Kairos:

The Importance of Telling Stories

 

“Kairos (καιρός) is an ancient Greek word meaning the "right or opportune moment". The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies "a time in between", a moment of undetermined period of time in which "something" special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word.”

- Wikipedia ( August 18, 2007 )

Confronted about the reason for The Greening

These writings, or memoirs or whatever they might be called, that have come to be called The Greening started off as an (admittedly) unabashed attempt to find some adopting homes for a foster cat and her four kittens. At some point, very early on, they became something more. Something special. At least for me they did. Maybe for some of you, too. But none of it was pre-meditated, and at no point did I stop to what it was becoming or why it was becoming it.

Leave it to my friend Claire to call me out on all that.

Claire is a real good friend of mine, but you could count the number of things we have in common on one hand of a clumsy, drunken carpenter with a lurching jigsaw. In other words, not much. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, and the friendship works. However, Claire (and perhaps more than a few more) had been growing somewhat annoyed by The Greening. I can fairly distill her annoyance into three sub-parts. Annoyance part 1: Aren’t you being a little over-dramatic, Ben? Annoyance part 2: Gee, thanks for keeping in touch with me via a distribution list. Annoyance part 3: You moved out into the woods and you’re writing stories about foster cats…make sure you talk to some actual humans once in awhile, bud.

(Some of you are cheering Claire now. She deserves it, so I’ll give you a moment to finish your applause and take your seats.)

Then she asked outright about The Greening: “Initially, I thought it was a means to get the cats adopted, but clearly it's become something much, much bigger…what has it become to you?” Okay. So there I was, confronted straight up with a pretty darn good question.

It’s about the stories

I’m sure I gave Claire a semi-long-winded answer that basically said, “I don’t really know. I just like to tell stories.” And really, that is the simple answer. Granted, foster kittens and springtime in Wisconsin seem pretty commonplace on the surface, perhaps even petty when compared with worldwide injustices, tainted governments, and bridges falling into rivers. But as far as stories go, I feel that “the meek shall inherit the earth”; that is, in the smallest details of things are borne the parables that cry out to all things.

A story is an exchange of information, woven and spun with some colorful yarn if you’re lucky. But a good story…that’s something different, something more. A good story reveals something about the teller and the hearer alike. A good story is a two-way conversation. It need not be a pleasant conversation, but it can be. It need not be an emotional conversation, but it might be. A story just is whatever it becomes, and it might become many different things to many different people just as it might become nothing to others.

It has been my pleasure that The Greening has brought stories back my way, popping up like locust trees on the side of the road. See, if you tell stories, others are more likely to tell some back. And this can be rich. Case in point, in some meandering way The Greening brought forth this story from Scott (who you may remember as the adopter of one of the kittens, once Panda now Sweet Kitty):

Back in the Depression my granddad contributed to the family table by hunting squirrels, frogs, whatever he could find. By all accounts he was quite a shot; his sister complains today, at 87, about his always shooting the squirrels in the head, depriving Aunt Pat of her favorite thing in life...squirrel brains. Anyway, at some point my granddad made a deal with a fella for frogs - 5 cents each. Evidently this was a reasonable deal, not exorbitant, but enough to excite my granddad. After some time, on a hot day, my granddad met up with his patron along a dirt road bordering a corn field. My granddad, having killed 10 or so frogs, was understandably excited to see the guy. Unfortunately, the guy decided that now would be a good time to renegotiate - 3 cents per frog, take it or leave it. Well, he took the stick on which the frogs had been carried and started twirling it, round and round, ‘til finally he threw the whole lot of them out into the cornfield. Told the guy he could have them for free if he wanted to go get ‘em.

Oh man! See, that’s pure gold right there. Pure gold. Another offshoot branch from The Greening gave me a new glimpse into my own dad’s childhood. He wrote:

I had only two pets that survived long enough to be beloved, but they were both well beloved and kept by my parents for many years after I had left home.

My pet black goat was Nellie Baa. She produced a whole flock of goats by jumping a fence and joining a Billy goat next door. Lots of stories there. (I've written a whole book about her and our growing up - meant to share it with the <grandkids> but it turned R-rated or at least PG before I finished the 24 chapters!)

My dog, also a mongrel, a runt of the litter...almost got shot more than once because someone mistook her for a fox. Her name was Shoestring. (When I got her, my dad and I were reading a book with a dog named Shoestring - if she wasn't tied, she was always under your feet.) Shoestring worked in the fields with me. When she got hot and tired, I would put my sweat-rag (handkerchief to you city slickers) down at the end of the row in a shady spot, and she would sleep there ‘til lunch time. She waited for me at the gate to our farm after school every afternoon. My parents would never have considered letting me keep her in the house, but when I graduated and left home, she got to winter in the kitchen by the old cast iron stove.

