Every speck of dust shows swimming in the current of that light.  They look beautiful.  Things that shouldn’t be sparkly, gleam.  That’s what the light of the sun does.  The world is dark and dull, filled with grey, asleep at the wheel.  Suddenly there is a scuffling and unexpected movement; there is sound.  Murmurs rise giving way to a slow and peaceful, quiet and personal birth to a new day.  In a moment the Sun appears and the moment goes unnoticed by most because it looks no different, really, from the moment before… unless you are there, right there on the cusp of the change… unless you are paying attention like a wise one watching the sky or a simple man going about your simple work at just the right time.  Unless you are paying attention, you have no idea that the world is about to light up with radiance.  In the following moments the clearings are illuminated and shadows emerge, shown for the first time in daylight for what they are, dark places… for dark does not distinguish between a shadow and light, it is all one… they do not exist in the dark.  So, unexpectedly, something as dirty as dust becomes it’s own small light, floats gracefully in the illumination of the sun, dancing… dancing… and we see that it is dirty, we know what dust is, but that does not diminish its beauty in the sun.  The world is full of small surfaces that catch fire, burn dazzling in reflection… a million points of light that are nothing in themselves but find their beauty under the gaze of the their illuminator.

*****

Photo credit: fusion-of-horizons / Foter.com / CC BY

Photo credit: Neal. / Foter.com / CC BY

Photo credit: Martin Gommel / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

My dad is the Champion of my childhood.  For whatever else he may be of my adolescence or my adulthood, he is Champion of my childhood.  Most of the things that made my childhood beautiful found their origin in his imagination and the eyes with which he sees the world.

I see it again as he plays with my son, the sparkle of fantasy that dances upon the edge of my vision as I listen to them talk and watch him unfold his imagination before my son’s eyes… that sparkle that reminds me that there is magic to be found still, all we need do is see it.

Time passes, it slips into the past quicker than we can acknowledge the present and the most significant and defining memories I have are the magical ones.  When I was very young my dad used to take me for walks at dusk.  He called it the witching hour.  It’s that time at the close of the day when everything knows it should be settling in, hunkering down for the night but, just to spite or perhaps in a desperate attempt to deny the putting to rest of a glorious day – as a small child asks for that last drink of water, it winds itself up so as not to drift off.  Animals prowl; noises stir up; things get busy.

He suggested to me, without ever saying the words, that the witching hour is really an intersecting of parallels… an enigma, that’s what makes it so interesting.  The day things are yet to fall asleep but the night things have been awakened.  The light from the sun lingers with hues of ashy blue alighting gently over the landscape while the warm yellows and golds of incandescence spring up and one feels as though they walk in daylight still until a glance toward a window or step into a house belies the arrival of night.  It was into these paradoxical moments that he would creak down the back steps of our second floor flat with me by his side to take a stroll down The Disappearing Street.

You see, the witching hour is the most magical time of day.  The eyes can play tricks and that which is impermanent can flit back and forth between the parallel realities that exist all at once during those few moments each day.  This is when the Disappearing Street opened itself to our waking dimension.  It was not a long street, only going two blocks before dumping out onto the main street that ran the perimeter of town, but it stretches the sojourn of my childhood and encompasses the origins of how my father and, as a result of walks such as these, I perceive this world in which we live and adventure.

Wrong Way (Photo credit: TarynMarie)

“I wonder if it’s out yet?” he’d say as we strolled down the sidewalk from our house.  His walks were never rote, eyes open to the world (though sometimes closed to the normally perceived events), waiting and patient he would take a deep breath and we would set our feet down our path perhaps to see an owl pass overhead, a fox dart across the neighbor’s yard or a fairy flit in and out of the corner of our sight.  We would always come upon it quietly and without warning as we conversed easily or, more often, walked each in our own silent reverie, listening to the sounds of the dying day being eaten by the night.  Both contemplatives, silence has never been our enemy.  Our feet would stop, “there it is,” and its shadowy corridor under the trees with its slightly unnerving One Way sign staring us down would open up in our path before I even knew where we had gotten to or what was laid out ahead of us.  I would reach up his tall stature to take his hand and we would step forward into uncertainty.

