The Humility of Life Beyond My Control

The cold has crept upon us like a Halloween ghost.  It isn’t so much that we didn’t know it was coming; we simply didn’t see it coming.  I didn’t notice its approach, so busy was I admiring the color in the trees and the settling pace.

And then the night froze and the puddles hardened and the leaves fell as, in quick succession, did the first snow.  Our language deceives us - or at least lulls us into unsuspectedness.  Winter - not the actual experience of it, but the calendared technicality of the birth of it - doesn’t actually arrive for weeks.  Several of them.  We can be forgiven, I suppose, for expecting the Cosmos to abide by the seasonal frames.  Autumn, we would like it somehow enforced, will be given its free and full expression - mild days and crisp nights colored by painted leaves - between the autumnal equinox in mid-September and the winter solstice in late December.  No encroachment by a lagging summer on the front end nor an impatient winter on the backside.  Later on, we might make happy exception should an early spring shave a few days or even weeks off of winter.  But if there is a God above, let autumn enjoy it’s full complement of days.

The cold truth, however, is that it doesn’t work that way.  Seasons flow like a stream, drying to a trickle on random occasion while swelling unnaturally and dangerously beyond its banks on another.  Mercurial, they move like the Spirit:  where and when they will.

Like most everything else that finally matters.  Only the puny and ephemeral is subject to our control.   Life and love; meaning and even mastery; joy and depression; condemnation and salvation - all beyond our control or determination.  We can practice and rehearse; we can study and work hard; we can needle and advocate, twist arms and raise our voice, but by only the most superficial definition do we own credit for success or failure.

There is a deep humility required for this admission.  We boast of agency.  We measure, we reward, we incentivize, we nudge, we shame, all in service to our hunger for merit - and aversion to demerit.  But while we can improve on or fall short of arbitrary markers; while we can win jobs or wars or games or awards; while we can best our competition; while we can move certain needles more or less in our favor, we are constantly surprised by how much that matters to us is beyond our control.

Acknowledging this isn’t fatalism; it isn’t stoic detachment.  It is simply the truth that nature speaks all around me.  I had no say in the reddening of the leaves, nor the timing of their fall.  As Job was forced to admit, I do not know the way to the place where light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered, nor have I entered the storehouses of the snow.  I only know it fell this week.

And I didn’t see it coming.

Morning Worship

Sunday morning, Lakeside

Charlson Meadows, MN

The water is at prayer this Sunday morning, unstirred and hushed; the surface of the lake mirroring the lone cloud and the golden leaves above, similarly absorbed in silent meditation.  Only an occasional bird voices morning praise.  Otherwise, this new beginning is silent.  And still.  The autumn colors and chill, otherwise, the loudest exclamation.  

What is my contemplation?  What is my new day prayer?

Only to pay attention - to listen and, listening, hear; to look and, in looking, see; to wonder and, in wondering, to be fascinated and amazed - with gratitude and awe.

And in such attending, to accept the morning’s blue and green and red/yellow invitation to offer my own autumnal colors in return.

Tending an Autumn Fire

 Charlson Meadows, MN

The logs resident in the fire pit, remainders of the meditations of some prior anonymous visitor, were damp despite the covering lid.  The logs stacked neatly in a rack beneath the trees were curiously dry.  Paper was stored in a nearby bin, along with kindling and a container of lighters.  We arranged the fuel in a teepee of optimism, lit the paper and hoped.

A mild October day, the fire was more aspirationally aesthetic than necessity, but we nonetheless drew close and exposed ourselves to the warmth when flames slowly appeared behind the steamy smoke.

Like a doting grandmother ladling chicken soup, we continued to feed logs to the flame as though its appetite- and our meditative stay - knew no limits.  It crackled and licked and smoldered and smoked, and we breathed in the woody scent, smiling at the extravagance of it while adding yet another log.

There is more smoke than flame - a common enough phenomenon, I’m poignantly aware; or perhaps the flames in this case are simply subtle, making their way incrementally into and among the cracks within the logs rather than showing in the spaces between them.

Perhaps we could use more of that in this volubly exhibitionist culture where it has to be big and blazing to be real - or at least acknowledged.

All of a sudden a tongue of wind licks the embers and a finger of fire points in my direction and signals for yet another log.  Dubious, but dutiful, I comply.  The supervising trees shimmer with the breeze and, as if in moral support, sprinkle in their kindling leaves which curl and disappear into the flames.

The flames rise and fall; disappearing altogether for all I know, only to erupt without announcement.  Passions behave the same, as artists and lovers have long observed.  It’s hard to account for the falling; easier, perhaps, the rising.  In either case, a constant supply of logs is essential.

As with this fire, all the logs won’t be consumed; but they will be ready the next time the cover is dragged away and the foddering paper is stuffed and matched;

...and the memory of this autumn day is reignited.