itsawonderfilledlife

Light is diminishing.

I knew it when my body awoke for the day just after five on a recent morning.

Not even two months ago the summer solstice heralded in the longest day of daylight in the calendar year. At just over sixteen hours of glorious June daylight, it was double what will be on December’s darkest day. No wonder we humans are known to have a more sunny disposition in the summer months!

I have enough darkness within me that I seek the light in most areas of my life. Part of that is just aging (for who, as they age, wants to linger in the dark), part of it is knowing what is best for myself, but mostly I believe it has to do with the light that is within.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

whoever follows me …
will never walk in darkness

Oh, how can that not be good news? To think that there is always light … if we follow Him/Jesus.

Jesus also said that we (who follow him) are like a city built on a hill, visible to all, and if we live in His light, others can see it, and also choose to live in His light. (Matthew 5:14-16 … Carole Wheaton translation 😉 ).

So our reflection of his light, draws others to him. What a fantastic privilege to reflect light, to reflect hope, faith and love. As I think of it, reflecting isn’t even an action, it’s a

reaction …

We are not the doer’s of reflecting the light of God, we are simply choosing to be available, so that the light of God shines here in this world.

I love this quote, by Fredrick Buechner (Telling Secrets):

and love.

“Let go of the dark, which you wrap yourself in like a straitjacket, and let in the light. Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the life around you – your children’s lives, the lives of your husband, your wife, your frineds – because that is just what you are powerless to do. Remember that the lives of other people are not your business. They are their business. They are God’s business because they all have God whether they use the word God or not. Even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought.”

Just follow Him.

Just reflect.

And we will shine with his light.

And the light will not be diminished.

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“Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears”

– Fiddler on the Roof
(Sheldon Harnick / Lewis Bock Jerrold)

As I drove the highway to my childhood home, I did as I often do … I marvelled at the great big sky that seems to travel eternally to reach the horizon. Pulling off the highway, I just had to snap an imagine of the setting sun.

Born in that great big sky country in eastern Canada, currently living in the sea to sky mountainous region of the west. When I say the word home, there is never simply one definition. There is a constant confusion, a muddying of the waters (and this may have double meaning as well, with the mud of the Bay of Fundy in the east and the muddy/murky Fraser in the west).

But, it is in returning to the home of childhood, of the first twenty years, that the memories of the seasons of those early years flood my mind. It is as if there is a constant video reel playing in my mind of places, people and events. Core memories that sweep into my consciousness as I hear voices, drive by significant sites, or catch a whiff of the Atlantic’s salty breeze.

All of the feels of such recollections of the good, bad and ugly.

All swiftly falling, one season after another.

All laden with happiness and tears.

As I drove the highway away from my childhood home, I did as I often do … I marvelled at the great big sky, that seems to travel eternally to reach the horizon. Pulling off to the side, I just had to snap an image of the rising sun.

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I was unmaking the bed where our adult daughter had slept the night before. Sheets were deposited into the washer, mattress traipsed back into it’s storage. As I picked up the second of the two handmade quilts to fold, I noticed that one of them was in bad shape.

The quilted stitches …

were gone, as if they’d disintegrated (though, probably they just pulled loose).

Now the top and bottom fabrics were no longer holding, tightly attached to the quilt batt in the middle and I feared that the stability of the quilt was in danger.

This quilt, lovingly stitched by a multi-generational family of ladies I respected, adored, learned from and played with as a girl, was gifted to us as a wedding gift, almost thirty-five years ago. It is faded, fraying and now, coming apart at the seems …

much like any marriage of thirty-five years.

I felt a sadness creep into my heart as I lifted it into my arms, as I longed for it to be, once again, brand new.

The quilt or the marriage, one might ask … at that very moment, maybe both. Because, we have, after all, a very human marriage of two very flawed and selfish individuals.

I pondered disposing of the quilt,

but then, the more practical side of me took a closer look, a further consideration. The quilt, though originally beautiful, was not made to simply look good. The pieces of it were stitched together so that it would bring warmth to those covered by it, underneath it.

