Category: Time

September 22nd, 2012

9/22/2012

morning gold

I'm heading out for another walk, thinking about why/how I do this as often as I do. Somehow the waters of my days are parted occasionally and I find a path to my wooded wandering place. Certainly it's great exerscise for my body - although it would be even better exercise without this dangling camera...often my footsteps slow, stop, even back up, as I catch a glimpse, then try to capture, some tiny exquisite jewel...or I look up and long to pull in the wonder of morning gold. But my camera can only garner what it's one dimensional wide eye can observe. It cannot catch the hum of crickets warming in late September's angled rays nor the damp fresh smell floating from Lydia's laundry. Still, I take my camera anyway, thought it slows me down, for recently I've realized that the physical benefits might actualy be secondary. Even if this were fattening, I might still find a way to do it....

So why? Why let sixty three possible projects undone: dishes stacked with breakfast drying on the edges, slow cooker awaiting chopped veggies, clothes dryer dinging "done," lesson plans strewn across the desk…oh, the desk. There are appointments to be made for my parents, my son, myself. Editing/writing projects call my name, and I know I'm not prepared to teach Sunday school this week. (Whose idea was it to tackle "grieving the Holy Spirit" as a topic. Oh. Mine. Sigh.) I keep moving through unseen beckoning tendrils of the "oughts," past the silent glare of the to-do list. I am moving toward the door, toward a different choice for these 30-40-50 minutes.

Because I've been learning something lately:

When I get to the end of life, my in box will not be empty.
My list will not be ended.
The oughts will not all be accomplished.

So, I cannot wait for the perfect time or enough time.
I just have to take time. NOW.
You know, in the present.
With the Presence.

I'm almost there...here. I choose my water proof hikers. I choose this way to breathe life into my soul. I walk outside and close door on all of that, for now. It will all be there later. It will all wait. But this moment will not wait.

"High moments of holy companionship are found
as one's ordinary life is lived out in the Creator's extraordinary creation."
(Corrine Ware in St. Benedict on the Freeway)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be about my bees-ness....

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Embracing change...or not.

8/17/2012

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I'm a faithful, daily reader of the Funky Winkerbean cartoon, have been for years. I may not always agree with his pithy commentary on life, but Tom Batiuk often makes me laugh, and some of his observations are spot on. Like this one from a few weeks ago:

Funky Winkerbean, 8/10/12

Why is it that the inevitable change of season from summer to autumn feels depressing? I never feel this way about other seasons…say, in March, when winter starts to melt around the edges, and spikes of daffodils promise change. And when the maple leaves have fully emerged and the garden is planted, I don't mourn the passing of spring. Yet here I stand on the verge of autumn, and a melancholy sense of loss curls around my heart like fall mist in the valley.

I face the realities of the autumn's soon-coming all around me. I write a check, and the date seems unbelievable; August is slipping away, and I grieve it. The corn-on-the-cob season is nearly ended in our garden, much too soon as usual. That one remaining robin looks lonely on the green, green lawn. Does she miss the noisy morning banter, the evening ruckus of her dozen or so cohorts as I do? (But it will be nice not to have the roosting evidence splattered beneath the tree that overhangs the driveway!!)

When I hike the mountain these days, I can't ignore the reminders of coming change, and while it isn't exactly depressing, melancholy describes my mood fairly accurately. Still, I am surrounded by loveliness. The first goldenrod blossoms wave from the woodland meadow, surrounded by green promise of more gilded beauty in a few weeks. The lazy ennui of summer afternoon mugginess has been replaced by a new breeze, crisp and scented with the tang of autumn. Queen Anne's lace edges the lane, replacing the chicory that replaced the daises that replaced the buttercups….. Crickets and cicadas and katydids and myriad other chirping, clicking, singing, murmuring creatures make such a racket I realize I've stopped humming; I can't even hear the ringing in my ears. I find autumn bright wintergreen berries, and there are definitely some leaves flaunting colors unknown to summer. The poor black walnuts trees, last to don the green of springtime, are now leading the way to tree bleakness. I hear, I feel their brown leaves crunch beneath my feet. I don't hear a single red-wing blackbird, and the perches frequented by the joyful purple martins are deserted, silent. Butterflies still dance everywhere, but their tattered wings move at a more frenzied tempo, as if they too know that change is the air.

The autumn season of change reminds me of loss, of endings, of goodbyes, of the final goodbye. I am filled with a sense of longing for things to just stay the same already, on so many levels. I cannot avoid these small griefs that cause me to think of greater losses past, present, future. I don't know about you, but sometimes I must squelch the urge to rush up to toddler-weary parents at church, in the grocery store, anywhere?! and warn them that while some days may seem very long, these years are soon going to suddenly be gone, and childhood really doesn't last forever. (God, how I miss those boys.) What is that let down feeling that sweeps over me when I realize one of my favorite authors won't be writing "just one more" book because she's had a stroke? I watch the relentless aging of the two people who gave me my life and my name, and my heart aches. Like fading cucumber vines in mid-August heat, my parents seem to be shriveling up and dying by inches, relentlessly, week after week. When I cut corn from stacks of golden cobs, alone, I remember my sweet little mother-in-law, sitting on a child's chair with her favorite ancient,thin bladed knife, slicing, scraping, catching up on news. These changes are painful, depressing, difficult to embrace. And that, Wally Winkerbean is why I think there is an undercurrent of melancholy in all things autumn.

