Touching Down
Lilias Trotter, Bee In The Flowers, 1907
I’m feeling swamped by so many things these days. It may be technology coming apart. It may be the craziness of our political divide. Or perhaps it’s the pain of watching the crumbling of a common culture. I’m exhausted by the endless polarization, the outright hatred loose across the land, the snarky cynicism, our supposed gloomy prospects, the deep loss of common sense.
I’m fed up with the endless chatter from our leaders, how they will change the tone and unite our nation—even as they reach into their files for the same old speeches. It’s exhausting. I’ve had it. I’ve started looking where else I might turn. I’ve been looking for a fundamental reorientation, a fresh angle.
I realize sometimes I can search in uncommon corners. I’m risking something here. But listen, the other day I found something in the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century painter Lilias Trotter, in her paintings and in her reflections.
In 1876, when traveling with her mother to Venice, as well-to-do Victorian young people often did, her mother discovered John Ruskin, the towering art and culture critic, was staying at their hotel. Boldly, presumptuously perhaps, she approached this great figure and asked if he would deign to look at her daughter’s paintings and sketches?
He was struck with amazement. This was something exceptional. She could become, he felt, one of the most important artists of their time. To the mother’s surprise and delight, Ruskin took the girl under his tutelage.
But Lilias was hearing a call from a different voice. She believed God was calling her to become a missionary, venturing into the far reaches of the globe, to the northern shores of Algiers. The challenges were huge. The venture fraught with hardship and danger. She labored there for the rest of her life. Ruskin, of course, was not happy about her decision. Lilias embraced her calling with joy. Fortunately for all of us, she continued to paint.
She kept a simple diary too.
I have found a corner in the Fortification Woods, only five minutes from the house, where one is quite out of sight, and I go there every morning with my Bible from 7:15 till 8:30 – it is so delicious on these hot spring mornings, and God rests one through it for the whole day and speaks so through all living things. Day after day something come[s] afresh.
This little report is loaded. She finds rest in the silence and solitude of her little prayer and reading corner. Oh it is “so delicious on these hot spring mornings.” God comes near for the “whole day.” And notice she finds a new language speaking through “all living things.” Her world becomes enchanted, filled with God’s presence.
Adopt this practice and “day after day something come[s] afresh.” Maybe this is the fundamental reorientation I’m looking for.
Here’s another report.
A bee comforted me very much this morning concerning the desultoriness that troubles me in our work. There seems so infinitely much to be done, that nothing gets done thoroughly. . . We seem only to touch souls and leave them. And that was what the bee was doing, figuratively speaking. He was hovering among some blackberry sprays, just touching the flowers here and there in a very tentative way, yet all unconsciously, life – life – life – life was left behind at every touch, as the miracle-working pollen grains were transferred to the place where they could set the unseen spring working. We have only to see to it that we are surcharged, like the bees, with potential life. It is God, and His eternity that will do the work. Yet He needs His wandering, desultory bees!” 9 July 1907
Want to make a difference against exhaustion and disorder? Well, we need to get “surcharged, like the bees, with potential life.” We do that in our little corners of prayer and reading. And then we need to let God do his work, through you and me, as we touch down here and there in life and work. God is doing his work with “the miracle-working pollen grains you carry.” With “every touch,” we leave behind life - life - life - life.
God sets the unseen spring in motion, even as we do our small part. We then can be at rest. And we can see God working “through all living things.” Day after day the world becomes new and fresh again.
A personal note. I’ve been away from my blog for a few weeks, not by my own choosing. Technology got the best of me. My blog platform just stopped functioning. Would not send out a new post. Frantically, I tried to get it going again, five hours one day on a chat with technicians. I am a writer, I told them. This platform seems now to exist for technicians, not the writers for whom it was originally intended. From the stories I hear these days, I suspect technology, as with so many things, is spiraling out of control. We’ve grown far too complex. We need to rescue simplicity. I will share some reflections on this topic in a later blog post.