Despite the Cold

Lately around here it has been cold, cold, cold. Hello, obvious.  It’s winter.  But I mean the cold that gets into your bones, and sort of gets to you unless you deal with it.  It feels very obvious to me that seasons are important and there are times you go through things.  You don’t go around them, you go through them.  So says Robert Frost.  Spring is coming but it’s not yet here.  It’s not time. 

It feels like life is lately a very slow story.  It’s not time for lots of things.  Yet.  This morning I thought about this, and how much I am feeling it.  And then I thought about how fast a life goes.  And that sometimes, on other days, I am shocked that people only live 80 years in this great big world.  And not everyone does.  And how sometimes that feels ok and sometimes it just doesn’t.  It’s that reckoning with ‘aliveness’ that I am talking about. 

  Culture suggests fast is better.  But I guess this morning I am kind of grateful for slow stories.   

This winter I have been lulled by the seat warmers. At the beginning of December, I bought a car.  And the seat warmers have revolutionized my own stamina for warming the cold car each morning.  One of my friends said it’s a feeling like you’ve wet yourself.  Why would you want that?  I disagree.  Seat warmers are beautiful. 

                So often on this blog the loftier thoughts fill my brain and I ask all of these winding questions.  And on and on and on.  But today I want things simple.  And basic.  And what is right in front of me.  What is right in front of me is that I am going to remember to take some Vitamin D today.  The people around me are looking sort of pale these days.  You don’t want too much blush on.  (Or do you?  You DO, but you can’t leave the house looking like a dehydrated clown.)  But the Vitamin D helps.  A lot. 

I am going to grade a LOT of homework today.  There is a pile waiting for me on my desk.  Yesterday I got organized so that this morning I would come to the desk and be inspired.  This is essential before standing in front of a bunch of kids.  They can tell if you’re inspired or not.  If you’re not, there is no momentum.  This is the shocking and simple thing about teaching.  Beyond Common Core Standards and GPA and what next and themes in history.  Much of the time, the beginning of the day for me is really that simple. 

There is a seasonal routine in teaching as well.  This time of the year is when students have minds like a sponge. They run around and scream and play like a 5 year old after lunch, and then they trudge in and take off their boots and settle in and LEARN.  They’re doing well.  I like spending the day with these people because they are interesting and funny.  Sometimes they’re difficult and annoying too.  But at this point in the year, I know who is riding their own personal roller coaster and will shoot me the stank eye every once in a while, and who won’t.  And it’s kind of a relief to just know that.  Always, always, always, it’s nice to not be a 13 year old myself.

                I leave those memories to 1998.

                I’m going to use words today like Mongolia and Fugitive Slave Law and reminders and candy bar sales and Washington, D.C., and portfolio and timeline and Genghis Khan and Abraham Lincoln.  Good morning and transition and please and thank you and pause and take a seat and formal warning, kid.  (I always, for a split second, wonder what comes after ‘This is your formal warning.’  Thankfully we do not often come to this.) One of my awesome coworkers will tell me something to make me laugh really hard.  (I am always grateful for these people.)    

                And then tonight I will get into my car and drive to Minneapolis to see friends. We have Bible study on this night, and there we will sit, in Jamie’s living room.  Sometimes it’s not so serious, sometimes it is.  We traipse along in conversation sometimes, and other times we drop anchor.  My view of God grows and becomes more mysterious and interesting and overwhelming and good when I meet with these people.  This is how I am sharpened, which is what you’re supposed to do in the Christian life, but not outside of grace.  It’s amazing to me how many people I know who think I am sitting very quietly like a nun at vespers the entire time I’m ever meeting with God.  I’m not.  Usually I’m laughing and asking the deep questions people don’t want to ask about humanity.  And I’m mad sometimes, and exhausted other times.  I confess fear, I welcome abundant things.  I wake up.  Seeking God is adventure.  It brightens up every corner of the life I am living.  It surprises me when I feel I am anything but deserving of a surprise.  I am reminded of this on Tuesday. 

Let me tell you that the people I meet at the end of this drive are some of the loveliest people I know.  They are secret keepers.  They are gracious.  They are inspiring.   They’re good listeners, they laugh about things I laugh about (more and more the sign of a great friend), and they are classy and simple.  And doing interesting things in their little corners of the world.  The four of us are not that alike.  Except that we probably ARE since we wrote similar things in our journals in 1998.  This has been confirmed.  Again.  Grateful. 

It’s worth the drive. 

On my way, I will crank up Cities 97 and think about how charming St. Paul is, and then how strangely majestic Minneapolis is, and that probably, even though my friends live further west, I would probably love St. Paul at heart a little more.   And I will think about moving, because that’s in the plans at some point.  but not yet.  That is another story that is slow. 

                Cheers to inspiration, lovely people, and the grace of God in each of these moments on Tuesday.