Coffee Chat: Spring Has Sprung

Hello dears.   Do come in and join me with coffee.  I haven't a thing sweet to offer to go along but there are biscuits left from breakfast.  Would you like one toasted with butter and spread with jam?  It does seem more fitting to tea perhaps and we've that, too, if you'd prefer.

I looked out across the fields this morning at all the white blooms and the pale tender green of barely there new leaves.    In the long ago old days, when girls wore white dresses it was always pink or blue ribbons tied about their waists.  Why not pale green, do you suppose?  How lovely that should have looked to see pale green against the white, just like spring.   

There's one especially tall white tree on the fence line, swaying gently like a young girl swaying to a quiet strain of music.   I know that hidden in that tall white column of a tree are branches with long cruel thorns and the flowers themselves stink to high heaven.  But against the pale blue of the sky and the soft warming grey of about to burst into leaf trees behind it, the tree is lovely.  And I'll take it's loveliness at face value just now.   One can appreciate beauty even if it is merely a disguise.   The knowledge that it's only skin deep is key though. 

Well the look of spring begun is here, but it's deceptive.  It's been cool this morning, cool enough to warrant the heat coming on several times.  Spring is such a mixture of cruel cold, crueler after the few brief warm days we've had, mixed with a sudden heat that is out of proportion to the morning cold.  Here of late it's been deep frosty mornings and by mid afternoon the AC is kicking on.  No electric savings this time of year with heat in the mornings and AC in the afternoons. 

There is a new season upon us.  I've been feeling it all this year, since the beginning, but it seems foolish to say, "Look a new season cometh..." when there's no sign at all of anything new, just more of the sameness that existed before.   But the season is new and something has shifted.   Not completely in lovely ways.  There's a deep rumbling bitterness underneath much of life at the moment.  One vlogger described it as "The world has gotten meaner..."  and it has, but few  say so.  It becomes political quickly and it becomes divisive immediately.  But it is there, the meanness.  I've seen it myself.

I believe though that hope springs just as fully alive as ever.  I see it in the smiles and hear it in the laughter of those about me.  There's a faith that things are not as bad as they seem nor people quite as nasty as a few are determined to be.   Life is not endlessly harsh  There is still good there to be found.  Perhaps we have to overlook a few more rocks in the path than usual but it's still there.  Great kindness and lovely generosity and people who are uplifting those around them.     That's the sort I want to be.  Not mean and temperamental and bitter but kind and generous and uplifting.  It's a challenge to me to overcome myself at times, and that's truth.  Occasionally I can turn the other cheek and turn again to the other side, too but eventually I have enough and remind others that their snarkiness and negativity is theirs to own and not mine and then I feel better.  Don't we all?  No one said we had to become the doormats for another's muddy shoes.

I'd been off my Bible study and prayer times lately.  I'd noticed it, of course, and I did struggle with myself to get back to it but this week  I sat down for a bit to journal, something else I've neglected.  I don't know if any of you journal but for me, I just write out the problem and then let my thoughts flow and my pen goes along the page and suddenly I'll find I've been writing something worth reading and start taking it in.   So it was this day, as well.  I started with my questioning of why I'd been so distant from God lately, especially after that long dry spell I'd gone through just before December of 2020.

As I wrote, I contemplated all the ways I feed my spirit so to speak and all the things I knew I ought to be doing in order to keep from hitting another spiritual drought.  I found myself writing about the Spiritual Awareness series of sermons our church hosted in January.  I'd had such a deep experience during one of those sessions and I was a bit shocked at myself for not carrying it forward.

I realized with a start that I was spiritually sated since that moment.  That lovely spiritual time in January satisfied something so  deep within me and I've been just drifting along in complete contentment, not seeking a thing, not asking a thing, not doing a thing to maintain this very personal relationship.  Confession time: I tend to be the same with John.   When most content, I do the least to maintain that quality relationship status with him.   It is a great wrong I render him and most certainly to God.  It bespeaks  a deeply selfish nature.  "I'm happy at the moment, so you just go away, I'll call when you're needed."  That's what I mean.

Well that brought me up short on both accounts.  You see, I hadn't recognized that I had been the same with John until I saw that was how I'd been with God.  They are both such deeply intimate relationships.  I've said often enough that my trust in God grew apace with my trust in John. Well so has my love for both grown apace, because the more I trusted the more I loved and the more loved I felt.  I came from a deeply wounded personal and spiritual past into these relationships both with John and with God and it's taken time to reach this state of intimacy.  Unfortunately, what hadn't changed was my former response to being content.   It was good to have my eyes opened and to become aware of something I needed to change.

I picked up the book The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge this past week and finished it before Sunday was over.  This book is one of my two most favorite by Elizabeth Goudge.  The other is The Scent of Water.  All of her books have a deeply spiritual slant and make me really look hard at myself.  Truth told, that deeper awareness of myself revealed in my journaling on Monday no doubt came about because I'd just finished The Rosemary Tree.

The humbleness of the vicar John really spoke to me.  He couldn't see all the good he was doing.  He saw only his failures which he felt were extreme.  I can't say I've ever allowed myself to be quite that humble...but now and then I do become aware that I'm not 'all that' as the young people say and this moment of awareness brought me up short.  It was my personal stumbling block and it was needed.

I've said before that not all stumbling blocks are meant to prevent our passage.  There are some meant to make us stop and take notice of things, to look about for a moment at our surroundings rather than being hell bent on some future task, blinded to the path before us.  There's nothing like stumbling to make you slow down is there?  I'm so glad I was made to stumble!  I needed to become aware of this trait of mine and to work to correct it.

A friend prompted me to examine who I was as a child.  I've often felt I was wrong to join the church at 9 as I did but in looking from this side of life  back at that moment, I think my objection had little to do with my spiritual state as much as it had to do with the grownups about me being so willing to assume I'd had a spiritual experience that led to it.   It wasn't that I didn't believe in God, nor in Jesus.  I did and had for as long as I could ever think back.  But I was irritated by the lack of concern that I'd been manipulated by my grandfather's weeping and stating he was dying (he was but it was a manipulation all the same) and wished to be assured of seeing me again in heaven.   And that moment led me to step away from all faith for a bit and to examine hard all the reasons why I should believe and what it meant to me personally to believe.   Ultimately I came right back around to the same sure belief I'd had always: There is a God and He is.  I've never felt unsure of Him since, only of myself.

After a week of being very busy indeed, we've had a quiet day at home.  It's been awfully nice to enjoy this time just puttering quietly about.  It seems of late I have had an added appreciation for my time spent at home and about 95% of my time is spent right here.  I don't get bored or weary of it very often. I like my home.  I like the business of it and the romance of it and the history of it.  

I think Psalms says it best:

6The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

It's hard to better David, isn't it?

Well it's a short chat, to be sure, but it's time to begin supper so I'd best end.   Do drop by again!