NEAT BOXES
[Jesus] rose from the table and took off his outer garments. -John 13:1-15
How many ways can things of this world fit into a box? Boxes for moving, shipments from Amazon, and wrapping presents. Boxes for where we live like a house, a bed room, or walls made up of cardboard. Perhaps things we consume that comes in a box like television, computer, food, and juice. Institutions as in education, society, culture, and religion also box us in. Let us add in titles that fit into a box as in male, female, priest, nun, religious, mother, father, student, and teacher. The list goes on and on. Finally, does God fit into a box?
Between summer of 2017 to end of 2019, I moved seven times. Over time, I found it easier if I could organize my life into boxes and clearly label them. Yet, even on my seventh move, I failed to have all of my life in clearly marked, neat boxes.
There is a function to neat boxes which helps to get my life in order and learn how everything needs a home. Places like living in my parents’ house, attending university, working in the industry, and practicing Catholicism taught me about boxes. Everything belongs somewhere. After a while, as I begin to look at life’s design in nature, I recognize that there are no neat boxes as I thought at first.
So, what things do I place into neat boxes and do I expect things to remain in neat boxes? Neat boxes as in the subjects we studied in school, career that we chose, religion we follow, and titles and identifiers accumulated over the years. Can I sit down and list the neat boxes I carry from place to place?
There is nothing that can keep us from the immense love of God and yet, life in neat boxes create distance between God and myself. There are not enough boxes in the world that can contain God, yet do I ask myself, “do I put God in a neat box?”
Currently, I am learning how everything spills over from one box into the next and nothing is as clear cut as I previously thought. Everything informs one another and not one box is better than the next. In order for me to rise up and begin to wash my neighbor’s feet, I will need to set down my boxes as Jesus did in today’s gospel, “rose from the table and took off his outer garments.” Only when I can put these boxes down can I begin to see my neighbors.
Tram Nguyen