There was urgency, even as we took our time.  As all good storytellers and dreamers know, without conflict life is bland and even exciting things lose their electricity and fall flat.  ”I suppose we’d better hurry” he’d tell me to the beat of his steadily slow steps on the pavement of The Disappearing Street, “or it’ll disappear before we’re able to return home.”  And my heart would flutter a little at the hint of danger and that danger’s promise of adventure.  You see, when we understand that a little fear is nothing to be afraid of, then adventure and uncertainty are some of the most magical parts of life and my father taught me that you can never be certain when a disappearing street may open up before you if you dare walk out into the witching hour.

***

Written as a response to the Weekly Writing Challenge, this sketch of my own experience is really a much deeper sketch of my father’s soul than a mere memory of my own and I am grateful to him for giving sight to my eyes.

****

Today I am linking up with and writing from Lisa-Jo’s prompt at Five Minute Friday.

Words on a page are slow.  They are one-at-a-time comfortable and dry.  They swoosh with each turn, my tired arms hold them heavily up to my eyes which are begging me to close as I stubbornly press through to the last period of the chapter.  Each chapter has a place, every memorable passage can be flipped to in a moment and re-read to become part of me.  And books smell like my youth. 

It took me months to get that book.  Sure, I ordered it online in a flurry of an instant… but a forced aspect of our lives here is patience.  Patience to wait for a book coming with my mother’s visit or a new trinket that a friend brings down in three months.  Patience to wait in electric anticipation for that special movie over which the general populous in the States is raving, or peacefully enduring the commercial breaks and holding our breath week to week for the showing of a TV program because we don’t have DVR. 

Even the ultimate nine month waiting game has been sped up by ultrasounds and scheduled cesarians… Again, I fully admit to participating in the ultrasound option and couldn’t WAIT to know the sex of my bumpkins.

But that’s the thing, “I couldn’t wait.”  Do I want to be a person who “can’t wait”?  As children we waited for everything… and now we’ve forgotten.  Over the course of our generation we have forgotten it… forgotten how.  And we have lost.  

There is magic to waiting.  It defines anticipation, that electric aura that sparkles in our minds and makes the moment we receive… pleasurable.  Waiting is what makes our hearts soar, our dreams take flight, it buoys our souls.  Without it we are flat.  Waiting fills the world out and plumps our days.  The heft of life happens in between and without that vacant time we are unsurprised and bored, always wanting more entertainment.  Surprise eludes us, the expected reigns.  

So, I am sticking to my guns.  I love a piece of paper to read.  I love that I have to wait for it and find the patience in my soul which discovers the world.  I love a letter, I love a book.  I would not choose my life in an instant, always on-call, because I love it so and it is forever bigger than I am expecting. Every time.

Fresh crayon-y wax, the sweet-dry scent of pink erasers, page after glorious page of blank lines and potential, freshly exposed wood and graphite…

“It’s the hap-happiest seeeeason of all.”

New shoes, a first backpack, meet the teacher, nervous excitement…

In my world, this song carries me straight through to February and the advent of the school year.  After a long and busy summer break encompassing the “other most wonderful time of the year” as well as much TV watching, outdoor play, disgusting floors, mountains of laundry comparable to the foothills of the Rockies, and a kitchen who’s purpose (it seems) is to store dirty dishes… I am about to get some small portion of my sanity back.

And so… for everyone involved, we seem poised on the precipice of so much potential.  A universe of static energy just waiting to be released.  There truly is magic in the air today as we turn the corner from celebrating vacation (concluded by Grandma’s departure and the Super Bowl) to the dutiful return to routine, normalcy and the blessed and joyful quotidian.  The advent of a school year is the one time in life (apart from the less frequent first day at a new job later on) when we are poised for something new, and excited about the possibilities that might come packaged in the day-in-and-day-out slow burn of routine.

