#11: sparrows and lilies...

I've just come home from a shopping trip to Safeway. The gas to drive there and back was carefully economized. The weekly insert in my mailbox was attentively read, pen-marked, and planned into my menus for the next several weeks or so. A list of meal permutations was meticulously composed and pinned to my bulletin board. And I now possess things in my refrigerator, freezer, and pantry that I have not had there for months.
This is not a post of complaint. This is much less about how tired I am of the challenge I face daily in resisting my compulsion to spend money, trying to find a job that will bring me enough of it to live on, and constantly worrying about the next unforeseen or careless expense. Instead, I am rejoicing in the fact that I have all manner of long-lasting foods from which to choose, resting full of promise in my kitchen. I have ketchup, a luxury for the penurious and condiment-deprived. I have one loaf of bread in the pantry, and another in the freezer, waiting for me to defrost its deliciousness months later and fully appreciate in some less affluent moment the true pleasure a piece of toast can afford. I absolutely do not mean to be flippant. Maybe this ode to semi-perishables qualifies as wry humor or wit. But I am telling the truth when I say I have longed for butter and cheese every time I've stepped into the square of light thrown on the floor by the open refrigerator only to see hardly anything illuminated by it.
If you think I lack perspective when I call my circumstances tight, then perhaps you are a better and more enlightened person than me. This week, I've come to terms with the notion that someone else will always feel his degree of awareness is more heightened than mine. I burst into tears yesterday when I realized that I was twenty-one years old, about to graduate from university with a degree in English literature, and I still didn't know everything. It sounds like a silly thing to allow to disappoint me. Everyone knows that nobody could ever know everything, much less have all their questions answered when they graduate from college. Where did all the jokes about uppity college kids come from if not from the humorous gap between the self-illusion of omniscience, and the truth of young peoples' sophomoric tendencies? But somewhere along the line I think we all conscripted to the myth that an education could satisfy us. It is so relieving to know that these four years are not the proving ground for wisdom, though they may be for brightness or intelligence. It is such a comfort to know that nobody, nobody else on earth knows everything either, and in that respect, we are all equal.
I know I am finished with the college experience because I am through with allowing people to constantly view and judge my opinions as acceptable or right. Along with the education comes the evaluation of one's opinions in accordance with the views of the establishment. And I have felt from the beginning as if it were not acceptable to believe what I do, as if I were of substandard intelligence, and therefore substandard everything else. 'How could anyone possibly retain beliefs of a certain strain after being educated?' Well, I am through with the arrogance of that question. I am a human being whose thoughts are valuable and carry some measure of truth in them. I am a creature made in the image of God and given a wondrously complex mind and body. I no longer need to feel as if I am a poor example of a human being.
The fact that I could buy groceries and not be constantly feeling guilty about the process is, I hope, evidence of this change in me. I want to be socially conscious without being miserable and unable to enjoy the life with which I've been blessed . I want to do honor to God's gifts to me by actually enjoying them and appreciating them, since that's what they're for. I don't just savor buying lactose-free milk because I feel a deep pity for those who don't even have water to drink. It would be limiting to only enjoy what one has because one is thankful not to be a have-not, and moreover, I think it would be wrong. Instead, I relish the purchase of milk I can drink because I love its cool sweetness. It is right to enjoy such a good thing when I am able to. God is not waiting for me to show him how aware and compassionate I am before I can enjoy what He allows me to do. To me, He is saying, "Why do you worry about what you will drink or eat, or what you will wear? Isn't your life more important than food, and your body more important than clothes? I know best what you need, and I know best what everyone else needs. You do not need to convince Me of the rightness or fitness of My own plan. You may now commence to be happy with the life I have given you, and be thankful in your joy. The rest is up to Me."
For the first time in months, I am content - not because I have enough to eat or a bed to sleep in, but because I can completely trust His wisdom to put me in the best possible place, and to direct me along a path shaped by factors He completely understands in His great goodness. Amen.

Matthew 6
"Education doesn't make you happy. Rather, it is the means by which you realize that you are happy." - Iris Murdoch