November 25, 2003
Senseless
A story is told that one of the older nuns in a community was suffering from chronic confusion and loss of memory. From time to time, she would wander through the convent emptying people’s mailboxes, striking up strange, but pleasant conversations, collecting items from the sisters’ bedrooms and giving them to others.
The community sponsored a school. One day, one of the teachers was called to the phone and left her mid-term exams and grade book on a table in the community room. When she returned, they were gone. A frantic two-day search began, notes left on the bulletin board, pleas made on the public address system.
Finally, somebody thought of the wandering collector. There, buried under her laundry, were the grade books and the tests, all studied and corrected. Everyone had got an A.
Nowadays, they say, when sister wanders the halls, passersby bow inwardly to her. Through her seemingly foolish actions, wandering and reminding all by her presence not to fear the final judgment, they discovered a new sense of themselves, that there are, finally, no record books, and everyone makes an A. “There is no end to the birth of God,” wrote D H Lawrence.
Perhaps, what appears most senseless can often seem most meaningful of all. Life fills to overflowing with opportunities to make the senseless meaningful to an irrationally rational world. We might but grasp the moment.
Sometimes we are senselessly poetic, and the world is charged with a moment of beauty. Sometimes we are senselessly tender, and hardened hearts begin to melt. Sometimes we are senselessly nonjudgmental, and we see through a glass darkly into the nature of life.
What if we became senselessly vulnerable and reduced the defense budget? Might the world know less fear? What if we were senselessly forgiving and abolished the death penalty? Would children understand respect for life? What if we were senselessly generous and created a new welfare system that gave the poor a fighting chance? Might our own hearts be softened?
When Jesus forgave the adulterer, a senseless kindness brought the self-righteous to self-knowledge, a senseless grace embraced both accusers and accused and changed lives, a senseless justice confronted an oppressively sexist system and challenged all to do likewise. We are surrounded by the seemingly senseless: the mystics, the poets, the clowns, the so-called irrational and impractical, those who are “different.” They are there, writing something in the sand.