Come Let Us Reason Together

“Come let us reason together”, says the Lord. ”Though your sins be as scarlet, they will be white as snow.” Isaiah 1:18

Snow covered the yard and wind was relentless for days.  Nevertheless, snow is exciting, and tucks one into a cozy frame of mind, removing a myriad of options from a day off.  In the quiet house clocks tic toc the time, the faucet is dripping away to protect the pipes from freezing, and cars ease by on a snow covered 3^rd. 

I sliced a box of plump little multicolored tomatoes and slid trays full into the dehydrator, but not before saving some of the seeds. I covered the seeds lightly in a little box of soil and put them near a window.  Seeds have come up with no care at all in past compost piles and random spots in the yard and garden, so maybe these seeds will find their way to germination too. They will help with the wait for spring either way.  😊

I often dream of what I could accomplish if I had a string of days like this.  I imagine all the reading I would do, the notes I would take, the food I would fix and the plans I would make and accomplish.  Then a day comes when downy snowflakes fall from the sky and into my lap is a snow day.

And it has happened again, weather that says, “Just cozy up inside. There’s nothing for you out here. The view out the window is best.” Rain fell in the night and giant trucks slid over yonder, off the interstate pavement into the trees and up banks of icy ground. Ice is nearly non-negotiable and it’s not wise to try, but oh, how we try anyway.

Black birds visited the yard in a throng, pecking the ground looking like digital creations. Maybe they are searching for pieces of pecans discarded by gluttonous squirrels. They all rose and filled the hickory tree, filling in the gaps left by fallen leaves, but only for a moment before moving like a black cloud across the lawn to the pecan tree, then to the ground again before flying away to who knows where. I watched them from my second story window snapping pictures.

“Come let us reason together.“ 

I slice the tomatoes and dry them for a day. How different they taste when not carried in a splash of water, how chewy and sweet. In my excitement I held one finished piece in the light of my window before eating it. The winter storm had changed my dead yard to a glamorous, all white stage where the tomato became a marvel before it. As if before a spotlight now, I saw the seeds exposed in their deep and secret place suspended in time, an intimate peek into a scarlet explosion in the heart of the fruit, like little, fat exclamation points, like rambunctious, young sperm in pursuit of the egg. I’m shy at the sight of it. If they had a voice I’d hear shouts of joy and the whisper of…  

“Come let us reason”.

It’s been days still simmered on this theme, these thoughts pulled apart. I started an ancient practice in a jar on my kitchen counter, fermenting milk. It is silky and white and tart from growing bacteria that is good for me. Then I dried pounds and pounds of strawberries into sweet, red chips. Yesterday, I put them all in a plastic bag and felt so pleased with this work. The whites and the reds glaring again. A simple, messy life, tucked in a measly river valley town has things yet to say. Important lines to repeat out loud in my own simple way.

“Come let us reason“

There is nothing more or less going on in this life long mess of discarded strawberry tops and the feelings and experiences. It is all a boiled down in a line from Isaiah, older than the kefir grains preserving the milk on the counter. It’s older than time. It is of the foundation and that’s as solid as it gets.

“Come let us reason.”

It’s not “Just do what I say!” It isn’t, “Blindly follow me.” It isn’t, “Let me take you, use you, control you.” It is higher and bigger and breathtaking.

“Come let us reason.”

Engage the matter of your life and your outcomes with the outcomes of truth. Reason, dissect, use your intellect. God has nothing to hide. 

Trust Fall

 

The cuckoo clock click, click, clicks as I pull the pine cone weights up again. I hung the clock some four years ago, but the ticking is a wee fast, or a wee slow. It requires a perfect setting for perfect time and since I’ve never performed perfection in my life, I wait for a day of visitation by the divine, a day when the clock will keep the perfect time and I will then never again touch the wooden weight, and will eject anyone else who tries. Until then, I admire the artistry, the movement and the sound, and move on to opening the shades and tying the curtain back so I can see a peek of 3rd from the blue room.

This place is all art, the cuckoo clock, the sunlight making shadows on the wooden floor, the quirky, twisty willow in the big patio pot outside and the morning glory that’s been creeping up the branches all summer. And again, inside, the desert rose has been pushing out shining new leaves since the day it moved from a friend’s bedroom to its spot near the window here. I went to a gallery to see paintings and pictures of things I see every day; mountains, rivers, lakes, butterflies, people posing, people doing peoply things. Right now the shaky, quivering, high leaves of the water oak out the second story window in my home is more than I can thoughtfully endure. I can’t render adequate words, can’t take it properly inside me, the emerald greenery cutting the view of a sun-drenched, wispy cloud formation sailing slowly by whether I ever see it or not. I can’t figure out what to do with this kind of wisdom and beauty. I can’t own it, can’t take an adequate photo with my old phone. I can’t devour it and make it a part of me, but still, I try to capture it in this way, in the ways of words, making friends with failure again.

My jolly, funny Wheatens beg for an essay of adjectives to pull together the scenes of their frolic and folly, their carnival of comedy, their shackle-less hearts of joy bounding around a back yard. I would leave pristine paragraphs, heart-melting songs, lovely letters for my grandchildren, the great, great, greats and beyond. The yearning to leave something after I’m gone keeps trying me. And I see only art today, and that gives me a good chance.

Some days all the scenes transform, as if seen through gray, cracking glass, or viewed to the sounds of school bells telling your racing heart that you are late for class, unstudied for the quiz, ill-equipped for another day of the 7th grade. On those days, the roses whine about needing dead-heading because the old blooms are ugly and many, the Bermuda laughs while invading the garden again and very likely plans to take it over for good, the hum of the air conditioner that cooled and comforted only days ago, begins to whisper that I didn’t have the unit serviced this season, so who knows what issues are building in the box outside.

But today, I see art, and today I say I will only see art forever, and face failure again when it comes. A man said that when grief or terrible upheavals come, this is the best opportunity to send your loves notes up to God, to imagine your hugs, your surrender and devotion, to remember your bliss about the cords of love He’s wrapped you into Himself with. He called this worship, and this makes sense to me. In the pain, what’s real remains, and a worthy story has its proving ground, its rendering of art and worship.

You have a worthy story, an artistic rendering of life in its time, its scenes. And the rules of your life are golden and your scenes are soft, no matter how hard, in the light of this blazing context:

All things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

Romans 8:28

Some days you wake falling, bored, unsure, slow-wafting into the abyss, flung away from a familiar plan. You’ve woke with the gray, cracked glasses before your eyes, you’ve accepted their strange fit with their poor visibility and you must strain the familiar strains to piece together the fragments of what you see. What appears is ugly, fearful, mediocre, and not what you’d planned.

I picked up a paper and a pot full of Prisma pencils. This morning it felt random and new, though I’ve done this before. I needed to make art today, so I stared at the paper and doodled the body of my favorite bird. I couldn’t remember how to add the head, but I tried. She looked like she was falling, so I drew her a blue sky in which to descend, I gave her some clouds for her free-falling. I wanted to encourage her, so I penciled the words, “Trust the Fall”, to comfort her. As I watched her fall, to my surprise, all at once, I saw the rays of a golden sun below, the sun she was falling towards, not away from, so I penciled in the sun. She was falling into the light, not into the abyss. “Trust the Fall!”, I whispered to her. I cheered for her quietly because it was morning, and I had only had a few sips of coffee. Instead of the free-fall, I saw, instead, a trust-fall, and soon she would see the sun, she only need believe. Her face now looked of surrender, I gave her innocent eyes that looked like ones who trust until they see.

Today, this place is all art.

Trust Fall

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