Snow's Long Leavetaking

For much of the last month, there's been snow on the ground.

It's been years and years since that's been true in our little slice of the Mid-Atlantic, but winter actually arrived for work this time around.   With March around the corner, it's all starting to melt now.  The gurgling and burbling of downspouts over the last week sounded like a benediction.  Patches of grass remade the acquaintance of the sun, and it was all lovely.  I've been eager for the snow to make its departure, and it's taken its sweet time.

I was meditating on this while walking the pup one morning this week, when the moist earth's return whispered a thought into my ear.  When rain falls, and falls all at once, the soil can only drink so much.  Get a three quarters of an inch of rain all at once, and much of that runs off.  The water table beneath gets a sip or two, sure, but the rest flows off down the watershed.

But get the equivalent amount as snow, and that melts off gradually.   It's a slow and steady drip line, saturating and then continuing, like a long, soft, soaking drizzle.  Like a dripline laid across an entire region, that timed release would improve aquifer uptake, more completely quenching the thirsty ground.    

It's so obvious, of course.  

But I'd never had that thought before, and it made the long melt feel less like an imposition and more like a blessing.

Mac and Cheese

That each of them may eat and drink, 

and find satisfaction in all their toil

—this is the gift of God. 

 Ecclesiastes 3:13

Last night I spent a little over an hour making mac and cheese.  

It's a recipe we've prepared before, and it requires a whole bunch of effort.  Butternut squash must be peeled, cubed, and roasted, and then blended up in a food processor.  After that, it's mixed with the macaroni and a buttery nutmeg/rosemary infused sauce in a large pan.  From there, it's poured into a casserole dish, topped with panko and baked.

It requires a significant period of sustained focus, as do many recipes, and at the end of the process, you have...mac and cheese.  Delicious, flavorful, utterly satisfying, it's vastly better than the boxed and powdered equivalent.  

But it takes five times more time to prepare than a buck-fifty box of Kraft.  It is inconvenient.  It provides no immediate gratification.  It is not easy to the point of mindlessness.

As I puttered about in the kitchen, sipping an inexpensive Cabernet with a chill synth-jazz theremin album humming through my headphones, I wondered at how we use our time and effort.

Because making the meal was work.  It required effort towards a singular purpose over time.  I was required to focus, measuring out ingredients, prestaging them neatly in bowls and cups.  Given the ingredients, that effort went back even further.  The butternut squash was my own, a cupboard-stored winter squash from my late fall harvest.  The tablespoon of chopped rosemary was clipped fresh from one of the two plants in my herb garden, five minutes before it was tossed into the pan.

The meal drew fractionally from many, many hours of labor, digging and composting, seedsaving and planting, watering and weeding.  A portion of the sweat of years, all contributing to the table. 

To what better use could I have put that time?  Because the gardening was a pleasure, and the preparation was a pleasure, and the meal was a pleasure.

Should I have been doomscrolling instead?  Or passively consuming a prepackaged entertainment?  

That would have robbed me of the delight of the work of my hands, and the flavor of time well-spent.

All the Time in the World

Last night, as I finished up writing a Goodreads review of the really rather marvelous The Hare with Amber Eyes, I counted back out of curiosity.

Just how many books have I read this year?  Not counting ones I read in late 2013, but dropped in for completeness sake.

The total count in 2014: Fifty one so far.

Which seems like a fair number.  Not insane, but still many more than I've managed in prior years.

 Generally, I'd gobble down around a dozen books a year for pleasure, and an equivalent number for work.

Those numbers have risen over the last few years, and I wonder...where exactly did I find the time?

Oh, I still watch movies, and still game.  Just...less.  What I don't do, pretty much ever, is sit down to watch television.  Just don't do it.  I have no "shows," though I know there are some excellent, funny, well-scripted and acted vids out there.  I don't choose to noodle through Netflix on my own.  We don't have cable.

And my kids are older, requiring vastly less wrangling than they used to...or at least, wrangling that's considerably less invasive of time and overall capacity to focus.

And I choose to delimit my external commitments, one of the collateral blessings of introversion.

And, as I write more, I find my hunger to read increases.  The worlds and stories others spin weave into my own.  The turns of phrase and voices of those I read--those I enjoy, at least--are subtly integrated into my own voice, in ways I can't always consciously perceive.

Where does the time come?  Ultimately, it comes because I make it.

If you're going to read, you must set aside space for the written word, for the stories that tell themselves in that peculiar, magical space between an author, the page, and your own soul.

Predestination

Predestination is a challenging doctrine, made even worse by the fact that most of it's adherents use it as an excuse to become insufferably smug about their own salvation. Then again, holding to that doctrine doesn't inherently make you a Nazi...at least, I hope not.

As a Presbyterian, predestination is part of what I believe--so I'll offer up my overly long two cents on the subject.

First, "predestination" cannot be understood temporally. As mortal beings, part of the ebb and flow of time, we tend to think of it as God's foreknowledge of all of our actions. We've got this image of God planning things out in the back room before pressing that Big Bang Button, carefully charting our lives and deciding whether we gets ta be saved or not. But that's absurd, and antethetical to how God has revealed himself to us. The span and flow of time is meaningless to God. All of temporal existence rests before God as an eternal now. Predestination is a statement of God's limitlessness, of the God who stands above all of the temporal and spatial structures of creation. It is an inescapably necessary correlate of an omniscient, almighty God. If you want to worship a small and clueless godling who is unaware of what you've got planned for next Thursday, go right ahead. I wouldn't quite see the point, but...

Second, an orthodox understanding of this teaching does not allow for any smugness. You can't EVER say with complete certainty, "I am among the elect." You can trust that God loves you. You can trust that God is just, and that Christ is your Savior. You can delight in God, and serve God. But Calvin's clear on this: the number and identity of the elect are known only to God. Election rests in the mystery of God's glory. Those who are chosen are not to be confused with any church organization. Being convinced "in your heart" that you've been saved doesn't cut it. Being a staunch and dogmatic Calvinist doesn't either.

Oddly enough, that uncertainty is the point of predestination.

Predestination, for Calvin, means that you don’t have to fret over every little action, worrying over every little step. Predestination, for Calvin, means that you don’t have to lie awake at night with eyes wide open and mind churning, compulsively recounting every last thing you could have done better that day. God is almighty and graceful, and if God has claimed your life, then it is out of your hands. God is just and loving, and if God has called out your name from across eternity, then it is out of your hands.

And if it's out of your hands, then you don’t have to worry about it. The true end of your life, the true purpose of your life, the true meaning of this brief and fleeting flicker of existence, all rest behind the deep veil of eternity. Trusting God to be true, you can roll up your sleeves and be about God’s business.

Or, at least, that's my take on it...