Clean-up Work by Barry Hughes

On this beautiful, though somewhat dust-filled, morning walk, I turn a corner to find this scene that takes me back to memories of my teenage years. Who knew that people still had their yards TPed? It was a weak effort for sure, with too few rolls of toilet paper and the under-utilization of some perfect trees, but still, I give the job an “A” for effort - and for the memories.

Obviously a teenager lives here. A teenager who is in a group and is probably well liked. I wonder if parents in the Year 2020 still struggle to understand how making such a mess is, more often than not, a sign of affection. Whatever the motivation, someone has some clean-up work in their future.

Often in our journey through life we find ourselves in scenes whose meaning is not clear to those who casually pass by, or to those closest to us, or even to ourselves. Things aren’t always as they appear. At moments in time our life can appear perfect to others, yet be filled with emptiness. At another moment the scene indicates chaos while we, sometimes to our own surprise, are content and at peace.

Jesus taught that we should not judge, and I suspect this is one of the main reasons why. We just don’t know all we need to know about a life, about how it arrived at the one scene we happen to stumble into, about where that life is headed. We don’t know the story behind it all. And when we don’t know the story, our judgments become all about us and our life, not the life of the other.

We need to listen to the story of others, especially those whose journeys are far different from our own. Each person experiences life as they experience it. Just because another’s experience is different from my own doesn’t make it less important or less valid. What a gift it is to open a conversation through which I can connect to another and understand what makes them who they are. It is through such listening that I might grow and learn and, who knows? I might come to understand my own story more clearly. Now that I think about it, I believe I have some clean-up work in my future.

Peace.