But I am finding that the realities of these changes call me to a bigger picture, a broader understanding -

I am being pulled toward eternity.

All seasons, ALL seasons, do eventually come to an end – and then there is So. Much. More. I'm finding the element of changelessness about the coming realities of life "on that side of now" to be refreshing, reassuring and extremely comforting.

So, these days I'm thinking more about God's unchanging love and unfailing presence in whatever season I'm in. I'm pondering what it means to live fully in the present without trying to hold onto it. I'm finding comfort in His promise to never leave or forsake me. Never. NEVER. NEVER. I'm learning to live in the fleetingness of this day's joys or sorrows, knowing that while circumstances will change, He does not. My aversion to change has this good side, for it drives me to the One who does not change, and there I choose to to rest.

Hummin'B,

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Signs of the time, time for the signs...of Autumn

8/23/2011

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It's time and past time for a long, long walk, around my country block or up into the mountain, it doesn't really matter; it just needs to be long - long enough to quiet the racket in my head. I realize too late it might have been good to know where I was heading when I started out… But a decision about destination has kept me paralyzed on the porch too long; sometimes you just have to get started. I have half a mile to trek before the road forks, and yes, I take the one less traveled. We'll see if it makes all the difference. As it is, my aesics are mumbling about mud, my bare legs will bear signs of bramble scratch for days, and overgrown paths give me and my no-show socks reason to pause as I remember a snake I once met.

My camera dies a drained battery death, now it's just excess baggage. I leave it on a fence post to pick up on the way home. (That's how it is where I live, safe that way.) MY pace picks up; I'm storming the trail, feet keeping pace with the internal chatter I seek to escape, or more accurately to silence, or at least to tame. My ears have been ringing for months, but abruptly I realize the present chirp-buzz-click is external. I am surrounded by unseen cicadas, crickets, and God knows what else. (He does!) "The hills are alive with the sound of…crickets…"
Ahhh, crickets.

I know some cricket facts: -Over 900 species of crickets exist worldwide and we have at least nine varieties here in Pennsylvania. -Only the males sing-chirp by running the top of one wing along the teeth at the bottom of the other wing, NOT by rubbing their wings together.

And, I know some cricket lore: -Crickets have been considered a sign of good luck for thousands of years in far eastern as well as Native American culture. -In some circles, it is believed that the more crickets you have singing in your home, the more wealth your household will enjoy.

I even know (of) some famous crickets: - Jiminy Cricket, and - Chester Cricket better known as The Cricket in Times Square.

But the truest thing I know about crickets is that they are a sign of the beginning of the end of summer, and at the moment, all of the Pennsylvania varieties seem to be making the same announcement. When did they start this? I wonder. We had that sleep-stealing heat wave a few weeks ago, put a little a/c in our bedroom window, listened to white noise for a few nights, took it out, and – crickets.

Aughhhh, I gasp (again.) Not the end of summer yet, I'm not ready (again.) It's gone too soon, too fast (again.) I didn't see this coming…or going?! (again.)

Not so, says Jeff O'Brien, a favorite writer of mine whom you've (probably) never read. Your loss. I just read this in his book, Seasons in Upper Turkeyfoot: "The change (of seasons) is neither fast nor slow; the seasons change gradually and continually." And so I look around. I listen (again.) And now I see what's been happening gradually and continually around me.

The open fields and pastures are edge-stitched in lace fit for a queen, (Queen Anne of course.)

Manifold greens shine again, after drought quenching rains, but these are different, deeper greens, more mature and settled than the flirty greens of spring.

The moss looks tired along the path, and sunlit clearings are dappled with goldenrod.

Chipmunks scold and "tuwwhit" more than they did in early summer, and where are "my" birds?

The indigo bunting is nowhere to be seen or heard, and even the grackles are gone as are most of the robins.

I stand beside the cat-tail swamp, and it is silent as a cemetery where redwing blackbirds frolicked and fussed over their nesting territories oh so recently.

I realize too late I forgot to look for phoebe but I know her nest is emptier than mine, and she's probably moved on.
The nightshade berries are turning purple-black, and wizened blackberries bend seedy heads toward the earth, offering food to creatures preparing for what is surely coming.

The signs are unmistakable, summer is slipping quietly away, and autumn is on the move and has been for some time. "The change is neither fast nor slow…"

I want to put the brakes on, find the pause button, or just stop everything for an afternoon or three. I have not taken the time to look, to listen, to walk attentively in this place. And I have missed so much. I've been preoccupied, again, and thus caught off-guard, again. "Preoccupied with society and our place in it, we age in ignorance, caught up in the transitory." Jeff O'Brien again. He's right, and I will write it here. "Time speeds up only when we ignore it." So true, so very true. Conversely, if I take time to be fully present in this moment, I feel momentarily quiet, stilled, at rest.

And so, today, I will pause and breathe in the fragrance of the butterfly bush. (And I will not be alone!)

I will look up at flat bottomed clouds against a back drop of mountains drawn close in a no-humidity sky.

I will observe the swelling pink seeds of the ladyfingers.

I will not ignore time...

I will embrace this moment without trying to hold it forever. Hummin' B.

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September 22nd, 2012

Embracing change...or not.

Signs of the time, time for the signs...of Autumn

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