Heat Haze
“Louisiana
in September was like an obscene phone call from nature.”
Tom
Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
I can relate. Here in
Alabama, the temperature went into the mid-nineties in the second week
of June, and hasn't budged since. It is stiflingly hot—the kind of
thick, humid air that sticks to your body inside your clothing, and
boils you from the inside out. All the trees are drooping, and
dropping their leaves a month early. My back yard looks for all the world
like the 1930's dust bowl. The dogs make little puffs of smoke then
they run. The great Southern novelist, Pat Conroy, described the
streets of Charleston on late summer afternoons this way: “like
walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.”
I know how it feels to be
dry—I'll bet you do, too. There's a kind of mental and emotional
lethargy that feels like carrying a hundred pound weight on your
shoulders. Nothing new happens, nothing excites, nothing enlivens. We
all go through dry spells. The two trees taken down in my yard this
week, one oak and one hickory, had been hollowed out by beetles and carpenter ants. They were
still standing, but empty in the middle. Being dry makes you
vulnerable to being hollowed out, whether you're a tree or a human
being.
Finding the people, the
activities, the beliefs, the shared interests that are wellsprings
for us can be life-giving, maybe even life-saving. In dry times,
when we feel hollowed out, taking one step in the direction of
spiritual refreshment, diving deep into the green waters of life, restores our soul. It's too late for my trees, but it's not too
late for us.
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment