Rainbows and Amateurs

 This morning I sat on my front porch and observed something I don’t remember seeing before.  It was a rainbow, even a double rainbow at times.  What made it unique is that it was morning, the sun rising in the east, and this rainbow appeared on the west side of my house.  Most conditions that lead to rainbows happen during the storms that arise during the heat of the day.  A morning rainbow is rare.

 

I sat and watched for a good while as it brightened and faded, depending on the amount of sun breaking through the clouds in the east.  Sometimes brilliant with all the ROYGBIV colors easily observed, sometimes fading to a faint streak.  Over and over, it waxed and waned, and it reminded me of the impermanence of life. That everything is always changing in the world around us, in our bodies, in our mind.  I’ve always been so resistant to change, but I’m learning it’s just a reality of life. I am trying to be more at ease with it, less fearful of it, and open to it.

 

And just as I was watching this rainbow, I came across a reference to Anne of Green Gables. Anne Shirley is endlessly awed by the world around her.  Dr. Jonathan Rogers puts it this way:  

 

Anne sees royally beautiful things everywhere because she always has her eyes open for beauty and delight. "Isn't it splendid that there are so many things to like in the world?" she asks Matthew. That particular declaration is occasioned by the "jolly rumbling" of the wagon on a wooden bridge.

Anne is unusually sensitive to what CS Lewis called "joy," "the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing" that brings more satisfaction than any earthly consolation every could. Sehnsucht, as you may know already, is the German word for this longing.

If Anne seems out of touch with reality, it is because she is in touch with a deeper reality. Matthew and Marilla are good people, but they are pragmatic people, in bad need of a reminder that there is more to their world than meets the eye.

 

This is why I, along with millions of others, love Anne.  She reminds us of how we truly should be reacting to the world around us.  I want to be more like Anne.

 

So when I walk my road, which I have done hundreds of times, I try to pay attention.  It’s hard work, trying to keep out of my own head, to be aware of what this very moment holds.  On Monday as I approached an oak tree by the driveway, a small white something fell out of it and onto the ground.  I’d just the week before experienced what I am convinced was a squirrel throwing acorns out of an oak tree behind our house, but this white thing didn’t look like an acorn.  I went over and picked it up, and behold, it was an acorn, chewed all the way around by a squirrel.  I just happened to be there at that moment when the squirrel finished her breakfast and decided to get on with her day.

 

Such a small thing. 

 

But there I was, paying attention to it and delighting in it.

 

Dr. Rogers went on to share this passage:  

 

Robert Farrar Capon talks about amateurs, appealing to the etymological sense of the word: an amateur is a person who loves. An amateur makes and plays and works from motives of love rather than self-interest or pragmatism. And the world, according to Capon, needs all the amateurs it can get. I have quoted the following Capon passage before, but it seems so relevant to Anne Shirley that I'm just going to have to ask you to indulge me:

[The world] needs all the lovers – amateurs – it can get. It is a gorgeous old place, full of clownish graces and beautiful drolleries, and it has enough textures, tastes, and smells to keep us intrigued for more time than we have. Unfortunately, however, our response to its loveliness is not always delight: It is, far more often than it should be, boredom. And that is not only odd, it is tragic; for boredom is not neutral – it is the fertilizing principle of unloveliness. In such a situation, the amateur – the lover, the man who thinks heedlessness is a sin and boredom a heresy – is just the man you need. More than that, whether you think you need him or not, he is a man who is bound, by his love, to speak... There, then, is the role of the amateur: to look the world back to grace.

 

“To look the world back to grace.”  That’s what Anne does.

 

What a great role to play in the world!  

I think I’ll embrace it.