Rim Walking to the Eternal

Almost autumn; rouge-tinged leaves hint that a soon-to-arrive-change is near.  Rotund tomatoes have captured a summer filled with both promise and tragedy.  It is time… to remember, to move on.

Saturday morning and a visit to our hometown Farmers’ Market.  A much-needed respite, today’s early gifts.

Our overripe national drama could cause one to despair, to wonder if a return to normal can be gained, or regained. 

From near and far are images of tragedy… a nursing home in Hollywood Hills, Florida, opioid overdoses down the street, a denuded Virgin Island paradise, mud, posturing politicians, mold, South Texas languishing, St. Louis marching in step with decades of accumulated grievance.  Politicians preen, speak sly words and pose for photo-op-displays-of-compassion.  These televised images vie for attention alongside heartless racist-tinged rhetoric.

Will our national identity be reduced to cheap reality television episodes?  Are we prisoners to shallow, disjointed actions and pathetic promises? “Everyone will be happy”!?  Is this reality?  Fake becomes real, while the real, the true, is declared fake.  Don’t lose your balance fellow pilgrims-of-hope.

Even here, especially here, there is truth… there is music, poetry and beauty.   So much fine produce at the market, stacked high, even okra (mostly for my spouse) and summers-end sweet corn (mostly for me).  The community band plays sweet summers-end music.  Abide With Me as it tunes up for the morning.  Tune to the “A.”  Some things do remind one of stability.  Abide…

 

Sweet corn, ripe tomatoes, sweet music and poetry abide.  Justice will prevail.  Our belief in respect and decency will survive this cruel passage.  It is clear in the acts of human compassion evidenced in the places of unimaginable destruction.  From St. Johns, a family shares space under their tarpaulin.  One visits a nearby hospital — just a brief word, a smile and a prayer.  We applaud as early response teams arrive in Texas and Florida, and ahead of them are thousands-upon-thousands of cleaning kits, (flood buckets), arriving along with a piece of our hearts.

How will we know the way?  What direction and pace shall we travel?  Poetry directs us beyond the limits of here and now.  Friend Walter Wangerin, Jr. calls our name:

The Wanderer*

I am the World-Rim-Walker.

I tread the sheer crags

Where night and daylight

Contour one other.

So we journey ahead as Rim Walkers toward the Eternal.  Between the tragedy and treat offered in the daily news cycles and our truest hope found in the dignity of human beings at their best.  Here and there… we move forward.

These are our compass points.  Smiles and greetings.  New friends met and old friends greeted.  Fresh eggs, ripe tomatoes, kale and spinach now join honey, music and poetry to point to our pathway ahead.  We journey together fellow Rim Walkers. 

May your late summer be filled with laughter, joy and the reminders of taken-for-granted beauty all around.  Together let us continue to walk in ways that rebut and rebuke the vapid efforts to divert us from the ways of our truest hope.

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*Poem The Wanderer is from “The Absolute, Relatively Inaccessible” by Walter Wangerin, Jr., Eugene, Oregon, Cascade Books, 2017.