Broadview magazine included an article I wrote about my church’s transition from an old boiler heating system (and no air conditioning) to heat pumps for both heating and cooling.
The article includes four subheadings: Don’t rush, shop around, work in phases, and have faith.
Those same four subheadings apply to more than heat pumps, right? Writers on their journeys, families navigating life challenges, and people facing health problems can all benefit from a similar approach.
Whatever life throws at you today, don’t rush, shop around, work in phases, and have faith.
In Canada we joke that we have two seasons: winter and construction.
From when the snow melts in spring until it builds up in mounds again the following winter, barriers and pylons obstruct streets and roads.
Danger due to construction
This summer my home lay at the heart of a vortex of road improvements. Crews tore up ditches in one direction to make room for bicycle lanes. Workers in another direction stripped old asphalt, shored up the shoulders with thick gravel, and laid down a fresh layer of pavement.
While construction was underway, the posted signs read, “Danger due to construction.” Now I walk along this road, with its strong shoulders and new pavement—construction danger in the past.
The unblemished brightness of it symbolizes to me the fresh start of autumn. As road construction slows down in our northern climate, we begin different kinds of construction. New school projects, new organizational meetings, new roads to new adventures.
I wonder what I’ll build this winter? What dangers will I face? I can’t wait to find out.
Where I live the pouring rain of dreary spring lingers still. I hope that where you are the sun of coming summer is shining.
Happy #Beltane––'Bright Fire'––one & all; a festival falling on the midpoint between Spring Equinox & Summer Solstice. Fire was long used to mark this day of turn & return. Here's one of Julie Brook's astonishing Firestack works, blazing off the west coast of the Isle of Lewis. pic.twitter.com/irLs29dKmv
Some days I feel like this: snapped off with jagged edges exposed.
Tree snapped by a derecho in Ottawa, May 2022
Some days I feel like this: uprooted and toppled.
Evergreen tree blown over, probably by the same derecho.
But most days I feel like this: strong, straight, and reaching for the sky. I have a broken branch or two, but that’s okay. The morning sun shines on me and the skies are blue.
The book provides solace to the soul, and that is something we citizens of Ottawa, Canada need in our difficult times.
Katherine May writes about how we think of life as linear, a slow march from birth to death. That is true, but May reminds us that the pattern of life is also cyclical, or seasonal. We circle through periods of beginnings and endings, storing up and shedding, and wakefulness and sleeping throughout our lives.
At the beginning of a day, or a project, or a course of study, we are similar to trees with green leaves full of chlorophyll. The leaves absorb sunlight and convert carbon dioxide and water into tree food, and we absorb information and convert physical supplies into some sort of product that serves to advance our lives. Spring and summer cycles are about gathering and growing.
At the end of a day, or fiscal year, or a career, we prepare for change in the way of a tree. The chlorophyll in leaves breaks down in fall. The green disappears and exposes other beautiful colours that were always there but hidden. In a process called abscission, the cells between the stem and the branch weaken until supply to the leaf is cut off and the leaf falls. In our lives, this is when we pass on clothes we no longer need, or clear out university textbooks, or pack up personal belongings from the office and walk out the door.
Abscission, the process required for shedding of leaves, is “part of an arc of growth, maturity, and renewal.” In other words, to protect ourselves and stay strong, sometimes we need to rid ourselves of that which no longer feeds us.
BUT—and this is important —even on the coldest, darkest days of winter, when deciduous trees appear fully dead, there are buds. They are small and protected by thick scales, but they are there.
“We rarely notice them because we think we’re seeing the skeleton of the tree, a dead thing until the sun returns. But look closely, and every single tree is in bud . . .”
On this cold winter day in Ottawa, it helps me to know that buds are in place. It allows me to believe that the events taking place in downtown Ottawa had a spring, summer, and fall season and that the time of shedding approaches.
Soon we will be rid of that which does not feed us.
Somerton Smith 