Middle Marriage, Moonlight, and Fireflies
It’s that time of year again. The East Tennessee air becomes something this southern woman wears, and the field flowers frame all the roads where we live - urban, suburban or rural, no matter. Whether country lane or four lane, or daunting interstate rife with eighteen wheelers, the grassy hedges to each side of the various pavements are laden with stems of swaying, nodding color.
In between finishing my upcoming online art course, writing for a couple of magazines, and trips back and forth to church, I’ve managed to squeeze in daily walks in what we affectionately call “Mimi’s Meadow”. Only yesterday, being a Sunday and all, what has normally been a first thing in the morning thing, became a last thing before sunset thing.
And I couldn’t have been more pleased.
Middle Marriage, Moonlight, and Fireflies
Oh, it’s just a minute and forty-some-odd seconds of nothing, but it is less than two minutes of everything.
The sun rose early yesterday, with just a few clouds in sight. The Preacher donned his helmet, and fired up his pretend Vespa (a vintage Honda Elite), heading out to preach, with me following a half hour behind him in the huge white Ford truck. I couldn’t help but think, as I gripped the steering wheel, hugging my side of the narrow two lane highway to Harvest Church, about how that we are less than ten days away from summer, and our Appalachian Spring seems to have gone by in a blur of breezes, and rainy afternoons and bright moments. After two years of “Pandemic Pastoring”, we are looking ahead into the next season with sweet anticipation.
And we’ve grown ever more mindful of the fact of our embodied faith, together. This has been a long, breaking two years, for so many bodies. Some bodies still endure the effects of “long Covid”….some bodies are gone altogether, their spirits forever with the Lord.
As a result, things like the snaggle-toothed smiles of grandkids, the soft downy feathers of our daughter’s four urban culdesac baby ducks, and the smell of garlic from the gardens have become Remarkable Events.
No, but really. We remark upon them, we reflect upon them, we discuss them all, we openly and vulnerably savor the aching beauty of being alive by tasting each others’ words, as we walk and sweat and sweat and walk.
Usually, these conversations are followed by a fast drive home, by cleaning our bodies up, and a full day.
But yesterday was a Sunday. Did I tell you that, already?
Since it was The Lord’s Day, we went at it with an instinctively gentler pace. The skies were twilight pastel, the trees in blue hour silhouette, and we inhaled the soft fragrance of nightfall in a meadow full of green grass and wildflowers. A few eager birds who were still awake sung to us with soothing tunes.
It’s all worth remembering. And so I write it down.
"The Blessing of the Lord Makes Rich..."
…and He adds no sorrow to it.”
I have a crush on summer mornings. I married a man and had four of his children and taught them at home and now practice art from a home studio, mostly for mornings like this one, and zinnias in demitasse cups.
This, to me, is wealth. It is the evidence of the blessing of the Living God. I stand outside on my backyard deck on a Saturday, beneath a dark grey canvas umbrella, and trim The Preacher’s neckline hair to the sound of birds and the gurgling of his handmade garden fountain, and I know I am living the life I dreamt of as a girl.
I enjoy the things money cannot buy.
Money cannot buy the anointing. Neither can influence buy it. So there’s that. It’s all as simple and as profound as that. I aimed my whole life in pursuit of summer mornings with my very own zinnias in demitasse, and of taking care of one man well, of raising children to be beauty chasers, and letting the anointing of the Holy Ghost be my compass.