I’ve been pretty wasteful. By definition, I am therefore prodigal.
That’s not the way I’ve tended to see it, however. The biblical story of the prodigal son has always left me with the impression that the selfish and wasteful son was prodigal by virtue of his return. A greedy guy had left and been lost. Later, he returned and was found. To the kid who would hear the parable once a year in church, and even to the adult who might reference it on occasion in a metaphor or analogy, to be prodigal had more to do with return than with departure. Being prodigal – to this kid and adult, at least – was a sort of renaissance, a rebirth. I didn’t need rebirth, not personally, because I had never left, not that I knew of. It was others who had veered away, from family, values, or themselves. That veering, when corrected, was somehow the essence of the prodigal. The return was what mattered.
Which it does, in both moral teachings and perhaps in life. But the return is not, by nature, the prodigality. The departure is. The spendthriftness. The recklessness. The waste.
And not all prodigality leads to rebirth.
This may seem fairly elementary. Besides, what does it matter, after all, that I misunderstood the adjective in the context of the tale? Is not the important message – the moral – of the story within the act of acceptance from the father when the wayward and bankrupt son decides to return?
The story of the prodigal son is not one unique to the Bible. There is evidence of it in ancient Buddhist teachings as well. While some features are different, the main plot line is the same: selfishness, loss, return, and redemption. It seems to be part of the human story. Someone else’s, in particular.
For most of my life, that someone else has been fairly predictable. It was the self-centered businessman who, upon financially failing, discovers charity. It was the morally decrepit politician who, through personal grievance, encounters justice. The hospital administrator who, when sick, learns about compassion. The angry child who, upon the unexpected death of a parent, yearns for forgiveness. The prodigal was the other. It was him or her. It was you. It was my own brother.
It was never me.
And so I have likely missed a myriad of opportunities for insight, for learning, and for, dare I say, grace. Because waste does not need to occur in prodigious quantities for it to matter; a person doesn’t have to lose everything in order to qualify as prodigal. Small aliquots of intemperance can suffice. Recognition of life’s little excesses and improvidences offers repeated portals of potential renewal and regeneration.
Every September, in the Catholic church, this week’s gospel is the story of the prodigal son. I know this not because I attend church sufficiently to be familiar with the liturgical cycle. Instead, I know it because this week is also the anniversary of my mother’s death. Nine years ago, two days after she suddenly died, I slipped into the back of one of the churches where Mom worshipped, hoping to meet the priest after mass and ask if the church was available for her funeral service the following day. When I entered, mass was in progress. The first thing that I heard when I stepped through the church doors was the reading of the gospel of the prodigal son.
How ironic, I thought. I wish my brother could hear this. After all, he was the one of us most at odds with our parents. Of course now, given what had happened to Mom, he would probably rush across the metaphorical field of time to support our emotionally distraught father. And Dad should embrace him. As Dad did. And I would not feel jealous. As I did not.
I felt something worse: quiet judgment. Through the lens of the parable, I smiled at the “biblical” nature of our situation. I heard the message of parental acceptance and filial renewal and I vowed not to let my own ego interfere. It did not; it just missed the whole message of the moment. For when I heard the gospel of the prodigal son that morning, I identified myself with the brother who had never left, the one who had, it appeared, been prodigal. And so I wasted the opportunity for my own return.
You see, only this week did it occur to me, through a brief series of unexpected yet welcome communications, that I don’t really know my brother. Not really. I know what he has done in his career, yes. I can give some details about the arc of his life but only like a sports fan can recite the statistics of an athlete. I don’t understand who my brother is, who he has been, or who he aspires to be. I’ve always seen him through the prism of certain character features rather than the unfiltered perspective of a whole person. I’ve never tried to get to know him on his own terms.
The same might be said of many of my relationships: they’ve tended to be somewhat stereotypical. Given the choice of being the welcoming father, the loyal child, or the prodigal son, I have – metaphorically and sometimes consciously – worn the mental garb of loyalty. In doing so, I’ve muffed chances to recognize my own prodigality. And I’ve undoubtedly missed many moments to embrace the return of others post their own prodigal departures.
I have, in short, wasted my wastefulness, through both unawareness and inaction. Here’s hoping I can better learn to see some of my lapses sooner, so that the opportunity to learn from my prodigality will not continue to be needlessly squandered. I may not, in many instances, desire return or deserve redemption. Therefore, I seek only attentiveness and gentle awareness – and the patience of fraternal grace.