“I
pause amazed, again arrested, by the changing season. The languid, downward spiral
of fecund harvest, the slow closing down of fruit and flower, reminds me that death, a yellow-gold leaf in a shaft of life,
too, is one of earth’s basic rhythms. The four-four time of eternity is
played out on every field and forest; it echoes in every human heart - the dance,
the dirge, the diurnal drama of dust to dust.”
Bonnie Thurston
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I had a place, mortgage free, on the eastern
slope of Piney Mountain, a house at the southern-most tip of the Massanutten Mountains that split the Shenandoah Valley all
the way from Front Royal to Elkton, Virginia. Facing northeast, I saw the morning
sun lift majestically over the Blue Ridge Mountains and as evening fell, shadows mute the gentle old Appalachian hills with
mist and mystery. The house was a solidly built chalet that I named “L’Abri”,
meaning shelter. I borrowed the name
from its counterpart in Switzerland, a place that gained a measure of fame because the man who lived there, Francis Schaeffer,
wrote a best-seller book called The God Who Is There. Perhaps intuitively I knew that our Lord would be there too and would be my companion in this sheltered
place among the towering old pine, maple, oak, and tulip poplar trees. Living
there nine years, I came to commune with Him often and found Him to be more resolutely the Director of my life.
The house must have been built on an ancient deer path because they often traversed through my property,
sometimes in families of five to eight. Scenes reminiscent of Arbreux, my other
place in the woods of Shenandoah County, repeated themselves. Pileated woodpeckers
came to drill for food on ancient pines. Again I saw wild turkeys on the front lawn and once I saw an opossum climb my neighbor’s tree to invade a squirrel’s
nest. Rabbits, chipmunks, groundhogs, raccoons, and bears were also co-owners
of the place, their ancestor’s protagonists and no doubt food for the native Indians who had a prior claim to these
hills.
Living there long enough,
I realized the energy needed to be a proper steward of the place could not be sustained. So I moved on to this village of
retirees with a prayer that I could continue an active life and demonstrate the courage to confront another passage. I look back with immense gratitude for the wise counsel and benefactors through the
transition. So I have special cause this year to raise thanksgivings for the
joy and lessons learned living there, for the friends I made there, and the measure of good health that enabled me to stay
there for my allotted time.
“Give yourself to life, give yourself to the important things of life, give yourself above all
to the personal. And the most personal of all…your relationship with God. This above all is what life passing impresses upon you. By making you serious enough about Him so that He has a chance to become real to you ….to become
peace and contentment in the face of life and death, which is the ultimate joy…. Let an old friend out of Nazareth lead
you in these dying days of autumn to the place where He had to go before the end, to the joy that does come as in the face
of frailty, we learn to rest ourselves in God. May the fading light lead us all
to the One who is our ultimate hope and joy.” Gilbert Bowen, in a sermon,
“Living in Time.”
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