Autumn

This season feels shrouded, overcast with some heavy pall. A few weeks ago, a colleague's wife died suddenly; she was just a few years older than Sam. Her gentle-souled husband is left to do--what? start over? In middle age, after working his whole adulthood building a life alongside her? I'd just had a conversation with him about the bathroom he'd finished remodeling in the house they had just bought, and about his new hobby of baking bread. And then there we all were at her memorial service, in black.

And just this past week, we learned that another endlessly generous friend has gotten some very, very bad news from his doctors. The spring we bought our house and ripped open all its walls and ceilings, he came over to offer some advice on how to solve a tricky wall-rebuilding problem; later that afternoon, unexpectedly, he returned with a couple of wood braces he had built in his shop, let himself into the house with a quiet "Hello" (we were all open doors then), and set about rebuilding our wall for us. Just because he thought it looked like we were having a bad day. We were, but it was one in a couple of months of bad days, and what I remember about that one day, and even about that couple of months, was this act of kindness and others like it.

I was thinking about these things, and about a couple of friends of friends who have lost or may be losing children, when we were in church this morning. Allison Clare had been running a very low-grade fever for a while, off and on, and then she had surprised us by sleeping until 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning. (Which, you know, leaves you 98% elated and 2% worried about whether she'll be okay when you finally go into her room.) I'm pretty sure that she was just worn out from a busy week, but it did make me think, there in church, about how what we love most tenderly is perhaps the most fragile and absolutely the most irreplaceable. Or it seems to be fragile, because the eternal is represented in flesh so undeniably, relentlessly perishable.

For me, I don't think that what faith provides most significantly is the knowledge of how to live my life (as I think a theologian would affirm), or even the power to do so (as a charismatic would promise). To be honest, I think I'm muddling through on both counts. Sometimes, I'm self-righteous or proud about how I'm doing it, which is certainly no credit to what or whom I believe, and other times, I just feel confused or skeptical or cynical. Sometimes I'm pretty sure that my faith is so insufficient that it doesn't even change me, that I'm no better than I would be without it--which is not to say that God isn't good or present or powerful, but rather to comment on my own smug slothfulness.

But here is the one thing that my particular, peculiar, rickety faith gives me that nothing else in my self-centered little world could: the hope that if I lost Allison Clare, I would see her again.