Immediately I thought how similar that is to marriage. Two individuals, like the top and bottom fabrics of a quilt, can be so beautiful on their own, or even together. Yet, the depth of their warmth is limited to what each person brings into the marriage.

When God is present … but not just present …

when the two allow Him to be connected to each of them and then they are tied together,

with Him at the center

then they are cooking with gas! And the warmth (literally) between them is the One who also sustains each of them as individuals (first) and them together (secondly).

Sometimes we think that simply being married to another Christ-follower is the most important ingredient. But it doesn’t take much thinking to come up with examples of married Christ-followers who do anything but love each other sacrificially, nor do they put the needs of the other ahead of themselves. Couples who do not even share of their walk with God, with each other.

These are examples of anything but Christ-centered marriages. They are made of a top sheet, a bottom sheet and a God in the middle who is not even truly stitched to either, let along to both.

No, if we want the warmth of God, we need to stay stitched, first to Him … individually,

then to each other with Him at the center.

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Walking through the halls of the secondary high school, people are smiling, jovial, friendly. It is the final day of classes and the relief of the school year’s end has brought joy to the hearts of everyone in the building.

The sense of community is strong in these last days, as we are all (students, staff) eagerly anticipating the same thing … the end of the school year. It is the shared anticipation of change, of rest, of other communities.

Final days can be especially joyous, especially when they precede something new.

The school years turns into summer.

The school years turn into graduation, jobs, travel.

The work year turns into summer vacation.

The dark seasons turn into light.

When it comes to school’s year end, it is the students who struggle, who hate this institution, whose gifts are best utilized outside of our places of learning. These institutes where the unnatural practises of sitting inside, under fluorescent lighting, with only people born the same year all day, every day, is the model, but also that successful learning is often different from loving to learn.

These are the ones I smile a knowing smile with, both of us aware that not only is summer coming, but so is freedom. Freedom to be who God made them to be, free to explore, free to create, free to move … free to breathe … free to heal.

Just As The Calendar Began to Say Summer
Mary Oliver

I went out of the schoolhouse fast
and through the gardens and to the woods,
and spent all summer forgetting what I’d been taught —

two times two, and diligence, and so forth,
how to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and so forth,
machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth.

By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back
to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember

the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,
the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn’t a penny in the bank,
the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.

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The fifties, a decade of changes, once known as the time in a woman’s life as ‘the change’. In the beginnings I joyfully embraced this season of freedom to wear white pants every day of the month. Rediscovered the new me, without the highs and lows of hormone fluctuation. Added to the physical changes were family changes, as the rooms of our children began to empty, as changes in hubby’s career meant less demands on myself.

Now, sitting squarely in the middle of this decade, along with the pounds that refuse to budge, the aches that come from sleeping too long on one side as opposed to tenacious physical exertion, the fatigue that seems to never go away, the hairs that grow inches in the night on chin (only to be discovered after the work day), the wings that have developed from the flesh of my upper arms, the tugs (real and perceived) of generations before and beyond, the areas of life where one of this stage is simply no longer needed … one might wonder about identity, purpose.

“I used to float,
now I just fall down
I used to know,
but I’m not sure now
What I was made for?”
-Billie Eilish

Yet, there is something more to being a woman in her fifties, more than the oft common feeling of being dried up and drifting …

There is a connection, a solidarity with all women, of all ages.

A woman shared a new song with me. It was the same day a young mum at church was holding her precious child, bellowing loudly his hunger, unhappiness, fatigue (so many reasons to bellow in this life). The same day a young woman shared her thankfulness for her foster mum who taught her what her mum of blood and flesh and DNA could not, due to her dependence of drugs. The same day a friend messaged it’s time for an ice cream, even though we will probably need to wait until the end of the school year. The same day a young man, living away from family, came for dinner and the realization set in that this is how we fulfil vows made by a congregation to one who is baptized or become a member. As I looked across the room to one who has become like a daughter, whose own momma lives so far away,

I smiled as I realized the grace in being a woman, loving for other women, loving other’s children, supporting each other, lifting each other up, laughing and crying with other women. A word, a touch, a connection whispering into the souls of other women.

