Bagged and blown away

Winds and floods pound and rise far to the east of us. But across our street this scene. A beagle and a retriever rolling in the leaves, their owners raking tawny-melon colored leaves into giant piles, pressing them into bags. The scene is so idyllic I want fall to stay for weeks and weeks so we can bag the warm golden light this old maple channels into our living room. Yesterday, lawns were mowed a final time. Hostas, the last to fade, were cut back, even gutters were cleaned.

Today, all the leaves are gone. Bagged or blown away. The maples and lindens are dark and bare.

I could have imagined all the world is all right for a day or two.

For this is what the Lord says – he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited- he says: I am the Lord, and there is no other,  …those who hope in me will not be disappointed.” Isaiah 45:18, 49:23

I was happy

... the weekend we invited people to lift a glass of champagne and hear a reading from The Exact Place. It was beautiful but surreal. Around 50 people came to Toad Hall. Anita did all the planning. There were candles inside and out, flowers, sparkling glasses in a row and my grandmother’s lemon angel pie (one of the recipes from the book) ready to share. Me: useless, standing in front of closet wondering what to wear, or does it really matter? It doesn't, silly woman.

...I sensed people walk in, take a deep breath, exhale and settle into a chair for the evening. Then I relaxed, too. That people would actually come. That friends, and Anita, and Denis would take charge and make folks feel welcomed. That there was a real book to hold after so many years of claiming “I’m writing a memoir.” All I had to do was remember how to spell my name. It actually happened.

The dining room table made a good spot to sign.

Night falling by arrival time.

Looking from the kitchen out to the front door.

John Eddy & Denis arranged chairs to seat around 24.

Leslie Van Orsdel and Anita with last minute details.

Sunday afternoon reading. Randy & Barb Kinnick in foreground.

Big hug from my littlest sister, Roxanne.

Signing. Karen Vinson, Shelly Bergen, Melissa Hake. (Front to back.)

Thanks, Anita, for making beautiful details!

Two special surprises: John and Leslie Eddy came from New York for the weekend. The other: my youngest sister, Roxanne, arrived for the Sunday afternoon reading. She is nine and a half years younger than I am so by the time I left home for college, she was only seven years old. For most of the story – the part of my life I write most about – she was the little girl sleeping in the crib or my shadow following me around the farm and my best-est sleeping buddy. She still has enough sassiness to keep my writing honest. We don’t often see each other often enough.

Golden Fall

-->

Looking down the front sidewalk

I walked through the front yard this morning to stand among the leaves. If it’s quiet you can hear them faintly whispering as they drift to the ground. I wanted to capture them spinning, slowly falling, but couldn’t. By the end of today there will be a completed golden carpet on the lawn and sidewalk. They will be gone in a few days. Mulched by the mower or blown to the neighbor’s. I love fall. I wish these days lasted longer. My great treat early in the morning, before anyone else in our house rises, is to wrap up, pretend I don’t have my pajamas on under my coat and sneak down to Caribou, lining up with all the medical folks getting ready for early rounds, and I order a soy latte. Back home, I sit by a window and read and watch the day begin.

CSA members picked up on our front porch.

 CSA is over for the season. The sign down. The boxes going into storage. I already miss the weekly box of vegetables from HeartBeet Farm. Each time the box comes, we open it like it is Christmas. Golden squash, huge, sweet red radishes, bright carrots, red potatoes, ripened red peppers, kale and more kale. It didn’t get old. Nor does it get old supporting these young friends who work hard to bring people the produce of their gardens. It was a pleasure to be their drop-off point for 26 members, who stopped by every Wednesday afternoon to pick up their boxes. We’ll be doing it again next year.

CSA Box

You can see the sprinkler going, one last good drink before winter.

Mornings are especially cold this week. But I like that. Denis is waiting until Thursday to turn on the furnace, since the high that day is only supposed to be 48 degrees. This morning the moon was almost full and still up in the western sky when the sun rose. There will be bleak days ahead, but for now I’m enjoying the glory of fall, and I hope you can, too.

Dylan on work and calling

     In the last issue of Rolling Stone there was a lengthy interview with Bob Dylan. In the midst of it,  I was fascinated to hear him talk about about work and calling. It seemed very insightful which really shouldn't be surprising.

Rolling Stone: So live performance is a purpose you find fulfilling?

Dylan: If you’re not fulfilled in other ways, performing can never make you happy. Performing is something you have to learn how to do it. You do it, you get better at it, you keep going. And if you don’t get better at it, you have to give it up. Is it a fulfilling way of life? What kind of way of life is fulfilling? No kind of life is fulfilling if your soul hasn’t been redeemed.

