In my memory, the words of wisdom: “You learn something new every day,” were spoken by my mother. Many times. Just recently I asked my sister, Suzie, in an email, if she remembered these words of wisdom. Yes, she answered: she remembered Dad saying them. Many times.
So much for memories. At any rate, the mantra, “you learn something new every day” has not left my memory, regardless of the source. As I’ve gotten older, and since my twenties, as I fashioned my own life in the world, my memory is accompanied by my own judgement. “…Yes, I do learn something every day, something about me, about how I manage to live my life in the world, something about my inner life, something about how life in this world works” – an important companion to me in my own journey.
I expect that my mother was thinking that we learn some new fact, some interesting detail, every day. I am grateful for the way she was interested in life, in other people, in new events, in changes. Always interested in Milwaukee, her – and my – hometown, she would send me clippings about new happenings in the city, even when I had moved across the country to the Bay Area of California. I could count on her hand-written notes to reach me, along with several newspaper clippings from the Milwaukee Journal. I read every single one she sent.
In my thirties, and as my inner life grew, I turned to therapy and body-work to grow in understanding – “consciousness” of myself, of how I ticked. Most of my companions, beginning with my days in seminary and later, among my colleagues, used the same tools to grow, to “learn something new every day.”
Along the way, I’ve come to be grateful for my mother’s – or my father’s – words. They’ve given me a mind that is interested in life, in the world, in other people. And those words, lived out in my experience, have opened doors to understandings that I had never imagined.
This morning, I worshipped in a small church a distance from our home in Oakland as I accompanied Jeff, who was filling the pulpit. He surprised me when he told a story about me as an illustration. I’ve recounted before that holy moment: when the idea occurred to me that I might be a pastor – at a time in my life when I had not ever seen – or even heard of – such a woman as pastor. “By faith, Abraham started his journey, not knowing where he was going…”
I learned something new today, and about my own journey. Thank you, Mom (or Dad…).
Surely even the trees learn something new as they grow… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert
