Passing Through The Seasons

Vignettes of time spent alone with Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary...

Walking along the beach with a rosary in the pocket leaving transient footprints in the cool, wet sand at the edge of tides that ebb and flow on a quiet and warm mid-summer afternoon, then pausing and looking at patterns that glitter with exquisite beauty for one moment, wiped clean by the tide the very next, leaving yet another work of unique shapes, at times surprisingly heavenly;

Hiking up a narrow path in the morning of the first frost flanked between maple trees on a gentle slope with leaves of autumn on their branches and on the ground crackling beneath the shoes toward a monastery cemetery; with nothing particular in mind but mindful of the chill in the air that winter would soon arrive and that spring had long ago faded away, yet at times wondering what comes after life has ended before the mind rests and draws a blank once more with the body having goosebumps once in a while from an uncertain origin of cold; [1]

Praying for a white Christmas when a smattering of white flakes came down during the late evening sky the night before Christmas eve quietly but quickly blanketing the grounds with patches of dirt and weed with an untold thickness of soft powdery snow, then excitedly and quickly boots were on the feet and arms were through a winter jacket, giving no thought to anything else, running to an open space with fresh fallen snow and dropping into nature's new soft comforter making a first snow angel in many a year, and unable to contain the awakening of a long-abandoned childhood fascination with snow angels, many more were made and made with love, standing up carefully from one angel then leaping to another spot making another, and another until joy and gratitude started to well up from within and tears started to well up in the eyes, and while sitting down on an uneven tree stump prayers came forth with a certain sweetness rarely attainable, easily remembered, and hardly describable;

Seeing patches of ice framed by specks of dirt melting away on the ground in the early afternoon and leaf buds emerging in the sun from the stark branches high up in the trees, in seemingly no time at all blossoms are in full bloom with honey bees pollinating life, propelling it forward, waking the sense of smell from its hibernation and the urge to stroll through a soft breeze carrying a hint of fragrance of lavender on one path, of roses on another and as the fragrance of flowers subsides, a whiff of crisp clean air interrupts the dreaminess of the moment as the path meanders along a bubbling brook filled with a mix of of spring rain and melted snow, bending light green blades of grass and bright yellow buttercups along its banks where in the shallows occasionally a small fish hiding under a rock can be spotted, filling an otherwise listless soul with hope, hope that seasons are not merely markers of time, that passing through them year after year is not the same as going around and around, that every time the seasons rotate, they are being experienced in a slightly different sphere at a slightly higher plane in ascending order toward an ever expanding space that is heaven, that is filled with so much love that an eternity cannot absorb or embrace all of it while every moment is a moment of complete and absolute fulfillment.


[1] The Hail Mary is appropriate here, in Latin: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.  Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus.  Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.