I found out this past week that we own far too many dish towels.

I also found the originals of all the homilies I gave when I was a member of the pastoral staff at The Newman Center back in the early 90’s. Five years’ worth of homilies, and an adult lifetime of dish towels. There’s no correlation, save for the span of time in which each of these discoveries was made. Some may find it interesting, though, that there are far more homilies than towels. The word “priorities” comes to mind…

Living through a modified quarantine (I still go into the hospice office a few days a week), with both of us spending more time at home than we used to, Patrick and I find ourselves smack in the middle of myriad discoveries, and they’re not confined to what lies within the walls of our home (though, on rainy days, the attic is the perfect place to start). Inside or out, we are always stumbling over, unearthing (literally) or finding something new here. The first few days of lockdown, we did what most folks probably did—turned our attention to the dusty stacks of collected detritus from our equally-dusty youth, determined to move it along to a Better Place (i.e. the burn pile down the hill from the house, or Goodwill, or incorporated into our living room décor). But after a few days, that’s work, folks, and so we paged through some treasured cookbooks and started baking breads and making bean soups. More fun, less time, and we could eat the results of our labors. The stuff in the attic had been sitting there undisturbed for ten years; it wouldn’t evaporate if we left it alone another six days.

It’s both humbling and embarrassing to see what two people can accumulate in nearly three shared decades, even after moving seven times before we settled here at the acreage. Most moves push us to jettison what we simply don’t need anymore (or don’t want to pack and unpack), but we’re slow learners in the “touch nothing twice” classroom. At least seven times, we’ve packed and unpacked tools that may come in handy, raw materials for too many future and noble repurposing projects, a few pairs of jeans we hope to downsize into someday, and a collection of kitchen utensils that any Iron Chef winner would be lucky to own. A thin but strong line of sentimentality runs through everything because we affixed our dreams to each item, and it’s hard to peel that romantic veneer away, even though we’ve moved far beyond the initial spark that pulled these things to us.

Pre-pandemic, we had the luxury of jobs that took us away from the prolonged daily visual of all that we’ve tucked in around us, begging for attention. It was easy on our way down the driveway to make note of the pile that used to be the old dairy barn and promise to sift through it the next dry and sunny weekend that presented itself. But after 8+ hours of meetings and driving school children to and from their lessons, the trip back up the driveway to the house was all about respite and unwinding; the old dairy barn pile became blurry around the edges. Now, there’s no avoiding its persistent gaze. So earlier today, we found ourselves standing where the old barn stood, dragging sections of the metal roofing into the clearing near the banks of the creek, promising to sort through the rusty twisted panels and tin-snip smaller pieces into birdhouses. The toe of my boot kicked a small and perfectly clean Tonka truck wheel across a patch of crumbly barn floor soil. I wonder if we’ll find the rest of it beneath the rotted and punky rough-cut beams that once towered over our heads.

Back inside, in the upstairs guestroom, the homilies rested in an 18-gallon blue Rubbermaid tote, along with some old silk ties, my dad’s red plaid flannel bathrobe, pretty much every music and pop culture magazine from the 80’s and 90’s bearing Sting’s photo on the cover, a mini Hohner harmonica on a chain, and all four yearbooks from my college days. Digging them out from beneath all of that, I saw that my leanings toward order and organization had been well-established and well-employed. The homilies were first hand-written, then typed, then paperclipped together with printed copies of the readings for that particular weekend. I do not recall the moment they were relegated to that tote, or what it was like to sort them by year and label the manila folders that held them. I only remember what it was like to stand behind the lectern in the cavernous worship space and speak the words I’d written in front of 1000+ faithful fellow Catholics (terrifying the first couple of years, then merely intimidating, but always humbling). I practiced for hours in the days leading up to my assigned preaching rotation until I had the words, pauses, transitions and flow memorized. Sometimes my parents would be there, trading their more familiar and traditional Sunday Mass for a progressive prayer and songfest that boasted a 30-member choir, trumpets, drums, and applause after the final benediction was offered. They sat close to the front, throwing me encouraging smiles, and hugged me tightly in the after-Mass reception line at the back door to the parking lot.

Lifting the lid on that Rubbermaid tote sure did reveal a lot more than silk ties and manila folders.

Living here, we’ve grown quite accustomed to one or two discoveries in the course of our usual 9 - 5 (roughly) work week. It happens organically on a morning or evening walk, or when we head down to the still-standing old goat barn to fetch the pruners. We’ll notice a new patch of wild raspberry vines just past where my brother’s ‘68 Chevy pick-up is parked, see clear signs of a new resident mole tunneling her way around the front tires. And we’re always on the lookout for the new buckeye saplings on the west side of the driveway. But in the past five weeks, the sheer volume of “new” that happens here, most likely every day right under our unaware noses, leaves us confounded and a bit sheepish—have we really been that distracted by whatever the heck else is taking place to our left and right, above us and below us? Yes. We have. And more startling is the realization that it can manage just fine without an ounce of help from either of us.

What we’re finding in these days of land and home-focused existence is more than our stuff in the attic. We’re rediscovering pieces of ourselves that we’ve carried with us all along but set aside, stories and memories and unexamined values that need a good airing out, dusting off, pruning and reshaping. In its overwhelming and frightening hands, this pandemic is giving us the unexpected gift of concentrated time, introspection and self-discovery the likes of which we’ve not explored, ever. Even with 41 acres of classroom surrounding us. It’s as liberating as it is uncomfortable, and we’re finding that we welcome the creative tension of it all. To move through this time in human and earth history without being profoundly touched and changed by it is not an option anymore. I’m not sure it ever was.

As we continue to pass through the immediate worst of this, and into whatever the next iteration of “normal” is, I look forward to finding you there. Bring your bins and totes with you. We’ve got some catching up to do.