seasons

Blessed are those who mourn

December 14, 2017 by Billy Coffey 10 Comments

Winter scene

So, here’s what happened—

My wife was diagnosed with leukemia. Our daughter continued on with her mostly up but sometimes down battle with Type 1 diabetes. Our son broke his wrist. Mom’s health took a turn for the worse and then the very worse. It all got so bad there for a while that people at work started referring to me as Job. But while things by far have yet to settle down, it is Christmas—my favorite time of the year—and I do have a new book coming soon. And I really missed popping out a blog post every seven days. So here I am, doing my darnedest to get back into the swing of things.

The problem with taking so much time off from a blog is that you have too much to say when you get back. It all tends to get muddled up in the mind. That’s a little of what I’m feeling right now. So instead of one story about one thing, I thought I’d take this bit to share some of the things that have been on my mind.

You remember the story of John the Baptist being put in prison? Herod had reached the limits of his patience with this hillbilly out in the desert and so tossed John in jail to rot (and ultimately to have his head literally served on a platter). While there, John hears reports of all the things his cousin Jesus is doing and sends his disciples to ask Jesus one simple question: Are you really the Son of God? Because I’ve been spending all this time telling everyone you are, and I could really use your help here. For his part, Jesus told John’s disciples to go back and say that the blind now see, the lame walk, the lepers are healed, the deaf hear, the dead are being raised, and the poor have good news preached to them.

And then Jesus adds this, saving it for last because it’s so important.

Tell John, he says, that “blessed is the one who does not fall away because of me.”

I’ve probably read that story a hundred times in my life, yet it never really clicked with me until these last months. John had faith enough when his life was just chugging along—great faith, even—but there’s something about a prison cell and the threat of death that can bring doubts to even the most faithful soul. You sure You’re up there, God? Because I kind of need a miracle right now, and it seems to me You’re just not paying attention. And God says Of course I’m here, and I’m there, and I’m doing things so wonderful that you can’t even imagine it all. But don’t lose faith just because I’m not fitting into the little box you made for me. Don’t stumble because you don’t understand why things have to be like this for now.

A hard lesson for sure, but one my family is learning.

I was walking through town one morning a while back and happened upon an honest-to-goodness professional singer. You wouldn’t know him. He plays a few of the clubs across the mountain on the weekends, that’s all. But he gets paid for doing it, and in my book paid equals professional. I was one street up along a little hill, walking parallel to him and minding my own business. No traffic, no people. That’s when I heard him sing. Rich baritone, smooth as butter. Enough to make me stop and watch. What I noticed is that he would sing when walking by the buildings, then stop whenever he came to an open space like an intersection or an alleyway. It got me so curious that I bumped into him accidentally on purpose a few blocks later to ask what he was doing. Testing his voice, he said. You can’t tell how strong your voice is if you’re singing out in the open. But when you sing while surrounded by something like brick and stone built up so high that it dwarfs you, then you know. Things like that bounce your voice right back to you. You hear your true self rather than the noise in your head.

Maybe that’s a little of what John the Baptist was doing, and me, and maybe you. Testing our voices up against things we can’t move. Finding out who we really are.

You know you’re getting up there in age when all the stars of your childhood start passing on. That’s the first thing I thought when I heard that David Cassidy had died. The Partridge Family ended when I was two, but I grew up with the reruns. Was there anyone cooler than David Cassidy? Nope. He had the looks and the hair and the voice and got to travel around the country in a funky school bus. I remember him on magazine covers and being mobbed by girls. Rich. Famous. What a life.
And yet I read an article last week that mentioned his final words to his daughter. Know what they were?

“So much wasted time.”

Kind of hits you hard, doesn’t it? Especially when you realize everything that man had is everything the world says is necessary to live a good life, and everything most of us are either chasing after or wish we had.
I’ve heard he suffered from dementia at the end. Maybe that was the prison cell David Cassidy found himself in, like John the Baptist. Maybe that’s what allowed him to face the hard truths of his life. Or maybe he just found himself singing into a wall too big and wide for him to get around, and he finally heard his real voice for the first time.

Maybe.

But this I know for certain now, and maybe you know it, too—life can sometimes be a terribly hard thing to endure. Sometimes the things that happen make no sense. But that’s no reason to stumble. No cause to throw your hands up and say it’s all for nothing.

I know it true.

