Less than 24 hours ago we were all preparing for a major hurricane to hit our islands. We stacked our gallons of water and canned beans, dismantled the trampoline and took house photos for future insurance claims. Schools were closed and many grocery store shelves were emptied.
Eerily apocalyptic. But last evening, by the intervention of the “high shear winds”, as the weather people called them, the force of this dark system was suddenly dissolved even as it approached.
Tell me there’s not a metaphysical truth involved. I envision the protective intervention of angels directed to our petitioned defense. But even without a gloriously mysterious narrative, I feel the sigh of relief.
Now our whole community is living in a day taken out of time, a holy interruption of Chronos. It feels like the “day after Thanksgiving” but without the stress of shopping, of distracting and insistent options. Ironically, the impending destruction made us all hold our breath. And now we get to live in the consequent full exhalation, deeply aware and more grateful.
This made for an unexpectedly savorable morning in our house. Pancakes, coffee, my daughter vacuuming her carpet, my son pulling us in to watch Youtubers in an amateur boxing match. The sunlight on my girl's pine floor reaches mellowly now across the hallway, spreading an even tempered hand toward my butterfly chair where I'm reading. A cup of Good Earth green tea waits on my footstool, the mug scripted with “Wisdom is sweet to your soul.”
On this after-the-storm day, I am downloading an Audrey Assad album, and voices, smart and clear, fill the room, like the gentle wind from hundreds of miles away, cooling me through the jalousies. What else have I been putting off? What other sounds have I been missing?
My son lit a candle, and like that playful, dangerous flame, the words jump up from my page and dance, acrobatting over my heart. Audrey in my ears, and Julian in my eyes. Both real, raw, luringly expansive and authentically detailed.
I am reading Julian of Norwich's “Revelation of Divine Love.” She lovingly describes timeless things I intuitively know yet hunger to learn. She wrote from within the walls of a 14th century church during the Black Plague in England, but her insights and experiences feel more live to me than most anything I have heard in my lifetime.
Like John leapt in Elizabeth’s womb when he hears the voice of pregnant Mary, Julian's words make my spirit leap in recognition, too. I imagine what that prophet-in-formation felt. Jesus is near, Jesus is coming. Lean forward to the Word who will give meaning to all your yet unpronounced words, who makes noise intelligible. Then all that still-partial John could do, he did. He wiggled! Well, Elizabeth said he "leapt" in her womb, but really, to where could a womb-bound child leap? It was a wiggle. A movement, mustered with all the cells he had to date.
Like Mary, Julian lovingly carries Jesus in her writings. He is still being formed, so to speak, within her. So at her words, my still inarticulate spirit starts to wake up. I raise an eyebrow, surprised and delighted sensing the Lord of Life. This day out of time is an opportunity for me to hear and respond.
This extra day has momentarily collected life deep and wide, like an inlet along a river bank. It makes me notice my normal shallowness in the everyday, persistent current. From the faithful wag of my dog’s tail to the divine fire glancing off my feeble mind, I appreciate my wealth yet sigh at my incapacity.
I have so many blessings but lack usable capacity in me to make the volume productive. Life is all around but leaving me at once. Sweetwater is rushing over me then floats away nonchalantly in the currents of time and gravity. I feel helpless, unable to catch more than my plastic measuring cupful. I worry, will it come back to me? Not likely. God is generous, but original. Life comes back around but never the same way twice.
I have to watch it go. But not until I manage a wiggle. Like John, to make a leap with my few cells.
Writing is one way I can wiggle in the direction of Love. Toward the One who blows away hurricanes. The One who gives me music. Who grows my babies into mysterious and hilarious teens. I wiggle and write to collect the water I cannot hold, and keep it as a pool for our healing, day after chronos day.
Maybe in the aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane or a deathly faith struggle, we get a day like this. An unmapped space that unexpectedly opens and reminds us of what we really want in life.
We will probably try to stitch the exposed threats back into a small, manageable confidence for tomorrow. When we head back to work and the early morning school drive. But instead, how could we make this timeless moment stay?