How Monotony Has Affected Me

As I stepped out on the porch, Mitch in his cool, inimitable way, informed me of a hornets nest which had been constructed in one of the, fern lined, banks of the drive. I was full of surprise as I had walked and driven up and down past it for the last two week without recognition of its presence.  A bit disconcerting  because I have run into the same type of construction previously and suffered the consequences with great physical pain as discribed in a past entry here in my journal. This time I felt somewhat more responsible for not realizing the nest was present because the dogs, Daisy and Daphny are usually with me.  Most important is the fact that Michelle warms up on the drive before her early morning runs and the grandchildren walk past the nest on their way to hike the property or “woods.” Mitch’s information and showing me the exact location of the nest awakened me to the disheartening reality of all I fail to see around me.

As I visited the site the next morning at the breaking of light, I began to think about why I might not have noticed the site, especially since there were hundreds of hornets housed there. The reoccuring thought came to me that it was most likely the repetition of traveling up and down that corridor had had a way of lulling me to sleep. More than likely monotony had a way of robbing me of sight, or else leaving me in the stupor of disinterest. I had to admite that going past the gray nest, time and time again I was, most likely, focused on other things.  Now, giving further thought, some real life examples have become readily available. How many news stories do I need to hear about violence or suffering, racial oppression or injustice, before I fail to hear them at all? For that matter, how many stories about something small but positive do I really take in before I respond in boredom? How many times do I need to sit on the porch and see dozens of jet streams or see the vast array of birds from the same porch before the marvel of flight simply goes without notice?  Is it that I’ve learned to tolerate the repetitious by learning to operate on auto-pilot?

And yet, I am certain, being on skilled auto-pilot, there has been times when I have found myself, like any one of my four grandchildren, delighting in the monotonous, longing for another minute with papa, another page of the story, another pump while on the swing.

Wow, isn’t the incongruity unmistakable? How can my failure to see be blamed on monotony; unconscious living attributed to the repetitive, when at a point in time, monotony and repetition are not only tolerated but invigorating? I’m thinking that blindness can easily be blamed on the world around me—and there is certainly reason to consider the daily effects of all that bombard my senses—but perhaps this is too easy an answer. Perhaps the scales on my eyes are multiplied not by the many repetitions in life, but by my failure to see life in the many repetitions around me.

Jesus spoke of the kingdom as belonging to the likes of little children, and many have speculated the child's ability to see the world with wonder as one of the reasons for it. G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy, saw the child's ability to revel in the monotonous as another. The children's cry for more, reasoned Chesterton, is a quality of the very God who created them. "It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."

For the child on the slide or the toddler with a story, "Do it again!" is far from a cry of boredom or routine, but a cry for more of life itself. This is likewise the joy of the psalmist, the cry of the prophets, and the call of Christ: "Consider the lilies, how they grow...if God so clothes the grass of the field...how much more will he clothe you?" Luke 12:27-28. Jesus asks the world to consider the kingdom around us like little children, and thus, something more like God—finding a presence in faithful recurrences, grace in repetition, rumors of another world in the ordinary world around us. Here, even those within the most taxing of life's repetitions—the daily care of an aging parent, the constant burden on the shoulders of those who fight against injustice, the labor of hope in a difficult place—can find solace. "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope," said Jeremiah in the midst of deep lament. "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;  they are new every morning...'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him'" Lamentations 3:22-24, emphasis mine.

Father, God, thank You for the gift of and reveling creation, yet another lily, the encore of another sunrise, another sunset, the discovery of even one lost soul.  Grant me the grace, morning by morning, to exhale my daily liturgy of new mercies come with unapologetic repetition.