Shalom

Sunlight eagerly pours through white windowpanes, spilling its warmth and hope across my soft chairs, onto my knee, pooling on the floor. A little bird is hailing the day star and Arvo Pärt's Nunc dimittis gently adds its soft refrain.

A friend gifted me a set of four, Polish pottery luncheon plates, one of which is now full with a burst of raspberries, lustrous orange slices, and butter-seared banana bread. My globe-like green Polish mug is nestled on my lap, counter-balancing the morning breeze, keeping me just right.

Something about Spring mornings feels enlivening and hopeful, it feels like home. Something about Spring pushes me to dust dressers, window ledges, and chair legs. It reorders my time and my newly-polished spaces. I often choose to have fresh flowers in my home, but today I have a mason jar full of dried lavender for the sun to warm. There is also a cheery bunch of tiny purple waxflowers and their still-smaller buds, overflowing from a simple glass vase.

There is an excitement in Spring that I cannot overlook in my deep love for Winter. Everywhere I turn is life, light, and freshness. At least, in the natural world, that is what I see. I see the rhythms that have always been continuing. And that is where I want to rest this morning—not to forget the pall that has fallen over our world—but for now, to be present to the renewed order, teeming life, and refreshing breeze all speaking "Peace, be still" to my soul.

Think of the disciples in the storm-tossed boat. They could only see, experience, and think about the raging squall around them. Jesus was sleeping, not unconcerned, but in full trust. As that joyful little bird trills his heart out, I want to join him. As the sun warms the earth, I want to bask in it. As the Father whispers, Peace. Be still, I want to sink into this place of rest, trust, and hope.

The World is Full of Weariness and Wonder

Light rain is singing on the shingles, dripping to the carpet of pine needles by my porch. Darkness has descended in earnest, as it has threatened to do during several waves of thunderheads today. Evening has come, but I am bathed in warm light—my porch transformed into a quaint café with the help of several strands of twinkle lights wrapped 'round the rafters. I am pleased with my handiwork this day. 

It has been a long weekend of learning to rest well. . . I didn't accomplish any of the handwritten letters I planned to pen, but I organised various things in my home, put up lights, went hiking with a friend, read, walked slowly through a garden at sunset, and sat on my porch simply watching the rain fall. There is something to be said for the hours I spent accomplishing things around the house, but there is more to be said for the quiet moments of holding a mug of tea and listening to the raindrop chorus. There is something magical about sitting under twinkle lights as grey clouds melt into black skies. There is a grand sense of awe staring up at a waterfall a hundred feet high, pounding with spring snow melt. There is wonder in turning to stare up at a seagull-coloured house set against dark pines—a house etched with stars and trees at the cornices, its windows echoing the pink evening clouds. 

There is weariness in this world—but it is contrasted with all the glowing wonder sprinkled in the crevices. That huge glimmering star on the Western horizon reminds me that sadness is not all there is. That sorrow doesn't swallow up every ounce of joy. The hurts, the losses, and the fears that parade through the lives of my friends and family—that stab my own heart—are not all. Beauty also pierces us through. Wonder freezes us in our tracks. Glory bows our hearts. Desire makes us ache. But the piercing, pause, praise, and pain are not mortal wounds—they are healing hurts. They make us whole. Our yearning reminds us that there is more, so much more, than our narrow field of vision.

A thumbnail moon glimmers through the pine boughs tonight, and I breathe my thanks for its glory. A keen air, fresh and faintly perfumed with spring, whispers in my ears as it passes. Too many times I forget to praise, so the mountains cry out the Maker's goodness and grandeur. Too many times I tuck my head down and get stuck inside my thoughts, not seeing the stars and trees and painted sunsets. Too many times my own wallowing blinds me to the pain of others—others to whom I could show the stars and the piercing Beauty that reminds us that the shadow is but a small and passing thing. 

May I see beauty in unexpected places and in the features of men's faces. May my words point back to the Creator, who is forever blessed. May His words ring out from me in thanksgiving, in asking for forgiveness, in kindness, in giving grace as I have been granted grace. . . Amen.

A Shadow of Beauty

I woke in darkness to the jingle of my alarm and the chatter of birds. Perhaps the birds knew it was the first day of Spring and were thus employed with extra jubilation, but my suspicion is that they greet every morning with such exuberance. I listened to their Lauds—their morning prayer-chant—with a slow smile on my sleepy face. Finally pulling myself out of bed as the sky became a deep rose-gold. I never can decide if I like sunrise or sunset better, I'm glad I don't have to—I can simply like them both for their own sakes. 

Being the first day of Spring meant it was my friend-and-co-worker's birthday, and I had offered to make breakfast for the office. As I toasted English muffins and poached eggs in my cast iron skillet, I turned around to rinse my hands and saw a lovely moment: a reflected shadow. The sun coming through my antique windowpanes lit up the tawny dried grasses in the bottle on the sill, but the shadow it cast made them look like fresh wildflowers. I paused my poaching liturgy to snap a photo of the spiritual reality bowing before my eyes. 

There are times in life when all we can see are the dried grasses of our dreams or best laid plans. No matter which way we look at them, they are brittle, dried up, monotone kindling tucked in the corner of the sill. But maybe the problem is that we keep looking at the broken dream or the mislaid plan, whilst God is nudging us to turn around and look at the reflected shadow. When we turn, we see flowers outlined on the wall. We see the contour of each stem and leaf; each pod becomes a glory of its own. The dried grass looks different from this perspective, looks fresh and lovely and renewed. 

