Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-19-19

There are only a couple messages I reprise here during the year. I am not lazy – at least regarding words – but I think the ideas have resonated in my “mind.” So I share with myself, as much as with you.

One of them is about children going off to school, or to the military, or to get married. “Empty nest” is one of the gifts of language that provides a euphemism, or an allusion, from other corners of life. It explains, comforts, distracts, or puts things into perspective. Or reminds us of inevitability. Or futility in the face of our wishes and dreams.

When nests empty themselves there often is a certain innate satisfaction – almost an animal instinct – that evokes pride in fulfilling a role in the process of life. “There is a season; turn, turn…” We ourselves grew and flew; so too our children.

In Ecclesiastes 3, it is written, What happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. All go to one place: All are from the dust, and all return to dust.

Words that imply that life is little more than a wheel in a gerbil cage? However, elsewhere in the book of wisdom is found: To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted;

A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up; A time to weep, And a time to laugh; A time to mourn, And a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones; A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away; A time to tear, And a time to sew; A time to keep silence, And a time to speak;

A time to love,
And a time to hate;
A time of war,
And a time of peace.

There will be some people who read these lines as fatalistic – the glass half-empty / half-full paradigm. (Which I have never understood. Half is half! Fill ‘er up, if you’re thirsty.) But most people, through uncountable eons and circumstances, have rather found comfort in these lines. Whether at grave sites or alone with one’s memories, or reminiscing with family. Remember that Ecclesiastes also tells us – reassures us – that “there is nothing new under the sun.” God sees; God knows; God understands; and we are part of His great plan, a wheel of life that turns.

I have written previously that parents share a feeling about children they rear and say farewell to, that the days drag, but the years fly. Odd. Common, universal; yet counter-intuitive.

It is also odd that the empty places, the holes in the fabric of life, the things you miss about children who leave – when you “let go” it is not the major events or footprints or habits or even the milestones that haunt your emotions. It is the smallest of aspects: funny words; unfinished projects; notes pinned to the wall; scribbles on a pad; bedroom furnishings that seemed so trivial; silly jokes; even arguments that once were hot and then subsumed by obscurity.

“Warp and woof.” Who uses that phrase any more? It is a tailor’s term for horizontal and vertical threads. Lives, like fabric, are comprised of countless threads, often nearly invisible.

And sometimes that fabric of life is rent. Ripped, that is; torn. In those cases – if a child leaves home in anger, and a natural cycle of life is broken – the nest is just as empty. The tears burn just as hot… yet of course it is different. I have a friend whose son only occasionally calls, despite living nearby. His studied indifference hurts as much as if a battle royal had occurred. Another friend has a daughter who is aggressively hostile when she is not merely distant. How cruel if a daughter resents her mother and sister showing up uninvited but unobtrusive, in the back row of the church, at the wedding. Someone else I know has been shut out of the child’s life for years, over a first-time-ever argument; and has not seen the grandchildren over that time. Child abuse or elder abuse?

The bonds between parents and children should not be subject to footnotes. You are tempted to think that it is as unnatural as in the animal kingdom… yet there are some animals who remain in pods through their generations.

We appreciate the difference between vacant nests and empty nests. But both should serve as a welcome-home mats too.

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Click: Letting Go