Dear Blog Reader;
I hope this blog finds you doing well. I am pretty well.
Things have definitely shifted. While we had a near frost experience on
September 22, two weeks of autumnal tilt away from the sun has settled the
issue for this year. Last Sunday night we had a freeze. I don’t know if my
weatherman knew that he was doing this, but he mentioned that it was the
coldest day of the year since April 12. That was salt in the wounds of we local
apple and cider lovers. April 12 is the day that sealed our apple a day fates. The
tougher plants will still do some growing. In fact, all of my greens, carrots
and beets are still growing just fine. I hope to get some row cover in
operation and have good greens through Thanksgiving. I still have to plant my
garlic for next year. It is all over for the weaker cousins though. I say good
riddance to the gypsum weeds; goodbye morning glory. A lawn mowing season that
started in March is nearly over. We would have had buy replacement mowers if
the middle three months had not been so dry. However, even the cheapest of
mowers aren’t challenged when playing connect the buckhorn.
This turn in the weather coincides with a big change at
work. We are moving a production facility with all of its attendant doodads and
thingamablobs. It doesn’t really matter what they were or even how far they
were moved. It was a challenge and I am glad that it is nearly over. We will
spend a week or two looking for an odd misplaced doodad and that thingamablob
that we can’t do with out. However, the physical part is over. That is a good
thing.
They say that moving is one of the biggest stressors in
one’s life. Convincing a department that a move is a good thing, that all of
the work will get done on time for the move, reassuring employees that
everything will turn out okay, making seating and office assignments,
eliminating reserved parking, these things cause the stress to go off of the
charts. I was reminded of this the other day when I couldn’t remember the last
time that I just sat down and breathed deep. That recognition of lack of deep
breaths has come back to me several times the last two weeks as the pressure of
the move came to a head. I would be in a meeting helping 3 or 4 people identify
solutions to potential problems that we had not even faced yet, and suddenly, I
would noticed that I hadn’t taken a good deep breath.
I attended a wonderful wedding. It was a low key, kick back,
enjoy yourself and those around you event. The families that were coming
together genuinely enjoyed one another. It strikes me that the bride and groom,
now husband and wife, have a sense about them that they know the wedding was
not the event to succeed at but the marriage. I like those kinds of weddings.
In spite of that, I had an odd sensation at the end as the families decided that
a critical mass of festivants had made their way to the door and it was time to
start cleaning up. I sensed that these family members started breathing again.
I don’t think that I would have noticed except that I find
myself not breathing deep because of Grace and Chris’ impending nuptials next
June. My shallow breathing is not out of fear or foreboding. I have the same
sense of blessing for these two that I witnessed last weekend. They know that
the wedding isn’t the thing. The marriage is. They are committed to leaving
their biological families and knitting a new family between themselves with
God’s help. I know these things and yet my breathing is still shallow. In my
mind’s eye, I can see myself bussing tables, pulling table cloths, stacking
chairs and suddenly realizing that I can breathe.
I have a counseling friend who tried to convince me that the
greek for the holy spirit was breath of
life. God “breathed” life into Adam. He tried to convince me that deep
breathing is a spiritual exercise. This move and these two weddings have gone a
long way in convincing me that is the truth. I believe it because in the
physical here and now, I have a tendency to forget to breath deep. The
physicality of moving all of that stuff, concentrating on all of those details
sucks my breath away. There is no time to breath deep. Even more telling is
breathing deep causes me to forget about the physical for a moment. It takes me
elsewhere for a brief period of time. It shifts my attention to the spiritual.
In the heat of the moment, shifting attention to the
spiritual is the problem. It is the part that I don’t trust. The spiritual won’t
get the boxes moved, won’t develop an emergency escape plan, and it certainly
won’t maintain production while the movers are taking your machines when electricity
isn’t quite connected in the new building. The spiritual won’t get the dress
made, the cake made, the invitations addressed. No, it is the physical world
that will get these things done.
The spiritual-physical dichotomy is one we are forced to
deal with in this corporeal world with what I believe to be spiritual
underpinnings. Physically, I want to get
things done. I get a kick out of imposing my will on a task with a pile of
challenges and a calendar. I love to do that. However, I can only do it for so
long and then I have to stop and breathe. That stopping used to bother me. I
was being lazy. I wasn’t being productive. Things weren’t getting done because
I wasn’t doing them. As I read CS Lewis, I was able to embrace the
spiritual-physical dichotomy. In Screwtape Letters, he described it as the law
of undulation. It is natural to undulate between the spiritual and the physical
through out our lives. They are just both a phase of who we are. Both are of
the kingdom of God
That is what happened last week. The cold came and put a
stop to much of the physical. There will be a little bit of growing to do in
the weeks ahead. But the time to stop and breath is here. So take a nice deep breathe and relax.
Take care.
Roger.
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