Making our own way

I’ve been alone in Berkeley for a month now. I’ve been through my first pound of coffee, one cup at a time, and I’m understanding why people asked me whether my husband would be accompanying me on my journey to seminary.

“What would he do? Do you think I’m not capable of being on my own?” I would ask.

I now have the answer to the question.

He would keep me company. He would hold me as I told him the joys of being a student and my effort to stop myself from thinking that I immediately know what something is about when I only know the beginning of it.

Although off on my own, my connection to home is strong. A morning email waits for me, sent some three hours earlier than I rise here on the West Coast. As I begin my day in this climate that is pretty much sunny and hovers between 68 and 80 degrees, I know of the changing weather in the Upper Delaware. I know that the goldenrod is yellow in the fields, that the leaves are beginning to turn, that the garden is yielding its harvest and that there has been a lot of rain.

The leaves here are beginning to dry and fall to the ground. A native of North Carolina explained that the leaves fall because the days are getting shorter, not because the night are getting cooler. It’s information beyond my experience in the four-seasoned northeast and the vibrant colors of the leaves before they fall.

I awoke the other day to the rustle of dry leaves blowing around the brick and concrete patterned St. Margaret’s Courtyard just beneath my window. I thought it was rain. But rain here, I am told, does not begin until November. And while I might expect rain, because of the overcast of the morning fog, one is never sure what kind of day it will be until the fogs burns off. Sometimes that’s not until 3:00 p.m.

To me, it’s a metaphor of our journey through the days of our life. We never really know of the day until the fog lifts. We never really know the purpose of our experiences until we have lived to their conclusion.

From my second story room, I look across to a green roof over the first-floor classrooms that border the courtyard. On the roof, there are rosebushes, trees, grass and concrete paths that lead beyond this dorm/school/church complex. There is a secluded, walled-in garden, a mirror of the courtyard, on the other side of the dining hall where there is fish pond with goldfish and an eight-year old turtle, someone’s pet, that swims to the side for a visit if you stand on the edge and talk. The goldfish grow daily.

Flowerbeds, profuse with purple, white and red blossoms, line the walls. Hummingbirds flit in and out, and you can experience them within the garden or through the glass wall of the dining hall.

We all make our own way--not knowing the whether the day is warm or cool until the fog burns off. We make our own way not exactly knowing where or how we will get to where we are going.

Sometimes there are people at our sides, and sometimes we travel alone.

It’s a journey. It’s a life. And it is good.