listening

I read today a chapter in a book about weighing down each moment with thankfulness for that moment and all it contains. Spoken to someone who is always looking towards the next thing (unless I'm dancing) these are near impossible challenges.

I thought of Mary and Martha. Mary is condoned for sitting and listening and abiding. This story was always a bit hard for me to swallow, being a Martha, because I know that people would have complained had there not been food offered... or the house clean... there are these real problems in the physical world that need to be worked out by work. I thought of Jesus' response that only one thing is needed and the implication here is that we feed on him. The Eucharist. And really the problem wasn't that Martha was doing, but that in the doing, she refused to see that she was being fed by Christ.

I though of Jesus' miracles with food. Say Martha hadn't prepared food, would Jesus have whipped food out of thin air? Is this how He works? No, even in feeding the 5,000, it took one boy's mommy working in the early morning, baking him loaves of bread and preparing fish and packing it for him lovingly, and reminding him (perhaps more than once if he was anything like some kids I know) to not forget his lunch. Jesus uses our work.

Isn't that the whole idea in the response of the third recipient of talents? "Sir, I knew that you were a hard man, harvesting where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours." Mat 25:14-30. I wonder if that is how Martha felt? I wonder if that's how I view my work? I wonder if that's why I rush? and worry? and blister under the straps of all that I won't receive as a good gift.

There's a bliss in the work of dance. It takes all of me; my mind, my body, my very soul is bound up in the work and I have no capacity to check the clock while in this motion. Why, why can I not soak in the joy of work in the other areas of my life? As I look today at the tunnel vision that is my future, casseroles and cleaning, babies and bathing, scrounging and subduing: emotions and children and selfishness... why is it so distasteful compared to the consumption of sweat squeezing labor of dance? Why can't my soul realize that in these things I will be feeding on Christ? That when feeding my baby I will be feeding Christ. And have opportunities to meet him in so many ways.

It is so much easier to pay attention to how I'm doing things when I know how it's supposed to feel. It took me 14 years to learn effectively how dancing ought to feel... how long will it take me to learn how spousedom and motherhood ought to feel? Listen Heather! Create conversation with your creator and listen. Hear Him speak to you in all things that are held together in Him, bound up in Him. Listen even for the groaning of all of created things subjected to futility in hope that we might be made free. The groaning of futility is nothing less than the whisper of the promised freedom! Listen! Even if you are never a sitting Mary, listen.