Sometimes you just know when someone is close to God’s heart—whether they know it or not. These folks walk around practically oblivious to the depth of their own insights about walking with God that you’d love to know. Usually they also seem to be fairly oblivious that some of us are listening to their every word trying to figure out their secret. For me, one of these people was my cousin’s grandma who passed away a couple weeks ago. While spending approximately forty-seven percent of my childhood with my cousin, I got to spend a bit of time with Grandma Swaffield as well. Subliminal and unconscious, as most childhood learning is, I absorbed some of her wisdom throughout the years and didn’t realize just how much I had learned from her until I was struck like a minor chord upon learning that she had died. It’s the deeply stirred kind of beautiful sad that almost makes you feel good. It reminds you that you are in fact still alive in a world of cheap thrills and mundane patterned humdrum. It was the shock that such a person could be susceptible to death but the thrill that I got to know her.
It was strange not to feel that overwhelming regret I’m supposed to feel when someone dies. Was it just because she wasn’t my biological grandma? Perhaps partly, but it was strange to feel privileged—because I really did take every opportunity to talk with her, get to know her. As I learned what she was up to, I learned about her character—a character I wouldn’t mind gleaning from. She lived life until God took her home, and didn't quit a moment sooner.
She was a breeze at high noon in a culture where everybody’s wanting something for themselves and trying to get ahead. I never met anyone so content simply to be alive. I would often wonder what she was like when she was still raising kids and cooking dinners, but even if she hadn’t learned yet to be content, she had learned well by the time I got to talk with her. But contentment didn’t mean sitting and watching life pass by because she was old or something, contentment made being alive a good excuse to go out there and live.
For some strange reason, going to the senior center every day didn’t appeal to her. I guess she wasn’t up for bingo and all that jazz. She used to tell me how bored she got the times she went. “My son wants me to go, but I just can’t stand it.” She didn’t like the Senior Sesame Street effect—treating seniors like we treat our three-year-olds: entertain them and keep them busy so the rest of us can keep things moving in the real world. Grandma Swaffield wasn’t content to be sat down and entertained.
Instead, she began taking art classes at the community college. She was already an artist—my cousin’s house was peppered with some of her work, and her art had been displayed in the public library. Every family gathering she would show me the things she was working on and tell me, “You know, I am the only one in the class with white hair…” In her eighties, she was still working at it, still refining her skill, still looking for things to paint about. It's too bad she was the only one with white hair.
Her work was simple and concrete, but clear, nuanced, and detailed—usually having to do with somewhere she’d been or something that caught her eye. She was simple and concrete, and I suspect that she knew more about walking with God than she let on. With a simple and cheerful disposition, she was oblivious to most things. Sitting politely and looking toward the window in a room full of people on Christmas Eve, and a chair usually empty next to her, I couldn’t help but have a conversation or two with her whenever I got a chance. Besides showing me what she’d been working on, she always asked about college—my major, Bible and theology—and gasped, “Oh, you’re going to be a missionary…”
“Well, not exactly…”
By the end of our Christmas Eve dinner, she had my family asking what country I was planning on going to.
In his book Art and the Bible, Francis Schaeffer talks about why one would create art. He has an imaginary conversation with pre-king David, composing psalms in the solitude of his pasture, tending to his flock. When asked why he plays his harp for no one to hear, he responds, “I’m singing to the God of heaven and earth—He hears my song and that’s what makes it so worthwhile.”
And there goes a woman who knew what it means to sing the song of your life. Simple and humble, she did what God gave her to do, and painted the world her color. Sometimes we don’t have to do things because they’ll help us get ahead. Sometimes we can do something just because God’s put it in our heart to love doing it. She loved art, and God loved her loving it. In this way, she knew God deeply and accepted His call to live life abundantly. We can walk with God by loving the things God put in ourselves to love—be it painting, math, cooking, running, entertaining, laughing, simply being. The act of relishing the created world leads us to the One who created it all.
Cheers to that.
No comments:
Post a Comment