My dad has told a lot of stories about his childhood working the farm in Tennessee . A fair bit of these stories don’t paint his childhood as real happy. But some do. He should tell both kinds of stories, and he does, but I like it when he tells the happy ones. Or perhaps I just like it when he remembers the happy ones. For this reason it comforts me, this story of his loyal mutt waiting for him at the gate or sleeping at the end of a row of crop. This is a good story.

My friend Cliff

My friend Cliff lives in South County St. Louis with his love and wife of 54 years, Betty Lou. Cliff is mid-seventy-something years old, a veteran of the US armed forces and also a veteran of teaching and being a principal in the St. Louis public school system. Cliff can trade stories with the best of ‘em, and if Betty Lou is not around, he’s known to share a few of those jokes he learned waiting in line at the latrine overseas.

After writing the episode of the foster litter that died, Cliff stopped my heart with his response. He put down his telltale humor and shared his own story. He has given me permission to reprint it here. It gripped me as it is likely to do you:

I read your latest “Greening” and as I looked at the six stones, I wept. I wept for their little lives which never get to mature; I wept for you for I know the hurt and heartache you felt; I wept for another four baby kittens who were subjected to violence and death. When I was very young, age 3 or 4 (can't remember), I witnessed a violent act of murder. I was playing with four beautiful kittens who had climbed into my lap as I sat on the back stoop. My father came up, said something to me, and took each kitten by its hind legs and bashed its head on the stone stoop. I didn't scream, I didn't run away, I just sat there, stunned. My orders were to take the dead kittens and bury them. My father left. I gathered the little lifeless bodies in my small hands and took them to a nice shade tree where I dug a hole and placed each body in the ground. They lay beneath a blanket of dirt. I placed four little stones by the freshly dug grave and sat in silence. My mother had witnessed the drama. She held me in her arms and softly hummed a hymn in my ear. I never cried, but my heart ached for the four lifeless kittens.

I tell you this true tale for when I was in high school, my father felt the loss of a pet. He had a dog kennel but his one pet was a beautiful white and golden female cat. She slept with him, she ate with him. My mother would serve my father his meal along with food for dad's pet, called “Baby”. He loved that cat, but age caught up with her and she died. My father placed her lifeless body into my hands and told me to bury her. He chose the spot. It was at the foot of a beautiful oak tree. My mother and I dressed her in some doll clothes, lined a shoe box with a towel and placed Baby in the box. We put the lid on and tied a pink ribbon around it. I dug a hole and placed the makeshift coffin in it. I covered it with a blanket of dirt and returned to my duties.

That evening, when my father returned, he went directly to the burial plot. I followed him there. He had placed a stone by the grave. I saw no tears. I saw only a sad face. In my mind, I was hoping his thoughts traveled back in time to the day he killed four little helpless kittens.

Isn't it ironic that a man who destroyed four little lives would feel sad over the loss of one?

One story begets another, both important in their own way. I read Cliff’s words and I hoped, prayed even, that Cliff’s father’s thoughts did travel back in time as he stood at that oak tree. I hoped that his paradoxical love for Baby was some manifestation of grace, some balance of conscience. Of course I do not know, nor does Cliff. Then again, not all parables reveal themselves in this world.

Kairos, and the importance of telling stories

A good story is a way of marking our “Kairos” time. It’s like leaving a footprint on the path of our life. Then, as we all walk along and our paths cross or overlap, we share our footprints. So truly, and for what it’s worth, The Greening has been my part brave, part cowardly invitation for us to walk together for a moment or two, just to see if something special happens. Of course, what that special something is depends on who is walking the path.

Epilogue (and a proper one at that!)

Yet another meandering of The Greening takes us back to my friend Claire, who as you remember was the one who challenged me about why I felt compelled to write The Greening in the first place. It seems that some extraordinary and unexpected tick of the “Kairos” clock brought Claire to the recent realization that her cat Mingus was going crazy being an “only cat” and that perhaps Mingus needed a friend. It is with great pleasure, then, that I announce that Claire and Mingus have adopted The Fading Tiger. He has been renamed “ Milo ” and rumor has it that Milo and Mingus are getting along famously. Claire loves him too.

And, I might add, now she’s got a new story to tell.

-bn

The Fading Tiger...now called "Milo"...at his new home.	Milo puts the death clamp on a fake mouse.
Milo's new human (Claire).	Mingus and Milo. The family that eats together, um, probably poops together.

Back to The Greening index.