the straggler
by bam
it doesn’t know, apparently, what the little box on the calendar says, what it insists. doesn’t know the frost is due any day now. it sticks its bold blue neck out. damn the proscriptions, it shouts. in its wee little glory of morning soprano.
it’ll bloom when it darn well pleases. and apparently it pleases now.
pleases me, too.
startled me, caught my eye, made me stop, turn, go back and kneel there. i knelt at the feet of that blue burst of i’ll-do-it-my-way. a something worth kneeling for, if ever there was one.
i’d been loping, as i often do, from one spot in the alley, down to another. taking a shortcut. scooting along.
the alley, as all alleys are, especially at end of october, was mostly all gray, with long stretches of shriveled-up leftover green. or brown. the mint gone to rangy. wild asters seeded, collapsed in exhaustion. the golden rod splayed, as if it too merely gave up the ghost, laid down and gasped its last breath, there on the cracks of the asphalt.
garbage cans, even, were tossed willy-nilly. it’s been windy of late, and the cans leap into the melee, join the percussive parade, rolling and banging, scattering this way and that.
and then, that one recalcitrant bloom. as blue and as bright as a midsummer’s fine afternoon. one where the sky and the lake seem not to know there’s a difference. the blue just bleeds from below to above. not a cloud mars the tableau. it’s blue, as far and as deep as can be.
that ol’ morning glory minds its own clock. it bloomed when it was darn well ready. and not a minute before.
all the rest of the morning glories are long shriveled, and dropped from the vine. they’d had their moments of glory, way back in august, maybe early september. but not this one. she waited till nearly november. and she paid no mind to the morning that is, after all, her first name. heck, that sun was near as high as it gets at the end of october, it was just after 2, maybe 3, on a day that demanded a sweater.
but there she was. in all her glorious glory. how could i not turn on my heels, do a 180, slow down and take in all that she offered?
she offered much, that five-petaled promise of heart-skipping joy amid autumn’s not-so-showy attempt to pack up the goods, put it away for the winter. there is little poetic, i tell you, in shriveled-up weeds.
but there is a whole sonnet, maybe two, in the lone blue bloom, the straggler who reached out to me.
sometimes–almost always, truth be told–i am convinced that these out-of-the-blue whispers and sightings and knocks on the head are love notes from way beyond clouds. i call them Divine, with that rare capital D.
the way my curly head pictures it all, it’s God who’s loping the alley in front of me, looking here and there for places to drop just a sweet little morsel, a reminder, that grace and beauty are right there around the corner, if only we allow them, the cousins divine, to seep into our peripheral vision.
that’s what i felt the afternoon that glory of morning just leapt out and grabbed me. it was a whisper, or maybe a shout, a sign from above or beyond or within–wherever you place the great gentle goodness that i happen to call by the simple name God–pulling me wholly out of my lope down the alley, telling me simply, there is good.
i needed to hear it. we all do. there is, far as i know, not a one of us, anywhere, who needn’t regular infusions, reminders, that we are not alone out here, adrift, dangling from strings without anyone minding the cords.
it’s almost a game that i play. looking for God in unlikely places. there on the bloom on a vine. or there in the branch in the tree where the cardinal is calling.
i’ve spent whole spans of my life connecting those dots. there’ve been rich spells and dry spells. spells where i knew not a thing. but then, on a whisper of wind, a moonbeam, a shaft of bright sunlight, i’d feel that tap on my shoulder.
i’d turn and behold what could only be something bigger than me, but delivered in quietest, softest of telegram.
i learned of this naturally, growing up as i did at the hand of a mama who, as i’ve mentioned before and again, keeps one eye on the limbs of the trees, the other scanning for God. she connects dots, every time. in a hawk that circles her head. in a bluebird she finds in the woods. in a tissue-thin lily that pokes from the ground in a place where she didn’t plant it.
so do i.
i am, after all of these years, a disciple in her brand of religion; a beautiful thing, the finding of God in the leaves underfoot, the wings overhead.
and that’s why the bloom in the alley, that’s why it took all my breath. it reminded me that out of the blue, when you’ve felt all alone for day upon unending day, when all has been gray, has been dimmed by the shadows, there is the brush stroke of God, handing you, if you stop and you listen and look, the undeniable knowing that you are, not for a minute, left to dangle on strings.
there is, very much, someone to keep you from falling, from getting too tangled. i think that someone is God.
and the morning glory reminded me.
do you look for or find God in blooms in the alley, bird calls at the dawn? what might you have stumbled upon lately? do you have a someone who taught you their brand of religion, a way of taking the big sweeping picture and stitching it into your every day?
be sure to check the lazy susan. it spins anew for this, the season of pumpkin. there is a roasted stuffed pumpkin, a jolly fine orb to bring to the table, you might want to give it a try. i know, at my house, it’s not autumn without it.
thank you…know that the words you write often touch other’s hearts deeply. today I felt as if God was speaking right to my heart through your words, at a time it is desperately needed. you are a blessing!
I share a story of seeing “god in the wilderness” in a way that some might shudder and it involves fire. I am mindful that many of you know and love people who are impacted to the fires in San Diego, but I offer a somewhat different perspective on a forest fire.I serve on a board for an ecumenical retreat center in the North Cascades of Washington. This is a place that I lived at for three years. It is in the heart of the glacier peak wilderness are and is very remote (only way to get there is by hiking and/or ferry). This remote retreat center always lives with the reality…. the possibility of forest fires. This past August a forest fire threatened not so much the retreat center, but the 12 mile mountain road that leads from the ferry dock up the mountain. 100’s of guests and staff at the retreat center were evacuated for over 5 weeks. Luckily the buildings were not destroyed and nobody was hurt.The irony was that the lectionary reading for the first Sunday of the evacuation was from the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus says, “I did not come to bring peace, I came to bring fire.” These were hard hard words to read, and I even preached upon them, while I was also praying for safety and an end to the flames.Weeks after the fires have ceased, we have seen that these fires created a new understanding and respect between leadership in the U.S. Forest Service and the staff at the retreat center. The staff from the village learned a new form of hospitality, ritual and even hilarity amidst a very challenging time. Through this experience alumni and people from around the world who love this retreat center created a blog and began amazing conversations, much like the ones we share here, and it hadn’t occurred before the fire.Ecologists will say that fire is a natural phenomena, one that needs to occur, in order to renew the forest. There are pine cones that will only release their seeds when fire opens their cones. I believe that amidst this difficult natural disaster, people who know and love this retreat center, began to see fire not solely as an act of destruction, but one of renewal and cleansing. So if we were to take the biblical text and interpret it for our current experience, many of us are saying Jesus came to bring renewal, to open the cones in life that would not budge, would not open with fire. New relationships have been formed through this fire and a new understanding of hospitality has developed through this experience of the fire.
It’s as if that spectacular bloom took one final bow before the curtain fell, one last curtsey to the audience before retiring for the season. How appropriate that it appeared ‘out of the blue’ … blue just for you, bam, your favorite hue.