The Weakly Post
The Small Things
“For who has despised the day of small things?” Ruminations of a 6th Century BC Prophet.
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It was one morning last July. A cup of coffee and I were on the back porch hoping for inspiration, some spark of creativity for a Weakly Post subject. My brain was as empty as politician’s rhetoric.
The Bible lay closed on the table. Somebody once said that if you want to know what God has to say to you today (a big assumption, since He’s been pretty mute since Moses), just shut your eyes, open the Bible and put a finger on the page. Whatever verse it falls on is your message for the day. Sorta like cracking a Biblical fortune cookie.
Of course, God has ways and means of speaking, like burning bushes, whales, frogs, locusts, thunder and even dumb asses (uh, that’s Bible-speak for donkeys, and does not necessarily refer to politicians). I’m pretty sure He spoke to me one time after five Varsity chili dogs. But that’s another story.
So I’m no skeptic when it comes to Biblical advice. There’s good stuff in there. But I figure such randomness has terrible odds, about the same as being struck twice by lightning, which is about 1 in 9 million, assuming you survived the first strike. Actually, these are better odds than winning Powerball or Georgia winning against Florida this weekend.
But what the heck. Why not? Still, I couldn’t help thinking how silly the suggestion was. Success would be like walking blind into Publix, groping the shelves for a can of tuna and finding one. It could be dog food.
But I did it anyway. My finger landed on a verse in the writings of Zachariah, one of the Minor Prophets. I kinda felt sorry for Zach, being minor and all, until I read the verse. Notwithstanding the obscurity of his prophesy, he was on to something here: It’s the little things of life that count.
So there, I had it, a theme. Now all I had to do was fill it with words. I cobbled a few together on the backside of a crumpled bill from the Confiscator of Last Farthings (the IRS) and wrote this poem.
The Small Things
The small things,
incomplete clusters,
Like tiny chips in a stone mosaic,
they identify us.
Ask Jesus.
He notices.
We boast of the Big,
Shroud the small, and
Tuck them inside drawers,
upon shelves of yesterday,
in nooks and crannies stuffed full
of the ignored
the irrelevant
the insignificant.
How long this friendship,
this marriage, this place?
Do I know her? Him? It? Me?
We leave in pieces,
Inches not miles,
Seconds, not hours,
Scattered in bits and pieces
These Trails of ourselves.
Big comes in spurts,
Small is habitual.
The big things fade,
fail to linger long.
The small things abound,
occupy the empty, dusty spaces
of life,
of love,
of joy,
of tears,
of things gained,
of things lost,
remnants mostly forgotten.
The whims of acquisition wasted,
no regrets, money spent, gone,
life’s choices scattered,
some here, some there, yet
the small necessities remain.
The costly and the cheap
co-exist quietly
like strangers in a crowd,
each claiming small spaces to breathe…
the important
the insignificant
the impotent
The ignored,
All co-joined, seeking identity,
craving distinction in the world of chance,
an array of shapes
of use,
or non-use,
part of a jumbled collage of
random collections
meaning what?
A note written, not mailed
Black ink its voice, now muted
its passions past, the memory silent.
I imagine a box
brimming with these small things of life
poured out, scattered
reassembled, these little things
defining the image of her, of him, of it, of me.
Can we see now
what can be known
of it all?
Jesus knows.
Are we beginning to get
a clue?
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The Small Things, the seemingly insignificant incidents, are yesterday’s building blocks for today. Can the Small really be the big, and the Big actually nothing more than occasional adjectives in the mosaic of life? Depends on perspective, I guess. But Somebody knows.
Bud Hearn
October 27, 2017