December 30, 2018 Seventh Day of Christmas/First Sunday after Christmas

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

I have around me so many good things to have, and my memory is full of days that were good to spend this past year. I have work that fulfills me, family and friends that I cherish, books and pictures and objects and artifacts that carry joyful memories. Everything around me has a connection to a happy moment with someone I love. If I wanted to share my life with you, how could I choose where to start?  Love and quiet joy fill my life with a sweet and solemn background music, yet seem mundane when I come to talk about them.

I remember my grandmother urging me to travel, to visit Alaska, "while you are still young. Don't wait until you are old to do things." Though I couldn't follow her advice then, I understand more every year what she tried to do. Youth has the capacity to experience the world in ways that only the eyes of age can see: distance brings things into focus. But I couldn't pull up roots and see the world at that time, because I hadn't been able to put my roots down into firm soil.

No two seeds respond to their environment in the same way. I responded to stability by digging deep and holding tight to a settled life. Over time I have learned to trust in providence, seeing that things always work out for good in the long run. Periods of transition are difficult; the weather in spring and fall brings more storms with greater severity than summer and fall, because cold and warm cannot encounter each other without drama. Just so, in life there are still moments of dispair and periods of prolonged fear. But I have learned to hold on, with faith and hope that the tossing and pulling, tumbling and turning, will eventually calm down. Eventually I return again to the warm peace of summer, the calm rest of winter.

Someday I shall write about my youthful struggles with financial and emotional security with probably too much detail.  For now, let it stand as the background to my current peace. Memory of deprivation makes current abundance more satisfying.

Perhaps, time will tell

I reached out to an old friend this morning, a connection to another life. Long ago, in my ancient youth, I could visit another world, The Country - a place in California that I now consider an image of Paradise.  Like Paradise, it lies beyond my earthly reach.  Unlike Paradise, I have no hope of visiting it again, because it no longer exists.  Time has changed me, rooted me where I stand, too deep now for transplanting.

But I retain a connection, a memory of vision and sound and smell and touch that the early spring here has triggered, and  I long for both the Paradise of the past and the hoped-for Paradise of the afterlife.

 To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.

What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time’s lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.

I could give all to Time except – except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.

--Robert Frost