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.
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