Puzzles

Reflections by Brother Luke

            Our sisters, the Nuns of New Skete, have a long tradition of working on picture puzzles during their recreation time. The most recent one was 5,000 pieces, and it was so large they had to find creative ways to expand their table to accommodate the puzzle as they put it together. They thought they could finish it in a month or so. Surprise! It took almost 6 months. As it turned out, a few of the brothers helped out at the end of the process and put in some of the last pieces. It was a spectacular painting of a museum scene of paintings. The box didn’t reveal the artist or identify the scene (this was a used puzzle, after all), but we guessed it might have been the Louvre or the Vatican.

            Back in the early 2000s, one of the tasks I inherited was to do the shopping for the monks’ monastery. It was a large task, and right from the beginning I needed to learn how to do it efficiently all in one day each week. I always worked with a shopping list. To get everything on the list I had to make stops at a wide variety of stores. If I had personal errands to run or a doctor’s appointment, for example, I would combine the two activities to save time. I had to plot my trip to avoid backtracking, since the shopping involved trips to Saratoga or Albany.

In those days we had a Chevrolet Suburban, which was my usual vehicle for the task. We also had Ford Aerostar vans. So either way I had a good amount of space to carry home all of the items on the list. As I gained experience I began to take note of prices and to compare stores on the basis of their prices. I took lists of our usual items and noted the prices of the same items at the different stores. With this information I was able to manage costs and to cut down on the number of stops during each trip. Well, sometimes, anyway. Organizing the job was like putting together a puzzle.

However, as we had to replace vehicles, the new ones were not as large as the old ones. Vehicles came and went, but the task was still there. Now the puzzle had a new wrinkle. Could I fit everything into the car? In many cases it was possible without much trouble. But when we had a large number of guests or a special event, such as the new dog seminars, then the challenge to fit in everything grew. Sometimes the amount of items purchased forced me to put some of them in the front seat. On some occasions I had help in the shopping expedition, but that would rule out using the front seat for groceries; I didn’t want to make a guest walk home! Recently one guest who kindly agreed to accompany me on the shopping trip took photos of the task of loading the car at the end of the shopping trip. His before-and-after views were an amusing documentation of the three-dimensional puzzle I had to put together that week. He took the pictures because he was convinced that I would not be able to get everything in the car. Actually, I wasn’t so sure myself that I would fit everything in. But we made it. The outcome was not as esthetically beautiful as the puzzles at the nuns, but the situation presented a challenge, perseverance yielded a result, and a level of satisfaction was achieved.

Many monastic tasks, or should I say life tasks, can be approached in a similar way. No matter what the task is, we can see in it an opportunity to give it our best effort and to trust that the outcome will be what it should be. What more would God expect of us?

Brother Luke mastering the groceries into the van puzzle.