The Dry Season

September 15, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

I write these words some dozen feet from the soft earth of the Virginia mountains, my feet dangling from the thick willow branch that also supports my butt and my back, because rain has been scant here of late. Everything that was bright and green at the turn of August has now gone a rusty brown. Leaves are falling brittle and dead. The deer and the bear are coming out of the woods to forage what they can. Those you meet in town shake their heads and shrug (“What you gonna do?”) and cock their heads up to a cloudless sky the color of the sea.

The dry season is here. And that’s why I’m here, in my willow tree.

It happens every year around this time, usually between the start of school and the beginning of harvest. There will be a few showers here and there, thunderstorms that blow over the mountain and dump inches of rain in minutes, the water unable to pierce the hard ground and so floods the streets and lowlands. Water, but the sort that nourishes little and helps nothing. The kind of water that only makes the weeds grow.

Though it’s a little more difficult to rummage around in the woods this time of year, I still do. You have to mind the snakes and grouchy critters, and you have to understand that going along quiet will be impossible with all the dry wood and hard leaves. But it’s still the woods, still the quiet wilderness and the open sky and the mountains all around you, and that’s where I went a little while ago and where I’ve always gone with things get a little rough.

Dry seasons don’t just happen in the world. They happen in us, too.

Have you ever noticed that? There are seasons right outside your door and there are seasons right inside you, and both can blow cold gales or steady rain or bright sun, and both can make you happy for life and make you dread it.

Whenever it’s dry both inside and out of my own days, I’ll take a walk along a path through the woods across the street and listen for the sound of the bold stream that winds and dips its way from the deep mountain to the South River, and I’ll come here. In all my years, I’ve never known this stream to dry. No matter how parched the summers get or how long the snow doesn’t fall, the water here always runs. I’ll weave my way between all these dying and thirsty trees and follow the near bank, ease myself over the moss and slippery rocks, to the spot where the stream bends toward town. To where my willow sits.

It is an ancient one, tall and thick of trunk, with a canopy that rises and falls with a gentle grace of perfect symmetry. My tree is a marvel; I’ve never seen another quite like it. I’ll stand in its shadow and feel the cool of the air beneath its branches, rub my fingers over the long, slender leaves. Let it all fill my sight. And then I’ll leave my hat in the soft earth and slither up the trunk, my hands groping more by memory than sight, for the upward path to the first sturdy branch. There, I’ll sit and look and listen.

It isn’t a magic tree, this willow. As a boy I thought such things possible, even plentiful, but no longer. Not usually, anyway. Besides, this tree isn’t set apart from the hundreds and thousands of others surrounding it. It’s just as subjected to the seasons as any other. My tree isn’t always so green and blossoming. It doesn’t always look wonderful. It’s still in the world and so has no choice but to suffer along with the rest of its forest kin, to feel the stifling heat and the frigid cold, to be tasked with the very goal that is tasked to every other living thing everywhere—to endure, and for as long as it can.

Yet I’ve come here often in my own dry seasons (and I imagine I will continue doing so in all of my dry seasons to come) because there truly is something different about this particular tree, and advantage it possesses that the other trees here do not. And I scamper up these branches and sit and watch and listen so I will greater appreciate that difference and better apply it to my own life. Because even though this tree is planted in the same earth at the same base of the same mountain as so many untold others, this tree has also been planted along a stream that never dries. Its roots have access to a constant source of water. Even in the heat. Even in the dry season.

I sometimes fall into the trap of believing the happiness to be had in this world comes like the rain. It falls from the sky into my waiting arms and I try to gather up all I can, knowing that it will never rain for long. But here, in my willow, I know different. I know better. Real happiness is the kind that doesn’t depend on anything external, whether its rain from the sky or a cool breeze to chase the heat. It is instead found inside. Down deep, where your roots are.

It’s a lesson I’m going to try and hang onto whenever I decide to climb back down and resume my living. One I’d very much like to take home from the woods. It’s a valuable lesson, and maybe the most valuable one of all, to know that your happiness or your sorrow won’t come from whatever happens to you, but from where you’re planted.

Cheating the seasons

April 10, 2014 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

Three weeks ago…

I’m standing on my front porch in the early a.m., as is my habit before starting the day. A cup of coffee and a view of the neighborhood serves as my morning news, and it’s all the news I need. The mountains and the creek are right where I left them last night. I need that assurance. It reminds me that even if the world’s a mess, the mountains and the creek are still here and so am I.

My eyes wander to the flower beds below me, and then to the green something poking up from the mulch and dirt. To me, flowers have always been like people I meet once and then again months later—I can place what they look like but can’t seem to remember their names. So ask if me if we have roses and daisies and begonias, and I’ll answer no. I will say, however, that we have red flowers and white flowers and pink flowers.

