A time for every season

  

 

 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…

Daffodils dance in the wind along the stone wall.

Red maple buds are ready to burst into leaf.