Here in the Ember Months
Summer Has Slipped Away
Dear Ones,
So much has changed since my last optimistic email in early July. My glee at emerging from the pandemic has been replaced with anxiety and grief as the delta variant ravages the unvaccinated, and breakthrough cases came close to our family and employees. Wildfires are once again razing the beautiful forests of California, and violent weather is upending lives and ecosystems everywhere. My husband's sister died on August 1st, less than a year after losing her home to last summer's CZU Lightning Complex Fire, and yesterday marked the 20th anniversary of the attacks on 9/11, the ripples of which reach all of us.
To counteract the stress of ongoing uncertainty, tedium, and trauma, I stay close to my camera on the look out for beauty and oddities that I can observe and attempt to recreate as I snap the shutter and later process in Lightroom. Images that I can offer to you, my community, as a gift, a sign of my care and gratitude. These days, I'm finding it hard to write, to gather words and order them in rich and life-giving ways (these few paragraphs have taken more than an hour). And so I'm listening with my ears, to audiobooks and the writing of others, with my eyes to daily life unfolding before me, and with my heart to the gracious and gifted people in my life. Thank you for being among them.
Below you'll find some of what has captured my attention lately.
May peace permeate your lives as we move through September and into the season of -ember months that end our year.
Cathy
Church of the Golden Arches
I participated in a spiritual autobiography class at Grace Episcopal church when I lived on Bainbridge Island a decade ago. New to the community, and the church, I was feeling both a bit put out (after all, had I still lived in California I'd be the one leading the class) and uncertain about sharing (it was a big church and I slipped out after the service each week without speaking to anyone, introvert that I am). After our writing prompt, I bolstered up the nerve to read aloud my experience working at McDonald's in high school, and how looking back, it felt like my first church. Afterward, a participant approached me and said, "that was one hell of a free write." I thanked her, and found out later from another participant that the complementer was Rebecca Wells, author of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood novels. [I met her for dinner a few weeks later, which is a story for another time.] We've both since moved away from the island and lost touch. But I'll never forget her words, which have nudged me periodically to finish the piece and find a home for it, which I finally did. Thank you Rebecca and Agape Journal.