After Rain

Sometimes you just flat out blow it. After the all-day-and-night rain on Wednesday, I take my time getting up and out for work on Thursday. The pre-dawn sky appears cloud covered, meaning no sunrise will be visible. A good day to skip the dawn walk (again) and linger inside. When I step out the door heading for work I realize my mistake. The air is damp and fragrant, birds are singing, raindrops puddle in plants and drip from the trees, the sky is clearing and the fading gold clouds are skipping across it. My favorite kind of morning. Work can wait a few minutes. I tour the garden.

The bluebells are blooming! The narcissus buds are fat and the new growth on the roses is bursting with excitement. I find two close-to-the ground variety Japanese iris and tiny violets. On Saturday the snowdrops have opened and the back-garden camellia is looking like the Queen of Hearts rosebush in Wonderland. Closer examination finds the red peony and the sea oats emerging from the dirt.

Ah Saturday. A warm day that screams BE OUTSIDE BE OUTSIDE! Smudge and I hear and obey. A juvenile hawk is sitting in the tree outside the cafe. Seems like that should be some sort of omen. I buy and plant another half flat of pansies and can't resist purchasing a false something or other that calls to me. (I really don't understand why botanists feel a need to name anything "false.") I pull a boat load of the wretched carpet grass out of the flower beds. Surely it is too early for it. Oh, we didn't have 

winter. It is the after-pulling that makes it worthwhile: the open space its absence creates as I unchoke the annuals and perennials. I decide to try some early vegetables for the first time. I dig the leaf mulch into the vegetable strip, smooth out the rich soil (oops, forgot the compost) and plant snow peas and Brussels sprouts. I was too late with the sprouts last year. Trial and error and try again gardening. And I finally cut the dead leaves and upper stalks of the banana tree. It is still sturdy up over my head. I pull down an ENORMOUS vine that starts in the neighbor's tree and wends its way through my gardenia and camellia. How did that go unnoticed long enough to get so big?

Other rainy seasons have come to end, too. On Tuesday, I officially declare the annual December/January work hell

over-- 2011 done with on Valentine's Day. For ten years these have been months to just get through; but when it's over--the books closed on the old year, January caught up and closed, the new year budget adopted, and the backlog of filing done--it is the day after the rain. The day of opening up space.

Late Friday I receive a text message from a struggling friend. She thought she was out of the woods following a huge disappointment, but the pain has taken up residence again. We so want to be in the clear after the rain as soon as possible. But the forest is big, the path is long. And we are not lost. 

I don't know what is up with Julie on Friday, but yoga is so hard. I am popping ibuprofen for screaming pectoral muscles (Saturday yard work didn't help). On a bright note, after about the eighth chaturanga --the pose I decided long ago I just couldn't do and wasn't going to try--I forgot to not try. I did the last two without putting my knees down. But then I collapse on side plank and instead do gate pose with my knee down on the second side.

Pullen Church is honoring, this weekend, the 20th Anniversary of the church's decision to be a welcoming and affirming congregation and to bless the unions of gay and lesbian couples. As I listen last night to the three lay leaders who shepherded the church through the time before, during, and following the open forum and voting period; through the hate mail, the grateful mail, the picketers on the 

sidewalk, the national media, I find myself reflecting on where I was 20 years ago. I was discovering a part of myself about which I had been unaware. I was coming out in secrecy and silence, barely able to understand myself and completely unable to share it. I was an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church; a Church that, on a national level, was about to come to a completely different conclusion about homosexuality in the church. Amendment B to the Book of Church Order, passed a few years after Pullen's courageous decision, reads:

"Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church. Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman (W-4.9001), or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament."

Eighteen years ago, shortly before the amendment was passed, I resigned as Elder and began attending Pullen, leaving the denomination in which I was baptized, confirmed, married, and ordained--and deeply disappointed. I wept each Sunday morning for at least a year as I was told both verbally from the pulpit and emotionally by those in the pews, that I was okay. That I was still a child of God. A couple of years 

ago, Amendment B was repealed and a revision passed, eliminating the explicit language about marriage and leaving the decision to ordain to the local governing body. Six hours before I sat listening to what happened at Pullen 20 years ago, the first openly gay candidate for ordination in the New Hope Presbytery (NE North Carolina) presented herself for examination and was approved for ordination. Last night is an emotional juxtaposition of events for me. A little rain falls from my eyes; grateful that God is still doing a new thing in the world; grateful to have spent the last 18 years in a church that opened its eyes and heart long ago.

Yesterday I finish reading Patti Digh's Life is a Verb. This book and its companion, Creative is a Verb, have added indescribable value to my living and have frequently found their way into this blog. I have read them both twice now, and may start right in on a third reading. The last chapter of Life is a Verb is an urging to "live an irresistible obituary." What would I like people to say about me after I am gone? And what daily decisions must I make to get there? "Live an extraordinary and irresistible life to ensure that when you die, the people who are left have the feeling that with your passing the world has become a duller place." There are many in my life who will leave the world a dull place when they are gone. I am so thankful for you.