Evening Quiet

One night this week I took a walk with my dog in the moonlight. Heading down the hill, the three-quarter moon framed by the trees bordering the road shone ahead through the clouds in the east. There is nothing like the moon and the clouds as the clouds alternately veil and reveal the moon. Beautiful, mystical, haunting. I strolled down the road enjoying the moon and clouds, the warm fall evening, the quiet and peace. My moon shadow and Romeo’s accompanied us back up the hill.

I had another evening like this the earlier in the week. After dropping my daughter off at her dance classes in Lewisburg, I drove to the library to pass the two hours, but didn’t feel like facing the large space and florescent lights; I felt like something quieter, more solitary, natural. So I went to the park on Fairground Road and sat in my car in the twilight watching the mallards and other ducks who live there and listening to quiet jazz on the public radio station. I just sat and observed the ducks waddling back and forth, quacking at one another, flying to and from the creek, wading in the rain puddles in the parking lot.

I was amused to see the ducks walk among the flock, quacking at one another. Were they greeting friends, scolding foes, remarking on the events of the day? Do ducks have duck friends? Do they spend their time with the same ducks all the time or just randomly group and regroup in the flock? One duck stood and groomed himself, running his smooth orange bill over and over his smooth gray chest, rubbing his smooth green head over and over his smooth brown back. He looked well-groomed to me but apparently he didn’t think so as he did this repeatedly. I've never taken time to watch a duck at his grooming ritual before.

I took a walk around the little park, noticing how the ponds and stream shone in the twilight reflecting the trees and evening clouds. Perhaps the reflection was how the heron who flew in spotted the place he would spend this night.

Gradually the ducks slowed down for the night as the light faded. One and then another would settle to the ground, and though it was hard to see distinctly in the light, some appeared to turn their heads over their backs and tuck them under their wings. Occasionally a few late evening ducks would saunter into a group of settled ducks, quacking and disturbing them so some of them too would stand up and join in. Eventually they all settled down again and grew quiet.

What a peaceful, refreshing way to spend the evening, being with the ducks as the day came to an end.

Wind and Roots

I haven't posted in quite a while. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with a blog. Sometimes I think I should keep the posts really short, change the name and jazz up the background a bit so it will appeal to people like my younger daughter who says my posts are too long and hasn't read any of them. Somehow I want the blog to express me, but I'm a person who has many facets and different ones show at different times, so to really express myself, my blog would always be changing! So far this blog has had two names and I don't like either of them but don't have any better ones waiting in the wings... (I'm open to suggestions!)

I have been thinking that I want to try posting more frequently. A friend told me I should post my poetry, and since I was inspired during mass today to write a poem that describes how I feel lately, I thought I'd post that.

I am a tree tossed about by the wind

my branches whipping

my leaves torn away

I bend and swoop with each gust

back and forth

frenzy and agitation.

Yet I am rooted firmly in soil

where I cannot see

strong earthy anchoring me

Bending, yielding, yet not breaking

or moving from my earthy fastness.

Tempests blow me about

rattling, shaking my limbs

bowing my trunk

but my roots are invisibly, firmly gripped

by soil embracing and homing me.

Cat's Light

I love twilight. It's my favorite time of day. I sat on my bed tonight observing the sun go down behind Montour Ridge in the southwest and the sky gradually darken from sky blue with gray and white clouds to the deep rich dark blue of twilight. I love the bare trees silhouetted against the clouds of the late afternoon sky and then against the twilight sky. I remember summer nights sitting on the back porch of our house in Hartford during the twilight. Watching the flock of pigeons someone had circling the block, their wings catching the last of the sunlight that day. The quiet and calm of that block in the midst of the city--gardens and grapevines and clotheslines and rose bushes and the beagles next door. So much nature in the midst of the city. The cat from next door I called Friend because she was so friendly and visited quite often. We were pregnant at the same time and I felt a kinship with her. She even brought her kittens visiting a few times.

And later afternoons in our house in Turbotville, walking down the road to see a view of the sun just disappearing over the hills to the west. Watching the sun actually getting smaller as the hills gradually hide it. Catching that moment when there is just a dot of light, then suddenly it's gone. Here on Montour Ridge, we watch the sun set through gaps in the trees, so we don't get a gorgeous sunset unless we are driving home through the fields below to the North--there we have spectacular views of the fields and distant hills topped by the western sky. Sometimes I stop to catch that moment when the sun winks out.

