The rain reaches its gray fingers down, undefined, feathery edges of cloud. Looking close to touch, but always distant, always far. 

In the land where I’m from, clouds that look like this smell of foreboding. Those that reach toward the earth are churning and black-green with anger. You see them and flinch.

In this gray northwest, the fingers of cloud reach down as if the water making them up never quite left the earth. Connected by the ebb and flow. You see them and sigh. 

Not long after I moved here, I saw such a cloud and flinched. My breath caught slightly. “There’s no tornados here,” I assured myself. And now, a few years later, sometimes I still flinch, briefly fearful of the dark heaviness. But mostly I wonder – maybe this time? Maybe if I reach out I’ll touch them?

I’ve been reading Wendell Berry lately. Slowly, amidst other books and stories. And the further I’ve made my way through the book the more of a boon it has become. His stories seem to cast this lens of significance and weightiness to life. The true meaning of romanticizing life. The meaningful moments of life that generally go by unnoticed or at least unaccounted for: comforting someone in misery, beholding a bit of nature you haven’t yet, observing the growth of a boy into a man.

The book is called “A Place in Time:” a collection of short stories set in his world of a small Kentucky community on the southern banks of the Ohio. It compiles stories and snippets from the perspectives of well-known Berry characters, or from a narrator, as lives go by. As they account for these significances that few do.

The lives are normal, achingly so in many of the stories. The humans are human and true down to their marrow. And Berry’s prose captures not the idealized lives of “simpler times” but the plain ole existence that every human experiences. He brings truth to bear without removing the beauty. Without taking away the glory of creation, the incalculable worth of life, and the devastating weight of loss.

As I’ve read (and I’m yet to finish as I write this), I’m so impressed at his ability to write successful people with their complexities of sorrow and humor. Many pages cause me to chuckle and those that follow bring tears. Just as our own days do.

I’m excited to finish.

Do you have funny, oddly specific memories? I know we all do, and I forget about mine from time to time. But I love when I do remember them. Almost always something small recalls them to mind. 

I heard a fiddle song today and instantly I was in my parents front room, playing my violin for my cousin. New to the art of violin, every additional skill I learned was almost always showcased, whether it be my parents, a friend, or any other (probably) unwilling person. Cause let’s be honest, I’ve heard my fair share of new violinists. It’s rough. What  they lack in intonality, they make up for in exuberance and earnestness. I love it.

So I’m there, in this memory, and my cousin is sitting across from me as I show off my new skill: the slur. Two notes joined together in one, supposed-to-be, smooth bow.

We’re in a version of my parents’ old front room and she’s perched on the piano bench, waiting… I, maintaining to the best of my ability the perfect violinist stance, begin the song. I don’t remember what song it is. As I play, I remember feeling vaguely nervous. This new skill is overwhelming after all. Then it comes, the slur. And I nail it. Flawless execution for my grade school, new to violin, self. I remember feeling thrilled as I looked at my cousin. She does that face that all suburban moms do when you show them something slightly impressive. Raised eyebrows, half smile, pursed lips. You know. And I’m just so proud.

And for some reason that memory has always stuck. I could philosophize about why. Create some reason psychologically why my brain chooses this one. And maybe there is, maybe that’s true! A definite part of me looks back at my younger self with vague envy, wishing I still had such self confidence. I was nervous, yes, but I don’t remember that ugly form of self absorption that comes with being seen by others once you age. Really I wish I didn’t care so much.

But, I’m learning not to look backwards. There is help to be found in introspection. Re-forming habits or reflecting on patterns of speech and thought is integral to the Christian life. However, it easily slips too far.

I find this is where I have to remember the truth of sanctification and that it is not justification. Neither then become untrue, of course, but they must be held in balance. Our salvation is sealed in Christ. Accepted by God the Father for all eternity. We will not be snatched from His hand. Sanctification then builds us up. Sends us along an imperfect path, while trudging toward perfection. And that is why I love the idea of “already and not yet.”

This is a lot to come out of remembering something random, right? Welcome to my brain.

Love, Meg

Too tired to go on. It’s 7pm.

“I’m not tired,” she wails.

“I’m not tired,” she cries. Eyelids half shut. Words barely audible. 

Her eyelids close. Asleep at 7pm.

And up the stairs I go. Chuckling – “it’s only 7pm.”

The evening stretches out. 

Peace and quiet as the house closes.

Funny little things, that can hardly make it to 7pm.

“If only you knew,” I think. “The sweetness of sleep.”

I think I’m tough. I can make it through the day.

An adult, not a child. 

Yet, I think about our Father. 

How alike to a child I am before Him.

“I’m not tired,” I wail.

“I’m not tired,” I cry. My eyelids half shut. My body and spirit weighed down. 

Too tired to go on. 

One day in light of eternity.

The last light of day on mountains. Something pale and ethereal, both close and far, soft and solid.

Ones half hid by hills, pointing above just barely where the white looks blue and the shadows change slowly. 

Ones showing entirely, the cascade of angles and edges softened by the dimness and distance of light.

Yet somehow, still majestic, even more so in the end of light – strong, still standing, unmoving and mighty.

I use a fish spatula to flip eggs, because that’s what my mom always did. The same one, always. A slight wooden handle encasing the metal. It came out, probably for more things than eggs but always, for eggs. 

“Would you like a fried egg?” My mom would ask. The invitation being open to us all, but mostly my dad. 

Because at breakfast there was always eggs, or bacon, or Canadian bacon, it could be anything like, but always something. Who wants breakfast without protein, huh? 

I remember the first time I fried an egg in my own kitchen with my own fish spatula on my own cast iron. And it came out like my mom’s always did. Maybe I cheered, I can’t quite remember, but I probably cried a little. I don’t always cook things like my mom does, but when I do, I always cry a little. 

So the eggs get fried a lot in this house. But there’s never canadian bacon like in Texas, because that’s called ham (or back bacon?) here in British Columbia. The distance feels far now, but a little bit less when the fish spatula comes out for eggs.