Moonlight Conversation
Sometimes I crave a kind of connection with nature, with myself, with God that I don’t know how to achieve. The absence of it makes me feel caged up inside. I can’t sit still. I can’t listen well.
The other day I felt this way and talked of going to the farm. I planned to ride horses, go on a hike, sit on a hillside. As it turned out, by the time I pulled out of the driveway, heading for the country, carrying two dogs, two kids, and pulling a tent camper, the sun was an hour from setting. There wasn’t enough daylight left to do anything. So I just positioned the camper on the edge of the woods and left it there.
I turned on lights in the cabin, and left the girls to listen to their latest obsession, High School Musical.
I alternately pulled weeds from between the wooden porch steps and sat in the rocking chair, then pulled more weeds, then rocked a little... all the time wondering, Is this it?
Was this moment the thing that had made me so antsy to leave town? Now I was antsy in the country, and getting bug bites.
At least the girls were having fun, singing soundalike lyrics at the top of their lungs, not much of it making sense, but that didn’t matter to them.
By now a butter yellow moon had risen over the treetops, and I was compelled to walk through a little stacked-rail fence onto the open hillside where Vince and I had said our wedding vows. The beauty of the sky at night and the stillness of the warm summer air were beginning to settle in on me, and I could feel their calming effect.
The pacing in my mind and heart was slowing down.
And as I stood there, gratitude began rising to the surface.
Gratitude for so many things... For this time in my family’s history, marriages, babies, for my parents, for all the comings and goings under my own roof. This uncluttered, uninterrupted moment with my bare feet on the grass made me feel closer to the connectedness I longed for.
Maybe I should pray. Maybe out loud.
But when I opened my mouth, the words seemed outside the moment.My voice too thin. The actual sounds inadequate and out of place. If this had been male-female communication, words would have stopped and touch would begin. How natural. But how does the created connect with the Creator?
I welcomed my gratitude, pictured my loved ones, and then began moving my arms, my hands, my feet in communication... I saw my sisters’ faces. And then I bent down, reaching, and then stood, stretching up, and I rocked my arms and my body and pictured all of us rocking each other’s babies...
And then I was marching and seeing my father, and dancing a jig... And then I moved in gratitude for my mother, kneeling, and bending,
and rising... And then for my children and Vince, and I moved and twirled and danced, and balanced, and stood and spun until I was panting and my heart was racing and I felt connected.
Later, walking back to the cabin, it occurred to me that I should do a little more stretching to stay limber so I can pray wordlessly in the moonlight when I’m ninety.
Sometimes I crave a kind of connection with nature, with myself, with God that I don’t know how to achieve. The absence of it makes me feel caged up inside. I can’t sit still. I can’t listen well.
The other day I felt this way and talked of going to the farm. I planned to ride horses, go on a hike, sit on a hillside. As it turned out, by the time I pulled out of the driveway, heading for the country, carrying two dogs, two kids, and pulling a tent camper, the sun was an hour from setting. There wasn’t enough daylight left to do anything. So I just positioned the camper on the edge of the woods and left it there.
I turned on lights in the cabin, and left the girls to listen to their latest obsession, High School Musical.
I alternately pulled weeds from between the wooden porch steps and sat in the rocking chair, then pulled more weeds, then rocked a little... all the time wondering, Is this it?
Was this moment the thing that had made me so antsy to leave town? Now I was antsy in the country, and getting bug bites.
At least the girls were having fun, singing soundalike lyrics at the top of their lungs, not much of it making sense, but that didn’t matter to them.
By now a butter yellow moon had risen over the treetops, and I was compelled to walk through a little stacked-rail fence onto the open hillside where Vince and I had said our wedding vows. The beauty of the sky at night and the stillness of the warm summer air were beginning to settle in on me, and I could feel their calming effect.
The pacing in my mind and heart was slowing down.
And as I stood there, gratitude began rising to the surface.
Gratitude for so many things... For this time in my family’s history, marriages, babies, for my parents, for all the comings and goings under my own roof. This uncluttered, uninterrupted moment with my bare feet on the grass made me feel closer to the connectedness I longed for.
Maybe I should pray. Maybe out loud.
But when I opened my mouth, the words seemed outside the moment.My voice too thin. The actual sounds inadequate and out of place. If this had been male-female communication, words would have stopped and touch would begin. How natural. But how does the created connect with the Creator?
I welcomed my gratitude, pictured my loved ones, and then began moving my arms, my hands, my feet in communication... I saw my sisters’ faces. And then I bent down, reaching, and then stood, stretching up, and I rocked my arms and my body and pictured all of us rocking each other’s babies...
And then I was marching and seeing my father, and dancing a jig... And then I moved in gratitude for my mother, kneeling, and bending,
and rising... And then for my children and Vince, and I moved and twirled and danced, and balanced, and stood and spun until I was panting and my heart was racing and I felt connected.
Later, walking back to the cabin, it occurred to me that I should do a little more stretching to stay limber so I can pray wordlessly in the moonlight when I’m ninety.
