Stepping outside

I’m getting the best view of the cabin’s lighted tree this morning…better than any I got during the holiday season. I guess that means it’s time to go get it. Give it a rest for another year. I’ve thought of bringing it in a few times but the snow’s been so deep in the yard that I just plain didn’t want to find my high boots or get my ankles wet.

But what’s getting me about it is how good the tree looks. Why? And why does that small light over the kitchen sink illuminate the yard one morning and not another? They’re not only questions of the way I see. Today, you wouldn’t know the light over the kitchen sink is on. It’s a hazy morning with a touch of pink in the sky and the yard is uniformly quiet, devoid of light.

The feel of morning is one of resting, as if the day is caught before it begins.

I’ve not been resting much physically, but I guess my mind has been resting in its own way, with a sort of freedom from what, for a while, had become the usual thoughts of a particular time. Now the unusual has arisen. I’m going to leave my elderly gentleman and his fields and begin caring for a family member. It is such a personal and private matter, that writing about it more than this feels unseemly. Let’s just say there’s been a break in the usual and a new direction has arisen. It is a restful change in attention – this chance to devote myself to the needs of someone I love. There’s a quiet stillness to it.

It’s been such a break from “the usual” that I didn’t even realize it was Martin Luther King day on Monday until there wasn’t any mail delivery. I’d been away from the TV and the newspaper. Yesterday, mid-morning, I saw the front-page article about a march that took place in relation to it. I generally am happy about those times when I’m not living by the calendar. They feel more natural; the calendar too often a kind of dictator. But the article made me wish I’d been there. The marching banner said:

“The Fierce Urgency of Now.”

There are all kinds of meanings to that phrase and one must surely be about getting away from trivialities long enough to feel the quiet sense of rightness about your own actions in your own now. One of the women marchers said, “I’m so glad to be here. It’s a part of history – it feels like stepping outside myself. It’s thrilling.”

Wow. What a great way to describe it: “stepping outside myself.” Sometimes the actions or the feelings of a day or hour like that become those of a life fully engaged.

The speaker for the King day events, the civil rights leader, Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery, said, “Don’t diminish Martin into some glorified social worker. He was a nonviolent revolutionary.”

He also spoke of moving beyond ceremony to sacrament. He said, “Ceremony is putting the ring on her finger at the wedding. Sacrament is ringing her life with love and joy everyday.” Sacrament is an outward manifestation of an inner reality. I know when I feel it. I hope you do too. I hope we all begin to recognize the days when we feel that aligning of the inner and the outer, no matter how it comes. It gives us stillness…even in the midst of revolution.

The article’s title read: "A March, A Message, A Mission. Across the Twin Cities, civic leaders exhort people to everyday action in the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr." Written by John Brewer and Maria Reeve, St. Paul Pioneer Press, pp 1 and 4.