The Sylvr Pen

Autumn.

On the weathered gray barn a rusty vane swings with the wind, barely stands out against molting trees, a ghost of former, livelier, times. Evening chill invades the air, and the barn’s gray blends increasingly with the grays of sky and bare branches beyond. Gray.

A moon is rising, a silver sliver, looking worn. Waning light, nearly vanished. Waning. Worn.

Ripe apple smell fills the night air. Ripe.

It’s the time of growing silence, when summer bird babble disappears, leaving only crow croak and blue jay squawk, and, of course, the cackle of hens.

Even all that is stilled now, and the only continued singing is the chirp of crickets scavenging leftover crops in frost-melted gardens.

I stand at my study window, gazing out at the fading color, fading activity, fading life, scene of growing grayness—and I think of my own growing grayness, and the ebbing of my own earth-life. Fading.

I am jolted out of my mind-wandering by a “sping! sping! sping-sping!” followed by a tinkling avalanche of tumbling paper clips. My languid elbow has unknowingly brushed the boxful from the sill, onto the wooden floor. My eye catches the last few bounces, and I feel, well, embarrassed.

That’s what I get for idle mind-wandering—and not picking up after myself. Time to come back to the moment inside and play One-Hundred Clip Pick-up. I sit down on, rather than stoop or squat over, the shiny floor still smelling of fresh polish, and make the odious task leisurely, by plucking a few at a time between fingers, rather than trying to sweep the lot into my hand all at once.

The elder years can teach us such wisdom, if we let them: Experience says such hurry might only result in discomfort requiring time and pain to dislodge. The floor may be shiny, but it’s old and worn, too.

A rustle of dry leaves outside draws me back up to the window. It’s coming from right down there beneath the apple tree. I strain my eyes in the dusk to see what wraithlike creature is moving through the yard. Ah, as I thought, deer. Three, actually. A big one and two adolescents. I wonder how old the mother is, how many twins she’s born, if her bearing years have ended. I watch as she raises her head, alert, and glances around to detect danger to her own, then bends to grab a bite of apple falls herself. I bend to grab the rest of the paper clips.

A leather journal lies on the desk where I pull open the drawer to deposit clips in their proper place. It’s mine, from back…when? I flick on the lamp and open the cover to see.

Can it be? Twenty-one years ago I started this account of days—and days—and days! How many? Let’s see: twenty times 365… around eight thousand? No, more: for before this journal, so many other days, their thoughts and feelings. Nine, ten, maybe eleven thou! Quite a stash locked in that file cabinet—till I’m gone and someone going through this room, clearing out all useless debris (like these journals) unlocks and reads whatever they like—if they want to bother, which they probably won’t anyhow, just because of the overwhelming number. If this one journal alone were left, it would probably get sequestered, read and reread, and receive all manner of interpretation…

Now there’s something to consider. If I left behind one that might give a blessing, a lesson, a legacy, which—out of all that motley collection could I choose? From the covers I can guess (or remember) nothing of the contents’ value. I suspect there’s as much substance beneath the cheap black cover as behind this fine leather one. Worse yet, I suspect there’s little substance in any.

The graying of autumn outside, the graying of the woman inside, the sweep of chill wafting through the window I’ve neglected to crank shut  (but now shall!), the evening’s growing darkness, are giving me the feel of a cinder in my eye: a tear-maker, irritant, pain demanding attention. “So attend to it,” my will and heart tell my mind. And so I shall; I must.

The sky’s remaining background light turns barn into great hulking silhouette. A final cackle of hens from the coop announces the place is not abandoned… yet.

Nor am I finished growing my accumulation of written days. Or growing.

*****

[Note: This post isn’t what I’d planned to publish today, but cleaning out computer files brought it to light— and it fit so well with the first two posts on the Aging with Grace theme (here, and here), I thought I ought to edit and place it here. Next week (probably!), “Lesson from the Seasonal Blues” or, “On Endings and Beginnings.”]

