Today my husband and I woke up in an empty house. Only one of our five children still lives at home, and he was off to his day’s work by the time we got up. We enjoyed a quiet cup of coffee with our morning readings, and then went to the deli for breakfast and more coffee. We talked about some big decisions we need to make, and we bought a cinnamon roll as big as my face to share later, after our work for the day had wrapped up.
Anything could happen between now and later. I have this thought several times throughout the day as I try to avoid the cinnamon roll, and it’s not just about the cinnamon roll. It only starts there. We could have unexpected guests show up and not be able to eat the cinnamon roll. My husband could get hung up at work and be home too late to eat the cinnamon roll. My flesh is close and mostly taken up with my appetite for carbohydrates, so I hide the cinnamon roll in the pantry to shield my eyes. But the thought expands like leaven in my brain. Anything could happen is now preventing my husband from ever returning home at all; is burning through the woods toward our house; is on the highway, throwing two tons of metal and sparks toward people I love. Anything could happen is growing in my bones from that one precise point of hip pain that has been present for years.
It’s subverting every future joy into the feasting of Job’s children—momentary, pre-affliction.
Tell me why anything could happen is not welcome news, instead of disaster? Why doesn’t it foretell impending goodness, making me think of all the wonderful possibilities? The leaven is foaming up in my brain, like when you substitute regular dish soap for dishwashing detergent and find it’s really a bad substitute—not just a poor substitute; a really, really bad one—and by lunchtime I’ve lost everything that matters.
After lunch I am still telling myself foreboding tales and a walk seems like a promising cure. I’ve tried to write. I’ve tried to work. I’ve attempted to clean but I was too close to the kitchen and the cinnamon roll I may have to eat alone, heaped in my sorrows, sitting in ashes. I am pretty sure I need some fresh air.
My thoughts are fomenting doom, and my temptation is to turn on a podcast and tune out my troubles—real or perceived—until later. But I want to hear what the Spirit may say to me, so I turn my phone up real loud and press play on John 13 and stuff it in my pocket. One part of my hope is to hear the Spirit and the other part is that any wild animals lurking in the forest at the end of Wildcat Road (for real, that’s the name of my road) will hear the word of the Lord and repent of their meal plan.
Anything could happen but in John 13, Jesus knows exactly what is about to happen, who His betrayer is, who His friends are. And still, He washes everybody’s feet. He dips the bread and hands it to Judas. Love one another, He tells them.
When the reading is over, the woods are quiet behind the noise still bubbling in my head, and I just can’t stop my thoughts from following each other off existential cliffs. I am not normally this way. I decide I will work on the poem I am memorizing—Wendell Berry’s Mad Farmer Liberation Front [1]. For three-and-a-half miles I recite his words until they are almost mine, until I can’t think any other thoughts but these:
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Laugh
If you’ve believed everything I’ve written up to this point, please stay with me for the next part. Please believe me when I tell you about the one wild thing I see on Wildcat Road on my walk, and remember that I’ve been saying all along that anything could happen.
In the twenty-nine years I have lived here I have seen cougars and bobcats and stray cats and coyotes. I know what is normal here. I know the animals. Which is why, when I see this animal, I have no category for it. My brain cannot work this thing into any kind of order or genus or species.
It is crouching on the side of the gravel road, in the grass. It is lying down, and its yellow eyes are fixed on me. My brain is scanning for clues and asking inarticulate questions: What? Are you doing? An owl? A very large baby owl with grey downy fluff? A cat? With wings? What.
Since I’m letting my imagination run wild today, for better or worse, I decide this creature is a cat with wings, two gray fluffy appendages sticking up from its back. Or are they broken legs? But they are up in the air, like a vulture drying its wings in the sunshine, and the “cat” is lying, crouching, in the grass. I am too stunned to get my phone out. My mouth is open. I move closer, cautious, afraid this unknown thing may suddenly identify as a flying creature—a bird with cat-claws. That would be so much worse.
I move closer and the creature is indeed a cat, and it jumps and runs—runs, thank God!—and I see now that its two extra legs flop on its back like useless limp wings. It runs into the woods and I laugh a little, astonished. It’s absurdly whimsical and I am stunned. I have no proof, no pudding, no picture, but I’ve told you all along that anything could happen and something did and isn’t this the best anything that could have happened? A cat with six legs!
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
I don’t understand or have answers for this creature except to say that I forgot all the impending doom I’d been dreaming up. I forgot the end of the world I’d been dreaming up.
Be Joyful
By the time I return from my walk, my husband has just arrived home and is sitting in his truck in the driveway. I have the first half of Berry’s poem memorized, and I have Jesus in John 13, serving His friends while someone somewhere prepares a cross for Him. I have expected the end of the world and received its laughter and absurdity, too. My made-up worries do not fit with reality, and the reality is that we have real things we are struggling with right now, not imagined things, not the fairy tales I’ve been contemplating.
We share our cinnamon roll after dinner. I recite the poem as I have it so far, and then I remember the cat with wings. He listens, and we laugh, and he has no idea I’ve been expecting the end of the world.
This is our refusal to be overcome. Cats with wings roam the earth. We narrowly avert disaster every day without even knowing it. Our cross is being prepared and we welcome the end of the world—this world—with the small celebration of a warm cinnamon roll and laughter at the absurdity of it all.
[1] Berry, Wendell. Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
The featured image, “Glory Skies, Golden Sky,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Tresta Payne learned to appreciate the beauty of God from the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, where she lives with her husband and four children. She builds her own MFA in creative writing through homeschooling her children and tutoring others, finding every excuse to learn and read and grow. After twenty years of homeschooling she is ready for someone to hand her that degree. She enjoys a good, deep discussion with a balance of differing opinions, and works out her own thoughts in writing. Tresta walks a lot on the wild country roads around her home, with her dog and her thoughts and the nearness of God to keep her company.
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