Where Did the Weather Go?

OK.  I'm not complaining.  After the winter we had last year, it was amAzing to have a light-handed winter this year.  But have you noticed that the months are no longer distinct?  I used to get to the end of March and recognize that March had happened in its entirety.  We had heavy winds.  We had the lion's roar at the start and soft lamb-like Spring showers decorating March's end.  As I recognize the shift in our weather over the past few years, this climate change, I'm seeing how my life longs for the ritual of the seasons.  I love to see how November is overcast, miserable, never glorious, but it gives way to crisp blue skies in December.  There is a natural rhythm to our lives.  The Church displays this in the liturgical year.  Advent prepares us for Christmas, a brief ordinary time yields its normalcy to Lent, then Easter and Pentecost proclaim celebration.  The remainder of the year is ordinary, a simple observance of life with a sprinkling of holy days throughout.

But the weather is changing.  Our world is experiencing a cosmic shift.  While many of us experience ordinary times as usual, there are countries in existential turmoil.  While I am bemoaning the loss of my vibrant New England variety, refugees are living in muddy tent-communes, existing on the generosity of others, unable to provide for their families without begging for help.

The liturgical year was my focus for years.  I relished the shifting rituals.  That was my home.  But I have found myself, these past 8 years, with freedom from practicing my faith in a prescribed manor.  I am outside my comfort zone, the manager of my own home, the leader of children I am still recognizing as mine.  I am comfortable, well fed, and have a purpose to live out in the ordinary times of motherhood.  But the world's shift is a mirror to my own.  I feel displaced, as though this world is strange and outside any reference I was ever given.  There is joy in my wild, unstructured days, but as I try and enter those moments of glee, anxiety crops up, making me turn my head and look for the ritual wherein I hope to rest.

And now the weather is unpredictable, it is shifting.  The world's boundaries are shifting...a source of anxiety and cosmic displacement for so many.  Where did the weather, the security of seasons go?  We can focus on the shift, the disturbance of earth and time, and inevitably find ourselves in the liturgy of fear and anxiety.  Or, we can play.  We can embrace the wild, the unpredictable, and look to bring comfort and stability to others.  We can care for ourselves and this good earth.  That is the only ritual we are capable of maintaining...the ritual of the "other."  That is where we can rest.