Staying open in the seasons of lIfe

Another four weeks will pass by on the calendar before summer officially succumbs to fall. Leaves will tumble and crackle beneath hiking boots, and gray chimney smoke will waft into brilliant blue skies. Nascent spring life will submit to the inevitable beauty of brisk late-year relinquishing. The calendar says we must wait, but cooler mornings and evenings speak of imminent transition.

What changes are you sensing in your life? Earth speaks irrefutably with scorching heat and icy storms. Does your spirit welcome life's approaches with equal resolve? Do you not occasionally feel it in your bones, the ache of life's seasons? The urgency to move forward--or aside?

Where we live, stubborn months insist on a certain degree of individuality. The August we're living will bear little resemblance to the January which passed six months ago. Whether or not we acknowledge the seasons, they bear along their own idiosyncrasies.

And such is true of our living--acknowledge it or not. Change impresses itself upon each of us in waves of growing and aging. And upon these waves we have opportunity to participate in the making of our hearts.

Last week my wife and I calendared four beautiful days living in a tent next to a chattering mountain stream. In cherished moments of conversation, of preparing and enjoying simple foods and of sitting and reading and thinking, peace seeped unawares into the corners of our spirits.

"Wisdom calls out," says the ancient writer of Proverbs. I long to be among the wise who find ways to quiet themselves enough to hear her voice.