Ordinary Time

Ordinary Time

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In the liturgical calendar, Ordinary Time is when it isn’t Christmas and isn’t Easter. The priest wears simple green vestments. There are no wreaths and no ashes.

It’s also a time of miracles: of water turned to wine; of the blind who see and the lame who walk. Anything but ordinary.

Here at the house, ordinary time began Saturday, when I removed the Christmas wreath and hung up the little basket that serves as a door ornament at less festive times of year.

Ordinary time. Nothing special. But everything wondrous.

Running Stitch

Running Stitch

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In his book The Old Ways, Robert McFarlane talks of ancient chalk roads and of sea lanes. Any path or trail is worthy of his inspection, and what he sees when he looks is informed not just by poetry but by history.

I’ll be writing quite a lot about this book, I know. For now, here’s McFarlane riffing on the etymology of writing and walking:

Our verb ‘to write’ at one point in its history referred specifically to track-making: the Old English writan meant ‘to incise runic letters in stone’; thus one would ‘write’ a line by drawing a sharp point over and into a surface — by harrowing a track.

 As the pen rises from the page between words, so the walker’s feet rise and fall between paces, and as the deer continues to run as it bounds from the earth, and the dolphin continues to swim even as it leaps again and again from the sea, so writing and wayfaring are continuous activities, a running stitch, a persistence of the same seam or stream.

Running stitch: that’s one I won’t forget.

Shut-Down Blackout

Shut-Down Blackout

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I noticed the difference the minute I stepped into the office. People were chatting with neighbors, hanging out. No one seemed in a hurry to get to work. I waved and smiled but moved right to my computer. I have a lot to do today, so I was going to get right to it.

Except … I couldn’t — and can’t.

There’s no power in the office, no internet service. I’m writing this courtesy of my cell phone’s hot spot.

With the partial government shut-down in its second month, with the State of the Union address postponed and a husband and daughter both furloughed, this has a bit of a “are you kidding me?” quality about it.

Maybe the power will be back on again soon. Maybe today’s votes in Congress will shame lawmakers and leaders into working together. Maybe we will all learn to live together in peace and harmony.

I would settle for just one of those, the first one. And that’s good … because I imagine that’s all I’ll get!

To Go Through

To Go Through

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A standing joke in my parents’ house was the phrase “To Go Through” scribbled in marker across the top of a cardboard box. It meant a reprieve for my mother, a postponement of the not-always inevitable; for my dad it meant more clutter.

Mom wasn’t a hoarder, but she never saw a box she couldn’t fill. And she didn’t fill them in an organized way. They were stuffed hurriedly, before a party or the arrival of visitors, and pell-mell, with a jumble of newspapers, junk mail and the occasional treasure — an envelope of photos or handwritten note.

Though Mom did have time in later years to go through some of these boxes, to sort and toss (though never as much of the latter as Dad would have liked), there were still plenty of these “to go through” boxes when she and Dad were both gone.

I went through a few of them last weekend. There were birthday cards, a spool of gold thread, the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader with the banner headline “Clinton Impeached.” There were notebooks and ledgers and an ancient bill from my college infirmary when I had strep throat my senior year.

Did these discoveries “spark joy”? Sometimes. More often, they sparked tears. But after a couple of hours I had winnowed the contents of two boxes into one. I had “gone through.” And that was good enough for me.

Brrrrr!

Brrrrr!

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It was 10 when I woke up this morning, 11 yesterday. A strong west wind has blown in these frigid temperatures and they have settled over the land. They bring with them a brittleness and breathiness that is most unwelcome.

It isn’t difficult to admire winter when a soft snow is falling. But when Arctic air is blowing in your face or down your neck, it’s significantly harder to see the positives.

The birds have tucked themselves away into bushes and brambles. They streak out to the feeder or the suet block then dodge right back in. They need warmth and, even more to the point, they need water.

But water is coming, I read in the forecast. Rising temperatures will take us out of the deep freeze, and rain (what else?!) will greet us on the other side.

It’s the kind of morning that sets my teeth chattering, but what can I do about it? It’s January. The bulbs and buds are sleeping. To everything, a season.

