On slow change

13 September 2012

Sometimes, it is good that things percolate and brew. There’s a flavor transition, a texture change, a metamorphosis—so that one scarcely recognizes the thing finished from the thing began.

And people morph in progress; if we are not changed by the journey, we are not likely moving, not living at all. People must change. It is the nature we were given. Even when change is imperceptible externally, or torrential internally, or catastrophic contextually; it simply is our state of being: becoming.

Childhood’s emblems pass thick and dense with threads of imagination, all the worlds created from thin air, the first whispers of wishes for life, a prelude to the symphony. Perhaps the first pinings of “artistic temperament”, or just the utterly basic nature of man: to long, to hunger, to ache with happy angst for our true destiny, our ultimate relationship.

But dreams disappoint, especially when the dreamer is ignorant and scared—pseudo-safety constructed from gossamer whims. These disintegrate, swept away in reality’s cold winds, sometimes to liberation, sometimes to despair. And love of dreams wanes as actual strength to forge in reality what the heart sees in clarity fails, because the heart is humiliatingly weak, and the soul crushingly frail.

And yet, in all the smashing and sifting and blowing away, an indomitable, severe and sweet mercy pervades, because, after all, we are created ones, and we have a Maker Who cares for our souls. And perhaps the winds blow to teach us that we are not our own, that we cannot possess control.

Maybe the frost is really our friend, warning us to seek the protection we need from the winter storm.

Could it be that the darkness and cloud come as kindreds, beckoning us into the light and warmth of our Maker’s embrace?

What would happen if we welcomed the winds instead of resisting them? If we listened to the whispers and shouts instead of covering our ears? If we accepted the season of confusion, darkness, and quiet? What might we learn of ourselves? What might we come to know of the One Who made us? And what might change in how we look at the pilgrims walking near us?

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - These are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” C.S. Lewis

Making a Father’s Heart

Like the land he tills, his heart stays quiet and predictable most of the year. His life seems so simple; we assume that’s all he is: boring and brown and tilled in straight lines. But that just proves we know nothing, either of the soil, or of the heart.

During the drought we languished, tired of grieving and wishing for rain that did not come. But each spring he planted. Each autumn he harvested. Other farmers’ fields lay abandoned, crops never brought into granary, because it wasn’t worth it for three bushels to the acre.

But he just kept going out: waking early, working late, keeping us linked to life by radio conversations and tractor rides.

So we kept going too, not aware that our own roots were growing deep.

He could do something other than farming, this brilliant man. In four years of high school, he spent only thirty minutes total with homework. He could have become a chemistry professor with the Canadian military. He could have been a local name with his community club book-keeping and school bus driving and golf swing. He could have vacationed and built bigger and been a good average farmer.

But he didn’t.

He came home to the farm, because there was no money to put him through military school. He gave up the local clubs and golf league. He decided children were more important than early retirement or new equipment. He chose to pay off inherited debts rather than leave his sons with liabilities. He risked loving people outside his community, and loving children beyond his family.

In his long, slow journey of surrender, he was transformed. Ambition morphed into invention, prowess into stewardship, pride into grace.

And through all the loss and exposure and deep tilling and hardship, God made a Father’s heart.

So now, he cultivates and sows and harvests. He plays with children, labours with his sons, listens to his daughters, shields and supports his wife.

Nothing special.

Nothing so hard.

Nothing so worth it.

He opens calloused hands and dies to himself, and others come to life.

This is way of the seed in the field. This is way of the Father’s heart.

For my Dad, on Father’s Day.

George MacDonalad Musings

But all things shall be ours! Up, heart, and sing.
All things were made for us---we are God's heirs---


Moon, sun, and wildest comets that do trail


A crowd of small worlds for a swiftness-tail!



Up from thy depths in me, my child-heart bring!


The child alone inherits anything;


God's little children---all things are theirs!

~Diary of an old soul, May 4th