Cog-Like
By Andrea Lingle
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me
Read that last line again. This song played a hundred times before I HEARD that line. Then it hit me like smoke from an unseen fire. You aren't ready when it gets to you, but you can't not respond. No matter what you are doing, your lungs and eyes are going to revolt.
Our world is so much about the misery of "cog-ness," that I couldn't believe I had heard the line correctly. We aren't supposed to want to be cogs. We are supposed to be enamored by the me-ness who we are. "Find yourself." "Be yourself." "Be all you can be."
So, I replayed it. There it was, the veneration of being a cog.
Don't we all dream of being, not just A hero, but THE hero. We venerate the one who was foretold, who fulfills the prophecy, who stands apart. We write stories, script plays and movies, and craft epic poems about the one who escaped the machine. Not about the cogs. Not about the supporting cast. Not about the ones who tend the hearth or the earth or the toddling child.
But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see
Since we look out on, what seems to be, a complete world from our own eyes, we believe that we see the whole of what there is to see. We comprehend the dew on the grass, so we assume that we understand the morning. Since the world seems to hang together from our vantage point, we figure that we see things as they are, but our eyes are only equipped with three color receptors and light contains an infinity of color. There is a species of shrimp that has fourteen color receptors in its eyes. A shrimp! The world is a prismatic adventure through the eyes of this shrimp, and here I sit, with only three, and marvel at the glory of the redbud in spring.
Perhaps it would be of some use to learn to speak with the shrimp.
What's my name, what's my station? Oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say, "Sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me
Being a cog is not an invitation to blindly participate in whatever gristmill you are tossed into. To live a life of grace within community is to insist that no one need be ground to dust. The great machine is one wherein all of the cogs protect the others from being stripped of their place in the whole. This is what it means to be holy. To guard against being part of that which is against the nature of love and grace, which is the nature we were created to have. To be a cog in the wonder of grace is to be immeshed in the well being of the other. In fact, the well being of the other is the very duty of the self.
And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see
If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness is beyond our natural power to achieve (which it certainly is) then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task he requires of us. He will certainly give us the grace we need. If we do not become saints it is because we do not avail ourselves of his gift. ~Life and Holiness, Merton, p17
If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?
That is why we practice this life of grace together. A cog doesn't function alone. It must be held by another to turn. That is why we pause in the evening and the morning to whisper to each other: you are not alone. I am here remembering that you are beloved, as you are of me.
And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I'll come back to you someday soon myself
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm raw
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store
Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore
If I had an orchard, I'd work 'til I'm sore
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen
So, here I sit, wondering if I have the courage to embrace the life of a cog. It is so easy to want to be a hero, but Moses had a stutter and didn't reach the promised land. David and Jacob lacked birthrights. Peter and Paul made it a habit to get things wrong on the first try. Perhaps we were never intended to be the chosen ones. Perhaps we have always, only and gloriously, been a part of the whole.
For even though we may tend the orchard, we cannot, even for one moment, capture the sun and turn it to sugar.
If you feel inclined, comment with one word or one sentence that answers: Where do you see holiness?