Co-creation

I went for a long walk (after a shorter than usual run) tonight: one of those walks where it just feels good to be outdoors, crunching leaves underfoot, breathing in wood smoke and leaf mold and the last lawn clipping scent of summer, and just enjoying being alive.  Walking for me is generally a great way to get into a thinking sort of mood - to, as Emily of New Moon would say, bring on "the flash"(if you're not familiar, look up L.M. Montgomery).  Anyway, I found myself really pondering the idea of co-creation, and how it relates to our eventual (hopeful) destination of heaven, as well as our current vocations in the here and now.  Thought I'd share a bit of the rambling road my thoughts went down, not that they were somehow highly insightful, but rather hoping that they might inspire further thought and/or spark discussion, leading us "further up and further in" (as C.S. Lewis would say).

1)  I would love to be able to really paint, to do justice to and call attention to the beauty of God's creation around us.  But I would need another whole lifetime to cultivate that particular skill.

2)  Lewis and Tolkien both suggest heavily that a particular element of heaven will be our continued participation in further fleshing out/leafing out/decorating God's creation - that the particular way in which we are made in God's image, is that we, like him, create.

3) Therefore, perhaps in heaven, I'll have the chance to perfect my painting skills.

4)  Perhaps the great multitude around the throne singing "Holy, Holy, Holy," aren't necessarily literally singing the whole time, but are rather glorifying God with the various talents God has bestowed upon them (and ever discovering new talents He has bestowed on each).

5)  In the meantime, here in this time and space, He has given me a very particular set of roles and gifts.

6)  One of these gifts is writing, however the time hasn't necessarily come for that to be my primary focus (when or if such a time ever comes is in His control rather than mine).

7)  He has, very definitely, given me one very concrete way to participate with Him in the most glorious type of co-creation possible: that of begetting and raising new little souls to be loved and learn to love Him.  Being "just a mom," even if I never did anything else, would be, if lived rightly, all the purpose, title, and crown I could ever need.

8)  Still, I do hope to be able to find time, (in time, or in eternity), to develop the other passions He's planted in me: not for my own glory, not to point towards or share of myself, but to share more of Him.

As Tolkien says, in his poem "Mythopeia" (this is only an excerpt; the whole poem can be found in the book Tree and Leaf),

"Though now long estranged,

man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,

...

man, sub-creator, the refracted light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with elves and goblins, though we dared to build

gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right

(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we're made."

Anyway.  If any of this resonates with any of you in even the smallest part, I suggest reading Leaf by Niggle, by J.R.R. Tolkien.  It is (especially if you have any knowledge of Tolkien himself, and his long work on The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) a beautiful metaphorical glimpse into what heaven might be.  And also The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.  My apologies if this all is a bit disjointed - I find myself torn between perfecting my posts (and never or rarely posting anything, due to the previously lamented extreme lack of time in which to write), or posting items even in an unanalyzed, barely proofread state just to continue communicating with the world at large :)

A Horse and Her Girl: Part One

This time of year, with the crunching leaves and crisp edge to the wind, always makes me think of horseback riding.   And this year, it's reminding me of my horse, Eclipse, in an extra way, because it was right around this time last year that we had to say goodbye.   My mom wrote about this at the time, but for me there wasn't a lot to say. Now, however, over a year has passed, enough time to want to, and be able to, tell the story of the horse that grew with me from a child of ten, to a wife with a child of my own.  However, it's a longish story, encompassing seventeen years, so even a brief telling of the tale will take a couple of parts.

Part One

Eclipse was technically an accident, the product of an escaped stallion, a late night rendezvous, a moment of unbridled equine passion.  Her mother was, at the time, my absolute favorite animal on the planet, a thoroughly patient, devoted, loving mare named after my grandmother Norma.  N.R., as she was referred to, was never formally trained, but she was still the safest horse in the pasture on whom to learn to ride.  The stallion, Praise Song, was a fiery young stud who, shortly after the rendezvous in question, picked my father up by the hood of his sweatshirt and actually shook him (my dad later liked to show us the sweatshirt with the teeth marks, evidence of a close brush with death).  Needless to say, Praise Song didn't get to stay a stallion long after that incident - he was actually gelded the very next day.

So Eclipse was a one-and-only from the moment of conception.  Then came the night of her birth.  If you search for June 15, 1992, you'll find that there was a partial lunar eclipse on that night; that night she was born, with her forehead marked with the crescent moon.

