While Walking in the Middle

Since the last post here, I have been wrapped up in the business of life.  And at the same time, I've felt awkwardly removed from it.  This week there were the moments of being born and of dying all around me.  Lots of my friends are having babies.   This week there are three.  Count it.  Three. And last week my grandpa died.  It felt like a lot of things beginning and ending and in general just passing by.  

So you know what happened with things like paperwork or NOT friendly parents at conferences (who ask me to explain that ONE question on that ONE test I wrote 5 years ago....)?  All of it was put in perspective and in its place in 2 seconds flat.  

Some things matter.  Some things so DON'T that it's almost laughable.  It's good practice for the times when life feels more ordinary.  The air clears faster. But this may just be a sign of the times, or the recognition of growing up.  Like REALLY growing up.  I feel this week that I have really lived.  And, as usual, my head cleared a little more when I thought about things through quotes.  Things like...

Glorius Ruins and the Poetry of Life

Today I took time to look back at old journals and previous writing.  Let me tell you, it is both astonishing and humbling to review previous work, especially if you care about it.  And to see the story of your life in general.  Because inevitably you are able to see the good work of God in your life, and hear the nasty comments and thoughts of the inner critic.  Sometimes at the same time.  My life has been interesting and good and sort of obviously raw all at once.  Like many, or maybe everyone.  My journals show it.

I think about writing all of the time.  When I'm teaching, when I'm talking with people, when I wake up in the morning and am trying to make sense of the day.  'Write it down.'  That's what the inner heartbeat says to me.  And I have lately been thinking about this, and why the thing that charges you up and makes you feel most alive also brings you to your own messy soul just as quickly too.  I have been thinking about bravery and mastery of fear and that things in this world that are broken always end up pointing to God.  God is all about broken things. 

This is the surprising sweetness of grace. 

Now

Ah, November.  This is a month I love.  

It's been said before, but here and now, without fail, life feels different now compared to any other time of the year. Things get gray, and it somehow it makes me happier than before.  I have wondered in the past if I am terribly morbid and tragic to crave this season so much.  But I'm ok with it now.  If I am tragic and morbid, something else balances me out.   I have learned that I am not alone in this feeling....a lot of others love November too.  (Do you?)   

What is this anyway?   A quieter time?  Or (for me, at least) the internal rhythm of teaching beginning to make sense? Sometimes I think it's as simple as bracing winds coming to the door, and being awake enough to life to still step out into the world and greet it.  In November, I wake up and settle down all at once.  I also start reading poems by Robert Frost.  

November is also the time of thoughtfully waiting.  And making space.

  
In the midst of the business of life, I have lately been thinking about a lot of wandering things.  Thoughts thought by C.S. Lewis.  Thoughts of my family.  Of my life as a teacher.  Patterns all around me.  Books and the things that are in them.  What is comforting in the fall.  The importance of making space.  How good it feels to have a season change right in front of you.  Why I like certain things and not others.  I feel unfettered and I can't tell if that is making me feel good or mostly alarmed inside.  Unfettered means 'to release from restraint or inhibition'.  (Hmm.)     

Just a Little

Something in life shifted again and I began to feel older.  Not bad older, like I have creaky joints and we all have to just get used to it and not complain if we want to be a certain kind of old person.  Not older like your kid is going to college and you wonder what happened by each decade.  It was internal and subtle and still all about me. 

This is probably the look of the 20s. 

I sat at my desk at the end of the day at school, and felt one notch further away from something and closer to another.  At school, my periphery is perpetually 8th grade.  And as I age, I am so not.  When I was younger I knew certain things that they knew.  But now I don't.  Quite obviously I don't.   So I   listen better instead.  And sometimes I see them shuffle around the way they do and I feel so glad to not be half my age anymore.  These are probably the good things of a growing teacher anyway.   Listening to kids.  What a novel idea.  

Adventures in New York

True to form, here I sit in the morning, with the coffee and the love of words and the silence.  I have just returned from adventure.

The shift back from travel is something I think we all know.  You come back to your life.  To the memory of how your world talks to you when you are not anonymous anymore.  And how the tick of the clock feels different again when you have your own work to do.  And how things like ‘We might miss the subway’ are different conversations when compared to how you all feel about ‘We must once again remember our year-long goals’. 

Last week I went to New York City.  And life lately, New York or otherwise, has been rapid change and movement for me.  As before stated, God and life are changing me, and it’s drawing me back the old things that I used to wonder about and long for a long time ago.  This is a happy thing in my life.   

Centuries in October

It is suddenly new timing, and a new season.   The fireplace in my little apartment is on, and I have waited for this.  I dreamed of this scene a few months ago, in the heat of the summer, when new hopes came to me that I didn’t yet know about fall in a new location.  The fireplace is a pretty posh expression of this change, obviously.  But I am loving it.  Loving it.  Starting the morning in pajamas with books all around me and coffee and silence and this blazing fire feels like the most perfect thing.  Or one of them. 

 I have been thinking of a great many things in life these days, and trying to make sense of where to place it all in the midst of a busy schedule.  A quote by Emerson comes to mind. 

‘I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred.  I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant.’

 It sums up the feel of life.  Mine is happily full.  I tend to prefer this though because I have always longed for life to feel this grandiose.  And for my life, lately in October, this has been true. It makes now feels like a good time to think ‘vantage point’.   What has been, and what might come, while still staying very present in this day.   This weekend was time with family, some of it planned and some of it unexpected, life aside from teaching, a time to sleep and rebuild.  The coziest feeling of home while sitting in the pews at Hiawatha.  This is a great place for me to learn, learn, learn.  I love the people there too. 

Beautiful Elemental Things

What do you say when you return to what you love, after being gone for a long, long time? 

As I am sitting here, I am blinking and feeling fairly thoughtless about beginnings.  Not the rest of the story.  Just right now with 'how to begin again'.   I'll say this.  I have learned that writing always brings me back to well being.  But it wasn't that way, at least recently, for me and for Life on the Bridge.   I became embarrassed of it.  Really really really.  And then I forgot that I loved it.

Here we go.  Short and sweet.  Just tell the story.