It was not an easy week at work. It was not an easy week at work but the day is sunny today. It was not an easy week at work, but the day is sunny today and I have on rainbow colored socks as I write. It was not an easy week at work, but the day is sunny today and I have on rainbow socks as I write in an empty library that reminds me that “some nonsense about sense continually intervenes.” (Robert Louis Stevenson on art.)
Who would have thought that in the middle of Manhattan the sense I sought, the meaning or fundamental motivation, for the week I had, would be expressed in terms of trees.
After school one day, I found a group of kids in the seventh grade locker area. They were…well… being twelve, being goofy, being girls at the end of a day. This included a pair of them donning their volleyball kneepads like slippers and using the padding to spring around on the polished wooden floors. I passed them by, stopped, turned, and asked the patently obvious to which they answered the equally clear.
I left them with a sigh to get on the elevator. Before the door opened, I heard a chorus of voices call out, asking “Are weeeee the apples of your eye???” I turned back around the corner and see all of the kids from the locker room hamming around like clowns and yes, wearing kneepads on their feet.
What could I answer but the truth. “Forget apples. Y’all are the whole orchard.”
ConEdison could have lit a couple of blocks with the wattage of their smiles.
Yes, that is the motivation for troubling weeks. It’s the motivation for the good weeks, too. God and God and God. And the chance to tell these kids that they are loved.
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