“Another year another day at the mines. Digging away just digging. Always turning up gems but just digging still.”

Words from my brother.

I’ve been thinking about the seasoning that happens in our lives, when rough winds come and the earth shakes around us.

There’s a passage in Hebrews that speaks to this: “Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace…”

The shaking…not to upend our lives, but to remove only that which doesn’t belong.

Madeleine L’Engle talks about this idea in her book A Circle of Quiet: “I think that the part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on  the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but our ontological selves; what we are meant to be.”

Mary Baker Eddy puts it this way: “The mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of dissolving self, and drops the world. Meekness heightens immortal attributes only by removing the dust that dims them. Goodness reveals another scene and another self seemingly rolled up in shades, but brought to light by the evolutions of advancing thought…”

the mounting sense…

gathers fresh forms and strange fire…

from the ashes of dissolving self…

drops the world…

o to drop the world…

to find that self seemingly rolled up in shades

revealed by goodness and the evolutions of advancing thought…

seasoning, rebirth, renewal, turning into our real selves, emerging, emerging into who we were always meant to be.

what grace, to watch each other move through storms, seasoned ever with more tenderness, humility, strength, beauty and peace, emerging childlike and pure from the fires of life, unscarred, unscathed, innocent and free.

here’s to the journeys we take together, lessons gleaned, the room we give one another to grow, and the palms of heaven that hold us in their hands.

This hymn by Robert Lowry, adpated by Enya and Nicky Ryan, so says it well:

My life goes on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear it’s music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness ’round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble in their fear
And hear their death knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?