so that I don't bump up against anything that will jar me out of my naive complacency. Eventually, however, I begin to look around and notice that I'm not quite in sync with what's happening around me and I realize that, in terms of the big picture, I'm not where I belong.
In all these experiences though, I try to hold on to the lessons I can take with me from the experience-- even if it's as simple as "this isn't the job . . . relationship . . . breath-takingly gorgeous but terribly uncomfortable pair of shoes" for me. The via negationis is a wise, although often under appreciated teacher.
All the above rambling comes not only out of my musings in the shower but also from an experience I had a few weeks ago of writing and preaching a sermon for the first time in many many years. One of those "I don't quite fit" pieces of my life occurred shortly after I graduated from seminary. Although there were many positive lessons I got from earning a graduate degree in theology, the via negationis taught me that parish work wasn't for me. While I tried to figure out what was for me, I ended up working part-time in a small church where, in addition to my programmatic duties, I was asked to preach several times a year.
I may feel like someone is playing jai lai in my stomach in a social gathering where I don't know anyone but I'm pretty Zen before I get up in front of a crowd of people be it in a classroom, on a retreat, or even in a pulpit. When that was a regular part of my life, I'd usually decide a week or two ahead of time on the text I'd be using, ponder my message until about 11 pm Saturday evening and stay up for the next few hours putting some thoughts on paper, generally in the form of an outline or bullet points. My preaching style is definitely more conversational than rhetorical and I quickly learned that if I didn't have a narrative written out, I was more comfortable and effective engaging an audience as there wasn't the tendency to slip into simply reading the words on the paper.
This time, however, it was different. Maybe it was because these past few years between my personal work and my school work I've mainly been writing words to be read by people's eyes rather than heard by their ears. Or maybe it was because I was invited to preach at a church that I was completely unfamiliar with. Whatever the case, I struggled to get my thoughts down on paper and spent a lot of time spitting on them and trying to make them fit, which was an exercise in futility.
After several cups of tea and repeated tapping on the delete key, I finally resorted to my old standby of pulling out a pad of paper and a pen and drew more than wrote what I wanted to convey. Being a visual person, sometimes the linear-ness of writing on a computer just doesn't do it for me. When I can feel the pen in my hand and bring color and shape into organizing my thoughts, it's a more organic process and in turn makes me more open to the energy and flow. Then I can see the big picture and play with what words I have and how they fit together. I know some people are very organized and regimented about their writing (character studies, plot outlines, etc.) and that works for best for their creative process. I sometimes envy those people because it seems like such an efficient and productive way of operating but it would take a lot of spit to make me fit into that writing model and in the end, I'm sure what I'd produce would just end up soggy, peeling, grey and discarded, much like some of those puzzle pieces my aunt tried a little too hard to make fit.
PS - The title of my sermon was Reading and Writing Our Stories-- about how poetry can help us reflect on and shape our lives. Here's the link: http://www.universalist.org/archives/000679reading_and_writing_our_stories.html#more
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