stumbling into an irrational season

"It's so irrational," my friend said this week as we sat around a table, "that the creator of the universe would limit himself to one particular body, on one particular speck in the universe to live his life out for us.  So irrational." 

Today we are cleaning and vacuuming, dusting and re-organizing; getting ready to put up the tree.  I give myself permission to play my new Christmas CD by Carolyn Arends, "An Irrational Season".  I love the way she thinks.  Wondering where she came up with that name, I googled "irrational season" just to see what I would see, and stumbled on a treasure that I did not know existed.  Madeline L'Engle has written a book named "Irrational Season": reflections and autobiography, with a year that begins and ends with Advent.  This will frame the season for me this year.  Carolyn knew, of course, and the words for her song are L'Engle's words.  Should have checked the album cover notes first! 

I bought a calendar last year, "A Christian Seasons Calendar" beginning with Advent.  The pages are marked not by months, but, rather dis-orientingly, marked by Christian seasons.  A new page is turned on Christmas morning.  The twelve days of Christmas lavishly spread themselves over one entire calendar page.  The seven days of Easter week also get their own page.  These days - these irrational days of glory being limited, and death shattered - they mark the turning of the pages.  I like that. 

Lauren Winner first suggested to me the possibility of shaping life differently if we framed the celebrations differently in Girl Meets God, and then again in Mudhouse Sabbath.

I feel as though I am stumbling into this irrational season.  I want to embrace the joy of this season ... and I love to prepare a celebration.
But how do we frame it with Christ, rather than Hallmark
...with the longing of something that is not yet done,
combined with the celebration of that which has already been finished. 
There is so much that is irrational about this whole thing;
that my Lord, the Word of life, lay down Glory and  became wordless.

It'll take a whole lifetime to figure out how to celebrate well. 
And then the celebration will really begin.

courage

perhaps it was courage
or an instinct for survival

perhaps it was love
for the students
for the music
for a man quietly gone

she walked into the room with a smile
our applause meant to warm her
our laughter a surprise to us
but I think not to her

she intended to make us laugh
breath into lungs
the air that would sustain us
through long notes of her bidding
through the sharp moments of pain

her voice still remembers how to sing, to soar
her hands how to conduct
her feet to carry her
her face to smile
but beneath the music and the song
lies the silence of one gone

we sing into the silence
the songs of the redeemed

fragment or foundation

I'm not quite ready to  leave this summer behind

the details of the days
  are losing their focus
     without giving me time to put things into perspective

sending our daughter off to foreign soil for the summer
  moving our daughter and son-in-law out of the home
       where our grandson was born
hearing our son's first car arrive in the neighborhood
  watching our youngest yearn for a chance to drive

dancing with my Sudanese friend on our Canadian soil
celebrating freedom and a new chance for life
   on her Sudanese soil too often stained red

sorting through brittle bouquets
  satin, crinoline and spanish lace
fragment or foundation
  scraps or scaffolding
    ...these pieces of fabric in my mother's rooms

dragging our air mattress out of the tent
  to sleep under the star-filled sky
awakening to stars falling
  and dew on our faces

dislodging perennials from my front gardens
  disentangling roots and seeds, weeds and bulbs
praying for the same gentle disentangling of weeds for my soul

time with a toddler

The woodpecker wasn't a bit shy as she landed on the newly shorn poplar
and began her hunt for bugs. 
Following the ridges upward,
a light knocking sound corresponded with the bird's head bobbing
... eventually helping a 1 1/2 year old find what his grandma was pointing at. 

We whispered, and followed her, and she quietly keep looking for food;
not immediately flying away,
but pecking and knocking her way to the far side of the tree
- away from these two who insisted on following her. 
Eventually she tired of us and flew off. 

But we whispered for a while about the woodpecker
and screeched for a while about the blue jay
and cawed for a while about the crow

time with a toddler ... attending to life 

pruning the poplar

This was a pruning week. 


On Tuesday morning, two young men with hard hats, climbing gear and saws, swung themselves up into the branches of our poplar and disappeared into the foliage. 

They climbed to the top (where crows, blue jays and an occasional sparrow hawk have perched to survey this part of my world), cutting off the smaller branches and limbs that were growing off the main trunk and getting in their way.  Once they reached the top, they attached climbing ropes to stable upper branches, anchoring themselves as they swung wider and farther to trim and cut.

I heard the cracking and snapping of twigs and branches before they littered the ground underneath.  The ground showed evidence of the work long before you could see a difference in the branches.

A little painful, the pruning of my poplar was. 
Things are not quite as they were. 
The sunlight is a little harsher on the west side of the yard. 
The tree looks a little barren, but clean. 

My Lord said,

"I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. 

He cuts off every branch in me that does not bear fruit,

while every branch that bears fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 

 [pruned if you do, and pruned if you don't ... either way, we get pruned!]

You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 

Remain in me, and I will remain in you. 

No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. 

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me."   

restless hills

It's not that I want to live in the mountains. 
I don't mind this land that lies flat and lets the sky play over it,
lets the water carve its valleys,
unabashedly open for us to see
as far as we can see. 

But as we drive west for our holidays, over hills that grow increasingly restless,
there is one hill that banks a canola field to the right and then rises
and as we reach the top of that hill, the horizon explodes. 
That hill always takes my breath away. 

We used to live within sight of that jagged ridge, in southern Alberta.
If you drive the 22x from Pincher Creek up to Sundry,
you can have that living horizon on one side of you for a few hours. 

Mountains holding back the clouds, before releasing them in a torrent,
or letting them trickle over the ridge;
or putting a bridle on them, holding them in a perfect arc while the warm wind whistles through.

... anyway... as we drove, kept thinking of one of my favorite passages in Isaiah 55.12
"You will go out with joy, and be led forth with peace
the mountains and hills will burst into song before you."





 

solar thirst ... and composting corners

Composting corner

 Three sentinals stand in the northwest corner of the yard.  I emptied one, right to the rich bottom loam and surprising day lily roots [those day lilies earned my respect by growing even when I threw the roots into the composter one summer ... refused to decompose under pressure!].  One is finished composting and ready to be distributed.  The third one was turned this morning, extra grass clippings added to the top, and now I'll let that stew for a month or two :) 

Amazing to me, how watermelon rinds, slimy potato peel, poplar leaves, carrot tops, cilantro stems, lemon peel, and other left over vegetable matter from our dinner table can weigh each other down, sink into the oblivion of those black bins, and end up as rich, pungeant crumbling soil to enrich my gardens.

Testifies to the transformative power of a Creator for whom there is no life or action that cannot be transformed...

One squirrel runs back and forth along the fence behind the composters.  By the time August rolls around, she takes trips back and forth all day long, going empty handed one way, and then returning with a peanut or some other treasure.  The blue jays are back too, letting the whole neighborhood know that there's food available, and that they are claiming the territory. 

I put a beautiful solar lamp into the back yard this spring.  It soaks up the day's sunshine, and when the night falls, sends out a soft white light.  These summer days reveal a solar thirst in me as well.  My laptop is plugged in on the deck, so that I can write and research outside.  I can watch the squirrels and birds occupy themselves in my space, and soak in the life and activity of this corner of the world ... saving the sunshine for the long Saskatchewan winters.