For Wilshire Baptist Church
After taking a long break we’re back at the jigsaw puzzle table. During the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic we completed approximately 40 puzzles, but we stopped for several months when the masks came off and life got busy again. I’m not sure what got us back to puzzling, except perhaps the extreme heat of this summer has created its own pandemic-like response and we aren’t getting out much.
So, I grabbed the first puzzle on the stack of puzzle boxes not yet opened: a panoramic image of the famed ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo. The puzzle is 38 inches long by 13 inches wide with 1,000 pieces, and as usual we started with the border but then we were stumped about what to do next. Different puzzles prompt different strategies. A landscape might have specific items to work on: a tree, a barn, a canoe on a lake. Many puzzles have defined areas of color that can be sorted out and worked on. But the Sistine Chapel is a large collection of small scenes from the Bible and portraits of prophets and angel-like characters that all look the same when spread out in pieces on a table.
After scratching my head for a couple of days, I decided to go with a method I’ve used a few times before. I call it the “micro-matching” method. It basically goes like this: I pick up a piece, look for a distinctive identifying element — a face, a fold in a robe, a hand clutching something, whatever — then I search the picture on the box for that same detail and place the puzzle piece in its approximate location within the border. After a while, pieces start to connect and patterns start to make sense and the puzzle gets nearer and nearer to completion. It’s tedious, but it works.
I’m sort of approaching life the same way these days. I’m having trouble seeing the big picture, so I’m focusing on the little moments and events and trusting they will connect in a larger way that makes sense.
Like the work that I do: I’ve been doing some sort of writing my entire career, and when I was working for people at a specific publication or business there always was a big-picture mission I was contributing to. I’m still doing that type of work for a few clients, and that is good. But the work I do for nobody in particular because it feels like a calling of some sort? I’m not seeing the big picture. There’s no financial motivation because people aren’t buying books much anymore, so it’s hard to see the point of it. But using the micro method, I’m pressing onward and trusting there will be some value to it.
Or, the recent death of my father: Just putting those words in a sentence makes my head spin. Yes, he was 88 years old and I’ve known for a while that anything could happen at almost any time, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen the way it did. So I’m trying to get my head and my heart around what it all means and where to go from here. When a hospital nurse named Camila learned that my parents had just celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary, she said, “That’s a life!” Yes, it is, but that doesn’t mean it should have ended abruptly. So, without any guarantees of longevity, I find myself focusing on the little moments I’m experiencing in the present and not thinking about long-term plans and dreams.
Or, looking out my second-floor home office window at the burned-up grass and plants in the flower beds: I haven’t mowed the yard at all this season because I had shoulder surgery in February. I used to take such pride in the work and actually enjoyed it, but I’ve let two men mow the lawn until I tell them I’m ready to take over. With the heat and some residual soreness, I’ve been hesitant to take back control, and now I’m wondering if I’m just being lazy in the short term, or if there’s a good long-term reason to wait a while longer? Maybe I should go out in the relative cool of a morning and work at it just a little to get the feel of it again.
Those are all just situations swirling in my personal life. What about the world at large – the violence, injustice, hunger, unrest, recession? It feels like the problems are too big, and any attempts I make to help are too small to make a difference; like connecting two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and walking away with 998 pieces scattered on the table.
Still, small steps can lead to beautiful results if we keep working. It took Michelangelo almost four years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It will take us a little more than two weeks off and on to complete the puzzle. So there’s some proof that small efforts can lead to big results, and that can lead to deeper meaning.
The puzzle is a loaner from a church friend who said we should pass it on to someone else. So we’ll finish it and take a picture for posterity and then offer it to whoever wants it next. But before we do, I’m going to study the image carefully, do some reading and learn more about Michelangelo’s masterpiece. After all the work that he did on a grand scale — and the work we did with 1,000 little pieces — I want to get a better understanding of the big picture.