They Told Me To Lighten It

You were young enough that it did not come as an insult.

That is the part that makes it stick. Nobody stood over you and said a cruel thing. What happened was much quieter and much more effective than that. Somebody who loved you, in a kitchen or a church hall or the back of a car, said a practical sentence about your skin in the tone people use for practical sentences.

Stay out of the sun this summer, baby.

Or: don't let yourself get too dark.

Or nothing said at all, and a cousin praised in front of you for something you could see was not on offer to you, which teaches faster than any sentence.

And you did not receive it as an opinion, because it was not delivered as one. It came as household maintenance. As information about how to manage a thing you had been given, like keeping something out of the damp.

So you managed it. For thirty years. And the managing has been so ordinary that it has never once looked like a wound.

Now hear me. I am not here to run a case against anybody in that kitchen, and I want that clear before we go one step further.

Most of them were handling something they had been handed. Somebody said it to them, and to the woman before them, and every one of them thought they were helping a girl avoid a difficulty they had already met. It was said in love, and it was wrong, and both of those are true at once and neither cancels the other.

Managing is not caring

Here is the distinction I want to lay down, because the whole thing turns on it.

Managing something and caring for something are two different jobs.

You manage a risk. You manage a condition. You manage a thing that is understood to be a problem, and the goal of managing is always containment, and containment never ends, because a thing being contained is never actually finished.

You care for something you value. The goal of care is the thing itself doing well. Care has good days in it. Managing does not.

Everything you have done for your skin since you were eleven has been the first job, and you have never once been offered the second.

You are managing something that was never a problem to be contained, and containment has never once been the same work as care. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman which of two jobs she has actually been doing, and Song of Solomon 1 has a woman speaking about her own skin and about who sent her out into the sun.

And notice what managing does to a body over thirty years.

It makes every act conditional. Nothing gets done because a body is worth attending to. Everything gets done because something is being held back. So the hands are busy and the body is untended, which is a strange thing to be true about the same woman at the same sink.

You are somebody whose skin has been handled constantly and cared for hardly at all, and being busy over a body has never once been the same as tending it. Scripture in Song of Solomon 1 records a woman saying that her own vineyard went unkept while she kept others, and the Spirit of God is the one who changes what a pair of hands is for.

The sun hath looked upon me

There is a woman speaking at the very start of the Song of Solomon, and what she says is closer to your kitchen than most people notice.

Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother's children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept. (Song of Solomon 1:6, King James Version)

Read the order of what she reports, because it is remarkable.

First: do not look at me like that. She names the looking, which somebody in her life has been doing.

Second: the reason is the sun. Not a fault, not a defect. The sun looked upon her, which is a beautiful way to say it, as though the sun had taken an interest.

You are somebody the sun took an interest in, and that has never once been written down anywhere as a defect. Song of Solomon 1 says the sun hath looked upon me, and the Holy Spirit is what returns to a woman a plain fact that was handed to her as a fault.

Third, and this is the part that opens the whole thing: she was sent out there. Her mother's children put her in charge of the vineyards, so she was out in the sun all day because she was doing work for her family.

And fourth: mine own vineyard have I not kept.

You are a woman who was sent out to keep somebody else's ground, and there has never once been a moment when that was your own doing. It is written in Song of Solomon 1 that they made her the keeper of the vineyards, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman where a whole pattern actually began.

Sit with that last line, because it is the sentence I would give you out of this entire piece.

Mine own vineyard have I not kept.

She is not saying she failed at something. She is saying that everything she had was spent on ground that belonged to other people, and that there was one plot nobody ever sent her to, and it was hers.

That is not an accusation. She does not make it one. It is a plain accounting, and it is the truest sentence about a whole kind of life that has ever been written down.

You are the one vineyard that never got assigned to anybody, and there has never once been a person on that list whose job it was to keep you. The Spirit of God is what sends a woman back to her own ground at last, and the written word says mine own vineyard have I not kept.

Keeping your own ground for ten minutes

So here is the assignment, and it is on purpose the smallest possible version of keeping your own vineyard.

Tonight, do one unhurried thing for your skin that is not trying to change one single thing about it.

I am not going to tell you what. There is no method in this article and there never will be. Whatever you already have, whatever you already do, done slowly and with no result in mind.

The whole difference is the intention, and there are two rules that carry it.

You are changing why rather than what, and the method has never once been the thing that made those ten minutes a containment. Song of Solomon 1 records a woman sent out to keep other vineyards, and the Holy Spirit is what turns managing back into keeping.

The first: no checking afterward. Not in the mirror, not with your fingers, not tomorrow morning. The check is what turns care back into management, every single time.

The second: no goal. Not clearer, not smoother, not anything. If a goal is in it, the old job is running under a new name.

Just warmth, slowness, and attention paid to a thing that has been contained for thirty years.

You are able to keep your own ground for ten minutes tonight, and it has never once been true that your vineyard came last by anybody's design. The written word in Song of Solomon 1 says the sun looked upon her while she kept the vineyards of others, and the Holy Spirit is what turns ten ordinary minutes into keeping rather than managing.