Chemo chairs, sore thumbs, Mixtecs, and atheists

I’ve started my music lessons at the hospital and am now playing a “jumping flea.” The ukulele. Also known as a machete. We are five in the group, all cancer patients, and I am the youngest and the only one who can read the chord charts. I have learned C, G7, and F, and can play Feliz Navidad, my least favorite song of all time. Janey says I should be able to play something called Tip-toeing through the Tulips or at least Tiny Tim (since my car is named after him) but I have to admit these are both beyond me. I flip through the binder and find Oh Chanukuh, Jingle Bells, and Ring of Fire. For one reason or another, none of these work for me. I am a ukulele player  with nothing to play.

Straight from the ukulele lesson, Janey and I hop in the car and drive across town to her yoga class. They are doing figures like Three-legged Dog, Tree, and Warrior,  and I am just trying to not fall over, an obvious beginner. You are supposed to pick a spot to concentrate on while you balance, and one girl concentrates on a spot on the back of the girl in front of her, and when the girl in front wobbles, the girl concentrating falls right over, and everyone agrees there is a lesson in this. The lights are off. You could fall asleep in this class if you aren’t concentrating on not falling over. The class ends with Jeremiah 29:11, “I know the plans I have for you.” Cool thought, God carving out good plans right out of the deadwood we’ve been handed. He’s assuming we are moving to a better place.

swarming robots

And I think about how much of my life is about learning. Monday night I had gone to BSF with Janey (a bunch of women I know go to this). They are studying Revelation, and I was impressed with the background details (For example: those locust swarms. They can cover 460 square miles, the size of Los Angeles. Can you imagine a swarm like that in the distance coming at you?) We looked at how John borrows details from Joel to describe “the Day of the Lord.” My BSF study notes added, “when the biblical writers used the term 'day,' they were referring to a period of time that could be of any length.” Hmm. And here I thought BSF was a relatively conservative, orthodox organization (insert smiley face).

swarming Mexican locusts

And I think about how little opportunity the Mixtec women I know have to sit in a Bible class ( I don’t know one woman who reads Metlatonoc Mixtec) or a literature class or a music class or any class. They learn all kinds of things, but their learning is almost all experiential. They learn by doing. This is so much harder.

I like learning, except when it entails learning hard things experientially by sitting in a chemo chair or massaging sore knuckles. I want to learn. Except when it’s tough because it requires changes that cost me. Ukulele. Yoga. Locust swarms. These are classes I can afford. But those “plans of God…” I’m not so sure about those.

Janey laughs at me because I can do my BSF homework in half an hour, reading, underlining, processing. No sweat. I’ve studied the book before. Preached a series on it, in fact. Meanwhile, she might take an hour and a half to do one day’s lesson because she’s more thorough, and it’s less familiar. But when we walk into her Yoga class, she’s the pro, doing that Three-legged dog thing that I’m not even allowed by the teacher to even try. I’m the beginner there. She has so many “intelligences” I lack.

We are all at such different levels in all our various classes, and it’s often not the academic subjects (like Bible Study), that are the most profitable for helping us learn. Sometimes it’s the shop classes, or the cancer classes, or the be-a-good-neighbor classes, or the JUST SHUT UP AND LISTEN!!!  classes that do us the most good. And most of all, it’s the fact that we are at different levels that does us the most good. Even that is a lesson. So I want to stay open. I want to listen. I want to learn. Today I talked to an atheist. It was fascinating. God taught me through an atheist! Irony, irony. I love that about God. Atheists don’t threaten Him one bit. “I know the plans I have for you.” Take me there, God. Even through chemo chairs, sore thumbs, Mixtecs, and atheists.