Week 26 of 26: Endings and Beginnings

It new and old being back on the grounds of First Parish for the rehearsal Friday and the wedding Saturday. Much was familiar, and some things were very new. The Remembrance Corner exists! This is a project that had been underway for years, and had gotten more focused in the months before I left, thanks to some very dedicated church members. It’s quite an addition. The gardens around the church are also looking really good.

I still knew my way around, and I was also aware that I was a visitor. I no longer had keys to the building, the copy room, the office that I once called mine.

The wedding itself was lovely. It was good to see some of the familiar and friendly faces I knew from my years at the church, and to see the bride and groom and their families so happy together. The weather was agreeable, too -- after a deluge Friday evening, Saturday was dry and warm, but not unbearable, as it often is this time of year.

In the evening, I went with a friend to see the one-man show of Stan Strickland, one of Boston’s resident jazz musicians. It’s called “Coming Up for Air”, and through it he tells his life story through music and song. Very engaging to see. It was playing at a new theater in Cambridge on Mass. Ave., but that was the closing night. His next stop will be Edinburgh.

Sunday morning was leisurely. I took my time getting out of bed, and gathered my things to be checked out by noon. There I was, on the fifth floor of the parking garage about to pull out of the hotel, and I noticed just how brilliant the partially cloudy sky was. I took some time to be with it, before getting into the car and driving away. Coming back over to Roslindale, I had to take the long way around, as the (Caribbean Festival?) was happening in Roxbury, and there were many police blockades.

I paid some attention to how I moved around the snarled traffic. I like that, at least where driving is concerned (and I’m not running late), I’m at ease with changes in route or plan. I had to go way around Roxbury – all around Franklin Park, through Dorchester, Mattapan and Hyde Park – to get to Roslindale. But I felt my way, watching the signs, and learning to trust the moments of uncertainty. And I got where I was going just fine.

And now, the break is truly over, exactly six months from my last sermon at First Parish of Arlington. I have a check-up with my doctor of the past seven years tomorrow, and the movers arrive Tuesday afternoon. I will make my way down to New Jersey at that point, too, and I start work Friday, August 15.

Some have asked if I will be blogging after my leave is over. I’m going to take a break from blogging, though I suspect I will resume at some point. For those who have been reading this one and would like to be alerted when a new one starts, please send me an email at smithcarel@aol.com and let me know.

And to those who have read and commented on Six-Month Break, thank you. I’m glad to know that you’ve been interested in the journey enough to follow along. The format really gave me a chance to make a record of my travels and share as the path unfolded.

Many of you know that one of my goals when I set out on the break was to finish the novel that has been in the works for about the past two decades. That didn’t happen. I can see that I didn’t create a context for myself to support that work. What the novel needs is consistency: of my attention, and of location. With the blog and with my morning pages, I’ve established the consistency of a regular writing pattern. In New Jersey, with a place to call home for the next several months, I will have a consistent location. I look forward to seeing what emerges from that.

And, I’m glad for the book that has emerged in raw form – the memoir of these several past months. I remember being frustrated with myself when I was in Provincetown those three weeks late in the winter because the novel wasn’t what was coming out. When I stopped berating myself for not doing what I thought I was going to be doing and just got with the flow of what was happening, I was able to relax into the process and appreciate it for what it was.

Now the whole six months seems like a dream, part of the longer dream of my whole life, where nothing stays for very long. I guess long-term relationships are like that. Where do we return to, in hopes of not being alienated? I have been re-reading Laura Kipnis’s searing polemic Against Love in recent days. Is she ever adept at skewering the sacred cow of romantic love in modern Western culture. However, I think she missed the deeper need that romantic love serves. In a world of changing faces and places, I think such attachments fill the need for constancy, and serve as a kind of a guard against loneliness and isolation.

I asked myself as I drove from Cambridge, and the wedding party that knew me, to my friend's house in Roslindale, "If I were to get in trouble right here – an accident, an aneurism, a blown-out tire – who would know who I am?" There’s a quality of life that seems to be about shuttling from safety zone to safety zone, to hold back the unpleasant and unpredictable aspects of existence. I haven’t had a consistent place to stay over the past several months, but I have had regular pay-checks, and access to health care, and a reliable, paid-for vehicle that I own to drive. Out of that relative stability emerged a six-month adventure now closing as quickly as it began.

I am left with sense of providence. I’m not always reliable to follow my intuition, or to act consistently with what I say are my best intentions. I can’t always rely on people to tell the truth, or to behave in ways that promote honor, integrity, love and peace. But I do find that the universe is providential. The old folks used to say, “The Lord will make a way somehow.” Even older folks said, “The Way doesn’t do anything, but it leaves nothing undone.” What is necessary is somehow always near, always available – What is necessary is often not what I think it is. Oh, for eyes to see, to truly see.