In the Spring of my thirteenth year, I was caught in a storm. Thunder rolled, lightening cracked and rain poured down in blinding sheets.
This storm was metaphysical not material. We’d just moved into a new town. I’d started in a huge magnet High School miles across town. I had watched my father die of a violent heart attack. In the blink of a death, family income was cut to one fifth normal.
I walked to a city park. I sheltered under a pine tree. I tried to identify the texture of my life. The bane of fear was painfully abundant. ‘Aha’ insights of blessing seemed unattainable. Walking back and forth to my pine tree, I finally figured something out. Storms come and go beyond my control. I can look for sunbeams peeking through dark clouds.
During the summer of my life constant motion threatened to disorient me. Marriage, children, building a career, the dizzy whirlwind never quit. Like Christ fighting temptation in the wilderness, I laced up my hiking boots and went into the woods. Riding a canoe down a swift river, I found peace in the harmony of earth, wind and fire.
In my autumn, the color of my life changed. Green morphed to red. I counted my blessings. My career was reasonably successful. My family was reasonably healthy and happy. My friends were abundant.
But as red faded to brown, I put on my traveling shoes. Visiting cities of my ancestors – spiritual, intellectual and immigrant, I rediscovered bane and blessing as a condition of being human. Museums remembered their struggles. Beautiful churches and city centers bore witness to their joys.
As the cold of winter begins to close around me, I sit in my ergonomic computer chair in fuzzy slippers. I look out my window at black tress against a white landscape. I turn on the Ethernet and look for colorful rays of hope.
I wonder, will my grandkids know the renewing power of Time Outs in their insistent Right Now cyberworld? To sanctify with modesty the bane of suffering and dance with delight the blessing of joy! To be still in a peace beyond words!
Winter fog drifts across my vision. In it I see Mom during a rough day flop in a chair sweaty, disheveled, at her wit’s end. She’d close her eyes for a moment. Smile and say, “Thank God, the first hundred years are the hardest!”
Then she’d pop up and get on with what needed to be done.
