410 Friday April 30th, 2021

There’s always a chance to rebuild; there’s always a new purpose for the individual pieces

I have bought more sets of Star Wars LEGOs since the pandemic began than I did throughout my entire childhood. I try to convince myself—and my wife—that it’s for our daughters. But my three-year-old doesn’t quite have the dexterity or patience to build even the simplest of sets, and my ten-month-old is still at the stage where she puts everything in her mouth.

So, what is it about these LEGO sets that have suddenly captured—or, recaptured—my imagination? My three-year-old and I do play with the finished sets; it’s only the building that foils her. She loves to make up scenarios in which Baby Yoda, a handful of Stormtroopers, and Rapunzel go to the park. (She did find a very small set of LEGOs based on Disney’s Tangled in her Easter basket.)

I love to see her mind at play. I see a lot of my own childhood imaginings reflected in her, in her approach to toys and stories and songs.

But why not get action figures, dolls, stuffed animals, things that can’t break into a million tiny pieces, things that aren’t choking hazards—and the bane of bare feet and vacuum cleaners?

I’ll be honest, when my daughter first took an interest in an old set I had, I was not pleased. It was a tank from Star Wars: Rogue One and we immediately lost a piece, some trigger firing off some tiny piece of plastic into the dark regions of our home. I shook an angry finger at my daughter: “We can’t lose pieces! You have to be careful! These break so easily!”

But as the pandemic has worn on and my collection has increased and I’ve found myself taking things apart and rearranging the build of ships and landscapes and all sorts of things, I realized that the fragility of these LEGO sets was exactly the reason I wasn’t buying action figures, dolls or stuffed animals—for me or my daughter.

If an action figure or doll breaks, that’s it. Bearing some hotshot with a glue stick, you now have multiple pieces of unusable plastic. You might be able to mix and match accessories, but you’re more or less stuck with what’s in the box, that image the packaging portrayed.

There’s something fluid about LEGOs. They break, pieces get lost and replaced and mixed up. But there’s always a chance to rebuild; there’s always a new purpose for the individual pieces—even if so many have been misplaced that you can no longer build what the image of the box prescribes. You can build something new, whatever you can imagine.

Isn’t this what we’re called to, now, in this moment, as we set our sights on our lives beyond the pandemic?

Things are broken. Those images on our own boxes of life are no longer reflected in our present reality.

In the coming days and weeks and months, try not to reach for that glue stick.

I think God has given us a whole bunch of LEGO pieces, and we’re being invited to imagine something new—and then commissioned to build it.

This piece was originally sent as an email by the Jesuit Conference of Canada and U.S. as a part of a weekly series sharing tools and reflection resources in the tradition of Ignatian spirituality.

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- By Eric Clayton

Eric Clayton is the deputy communications director at the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, responsible for developing and sharing resources and reflections to promote Ignatian spirituality. He and his wife are both graduates of Fairfield University and live in Baltimore, MD, with their two daughters.

POEM

I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom's way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white,

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all mankind-

Of such I dream, my world!

- Langston Hughes

SONGS

Lin-Manuel Miranda & Ben Platt - Found/Tonight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aQykuIaJVI

Im Not Afraid Of Anything - Songs for a New World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV_RdaR2FHc

Sara Bareilles - "Once Upon Another Time" with Ben Folds & Caroline Shaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oZ9u6_Okk8