I walked my daughter to the bus today. It was sunny, unseasonably warm and windy, the kind of day that always takes me back to Thanksgivings past. On the way back to the house I noticed that my neighbors' yards were once again covered in leaves. I'm used to my lawn being covered in leaves, but am not accustomed to the "leafy look" on my neighbors lawns. In a matter of just a few hours, the wind - ignorant of human constructs such as property lines and emotional boundaries - had rearranged the residual leaves all over the neighborhood. For a moment I was glad that I hadn't finished raking my lawn, since as of today, we all were going to need to get back out there and rake some more anyway, no matter how good our lawns looked yesterday.
I thought about the wind, and the leaves, and how Jesus reminded Nicodemus that those who live in and are born of the Spirit will experience much of life as wind, not knowing where it comes from. The leaves this morning mirror life. We clean house, we take care of whatever we conceive as "our responsibility," but occasionally the Holy Spirit, without so much as a social courtesy, playfully deposits the "debris" from other lives and other realities onto the lawns of our lives. A friend pulls her hair out over the burden caring for her mother has turned out to be. She didn't ask for this problem, and wishes that the Spirit would blow her mother's condition into her brother's back yard for a while so that he might know how much responsibility has fallen to her this past year. Shelter directors in town struggle with how to house the anticipated increase in New Hampshire homeless persons knowing that the Spirit has blown countless "transient" homeless into our back yard from all over.
Ask all we want, it is not ours to know the "why" of our struggles and responsibilities. Decay happens, and responsibility for life's debris pretty much falls, or blows to all of us sooner or later. The smart neighbors will find comfort in knowing that the unraked leaves of life will eventually compost into the soil of tomorrow's new growth. The wise ones will see in their frustration the Spirit's prompting to invite all the neighbors together next Saturday for a shared response to the problem, followed by a really nice dinner together to share some of the joys of life. We all spend so much time raking alone...why not share the load?
