So much sun hasn’t been seen in the vicinity for a long time.
The sun lies down on the living room table and stretches on the worktop of our tiny kitchen. I can’t believe at all it’s shown up after such a long and exhausting absence. I’m cautious about enjoying it, as it might disappear again soon and I’d be left with the sense of regret.
Feeling the warmth on my face, I look outside. Something seems to have changed, the sky is blue, but I can hardly see. Mainly I can see the outstandingly dirty window panes. As dirty as only windows can be, cleaned for the last time maybe in September, in the city center like this.
And I’m thinking: how really rarely God’s love reaches us in its authentic form, unfiltered by the dirty window. It works its way through the screen of mistrust, of the images inherited from here and there, as well as through the so-called grevious lessons of life that we’ve been taught. It reaches us through the collage of broken ideas that match only our handicapped sense of justice, our petty tight-fistedness, since we have already managed to believe that “life is life” and you can’t expect anything good about it, anything to enjoy.
So much of the warmth and the light that could take us under protection with the utmost tenderness – stays outside the window pane. And it seems that this is the only truth that there is: the truth of the neglected glasshouse we’re in. But yes, of course you can feel completely at home there, even to the point that the stories about the beautiful sun outside seem out of place. And incredible.
A water bearer had two buckets to bring water from the river to his master’s house. The buckets were hanging on both ends of the pole that he carried across his shoulders. One of them was cracked, the other – was perfectly fine. The bucket with no trace of a crack – conscious of its excellence – was proud of itself. The cracked bucket – ashamed of its crack – suffered.
One day the cracked bucket confessed its misery to the water bearer. “Because of my crack you carried so much less water to your master’s house every day than I could have hold if I was unbroken” – it said. The man ponited to beautiful flowers, sparkling with colour, only on one side of the road, and replied: “The flowers grow on this side of the road, and not on the other, do they? I saw your crack and I made a good use of it. I sowed the seeds on your side of the path. Each day, as we were going back from the river, they drank the water leaking from you. For two years I have picked the floweres and beutified my master’s house with them. We wouldn’t have been able to give so much beauty to the house if it hadn’t been for the way you are”*
Even though I am like that cracked bucket, I know that the One who is carrying me is not discouraged by my crack. He is not complaining about water being “wasted”, he is not worried by my effectiveness – so much below the human standards of productivity. I know that He can take advantage of my cracks and defects, if only I place them on His shoulders. Because He, as nobody else, “causes all things to work together for the good to those who love Him” (Romans 8:28).
Basia
*You can find the story in its full version in I. Holler, Porozumienie bez przemocy. Ćwiczenia. (Nonviolent Communication. Practice.)