The Sylvr Pen

Our anniversary. I draw from the shelf the shoebox with the cards. On top lies the one I picked, months back, to give on this good day.

I read its words, and  freeze, surprised.

This is not what I want to say at all. I want neither for us to get lost anywhere anymore, nor to dwell on the years of our past. My heart is singing the praises of today, of the moment, of the wonder of where we’ve come to, together, by now.

What I want us to revel in now is this year, unique treasure compared to all others before it—this day, as sweet as any we’ve lived together, these present steps we take together, into tomorrow. How much better, today than yesterday.

And tomorrow than today. Whatever lies forward, upward, toward ultimate tomorrow, the very “best is yet to be.”

So, I need to change, to edit, that card—or else compose another, telling what I really feel.

Ah. I think I just did!

*****

We think of our spiritual progress as a straight line.

Not so.

Circles.

For me anyway.

Yes, I know, our moral walk should turn neither left nor right off God’s way, but I’m thinking of another facet of Christian life: our growth…

I was in an emotional pit, trying—still, even at my age—to get my bearings, God’s direction. It seemed all I ever did was go around in circles, like some poor ignoramus lost in the woods.

I took the issue to God, wrestled with it, with my thinking, so stuck in its negative groove.

“Stuck in a groove” pictures a record with a crack or scratch making it repeat the same sequence, over and over, as it goes ‘round and ’round. However, a phonograph needle ordinarily makes continual forward progress through a song by going around and around. I failed to consider that, stuck as I was.

I drew a ragged spiral, representing my walk—and sighed.

But then, a word, an image came into my mind,

Helix.

A helix goes continually around—but simultaneously progresses upwards.

With that insight, I cut on the lines I’d drawn, lifted their center point upward…

and suddenly I saw my path toward God! Like a vine wrapping a pole or tree—or cross—around and around, reaching, growing, ever upward, toward the light.

And I wondered, was Jacob’s ladder a helix, a spiral staircase? Could be. I was now assured my ladder was, anyhow.

I recalled a former pastor’s frequent urging us “Higher up and further in” to God’s Kingdom. I was now seeing the helix of his principle.

Yes! Constantly moving higher up the spiral ladder, ever further into Kingdom life,

That is my Christian pilgrimage!

After all, which does God care about more: My choice of straight line paths between earthly points (as, job or geographical move A to B, A to C, A to D…) or whether I move steadily upward, nearer Him and His kingdom?

The mountain of the Lord is very steep. A cliff? The only way to its summit (for a shaky climber like me) is a path that clings to the mountainside as it continually rises, around and around, ever aimed toward the apex in God.

Paul pursued this ever-onward and upward path with a passion. “I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phl 3:14)—the aim toward which he told the Colossians to focus: above, where our lives “are now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:1-3).

“Excelsior!” also carries that same meaning—”Onward and upward!”

I don’t feel so bad now about going around in circles in morally neutral decision making, as long as I’m aiming right up toward God Himself, spiraling ever higher “to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me,” and not spiraling into self by the ever-moving introspection that swirls down and down into darkness—or lies flat dead, without dimension, life, aspiration.

So… onward and upward, around and around, heavenward, toward God, clinging to the Christ and His cross.

Excelsior!

From front porch perch, at table, I sidewise look to watch clouds form on familiar but ever-changing horizon—shadows and light, and one looks almost like a pillar of cloud!

That’s what I feel I need, to lead me clearly through this wilderness of life!

Always the ambivalence, it seems, the push to go, the pull to stay back. This time it’s a writers workshop on social networking, something I’m told I so need, to open up my blog’s front door, hang out the welcome sign.

That’s the push. But the pull backward is the uncertainty, born—not of fear, I feel quite certain, but—of passion for the Christ life now growing for me, hating anything stepping in that path, like stifling interferences that all things enterprise-busy seem to throw up in the way.

But, uncertainty. The thing that nags, “You missed the boat! You didn’t do the promote-a-writer things way back when you were young but chose the other—motherhood and all. And now one thing you can do is speak through blog to any willing listeners, but you don’t even go to learn connection-making, just blog into the air!”

I look for guidance in this thought whirlwind and find only confusion. (What else would one find in a whirlwind?) I seek signs and listen for a word from clouds. I wish that God would write instructions on that big blue background. (Sometimes it almost seems He’s setting out to, but not in letters I can recognize!)

And now even that horizon pillar has dispersed completely, upward disappeared.

In withdrawing, quiet, with my gentle Shepherd, I sense the familiar, “Peace, be still.” “Be still and know that I am God.” That’s all. And the peace itself seems an answer.

