A broken tulip

What is it like, the world that is at your fingertips? Have you paid attention recently?

“Hands learn more than minds do, hands learn how to hold other hands,/ how to grip pencils and mold poetry, how to tickle pianos and dribble a basketball,/ and grip the handles of a bicycle/ how to hold old people, and touch babies/ I love hands like I love people,/ they’re the maps and compasses in which we navigate our way through life,/ some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past…” (Sarah Kay, “Hands”)

Once, the nephews and nieces of Jesus were dragged to Emperor Diocletian. The accusation: they are called members of a royal family.

Flanked by guards, these men and women stood before the Emperor. Born into a nobody-family himself, perhaps even with a slave as his father, Diocletian had quite literally fought his way from being nobody to being granted the throne by the gods. He saw himself as the restorer of Rome’s former glory, exercising “an absolute, “divine right” monarchy, and he surrounded it with majesty” and among his reforms was the bloodiest, largest persecution of Christians of the entire Roman Empire.

Now here they were, the accused family of Jesus. They stood quietly. When an answer was demanded, they extended their hands, worn into thick callouses by constant manual labour. They asked one question,

“Where have you seen a royal family with hands like these?”

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I heard this story on a radio station while picking beans on a farm. I chuckled at the beautiful simplicity of their question. The king whose family they belonged to had rough, calloused hands himself. He was a carpenter, after all. His hands were to take even more abuse — scarred for eternity by nail holes. Those hands tell you something about the kind of kingdom he established.

I examined my own hands in the bean field. My hands have always aged at least a decade older than the rest of me. They would not pass for royalty, either.

Your hands tell the world about you; your hands tell you about the world.

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I’ll keep you safe
Try hard to concentrate
Hold out your hand
Can you feel the weight of it
The whole world at your fingertips
Don’t be, don’t be afraid
Our mistakes they were bound to be made
But I promise you I’ll keep you safe

You’ll be an architect
So pull up your sleeves
And build a new silhouette
In the skylines up ahead
Don’t be, don’t be afraid
Our mistakes they were bound to be made
But I promise you I’ll keep you safe
I’ll keep you safe

Sleeping at Last: I’ll Keep You Safe.

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This weekend, Newfies turned the snow at their fingertips into play:

(I was concerned about the reports of so many people snowed in until I heard about “Chip Days”. Apparently, Newfies stock up on potato chips, which they then crunch through their snowed in days. A huge fan of chips myself, I decided snow days in Newfoundland can’t be too bad.)

What is at your fingertips?

This past weekend at my fingertips I found smooth flute keys which hadn’t been touched in too long; I found piles of crusty and greasy dishes which turned clean in soapy water; I found a baby’s sleeping face; and I found one brilliantly orange pepper.

Concentrate is one of my words for this year. Sometimes concentration means zoning out all your senses to focus on a task. Sometimes it means paying attention to all of your senses and the present moment. May you — and I — have the wisdom to know which it is, moment by moment.