Your Daily Miracle: School Starts and Silence Returns
Today, I celebrated a return to schedule by walking Charley on the same paths we've followed for three years. Silence, broken only by the jingle of his tags, our breath, assorted neighborhood sounds. Without friend, phone, or podcast we walked, noting dahlias feathery and koolaid-red on the corner, bowing blackberries, bruised with rain, golden leaves high crowing a Japanese maple. At home, Charley watched me concernedly as I took off my shoes, hung up my coat, put on the kettle. Then he curled up contentedly in his bed, restless no more, a dog of routine happy once again. Ah, all is right with the world.
I have not always been so happy with routine, but chafed against it, squinting into the future for change. As I grow older, changes have been less uniformly welcome as they were when I was young; some change arrives unbidden and runs you flat. All the same, I love change in the form of newness. Bea just got new shoes and I almost kept the box they came in because I loved the smell so much. Newness!
I love this:
Behold, I will do something new.
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.
(There are certain parts of Isaiah I have underlined and gone back to many times--the imagery is so rich and wonderful!)
The new thing. I pace back and forth, mentally shelving my unfinished projects. A NEW thing, so much more exciting than the old and worn.
As the summer drew to a close, the same intense dissatisfaction with my own vocation hit me like a wall. Why aren't I making more money? Why aren't I out rubbing shoulders with people who tell me I'm vital? Why aren't I the mom who comes home and pops in frozen dinner from Costco? Seriously. I know I sound insane, but the grass is always greener, and the lure of a full-time paycheck is strong. But right now I've been given this immense gift. We aren't flush with money, but we have enough if we're careful, and I have the great privilege of sitting down every day and writing. I don't know how long this gift may last, but I would be a fool not to embrace it with both arms.
Listening. Contentment. It doesn't come easily for a person like me. Where's the NEW THING?!
As the summer drew to a close, I began having dreams, where I was pregnant or breastfeeding. I can tell you--I am done with childbearing. That door is sealed and sealed very happily. So what was that dream all about? Okay, I know, duh. The new thing. Growing restless, wanting to produce, wanting to begin afresh. Writing is all about waiting, about toiling for a long, long time, patiently working on a new thing that, after multiple drafts and endless tinkering, doesn't feel so new anymore. And I knew what was waiting for me after the kids went back to school, what I long for and question and doubt and celebrate. Writing. Silence. Contemplation. Hours of silent editing. I always feel completely anxious for it and yet fundamentally unprepared at the same time.
All my children can read now, including Bea who, after a slow start generally, finally can sit down with a book and enjoy the words. Yesterday she sat next to me on the couch and read me Richard Scarry's "The Great Pie Mystery." Now let me tell you, I have read that book a gazillion times to her. I could probably recite it with a little prompting. But yesterday I experienced it completely newly--and that is because I was looking solely at the pictures. I saw details on the periphery of pages that I'd never noticed before--some pie eaters have pie on their faces and their feet, for instance. On one page a grinning green bug climbs out of an overturned car through a little trapdoor. Funny stuff. And to hear my daughter reading to me? Utterly delightful.
Lately I have felt a longing to return to listening. And right now, I am in a good place to listen. This morning as Charley and I walked the same paths, silently celebrating the small changes that we encountered on street corners, I found myself happy to be back in a ritual that feeds me with precisely with its slowing-downness and its relative lack of excitement. Does that make sense? The change I often long for, that fills me with restlessness, may be leading my feet not in forced external change but in the quiet, private interior shifts that come slowly with time and contemplation. Strange, because I am an extrovert. I thrive with people. I have been known to populate my life with noise, company, and distraction.
But my chosen vocation is one marked by long periods of silence. Silence. The new thing is hidden in this space. The new thing is gift, is in the renewing of my thankfulness, my re-attuning to wonder, to question, to mystery, to story. I bow to silence and to contemplation, and I see the colors of all that is within and without, the bright dahlias I had forgotten, the completeness of the blackberry vine. I step onto this path and find rivers in the desert.
I have not always been so happy with routine, but chafed against it, squinting into the future for change. As I grow older, changes have been less uniformly welcome as they were when I was young; some change arrives unbidden and runs you flat. All the same, I love change in the form of newness. Bea just got new shoes and I almost kept the box they came in because I loved the smell so much. Newness!
I love this:
Behold, I will do something new.
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.
(There are certain parts of Isaiah I have underlined and gone back to many times--the imagery is so rich and wonderful!)
The new thing. I pace back and forth, mentally shelving my unfinished projects. A NEW thing, so much more exciting than the old and worn.
As the summer drew to a close, the same intense dissatisfaction with my own vocation hit me like a wall. Why aren't I making more money? Why aren't I out rubbing shoulders with people who tell me I'm vital? Why aren't I the mom who comes home and pops in frozen dinner from Costco? Seriously. I know I sound insane, but the grass is always greener, and the lure of a full-time paycheck is strong. But right now I've been given this immense gift. We aren't flush with money, but we have enough if we're careful, and I have the great privilege of sitting down every day and writing. I don't know how long this gift may last, but I would be a fool not to embrace it with both arms.
Listening. Contentment. It doesn't come easily for a person like me. Where's the NEW THING?!
All my children can read now, including Bea who, after a slow start generally, finally can sit down with a book and enjoy the words. Yesterday she sat next to me on the couch and read me Richard Scarry's "The Great Pie Mystery." Now let me tell you, I have read that book a gazillion times to her. I could probably recite it with a little prompting. But yesterday I experienced it completely newly--and that is because I was looking solely at the pictures. I saw details on the periphery of pages that I'd never noticed before--some pie eaters have pie on their faces and their feet, for instance. On one page a grinning green bug climbs out of an overturned car through a little trapdoor. Funny stuff. And to hear my daughter reading to me? Utterly delightful.
Lately I have felt a longing to return to listening. And right now, I am in a good place to listen. This morning as Charley and I walked the same paths, silently celebrating the small changes that we encountered on street corners, I found myself happy to be back in a ritual that feeds me with precisely with its slowing-downness and its relative lack of excitement. Does that make sense? The change I often long for, that fills me with restlessness, may be leading my feet not in forced external change but in the quiet, private interior shifts that come slowly with time and contemplation. Strange, because I am an extrovert. I thrive with people. I have been known to populate my life with noise, company, and distraction.
But my chosen vocation is one marked by long periods of silence. Silence. The new thing is hidden in this space. The new thing is gift, is in the renewing of my thankfulness, my re-attuning to wonder, to question, to mystery, to story. I bow to silence and to contemplation, and I see the colors of all that is within and without, the bright dahlias I had forgotten, the completeness of the blackberry vine. I step onto this path and find rivers in the desert.
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