Those who are blessed with distinct seasons know how they pace the passing years, an underlying rhythm to events major and minor, in our world and in our lives. In my small micro-climate, this winter has been unsettled and undecided, one day hurling white gusts at the windows, the next melting it all away in pouring rain or melting sun. There have been deaths, too many, in the family, among friends, in the world near and far. And yet relentlessly spring approaches.
Four seasons outside my windows. Summer, winter, spring ~ æssmith photos; fall ~ jturner photo
Already it is two months past the December solstice. Like an old friend visiting too briefly, winter threatens to leave before I have had enough of its company. I need to harvest a little food for the journey, to store up treasure in heaven, to bind a measure of beauty in memory until the call for it sounds in a needful time.
This binding in memory is a paradox, partaking of eternity by the conscious refusal to record by any visual means the beauty in question:
- no photograph,
- no painting,
- no video,
- no animated substitute for reality.
The binding of visual beauty requires stillness and contemplation, a looking-through-and-beyond instead of a looking-at. It is
- a staple of both quest and journey,
- a focus on the essential, and
- a salve for the heart’s wounds.
Here is such a memory bound by words for sharing. The other morning, as I stilled my mind to pray, all outside my window was grey except for the bare, dark birches standing still. Suddenly two small pools of shimmering flame struck the vertical muntins between the panes of glass, sending slender spines of red light above and below. A matching line appeared on the slanting ceiling above my bed.
Beyond the birches the grey withdrew into ocean and sky. Now the muntin flames were old gold and shimmering still, the line on the ceiling widening to match. Ocean deepened into cobalt and light gleamed above it, streaked with bands of ashy rose. Higher still, winter’s blue sky eased into the day. The sun lifted free of the horizon, though I could not see it, my window facing south. The flames, now bright gold, were higher on the muntins, the band on the ceiling light and wide. The birches became so finely drawn that each tiny, late-winter bud was clear to my eyes, more than a promise.
With such a simple view comes a deep sense of the planet from this northern latitude. Already the hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, which just two months ago surfaced late in this window, well to the south. A few more months and I will be grateful that it rises well to the north, sparing the house the heat of summer. The recent morning’s particular beauty is now fast bound in memory alone, perfect and unique, linked forever with this time in my life, that morning’s prayer. Praise ye the Lord; the Lord’s Name be praised.