The Sylvr Pen

Journey. The word is affecting me strangely, as a free-write prompt word. (At Five Minute Friday.)

I’ve used it enough times to refer to moving through a painful time or a time of necessary growth. I’ve written “journey journals” that recorded my progression through some particular trial or other.

But right now, I don’t want to do what I consider journey. I’d like to take a vacation trip instead. And then I’d like to come home and be able to settle in one place, my own little niche, and not have to journey, journey, journey, as if all life were a day by day climb up a mountainside that never reaches the top, and the rest-stop hostels are sometimes hostile and without the comforts associated with home, sweet home.

Though maybe life is just like that, climbing, never arriving, every rest stop only temporary and brief. The top comes later. The climb is called growth. We’re higher up and further along in our ascent, but we can’t always see the view that reveals our upward progress.

The oddest part of this odd reaction is that I’ve been living in the same place for over twenty years now, and haven’t lived like a nomad at all. And there’s a lot of travel I actually long for wistfully: to see more of God’s great, wide, amazing world. The word “travel” implies a leisurely pace, a recreation vacation. Journey sounds like a whole different thing, a possibly arduous trek toward a desired destination whose location is very uncertain.

So this feeling about journeying is symbolic, figurative—and enigmatic.

I don’t fully understand it. I don’t know what it’s all about. But it must be something I need to explore further, need to plunge ahead, and… dare I say it?… journey toward insight and resolution? I hope not. I wish my destination would come to me for once. But then, maybe it will…

It’s Wordsday here, and this week’s word is autumn, with more than one connotation:

au tumn 1: the season between summer and winter comprising in the northern hemisphere usu. September, October, and November or as reckoned astronomically extending from the September equinox to the December solstice — also called fall. 2: a period of maturity or incipient decline. <in the ~ of life>

In the collage, blanked out verse:

These leisurely days,

the Twilight slowly turning the pages

our journal brims:

quotes that have moved us,

books to read,

people we’ve met,

surprises to savor.

Heady freedom gives fresh dreams wings,

as we soar through

Autumn.

And this quote:

“Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined,

And spreads a common feast for all that live.”

-James Thomson

Autumn has always been “my” season. At least it always seemed so to my heart.

Born right at the height of autumnal color, I like to think of myself as a babe of few days exiting the little homemade hospital in our town, greeted and dazzled by multiple vibrant hues above me splashed against deep blue, in a sort of imprinting event! –as if we bonded, right then and there, Autumn and I!

For me, no other season, lovely though it may be in its own right, holds the power of autumn: to enliven my spirit, stir my senses,  and activate my mind to all sorts of possibilities. And, as I’ve said before, this season of year came to mean, in most of my life, my time of new beginnings.

But what about that other autumn in the definitions above? If the dropping off and blowing away of leaves, the ending of growing season and closing of the garden gate, the absence of all those departed birds and butterflies, seem to signify the ending of the year’s vitality, the words “incipient decline” certainly sound like the end of the vital part of life!

Yet I am in autumn, both ways. And I do not feel ended, or declining!

Really.

I seem to have things backwards.

For instance, the “poem” above is actually “blanked out” text from a Victoria magazine’s summer edition (except for its final word)! For me its phrases fit autumn far better, at least since my “nest” emptied out. Spring and summer are typically full of work and demands and a crowding of the calendar, But Autumn, in its slowdown, offers me the ideal time to give myself a break, travel, take some kind of vacation.

And truly, my health and stamina are stronger right now than back when I was forty or fifty–something I never would have predicted.

You never do know what a season might bring. And autumn can be as fresh with new ventures and outlooks as any other.

Meanwhile, it’s the season of richest harvest, in life as well as earth-year. Though I don’t like the words “incipient decline” in the second definition above, I do like that word “maturity.” Now’s when the wisdom of experience reaches its peak of ripeness, and a panoramic view of reality not possible in youth opens up wide over all the fields we’ve planted, brimming with revelations to reflect on and share, to anyone who wants to listen…

***

What about you? Do you find autumn (the year-season) enlivens you? How about the “autumn of your life”? Does it hold treasures for you the other seasons couldn’t? Or, if you’re not in that season yet, what do you anticipate it offering?

