Shadows Are Only There Because Light Was There First

Standing in the kitchen this morning, waiting for my rotini to finish cooking, I looked out the back door and saw Bernie sitting on the patio, his legs on one of the footstools I made this past year, his hands gracefully wrapped around his Bible, a blue scrub jay standing in his lap.

The morning was so sweetly quiet, without the thrash of horrid winds or the intrusive blare of lawn equipment. There were the sounds of birds, and of the click and bubble of macaroni salad being prepared for the afternoon meal.

My husband was near at hand, his face glowing with peace, communing with the Word of God and nature.

There is no amount of money that can buy the richness of joy that I felt watching him, knowing he would be here all day, knowing that he wasn't going to have to risk his life and our happiness in that damnable Mad Max melee of his former commute to the Bay Area.

We believe we have the monies available to live comfortably into our 80's without us having to take a crack at re-employment. Probably we have enough to live austerely into our 90's. Wow. Real retirement is really here.

I'm glad he's home for good. There was not a single day in 36 years that I wished he would get his ass off to work and get out of my hair. NOT ONE.

The only darkness that whispers evil in my ear is the voice that says, "What about health insurance? You can't afford much any more ... you are going to die if you don't have health insurance!"

An icy dagger stabs at me. I'm going to die if I don't have health insurance! This is when I realize that against my rational will, against my determination not to become a witless consumer led by the nose by advertising, I have indeed been indoctrinated by this media society to believe that Blue Cross, Health Net, Kaiser Permanente, whatever -- will make me immortal and I won't die.

It's not that I'm against health insurance intellectually; it was a great idea for two barely-twenty-somethings back in the day when health insurance was affordable. But now -- good Lord, the premiums are obscene! One month's health insurance = three months of groceries for the whole family.

In spite of the commercials and the hype, none of those health insurances mean that I won't drop dead in my tracks tonight, or tomorrow, or next week, or five years from now. It's a gambling game, not a guarantee. And if there's one thing that has been a tenet of my whole life, it is that I will never bet on anything but a sure thing.

Here's the sure thing: I am not immortal; I am going to die. I can bet on that.

What do I have to ante up to win that bet? Why, nothing at all.

If that is a darkness in my life, I have to remember the God Who illuminates each day, and Who promises that the life after this one will be even better. I have to remember that this life is practically an illusion of Life.

The shadows must remind me that the Light was there first, and that when all shadows are gone, the Light will still be endless.

The Day in the Kitchen

Before it was barely light, the sound of the wind thrashing the trees in the neighborhood infiltrated my dreams, making me image wild surf and seascapes.

The wind, along with the high pollen count from the citrus, the walnuts, the locust, and the weeds, is hurtful. Without the wind, it would be aggravating, but with the wind -- oh, noes, time to stay indoors.

And so it was an indoor day, a day for the kitchen, which we needed, after all.

Orange season is at its end, so we had bought cheap navel oranges in big bags to grind into juice. That's how the morning began. Bernie got more than two big jars of sweet, rich juice from his market harvest.

Then it was my turn, when I brought home my 40 Super-Jumbo eggs from the egg plant down the road. Super-Jumbo eggs are incredibly large, and can't be automatically processed at the egg-plant. They don't get candled there, and they're too big to go through the auto-wash. So we washed them carefully, all 40 of them, and I candled each with a flashlight to make sure they didn't have any dark streaks in them. (One was revealed to be a big double-yolker, which absolutely astonished Lillian, who had never even heard of such a thing!)

When my eggs were done, Bernie came back on shift to juice lemons from our tree, making lemon juice cubes to give us lemonade all summer long. (Lemons are a winter fruit.)

When the lemons' juice was all put away in ice cube trays, we cut up a large banana squash and cooked it in the pressure cookers. This is for pumpkin pies, a bright and rich-tasting confection. Then it was time for lunch, while the squash/pumpkin cooled.

In the afternoon, I piled the cooked squash into the Cuisinart (I love this technological marvel) and whirred it until it was creamily crushed. In my mother's time, we would put squash/pumpkin into a ricer and hand-grind it into palatability, leaving behind the fibrous bits. With the Cuisinart, the fibrous stuff gets chopped into oblivion, yet still remains as fiber in the mix, thus adding healthy stuff. The harvest was five pies' worth of pumpkin, a real treasure.

It was Real Life. We harvested, we processed, we preserved, all for our own survival, and pleasure.

As I gently washed the eggs, I had a strong sense of the blessing of food. They came directly from the chicken; no machinery was involved. This was REAL food, and we cared for it and prepared it for consumption ourselves.  It was not an automated event, far removed from our refrigerator. It was not a detached event; what I was carefully cleaning was also what would nourish my family, bringing to the task a tenderness, a love.

When I measured the pumpkin into containers for freezing, I had a sense of the future, when the pies made from this effort would bring smiles and good feelings to those who ate them.

I have a strong sense that this is what life is supposed to be about, not about hurrying to make money or meet deadlines, but to attend to the basic stuff of existence, the food, the provision, the love. The society we live in has put those things on a back burner, or a side burner at best. We've lost so much beauty and peace in that.

Retirement has honestly been a bounty of blessings.

Lent, and What It Tells Me

I have frequently heard it said that if you do not have some way to prepare for the Easter celebration during Lent, God will provide one for you.

(If you do not believe in God, or religious seasons, or spiritual exercise, please forgive me for speaking my mind.)

This year, my Lent was overshadowed by the visceral panic proceeding a routine colonoscopy. I knew it was on its way before Lent; I had about half a plan for a spiritual exercise, but when it came down to a day to day discipline, I could not follow it because I was so lost in horror. I tried to redirect by reading the Seven Penitential Psalms from the Bible each day, but the effort was hollow, and my Lenten resolve was pointless.

Nevertheless, it has been a good Lent. I would have preferred to have done something positive, but failing to do so, my lot has been to have trials of fear set before me, so that my only recourse was to throw myself on the mercy of God. The outburst of painful itchies as a result of my fear has shown me how frail my faith in God really is, how flabby my spirituality has become. And the cold that kept me from being the best song-leader in the parish -- well, I suspect my ego needed taken down a peg or two.

Not introspective by nature, I find that Lent provides me with a time to examine my way of interacting with the world, inspecting my nature in the light of the infinite goodness of Creation; Lent calls me to shed my self-sufficiency and immerse myself in how much I need the people around me, how much sustenance I need to seek in God's grace.

Lent's message to me? I've got a long way to go. Let's get crackin'.