Sometimes the shadow is full of beauty, not mere darkness. Sometimes the shadows that fall on our lives are not snuffing out the sun, they are the evidence that there is sunlight. Without light there couldn't be shadows cast, after all. All would be utter darkness, impenetrable, blinding. For darkness, as well as overpowering light, blinds the eyes after time. But shadows are a mix of light and solid things; they are the delicate darkness dappling the wall.

One of the darkest things I have witnessed is my faithful sister being turned out of her home and her marriage. We could only stare at the pieces all around, the shattered lives of those affected, with shock and disbelief and horror. How did this happen? Those pieces looked sharp and irreparable and bleak. In many ways, they are. But when we stop looking at the shards and begin to see the light shine on them, through them, around them, we see the shadow reflected on the wall. We see Beauty and hope springing out of dead things. It isn't the restoration or reconciliation we hoped for, but other good things are germinating. There is Beauty in the shadow, as well as beyond it. There is light high beyond the reach of darkness, as Samwise discovered in Return of the King:

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

The Fall and all its evil is but a small and passing thing from God's perspective. There is Light and there is Beauty that evil cannot touch. There is unseen Reality that cannot be destroyed, even when all the seen is turned into so much ash and concrete dust. The truth is that God is Real—He is high and beyond the reach of evil. God is the Light of the world, and it is His light spilling on and through and around us that casts a shadow of Beauty on the wall of life. Many times we get too busy looking at ourselves to see the whole Beauty-filled outline; to see the Light by which we see—but He is there, prodding us to turn around and see what the Light has made new.

Stars in the Pools

Ridges of foothills rise and swell, then swirl away in the fog filling the valley. Streams of melting hail run off the eaves with the sound of endless rain—and the look of thick snow. My neighbour's flower box is one puddle of icy water. The gravel parking lot is more like a muddy-red pond than solid ground. All at once, a wave of thunder shatters the air, makes the ground shudder. Lightning flares pink and the ground trembles again—and again. 

It is Spring in the mountains—cool, wet, glorious. Yes, glorious, because pools of water seem incongruent with this arid place. This comes from having transplanted into the mountains amidst a lingering drought some years back. I am learning that even dry climes have Spring rains and puddles, once the spectre of drought moves his dwelling elsewhere. 

The pooling rain water recalled to mind these words:

Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.¹ 
When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, 
it will become a place of refreshing springs. 
The [early] rains will clothe it with blessings.²

Long have I loved this Psalm. Long have I gained hope that tears will come to fruition in blessings. Then, I met this Psalm in lectio divina and my perspective was expanded. My attention caught in those pools, as my world is dotted with puddles—puddles colossal, puddles micro. Rarely do they last very long—the ever-thirsty earth slurps them into deep aqueducts, unseen, insatiable. Oft I have thought of the Valley of Baca (translated, weeping) as a cracked desert, bare and ugly, sometimes covered with stagnant, muddy meres. This vision has now been replaced by one of red soil, juniper trees, and depressions lined with rocks of many hues, filled with clear water. 

Pilgrims on their way to the house of God—where even the birds of the air vie to raise their broods—walk through this valley. It is the proverbial (or Psalm-ish, in this case) 'vale of tears' to which many individuals refer. Long have I thought that the tears shed in this dry land were simply for the refreshing of the valley, for the watering of any living scrubby bush in the desert. Wrong. Again. That is just the surface tension—these pools run deeper.

Think for a moment how many tears it must take to fill even a small pool. So many. A large puddle would take myriads more. I began to picture all of us sojourning toward home, where God is, traversing through Baca to reach our desire. The tears of our whole lives are collected in those pools encrusted with rocks of so many shades and shapes. My long-standing mental photograph of the Valley of Weeping withered. Our tears are not collected in turbid puddles, watering needle-nosed cactus or gnarled brush. The pools are refreshing springs, says the Psalmist. He must know from experience. 

There they are: dusty, foot-sore, the travellers trekking on toward a home they have never yet seen. In the dark of night they reach this Weeping Valley. Swish! Their feet splash into an unseen, unanticipated, unthought of pool. The night air has cooled the hot salt-tear puddles. These unexpected springs cleanse wounds, refreshing the hot and filthy feet. They are a resting place for the weary. Water weaves, wavers, settles. The travellers are arrested by the night sky above them, but no! Below them, all around them—the stars gently throb and quiver. What mythical valley have they entered? Wobbly circles of star-light spread out as far as the horizon, kissing the starry ceiling. How can this be? It is all of the sorrow-pools, echoing back the beauty of the night canopy. Long the pilgrims gaze, their bloodshot, dry eyes drinking in argent rivers of liquid light. Hearts and feet and eyes refreshed, rest comes to the weather-beaten bodies and parched imaginations. Though these wayfarers will weep enough to fill puddles of their own, for now they are given strength to journey on.

Our tears, our sorrows, can somehow heal and refresh others. We might not see them come through the vale behind us, but our tears are not wasted. Always and ever do we go onward, toward Zion. Suddenly, my view of the Psalm dilates again—I see that we are dropping tears into varying pools of all sizes as we press on toward the lights of home. Our tears are not one deep tarn itself—no! Our tears are co-mingled with the saints who have gone on before us to refresh those who follow. Whether to wash and heal them, to inspire them, or to water the fruit trees to feed them. Indeed, the Valley of Weeping is clothed in blessings—the blessings of Beauty, of healing, of satisfying. Our weeping is not in vain, it is a blessing.