Do you make resolutions at the beginning of each new year?

Years ago I concluded that New Year’s Resolutions are useless for me, maybe even counterproductive, and decided to make monthly resolutions instead. If I do well in keeping one, I make a new one for the next month. If not, I renew the resolution of the month just ending. Sometimes I renew a lapsed resolution from months or even years past. This works better for me than once-a-year hopeful purposing.

However…

Lately, I’ve neglected New Month’s Resolutions, just let them go by the wayside. That just might explain my too often scatteredness of focus and uncertainty of intent.

So, today, I renew the practice.

From my personal journal:

“November 1, 2016 To-do’s-day

To do: Make a New-Month’s Resolution

New Month’s Resolution (to do every day):

At least once each day: take the time, make the time, to note in my journal the moments or incidents when God’s presence or workings in my life were evident to me, during the previous twenty-four hours. Include thanks for his gifts and surprises of the day.

Of course this is going to involve—no, require—my paying attention throughout each day in order to notice, recognize, and appreciate God’s presence and working.

So starting right now, concerning the last twenty-four hours, I’ll try to remember what I can. And concerning the twenty-four hours in front of me I’m aiming to look for the evidences of His presence and workings, and “listen” for what He might be trying to get through to my too-often dull spiritual ears…

(Dear LORD and Helper, please bless my intent and effort. Please be much with me and work within me. Open my eyes, my ears, and bend and steer my heart, my will. Amen.)

***

What New Month’s Resolution might be helpful for you this month?

*****

Besides the evangelistic work he was set apart for (Acts 13:2), the Apostle Paul also worked as a tent maker. But what this tent making really encompassed I had no informed idea… until this week! Then, wow!

I was hopping around the internet, looking for open doors to interesting new amateur work, because health concerns seem to have closed the door for me on handspinning and weaving. And I happened on these surprising videos.

Not only did they make me sit right up with wide-eyed interest, but they also blew my conception of Apostle Paul’s hand labor right out of the water. Take a look and you’ll see what I mean.

Talk about art and creativity! Did he really do work like this? If you watch the first video for a short while, you’ll hear the presenter mentioning him (somewhere about five minutes in or so)…

A few notes:

• I find applique the most challenging and time-consuming kind of “quilt work.” To see these guys work so skillfully so lightning fast just leaves me breathless.
• As I was looking again at the videos, I was imagining these works in huge size covering the inside of tents as they once did traditionally (though now only rarely), with the blazing Middle Eastern sun shining through them. Just imagine… !
• I also started wondering about the “embroidery” (as sometimes translated) in the tabernacle (tent!) of God…
• Also do you see the enjoyment these men have in their work? In one video we learn that one of them was trained as a lawyer, yet returned to the family craft because he found much more pleasure in it. This really led me to think about Paul, and wonder if part of the reason he continued tent-making as he carried on his ministry was that pleasure and not just earning his own bread…

Five Minute Friday, and the joke’s on me!

The prompt word to free-write about is “eat,” and I’m sitting here with indigestion—admittedly from eating too much, and too carelessly, today…

I see I’ve already started in on the writing, without giving myself the usual “Go!” as I punch the timer—because I’d already started thinking about the subject before I checked in at Kate’s website to get the prompt.

Thoughts I had about eating:

“I need to drink more water and eat less food!”

People who eat frugally, sparingly, enjoy their food more abundantly.

Having too much can spoil our enjoyment.

Studies have shown obese people do not enjoy their food as much as skinnier folk.

This principle reaches into lots of other areas. Too much entertainment and we end up “bored.” The more clothes our wardrobes bulge with, the more likely we are to whine, “I have nothing to wear!” An overabundance of choices of things to do with our hours, our days, our lives, leave us confused, overloaded, tired out, and discontent, seemingly unable to find the satisfaction we crave.

These thoughts make me think of these words of Christ in a different light: “Come to me, all you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke… my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” They bring to mind the parable about the grave, weighty danger of “the cares of this life and the abundance of riches.”

How important not to “overeat”! And I’m not just talking about too much literal food giving us indigestion!

(Time to stop.)