Lately I find myself in a state of “what day is this”?
Days, which were once so organized and followed a specific order and life time of assigned names, have now become “today, yesterday, the other day, someday, that day, any day, tomorrow”. In fact, to be sure, I have started to pick up The Gazette and check the upper right-hand corner, just to make sure. They seem to all run one into the other with no specific or allotted time frame.
This has led me to ponder beginnings and endings. As I look out the window (something I find myself doing a lot on what ever day it may be), I realize, with great clarity, that one season is ending, blending into a new season.
The color of the sky has, without much notice in all the other stuff going on, changed from an icy grey-blue to a warmer tone of blue, ending with sunsets of pink and gold.
The trees have begun to look just a little different with small buds showing…but they too “began” and now seem to be stuck somewhere “in between” as the days have not fully warmed enough to proceed to the next phase. There are no signs of green yet, but you can sense branches beginning to welcome new growth.
As we slowly enter our seventh week of “isolation”, we too are waiting. Waiting for an ending, or a beginning to happen in our own lives.
As we wait in that “in between” zone, now might be a good time to take yet another sigh or deep breath and reflect on all the beginnings and endings which have happened in our life times. It’s a good time to remind ourselves of all the days and seasons we have moved through over the years. So many beginnings and endings.
As we have tried to fill our waiting time as productively as possible, something has begun - perhaps without much notice. Spring has come. And there will be a summer and a fall and, yes, another winter. More beginnings and endings.
It is time to ask ourselves what we have learned during this waiting period? And, of more importance, what can we bring into our lives when the waiting ends?
T.S. Eliot in “Little Gidding” (see note) summed up endings and beginnings as follows:
“What we call the beginning is often the end
and to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from”.
I wish us all well as we move through this “somewhere” time. Let us do it with awareness and intention. Let us honor our own steps. And may we all find peace as we end and as we begin.
Pastor Beryl
Note: Little Gidding is the fourth and final poem of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, a series of poems that discuss time, perspective, humanity, and salvation. It was first published in September 1942 after being delayed for over a year because of the air-raids on Great Britain during World War II and Eliot's declining health.