MemoriumPg3.html

The second thing is “working.” Certainly there is such a thing as being driven

by stern doctrine or nervous energy to always be busy; the other extreme

temptation, of course, is to do nothing at all. But there is a middle way: to

plant a flower, to clean a house, to mend a garment, as an intentional

contribution, a testimony that is always useful work needing to be done, that

no one is ever free to forget or renounce what our human condition is. This

story is told of St. Francis of Assisi: he was fasting, and had fallen ill; it was

now bitter cold in his tiny hut, and his friends pleaded with him to allow them to

find wood and build a little fire. “Go out into the world,” he said, “and see if

everyone else is warm; if so, come back, and we will have a fire -- but not before.” When heaven has come to earth for all, and there is no more pain to be alleviated,

no more ugliness to be transformed, no more improvements to be made, then it

will be time for unlimited idleness. Ms. Lillie did not claim the angelic privilege

of absolute retirement.

A third thing, being unable to come up with another term, I call “sweetening.”
A very consistent quality running through her memoirs, as well as her behavior,
is a sense of humor, an affirmation of the appropriateness of delight. Sometimes
this was a little brazen: when she was a girl, her sister Norma, was trying to
court the young man she was later to marry; but the parents were very strict --
so it was Lillie’s job to go downstairs on a prearranged signal and get a very
noisy drink of water, so as to distract the parents sufficiently for Norma to slip
back into the house from wherever she had been, which Lillie thought was mostly
likely a haystack. (This reminds me of Naomi in the Bible, helping Ruth to seduce Boaz). And, at the hospital a few days before she died, Lillie made the unsettling discovery (at the age of 93 1/2) that her face was becoming wrinkled; she wasn’t morbid about it, but it did seem to raise with her the possibility that she might be
aging.

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