“Behind the scenes, sacred synchronicity happens.”

Thus Kel Rolf began her introduction to my guest post on her blog, about aging. We’d seen several examples of it as we (or, rather, God?) coordinated our efforts on that post. And then, even more synchronicity happened…

To illustrate the post, which I’d sent her ahead of time, she created this mixed media art:

Because of technical hindrances, I didn’t get to see it till the final draft was published. But was it ever appropriate, and “timely”!

It grabbed my gut. It haunted.

It reminded me of the scripture that says “Now we see through a glass darkly…” And of something else I’ll share below…

Do you see a face in the window? (In just a glance, you might not.)

When I did on my second glance, it surprised me.

The colors surprised me.

I think I expected any depiction of a window to show wild autumnal colors flying beyond it, the flamboyant, exotic colors of future possibilities. Instead, I got a view inward—and the sense of someone’s inability to see out to those shining possibilities, either in this present life or beyond.

This startle couldn’t have come at a better time for me. Amid the plans with Kel for this cooperative effort, I’d suddenly found myself, my life, surrounded by a mess of varied, bittersweet colors swirling chaotically—more bitter than sweet, I might have said, as I started taking on a view like that of the windowed person above.

But more than that, it led my mind right to the quote I’d “just happened upon” and had almost added to that guest post, but instead withheld for the next post on aging:

      Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness . . .

     But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence… by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.”

-Henri Nouwen

The startle that brought me back to the view beyond, to which Nouwen points us, also probed my heart with the question, Where is your focus? On your own reflections in life’s window, or through that glass darkly, to faith-glimpses of glorious beauty, light, and joy beyond?

In future “Themesday” (Thursday) posts on aging and the winter of our lives, I plan to explore the earthly possibilities still dancing free and fresh, beyond the glass of the present year. But even if those possibilities all get crushed and lie crumbled, the view to which Nouwen points us shines, bright and more than hopeful, further beyond. Look out there, strain your vision outward toward God, and you’ll see it. Ask, and He’ll open it up to you.

“Keep on asking, keep on seeking” (Luke 11:9NKJV, AMP).

“For now we see as through a glass darkly, but then face to face” ( 1 Cor 13:12KJV).

*****

Maybe now it’s safe for me to say it without getting laughed at.

Home from errands this morning, where he’d seen a friend he stopped to chat with, Husband informed me, “Well, you were right all along.” Then he related how research has determined that adjusting to adjusting to DST is bad for your health.

I don’t think it takes a genius to figure it out personally, but to make any global difference we first need the convincing stats.

So before relaying any information here, I came online to double-check it, but I had no trouble believing the data Husband reported.

DST. It sounds like a disease in itself, don’t you think? I refer, of course, to Daylight Saving Time (which might be better labeled SLT for Sleep Loss Time), when we move the indicator on our watches and clocks ahead one hour, thus losing, not saving, it! (Nor do we save, or gain, an hour in the fall, but merely reinstate the one we stole from spring, and still lose productivity because our bodies must readjust their sense of what time it is and establish a new rhythm again.)

Now scientific research is showing clearly that the DST time change does indeed increase incidence of stroke by 8% in the general population in the two days following the it—and higher in special groups like cancer victims (a whopping 25%) and the elderly (20%). Previous research already indicated that it ups the risk of heart attack by 10%.

I’m sure it does a lot of other damage via work-related injuries, auto accidents, and mistakes in medication dosage,  and it’s bound to lower productivity as millions of people get thrown totally out of sync with themselves and worsen their already abysmal sleep deficits! I wonder really, how many huge errors  are made, how much money is lost, even how many lives are forfeited by this nonsense.

I have long chafed over the issue. But no official organizations I know of except the governments of Arizona and Hawaii have had the sense to abolish it. Those of you who like to make your voices heard, here’s an issue worth your shout. You may save lives, jobs, companies, who knows…?