But these green things shooting up from the earth? These I know.

Tulips.

The tulips are the first spring flowers to sprout around here. Which to me makes them much more than just a plant, but a vital part of nature’s calendar. When you begin to see tulips, you know better times are at hand. No more cold, no more snow, no more gray skies and bare trees. Everything is about to be make new again.

Seeing that first tulip means I’ve made it. That I’ve survived one more long and dreary winter.

That’s how it usually is, anyway. But as I stand there staring down at this first true sign of spring, all the joy and peace I know I should be feeling isn’t there.

Because I’ve cheated, you see. These aren’t the first tulips I’ve seen this year.

The local nursery is owned by relatives of mine, Mennonites with green thumbs. They can grow anything. And thanks to the modern marvels of both science and climate controlled greenhouses, they can grow anything at any time. Even in the middle of the worst winter I could remember.

So in the middle of January and our third consecutive snowstorm, I stopped one day to say hello and buy some tulips. Things were getting pretty blah at that point, and so was I. I was tired of having to endure and scrape by. Tired of the sadness and outright heartache that winter always seems to bring.

I needed an act of defiance. A symbol of hope.

So I brought the tulips home and sat them right in front of the window. I’d stare at them as the snow fell and thumb my nose at Old Man Winter. When they died, I bought more. And then more. I’ve had tulips for about two months now in an effort to thwart the one barren and agonizing season I dread most.

It’s worked, too.

Maybe too well.

Because as I look down upon this miracle of God below me, it doesn’t seem like a miracle at all. It just seems like a tulip.

The rusty tumblers of my mind click into place and open, revealing a very important truth. I had wanted to skip a season. Winter and I have never gotten along, so I thought keeping a steady supply of spring on hand would cheer me. I was right about that. I did.

But I never considered the consequences of having those flowers by the window. I was so consumed with the now that I dismissed the later. I surrounded myself with a symbol of joy and warmth for so long that it became the same old. My tulips lost their luster not by becoming rare, but by becoming familiar.

Which is why next year I think I’ll leave them at the nursery down the road. I’ll let someone else give it a try. I will instead take the seasons as they come. I’ll revel in the sunshine while I have it and then stumble through the months of cold and gray as best as I can.

We’re not meant for perpetual joy, I think. There are seasons in the world and there are seasons in us, and each have their own purpose.

We are made for winter as much as spring. Made for tears as much as for laughter.

And we are here not just to dance, but to endure.

Saying goodbye to summer

August 19, 2013 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

I write this late on a Sunday evening, sitting at my upstairs desk as the frogs and crickets sing along the creek outside. The house is quiet, dark. Everyone else is in bed. It’s just me up here, watching the clock tick the last few hours of summer away.

Sure, there will be more warm days ahead. More late evenings when the sun still sets well after the supper dishes have been washed. Still plenty of time for a walk in the woods or a little fishing at the lake. But really, the end of summer has little to do with the weather and much to do with the calendar. Just ask my wife and kids. Because school starts tomorrow, and that marks the end of all that is right and good in the world.

It was the same for me when I was a kid. Still is, in many ways. My children are young, my wife is a teacher, and I work at a college. Our lives are inextricably linked to the school year. Enduring it to find summer on the other side feels like a rebirth. Facing the prospect of a new year? That feels more like a death.

Right now, we’re all dying a little.

A tad dramatic, I know. But it’s true in the sense that we are all about to give up a time of relative calm and quiet for nine months of stress and busyness. Despite our best attempts to inject a bit of excitement into the promise of a new school year, my wife and I have so far failed to inspire our children. Mostly because we aren’t very inspired ourselves.

That’s how it often goes, though, and for most of us. Life can be better measured in seasons than years. There are times when the sun shines and when it goes hidden, times when everything is green and beautiful and when the world lies gray and ugly.

We learn early on that nothing lasts. This life just isn’t built for permanence. Things fade and go away, both good and bad, and those things always come around again. We never suffer so much that we forget how to laugh, nor do we ever experience such joy that we no longer remember the salty taste of tears. That’s what I tell myself, and so I believe. My children aren’t quite there yet, and that’s fine because they will be one day. They’ll discover that often it’s the things you really don’t do that become the greatest things of all. There’s a blessing in pushing on and trying, in facing the inevitable. Even if what’s inevitable is something as small as the end of a summer vacation.

We’ll be okay. My wife. My kids. Myself. You, too. We’re all gonna make it through this little bit. We’ll all find ourselves laughing as we come out on the other side. It isn’t so bad, embracing the new and the unknown. There is great promise in it.