We are back but irrevocably changed.
"Shaken off our social foundations by a global calamity, an invisible virus we could not see coming, we each found ourselves at the end of certainty and the beginning of faith," writes Joan Chittister in The Monastic Heart. "But where can we start to become what we know, down deep, ourselves to be -- spiritual seekers in search of a way through a serious period, an astounding eruption of normalcy in our lives?"
Climbing the well-worn stairs of the front porch to the accompaniment of birdsong, I insert the key into the lock of the old wooden door, and enter into a new season, unlike any other. Overhead, seagulls circle, and the red maple is about to explode into leaf.
The summer house is asleep, but now it yawns and stirs. It's time to throw open the windows and clear the cobwebs. Listen and you can hear the siren's call, the ancient song of the sea, waves crashing in cadence to the Master's beat.
This is the place where
the stuff of childhood and contemporary life intersect. It is forever
springtime in childish musings, yet altered by the last two winters of our
discontent.
There is much work to
do. Sprinkled like flour, a thin layer of dust blankets every surface. Pushing
up the old windows and sliding them into worn slots takes a great show of strength.
The freezer door is stuck and needs defrosting. A kitchen towel drawer is dotted
with mouse droppings. As the well begins to pump, water circulates like blood
through veins. Opening the kitchen faucet, brownish water pulses for five
minutes straight, before it clears.
Lying dormant, the
summer house has waited patiently for the sound of children playing, the whirr
of the lawnmower, the hum of the refrigerator, the play by play of a Red Sox
game, and most of all, the gathering of family and friends filling every nook
and cranny of the place with laughter.
But right now I alone herald
this new and unknown season. I sit in my favorite chair and ponder the future
while acknowledging the uncertainty of a return to life as we know it.
Ultimately, we are spiritual
seekers traveling on the road of life. We lift our burdens, and despite
stumbling, we amble on…
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| Daffodils dance in the wind along the stone wall. |
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| Red maple buds are ready to burst into leaf. |