Then I go to church and hear a sermon on the angst of not understanding God’s dealings or direction, the times we can’t see His footprints or road signs anywhere. The example, at the Red Sea, to which God’s leading had always shone so clear: day pillar of cloud, night pillar of fire, taking His people right up to a big dead end Red Sea— unarmed, and with a great approaching menace signaled in a dust cloud from behind! What to do at times like these: “Stand still, and see the deliverance of the LORD.”

Hm.

*****

I sit and watch as shadows flicker under porch hedge leaves, and feel monastic rhythms weave their way into my days, my being, like shadows overlapping—

in, out, in ancient balanced pattern that feels like long unpressured breathing: prayer and meditation and reading of sweet holy words lined in gentle symmetry with work and walk.

I listen to the midday stillness that this season grants sometimes, broken only intermittent by a shushing of rare passing car on dampened road or single bird call, leftover from spring’s noisy joy and summer’s nest cries begging food and other needs, and reflect on the sweet realization: how my times have grown, unknowing, like the ancient ones laid down within sequestered walls long centuries gone.

And I ache with longing to maintain what must be God-made weave scheme after all.

I fear to break the wholesome blessing with any rush out into world at large to fling the shuttle here and there outside the weaving, tangling time as never meant to be.

Is this the secret blessing of the harvest time of life that no one told—perhaps because they never let themselves in on it, but in fear of silence and seclusion, rushed themselves pell-mell busy to mimic youth and fill the empty nest with time trivialities and trinkets that hid the treasure woven in its deeper layers?

How did I happen on that treasure in this blessed place?

I picked up books on days medieval, moved a cursor on a path that wandered ancient byways, branching off from family lines and castle knights’ abodes to side paths still more faint, till in the hours and the rules I found mirrored my own evolving time frame.

And then, then, I read how these rhythms ran in and out in Christian lifelines long before the monastery tried to write them down in stone, and even after that, wove through Everyman/Everywoman’s days and nights.

What have we lost? What have I found? And how can I write down the pattern in my hours, and continue, so not to lose it, to prevent its being robbed away?

I almost long for stone cocoon to guard it like the monastery’s walls. Here’s where prayer can rise with quiet power, its sparkling crumbs to shower out its incense on the needy world as it wends its way toward heaven. Here’s where wisdom can send down roots and restrengthen, bear bloom and fruit to leave to coming generations and to milling crowds beyond the walls.

Lord, please guard the treasure in my heart, guard my hour-weavings from ruinous intrusions. Show me Your quiet way wherein You speak in that still small voice, and keep my life and heart and tongue silenced enough to hear You when You do.

*****

It came this week like kisses from God. Blessing poured out on crackle-dry grass and powdery dust, languishing leaves, and us. Everything sighed. Relief, delight, exuberance.

In May it came violent like curses, plowing up ground never furrowed before, washing out soil built up rich over years, weakening roadways, gouging deep traps where, before, gentle ditches drained, tame.

Rain.

Good.

Bad.

The difference: enough versus much–too much, too much!

I confess my struggle to live Paul’s contentment in whatever circumstances. But it’s not always lean times that tempt my heart wayward. Truly, I find contentment harder in plenty than in want. Much, too much, is too much.

And now comes in the harvest. Buckets and baskets and bags and bags, of zucchini and straight-necks and cukes and tomatoes. (Although we can definitely use those tomatoes after three years of blight…)

This year, however, the garlic is sparse. And how lovely it looks to me!

So also the onions look beautiful in my sight. I harvest a small handful at a time, because they too are scarce, and small.

…I save and savor and use them wisely. And oh, they are so nice and crisp and firm and good…

We tend to hoard too much too often, like our forebears who lived the Depression, walked city street with one nickel between man and wife, tried to decide: bread loaf or milk quart? Which would nourish more, which would give stomachs a more lasting fill?

We haven’t many (or any) of us done the Great Depression–so what’s our excuse? We take such focused care of ourselves, our needs, our maybe someday needs our just in case needs our well let’s get it anyway needs… And we smother ourselves with our blessings and we can’t see through the pile to God the giver of all good things and we drown in our own self-engineered drenchings!

Halt! Let me breathe. Take me back to the blessedness of that dawn of my Christ-knowing when, single parent left holding the empty bag, I learned to live by faith and not sight, learned to be more than contented in little–that time of praying and trusting, then pulling out of that empty bag what God kept slipping in: just what we needed, just when we needed it. (When finally I could buy a real nightgown to sleep in instead of old tattered T-shirt, I danced, ecstatic with gratitude.)

O, God of it all, “two things I ask of You (deprive me not before I die): Remove falsehood and lies far from me; Give me neither poverty nor riches–Feed me with the food allotted to me; Lest I be full and deny You, Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God” (Pro 30:7-9). Teach me, teach me, contentment in little–and how to abound in abundance–outward, somehow, to others in little.

Now, who would like some extra cucumbers?????

*****