She was essentially mine from birth; my aunt, who owned all the horses, had promised each of her nieces and nephews a horse of their own choosing at their 13th birthday, which they could either sell (reaping the proceeds), or keep and train.  Horse-crazy basically from childhood ("see! see!" was my early word for horse), I of course chose the latter, and the only filly born in years from my favorite mare was an obvious choice. But, at 10 years old (and not yet weighing the sixty lbs that my elders has arbitrarily deemed the weight at which I could ride alone), there wasn't a lot I could do with her.  I halter trained her, of course, and when she escaped her pasture, I was the only one who could catch her to get her back in.  I have a shadowy memory of a young, dark filly on a sunny lawn, friendly ears pricked towards me as I confidently walked up and put a lead around her neck.  And another memory of then weaving, with my mom, a "baling twine barrier" all up and down the fence, so that she couldn't escape again.  Hours of work, a complete visual eye-sore, but effective enough that it stayed for probably a decade after we put it up.

Over the next three years, she and I both grew, and the storms of adolescence hit.  She began to exhibit a temper much like her father's; I was rather broody, melancholy, and while becoming an accomplished rider, still very green and uncertain.  Probably as with any horse trained by a young teenager, she developed some quirks right from the beginning that took years to go away: spinning into the circle on the lunge, rearing to get out of things, tossing her head at bridling.  If things had continued in that vein, I might not have had much luck ever riding her, but fate, and illicit rendezvous of her own with another escaped stallion (this is a trend on our farm.  Stallions, rams, "I don't think anything happened" and then several months later, offspring; great for reproductive education but not so great for keeping herd size down), intervened.  Over the course of a few months, her mood inexplicably mellowed, until one day, as I was brushing her, I felt something move.

Unbridled Passion, as I named the foal, was born a few months later.  Before he was born, I took great advantage of Eclipse's more mellow disposition, and the weight of the foal inside her kept her a lot slower and easy to work with (having now experienced the last trimester of pregnancy, I now realize it was awfully unfair to take advantage of her condition, but it did help).  Of course, the whole situation was far from ideal; if she'd been a human instead of a horse, she'd have been starring in the movie Juno, because age-wise she wasn't out of horse-high school yet.  The stallion in question was a cousin of hers, so the genetics weren't great, and the foal never amounted to much (he actually had to be put down after he broke his leg in a pasture accident when he was two).  But the time allowed Eclipse and I to grow much closer, and for the first time in my life I was riding on a daily basis.  Riding - to this day, there's still nothing quite like it, and back then, I was riding my equine best friend.

If there's any interest in part two, I'll continue soon.. :)

Slowing down..

It's been a very busy couple of weeks: dress making, cake making, wedding festivities, and then a full week off for both my husband and I, which meant coming up with some fun things to do to make our vacation "count".  Towards the end of the week, my daughter came down with Coxsackie virus (if you've never heard of it, don't worry - I hadn't, either), so she was a miserable camper for a few days, and we ended up having to postpone our planned trip to the ocean.  Now I've got the same miserable sore throat that she had, and am finally listening to my body's cues to just slow down a little.  Hence the renewed quiet on the blogging front (I know, I've spent most of the summer apologizing for being quiet!)

The end of the summer always brings a particular frenzy of activity: that first burst of fall color in the trees sparks a sense of urgency, as I try to squeeze in every last one those activities planned back when summer was just an oasis glimpsed distantly through winter-sick eyes.  Complicating and adding to that last burst of planned fun, I always seem to experience a huge creativity surge as the weather gets cooler.  If you've ever played Sims2, they hit the nail on the head - the characters are more motivated to learn and do crafty things in the fall.  Not that I've had any time for such games since the stork dropped off LW, but the analogy comes back to me at times like these, just the same.

Anyway, I've got skirt patterns, patterns for LW, plans to make more throw pillows, and stacks of books that I'm gathering to read; plans to pick apples and put away crisps and butter like last year; harvesting, preserving, and also have some other ideas and projects that have been waiting for cooler weather and more indoor time.  I'm reflecting more on faith, on vocation, on who I am and who God is calling me to be.  I suppose it's always this way at the change of a season (which makes me wonder, what is it like in those parts of the world with no, or different, seasons?) - the space between seasons is a transition time, a "time-between-times" as in Celtic mythology, and as such, is a perfect time for reflecting, taking stock, and also for making plans for the future.  However, this end-of-summer cold is reminding me not to burn myself out in a frenzy of "enjoyment," but rather, to take some time just to be; to go on walks, or maybe just lay in bed and listen to the breeze (if I can get LW to occupy herself, somehow!)  In short, to enjoy the "now" of the end of summer.

So, what about all of you?  Do you experience an end-of-summer frenzy, or a burst of creative energy at the beginning of Fall?  Or how do you stay in the moment, in the midst of the always-moving busyness of life?