My length of days

Can you tell that I first wrote "nasturtiams"? And then it looked funny, so I went inside, found my phone, looked it up, and got it right. When you're an English professor, it's not okay to misspell the label on your garden container. It's in the backyard, no one will see it before the rain washes it away (unless you put it on your blog), and you only wrote that label on there in a moment of "use it up" before you threw kid's scrap of chalk in the trash. But, still, as soon as you get that PhD and call yourself a "professor," people think you know. So you get used to keeping up appearances. I need to get over this way of thinking. Maybe I'll join the humble Winnie the Pooh and just called them "mastershalums"--what a great word.

A few weeks ago my three daughters and I found dozens of caterpillars on our bluebonnets when we were gathering the dried seed pods. (To take to our new home!)  The kids and I had to go inside and look up caterpillars of Texas and try to identify these butterflies. During this process, we were reminded how much we love butterflies and my second daughter asked for a trip to the Cockrell Butterfly Center for her birthday outing. 

These two were attaching chrysalids to strings with hot glue. Then these sheets were hung behind big windows where you could watch the butterflies and moths emerge.  

I love when my kids beg to go somewhere that I really want to go too. Wish granted!

We spent a very long time at the Butterfly Center. The birthday girl has a surprisingly long attention span when it comes to things she loves. (On the other hand, this girl has the attention span of puppy when asked to focus on something she doesn't care about. Boy, am I glad that the homeschooling year is winding down.) While we strolled around and around the rainforest butterfly habitat, I noticed a sign explaining that some butterflies were tagged with numbers. These little guys were part of a longevity study. 

And then I started to wonder about the lifespan of a butterfly. Weeks? Months? Does a butterfly in captivity live longer than one in the wild? Or the other way around? So, of course, I looked it up! (If I had five dollars for every time I looked something up . . .) And that information was easy to find because lifespan is a defining characteristic for any species.

Lifespan; longevity; the number of days one can reasonably hope to live. The deceptive simplicity of this concept evaporates when you pause to consider the vast importance of one's length of days. A few years ago, Evan told me he had been surprised to hear a talk by Billy Graham on NPR. And he said that he was amazed when Billy Graham said, "The greatest surprise in my life is the brevity of life." I went back to listen to this speech to hear why Graham said this--I hadn't ever listened to a speech by Graham before and I was a little surprised by the actual tenor and tone of this speech. In it, Graham makes this statement and then tries to show how one might confront the alarming brevity of human life. Regardless of what you think of Graham's life and his work, you must see that he is a man who has lived a full life and accomplished much. Yet he acknowledges the brevity of human life as its most shocking quality. More than once in the past few years, I've come back to that notion of the surprising brevity of the human lifespan and turned it over in my mind. (You can listen to the speech here--it was a TED talk in 1998--this quotation is from about 18 minutes in.) 

A few weeks ago, I returned to thoughts of the brevity of life while I watched the movie Babette's Feast with some friends. It is a Danish movie from the 1980's, based upon a short story by Isak Dinesen. The story is set in the nineteenth-century: two aging sisters live in a small Danish community where their father once led a religious sect. In their youth, these two sisters were beautiful. A young army officer loves the young Martine, but leaves when he finds it impossible to break into the austere, puritanical world of her father's influence. A famous opera singer recognizes Philippa's immense voice talent and is devastated when she rejects him and his vision of her great career in Paris. When they are much older and both unmarried, Martine and Philippa employ a French woman named Babette, who is fleeing violence in Paris and is sent to them by the opera singer who once loved Philippa and her voice.  He writes off-handedly, "Babette can cook" in his letter. And this Babette settles into the home of the two sisters and cooks for them and their small religious circle of friends. After fourteen years, Babette wins the lottery and begs the sisters to allow her to prepare a French feast. They are hesitant--everything in their austere religious beliefs forbids extravagance, but they love Babette, so they consent as a favor to her even though they secretly vow not to enjoy the sumptuous feast. What a meal Babette prepares! (Rent Babette's Feast on Amazon if you've never seen it before.) 

This time, as I watched the movie, I was especially taken with the final conversation of the movie. The sisters come in to congratulate Babette after the guests have left the magnificent feast she created. Despite their intention to refrain from pleasure in the food, everyone has been won over by the feast and new grace and joy has been infused into their small society. The sisters are glowing. But they find Babette herself worn and wan, physically and emotionally emptied from what she has given.   She confesses that she has spent all she had on the feast, tells them that she was once head chef at the Cafe Anglais, and says that this was the sort of dinner she made there, when she was doing her very best. Philippa, the sister who once sang so beautifully and yet rejected an opera career, rises to her feet to speak with Babette. She tells Babette, "But this is not the end, Babette. I'm certain it is not. In Paradise, you will be the great artist that God meant you to be. Ah, how you will delight the angels."

I am not yet very old but I am old enough to realize that my life is going by very quickly. I am busy every day doing all that it takes to raise four children, run a household, and teach part-time. I don't have much time to write. When I fall into bed at night, I give rein to all the thoughts and stories running through my head that never get written down. And I do write some. (Obviously. You're reading this.) But I am not very productive. Or, rather, I am productive in some ways but not others. Those four children are certainly a "product" of mine, if you want to see it that way! More than anything, I love my family and the life we are living together. Also, I've "produced" some students who are a little better at writing than they were before I taught them. I love teaching. Yet I am also sad, thinking that my life is so limited and I wish to do so much. 

Not everyone laments their lack of creative output. But all of us have things we long to do, but do not have time for or the opportunity of. Learn a language. Have a child. Travel. Master a skill. Fall in love. I'm not talking here about some bucket-list notion of "wouldn't it be great to ___."   I am talking about the things that that pull at your soul and keep you awake at night. The things that you feel that you were meant to do . . . yet you have not done. The things that if you were to do, would be a joy for you as well as a gift to others.

So I love Philippa's words to the emptied-out Babette, who knows she has created her last masterpiece in this life. "This is not the end." Life is bounded by our length of days. Yet we do not have a lifespan like a butterfly has. We have this life. And the next. And in that life, I will be what God meant me to be. Philippa has come to accept her rejection of an opera career and embraced her small life in her village. In these last words of hers, we may see that her life has not simply been one of puritanical rejection; she has chosen what she loved best, which was her father and her faith in God. And yet, it caused her sorrow to reject that which she also loved: her art, her voice. 

In this life, we must constantly choose. If I do this, I cannot do that. We must choose because we are limited creatures with small resources and little time. And if we let ourselves, we can chafe at what we must let go of. 

In the middle of the movie, the disenchanted army general, who was once in love with Martine before he left to make a grand career for himself, stands to give a toast in the middle of the feast. He says,

"There comes a time when our eyes are opened. And we come to realize that mercy is infinite.

We need only to await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude.

Mercy imposes no conditions.

And lo! Everything we have chosen has been granted to us.

And everything we rejected . . . [he glances at Martine] has also been granted.

Yes, we even get back what we rejected.

For mercy and truth are met together.

And righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another."

The general voices a comfort central to the human life: God's mercy is infinite. And at times we see that all that we have "chosen" has been granted to us, mercifully. And we also see that all we rejected has been granted--for the love of that which we gave up is still ours and one day that love will be fulfilled. And even as we wait for that "one day," we can take joy in what we cannot do or what we cannot be, knowing that we may continue to hope for completion, for one day "you will be the great artist God meant you to be."