It starts with a bang, always full of first day anticipation and the semi-unknown… new teacher, new dynamics, new books, unexplored possibilities, new information.  The flames flicker and flash for those first days and even into that first weekend… and then, on Monday, we look down and we are one big bed of coals, perfectly smoldering, ready to refine or cook or heat the world with a constant, reliable, effective burn that reforms and changes slowly, day by day.  The start of a new chapter of life is the advent of reform.  The kind of reform is always up to you.

The two most influential pep-talks I used to receive from my mom (and they were oft repeated) were always to do with two things: Duty and Attitude.  When they finally clicked, I am not sure… but I do know that I rely upon them to this day to carry me through (though failure is frequent).

Duty runs a long way over much terrain, but for me it was a concept I needed reminding of when it came time to buckle down and follow through when I wanted nothing more than to quit.  When everything in me said, “Ugh!  Forget this!” and I called her in tears because I could not see a successful path through the wilderness, she would simply tell me, “Well, whatever the result, you will do the best you are capable of and finish b/c that is your duty.  You just do it.  And then you’ll be done.”

…And, honestly, that carries one into Attitude.  It is the one thing, in boring, or difficult or exasperating circumstances, of which we are in control (which is something we crave when life feels unstable,  difficult or monotonous)… and it unexpectedly wields a hefty amount of weight.

These are the super powers for the slow burn, the heroic actions of every-day.  They bring the kind of reform and growth that can save the world one blank page or sink of dirty dishes at a time.  Thanks, Mom.

May my little heroes find the needed mercies new each day to use their superpowers to love well and honor God in the slow burn of this year and when they do not, may I be there and hear them so that I can remind them of the One who makes their super powers a reality.

Always a creeping shadow that catches me up and finds me sitting in the sun.  Within a moment I am shivering and a lost little heart.  I fear disappointing others… I can handle my own quiet failure just fine.  It is my defense mechanism, a necessary one after 33 years of unadulterated failures in the small things of life… you have to have a merciful self-love or it would kill you to be me… so many silly flake-outs, so many “UGH!”s and sighs of frustration.  But the shadows are cast when my ridiculousness touches others and i let them down.  I suddenly am the cause of their suffering or discomfort or frustration… of their tears or sighs.  I fear letting down my husband, I fear letting down my Brothers and Sisters, and my greatest fear has been of letting down my children.  Let’s face it, it’s so easy to do.  One lapse of concentration and small failures come creeping like a thousand ants, each one insignificant but with power in numbers and a strength to carry me away.

Ultimately, I fear being carried away from those Dear Hearts.

And then I am reminded… in that gentle, “oh, Dear One”-ish, quiet voice… that perfect love casts out fear.  And I am brought back to who I am meant to be.

Just me, loved through fear, and found on the other side each time.

**********

Linking up with Lisa-Jo for Five Minute Friday, today to talk about ‘Afraid’.

I do not come across silence much anymore.  I used to have it in spades!  In fact, I would go out looking for sounds, words, or bustling people from time to time because I would reach the point in which I was full of silence.  Now I grasp at silence, melt into it and dread the breaking of it.  Somedays I spend my entire moment of silence in anticipation of it’s breaking.  And broken it always is… (shattered usually) in shards that scratch my peace and challenge my resolve.

Right now (for a few minutes) I have silence.  Like real silence… the kind that screams into your ears and fills your chest with wind… and it occurs to me that I was created to thrive in it.  I am most ME in silence and stillness.  So, the One Who Loves Me hands it out in life-saving nuggets, urging me to stop and be Me.  Drink.  Rest.  Eat.  Revive.  …And then jump headlong back into the fray because this beautiful storm of noise and tempest of movement will only last so long and I will return to the silence that makes me Me, but I will no longer be that Me.  I will be a Me with a little loud crazy in her soul, and I will long for some of this squall that is Together.

