WINTER 2008The weather man is predicting rain. The Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a very cold winter. Economists are predicting a worsening in our money and material world. Many students of the Mayan calendar believe it, too, portends terrible things, and the end of the world in 2012. (Frankly, I’ve talked with Mayans who read 2012 very differently. The “end of the world” is mostly a white man’s sense of the calendar.) In any case, there are disastrous predictions all around.
I hear friends and acquaintances fearfully wondering what to do with all this disastrous news.
I look out my door at my lake and the trees and vines that surround it. The weeping cherry has golden leaves. The dogwood tree has crimson leaves. A squirrel runs across the lawn, acorn in its mouth. A blue heron perches in a distant weeping willow, watching for fish. They all seem unaware of disaster, only aware of the calling of the season, with its labor and its joy. I have noticed that autumn, the strong precursor of winter, is the time when the flying squirrels and the young geese play their hardest. There are no flying squirrels that I know of in New Jersey, but when I was a child, I used to watch them gliding down the Appalachian mountainsides, swerving around large oaks and maples. I have watched young geese race each other across this lake.
The psalmist, in Psalm 121, tells us that when trouble smites, we are to “lift up our eyes” instead of giving in to despair. Isaiah 40:31 tells us that “those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
If in fact a cold winter is coming, then I for one come from a tradition that says winter is the perfect time for huddling around the fire and telling stories, living close to one another, sheltering one another from the blizzard winds. If the economy is going to fall apart, it has fallen apart before. The 1930s swept the world like a cyclone—and all my grandparents survived it by banding together with friends and neighbors to share food and fuel and love. Even if the worst happens, and violent anarchy rules the land, my ancestors walked their trail of tears. I am still here to tell their story, and to glory in their strength.
Perhaps it is time for us to stop looking at these troubled times as times of disaster. Perhaps it is time for us to see them as a season, with potentials and joys. It is in troubled times that we learn to band together, to strengthen ties of family and community, to realize at heart level that we were not meant to be alone, but to huddle with our friends and family: strengthening one another, supporting one another, loving one another—so that we may all be able, not only to survive, but to thrive and to grow in love and wonder and glory.
Sondra Ball
Clerk, Salem Quarterly MeetingRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 04:03 PM
