The Gathering Basket: August Edition
Transitions and thresholds
For Your Soul
The times they are a’changin’. Families are moving from summer to school schedules, and the weather is doing whatever it will do in August. I will have an official teenager in a few short days. The political climate of America has kept all of us on our toes, so I think it's a good time to share this poem from John O’Donohue.
A threshold is not a simple boundary;
it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres.
Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience
or a stage of life that it intensifies towards the end into a real frontier
that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up.
At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive:
confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope.
This is one reason why such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual.
It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds:
to take your time, to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there,
to listen inwards with complete attention
until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.The time has come to cross.
To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge.
It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging.
This becomes essential when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you,
one for which you had no preparation.This could be illness, suffering or loss.
Because we are so engaged with the world,
we usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are.
It takes only a couple of seconds for a life to change irreversibly.
Suddenly you stand on completely strange ground
and a new course of life has to be embraced.
Especially at such times we desperately need blessing and protection.You look back at the life you have lived up to a few hours before,
and it suddenly seems so far away.
Think for a moment how, across the world, someone’s life has just changed –
irrevocably, permanently, and not necessarily for the better –
and everything that was once so steady, so reliable, must now find a new way of unfolding.
Though we know one another’s names and recognize one another’s faces,
we never know what destiny shapes each life.
The script of individual destiny is secret;
it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings
that is continually unfolding for us.
Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind’s light or questions.
That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be.
To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart.
It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives
to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion.
No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation and a promise.
Whatever comes, the great sacrament of life will remain faithful to us,
blessing us always with visible signs of invisible grace.
We merely need to trust
~ John O'Donohue, "Benedictus" ("To Bless The Space Between Us")
For Your Eyes
Watching the Olympics is always fascinating, and my favorite Instagram posts show the past and present side by side.
Other favorite moments in my house have been:
Watching the USA men’s gymnastics team win bronze
Synchronized diving (Carsten said, “It’s so nice they let men do that.”)
The anticipation and payoff of the cauldron/hot air balloon.
Commentators finally figuring out how to keep quiet and also lose their minds with excitement.
For Your Ears
Over the summer, I have been using more of the audiobook hours on my Spotify account and actually maxed out my hours in July. This means I am still in the middle of Terry Stoke’s new book and cannot wait for my subscription to renew so I can finish it. I also enjoyed some Emily Henry and let my daughter use some hours for A Series of Unfortunate Events.
For Your Taste Buds
Teaching my children to fend for themselves in the kitchen this summer has been revealing. I noticed that they choose to make pancakes or grilled cheese on the panini maker a lot. Also, my oldest has major time blindness and never thinks about eating until he is ravenous, which is also not when he wants to cook. He will scarf done cheese sticks, lunch meat, and bread without taking any time to make a sandwich. He also would subsist entirely on cold cereal if he had his way. As we creep closer to the school year (August 28th), I am trying to consider how to have healthy, quick-grab options that don’t cost a fortune or take a ton of time for me to make. My shortlist includes dried fruit, store-brand yogurt tubes, and bread with any number of available spreads (nut butter, jam, and butter).
For Your Nose
Petrichor
Can you smell it?
The shift that is coming.
Something is about change.
Can you predict it?
Lightning does not strike twice.
Thunderheads rumble with potential.
Can you feel it?
The calm swell of hope
Swirling with anxious ripples.
Can you sense it?
Hairs rising on your forearms
Fight, flight, freeze, your choice.
Watch the horizon, sniff the air
You know it’s coming, but where
will you be when it gets here?
~Caitlin Mallery
For Your Body
August is when I slowly begin the transition from the summer schedule to the school schedule. Week by week, I will begin to enforce earlier bedtimes (often with the aid of melatonin) and earlier rising. Especially since this year, I will need to navigate two different drop-off times at two locations (preK for Lucia and middle school for the other three). Next year will be three locations unless I can figure out a bus for the high school. However, that is a next-year problem.
Sleep is a personal value of mine. I take naps anytime I get the chance, usually on Sundays. I try to avoid waking sleeping people of any age (both being a mother and working in a hospital have taught me the immense value of sleep). One of the first things I do when the kids leave to spend a weekend with their dad is sleep for 8-12 hours. As you wrap up summer and transition to whatever the next season holds, I hope you remember to place sleep on your list of priorities.
(Not a picture of my cat and I, but my cat does sleep with all of us in turn, which I find comforting.)