So, when this silence is broken (which has already begun… I can hear it’s demise approaching across the yard, the inevitable march toward defeat), I will pull myself up by the proverbial boot straps and start mucking through my Together.  Because I may have been created to thrive in Silence but we are all created to find our purpose in Together.

I used to fancy myself a somewhat bohemian, off-norm, exceptional person.  I secretly suspected I was capable of a great deal and had patience that was far-reaching.

I was wrong.  Turns out, my daily patience is like a water balloon stretched to it’s limit from the time I get up, ready to pop from a simple blade of grass.  Turns out, my measure of capability is fairly large but has a great deal of restrictions and conditions.  Turns out, I am not very exceptional, am rather normal, and you would never guess to look at me that my inner landscape is somewhat bohemian.

It turns out that my self image from my youth has almost been completely demolished.

But here’s what I’ve discovered… I can take it.  After the initial tearing down of the image (which has come in phases, waves of harsh and somewhat depressive stripping), I am left with the only things that I know to be true.  That I am loved, I am forgiven, and I am capable of next to nothing of substance.  I am weak and my strength is found elsewhere.  The only thing that I can do to create a wave of resonance is a loving act of obedience.  These are the things that have supplanted my imagined self-image.

I know that I do not serve myself.

I know that I rely upon another.

I know that I must forgive, that it is part of my DNA.

I know that I was not created to be impressive, but rather to love and be loved.

I also know that I will never cease to pursue that self-image of my youth (and I don’t think it is an inherently bad thing)… but my hope is, by going back daily to what I know, that the image of the youthful, bohemian, out-of-the-box, capable woman will become centered in who she was created to be and will actually become a living dynamic being, given breath by the mercies that are new every morning and the purpose they bring to her quotidian journey.

(… And her offspring will live to see another day.)

What do you know… that informs your daily life?

Who knew…

I have been created, anointed and sealed for God.

I am free of all condemning charges against me.

I am complete in Christ.

I am holy.

I have been justified.

I am a friend of Christ.

I am united with the Lord in spirit and am one with Him.

I have been bought with a price, I belong to God.

I am amember of the body of Christ.

I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins.

I am sure that things will work out for Good.

I am a citizen of heaven.

I am hidden with Christ in God.

I do not have a spirit of fear but one of power, love and self-control.

I can find grace and mercy in times of anguish.

I am the salt and light of the earth.

I am a branch of the True Vine.

I was chosen to produce fruit.

I am the temple of God.

I am God’s minister of reconciliation.

I am a co-worker with Christ.

I am seated with Christ in heavenly places.

I am a creation of Christ.

I have access to god with security and confidence.

I AM A DAUGHTER, MY FUTURE IS TO BE LIKE HIM.

I am accepted.

I can do all things in Christ who gives me strength.

I am a daughter, purified!

…I know this to be true, it is all written.

The Epistolarian.

********

What about you? What do you know to be true?

Something I adore about my life is that, in spite of being far from my family and my old friends, I live hand in hand and walk in companionship with some wonderful souls.  They are my family now.  I know what is happening with them and they know what is happening with me.  We pray for eachother without intending to… just in our way of life, because they are inseparable parts of my every day.  We are Together.  In purpose, in love, in Spirit and in life.  I never facebook them or tweet them, rather I turn to them and rely upon them on a daily basis.  And they know my ugliness and mess because we are together.  And they love me anyway, as I do them.

   

The Brotherhood of Togetherness

Who is Together with you?

The Epistolarian

Some Fridays I link up with The Gypsy Mama…  We write for 5 minutes flat and then post it.  Whether it’s pretty or not.  (But I usually hope it’s pretty… or at least not super ugly.)