by jphilo | May 16, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Spring has sprung. After months of waiting for its arrival, life is rushing by so quickly, there’s hardly been time to smell the lilacs. But if I learned anything in May of 2008, it is to slow down and enjoy the fleeting beauty of flowers. Life is to be fully lived, for as this post shows, death is ever with us.
Today, I’ll Smell the Lilacs
On Sunday, the swiftness of death and the uncertainty of life touched me twice. Mom called after lunch with the news of her brother’s death. His son had called Saturday and said Ralph was failing. “Within a week,” he said. We thought we had a few days.
But Ralph didn’t mess around. He died like he lived – fast and full-steam ahead. The swiftness of his passing surprised but didn’t shock us. After all, he was in his late eighties and had lived a good life. Once we received funeral details, we crowded a trip to Minnesota into the upcoming week’s plans and moved on.
In the evening, my husband and I helped at a graduation party for our friends’ daughter. During the festivities, word came that a tornado had destroyed a high school in Parkersburg, where the uncle and aunt of the graduate teach. Next we heard seven people had died in the storm. Then word spread that some of the deaths occurred at graduation parties. No one said the words, but we read them in one another’s eyes. It could have been here. It could have been us.
This morning I walked down our road. The grass glittered, washed clean by gentle rain in the night. The birds sang. The trees swayed gently in the breeze. The first iris bloomed in the ditch. The lilac branches drooped under the weight of blossoms at the height of beauty. Tomorrow, they’ll begin to fade. If the wind comes up, they’ll be gone.
I did the only thing I could in the face of the fading beauty of this life and the swiftness of death to come. Today, I smelled the lilacs.
by jphilo | May 10, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
The wind’s been so blustery lately, I’ve been taking the more sheltered walk down by the bridge and through our neighbor’s woods. With the redbuds blooming, the trees leafing out, and the birds singing each morning’s jaunt is a walk through a fairyland. This post from May 6, 2009 is as close as I’ve gotten to expressing my spring thoughts in words. See what you think.
Further Up and Further In
The redbuds in our neighbor’s ravine are blooming. Few things compare to the sight of the small trees. Some are barely visible above the underbrush. The still bare branches of the hardwoods – black walnuts, elms, maple and locust – hover over the little trees like anxious parents waiting for their children to perform their spring recital pieces.
The redbuds performing beautifully every spring. When I descend the hill into the ravine, they catch my eye and draw it north across the bridge, into the greening woods. The vivid pink-purple of the near trees take my breath away, and I stand transfixed. But beyond them, ten or twenty feet another cluster of trees blooms. A short way beyond that cluster is another, and beyond it, another. On and on they go until the colors blur and meld in the far end of the ravine.
While I look beyond the bridge, a quote from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series comes to mind. In the last book, when the children get to heaven (oops – I gave away the ending), they rushing up a mountain with their Narnian friends, shouting, “Further up and further in!” They reach the top of the mountain and look out over a great valley. At the end of their vision is another mountain range. “Further up and further in!” they shout, and run to explore the new vista. And when they have scaled that taller, grander mountain, a more beautiful valley awaits, and in the distance, a more spectacular mountain range.
For eternity, they explore the unending wonders of heaven and the eternal God who created it. For one week, I relish the redbuds. Then the blossoms fade and the new leaves of the shade trees overshadow them. But while they last, my heart shouts, “Further up and further in!” when the haze of pink and purple catches my eye. Heaven, I think, will look a lot like
my neighbor’s ravine during redbud week.
I can’t wait to get there.
Further up and further in!
Further up and further in!
Further up and further in!
by jphilo | Apr 26, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Me, my family, my friends, my enemies, and total strangers all agree on one thing. This April has been a nasty one – the coldest, wettest, cloudiest, and grimmest month in living memory.
The problem is, we have very short memories.
A quick look at my April posts for the past three years reveals an embarrassing trend. Me, my family, my friends, my enemies, and total strangers agree that every April is the nastiest, coldest, wettest, cloudiest, and grimmest in living memory. To prove the point, here’s a post from April 30, 2008.
Guess we can be glad it’s almost May!’
Brrrr – Recycled
The weather reports are full of frost warnings for tonight, one day after the average last frost date for our part of the state. But I’m not complaining. No, no, no, definitely not. Never. Not me. No way.
But I’m feeling so sorry for the two poor deer who wandered across our lawn this morning. Cold, shivering little creatures, longing for spring was written all over their frozen faces. I felt so sorry for them I almost cried. But I regained control and grabbed my camera so I could take a picture of their tundra-weary faces through the picture window in the living room.
Maybe you won’t believe this, but I’m even feeling a little sorry for the asparagus. A whole passel of stalks emerged over the weekend, and they could get their tender tips nipped but good tonight. What a loss.
My greatest concern is for the magnolia. This morning I asked Hiram if we could cover the bush tonight and save the blossoms, which have been on hold for the better part of a week now, waiting to for one warm day in a row. He looked at me with his what-was-I-thinking-when-I-asked-her-to-marry-me look and said, “There’s no way to cover a tree.”
In my mind, the whole issue boils down to a matter of semantics. If he would call it a bush, there would be no problem covering it. If he insists on calling it a tree we’ve got problems. And since he’s the one who has to climb the ladder, me being quite afraid of heights, to cover the top of the bush, we’ve got problems.
