Overgrown Paths

Today, this perfect, brilliant, tender October day, I answered the call to the quiet and solitude. How many months have passed since I knew the beckoning and abandoned the lists and let the sweet invitation draw me to the shady stillness.

Because it has been so long, I had to push through the resistance. Summer's grasses had overgrown the path. Across the pond the new dog stood his ground with raucous indignation against the intruder in my own sacred space so long unvisited. Over my head sulked enormous black birds angling for what had become their trees, sending gusts of disapproval downward as they moved on. I felt the light fingers of an unfamiliar fear brush my senses as I made my way toward what had long been my most cherished holy place. I understood that in my absence, the sacredness was left untended and had grown thin.

So gripping my large stick with resolve, informing all barkers, whisperers, twig snappers, and flappers that I was not to be deterred, I pressed on to my piece of earth beside the dark pools and whispering waterfalls at the joining of the forest streams, cleared a fresh piece of earth, spread my dear blue and gold Kenyan cloth, settled myself between the murmuring waters with all the gentle beeches holding their faithful reverent vigil, and knew that I was Home. Home to the stillness where time cannot chatter, where other voices are hushed, where I could renew this shelter of mine in the shadow of the Almighty, in the refuge of His great wings, in the solemn and strong serenity of His tender ways.

Oh it has been too long. What patience, what longsuffering, in this Maker who yearns for our thoughts and our hearts. What treasure He has been holding close to whisper to my now quiet soul. He is ever present, ever faithful in the din and the press, but to come aside is to know that here is my heart's home, my abiding place, and His; here where the tiny brown wren flits soundlessly around me from one twig to another in wordless camaraderie, here I may come without gifts, without words, and simply rest in the oh so kind shadow of the Almighty. And here today I know and am known, and I am refreshed.

"When Skies are Low and Days are Dark"*

                                                                                                                              *opening line from a poem by that name, N.M. Bodecker, c.1938

Today is another gray day. Oh how heartily and instinctively we can dislike gray days! The skies are low, the day is dark, and whatever shiny momentum we knew the day before in life or in our souls seems to be suddenly relegated to dreariness and drabness. We thought spring was here—the calendar itself declared it just yesterday—but today all of nature seems to be left standing still, going nowhere.

But on this gray day, I am remembering how astonished I was by my sister's boyfriend many years ago, who with great pride and nostalgia led us trekking all over his grandmother's spacious Illinois farm overlooking the Mississippi on a dreary November day, when he stopped and exclaimed with uncharacteristic fervor, “These are my favorite kind of days!” Those words ignited a sense of intrigue within, a quest to understand what could ever make him think and feel such abnormal sentiments when he seemed otherwise so normal a human being.

And now by the cozy fire, warm in my dove-gray soft-as-down cashmere sweater, I am remembering one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite friends in the world, Susan Reese.

For a long time I have wanted to somehow share these musings of hers, and for many years I have pondered stillness and those moments in time when it feels like all of nature is quiet, holding its breath, waiting for something. Today is the day for all of these.

First the poem...to be read slowly...

A Poem About Gray, For Amelia Who Looks Twice

Pearl gray mist that robes the early valleys

Intensifies the golden ray of sun.

The rough-edged sides of stony garden fences

Brightens the red of roses that over run.

At first glance gray seems only just a setting,

A tarnished ring that flaunts a showy gem;

But gray's an invitation to peer closer,

Beckoning to treasures held within.

Blue surf dancing lightly in the sunlight

Belies the potent power of the sea,

But darker slate-gray swells beneath a storm cloud

Give truer account of the unyielding deep.

The tweedy sweater flecked with shades of oyster

Spins a tale of sheep on hilly farms,

Whose Maker thought of me in chilling weather

And preordained these warm enfolding arms.

Wisps of night time fog that cloak my pathway,

The age old might of massive glacial ice,

The steely ore that hides in rocky hillsides

Are laden mines for those who will look twice.

All nature is a summoning to seekers

To step into the grand estates of God,

But gray calls to an inner chamber,

A secret vault of things obscure and odd.

A quietly enthralling hidden parlor

Reserved for those whose glance becomes a gaze,

Who peer into what others bypass heedless,

Esteeming wealth humility portrays,

Childlike delight in downy gosling

Or wonder at the silver dewy web,

The Ancient Lord of Colors proclaims wisdom

By silver glory-crown laid on man's head.

**********

“Gray's an invitation to peer closer, beckoning to treasures held within.”

I have taken that invitation, especially recently with more than the usual allotment of gray here in what would normally be the glorious symphony of spring, and I am seeing that gray is a space-holder, a between, a place of transition. It is the noiseless fading away of color that occurs between day and night, between night and day, between sun and rain, between blue skies and snowy wonder. There is a stillness in that space, a holding the breath, a waiting for the change to be manifested. Gray weather points us to something to come. It is expectant, pregnant, foretelling.

There is an uncomfortable truthfulness about gray. Gray days, long uneventful seasons, heavy low skies, do these not test our hearts and expose our vulnerable places? Gray days divide between soul and spirit, expose the doubt, the fatigue, the weak links in the chain of our resolve, the “flesh”. The duress of gray, of extended dreariness can be harnessed to do a deep work. “And the seed in the good soil, these are the ones who have heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance.” “To him who overcomes...” “And we shall reap in due season--if we faint not”! Gray deeply assays my “long obedience in the same direction”, bringing to the surface the strength and integrity of my reliance on the Spirit, the depth of my abiding in the unseen, and takes on the gleam of silver as a training ground for my soul.

What about the humility of gray? It is a color that excels most in setting off the beauty of something else, something other than itself, as the “rough-edged sides of stony garden fences

Brightens the red of roses that over run”. Perhaps that is another reason why I am intrigued by it. I have long yearned for a life that aligns and breathes with the Christ described by the marveling apostle in Philippians 2, in words that so poignantly describe one who stood aside, cloaked Himself in absolute unremarkableness, such that there was nothing physically outstanding about Him, nothing that would distract our less noble motives, to keep us from the ultimate mission of His life, to make His Father shine, and to unite us with our Father. He set Himself aside even “to the point of death” for the sake of His Father. Gray, existing to make something else come into its greatest potential.

As the years go by and our senses are taught by the passing of time, we distinguish when the gray forebodes thunder and galestorms and bolts of sky fire, or when the gray is silvery, quickening, anticipating the dawn, or the twilight's first appearance of the stars; when it is holy, waiting, hushed, sabbath-like as even the birds and the forest creatures partake of the reverence; when it is the hush of gray that will give way to a softly imminent and pure snowfall. Is it the kind of gray that calls for replenishing the wood pile and the inventory of tea and good books, or the sort of gray that invites me to woodland paths to drink deep of the stillness, because “the Lord is in His holy temple, and all the earth keeps silence before Him”?

Could it be that gray days with low skies are a call to turn inward, to mute the noise of our daily activity, to adjust our pace just a bit, to quiet our senses, to listen?

Lord, teach our eyes to look twice, three times. Quicken our innermost being to Your timing, Your rest, the measure of Your pace in the yoke You invite us to share with you. Tune our hearts to listen well, to ponder, to wonder, and to know You with awe in the stillness.