Kirkepiscatoid

It’s a short one, Psalm 93, and one of the ones that is often a "Friday night Psalm" in the Jewish Sabbeth. Verse 2 hit me today, as I do my daily "work backwards through the Psalms" exercise. “He has made the whole world so sure that it cannot be moved.”

That’s an interesting verse in this time of UN-surety. I am thinking back between now and 2001. In 2001 my retirement portfolio lost 1/3 of its value but it bounced back over time. I have not even opened my statement from Sept. 30. I am not nearly as wound up about it as I was in 2001. Is it because I simply have more, or is it because I am just less wound up about it because I am starting to give up part of this? Or a little of both?

I admit, I am asking questions this morning and have no answers. Is something happening where I am starting to trust God’s ability to take care of God’s reign? Or is it that this meltdown is simply not touching me at this point?

I am not sure if I am “trusting” or just not affected. I really don’t want to test it. I don’t need an economic crisis.

What are the sureties of God’s world I see?

I know every summer, I will see Scorpio in the sky...it disappears about September as the horizon changes and about November I will notice that Orion has shown up.

I know barring catastrophe, my cottonwood tree, that is becoming barer and barer by the minute right now, and will soon become silent for the winter, will leaf out next spring and I will hear its friendly rustle again.

I know that soon the snow will come. I know next spring, one of my purple crocuses will pop out of the snow. I know the days will become shorter and then longer.

I would not know these things if I did not sit still in one place.

We make such a big deal of travel and adventure. Hell, I like travel and adventure! But I used to HAVE to have more of it than I need now. Now I am starting to like “the adventure of sitting still in one place and watching change and familiarity play out.”

I think back to when I used to run my grandfather’s route of coin operated machines in the early 1980's—pinballs, jukeboxes, video games, coin-operated pool tables. I think of how I rode those same routes every day, watch the seasons change along the same routes year after year. I loved both the wonder and the familiarity of it. I think sometimes about a friend of mine whose job puts her on the road several hours a day. I wonder if that same experience is there for her. When she calls me at work from the road, I’m half jealous. There I am behind a microscope and yes, I am doing important work that I love, but there are times at THAT moment, I remember the awe of being on the road every day, and the joy of it, even in a time when I wasn’t making shit for money and had trouble making ends meet. I was connecting with the surety of God’s world back then without even knowing it! That connection happened in those rather dull years after college and my first teaching job, which I left when my engagement blew up. I was substitute teaching school off and on, working for my grandfather, taking some graduate classes, not sure what I was going to do. Medical school hadn't really begun to be in the picture although I had started thinking about it and was studying for the MCATs to see if I could even do well enough on the MCAT's to apply.

My life back then was just sort of drifting from one relationship to another, working and struggling to make ends meet, mixed with low budget partying and a modest amount of emptiness, a lot of "what's in store for me in my 20's...none of this feels right," and a growing dissatisfaction with religion as presented by the church of my youth. I had NO clue at that point in time that there was a part of me that trusted the surety of God's reign. I thought enjoying the seasons and the colors was "something you did when you didn't have much else."

I think about the changes of the seasons and how they connect me with the surety of God’s world. This fall, I have been thinking when I sit outside, that I am starting to be “fall.” I am in the early fall of my own life. I probably didn’t appreciate the spring and summer as much as I should have. My spring and summer was all about “acquisition” and not stability. Will God give me back another spring and summer in the next world...or at least something as good or better that connects me back to it? All questions. No answers.