INCOMPLETE

It is the middle of July.   This morning’s walk along the trails of our woods, we stop as usual to climb the ladder to the treehouse where we listen to birds and the chuckle of the small creek emptying into our pond. At the top of the ladder and below the shake half-roof, Allan points to where the morning sun lights up a half-formed spider web. No better art lighting could enhance the architecture of the intricate web.  I approach cautiously to photograph it before the sun hides behind trees.  “But look, “Allan notes, “It is incomplete.”  As you easily see, the web is half a web, abandoned, no spider-creator in sight.

I dwell on “incomplete.”  As a teacher, it had import.  Often a student, unable to finish an assignment, would stay after class to ask, “May I take an incomplete?”  Sometimes the request was for a single project, sometimes for an entire semester’s grade.  There were multiple reasons for taking an incomplete from having begun too late or being ill prepared, to an interruption at home –an illness, a family vacation.  But whatever the reason, an incomplete was somehow better than an F.  Yet, although better than an F, it was still weighed down by a sense of failure, of falling behind. 

Sometimes the student would continue to work on the assignment and eventually return for evaluation.  But often an incomplete was something like Robert Frost’s words from The Road Not Taken.  As way led on to way, the traveler knew they would not go back.  Life interrupts life.  We are off to weave another web.

Today my meditation on the incomplete spider web would not leave me.  Farther along our walk, I noted on a bench two caps, one belonging to our hired helper who has been spreading chips on the trail, the other to his assistant.  Had they paused to rest here, chip hauling and spreading being a hard and sweaty task?  Although their work was incomplete, they had neatly spread yards of cedar chips, were nearly done, and promised to return on Monday.  I liked seeing their caps there and thinking of their wisdom in taking a break to rest, to drink from water bottles, and proceed later, even without their caps.

As usual, with my mushrooming thoughts, the figure of incompletion led to something bigger.  Today we learned that President Biden has chosen to pass the torch of leadership to another representative of the Democratic party.  Until today, he remained steady in his resolve to complete a task on which he set his whole life.  He did not want to take an incomplete. Wherein would his commitment to finish the job alone make a difference? Would there be shame in his taking an incomplete on this one?  Joe Biden has given his entire adult life to serving our country as an elected official, so today’s decision could easily be applauded as the completion of a dedicated career.

I think of so many accomplished people who chose not to complete school so as to follow their interests and talents in other directions:  the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning  playwright August Wilson, at fifteen left school to self-educate rather than suffer the racist intolerance he experienced in high school. Bill Gates with a privileged enrollment at Harvard University “failed” to graduate.  Is he a failure?

There is that spider web woven while we were sleeping and given to us in the morning light.  It is not done, but it is beautiful.  The artifice with which it was created cannot be denied.  Is completion overrated?  Among the many things I value in the University UCC church that I attend is the church slogan:  “Don’t put a period, where God has put a comma.  God is still speaking.”  Certainly, Creation itself is incomplete.