Today’s sermon is a friend writing from her Parisian vacation that she’s come down with Covid. It’s the fourth date I didn’t have with the former rock star on account of all his coughing.
It’s my sneeze that might be something, but doesn’t go anywhere, and packing a covid test in my bag just in case.
It’s the half and half I forgot to buy two days in a row, and wondering whether I can eat the two plums and the head of broccoli in my refrigerator before I head out of town.
And that moment this morning when I saw the four brown bananas that were going bad. I moved to throw them out, then felt wrong – like, what a waste. And I think about that a lot; all the clothes stuffed in my drawers and hanging in my closet, and how so often it’s not the shirt, or the boots, or the bananas that I want – but something more primal, something deeper that I don’t know how to name.
Today’s sermon is the way the man on the phone asked me if I was lonely, and how quickly I said no, like he’d asked me if I’d tracked dog shit on my shoe from the yard. “No,” I said, without considering the question, and the way I tried to explain it to him, but how my words got mangled and didn’t make sense. It was the way he got quiet as he listened to me.
Today’s sermon is that moment a few years ago at the kitchen sink when my younger brother asked me if I thought we knew how to love. He was talking about me and him and our two sisters. He was asking me if I thought our parents had shown us how to do it – whether we knew how to trust people, were willing to expose ourselves, or knew how to need something from another person.
And how when he asked me – we were in our 50’s – I felt like we might as well have been 7 and 8-years-old, me and my little brother standing in front of our house in L.A. in 1968, and he’s asking me if the stray dog standing in front of us might bite, and how I had to make something up – back then and now – that no, the dog wouldn’t bite, and yes of course we knew how to love.
Today’s sermon is the roll of flesh hanging over my jeans, the wet hair on my shoulder, the way the cat nipped my heels when I let him in this morning – maybe a punishment for keeping him out all night – though I explained, as I dished out the wet food, that I’d tried to find him, had called his name in the dark before I turned out the light.
That I do mean to love…
My children, the quiet of the morning, the hum of the house, coffee with cream, my mother…
Who sailed through Covid months ago, but who is now certain that she’s losing her mind. “Aren’t we all?” I say to her on Facetime, but she’s serious, and I think mostly scared because she’s 85-year-old and the path ahead is narrowing. And so I cock my head, and tell her that this sounds age appropriate, pandemic appropriate, but I can tell by the way she looks at me that she’s having none of it.
One day I’ll say something just like this to my daughters, and I can already imagine the way they’ll half listen to me, just like I’m half listening to my mother now, nodding and thinking she’s being dramatic. I can already feel the loneliness that I’ll feel then as they cock their heads and nod at me.
Today’s sermon is the way life keeps flooding me with something like love; the cat nipping at my heel, the dog that might just bite, bananas going brown, my mother telling me she’s scared, the half lie I tell my brother to help him sleep at night. Of course we know how to love, of course we do.
This piece was inspired by the poem, Today’s Sermon, by Cheryl Dumesnil
Listen to Laurie read the piece here –
Oh Laurie, thank you for writing so tenderly. I don’t feel so alone now.
Thanks. I needed that.
Laurie, Is it the quiet that grows all around us? Our own voice trying to speak to us? Thought-provoking! Thanks!
This cuts to the heart of life, Laurie. Really fabulous.
I love everything about this.
I love this, especially the part about you and your brother. Made me feel.
Thanks Laurie, love that dog shit on the shoe…
Wonderful. Thank you.
Do I know how to love? What a question, Laurie!
I’ve often asked myself that question. Always wondering if what I feel is what love is supposed to feel like. Or is there something more? Because won’t I know for sure when I feel it?
But now I’m thinking that I never really asked myself that question before. Or I never really asked myself that real question before. I just always assumed we were all born with the natural ability to love. That it was part of being born human. That love was natural.
But maybe not. Maybe I was all wrong.
Maybe we need to be taught.
Hi Penny,
I “hear” you when you ask about ever learning to love…it’s a deep question…and, when I ask it, I feel so very lonely. Remember the song by FOREIGNER, “I want to know what love is”? I’m thinking about that now…. I found it on YouTube. I’m listening now.
I think I know I’ve never known the love I seem to yearn for…But, there’s the next minute!! Right? Sending you love 💗
Yes…”I wanna know what love is…” a great song. This would be a fun prompt, Nikki!
Thanks, Laurie, for the sermon;-)
Somehow, yes, you have learned how to love. At least, I feel love when I’m with you. But I wonder if any of us are adept at all the flavors of love. There are so many, and some are so unusual. I’m struggling with that myself, having been served an unfamiliar variety for which I don’t yet have a taste.
Oh dear goddess the tears that are right below the surface of my chest reading this … until they’re loosed by a sad movie or some random reminder of something past, or a kind word from someone.
Love this. Love the sister-brother kitchen-convo stray dog-love braiding together.
One of the zillions of today’s sermons is that I get to be here to find all these sermons. Some blasting at me. Hey, Maggie, LISTEN. LOOK. Some dripping gently into my day. BE QUIET. WAIT. Today’s sermon is that I get to say thank you to Laurie and all. What a gift the 4 days of Wild Writing was. And is.
Thanks Laurie for this — I’m wondering about the way I half listen to myself and certain others and how maybe if I listen a little more then maybe it will be be a way to loving a little more.
Your “sermon”, your writing and voice, wake me from my own ‘half-listening’ to a fuller awareness of detail, to a kind of noticing that nudges love forward. Thank you.
this piece and all that it entails and brings to mind of my own life very clearly flowed off the screen (page) and into my own heart and body and at the end i had the full body chills – the sensation I have come to know is evidence that Spirit/Energy/Love whatever you call it has just been in my presence. it is the portal of your vulnerability and human-ness that allows that to flow through and remind me of my own. bowing in gratitude.