AfterWords | Q & (No) A

A short read
by Laura Boggs

“Are you enjoying your year?”

I stare at the woman behind the coffeeshop counter. I’ve just paid for tea, and she’s asking me about my year? What kind of question is that? A political one? Existential? I cup my hand behind my ear, the universal sign for huh?

“Are you enjoying your year?”

What is with this lady. Is she enjoying her year? “I’m sorry,” I say. “One more time.”

“Are you enjoying it here?”

Oh! My tea! “Yes, please,” I say, “for here.” I tell her what I thought she’d said, how I was frozen to answer. We have a nice laugh, and she brings me a very nice pot of chamomile.

A near miss. But there’s no such escape after Sunday’s homily, which I watched on YouTube from bed. (Thanks, Flu A.)

What do you want?

These are Jesus’s opening words in the Gospel of John. Jordan’s sermon begged the same question. (Thanks, Jordan.)

It’s a humdinger of a question, no?

(Perhaps I’ll text Jordan: Hey, buddy, what do YOU want?)

At this point in my year—which, no, I am not particularly enjoying—here’s how I hear that question:

Q: What’s the thing underneath the thing you’re longing for?
Q: Why so restless, heart?
Q: What will you do with your one wild and precious life? (Thanks, Mary Oliver.)

A: I don’t know, I don’t know, and heck if I know.

On several levels, I find myself in a liminal space. Between projects, routines, rhythms. January lasted, like, 331 days. February feels funky, as it does. And then your pastor goes and poses a question like What do you want?

Is it Ash Wednesday yet? Because that day is just a barrel of fun.

In the bleak midwinter, What do you want feels like too big a query. What do you want is going to take examen, excavating, some other word that starts with e… epiphanies! And journaling, lots of journaling. Long walks and swaths of quiet. Quiet in the morning, quiet in the evening, quiet all over this land.

I turn to John 1, which got us into all this. Yep, Jesus is indeed asking two of his earliest disciples, “What do you want?”

And what do these guys have to say? They return his question with a question. “Where are you staying?”

Huh?

That seems like a non-answer. But here’s what happens next: They follow Jesus to where he’s staying, and they hang out. Maybe they have snacks. Andrew invites his brother, Simon Peter, to join in.

I don’t feel quite up for sitting and sitting and sitting with What do you want. Not at the moment. But I’m always up for a hangout. (And hypothetical snacks.)

When I’m hanging out with a friend or two I love, Jesus is with us. I mean with, with a capital W. Things have a way of becoming crystallized. Little things like: who I am and who God is. And how much I already love him.

Hanging out is a form of prayer. A theology. An ontology.

I enjoyed that pot of tea with a friend—she’d been waiting for me at our table while I struggled to communicate with the barista. We talked about what we wanted. The things behind the things. Katherine likened our yearnings to downed power lines—”little sparks of the divine all over the place.” She smiled slyly. “Enough to be a little dangerous.”

Katherine’s impish posture reminds me of what another friend of mine once said. (Okay, I did not know this person, though I met her once when I was a kid, which was everything.)

“Paradox again: to take ourselves seriously enough is to take ourselves lightly.”
Madeleine L’Engle, in my much-dog-eared copy of A Circle of Quiet

Hanging out reminds me of the importance of a sense of ease. Of play, even. In my current state of sulks, I imagine Jesus suppressing a grin. Look at me, Laura. Now, don’t laugh. Whatever you do, don’t laugh.

Holy hangouts! I can breathe again. Now I can tackle What do you want, with curiosity and kindness. Which is all Jesus (and JW) was calling for in the first place. I’ll tread slowly, gently. I don’t have to summon a lightning bolt answer. Like Mary Oliver on a summer day, “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass…”