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| Image credit: Photo by Ashley Dinges on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
"I don't want to get up and I don't want to go to school!" my daughter Janie yelled when she heard me chime "Time to get up!" this morning. ("Well, maybe tonight you will go to sleep on time so you won't be tired tomorrow," I found myself muttering, then added mentally, "And I won't either.")
It was a battle to get Janie's clothes on and a battle to get her out the door. At the time we ought to be leaving the house, she was clothed, but still hadn't eaten breakfast. ("I don't want to eat, because I don't want to go to school!") I weighed the odds and decided just to give up on trying to make the bus and drive her today. So I plopped her in the back of the car with a piece of toast and we headed off to school, where she managed to run in just in time (and in a considerably better mood after having grudgingly eaten the toast in the car).
On my drive home, a little bird darted out from the side of the road and began to take flight just as I drove past. There was no time for it or for me to react and it hit my front bumper with a sickening thud. I stopped and watched, wondering "What should I do?" as it thrashed for just a moment and then lay still before I had time to answer my own question.
On any other day, that bird could have flown low over the street and my car would not have been there to hit it. If I had decided to try to have Janie catch the bus today (which she might have, though it would have been close), my car would not have been there to hit it. If Mark had gotten Janie to bed earlier while I was out last night or if I had not gone out and put her to bed myself, maybe she would not have been so cranky this morning and I wouldn't have been on the road. Or maybe the car behind me would have startled the bird and hit it instead if I hadn't been there. My little decisions — my small, seemingly random, actions — affect so many other things, but I don't always know how and why.
Last night, while Mark was trying to wrangle Janie in to bed, I was attending a talk by a Zen Buddhist who said, "Things are. There is a reason that they are. But we do not know the reason, only that they are and that there is a reason." There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. I want to know what it is, but it's enough to know that it is.
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