A month ago today, my time of hiking and exploring in Maine had ended. I drove away from the tiny house I was staying in, go into Portland so I could catch my flight the next morning. All I had left was a stop in Brunswick for a quick visit at an arts center I’d heard about. There’ll be more to tell about that visit soon. But today, in my home office, with my girl Tuxie sprawled out next to me, and the chirps of little peeps filtering in from the Florida room right next to my office, the whole month of September feels like it happened a lifetime ago. That realization is sobering.

I think I wrote elsewhere that as my flight approached for landing in Portland, I sensed an unexpected shift inside of me, a loosening of some of the things that too easily hold me captive, including anxiety and perfectionism. It was thrilling in the days that followed to simply show up, to practice ‘disponibilité,’ making myself available to what each day might bring. I look back on the day after I got home, when the rug slipped out from under my foot and wonder: was that a metaphorical fall back to earth? I had come home so determined to return to the ordinariness of my life with the kind of freedom I’d been graced to receive in Maine .

Clergy types like I often comment that October is insane in the life of a congregation. There are all kinds of reasons for the insanity and this time around was no different. Day by day, the sense of freedom got eroded a little bit, and then a little bit more, and then again, another little bit more. I can retrace my steps over the past month and see the places I kept losing bits and pieces of that ‘lightness of being’ I was so thankful for. At the same time, I can also see the moments when I was able to stop, to breathe, when I remembered and insisted for myself that even in this most crazy of months, the freedom is still possible, is still there for the taking.

About 10 days ago we had couple of frosty nights. The kudzo is in retreat; that always pleases me. But what was really the very best, was the color that suddenly burst into flame. In the morning, when the light hits just right, you come around a curve on Old Selma Road, and I at least, just have to pull to the side. I came across a gorgeous line in a book review in the NYT this morning that says it perfectly:

“ Whoever stood there and looked at this would never want to utter even a single word; such a person would simply look, and be silent.”¹

There is a large parcel of pastureland right across the road from our home. About two weeks ago the hay that had grown almost waist high was harvested; bales and bales lay scattered around the field until yesterday when some began to get hauled away. Again, it is the light, the golden light of a fall afternoon, that makes my heart calm itself into the kind of slow, steady rhythm that says, ‘you are alive. You are alive. You are alive.’

And then, of course, the cuteness overload that comes at 7 o’clock in the morning, when our lovely post office lady calls and says, “Miss Rosa, your chickens are here,” and you throw on a jacket, hop in the car and turn up the heat full blast. The box you receive is so tiny and so loud. The little ones, when you put them in their temporary brooder, are so stunned and bewildered. There’s the awe that they haven’t been alive for more than about 52 hours and yet survived a journey of hundreds of miles and are now eager to take up life in this strange new world. The forgotten delight, watching them discover water, take a small sip and then, bend back their heads, put their tiny beaks up in the air, so the water can gurgle down their throats.

Yup, October gets cra-cra with stewardship drives, Advent planning, budget planning, people getting sick, others getting their hearts shattered, with budgets and sermons. All that is true. So is the dazzled curiosity of my funny girl dog figuring out about those itty, bitty, tiny, little biddies.

Retracing my steps to September, finding even just a tiny little piece, one as small as Julian’s hazelnut, holding it in my hand as carefully as I hold the fluffy little peeps, I am reminded, freedom is still there for the choosing.

^[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/28/books/review/oyamada-halfon-krasznahorkai-guibert.html