pull up a chair

“Ecclesiastes was onto something,” i wrote, as i dove into a meditation on the notch-by-notch turning of the dial, the dance between heaven and earth that is the shifting of season, as one fugue surrenders to another and another, over and over and over again.

and here we are again, at another cusp. the autumnal equinox. tonight (or, rather, tomorrow morning in the wee wee hours) at 10 minutes to 2 here in the heartland, central time zone.  

in my musing on seasons, in the pages of that latest little book of mine, the book of nature, i prattled on a bit longer. . .

“Each season, in four quarter turns, brings forth its own headlines. There’s the yin and yang of spring, the season of exodus and resurrection, of equal parts heartbreak and magic. ‘The fizz and the roar of the land coming back to life again,’ is how Robert Macfarlane brilliantly captured the vernal animations. There’s summer with its invitation for indolence, for taking it slow, savoring, all but licking your plate of its succulence. And autumn, the season that changes its tense, is letting-go time, the beginning of burrowing in, when the shadow grows longer and sunlight goes amber, when half the globe is stripping to its essence, revealing its unadorned spines. Then there’s winter, the stillest of all, when deep-down stirrings are all but invisible, and we learn to keep faith. Sometimes I think God couldn’t decide which channel was best, so the heavens kept jabbing the clicker. 

“It’s a wonder reel that never ends, yet never truly repeats—a koan for the ages. 

“I often contemplate the geometries of time, how the year is not an inescapable circle, a shape that would get us nowhere, but rather it’s a spiral, and from one winter to the next we’re never the same, always ascending, closer to the holiness we were meant to be—or so that’s the hope and the plan, anyway. Maybe that’s why God keeps this seasonal show on autoplay: maybe God knows how dense we are in the figuring-it-out department, how some of the lessons we need to review. Over and over and over again. Most especially at the fraying hems of the seasons when the doubt begins to creep in, the fear that we’ll never be loosed from whatever it is that tangles and knots us, and God needs to show us those few immutable threads: Resurrection comes. Quiet must follow exuberance. So too dormancy. Surrender to earth’s holy rhythms, the very ones that pull the tides and the flocks, paint the woods, star- stitch the night sky. Expect heartbreak. Await healing. Start all over again. 

“’The seasons are our scripture text,’ writes Celtic spiritualist Christine Valters Paintner. ‘This earth we are riding keeps trying to tell us something with its continuous scripture of leaves,’ echoes William Stafford, a poet and pacifist who referred to himself as ‘one of the quiet of the land.’ To the ancient Celts, the unfolding of the seasons read as ‘gospel without haste.’ And Walt Whitman, America’s latter-day Homer, put something of a military spin to it when he wrote that ‘nature marches in procession, in sections, like the corps of an army.'”

i prattle on a few pages more. but i’m already thinking anew about seasons. life, when we’re paying attention, comes in all sorts of seasons. some, clocked by the sun. some, by the tumults and percolations from deep down in our hearts and our souls.

the season of my soul that i’ve been dwelling in all these past months is one that opened in mystery, back when every day was bringing another scan, another long wait, another doctor’s uncertainty. then, when the surgeon finally extracted the answer, “it’s cancer,” i landed in shock and bewilderment. and ever since i’ve been encountering an underworld, a sometimes murky, sometimes brilliantly glistening world potholed with reams of unanswered questions and populated by fellow travelers who nearly always, uncannily, know just what to say and just what i’m thinking. it’s those fellow travelers who have thrown me life rope after life rope. just when i begin to feel the walls closing in, one of them pings me with hope. or pure simple kindness. or laugh-out-loud irreverence (eileen N i am looking at you!).

one thing i know, which i am going to be thinking about for a long time to come (and trying desperately to put into words), is how love truly is a magnetic force field all its own. i can be teetering at the edge of some quicksand-y bog, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, kindness will come. and kindness, love’s gentle sister, can shatter the darkness to shards. kindness makes you not all alone. kindness holds your hand and squeezes it so tightly it won’t let you dangle. or drop. or run out of air.

just this week, a brilliant brilliant poet friend of mine sent me a note. and it might have been one of the wisest, kindest, gentlest things i’ve read in a long time. he wrote:

“You have spent a lifetime thinking and feeling deeply.  In my experience of living like that, I’ve found that pains are more painful and joys more joyful.  I think it also means that you are better able to face the sort of scary stuff you’re now facing.  I hope that your lifetime of thinking and feeling deeply gives you the strength to deal with this face-to-face…whatever ‘this’ ends up being.”

and so, my prayer as i look to my first post-surgical scan in the weeks just ahead, is that i begin to move now into a season where the edges aren’t so raw, and the fears aren’t quite so suffocating. there is love all around, and i know it will save me. no matter what comes.

tell a story of a kindness that saved you.

the apple slices above, already doused in caramel-y bath, are my sweet line cook’s first attempt at pie baking. his slicing alone impressed the heck out of me. just a month into the job at one of chicago’s finest eateries and the kid is picking up tricks. and pie recipes too. pretty sweet living at our house.

may this autumn, season of awe, of turning in and deepening, enrobe you in the brilliance you reach toward….

and a big giant thank you to each and all of you who have lavished me with kindnesses and love in this long season now turning…

p.s. i’m writing this from a hotel in ohio where tonight, squeaky squawky voice and all, i am getting up to a podium and giving a keynote address on the blessed book of nature…