Hunger for Beauty

Home, back in the city now after a truly satisfying three weeks at my other home on the Freddy Channel.  And internet being rather 'thready' up there (not entirely a bad thing) I thought I'd just post some shots.  Summer Part One, if you will.

Soon I will enter Summer Part Two, heading to Thailand for two and half weeks with a Team who will be visiting our children at the New Family Foundation (Hot Springs).  More pictures there for sure.

Then it will be Summer Part Three, and more photo ops of water and sun and blueberries (at least I'm hoping there'll still be some), and critters and... well you get the picture (pun intended).

Love Steve Bell's song the repeats the phrase "Why do we hunger for beauty?"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpnOmOyYxu0 The answer, theologically, is that we long for connection with our Creator and are drawn to knowing and being known in the midst of what we see instinctively as beautiful.  My hunger has been fed in so many ways already in just this Summer Part One of the season.

Grateful for all the bounty and beauty of my life.  Amazed that my Creator would invite me into this so intimately.

June Bugs In July

The clumsy buzzing startles against the deep quiet of the night.  I look up from my book towards the screen of the open window on this finally hot night.   Finally. 

A June bug.  First one I’ve heard, either here or back in the city.  This tardy summer has been reluctant to give up its opening rituals; still warm mornings, hot lazy afternoons, evenings that require open windows in order to sleep, and huge, bumbling June bugs, frantic to get to the light. 

I note the buzzing and bumping against the screen and add it to the list of late things.  Blueberries still in blossom when I arrived.  White pines just now releasing their pollen.  Day lilies still at least a week away from opening their colours to the sun.   Forty seven summers by these waters provides a solid base of data against which to compare.  Everything is late this year.  As if something’s off in the timeline.

 So am I.

It was so exciting last year to arrive so early in June.  It’s one of the benefits to the new way of doing life and ministry that began at that time, with its offering of more flexibility to allow for maximizing the cottage season.   This year, not so much.  We really didn’t get to open until mid June.  Then we left again for the city for ten days to celebrate a wedding, but also to catch up on some pressing preparations for other things happening this summer, things like a visit to Thailand, and some preaching assignments here at the cottage, back home at Highview, and also at the church in Thailand.  These, in and of themselves, were not unusual parts of my summer.  It’s just so much prep work has crunched into these later weeks.  Like a summer that’s late.  Something’s off in the timeline.

A shocking loss will do that.  Sort of holds you suspended in an opaque river of time that’s almost congealing, moving downstream in slow motion, unsure of the date and not really caring what day it is anyways.

How long as it been now?  Ten weeks I think.  But the calendar means nothing when it seems like it happened yesterday AND that surely we’ve been in this sluggish, disorientating river for months already, both at the same time.

The thing is, on this hot night with June bugs bumping noisily into the screen of my open window, I haven’t been here long enough (whatever long enough means) to feel what I know about all of this loss yet.  Normally (whatever normally means) I’ve already had some time for solitude and soul-settling way before now, and maybe, if I had, by now I would feel what I know, and know what I feel.  But I don’t.  Not yet.

Because it’s all late or slow or just hasn’t happened yet.  Next week family time will be complete, and I will wrap some quiet around myself and listen more deeply to this story.  But I don’t expect to get to normal any time soon.  Normal is a little ways off yet, a little ways longer down this congealing river of time and grieving and embracing and discovery. 

I note the lateness of the June bug and go back to my book.  His tardy arrival oddly comforts me.    

Just Here. Just Now.

I am suspended in the space of quiet occupation on the part of everyone else in the cottage, when I catch myself ‘listing’ again.  I don’t mean leaning to one side.  I mean that unending mental habit of thinking through to the ‘next thing’ to make sure I’m ready.  What’s next on the list?

By now I’ve checked off so many things.  It was our annual trip into town with the grandkids, complete with a visit to Mind’s Alive on the main street in old downtown for the birthday splurge.  This year’s choices include a 3D Harry Potter puzzle, and some spy equipment, hence the quiet occupation of everyone else.   I should be thinking of supper, but actually it’s just a tad early yet.  All the groceries are put away.  I think we’ll just have sandwiches with some of the new fresh bread we bought.

So I’m here, suspended.  And it occurs to me to pitch the list for now and just be.

The wind over the water, playing in the trees.  The way the breeze dances with my long cotton dress, so colourful in the bright and early evening sun.   The jenny wren on the post cap telling me something very happy and important.   Seagulls calling in conversation with each other, and most likely, I imagine, laying claim to some find of food.  The chipmunk the children have named Gray, come to see if we fetched more peanuts when we were in town (which we did but I’m not bringing them out right this minute). Clouds stretched thin across the blue of sky.  The way the sun feels on my skin. 

In these moments I just am.  A human being, not a human doing.

Not planning ahead.

Not remembering behind.

Just here.
Just now.

There is certainly enough to draw me backwards.  Over the past year.  Over the past seven weeks.  And process I will.  It’s why I keep a journal; to be able to read through the year past and listen to how the Spirit might want to teach me, rebuke me, cheer me, remind me.   But in this moment, right here and right now, I realize that with all the fuss of everything, the past seven weeks in particular, and with arriving at the same time as the children more or less, I haven’t done any of this since arriving to the bay.  This ‘just being’ thing.

And it also occurs to me -- and I’m thanking my journal reflections for this revelation – that the times I would claim to have heard God’s voice the clearest is when I’m like this.  Fully present in this moment, right now.

Beloved author and Christian activist Henri Nouwen liked to speak of “sacred spaces” where the place between humanity and divinity is “thin”.

This is one.

This environment, this place, yes.

But more.

In concert with a state of mindfulness, or presence, of presence, some sacred comes to me.

‘Be still and know that I am God.’ Psalm 46:10

“Receive” I hear now.  And the sunlight dances, giggling, over the water.