Susan Lafferty“Hmm,” my college art teacher says. Then again, “Hmmmm.”
She’s looking over my shoulder. At the simple drawing. Graphite lines. Bare bones to plan and guide the assigned painting.
“Bigger. Go big!” She says. With increasing volume. Her arms flying out for emphasis. “Stretch it out. Go biiiig.”
The startling command contrasts with my small, neat pencil sketch. So confined and contained.
Tomorrow. Next month. Next year.
Detailed future schedules, meticulously stored in digital calendars.
Vanish. Into thin air. Digital air.
As a corona virus disrupts. Delays. Deletes.
And thieves break in.
Whispering fear. Stealing contentment.
This confining space. A refining place. Reveals.
Makes plain where best-laid-plans put down roots.
And expectations take hold.
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city.…Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be!…”
James 4:14,15
The lines were forming to board several Air Asia flights out of Penang. I asked the woman behind me if this was the line for Singapore. Yes. She was also going to Singapore. She asked which seat I was in. 18B. Her seat? 18A.
Once we boarded, I found out she was traveling to visit her brother and sister who are now Singaporean citizens. I was going there to overnight with our daughter before heading to the US.
In further conversation, we talked about the weather and she said, “I like cold weather.”
In this tropical country? “Where do you go for cold weather?”
“London,” she said and shared that her other sister had lived there until her sudden death from cancer the year before. I told her I was sad to hear of her loss.
