poppy

I love poppies. They’re ethereal and vibrant at the same time. There’s usually only a few days of them around here, but oh, I love those days.

Sunday Morning

I wrap myself in a quilt, click on the coffee. The sizzle of steam keeps me company as I blow the coals in the stove back to life.

I open the blinds so I can watch the coming sunlight count the tops of the mountains across the runway.

I pour the first cup of coffee and open the Word. I read in Leviticus, and 2 Kings, and turn back to words in Thessalonians. I pour a second cup of coffee, and I see the fulness growing there in the words on the page, the words that are growing in me.

Let them find their way in, Lord, all the way in. And let them find their way out, out into my every thought and word and deed.

Metaphor

It’s cool and blustery today. The leaves are skittering across the ground, and dust clouds blow down the driveway. The sunlight is thin.

Fall is fading. It’s no longer the glorious days of color and day-warmth, with cool mornings and evenings that bring the return of the stars, but rather the in-between of brown and gray and growing cold that leads to winter.

There’s a thousand metaphors to be drawn from this season, many of which might seem cliché (and as I love fall so much, I’d be willing to accept them). But fall has always been the start of things for me, which perhaps isn’t cliché because that would seem to fit better in spring. The beginning of the school year, my birthday, new jobs. New ideas and resolutions and purpose. These all seemed to come in the fall.

The trees have lost most of their leaves. The late-turning trees are now yellow among the skeletal brown instead of green among yellow and orange. I cut across the lawn just to hear the leaves under my feet. It’s one of my favorite things.

The mountains are ever-changing. The snow, the vegetation, the light changes them from one moment to the next. All of the cracks and chasms in the mountains have regained something of their magic. I never tire of coming around a corner, and feeling breathless because THERE THEY ARE.

I think right now I feel a bit lost because I’m finding grief at the the things past instead of excitement at things beginning. These things may be months or years ago, but are just now finding their way to grief. It does not feel altogether foreign, even though it is a change from my usual fall season, because I realize that things concluding means others are starting… but it does not mean that right now I can see them. Winter comes next. And this makes, perhaps, a better metaphor.