I found a new restroom on our floor at work the other day. There’s one just outside the door of our department, but it’s only a two-holer, and even when one of those is available, it’s not always environmentally desirable. I have assumed, during the 6 months our office has been located on this floor that there is another men’s room on the floor below, but I always seem to be running, and have never bothered to explore.
Our office is a left turn off the elevator, and it never really occurred to me ’til the other day that I have never set foot onto the other half of the 6th floor, never made that right turn or taken time to go exploring. Our end is pretty boring, typical office building, I never catch up on my to-do’s for the day – who would think of exploring?
The other day I saw the young guy making his mail pick-up rounds through our office, just moments before I remembered I wanted an envelope to go out in this afternoon’s mail. So I chased down the hall, looking for him. No mail person – must have just missed him – but, voile! a second men’s room on our floor. Three stalls, a really more interesting color scheme – I was honestly a little tickled by the find.
And thoughtful about it. Over the last few days, it has rolled around in my head, as a symbol of all the possibilities we don’t find, don’t see, because we assume they are not there or could not be there – or just don’t look. For me there is something a little enchanted about that silly men’s room – it reminds me that this world is full of surprises, full of discoveries, if we are willing to let it be that way.
A bunch of years ago, I was teaching at a little liberal arts college in upstate New York – my first job out of grad school. My wife and I were renting a lovely farmhouse in a perfectly enchanting location on the side of a big hill, far off any major road. It was exactly the kind of bucolic retreat we had dreamed of.
But my year had been totally dominated by the rigors of balancing a new job and trying to finish my dissertation – that huge, frightening, infuriating last hurdle of graduate school. I did not miss the irony that my chronically stressed-out state, in this peaceful country setting, revolved around research on meditation and relaxation techniques. This was good for an occasional laugh, but I was not laughing a lot, overall. I knew that, if I didn’t push this hard to finish this oppressive project, I could easily never do it – there were plenty of stories like this in our department. And so I pushed on.
Once in a while, we would break the uninspiring drill of my routine by inviting friends over for dinner. On these occasions, we would go for long walks with the dogs or, if we were in a real festive mood, fire up the tractor that our landlord had in the barn and go roaring over the hills of the large farm that belonged with this house (and was being farmed by neighbors). On these occasions, my eyes would open wide and I would once again be confronted by the fabulous beauty that surrounded me every day, but which I walked around so often oblivious of. Future years, when I lived in cities, I have often dreamed of the ability to just open my front door and be in such a spectacular setting – how could I have made such relatively erratic use of it?
Thomas Pynchon, in a novel called y, described a mysterious underground mail system. He never explained how or by whom it worked, but messages addressed to you could pop up anywhere in your environment – under a rock, on the back of a door someplace where you would find them, at just the right time.
I think that God, whatever that is, works like that. This life around us leaves us messages – sometimes subtle, sometimes the 2×4 to the back of the head, giving us information that we are needing. Sometimes it’s a clue towards some puzzle we are trying to sort out. Other times it’s simply a reminder that this crazy-quilt of life really does fit together, that we are not alone and unloved, that in fact things are under control. I call these little messages “God winking at us” – and I don’t usually see them when I’m not in a mood to see them. Someone who was in a more cynical state would call them coincidences or not see them at all.
Like these 3 things that happened after I interviewed for my AT&T job, but before it was offered to me:
– The guy who interviewed me for the job did so partly based on some successes I had had doing management training for Arthur Andersen. One day, a guy ran by me in a t-shirt with big logos from its two sponsors – Arthur Andersen and AT&T.
– A day or two later, I pulled up at a stop light behind a car that had two bumpers stickers. One for Mothers against Drunk Driving had the MADD acronym that always reminded me of my name, and next to it, one that said “AT&T, the right choice”. When I pulled next to the car, it was a good friend. She didn’t work for AT&T, and I never did get around to asking her why she had that bumper sticker.
– I went to a workshop led by Harvey Jackins, the creator of the co-counseling methodology that has been such a mainstay in my life starting about 17 years before this period I’m describing. Harvey was doing a demonstration session with one guy in front of the group. This man had obviously been working hard on himself for a long time, and was real clear about how to support people, to respect and empower them. Harvey, who knew me, but did not know I was in the crowd or of the job I was hoping to get, made an editorial comment to the crowd that, need people who are this clear working in big companies AT&T, where they can help those systems change.”
All coincidences? Maybe. But I would find that a very impoverished way of looking at my world.
About 8 years ago, during a somewhat workaholic period that was characterized by not enough intimacy in my life and some real discouragement around its possibility, I was one day buying curtains for my new apartment at a local department store. The lovely young woman taking my purchase looked so strongly into my eyes as she took my money that I was a little wounded by her beauty, but then took my change and started to leave the store.
Not realizing what was really going on in me, I “remembered” before I got to the door that I actually needed one more item from this department. The young woman and I exchanged a little laugh over my forgetfulness, and this time she looked even more deeply into my eyes as we completed the transaction. This time as I walked away I was finally conscious of the charming way she was flirting with me, and of how attracted to her I was. I told myself that I would return the following Sunday and talk further with her.
“You fool” I answered myself, “you don’t know she’ll be here again next Sunday. Don’t let your shyness stop you – go back and talk with her,” She started to giggle immediately as she saw me returning to her cash register. I laughed also, nervously, and told her it wasn’t my usual style to try to pick up strange women, but I was by God going to try to get her phone number. She was shyly delighted to give it to me, and so we began one of the most charming, healing relationships of my life.
I will always cherish some of the evenings we spent doing our work together in my apartment – she was finishing a master’s degree in special education. On a couple of occasions, I came around the corner from my little office to find her sprawled sweetly in sleep over her books on my sofa. Nothing could have added a warmer, more connected feeling to my life in that period.
Ever since then, I have held on to a little card I wrote after one of those study sessions, saying that “God has got love stashed for us behind every bush, door, and cash register – if we are just willing to get beyond our shyness or cynicism and let it in.”
Radical Integrity 