A New Season
Last Tuesday when I was headed out the door to take the
girls to swim, I grabbed a fleece jacket from the closet, the first time I’d
done such a thing since early May. It
would be early evening before we were home, and the Maine nighttimes had become
deliciously cool.
As we came out of the Boys&Girls club after the girls
had showered and were glowing from the exercise and warm water, I pulled the
jacket on and stuck my hands in the pockets, to find a handful
of…something. I jerked my hand out and
then smiled. Beans. Pole bean seeds to be exact. I hadn’t worn this jacket since I’d been
planting last spring, and here it was dusky at 5:30, the light fading earlier each
day as we head toward the winter solstice.
Once school starts and we settle into new schedules and new
routines, it’s inevitable in our house that conversation occasionally turns to
Christmas. Sally wants company; she
likes a houseful at the holidays. Maggie
is already making lists of what she wants to get people. And of course, they are ruminating over what
they want from Santa (they are still full-on believers). The bean seed in my pocket reminded me of
what got planted and what didn’t, things done and things left undone. The garden is a riotous mess; my neat rows
and best intentions of last spring are just memories. As we come into fall and winter, everything
around is an ambiguous mix of old and new: leaves are changing, plants are
withering, the light is fading and the chill in the air encourages us to curl
up, withdraw, settle in. Yet there is
newness: new school years, new friends, new projects and adventures. Harvest time is a time of preparation, of
processing food and setting in stores of wood (pellets, in our house) and the
things we need for winter. It’s no
wonder that the Jewish New Year is now, that Advent approaches, that we prepare
to begin again in the middle of what seems bleak and dark and cold, our hearts
gazing hopefully for what’s next.
And that’s the challenge: being here now while the world is
always turning. I hope that another new
thing in our lives, our Sunday School program at St. Mark’s, can be a source of
strength for all of us. Our children
have an amazing gift of being able to savor the present and behold what’s
coming with a delight and freedom that we can both encourage and learn
from. We are all each other’s teachers
and guides. I hope that as we settle
into winter and prepare to begin again, we can do so together. If you’ve been away, come home, see what’s
happening at St. Mark’s on Sunday mornings, and be a part of it.
Bess Stokes, Coordinator for Children and Youth
