|
|
The Minister's Blog
Snow on tree limbs
branch across
the space.
Nature’s language
roots us in our place.
Out of our grasp
and always within
our reach.
Ancient systems
speak of
loving peace.
Sometimes my writing goes easy, and sometimes it is a torturous affair. Writing a reflection about collaboration this afternoon for an independent study on eco-theology was an experience with the latter. Not only did my musing take what seemed like forever, I am convinced that when it was all said and done, I got caught up with the details and skimmed through what might have been the depth in the exploration.
I concluded that collaboration was staying balanced on ever shifting ground. It is a concoction that is forever changing.
The predicted snow has begun. I ask Stephen how much will fall, and he tells me that the accumulation for our area will be four to eight inches. It doesn’t seem like much in relation to the big hoopla about the storm’s immensity, although meteorologists are undoubtedly looking at the larger cumulative effects across the Eastern seaboard.
I live on this earth
with humility
for all that I cannot accomplish
in service to its magnificence.
In small pools of
winter runoff
I find places
of reflection
and energy to
mourn and rejoice
in this strange
state of life.
The natural gas news today is all about investment and money making as the third-largest European energy company has announced that it will spend $2.25 billion to gain new access to deep natural gas fields in Texas. “Total SA, like Exxon (who announced in December they were buying XTO Energy Company in a $41 billion deal), will take what it learns in the U.S. to natural gas fields across the globe.” (Business Week, 1/4/10)
One can only shutter to think of what that could conceivably mean.
Outside, there is the sound of thunder.
And while I always enjoy a good thunderstorm, I wonder about what cold air is hitting what warm air at 6:20 p.m. on December 31. My first thought, it about global warming; my second thought is that the nearby ski area is shooting off fireworks and it’s not thunder at all. Either thought is discouraging and interconnected to my basis premise that we need a new vision for 2010.
Suspending the menorah gently above the fire box in the wood furnace, the last remnants of the beeswax, which had provided light for eight nights, dripped into the fire below. A quick flame leaped up as each drop fell on the burning wood. Carefully handling the hot metal, I removed the last thin coating of wax with a paper towel. I ignored the timer signaling that the bottom layer of the lemon bars was ready to take from the oven, thinking that an extra couple of minutes would make no discernible difference.
Returning upstairs, I was surprised to find the crust much darker than what it is supposed to be. I understood what had happened when I saw that the oven temperature was set for 450, instead of the prerequisite 350 degrees. (The temperature gauge on my antique cookstove is on the side, and it is generally set for 350 degrees.) In hindsight, my misstep was not letting the bars go a few minutes longer, it was that I hadn’t checked the temperature setting. Having not changed it; I didn’t think to check whether it was set for what it always usually is.
I’m not sure if I like this new routine, but I have been starting my day reading emails with my morning cup of coffee. It used to be that I would ponder the day's realities by gazing out the bedroom window into the deep white pines across the side field. Now, my first thoughts are filled with national and local natural gas articles, the compilation handiwork of Upper Delaware Council Senior Resource Specialist Dave Soete.
I don’t know how it happened, but it has become winter.
Just a week ago, I was watching the sumac leaves turn from yellow to deep red and the golden leaf laddened Bradford pear trees on Bridge Street in Narrowsburg become less dense with each passing day. Now the ground is white, and more times than not when I look out the window, a small snowflake drifts downward.
I have a distant memory of having to create a Thanksgiving service, perhaps it was last year, and feeling as if I wasn't sure that I had anything that I felt actively grateful for. Of course, it was an extremely privileged point of view because just the fact that there is no one shooting at me or dropping bombs on my house is cause for gratitude.
We forget, most of the time, that we are among the privileged.
Even as we face devastating news, we are among the lucky.
I'm off tomorrow for the Unitarian Universalist Ministers' Association Convocation in Ottawa. The five-day event will be chock full of UU ministers, candidates and aspirants for the ministry. With a bevy of workshops, the time spent will give me a good indication of whether I feel comfortable in the company of working ministers.
