so ends the season

Life comes and goes in seasons.
There are the vibrant, active, busy seasons; times when you have a seemingly endless list of to-do’s, more social activity than you can keep up with, and eighty-two percent of the time you are running off of adrenaline and the cognitive necessity to get things done. Keep going…
And then there are the slow, introspective seasons. These are always post-busy season, and have a tendency to catch me by surprise. But just as autumn always follows summer, and winter tails autumn, the periods of deep reflection and processing always follow the periods of fast-paced activity. You would think that I would recognize the pattern by now…

Such has been summer.
A time of reflection, introspection, deep thinking, analyzing and processing. It is kind of like debriefing. The experiences, decisions, learning and accomplishments of the time between September and April (where did that first year go?) are processed, connected, revisited in the quieter hours of the day. The noise and chaos and go-go-go is but a memory, a distant mental image in which I often see myself in third-person.
Quiet, silence, stillness. Sometimes it seems like the very air around me has settled to wait, watch and listen.
And then I realize again the steady, gentle, unchanging presence of my Father. During those busy seasons, I often forget that He is there. He is not the obnoxious, attention-seeking type. He quietly waits, with perfect patience, for me to take notice of His presence. And then, when I acknowledge Him, I sense the question, “Do you have time for Me now?”

The reflection season is not over just yet. But it is the beginning of the end. Much of the internalization of the season before, the analyzing and conclusions, the realizations and coming to terms with what was, what could have been, what ought to have been; allowing God to chip away and strip down some of the fallible concepts I had been building on…much of this has already happened. But it’s not over just yet. The leaves are still green, the sun is still warm…

Begin the song exactly where you are.
Remain within the world of which you’re made.
Call nothing common in the earth or air…

Become an open singing bowl, whose chime
Is richness rising out of emptiness,
And timelessness resounding into time.

And when the heart is full of quietness
Begin the song exactly where you are.

~ “Singing Bowl”, The Singing Bowl: Collected Poems by Malcolm Guite