And here, at home on the Ridge, sitting on the back stoop; don't do that as often as I did in Hartford in the days before children, but I do it sometimes and I do often sit in my room and watch the sky at this time. I remember one night early in our days here being outside by the apples trees at twilight with the cats roaming around outside--cat's light, the twilight is called and it's appropriate. It's such a peaceful time of day. A time to turn on the lights of home and pause for a breath. The work of the day is winding down and that makes life more peaceful.

(I'm updating the look of my blog--still trying to find a good photo for the title.)

Just Me

I don't do heroics
I don't aspire to sainthood
of the canonical kind
Martyrdom, extreme suffering
are not for me
It's not that I don't love you, Lord
I'm just not cut of the same cloth
as St. Teresa or John of the Cross
I just want to be faithful
in everyday matters
Become more kind and more generous
little by little
day by day

No fasts of heroic proportions
No levitations or miracles
No millions saved or thousands fed
Just to become more
patient with my kids
less critical of my husband
more thankful and prayerful
Is enough for me

I don't want to be great, Lord
I just want to be
who You made me to be
Please don't expect
big things of me
Detachment and sacrifice are scary words
I just want to love better
the people in my life
I just want to appreciate
the gifts You give
To be awed at
Your love and creativity
I just want to live
present and peaceful
with what is before me
I just want to be a better me
'cause You made me and love me
and are always with me
And especially I never want to forget that
but live with awareness of Your
constant companionship

I want to be little and obscure
content with the roles I'm in
faithful to the tasks at hand
true to the relationships I'm in
open to You

Just me
I just want to be me
with You
Not the old me
the false me of sin
but me cleansed and free
The me You envisioned
when the world began
when You endured the cross
when You look at me now
Just me

Vocation

I read this morning that just like God made each flower with it’s own ‘personality’–shape, color, texture, habitat–He made each of us unique yet doesn’t want us to stand alone. He wants to place us with others to create a stunning ‘bouquet.’ So the question came to me, where do I fit? What am I called to do with my life and where? I think this question of vocation is one that many struggle with.

Perhaps my views of vocation are mistaken, leading me to miss my true vocation and the fact that I am already walking in it. I tend to think of vocation as one specific thing I will be called to do for the rest of my life, or at least for a long period. I tend to see it as an exterior ministry to others that I am fulfilling. I tend to see it as something I discover God has gifted me for and that in doing I find fulfillment and joy. But when I look at Jesus’ earthly life, I’m not sure I see this pattern.

Jesus spent most of his thirty years of his life in obscurity in His hometown of Nazareth working at a carpenter’s trade. Was this His vocation? Then he wandered around preaching, healing and being with his followers for nearly three years. Was that His vocation? His greatest achievement in terms of impact was His death and resurrection setting us free from sin and death. Was that His vocation? Or were they all His vocations for those specific periods of His life? At one point He said his food was to do the will of God (John 4:34). Another time He said, “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does likewise.” Did Jesus think about vocation or did He just listen to God and follow the Spirit? And did He find joy in it or great sorrow, or a mixture of both? Several times He expressed exasperation with His disciples for their cluelessness. Neither did He find joy in every aspect of His ministry, though He did have expectations of future joy: “...for the joy that was set before Him [He] endured the cross,” And the most important question I can ponder is whether vocation something I am called to do or someone I am called to be. Jesus was the Beloved Son of God. Is His life defined by what He did or by who He was which was expressed in what He did?

As Catherine Doherty looking back on her life in her 77th year she realized that, though this activity and that activity she tried eventually failed, all the time she was walking in her true vocation which was really an interior one. In leaving her native Russia after the Revolution and coming as a refugee to Canada, living in a foreign land, speaking a foreign language, learning foreign ways, she was living her true vocation of being a poustinik, a desert dweller, a vocation of solitude, silence and prayer, a vocation of loneliness and sharing in the loneliness of God. She lived out this vocation in various places and various stages of her life. She didn’t even realize she was living it for she thought she was always seeking it. In seeking to follow God, to do His will, she was unknowingly living her vocation, being and becoming who God designed her to be, fitting into the bouquet of His body through her ministry of prayer, teaching and identifying with the poor as God led her.

I imagine I’ll keep stumbling over the question of vocation because I do so every so often. But when I do, God usually reminds me that in living in relationship with Him, in seeking to do His will, in allowing who He made me to be to blossom, I will walk in my calling contributing my uniqueness to His bouquet, perhaps without really knowing it.

July 14, 2009