How To Start
Hello, my dear readers! We are seven days into the new year. How are you feeling? Do you find yourself ready for it? I’d like to share with you an idea that I have for stepping, eyes wide open, into this year with its unknown challenges.
Last Sunday my husband and I jumped into our white Ford pickup and headed out on a 4 1/2 hour drive to northwest Iowa for a quick visit with my brother who lives in the small town where I grew up.
It was foggy on that Sunday and every branch of every tree was coated with a bright covering of frosty rime ice. Every tree between here and Estherville offered those who took time to notice, a glorious beauty. The trees with leaves that had not yet fallen actually looked like gigantic feather dusters!
The book I brought to pass the time sat unopened on my lap. How could I read when an entire grove of trees looked just like a choir of angels! I could hear their voices loud and clear but not a sound could be heard. They were not complaining or shaking off the cold covering. They were standing, doing what trees do, and doing it gloriously. Even the fragmented trees in our city were beautifully adorned, their limbs displaying a broken elegance.
As we enter this new year, with all the sadness of the past year behind us, and perhaps with more to come, I want to remember those trees…standing strong in the midst of the unexpected, leaning into whatever came, persevering even though the conditions were not ideal, but quietly beautiful none the less.
You and I have been given unexpected circumstances this past year. Perhaps you lost a loved one, or you became a teacher! Or maybe you had property damage or you lost your job. It could be that you got sick or had an accident. I know that we all received the unexpected and the unwanted.
What are we to do?
I have a tendency to want to hide away, get out my Bible and journal, and proceed to scribble out whatever truths and reassurances I can find.
But today I found Wendell Barry. Here he writes about a way that he faces fears that gather around in times like these…
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me, and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor, mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last, and I sing it.
As we sing, the day turns, the trees move.
Oh, Wendell! You know the power of sitting in silence. You know that facing your fears gives insight. You are convinced of the refreshment of retreat, of not rushing through, but instead, sitting and facing. Completely quiet. Eyes open.
The truth finally wins out and he finally hears his own song and can sing it, free of the stalking fears that really have no power except to intimidate, like a wolf whose yellow eyes are just waiting for an opportunity to pounce.
The Bible gives me a way also:
I remember closing my eyes as my spiritual director read from Deuteronomy 33: 12. “Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders.” With a bit of practice, I could visualize myself climbing up into my Father God’s lap and resting there, shielded next to the God I love…the one who calls me beloved…the One who is near to the brokenhearted.
Like Wendell Barry in the trees, I can find my Father God to be the safe place where I can face my fears and face them with the warmth of Wisdom wrapping around me. I am not alone among the trees. God is there with me.
He is the safe place I seek. It is in this soft, secure resting place that I can face those fears and understand them for who and what they are. I want to hear the songs. I want to sing them myself. I know I can do that by sitting silently and waiting for the voice of my beloved.
I encourage each of us to envision those tall beautiful, frost-covered trees and the waiting quietness they portray. Let’s go. We can find God to be our comfort and guide as we contemplate stepping out and into 2021.