Endings are good. Maybe that is why I find autumn so satisfying. The days of this year have come and gone; some have been productive, some have been wasted. We spent some in sorrow, some fighting, many we flitted away thinking about something else. But now the year is nearly spent, we can see the end in sight: the turning of the leaves indicates that we are in the home stretch. It always seems to me that the earth is very satisfied with herself this time of year. Yes, we have committed many wrongs, to the soil, to each other. To ourselves. And so on. But if you look at a maple tree in full golden bloom, it is hard not to understand transcendence. This shortest season is certainly the most magnificent, even if the real beauties are the quiet ones: the crisp foretaste of the air, or its woodsy aftertaste. The way the fallen leaves make another roof over ours, covering the skylights and making shadows dance across the kitchen table.
I do not understand how judgement and joy can coexist. Throughout scripture we are asked to accept this: God’s perpetual joy in his people, his continual judgement of his people. In autumn, it seems for a minute the judgement holds it breath (waiting for the death of winter, perhaps) and there is pleasure in all things, a space to breath without fear of the harsh biting winds of winter or the driving rains of spring or the suffocating heat of summer. We open our eyes, blink, finding the world so much more habitable than we remembered last week. We are grateful, perhaps even more so because we know this autumnal stillness is fleeting.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
crumbs
The sheets are running in the wash. There is construction still underway next door, and the shrill call of birds as they prepare for the sunshine today will bring.
I am trying to figure out what the light playing on the leaves of the newly green trees reminds me of: transcendence? A certain otherness, a knowing. The sun has come down to rest, with a newness and gladness about itself, about fifty yards out between our back yard and our neighbors, in a patch of dense and newly leafed-out oak and elm trees. The leaves look white and silver in the brilliance of the early morning light; they tremor, a bit, with the wind, and seem to whisper a secret I can just barely make out: this is the stuff of real life, the life that matters the sun glint off the spring oak leaves. The dappled sunlight falling through them, making patterns, faint and indiscernible, on the kitchen table—through the skylight, on the hardwood floors amongst the bits of rice still resting there after dinner last night.
These are the things we would be wise to notice: the pattern of the brown thrasher as it turns and returns to its nest in our boston fern on the front porch. The slight sigh of the wind as it rustles through our yards, past the hammering and lawn-mowing and industrious work of the day. Where are you, Lord, amongst all these trees and all this sighing? We are so weary of ourselves and our work. We labor—all day—at the most meaningless tasks. Then we lay down at night and dream that the ocean has come up to our front door and now we have an ocean view: ocean liners, freight liners, tug boats and sails line up with lights on for a race in the morning: and I am standing in the kitchen trying to explain (to myself?) how we got all the water there: “our view is much better when there is an ocean to look at.”
My dreams tell me I am homesick for water. For the expanse of it, its vastness. The perspective it brings to our small doings; for the quiet it brings with its noise.
Lord, I want to notice the little gifts you give today—the crumbs. May they be enough—more than enough—to nourish me. I have not watched, looked, listened. I have not paid enough attention. I know that your attention to Tabitha was not a dip in the action of Acts. The Gentile woman who asked you to give her the crumbs from under the table was not being overly self-debasing: she knew a secret I have forgotten: your crumbs, even the tiniest of crumbs, are enough to nourish us for a lifetime. They are the only substantial sustenance we get –the rest of our meals are glorious pretending, like peter pan’s feeding of the lost boys in Neverland: all the right gestures, places set, words correctly spoken—but no nourishment actually consumed. I want to get to the place of nourishment, to the place of secret crumbs.
I am trying to figure out what the light playing on the leaves of the newly green trees reminds me of: transcendence? A certain otherness, a knowing. The sun has come down to rest, with a newness and gladness about itself, about fifty yards out between our back yard and our neighbors, in a patch of dense and newly leafed-out oak and elm trees. The leaves look white and silver in the brilliance of the early morning light; they tremor, a bit, with the wind, and seem to whisper a secret I can just barely make out: this is the stuff of real life, the life that matters the sun glint off the spring oak leaves. The dappled sunlight falling through them, making patterns, faint and indiscernible, on the kitchen table—through the skylight, on the hardwood floors amongst the bits of rice still resting there after dinner last night.
These are the things we would be wise to notice: the pattern of the brown thrasher as it turns and returns to its nest in our boston fern on the front porch. The slight sigh of the wind as it rustles through our yards, past the hammering and lawn-mowing and industrious work of the day. Where are you, Lord, amongst all these trees and all this sighing? We are so weary of ourselves and our work. We labor—all day—at the most meaningless tasks. Then we lay down at night and dream that the ocean has come up to our front door and now we have an ocean view: ocean liners, freight liners, tug boats and sails line up with lights on for a race in the morning: and I am standing in the kitchen trying to explain (to myself?) how we got all the water there: “our view is much better when there is an ocean to look at.”
My dreams tell me I am homesick for water. For the expanse of it, its vastness. The perspective it brings to our small doings; for the quiet it brings with its noise.
Lord, I want to notice the little gifts you give today—the crumbs. May they be enough—more than enough—to nourish me. I have not watched, looked, listened. I have not paid enough attention. I know that your attention to Tabitha was not a dip in the action of Acts. The Gentile woman who asked you to give her the crumbs from under the table was not being overly self-debasing: she knew a secret I have forgotten: your crumbs, even the tiniest of crumbs, are enough to nourish us for a lifetime. They are the only substantial sustenance we get –the rest of our meals are glorious pretending, like peter pan’s feeding of the lost boys in Neverland: all the right gestures, places set, words correctly spoken—but no nourishment actually consumed. I want to get to the place of nourishment, to the place of secret crumbs.
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