In the season of waiting....

 

        There was a time when it all seemed so right. Don't we hold dearly to some shred of those hopes, even now? It is the season.

      Jim, with the drum, gone at 27. John, with the camera, gone at 33. Even still they wait with me, through another season of anticipation and watching and the seemingly eternal passion of yearning. Those days on Muncie's South Ebright and Ft Wayne's Rose Lane, Colson Drive, or the cold drafty year in the old farmhouse in Cumberland and the "new" house on Lawnhaven visit again, Christmas ghosts, like snow around the foggy lamp post. 

     With so many of others we've learned to invite losses and disappointments to our hearth. It's a good thing, to remember, to reflect, better even, sometimes, with tears. I think it all gets framed up somehow in a hall of time. We deck the halls, with joys of the past. We sip melancholy, we wade into time, and smile at old dreams. 

    We get to an age when those missing from our table, or those who are slowly departing somehow fill us with feeling, a muted trumpet, crying. The young fill us with cheer and kindle our aging imaginations.

    Those who celebrate this as a holy season lean into the circular, recurring nature of it all. More than catharsis, it is like the birth we celebrate. This season is a cosmic in-breaking, a moment poignant, which scatters. Past, present, future fuse, and then go again to their own places in the unconditional, the unending, that beyond the names we give it.

    We wait, all of us, for a spark, that moment when everything truly is right. Out of it, we come away, again, with another shred of hope, held dearly. It gets us by. 

    I live on a ridge along the Santa Lucia mountains, a coastal range that nestles our village between the rocky bluffs of the Pacific. There's a lot of space and few people so it's easy to give over to my interest to see what's up with Mother Nature in this time of winter fallow. I went for a drive.

On grazing slopes, new members of herds. Rain season has just begun so green is still to come. Furrows are laid, so plans are underway. The vines await

    The tidal currents keep their solstice approaching rhythm.

    The week before Christmas and it seems even the land is waiting.

This is the western edge of the US. As I look east we face culture shift and political uncertainty. It is a time for vigilance. 

This season heralds a better way. Goodwill, Joy and Peace will benefit all. We wish those for you, all that your heart can hold. 

See you down the trail.