Faithfulness

A little time this morning to be still, to be quiet and listen again. An impression. There’s a word I don’t hear an awful lot in the course of everyday life: faithfulness. And yet, anything that really matters, anything that’s worth pursuing—cherishing—requires faithfulness. Faithfulness is that strong, patient quality that enables you to keep going when the way seems too long, when the body and mind become weary, when your emotional fuel tank is running on fumes and you just feel like giving up. Faithfulness is what gets you through it all.

Faithfulness has an irrational quality to it. The person who remains faithful in the face of so much personal and circumstantial opposition often seems crazy to others, even to oneself. Faithfulness feels risky. Humility makes this possible; the faithful person keeps going despite what others may think. They care not for something so contingent as reputation. To be faithful is to stand on a rock in a world made of sand, to turn your face to the wind that changes direction from day-to-day and would change you with it. Paradoxically, this is how faithfulness changes you.

The greatest things in life come to us by the way of faithfulness: lasting relationships, reconciliation, societal change, personal livelihood, mental innovation and material invention. It is certain that in all these endeavors one will become weary, reach a crisis point, feel it is easier to just turn back. Given that, faithfulness proves to be nothing short of an everyday miracle hiding in plain sight. A tribute this morning, this day…to faithfulness.

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faithfulness

by troy cady

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*Photo by Ani Kalleshi via Unsplash. Creative Commons license.

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Memorial Day

a day to remember

when, in childhood,

guns were made of

thumbs and index fingers

and nothing more

when the neighbor I shot

got back up

when the game was over

a day to remember

how, growing up,

I learned to control

to fight for the upper hand

for something more

how my neighbor became my enemy

how I pushed them down

how love became a word game

a day to remember

why, in the days to come,

hope will have the final say

a world open-handed

hand-in-hand

and so much more

to savor mysteries like

when love had its last supper

but still nourishes

how love reconciles

why love plays and is playful

why life is more than just a game

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memorial day

by troy cady

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love, play and childhood

Photo by Blake Barlow via Unsplash. Creative Commons license

A life of significance is not found in what you accomplish, but in who you love. This is what children teach me. Never have I met a child who wants to have an account of my importance according to my resumé. Sadly, however, I have met some children who have been trained by accomplishment-driven adults to become accomplishment-driven themselves. I can see it in their eyes: the desire to please, to be regarded as special.

Nothing is more welcome to a child than to enjoy the presence of someone who wants to be with them not because of what they can do but just because of who they are. And the same is true for any person of any age. How liberating it is to be loved by someone who asks not “What have you done?” but rather asks in a pure, non-critical way, “How are you doing? Tell me honestly. I’m listening.”

This is really why I am passionate about play. Nothing communicates value quite like it for, in play, one is really saying: “I just want to be with you. I’m not here to get something out of you or to make you prove yourself to me. Let’s just enjoy being together.” Play makes space for love.

And this is how I think of God. Play makes space for God, because God makes space for love. And this is why I see God most clearly in children, and in people of any age who are well-practiced at living as a child-at-heart.

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