A Way to Rest

I scrape the thick frost blinding the windshield, and the sun turns the lower portion of our hemisphere pink.  I'm in my $9.00 fluffy, black coat trying to reach the middle part of the windshield and already thinking about the fiction writing class that begins in 45 minutes down Highway 34, up the 3 flights of stairs and into the tower where there is sunshine coming through and the stories seem even brighter, so much so that I have trouble speaking about them without shadowing places that need to simply shine on their own terms.

They write notes to my next class of writers about how not to fear fiction, and they will read them slowly out loud, bleeping out the one swear word.  And why didn't I think of this before, this breaking of borders between classes, so they might be an encouragement to each other?  And when they present their fairy tale revision pieces, I think we're all feeling a lot alive and a lot good and a lot like the semester will end soon and it will be missed.

Thanksgiving Break arrives and they pack cars with loads of dirty laundry and piles of homework, and I want to curl up inside a warm, dry place for the next 12 days and collect time like the girl in the red cape bringing an empty basket to her Grandmother's house, so she might gather moments of strong living like a breadcrumb trail that is home:

When you are worried, stop thinking so much.
Listen to the Holy Spirit.

I worry about us, how we race and move and sprint and climb and sleep and rise and run.  And the curious girl within me yearns for the next 12 days to be spent relearning the slowness of a line break, the architecture of a classic novel's sentence, how to draw, how to hear music, how to eat and how to stare.  To turn inward, not to find myself, but to find the instrument He made that knows how to live rich and deep, like the strong soil that prepares itself all winter for the epiphany of spring.