Period

For the past 5-years I have been very busy.  I have driven thousands and thousands of miles.  I have provided thousands of massages to hundreds of hospice patients.  October 31st was the last day of my contract.  Complimentary services were discontinued due to financial constraints imposed by the new healthcare law.

 In November, I moved and spent the next month cleaning, repairing, painting, and creating a space that fits our lifestyle.  Then came Christmas.  Boxes that were just moved into the basement were lugged back upstairs as we "decked our halls."  Last week the last of the glittery adornments were again put away.

Its January.  Its winter, the temperatures are frigid and the skies are gray.  What now?

The book-nook I created in the living room

The period punctuation mark is the most used in the English language.  It indicates that a complete thought has been expressed and the reader is to stop.  I remember as we learned to read out loud in grade school, the teacher constantly needed to remind us to stop and pause when we came to the period.  As young children, we were prone to run all of our sentences together resulting in a jumbled mix of words, which muddied the meaning and message of the author's narrative.

When God devised time, he structured it with a natural rhythm of starts and stops. Genesis tells us that he placed the lights in the sky to separate the day from the night.  The rising of the sun awakens us and invites to engage the outer world; while the setting of the sun, like a period at the end of the sentence, indicates that it is time to stop. 

The Genesis account of time also tells us that God placed a period at the end the week.  After six days of creating, God stopped on the seventh day and rested from all of his work.  The seventh day was called the Sabbath and was the day specifically blessed and sanctified by God, indicating the value he places upon stopping.

We are also told in Genesis that the sun and moon mark and delineate the seasons. Four seasons of the year, each bearing forth distinct characteristics that shape how we live and engage our world. The full days of sunshine in summer beckon us to activity from morning to night. Winter, on the other hand, by its very nature imposes upon us a stop. 

Metaphorically, our lives are referred to in terms of times and seasons. When we are young, we are in the spring time of our life, and when middle-aged, autumn.  When new things occur, it is a "dawning" and when they end, the "dusk".  When we are in prolonged periods of confusion or depression, it could be referred to as the "dark night" of the soul.  When we are in transition, our "season" is changing.

Winter is the season that beckons us to turn inward.   Winter, who invites us to life under the blankets with a good book and our journal, or in front of the fire with a bowl of soup.  Winter, who only allows us short periods of time in the outside world.  Winter, whose harsh winds and snowfalls say, stop!

Out my window on a winter morn

 Though we moan, complain, and feel a bit blue, there are gifts that this season brings to our lives.  It provides us that break in time which allows us introspection. We can examine our path, are we headed in the right direction?  Is there anything we should change?  What are the subtle messages our hearts have been trying to convey, but we've not heeded because of the demands of the outer world?

We are responsible to discern the seasons of our hearts and lives.  Unlike the clear signs of the natural seasons, understanding the times and rhythms of the inner movements of life is far more mysterious.  What does this sense of restlessness mean?  This anticipation, for what I don't know?  What of the persistent sadness?  Or, the exhaustion that is not cured by 8-hours of sleep?

I have had many people on my massage table who were unaware of the pain they were carrying in various parts of their bodies until the touch of my hands brought it to their attention.  The busyness of their lives did not allow them to "feel."  They were just a bundle of "doing."  Living entirely for the outer world, rushing to meet deadlines and to fulfill the myriad of the obligations that had their schedules overflowing.  Once on the table, experiencing a period/ a pause, they were finally able to pay attention to the message their bodies were trying to convey.


When we don't comprehend the pauses in life, like the reader who does not grasp the importance of the period, we are apt to run-on and on, jumbling and obscuring the message and meaning of our lives.

This is where I am at right now.  I am at a period.  I am pausing at the end of a complete work season to discern where to next.  I am celebrating the stop.  For I know that as the world turns, we shall not be in any one season for too long.  Before long, spring will call and I will douse the embers in my hearth and turn outward once more.

"What a severe yet master artist old Winter is ...

No longer the canvas and pigments, but the marble and the chisel."

- John Burroughs, "The Snow-Walkers"