October is filled with celebrations and challenges. In New England, the season is a glorious in-between time: summer's verdant bounty gradually morphs into autumn's cornucopia of colors, enshrouding our hills and valleys in shades of orange, crimson, gold, silver, and mocha. In time, however, this gentle display gives way to the stark, barren greys of November, reminding us that the cycle of life always includes death. It's not the only truth, of course, but it cannot be denied.
That fact has been swimming around my head and heart a lot this October. Yesterday, my back and hip ached with unusual vigor after I moved a massive downed cherry-tree branch from the front yard. While sorting through my vinyl record album collection for a few treasures from the year our oldest daughter was born, a wave of quiet melancholia washed over me and stayed with me in my dreams. No doubt, the recent deaths of two of my peers - one from my first church in Saginaw and the other a Vietnam Vet who served as the custodian of my church in Pittsfield - are pieces of the puzzle, as are the passing of both Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard. Small wonder my Celtic ancestors sensed this season to be a liminal one wherein the unseen mysteries beyond our sight draws closer to us with a whisper of transcendence. St. Paul was not kidding when he told us, in "We see by faith, not by sight." And October seems to heighten this reality for me.
It began with our grandson's 13th birthday. I couldn't help but note that in another tradition he would've been preparing to become an adult member of the tribe. Sadly, authentic rites of passage for both men and women are in short supply in our culture, and we are collectively the poorer for it. His parents have done an outstanding job connecting him to the creative arts, as well as to moral integrity and compassion. No doubt that's why I see this brave little boy came into being on the Feast Day of St. Francis, incarnating aspects of that tender, artistic, nonconformist saint whenever he visits. Add to the mix my precious brother's 71st birthday earlier this week and the celebration of our oldest daughter becoming a quinquagenarian this weekend, and before you can sing "soul cake," the arrival of All Hallows' Eve and All Souls' and Saints' Day takes on a renewed significance.
So, as I sit with a growing awareness of my own mortality, a few clarifying gifts have popped up. One concerns the way God’s grace gives shape and form to my life. Author and Prioress of the Abbey of the Arts, Christine Valters Paintner, creatively links our awareness of God’s call to both the path of pilgrimage adopted by the ancient Celtic monks and the wisdom expressed in William Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is.” She suggests that recognizing, observing, and then following the thin strand of synchronicity woven into our days is how we live with sacred fidelity. Stafford's poem is so precise:
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
Another gift I'm honoring these days relates to what Kate Bowler calls the blessing of appropriate smallness. In her Substack column, she writes:
When there is a temptation to feel everything as enormous; when every election is described as THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL of our lifetime; when very headline feels urgent or outrageous; and very disagreement starts to seem like evidence of someone’s entire moral character. We begin to imagine that faithfulness must also be enormous. But my friend Jeff Chu 朱天慧 has a phrase I keep returning to: appropriate smallness. Jeff volunteered on a working farm while he was in seminary. While the world constantly tells us to be bigger, more successful, more influential, more effective, he tended compost piles and paid attention to the slow, ordinary work of growing things. Jeff discovered the beauty of being appropriately small. Of recognizing what we can control, what we cannot, and what we must surrender. Smallness is not the same thing as insignificance. And it doesn’t mean we stop participating.
And Christa at Soul Play Canada suggested something similar:
I recently came across a Japanese philosophy called “Nagori”, that has got me thinking (and feeling!) Head straight to this article to learn all about it. "Nagori, literally translated, means “remains” or “traces,” and carries with it a particular feeling associated with a juicy gratitude and full melancholy when saying goodbye to something good and meaningful.
It is most often associated with the appreciation of the turning seasons in the natural world but can be connected to anything:
The last song at a wedding - the last sleep in your childhood house -watching your child go off to their first or last day of school - the last bite of a sweet summer peach. It’s a recognition that there is joy to be found as things depart and fade. It’s a deep knowing that there is sweetness in some goodbyes, and an invitation to embrace the true impermanence of it all. "Unlike the eager anticipation of a new beginning, nagori focuses on savoring the remnants of what is fading, whether it’s the last cherry blossoms clinging to their branches or the final taste of a summer fruit.”
She concludes with a spiritual practice I've stumbled upon in these later years, too: the value of looking and listening carefully to life's small things. Looking, lingering, and loving them. That's what I did last night with the record albums that will become part of our daughter's upcoming birthday presents. That's what I am trying to do by sharing gentle touch with "Bandit," our new/old rescue dog. Or with the challenges of Di's health. Or with the stories some of the seniors in my congregation share with me while racked with bodily pain. It's an upside-down way of being, the opposite of anticipation that's more like savoring without control. Or judgment. It is sitting as a human be-ing not a human do-ing.
This, too, is a gift that age offers. St. John points to it at the close of his gospel, where Jesus tells Peter: "When you were young, you went where you wanted. But now that you are older, another will gird your loins and lead you into those places you do NOT want to go." A humble blessing for the second half of life, yes? And now it's time to finish washing the kitchen floor, vacuuming for our Brooklyn loved ones, and installing a new doggie gate to create some boundaries for our new four legged. Liminal time, indeed.
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