A new year begins in September for many children and for all of us who love children and remember our own and our children’s September energy. There is movement coming. In Victoria, as I look over the Straits of Juan de Fuca towards the Olympic mountains in Washington state, I see flocks of geese practise flying together as they prepare for their yearly migration to warmer climes. I recently saw a hummingbird, familiar to me from last spring, hovering near the flowerpots on our deck. Only this week I read that some species of hummingbird return to their winter homes after summers lived up in the mountains. It is a migration of sorts.
There is joy in the air. And the promise of a future. Students and teachers and families are imagining the new people they’ll meet this school year, books they’ll read and perhaps places they’ll go during holidays. There are tall stacks of school supplies in big box stores. Last week my husband and I were in such a store buying a new printer. In one of those stacks, I saw a child’s backpack in ocean blue with pictures of swimming sharks all over it. There was also a pinky mauve backpack featuring a feminine faced octopus with long eyelashes and a pink mouth right in the middle of the backpack for anyone who followed behind to admire.
I am excited about the joy of new beginnings for our grandchildren. Three of them will be going to school this year in cities far from their families and homes. One of them is crossing the Atlantic Ocean to begin his studies at a British university in London. The youngest two are going to live at home here in Victoria but will begin the next stages of their studies in new schools in upper layers of the school system. One will begin Middle School and the other will enter high school.
There will be sports to play, music lessons to attend and homework as well as special events of many sorts. There will be pain and happiness and moments of joy.
As I sit at my desk looking over the Straits of Juan de Fuca, also known as the Salish Sea, I try to put myself into this present moment in my own life. On my way to finding a place of emptiness and silence within me. I bump into the immense human experience inside this moment. Intimate experiences of past, present and future are in my heart. I feel twinges of deep sorrow and knowledge of great suffering and death in our world at this moment and in moments past. These memories are alongside moments of almost pure happiness, for which I am extremely thankful. At times these feelings come together as something that is a huge peace, I call this peace ‘joy’ and am thankful for it even though it does not stay with me.
In moments of joy, I feel an expectation of what is beyond our moments here and my heart is restless for that. Perhaps this is a kind of homesickness for the future. Perhaps this is the way we humans survive in this world which seems unaligned with the rhythms of our time. The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time and a season for everything. Perhaps fleeting glimpses of an eternal home strengthen our attempts to come to terms with our restlessness and to meet our present moments on the lookout for joy.
Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest who wrote many beautiful books for spiritual seekers, lived in a group home with delayed or mentally challenged adult men, adults who needed a special community in which they could live and participate. Henri Nouwen’s group home was near Toronto. I saw him in person several times at conferences and lectures when I lived and went to seminary in Toronto. Henri Nouwen would come into the lecture space running with several members of his household running with him. Then they all stopped near the middle of the stage and Henri Nouwen would tell a story. I remember a story he told about going to the beach- probably on Lake Ontario – with members of his group.
The planned activity was for each person to draw in the sand something which meant a lot to him. One of the men ran wildly around the large space of beach and then concluded that joy is much too large to fit into such a small space.
It is interesting to me that I cannot remember whether I witnessed this story in person with Henri Nouwen and a large group of people or simply remember reading about it. The point of the story for me is that joy is very large and arrives mysteriously in the company of peace. Is this a small piece of heaven which begins in this world?
For all of you who have read this blog, I wish you ‘peace and joy’ for the present moment and always.
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