puzzling

worth sharing again: post-WWII reconstructed stained glass at Bristol Cathedral

Once, a bestselling author (who was at the time simply "a writer") told me that I was the most negative person she'd ever met. That was the end of our friendship. There's no happy ending here, except I guess that she went on to become a bestselling author. 

Another time, a boss wrote a formal letter of warning saying I had been useless to him and to the company because I kept telling him why his ideas weren't feasible, rather than figuring out how to make them work so we could make millions of dollars. That was the end of my technical career. And it was painful. This one does have a silver lining, though: a year and one baby after that, I landed the GAO job where my whole assignment was to help teams identify and fix holes in their arguments. I was fabulous at it. That job was amazing because I got thanked, sincerely and regularly, by co-workers I loved and respected, which felt so. good.

So I like to think that I'm not too negative, just very good at seeing both sides of any given coin (and not good enough at pandering to my superiors). But I know there's a real risk of using this talent to make myself and those who have to deal with me miserable: the quintessential GAO report title "progress has been made, but more remains to be done" does not exactly spark joy.

Which is all to say, I was wondering whether these posts have been entirely too grumpy, and I thought yesterday that I should make an attempt to be constructive. So here goes, something different:

Not in the Bible

The Kingdom of God is like a jigsaw puzzle. No two pieces are the same, and yet together they form a coherent whole. There are red pieces and blue pieces and the puzzle needs both. And there are purple pieces and orange pieces and every shade of grey and we need them too. There are pieces who know only one color and they give the picture its vibrancy; there are pieces composed of multiple colors and they provide shape and detail. We need the pieces in the middle in all their security; we need the pieces on the edge with their intimate knowledge of the abyss. It is precisely our deformities - the bumps we can't hide, the holes we can't fill - that allow us to stick together. At any given moment, the pink ones or the striped ones or the top-right corner might be dominating the conversation but in the end every piece is important. If just one is missing, the puzzle is not whole. 

Feel your piece-ness. What colors, languages, cultures, places make you, you? What gifts, what talents? What needs, what longings? Imagine: the Great Puzzle needs you just as you are.

Now I'm not gonna tell you that the puzzle is already complete, "from a distance there is harmony," anything like that. But what if what feels like messy pile already contains everything we need to build a future where everyone fits? How would we act if this were true? 

Would we hold our loved ones close, because it's the connections that have already been made that the rest builds from?

Would we give ourselves and each other more grace, because trying and failing is the only way to figure out where we ultimately fit?

Would we be on the lookout for the unlikely connections, because sorting ourselves into groups that look similar is a good way to get organized but ultimately only an intermediate step?

Not sayin' any of this is True, but it's an image that helps me sometimes.

And on a sort of related note:

A Tiny Prayer for those who want to heal the world (but don’t know where to start)
by me, inspired by Micah Bucey, master of Tiny Prayers

As a toddler delights in the tiny world she finds when she turns over a rock, may you delight in the surprises you find when you change the question from “how can I heal the world?” to “how have I already healed the world?” May you start where you are, right now, today, not by checking something off your endless to-do list or by judging yourself against the size of your inbox, but by simply taking a breath and knowing, deeply: you are already enough. We are already enough. May this conviction spread like a pandemic until all the things we do to feed the gaping holes of insecurity inside us are revealed to be the sound and fury signifying nothing, and all that remains in their absence is a world of love and holy work.

Amen.