As for me, I intend this year just to ignore the whole thing as much as possible. I have the distinct advantage of being retired, and the additional blessing of a wristwatch which either broke down a month ago or ran down its battery which I haven’t bothered to go out and replace.

In past years I usually turned my watch dial—and as many household clocks as I could get away with—an hour ahead weeks before the official time change to let myself adjust slowly. Now I’m just going to let my body tell me when to get up, eat, go to bed, the whole nine yards.

But what about all the poor people who have to jump out of bed an hour earlier on Monday morning, their bodies shocked by the shift and their waking brains thrown into confusion? My own heart almost starts beating faster just to think about it.

Of course this makes me think of how the traditions of man can never improve upon the plans and laws of God—like gravity, you know…, and how the glorious human body, so “fearfully and wonderfully made,” was designed to function in harmony with its own internal “clock,” and not be “digitally remastered.”

“For so He gives His beloved sleep.”  -Psalm 127:2

“The days of our lives are seventy years;

And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,

Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;

For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” –Psalm 90:10 NKJV

“October 1, 2015.” I wrote it at the top of my journal page, and looked at it. It seemed ominous. Psalm 90:10 resounded in my head. I felt like I was standing at the head of a street marked with a big “Dead End” sign.

For so much of my life, autumn had been a time of new beginnings. New crayons, new pencils, new notebooks, new clothes, new classes, new adventures!

I had taught school. I had home schooled. Before all that I’d gone to school as a pupil myself, and the brilliant leaves that drifted down to a clatter on the sidewalk had always excited my young heart. Their fresh color and crackling crispness had always said “new,” to me, not “old,” with a newness to match the prospects  of a new year: school-wise, grade-wise, and age-wise, too—for my birthday almost always arrived right at the peak of fall color.

But now my approaching birthday, and the turning leaves, and the chilling air, all seemed to speak of endings. And oldness! After all, I would now be officially old, wouldn’t I? In fact…

[Read the rest of this post here, at Soul Pantry, where I’m guest posting today, and where Kel Rolf shares her mixed media response to what follows.]

If I take the wings of the morning…” –Psalm 139:9

“Mornings are…” (from a journaling prompt)…

.

Mornings are

full of surprises

Mornings are when

the sky turns…

oh, who knows?

fiery and fuchsia, sometimes all at once,

sometimes scintillating silver first,

sometimes angry storm-cloud, blue-black scary,

sometimes all peachy and pink and lavender-tinged…

with one peak moment when it all crescendos in the sky,

and if you aren’t there, you miss the show.

Mornings are

the starting point of happenings,

the boat launch,

the launching pad for rocket takeoff,

the warm-up place for the inner Maserati,

the pre-plan warroom for the surprise battles that might pop up later in the day.

And if you aren’t there, you miss the boat.

Mornings are

when the roaring outside the window is there for blowing fog clouds away,

clearing the mind, freeing the soul, opening the heart,

and if you also push open the window

to stand and feel the rush-by, and breathe it in,

in one quick moment

you’re inspired.

Mornings are

when you meet the dawn and God,

when thanks are best born,

then borne out.

When praises prompt promise of the Presence of His Spirit,

in the coming light, till coming night.

Mornings are…

the optimum time for setting your focus,

when blurs become clarity,

and reality

sometimes lights up like the eastern sky.

Mornings are

breakfasts with my best Friend,

feasts not so much on food as wonder,

on answers to my questions,

or on simply sitting silent at His feet.

Confession: I used to be a nightowl.

Now I’m a bird that sings at daybreak.

Like the wrens and the warblers,

I slip out early to perch on the porch and hear

(once the weather warms…)

I still have my moments of dark-time hooting,

but it’s on early-to-bed that early rise thrives;

so I stifle my hoots and substitute

deep breathing, sleep breathing,

muscles melting into mattress.

So, warmed with sleep wrapped in flannel,

I rise and greet the skies

and the Author thereof,

with joy.

Won’t you join me (“on the wings of the morning”)?

*****

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