Latest / Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett / The Woman Who Kept the Porch Light On

Transcript

The Woman Who Kept the Porch Light On · Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: welcome back to Infinite Threads.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Bob.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Today I want to tell you another story.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Again, nothing grand,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: no headline,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: no great public moment where the world stops and recognizes what love has done.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just a house, a porch, a light, and a woman who kept it on longer than anyone probably noticed.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say she lived in an older neighborhood,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: one of those streets where the houses are close enough that people can still wave
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: from the driveway if they feel like it,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: but far enough apart that everyone can also mind their own business when needed.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe Broken Arrow,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: maybe Tulsa,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: maybe one of those places where summer evenings hang in the air a little longer and
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: the cicadas act like they own the place.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: She had a habit.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Every evening before the day was fully done, she turned on the porch light.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Not because she expected company, usually she didn't.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not because she was afraid of the dark either.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: She had lived long enough to know that darkness comes in more forms than nighttime,
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: and most of them don't care whether the front porch is well lit or not.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: She turned it on because somewhere along the way the porch light had come to mean something.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Years earlier, when her children were younger, it had been practical.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody was always coming home late from work or church or a band concert or one
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: of those football games that seemed to last half the night.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then there were the years when friends came by and cousins came by and neighbors came by.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And every now and then, somebody just needed a place to sit for a while and talk.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: The porch light said what she didn't always need to say out loud.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can find your way here.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: That mattered.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: After a while, the children grew up.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: The traffic slowed down.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: People moved.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Schedules changed.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Lives scattered the way that lives do.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The house got quieter, which is a polite way of saying it got lonelier sometimes.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Still, every evening she turned on the light.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: A neighbor once asked her about it.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: You expecting someone?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: She smiled and said, not exactly.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: That answer stayed with me.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: It really did.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not exactly.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because some love does not wait for a plan.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: It stays ready.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not anxious and not dramatic, but just ready.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: That porch light was not only for family, though they all knew it was there.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: It became one of those small landmarks in a neighborhood.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Kids cutting through after dark noticed it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: A woman from down the street noticed it when she came home from the hospital
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: after her husband's surgery.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And for reasons that she couldn't explain,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Felt steadier the moment that she turned the corner and saw that warm square
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: of light.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: A teenage boy noticed it too, though he never said so.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been having a rough year.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: The kind of rough that doesn't always announce itself loudly.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: No shattered windows.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: No police cars,
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: no dramatic movie music,
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: just a young person walking around with too much anger and too much silence,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: trying to act like neither one was heavy.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: One night he had an argument at home and left before it was finished,
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: which is usually how arguments convince us that they are finished,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: even when they're only taking a walk with us.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: He wandered around the neighborhood for a while Kicked a rock down the road,
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: sat at a park bench, got up again, and eventually he passed her house.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: The light was on.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: She happened to be watering a plant near the front window.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: She saw him, opened the door, and said, You alright?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a magic sentence.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's almost too small for the moment.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Still, he stopped.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: He said, yeah, which of course meant no.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: She nodded as if she had heard the truth anyway.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I just made tea, she said.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to talk if you don't want to,
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: but you also don't have to keep wandering around out there like a ghost.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: That line may be why I like her.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like something that a real person would say,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: not overly polished, Just human enough to give someone a way in.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: He came onto the porch, then into the kitchen.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't pour his heart out.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Life is rarely that tidy.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Mostly,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: he sat there holding a mug and looking like a boy trying very hard to be older
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: than his pain.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't pry.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't deliver a speech.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't turn the evening into some sort of lesson.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: She asked a question here and there.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: She listened more than she talked.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: When he did speak,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: she let the silence stay open around his words long enough for them
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: to land somewhere.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: After a while, she said, you know, you don't have to figure out your whole life tonight.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: He laughed at that, just barely.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then she added,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: going home and finishing a hard conversation isn't fun,
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: but it's usually better than building a whole future on one bad hour.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: That, that was probably the sentence that he needed.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not because it solved everything, but because it gave the night some perspective.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Later, when he got up to leave, she walked him to the door.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: The porch light was still on.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: He looked at it and asked, do you always leave that on?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: She said, most nights.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: He asked.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: He asked her, why?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you do that?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: She shrugged a little.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So people can find the house.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was all.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that that was all.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because the truth is some people become porch lights.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're not always the loudest people, not always the most impressive.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: They may not even think of themselves as especially important.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: But they carry a kind of steady welcome.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Something in them says,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: if you need a place to catch your breath, I hope you know that this is one.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think we remember people like that for a long, long time.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe because the world can be so uncertain, so much of life feels conditional.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Perform well,
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: keep up,
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: don't be inconvenient,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: don't need too much,
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: don't bring your mess into the room unless it has already been cleaned up and turned
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: into a testimony with good pacing.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then, along comes a person whose presence says something entirely different.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can come in tired.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can come in unsure, and you can come in carrying a little more than usual.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's room.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the most beautiful forms that love takes.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not spectacular love, but steady love.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: The kind that keeps the light on.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And notice, this kind of love is not about rescuing everybody.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: The woman in the story didn't make herself responsible for every wandering soul in the county.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: She still had her own life, her own limits, her own evenings.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Love doesn't require us to become an emotional bus station open 24 hours a day
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: with free coffee and no boundaries.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: But it does, it does ask whether people can find warmth in us.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whether there's some signal that we give off that says,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: you don't have to earn your whole right to be here before I'll care
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: that you arrived.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: That matters more than we realize.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think about my own life, and I know that I've been helped along the way by porch light people.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not always literally, but spiritually, emotionally, humanly.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: People who made the world feel less cold People whose humor,
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: kindness,
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: steadiness,
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: or simple availability kept me from feeling like I had to carry everything alone.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you probably have too.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe without fully realizing it, you've been that for somebody else.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: A person who made a room feel safer.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: A voice that sounded glad that someone called.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: A face that softened when another human being
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we don't know what we have meant to someone until much later.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we never know.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: That can be a little frustrating,
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: especially if part of us would enjoy a formal notice of appreciation with maybe
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: a plaque and a side of pie.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Life usually doesn't offer that, I'm sorry to say.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Love Leaves Traces.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: The boy in the story would probably remember that porch for years,
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: not because it changed everything in one evening,
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: but because when he was angry and lost and full of more than he could name,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: one light was on,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: one person noticed, one house felt like a place that he didn't have to pass by.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that is no small thing.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: We talk a lot here about the love force.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in large terms, courage, mercy, repair, grief, openness, all of that matters.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the love force often works through smaller gestures than we expect.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: A light left on.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: A door unlocked at the right moment.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: A kettle warming on the stove.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: A question asked without pressure.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: A presence that says you don't have to solve yourself before you sit down.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of love has a steadiness to it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't chase attention and it doesn't need applause.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: It just keeps making home possible.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, maybe that's the invitation for today.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not that we become saviors.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not that we become Endlessly available to every need either.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just that we ask,
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: in the life we actually have,
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: whether there is some porch light that we are meant to keep on.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: A little warmth,
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: a little welcome,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: a little sign that someone who is tired, lost,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: grieving,
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: embarrassed, or simply lonely might be able to find their way toward kindness.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you think the world needs that?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe more than ever,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: because there are a lot of people walking around in the dark
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: who are not really looking for answers first.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking for a sign that they still have a place.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the sign is not a speech.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it is just a porch light shining steadily into the evening,
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: saying without words, You can still come home.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I love you guys very, very much.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what I need you to do.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Go out there and pass that on, okay?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Later, Gators.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Every story, every voice In this love we all rejoice Infinite Threads, here we go.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome your friends, enjoy the show.