Tension


Dear Eugene,

Today is garbage day, usually every Tuesday for my street.

Every Tuesday morning I would dread looking out the window the first moment there's enough light to reveal the contour of my recycling bin, laid on the curb-side the night before.

The thing grows overnight.  Burgeons.

What happens is that my neighbors know I barely put anything in my recycling and garbage bins; I try not to create more waste than I need.  So one day during the lawn season after a neighbor asked if she could use the empty space in my compost bin, others took the cue and helped themselves to any empty space they could find in any of my bins.

And I don't mind.  It is a great way to bless my neighbors, even though we might have a different level of consciousness about preserving our environment.

That's until I started to get orange stickers on my recycling bin, warnings from city workers about wrong items being placed in the bin.  For a law-abiding tax-paying right-side-up citizen this is a great distress, like I'm being accused of tax evasion or streaking at the Canada Day parade.

So what am I to do?  Every Tuesday morning I would go out, many times in the rain, to re-sort garbage not mine, empty half-used gigantic bubble tea cups now with ants swimming in them (and probably telling jokes to each others about me), while scanning all quadrants of my neighborhood to identify the possible culprit to my predicament.

Sometimes new surprises would be added only after I did the re-sorting.

How many second chances shall I grant?  How many times should I forgive--when forgiveness is not even asked for to begin with, when the wrong-doing is expected to perpetuate, when evil is a nameless shadow, cast by possibly anyone that I would meet on my street?

I've often wondered: Was Jesus genuinely peaceable and compassionate when he was with his disciples, knowing all of them will continually disappoint and ultimately betray him?

Did he truly enjoy their friendship, with not a tint of cynicism when he looked them in their eyes and said "I love you"?

When he bear-hugged them did he feel like kissing a leaking diaper that has no will and ability or even the awareness to clean itself up?

How did Jesus not just tolerate but embrace the tension between good and evil, kindness and cruelty, joy and sorrow, dying and living, comedy and tragedy, hope and despair?

Was he finally confounded by the disappointment when the first nail went through him, that after all's been said and done still not one of his many "friends" were there to speak a single word for him?

Was Jesus too surprised by the joy and hope of going through death and out the other side, feeling the scar on his left hand with his right, smelling already the fresh bread he will soon break for his friends on their road to Emmaus?

Sorrow and love flow mingled down...

How do I carry "the weight of glory" in myself and ascribe the same to my neighbors, imperfect, even death-prone, as we all are?

Yours, Alex

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