There’s the frozen venison on the lawn, the asparagus shivering in its little green boots, semantic squabbles threatening our marriage, and my fear of heights which has rendered me unable to save any magnolia blossoms taller than me.
Good thing I’m not complaining about the weather today. I’ve got enough problems the way it is.
by jphilo | Apr 12, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Talk to people about this winter’s weather, and they say it’s been a long one, a hard one, with a March that clung to the cold with chilly, determined fingers. Around here, we’re all feeling long suffering, put upon, quite saintlike, really. We agree that never, never, never has a winter lasted so far into spring.
Apparently, we have short memories as this post from April 8, 2009 shows. A day earlier, seven inches of wet, heavy snow fell. Good thing I blogged about it, because the memory is completely gone. As the post below shows, this spring’s weather (minus the Mapleton tornado and egg-sized hail in NW Iowa) has been pretty much par for the course.
Sunshine Song
Thirty-two degrees and a slight breeze makes for a chilly morning, so I waited to walk until the sun was bright enough warm my back and seriously damage the remaining snow cover and, hopefully, warm my back. This April day I look ready for Christmas, stuffed into my down-filled coat, a scarf tied around my neck and over my hat, thick gloves covering my hands.
The sun is April strong, but this morning I doubted it’s power until a cardinal’s song lifted my eyes from the cold road beneath my feet. I searched the treetops and found him perched near the top of a neighbor’s tall tree, on the crest of the hill. Sunlight bounced off the small bird’s feathers, and he glowed, dazzling bright against the spring sky.
The little bird sang, oblivious of the cold, warmly dressed in his down-filled coat and pointy feathered hat. Had he been singing since sunrise? Or did he wait until he could serenade the pitiable, earthbound humans walking on his road? Whatever his reason for being there, the glow of his feathers against the intense blue sky and the buds swelling on the branches gave me what I needed – beauty beyond description and patience to wait for the warmer days ahead.
by jphilo | Mar 29, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Since the end of spring break, our weather had been a pretty convincing reprisal of winter – cold, wind, snow, and sleet. You name it. We’ve had it. Longer days are the only evidence that this is late March and not February. Today’s post from a year ago is a reminder that spring is coming and that we’re not the only critters looking forward to it’s arrival.
Crawdad Worship
Thankfully, a few days of warm weather made short work of our snow cover earlier this month. As the snow piles shrank, huge puddles formed around storm sewers. Many of them were plugged with debris carried by the flowing water.
All that water made me wish for duck feet or a canoe during my morning walks. But I wasn’t the only critter trying to keep my feet dry while winter gave way to spring. One Sunday morning, when I skirted a storm sewer puddle, a stubby chunk of bark beside the puddle waved at me. I blinked, then bent to examine the talented bit of driftwood.
It wasn’t driftwood. It was a crawdad, with vicious claws clacking and slender antenna quivering in the sunshine. I pulled out my camera and took picture after picture of this first confirmation that spring was here to stay. When Crawdaddy curved his bony back and stretched toward the morning light, looking positively pentecostal, I wanted to raise my arms and dance along with my newfound friend.
I didn’t because worry pinned my hands at my sides. What if someone saw me dancing with a crawdad, my warm weather antenna quivering, my mind temporarily unhinged by the promise of spring? My respectable reputation would be tarnished, and that just wouldn’t do.
But now, whenever the sun warms my back or streams in my kitchen window or dissolves another snowbank, I think about my could-have-been dance partner. I wonder when the pure delight of worshipping the Creator of spring be more important to me than the impression I make upon others? When will the presence of the Son be my perfect satisfaction?
I picture Crawdaddy, his arms raised, his threadlike antenna quivering. He’s worshipping his sun with abandon. Why am I afraid to let go and freely worship mine?
by jphilo | Mar 15, 2011 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Both the cardinals and Daylight Savings Time have returned as they do each spring. And this post from March 16, 2009 is a hopeful reminder that just like the cardinals serenading our gravel road, I can sing.
I Can Sing – Recycled
This morning, I checked the forecast: sunny and highs in the sixties. Bright and early, not wanting to miss a minute of such optimistic weather, I strapped on my camera and lugged the tripod on my walk, determined to photograph the cardinals I’d seen and heard everywhere the day before.
The dawn was grey at first, the sun not even visible. Twenty minutes later, when the sun finally woke up and showed itself, the tripod had worn out it’s welcome, and the camera was a lead weight. Apparently the cardinals are still adjusting to Daylight Savings Time, because it was another twenty minutes before they woke up.
By then I’d wrestled with the tripod and camera twice – once to photograph a red-headed woodpecker on a telephone pole, and again to capture some wrens setting up housekeeping in a bluebird house up the road a ways. Finally, outside my kitchen door at the end of my walk, a cardinal began singing from the top of our neighbor’s giant spruce.
The tripod, now an experienced traveler, waited patiently while I mounted the camera and started snapping.
One bright red bird, small but able to fill the enormous blue sky with song, reminded me of the tasks on my to do lists this week. I am too small to complete them. They are too elusive for me to capture. But they are the song I’ve been given by the Creator of birds and sky.
In His hand, I can sing.
