September 1, 2003 Evening

September 1, 2003 Evening
The light is strange outside. It’s twilight, the sky is bright gray with darker gray clouds to the east. The air is still, the spruce look green and black, the willows gray green. Lights are coming on in the condos. I sit on the edge of the leather couch, leaning over the laptop sitting on the coffee table.

I just went for a little walk along the edge of the ravine, high on the slope where the little fenced in gardens end. One condo owner has filled her patch with flagstones and plants of various shapes, colors and sizes, a splendid replacement for a lawn. Next door, another stunning garden with a profusion of yellow daisies or black-eyed Susans….they are the size of a daisy, have the color of a black-eyed Susan but they stand almost four feet high. A gray spider sat on one of the flowers, strands of spider web stretching across the faces.

Thunder rolled way off in the distance. The air is cooling down and the light slowly fades. What a time to do Evensong.

While I was outdoors, my senses were so alert, my mind so quiet I felt so hyper-aware and still that I wished I could share this state with someone. The other night while swimming in the pool at the club, I noticed how the clear water rushed over my hands, reflecting the soft lights overhead and the blue of the pool bottom. Jazz music piped into the pool area, the lights shimmered and I delighted in the motion of the water, the feel, the look of it.

When I am attuned like this, I realize how much I usually miss when I rush about my day. I do not see, or hear or smell or touch or notice like I am now. It is wonderful to be alert and alive.

Now, for Evening Prayer. The Psalms are 6,7,8 for this evening. The first lesson is 2 Chronicles 16; and the second lesson is Luke 20:27-21:4

“When I consider thy heavens, even the work of thy fingers; the moon and the stars which thou has ordained;
What is man that thou art mindful of him: and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:3,4)

“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him….” (2 Chron. 16:9)

After the Psalms and the first lesson, we say the Magnificat: Luke 1:46

“My soul doth magnify the Lord…..”

The trees are now black silhouettes against a dark gray sky. The sun has set. The sound of frogs or crickets trill in the ravine.

Tires squeal, a motor revs as a car speeds by on March Road, a four lane artery to the business park.

Now; the Nunc Dimitis (Luke 2.29)

“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,/ according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,/ which thou has prepared before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,/ and to be the glory of thy people Israel.”

The Apostles Creed.

Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.

The Lord’s Prayer.

I’ve had to repeat the Lord’s Prayer silently about three times so I could get through it without my mind wandering, so I could focus on each word and mean it. Not sure if even with all the effort, I was successful. It’s easy to rattle prayers off. Quite another thing to enter into them.

When I was in the fifth grade, I had a teacher named Miss McDonough. She was probably in her late fifties, balding, with long strands of gray hair covering her whitish scalp. She may have had a bun at the nape of her neck, but I can’t remember now. A pink face, huge jowls, black chunky heeled shoes with laces. She wore white blouses and black or navy blue skirts and had fat arms and strong fat fingers that didn’t hesitate to grab Bobby Borghetti by the ear and drag him out to the hall if he talked too much during class. We used to chant to poor Bobby: “Bobby Borghetti, are your meatballs ready?” Never in Miss McDonough’s class though.

She opened each day with the Lord’s Prayer and Psalm 100. And she read to us from the Bible. This was a regular public elementary school in Watertown, Massachusetts. We had a Jewish girl in the class and a Jehovah’s Witness who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance, so she stood outside when we rose to say it.

This was during the height of the Cold War, a couple of years before the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were pre-occupied with the Soviets, and when I said my last name was Russian, little boys would hop out of their wooden seats and aim imaginary machine guns at me and mime mowing me down. That is, until Miss McDonough turned around, and they would jump back into the seats, resting their elbows on the varnished desks that bore the carved initials of previous students.

I remember loving those Bible readings, and feeling such suspense and excitement the day Moses asked to see God’s glory. I couldn’t wait to get to school to hear the next installment. Moses was going to see God. I recall feeling a little let down that Moses only got to see God’s back.

What a loss to the present generation. No teacher in a public school would dream of a daily Bible reading.

Now, except for the outlines of the wooden posts of my balcony railing, it is inky black out my window.

The novel writing was difficult today. Have a new chapter to write, but avoided doing it by taking care of the never-ending amount of revising necessary for the stuff I’ve already written.

Now, to spend some time looking at what I hope to accomplish this week and setting some goals in all areas of my life: spiritual, physical, work-related, writing-related, home-related.