As I aspire at this point in time to be among their numbers, I'm interested in how it will go, how it will feel. Up to this particular point in time, I have always felt a bit out of place among the ministers of the world, assessing them to be more concerned with the career aspects as opposed to the community service aspects of the role.
There is something highly attractive in this morning’s cool rainy weather. The diffused light enhances the golden color of the maple tree outside my window. The sounds of water falling to earth, dripping off the roof, light and deep, form a symphony. From the patter to the drips to a rhythmic thumping of drops collecting and then falling, there is a peace and a diverse natural order. Somewhere in the side yard, a bird calls out.
There is a layer of fog that lays over the river as I return from an all day meeting in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Crossing the Roebling Bridge and turning north along the river, the roads are damp, and the orange-red-yellow landscape glistens. I surmise that the river is cooler than the air.
I always like that fog happens, and see it as a magical manifestation that occurs when one reality meets another. Cold meets warm or warm meets cold and something physical is manifested. That same concept was introduced in my reading this week about process theology.
In Henry Nelson Weiman’s article called “The Human Predicament,” he writes that “Jesus engaged in intercommunication with a little group of disciples with such depth and potency that the organization of their several personalities was broken down and they were remade. They became new men, and the thought and feeling of each got across to the other.
Reports of an early snowfall motivate me to put away tools and get the garden space ready for next season. As I pull dead plants and the plot begins to open up again, I am reminded of early July when everything showed itself to be planted too close. Now with a single row of broccoli in the large open space and some carrots, beets, leeks and Brussels sprouts in the raised beds, not surprising, there is plenty of room.
Address to the Hemlock Farms
Community Association Women’s Club
Steer Barn Meeting Room, October 10, 2009, 10:30 am.
I wasn’t pleased as a teen when I asked my mother whether I was pretty or not and she responded that she thought that I would be a late bloomer and that I would be beautiful and not pretty in a traditional sense. Now at 53, when I am find myself comfortable in my skin, I’m delighted with the idea that, as a late bloomer, there is great potential in this second half of my life.
And while I realize that my question to my mother was about physical appearance—I was a petite, reddish-brown frizzy-haired, shy, artistic adolescent in the midst of a long-legged, blond, straight haired, beach-party stereotyped groupie of the 1970s—I believe my question was about how I fit in the world and how I would make my way.
You can imagine my chagrin when I looked out the window this morning and saw that there had been a pretty hefty looking frost. I don’t know what prompted me to rise and look out the window since I usually remain facing forward, propped up, nursing, for some 30 minutes, the cup of coffee that husband Stephen brings me on whatever schedule I ask for the night before.
However this morning, I looked out the window behind me, and the sight of the white grass got me out of bed, into my clothes and out, fondling the harvest of peppers, which were quite frozen -- or seemingly so.
I am in the garden, covering the plants by moonlight. It is 10 p.m. It’s not that I didn’t think of it before, it’s just that each time I thought about it, I asked Stephen, who is the one who pays attention to weather in our family, whether there would be frost.
There’s nothing in the forecast, he tells me, and offers to check for frost warnings on the web. For the third time, he tells me that the low for the week will be 40 degrees.
I have taken myself and my distraction into the woods behind my house. I walk on ground that seems undisturbed by human activity.
Grass tips turn yellow. There is a chill in the air. And just as the garden begins to thrive again, recovering and beating the mold that grew with the summer’s rains, I worry about a frost.
I have developed a cold, and I move through my day with sinus pressure on my top jaw and achy, achy muscles. I contemplate whether my body is reacting to the change of season.
Today, I am on the lookout for Painted Suillus. It’s a common wild mushrooms that the guide books identify as a good edible that has no look alikes. It is a firm yellow mushroom that seems to have more body that some of the others I have been collecting. Basket on my arm, the folding knife lovingly given to me by D.D. on my hip, I move down the road with a sort of easy concentrated effort. The red convex cap is easy to spot and there are enough of them that I don’t feel compelled to harvest any other kind.
|
|
Laurie Stuart