Keeping one's balance is basic to the art of dancing...to place weight on the appropriate foot when something comes whirling your way...to be grounded in your center, lest one do the splits.
I've recently pictured myself spanning two continents, one foot on each. It's obviously not a solid feeling - rather a 'stretch' that calls for muscle tone to control, navigate. Much, I think, the way CS Lewis' protagonists in Perelandra, the second book in his space trilogy, might have felt at nightfall: living on a pristine planet made of floating islands; forbidden to succumb to their strongest desire for security and continuity; required to fall asleep on separate islands, not knowing how far apart they'll be when the currents deliver them to separate destinations by morning. Wishing they could span the gap and hang on.
Clinging. Floating. Finding balance. I'm holding two worlds together with tightly curled toes. The Present. The Future.
One of the blessings of having given 'two months notice' is that we have had that amount of time to spend with our precious congregants at St. John's - time to travel the road to separation together, to feel our way through this unexpected territory with it gradually becoming more familiar to all, though no less bittersweet. With finality still far off...the last hug, the last tear, the last sermon, the final hymn. They're not now.
Yet...now they almost are. This past weekend: A lovely, grand banquet of an evening on Friday. The sweetness of the cool Delta breeze wafting over a patio prelude to a Mardi Gras theme (one of the popular traditions we brought with us from Louisiana!); a bountiful dinner, with church family and friends; a tear-wrenching retrospective DVD presentation; official gifts, wonderful words, the bread of love broken in myriad ways.. Even a clever hymn parody from the choir!
A festive brunch after church on Sunday generously gave more opportunities for enjoyment, gratitude and love for what has been built in our hearts for 13 years. An unfathomable gift given: an amazing memory book of the worship, the vaulted space and the extraordinary people we have shared, walked in, loved. The book defies description.
Interiorly, the events of the past weekend brought an awareness, a seismic rumbling, an expectation of the coming tectonic shift. It's not about consciously measuring how I'm balancing the leaving & the going - two sides of the same coin. It's not even about being fully present here or imagining life there. Within my toe-curling, hanging-on-for-dear-life, balancing of two continental life islands, I suddenly felt the peace of being firmly planted on both. The floating islands yield their individual centers of balance and rest under my weary feet.
Seismic shifts often separate, sending flailing land masses into a new orbit. But in this case, the movement is toward center. In the soul's eye, the two islands are slowly moving toward each other. And, soon...very soon, it will not be a leap, but a mere though grace-filled step off of the Present life into the Future life. Those on the shores -- so close they could wave -- fill out the scene of the expansive Body of Christ, one side with open hands and a silk-faced memory book offered, looking east, and the other with open hands and perhaps a good deal of wonderings and expectations, looking west and ready to receive.
No, Sunday's service was not the final one -- though it did include the final sermon reference to The Cubs! The last hymn, Come, Labor On, offered opportunity for remembering the very beginning of Fr. C's journey in his ordination some eighteen years ago, as well as rejoicing in past ministries, clasping the unbelievably blessed years in Stockton AND envisioning the arrival on the shores of Warsaw to take up a new Labor of Love.
Come, Labor On. But it's not the final hymn.
3 comments:
how purely lovely. so thoughtfully profound and wonderfully written. I'm so glad you have a blog!!! I know that when the time comes closer to me straddling those two landmasses of which you speak (and in our case the metaphor extends geographically)I will go back to the this post to center myself in your wise words and remind myself how to dance gracefully.
Miss Brenda, I was at work today at World Market, putting a scarf away when I see this phenominal lady walking around and talking on her phone. And I wanted to say hello to her, but right as I was about to, someone felt the need to ask me where the napkins were. Once I got back to talk with her, she was gone. Now I would have bet all the money in the world that that was you, but then again I could have been wrong. But either way, I was thinking of you today. And I hope that your trip to Brazil is wonderful.
-Lauren
Precious Lauren, here I am some 5 weeks later...after having traveled to Brazil, returned to Stockton for 3 days, hit the road to Indiana... Oh, yes, it's been a wild ride. And when you wrote your lovely comment, I was in Brazil...visiting relatives for whom I brought gifts. yes, it was me that day. And -- if I had seen lovely, lovely YOU when I was looking for gifts at World Market -- well, then, your advice and companionship would certainly have resulted in selecting something unique and beautiful to take to Brazil. I wish it had been so!
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