Conversion

The leaves are falling off the trees. I like it.  It's time.  Sometimes in the midst of the summer fling I forget how much I love the quiet, unhurried routine of fall. It slows me down so I can breathe, so I can process. 

I like to sit on my deck and drink coffee and stare. My wonderful, ugly yellow MCC chair is positioned carefully in front of a beautiful maple.  I've watched it through a full year of season now.  Slowly its leaves are changing colour and falling quietly to the ground.  I can't help but feel the correlation to my own life.  Fall is about letting go, purging life, slowing down, getting ready for the long winter so that when spring comes the new growth can come. 

I'm reflecting through my life, as if carefully examining each leaf, barely having the courage to allow it to change colour, let alone allow it to fall to the ground and decay into the earth.  He's changing me, changing the patterns of my life, changing the movement of my soul.  Fear calls me to cling to my leaves and not allow them to fall, but Christ calls me to let them go, to let them fall to the earth and nourish my soul.  To make room for the new growth that will come...eventually. So silently, in the deep corners of my soul, with tears moving down my cheeks I open my clenched fists and say yes...conversion.

Silently you move me
You shift my soul to its proper place in one swift move...
like a mother with her child.

Plagued by fears without and evils within
firmly and quietly i hear you among the reeds
and eventually I see and feel your large strong hand...
i don't feel so confused any more.

Lord, help me to receive
to receive the gifts I don't understand, the unfinished paintings
let me receive them with joy and not disdain.

Let me carefully unwrap each moment
let me savour it the way you invite me to.

Teach me, oh Holy God, how to live in your unhurried sense of time.
Grant me grace as I explore you and others deeper...

conversion.