Mary Oliver: An Appreciation

Mary Oliver: An Appreciation

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The poet Mary Oliver died on January 17. She won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry. But it was her prose that I found most marvelous. I discovered it a few years ago, and her book Upstream is beside me now — with such a flurry of Post-it tabs that it looks as if I’ve bookmarked every page.

Oliver writes of the natural world, of shaggy dunes and the blue-black of pond water; of fields and woods “and the possibility of the world salvaged from the lords of profit.” We should teach our children the names of hepatica and sassafras and wintergreen, she says. Why? Because “attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Oliver acknowledges her debts to those who came before, the “immeasurable fund of thoughts and ideas, from writers and thinkers long gone into the ground — and inseparably from those wisdoms because demanded by them, the responsibility to live thoughtfully and intelligently.”

Now Oliver is gone. And yet she is with me now more than ever. I read her often because she is a writer’s writer who whispers — no, shouts — do it, do it now, because if you don’t, you will always be sorry. “The most regretful people on earth,” she writes, “are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

Second Coat

Second Coat

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To live in the mid-Atlantic is to know snow that falls then melts, or is rained out of existence; in other words, snow that seldom lingers. That will happen to us tomorrow—but today, we’re being treated to a rare event: a second snowfall the refreshes the first.

It began late yesterday afternoon. At that point it was mostly just wetting the pavement. But as temperatures dropped overnight, the snow stuck, at least where I live. And now last Sunday’s snow, which was beginning to look old and tired and dirty, has a lovely second coat.

Once again, tree limbs are outlined in the white stuff, each tiny branch made softer and more significant with the addition. Deck rails are padded. Even the air seems filled with snow, though I think it is just fog, posing.

By Monday, I’m told, rains will have washed away all of our pretty snow and Arctic air will scour the landscape. But today it’s soft and white and pretty as a postcard.

Binge-Watching

Binge-Watching

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Yesterday I spoke with a colleague. We discussed the government shutdown and other matters. She wondered aloud why more people aren’t up in arms about what’s happening to our country. I posited an answer: binge watching.

Of the two 20-century dystopian novels most in vogue when I was growing up, Brave New World was most on the money. Not for a moment underestimating 1984‘s Big Brother or the surveillance under which we now live, I think our peril lies in our pleasures, in our need for entertainment.

Enter binge-watching. In the last week, as my body has been trudging through January 2019, my mind and heart are lodged in Victorian England as I binge-watch the PBS series “Victoria.”  It’s a relatively innocent pleasure as pleasures go—and don’t get me wrong: I love it! But  I’ve noticed it makes me care a little less about present-day reality.

Binge-watching a show is addictive. I’m absorbed in my show just as the denizens of Brave New World were absorbed by their walls. All I need now is a little soma.

(Photo: Courtesy PBS)

Morning Workout

Morning Workout

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An elliptical in the basement creates a delicious quandary. When I have 20 extra minutes in the morning, do I read, write …. or work out?

Some days the answer is driven purely by my need for tea. If it’s severe, I settle in on the couch with my laptop and this blank screen in front of me. Tea and blog-writing go together beautifully.

But on days when the muscles feel limber enough to jump on the machine right away, well, then that is what I do. The blog-writing and tea drinking just have to wait.

Such was the situation this morning, which means I’m cranking out a post 10 minutes before a meeting—and there’s no tea in sight.

Such are the perils of affluence.

Gimme Shelter

Gimme Shelter

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As the snow fell Sunday I glanced out the window to see a little bird fluttering in the azalea bush behind the house. I didn’t see it clearly enough to note the type, but it was probably one of the many flooding the feeder these days, a chickadee or junco. (Look closely at the opening center left and you’ll see its little head and eye.)

What a small, quivering thing it was, preening and rustling in the brush. Seeing it there made me remember fairy stories about animal homes in thickets or under ground and how as a child I could imagine nothing more exciting than exploring tucked-away places like that.

Now I consider the goal that all living things have, which is survival, and how difficult it can be this time of year. There I stood in the warmth of my house, with its insulation and forced air heat and hot water flowing from the tap.

Yes, a part of me wants to beat in the breast of that bird, to be part of the living landscape. But I know enough of cold and ice to appreciate the comforts I have, the comforts I share with other creatures, as a matter of fact, including … two birds.