Spirituality Column: We understood the assignment

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski

The assignment: 500 words about a billboard, which is about a meme, which a TikTok video was about before it made it into a meme

I was on the road again, in the middle of the 3,000 miles I would drive this past May. I’d been put there by a life-loss as indelible as it was inevitable, given the eventual mortality of one’s mother. I felt like I imagined a pinball would feel, if it had to burn gas to roll.

I hate highways. I hate that there’s one commercial motor vehicle on them for every three Americans. I hate the semis without discrimination, because I hate private motor vehicles, too. I even hate my car, though I hate it a little less than everyone else’s.

I hate billboards. And I was coming up on an- other one, like and unlike dozens I’d seen in the last hundred miles, because the advertiser copies the old Burma Shave formula of frequent repetition with variation. In big yellow letters on black, it said, “WE UNDERSTOOD THE ASSIGNMENT.”

I got it. I hadn’t heard of rapper Tay Money then, nor of the #challenge movement her TikTok vid sparked when she boasted she “understood the assignment.” Comprehension was nevertheless immediate, no saucy girl power required. I had visited one of the billboard advertiser’s installations once. I must admit, if the assignment American interstate travelers made was to provide easy access to clean bathrooms, fuel and food that’s fairly fast but retains some individuality, all on a scale of excess so great it becomes self-parody, the Texas company whose mascot is a toothy beaver understood it.

I was in a mood. (Reality check: I’m always in some mood. This wasn’t my open, curious, mainly wry mood. It was sour and the color of the rain-heavy clouds that hung over the miles.) So when I asked myself, “Do I understand the assignment?” I was in no place to flaunt a “duh!” along with Ms. Money. (If you haven’t heard and seen her “The Assignment,” that’s your assignment. It’s two minutes of hysterical hip hop swagger.) (On second thought, skip it if you’re triggered by ... uhm, cheek.)

I allowed that considering the question while moving through the valley of shadows cast it in sharp contrast. Appropriately, though. “Mom understood the assignment,” I said aloud. To nurture and love us in a thousand ways that added up to a big, big love: that was hers. With watercolors, she taught me the shadows on snow are actually the blue of the sky. Over a frying pan, she taught me to turn each little cube of potato with tongs, so they’d evenly brown. (OK, I’m still working on learning that.)

Maybe my assignment is to keep asking the question. What’s yours? It isn’t mine, and neither of ours is Tay Money’s. A rising rap artist has to be brassy and bold. We can afford some humility. And perspective that everything we’ve done up to this moment is neither failure nor success to have understood the assignment, but learning and preparation.

So, let us do well what we love. And to those whom we love, let us do well.

The Reverend Doug Job does interim ministry for congregations in transition and keeps good memories and friends made while serving a church in Cape. At present, he lives in Hannibal, Mo., where the only beavers are down by the riverside.You may tell him how you understand your assignment at revdarkwater@gmail.com.