I wonder why transitions are so difficult.
School starts here this week, and there’s a lot of worrying around our table. Mostly from Beangirl, but a little from Blue, too. (Although I’m pretty sure he’s picking it up from her.) Perhaps it’s regret at the summer’s passing, but it’s heavy. This school year has a bumpy beginning.
So we’ve been trying to talk it through. What we can expect and hope for. What was fun last year. What each of the kids wants to learn (and that is a question that produces interesting answers…)
But none of the questions or answers really seem to be easing the way. I guess it’s always a little unbalancing to step forward. You are always also stepping away.
Wendell Berry, who celebrated his birthday last week, wisely put it like this:
“Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.”
I like that. Your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. Maybe I’ll write this one out and slip it into Beangirl’s lunchbox.
She’s been rereading the The Worry Tree again. It is the story of a girl named Juliet who finds a fantastical tree painted on her new bedroom wall along with a whole host of characters. Juliet learns that each character can look after a different kind of worry. In the centre of the tree, there is a shadowy hole – and that’s where you put the worries that you can’t quite describe. The ones that you can’t quite describe. Beangirl and I talk a lot about worries that go into that useful black hole.
But here’s something else for that lunchbox note – if I can find age-wise ways to express it to the eight-year-old.
I was reading the Artway website recently, and I came across a wonderful bit of writing by Rod Pattenden about a work of art by Australian indigenous artist Shirley Purdie.
The painting depicts Christ’s ascension in wonderful earthy colours made from ochres. Christ does not withdraw into a bright sky as he does in so many European artworks. Instead, he is received by a black void. Pattenden then uses these colours as a starting point and offers an alternate Australian perspective on the colour black and on Christ himself.
“In Aboriginal culture black is the colour of skin, of connection and touch. It does not carry European associations where black is the space of fear, darkness or sin. If there is place for bright shining holiness, it is in this void. This is a holy place represented in a way that reminds viewers of the felt intimacy of skin, the surface touch of human relations. What is most striking is that Ngambuny, the Christ figure, does not ascend into the sky but back into the land where God as Creator Spirit resides…Christ is alive in the land.”
Black doesn’t need to be a place of hiding. We might see shadows as a place where Christ resides. Christ is alive in the life going on around us – in the hopes and in the worries. Where there are shadows, Christ is there. And Christ is there, too, when we wrap our arms around each other and worry and wonder and look to comfort. Christ is there in our touch and in our connection to the wildernesses we step into each day. May that beauty sustain us and give us courage.