You’ve described what you do not as a career but as a calling.

Everybody has a calling, don’t they? Some have a high calling, some have a low calling. Everybody is called but few are chosen. There is a lot of distraction for people, so you might not never find the real you. A lot of people don’t.

How would you describe your calling?

Mine? Not any different than anybody else’s. Some people are called to be a good sailor. Some people have a calling to be a good tiller of the land. Some people are called to be a good friend. You have to be the best at whatever you’re called at. Whatever you do. You ought to be the best at it – highly skilled. It’s about confidence – not arrogance.

Rolling Stone,September 27, 2012, Interview with Bob Dylan by Mikal Gilmore.

Bob Dylan

     Way back when, when Denis and I began thinking about what in the world “Jesus is Lord over all of life” meant, we wondered how that could be as we cleaned dental offices for a few years while finishing up school. How could God be just as pleased with us doing that as when we were practicing a spiritual discipline like prayer or Bible reading. We had enormous barriers that kept us thinking that a call to “The Ministry” was a higher calling than the poor sot who goes to a JOB every day. It took time, reading, and lots of discussion to move us to a place in life where we could say, yes, this menial labor, this repetition of vacuuming and emptying, day after day, returning exam rooms and lobbies to clean orderliness – this is what God has called us to do for now. And it is good. As good as being a missionary to the homeless. We learned to honor God with our brooms and dust cloths, like Dylan does with words and guitar.

Longing for wholeness

-->

Bumble bee visiting a giant zinnia

     Today while I was in the backyard admiring the zinnias once again, I caught this bumble bee visiting one of the blossoms. I’m certain their season is nearly over, as fall is here. We almost turned on the furnace this morning. I know these gentle, bumbling pollinators are becoming less common as their environments become increasingly toxic. It was odd to come across a woman from the tenth century who teaches us more about caring for God's creation.

     Hildegard of Bingen’s (1098-1179) term for the grace of God inherent in all living things was viriditas, or greenness … Hildegard’s holistic approach to God and humanity is relevant today, particularly to those longing for wholeness and healing for all of creation.

She wrote, “we shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.”

Resource: Common Prayer by Claiborne, Wilson-Hartgrove, & Okoro.

Writing that soars

Gabby Douglas Women's Gymnastics Olympic Gold Medalist

This summer, we were entranced by the U.S. women’s gymnastics team as they competed at the Olympics. Yes. When aren’t we entranced?  Watching Gabby Douglas soar through the air was rapturous. She made impossible moves look so easy, for a fraction of a second I imagined I might be able to do that, too.

Of course, that’s ridiculous and not only because of my age … we know it takes years and years of practice and pain for a gymnast to make something so difficult and precise look so grace-filled and effortless.

I’m not saying writing is exactly the same, but it’s similar. A good piece of writing, a good story makes you forget the work it took to write it. It carries you away. For example, Cormac McCarthy’s work does that to me – some of his dialogues are so finely crafted they take my breath away. You don’t think about the author sitting hour after hour, drafting, deleting, staring out the window, percolating words and phrases as she chews eraser heads.

I strive for this sense of ease and flow in writing, but it is not automatic. If my work merely approaches this standard, barely touches it, like I’ve maybe placed in a local gymnastics meet, then I am pleased. The endorsements from folks who’ve read The Exact Place humble me. I rejoice in them, and yet I’m afraid. I wonder if it’s okay to fall off the balance beam once in awhile.

(This was first posted to Kalos Press Blog.)

Promiscuous Reading

-->

     So I don't really need to finish that book.

  

 "I often feel as though I’m a bad reader, an unfaithful reader, a reckless literary philanderer. But I can usually assuage this guilt by reminding myself that if I were to impose some sort of embargo on starting a new book before finishing a current one, I would end up reading fewer books. I would be a more methodical and orderly reader, certainly, but a less varied and prolific one. There’s a bit in Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson”—a book that I started but never finished—where Johnson gives amusingly short shrift to the notion that you should finish reading any book you start. “This,” he says, “is surely a strange advice; you may as well resolve that whatever men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep them for life. A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?” Well, when you put it like that, then no. It’s always reassuring to have Dr. Johnson on your side, and he makes an excellent point—that we don’t necessarily have to think of books we are reading as relationships, that they can just as well be casual acquaintanceships—but I’m still only ever half convinced of the virtue of my ways."

Mark O’Connell (via Writing in the Dust)