“She’s the artist that paints in the colours unseen
Every stroke of her brush is an act of belief
She’s a true work of art
She is playing her part of a woman
What a woman”
That Woman

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In my lifetime I have memories of making cards for my mum, feeling sorrow on this day as pregnancy loss seemed to overwhelm, joy to hold the hand of my littles, overwhelm from the expressions of love from my grown ones, and feeling regret for what I’d done or undone as a mum.

It was Friday night past, though, when my three gifted my mother-heart, in a most deep and meaningful way … and they hadn’t an inkling.

Earlier in the evening I’d noticed posts from Eastern Canada of the gorgeous Northern Lights thanks to a rare, high level geometric storm. This fueled my desire to witness this natural phenomenon. So, after the sun had set, I ended up on our back deck, seeing the show of a lifetime just overhead, with hubby and our son, while taking SO many pictures.

As I stood with my son, looking up, I was transported to dark August nights, from years ago. My three and me in our backyard, sitting in lawn chairs, or lying on the ground, eyes to the heavens, waiting with anticipation for falling stars in the annual meteor shower. I remember smiling, ear to ear, in the dark, as my children were rapt in awe. The same awe and wonder that has fueled my life, given me hope and joy when life was challenging, hard, unpleasant.

I almost mentioned that memory to my aurora-seeking son but …

well,

what if he didn’t remember? what if that memory was mine alone?

No. I would just enjoy this moment of shared joy.

Then, he directed me to his phone, to the images sent on our family text group. Images of the same lights we were viewing. They were images from 40km NW, 50km NE … where my daughters were, also looking up to the sky, also rapt in wonder.

In that moment, I knew I had shared something good, something even eternal, with my kids. I had shared my sense of wonder to my littles,

who grabbed onto it, years ago, with grubby, chubby little fingers, eyes and toes,

and they are still rapt in awe of the creation all around them.

He who can no longer pause to wonder
and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

Albert Einstein

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Someone has said,

“We are Easter people, living in a Good Friday world.”

It started with a “violent quaking” (Matthew 28:2). As if there had not already been enough violence, just days ago, now the earth seemed to join in with hot-tempered participation.

The women (the ‘Marys’) arrived to see a traumatized guard and an angel sitting on the stone that had been covering the entrance to the tomb. The angel said to them,

“Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.” (v. 5-6)

The news must have been almost too much to take in, for these women, still in the throws of new grief, still dealing with the trauma of the events of what had been done to their loved one, just days before.

This angelic being invited them into the tomb … into the place of death.

This invitation is for them, for us. For we, like the doubting disciple, need to see evidence. We need to enter into the place of death, to the place of hopeless darkness to see and know the miracle that has happened …

that death has been defeated!

We, who have grieved, who currently grieve, know the permanence of death … we have walked in the tomb of death. We know the darkness where grief resides. We know the sorrow that greets each new day. I think, in a way, grievers best understand this Easter Sunday message. This invitation to enter the tomb. To feel the cold, damp air. To hear nothing of life outside. To walk into the dark and imagine how much more dark it must have been with the stone over the entrance.

In his rising from death, in his dropping of his burial cloths, in the light pouring in, we can see hope in the midst of grief.

I love these words of Henri Nouwen:

“The resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death. It is not the happy ending to our life’s struggle, nor is it the big surprise that God has kept in store for us. No, the resurrection is the expression of God’s faithfulness to Jesus and to all God’s children.”

Or, in the words of Jesus, to these same women, not long after their empty tomb tour:

“And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (v. 20)

Always.

He is with us … always.

He knows our sorrows (grief or otherwise).

He knows our struggles.

He knows our needs.

And that is

why he came.
why he dies.
why he rose.

Blessed are we who stretch out our hands to you
in doubt and grief,
in sickness of body and mind and spirit,
our prayers not fully realized,
rejoicing… anyway.

For that is what makes us Easter people:
carrying forth the realized hope of the Resurrected One,
singing our alleluias great and small,
while it is still dark.

Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

Kate Bowler

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