When I woke up, it was too early to live…
It was dawn and the sky was gray. At the beginning of the day, the world looks surreal, invisible, with its outlines that take shape as in a miracle, without a hand having drawn them. But for me, since I don’t have a poetic spirit, the beginning of the day is always the same as days gone by. So, also, was it that morning; nothing new was on the horizon. Maybe, not even the sun was going to rise from the fog that encompassed the trees. No one has ever reaped anything except what they had sown in the right season. That was my thinking at that time, and I would still think like that if it hadn’t been for Lisa’s phone call.
I should have known it. “Life does not repeat itself. It’s like something deeply revolutionary. Life is dangerous; you cannot trust it. Life is not faithful, if by faithful we mean that the so-called certainties guarantee the repetition in the future of what we have today and what we had yesterday. Only those who love adventure can live.” (R. GUARDINI) The ringing of the phone woke me up from my daydreaming and I heard a voice that sounded different from what I had expected. I told Lisa to stop by, that I would wait for her. And when she came, I only saw her joy. For her, the sun had already risen that day.
From the time we were children, I thought that the day started earlier for her than for anyone else. She did have a poetic spirit. Like the times, when in school, she was given a white sheet of paper to fill in for a test. I was always anxious in that situation; she instead looked at it as at a new discovery, like the first snow in winter.
Smiling, she took my hand and she asked, “Do you want to hear him?” as if that could be the proof that life, in reality, is a novelty that no equation can predict. “Life contrasts the form, it always wants to stay alive, freely springing, impossible to be caught and sealed somewhere. Always fleeing, overflowing, incomprehensible.” (R. GUARDINI).
I approached her, knowing that it wasn’t her alone and that the space that was going to be opened in front of me was the space of the invisible. The baby that she was carrying in her womb was only 2 months old, but clearly it wasn’t too early for him to live. It was only then that I realized that my complaining about the eternal “same-ness” of days was in reality only laziness toward life. But in Lisa’s womb, beyond what my hand could touch and what my eyes could see, there was a new abyss that was telling me about the miracle present at each new start. Unforeseeable and inexplicable, outlines that only God’s hand could have drawn. And when Lisa got up, it seemed to me that she was dancing. It appeared, at that moment, that she was singing her Magnificat. Maybe that was her secret: you can go through the gray clouds of the morning only by dancing; walking in the constant surprise that you can reap much more than you sow.
I have begun to think that each morning holds this secret within, this disparity between what we deserve and what we get, because each profile, no matter how indistinct, bears the handprint of its own Author. Just as it is happening in Lisa’s womb and in her smile. “Dancing is the supreme symbol of spiritual life. Dancing is the highest, the noblest and the most beautiful among the arts, because it is not simply a transfiguration or abstraction of life; it is life itself.” (H. ELLIS)
What a wonderful thing is being able to start your day and each small task like a dance; with your arms raised to praise Him who gives us everything; with your eyes looking ahead to what you cannot see but to what you’re hoping in with all your heart. I wasted time complaining, but He “changed my mourning into dancing”. (PSALM 30) And then, it’s never too late to live!
A FEW QUESTIONS TO REFLECT
• How do I look at the life that I receive every day from God? Is it a positive approach, or do tiredness, discouragement and tediousness prevail?
• Which outlines did I see God’s hand in today? Was I able to see it in the faces of the people that I met today?
• Do I promote a culture of life that gives the human person priority over other realities?
• Am I able to dance through the difficulties of life, trusting God’s Providence that also allows
us to reap that which we did not sow?
