A beautiful season to be in London, made all the more precious by remembrance of how awful the winter is. As I bike around I keep thinking of how a former parishioner used to take walks in the rose garden at Lake Harriet this time of year, aware of the autumnal passing of time.
Just a few months ago it didn't get dark till after 10. A couple of weeks ago as I washed coffee cups at the end of my work day a little after 7 (a sign of the awesome responsibility I bear in my day job), I was looking out the window at a gorgeous sunset of deepening salmon, orange, blue, and purple behind the London Eye, which is kind of the luxury skybox of Ferris wheels. This past Monday around 6:30, I stood on the Millennium Bridge over the Thames (aka the Wobbly Bridge from the way it shook as people walked across it when it first opened) watching the last colors deepen.
I continue to spend a lot of time by myself, maybe storing up the solitude while I can before things finally launch in a few weeks: the solo bike ride in the New Forest last weekend, a mostly solitary birthday (haircut, reading the paper in Trafalgar Square, a stroll through the National Gallery, Evensong at St Pauls, dinner and the Millennium Bridge before meeting friends for a pub quiz in the evening). It's not that I'm antisocial (I enjoyed buying coffee for a stranger that morning), nor is it that I necessarily want to be alone, but there's something in me that's gravitating in that direction. It may be bad timing--more and more people are getting back into town now and it seems that there are more occasions for potlucks and parties--but the upside is that my solitary ways are giving me more room for reflection.
When I had coffee with Thomas a few weeks ago, the conversation turned at one point to what I might do after I finish here. I don't have anything specific in my sights yet, but I've been thinking I want to be involved in storytelling in some way. I've always been drawn to stories, certainly more than to doctrine, and he asked a great followup question: What kind of effect do you want to have on people? (And then yet another: And who are those people you want to have that effect on?) Those are questions I'll keep coming back to during the year. It's helpful to have longer-range questions like those in mind during the close and intense focus of Creation times in the Lispa school calendar. I think I'll be fighting an uphill battle by trying to keep inserting those questions into group work, but I think it'd be helpful if we remembered to keep those kinds of things in mind. Why just aim for cleverness if you're going to be trying to create something that goes deeper? I want to help create something that will evoke wonder, discovery, and an awareness of possibility. It may be it's not so much through story as through fertile and evocative images. (To do both, of course, would be of great reward! Personal, if not financial.)
The year ahead seems like a laboratory in which to try out ideas and approaches for whatever will follow. My questions aren't necessarily others', I know, and trying to get agreement or a shared direction among strong-minded creatives is indeed a bit like herding cats (while being one of the cats yourself). Still, I don't want to get completely subsumed in immediate goals and concerns this year.
The year is going to rush by--if it ever gets started! Here's to finding moments of reflection and insight in the midst of the coming long days of activity (and short days of sunlight).
No comments:
Post a Comment