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July 13, 2004
Reconsidering the alphabet
A new girl started work at my office this week. She is picking up some part-time work before she goes back to college in the fall.
She is soft-spoken and gentle. She laughs easily in conversation, watching the rest of us for cues. When she stops in my office to ask a question, I get the impression that she is subconsciously avoiding standing at her full height, letting herself slump a bit.
When I look at her, I remember me at that age, spending my college summers in offices all over Atlanta, a spirited 19-year-old trying to contain herself, join herself to the corporate world, press herself into business blouses and heels and hose.
I look at Donna, sighing over her uninspiring work, and I want to write a note here on a corner of this dumb legal pad and slide it over to her:
Things are going to get better.
That is what I want to say to her, and to me, and to you.
When I was her age, I honestly believed that age 30 was old. Sure, it's cliché, but it's true. What else could 30 mean but death? The best times were here, now!
So I cherished my youth. I clung to it desperately and ungracefully. In high school I took endless forced photos of myself and my friends, hoping to preserve forever our uncreased eyes, our bright, even teeth, our coltish legs unblemished by the varicose veins suffered by our beleaguered mothers.
When I look at those pictures now, most of what I see is that youthful desperation. How much I wanted to look beautiful, how hard I worked at it.
The funny thing is that when I look in the mirror now, at age 30 (you know, the death age), I am starting to see faint pieces in my reflection that I really like. I see things breaking through, bits of what I was striving for back then. And it has nothing to do with beauty. At least not in the way that the world thinks about beauty.
What I really want now isn’t long legs or unstained teeth. I want the wisdom that comes with knowing myself, of being aware of what I need, knowing how to care for myself.
And of course I find older women so much more attractive as I age. Kathy, for example. I could care less about the alignment of Kathy's nose or the color of her lipstick. What I notice about Kathy is her smile, and her laughter, and her eyes, in their marvelous wisdom and warmth.
Age 30 is, in fact, thirty times better than age 20. This is not an exaggeration.
How could it be that age 30 is better than age 20, or even age 10? It flies in the face of my religious upbringing. I was taught very early to view people as constantly degrading, sliding haplessly into sin and selfishness, running downhill, dogs to vomit. Manipulative sermons preached by powerful speakers throughout my childhood only reinforced this concept. (Think Jonathan Edwards Lite, or maybe that freaked-out "hell" panel of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights....)
At age 30, I am trying to reconsider this belief. It’s harder than you'd think; those roots run pretty deep. I remember again the "Bible alphabet" I was taught in kindergarten, where the letter A, the very first letter in the whole damned alphabet, stood for Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God....”
Twenty-five years after learning that alphabet, I can no longer speak it. I want to start from scratch, re-learn all the letters, practice them diligently in pencil until their brave new shapes come to life.
I'm not attempting to sketch out a theological treatise here, or to discard the concept of a savior. I'm just trying to consider how my relationship with the divine would benefit from releasing this weighty obsession with The Everlasting Depravity of Man.
The Biblical allusion of the wheat and the chaff comes to mind again. I am putting all my beliefs in a basket, tossing them to the sky. What will float away, and what will remain?
This is what I wonder.
And when the thought arrives, it actually takes me by surprise:
Could it be that there is more to mankind? Could it be that we are actually getting better? Could it be that we are not merely falling deeper into our own brokenness and lostness — could it be that we are growing up? Not breaking down, but reaching up? Could it be that instead of sliding deeper into a hole, we are instead opening, each of us, toward light? Turning like flowers toward the sun?
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