June Lights

The weekend was so full I didn't realize until just now that Sunday had come and gone without a post. Here's a poem-in-the-rough I wrote earlier and hoped to revise. Perhaps I still will, but not tonight.

The summer sun has slipped below the horizon

and fragrant dusk darkens the familiar path among the trees

as it bends away from the road

and so my bike wheels propel me forward on the empty road

steadily and nearly silently, I make my way home

before the smooth grey of pavement joins the shadows of the trees.

And then -- an unexpected glimmer --

and before I have time to think I'm seeing things --

another over above the grass

Now I barely see the road ahead

not because of growing darkness

but because of growing expectation of light,

flecks of gold in the dusky green-blue-grey of this place

rising above the ground and vanishing

as quickly as they came.

wordless

I am wordless so today I will simply post a few recent photos. These were not meant to be artistic shots - simply quick captures of things I enjoyed.

sisters

red paint



growing shadow

the Erie Canal



sunset sketch

Place

This week I moved into a new apartment –well, really it feels more like a house than “just” an apartment. Both my housemate and I are ridiculously excited about it. So excited that it makes me stop and think. Why? Sure, it is a nice old place with lots of character and even though it may not be in the best neighborhood by some standards we like the location. But why is moving in so important?

My hypothesized answer is that we want to settle. We were excited about moving into our first apartment last year, but we knew that it would most likely be temporary. Now we can hope that we won’t have to move in a year, as both of us have been doing since we left our parents’ homes for college. Settling means putting down some roots, doing things well now as small investments – hanging curtains with care, planning for a garden – hoping we will be here for a while to enjoy them.

Settling means security, in the wisdom of the world. I am again reminded of the challenging words of Jesus “the Son of Many has no place to lay his head”, and continue in my struggle to understand what it means to follow Christ here and now. It seems to me that we must be willing to loosen our grasp on the gift of place even as we treasure it, knowing our hearts truly long for another home (eg Heb 11). In our fervor of settling in here, I pray that we may avoid the temptation to comfortableness and apathy, and learn rather the art of contentment and generosity.

summer rain

It is a rainy day. This is unfortunate because it is also our moving day. Usually, however, I like the rain, especially during the warmer months. I am reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I liked this passage so much I thought I'd share. It takes place on an island in the Mississippi, where Huck and Jim are hiding, and staying in a cave high up on the island.

We spread the blankets inside for a carpet, and eat our dinner in there. [...] Pretty soon it darkened up and begun to thunder and lighten; so the birds was right about it. Directly it begun to rain, and it rained like all fury, too, and I never see the wind blow so. It was one of these regular summer storms. It would get so dark that it looked all blue-black outside, and lovely; and the rain would thrash along by so thick that the trees off a little ways looked dim and spider-webby; and here would come a blast of wind that would bend the trees down and turn up the pale underside of the leaves; and then a perfect ripper of a gust would follow along and set the branches to tossing their arms as if they was just wild; and next, when it was just about the bluest and blackest --fst! it was as bright as glory and you'd have a little glimpse of tree-tops a-plunging about, away off yonder in the storm, hundreds of yards further than you could see before; dark as sin again in a second, and now you'd hear the thunder let go with an awful crash and then go rumbling, grumbling, tumbling down the sky towards the under side of the world, like rolling empty barrels down stairs, where it's long stairs and they bounce a good deal, you know.