Holy Lingering

My younger brother graduated from Northwestern University this weekend. So I carpooled with my parents to Evanston, Illinois. I really am proud of him as he has already started working for Teach for America.

The whole weekend was wonderful and crazy busy. Connecting with family members, attending various ceremonies, attending parties to meet his friends and their family members. It was nice to finally be able to put faces to names after all of these years. I really am proud of my brother.

However the highlight of my weekend has to be when with my immediete family, we just hung out on a street on Evanston. We started out at a coffee shop, just enjoying each others presence. We continued various discussions we were having about life and life's questions over Chicago style pizza. It was a perfect day really, it was nice out and I was wearing what I was most comfortable in: a tank top and a skirt. There was no rush to be any where and we just enjoyed each other's company. That was the highlight of my weekend.

Upon arriving back by myself in St. Paul, I took care of some basic things that needed to be dealt with. Then, I decided that even though there were people I was wanting to connect with and things I wanted and needed to do, that I was just going to enjoy that it was a nice day. For some reason the question entered my mind if I do not do it now, I will just get consumed by the other good things that I want or need to do with my week.

So I jumped in my car and I went to the Como Zoo. On one hand, since it the entrance fee is optional and because it was a nice day out, there were a lot of young families around. Which is kind of pleasant knowing that the fun that I am having is pretty innocent and can be enjoyed by a variety of ages. I told myself not to think about the things that I wanted to do or the people I hoped to connect with and just enjoy the day. So I did.

I found myself just pleasantly wandering all around the zoo. I felt like I walked into a fairy tale when I walked into a room where butterflies were flying all around. I realized that I would love to have a seal or a sea lion as a pet, feeling drawn to how cute they look and how they swim around the water. (Water is my element of choice, and I realized that since I have been to the midwest my fins have been pretty dry...) I enjoyed watching the monkeys play. I also enjoyed watching a sleeping lion.

In these moments, I found myself really feeling at peace with being around the animals. They live such simple lives. I found myself captivated by how little they need to do, and how easily they seemed content by simple things like a nap sunshine or the presence of their family.

I love being in the Twin Cities. I enjoy the opportunities around here. For the first time in a long time I feel I am not depending completely on other people or books as main source of life's joys. (Dont get me wrong: books, family and friends are some of the things that truly do bring some of the most joy in life. Its just that I feel liberated to find joy in other places as well right now). I just realize that I am taking time to do I have already been bowling, to bars meeting new people through various friends I already have, been to a blues festival, been to see a wonderful production of "Midsummer Nights Dream" at the Guthrie, and am almost done with half of my mission developing class. What I definitely have planned in my agenda for this summer is a mission developing conference, a human rights conference and Chinese cooking classes. There are also countless places that I would love to explore on my own or with a friend around the Cities that I will figure out how to do as time permits. (I amazed at how many free-low cost items there are to do around the Twin Cities!) Definite things I have to do are taking an online class and proceeding on the endorsement for candidacy for ordination in the ELCA. For someone who was afraid of being bored and lonely during this summer, I definitely have a busy summer ahead of me. Yet, I feel like I am actually taking the time to live life outside the context of the goal I am trying to acheive!! It feels wonderful and freeing really having minimal constraints for now.

Yet within the midst of everything that I feel like I really want and need to do in the course of my summer, I realize that the moments that I had today with the animals at the zoo by myself and the intentionally not being busy with my family and just enjoying their company the other day seemed like incredibly precious moments to me. The animals at the zoo seemed to teach me a lot of lessons. Even though I seem to never lack for finding things that I want to do with people, there was something about not being busy with my family and just taking time to connect with each other. It was nice to see how the animals would seem to enjoy being around the other animals without being too busy with activity. Even though I never seem to lack for books I want to read, movies I want to watch or projects I want to pursue on my own, there was something about just detaching myself from all of it temporarily and just going out and enjoying the day. It was nice to see the animals seem content with leisurely swimming around or enjoying a nap in the sun. Animals do not busy themselves with unnecessary things but find a fair amount of joy (and conflict sometimes even) in the simple life that is before them. It was almost as though wandering around the zoo they were encouraging me to slow down and just enjoy the day today without thinking about all the activity I want and need to accomplish.

There seemed to be something holy about these moments. Dietrich Bonhoffer emphasizes that in the context of Christian community, we need time in solitude and time in community. Maybe I can not help but wonder how often even I take to truly enjoy these moments alone and moments with others. There is something about not thinking about what is next that helps me connect with the moment alot better. In the context of walking down the streets of Evanston with my family and around the Como Zoo in St. Paul, I felt like I somehow was just enjoying these moments all the more. These quieting moments or these moments in authentic conversation with people who wanted to connect seemed incredibly holy to me. It came from not obsessing over these little details from life to enjoy my family and the animals in the zoo. I do not think that I am always good at this but I think I am getting better about not worrying completely about what is next. There is a difference between being legitimately concerned, making life happen and being worried, although those items can be blurred at times. I think that I tend to worry about things excessively with good intentions of staying on top of things or trying to make life happen. Yet as I let go of this sense of worry, somehow I am able to enjoy the moments with myself or with my family all the more. And I do not feel like life needs to be rushed so much.

There is a sense of holiness to these moments. I think that God really does want me to slow down and linger in the moment around me even more than I already do. The real question is can I go about each day with this sense of holy lingering? Or is it necessary at times to linger so that I can jump into the craziness of life? Or, as someone recently suggested to me, do I just need to linger more in order to enjoy life more? I could write it off and say that this was just my weekend of holy lingering. Or I could really delve into this peace of lingering more as I think that these are the moments where the Spirit of God really becomes apparent in my life. Yet maybe life does get crazy busy and I need to find moments to take time for Holy Lingering. This holy lingering is to be done both with other people AND by myself, as Bonhoffer really emphasizes in his book Life Together. Maybe the point is that I just need to allow myself to linger whenever I get the chance to find peace with myself, in my relationships and with God. Maybe I just need to make a little more room for holy lingering.