I had mislaid a flash drive somewhere around the house. I was pretty sure it wasn’t out in the world somewhere, with my school work, scans of art, PDFs of journal entries, and so on. But there was little that wasn’t duplicated elsewhere, or that could be replicated if I needed to. So I was able to deal with the matter as an exercise in managing anxiety, rather than wallowing in it. (Berating myself one of the ways I punish myself for clutter, ADD, and moving too quickly through life.) It was somewhere around here.
Today I found it. Despite tying a day-glo pink string to it, its modern compact size had allowed it to slip down between cushions. I am glad to have it back. Considering what the shape of its loss had been, I thought of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, found in the Gospel of Luke, 15:3-7. (It can be found here: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=158578634 ) The shepherd had ninety-nine other sheep, and so a 1% loss would have been well within the acceptable range. There was nothing unique about the sheep, except that it was part of the flock. Off on its own, it was in danger, certainly. But what struck me is that the shepherd, in going of to search for the one, left the other ninety-nine in the “wilderness.” A piece of the connected flock had been misplaced, and somehow the flock was less – not so much in numbers, but in how it was connected. Losing one, and that loss being acceptable, would have changed the quality of connection in the group. The flock was in the wilderness, until the shepherd found the lost sheep, returning all to home. (Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but for me this links to how the Church cannot wholly be the Church until a welcome is offered to all – not so much because the lost sheep needs to be rescued, but because the flock is not fully embodying its “flockliness.”)
Of course I am not talking about the flock any more, nor even so much about my flash drive. I am thinking of a counseling psychology course I am taking this spring, Group Dynamics, and how we experienced working to include a fellow student who is blind. Communication around the circle depends so much on visual cues that it was hard for her to know when there was a chance to speak, or what form the silences were taking. The flock was in the wilderness, an unstructured in-between place, until we found a way to re-connect with her. Then the wilderness becomes home, taking a moment to rejoice at the simple fact that everyone has found a place.
It was a quietly wonderful moment – particularly when the formerly lost sheep is allowed to lose that designation! Yet there is a part of me that still wonders whether the disconnections I embody, not so clearly as my fellow student, would receive a similar level of searching and finding, reintegrating and rejoicing. Deeper in, where has my own lost sheep wandered off to, and what joy of reconnecting am I lax in seeking and finding?
Fewer. Deeper. 