Real Time

While we were at a local college to hear some fiddle music yesterday we came across this sundial.  It is situated front and center as you come to the front door of the main building on campus.  I paused to look at it.   I have seen sundials in the past.  Andy even told me that the upright piece that sheds the shadow on the numbers is called a gnomon.  We compared the time on the sundial and the time on our cell phone.  The cell showed 11:45...the sundial 10:45.  I know you can't see it, but the left edge of the sun's shadow in just a quarter increment before the line denoting 11.

I began to think about how we have adjusted the laws of the universe to our own convenience  here in this modern time.  Centuries ago when men came up with a way of marking years and seasons and days and hours, they depended on the sun and the moon and the position of stars in the sky.  The world they lived in made them aware of what was happening...or about to happen.  Harvest.  Winter.  Planting time.  Eat.  Sleep.  Work.  Play.  Simple yet effective.  The world got along very well with what to us, are crude measures of time.

I am not a farmer.  Never have been.  And I never will be.  But one thing I do know.  When the clocks are set ahead in the spring and back in the fall, it does not make any difference when you milk your cows or go out to plow your field or plant your crops.   Our universal life is still ruled by the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening.  The stars show us season and the moon marks the months.  

Living where I do I am much more in tune with what is happening outside.  When the sun streams in my east window, it is time to get up.  When the warm rays beat down over my head it is time to eat my mid day meal.  And when that blazing orb sets over the western horizon and paints the trees with crimson...it is time to put away the tools and make ready for the night.  And when I search the heavens for the marked constellations ,which I am slowly learning...I look forward to the month ahead and what it will bring.

Yes, there are certain advantages to living in "real time". 

All things Easter...all things spring

Here is an ancient photo taken from my secret vault.  My brother Paul..he must have been around 3 plus...and I was nearly 9 months, sitting in the side yard of 711 North Center Ave. waiting for my mom to take our Easter picture. You can see the shadow of her in the foreground... I can imagine her aiming the old Kodak camera after capturing our faces in the top view finder.  

Looking out over my expanse of green and growing pasture today my mind wanders back to springtime and Easter in my Illinois hometown.  I see a box near me and Paul is holding his Easter basket in his lap.  He didn't quite know what to think of his baby sister by this time.  The new had worn off and he really didn't feel like being a big brother. The pink bonnet I am wearing went the way of many things..sold at our auction a few years ago.  It was pink corduroy and lined with pink silk...when I found it in my mother's things it was a little crumpled and creased..and the lining was ripped.  But still it was a keepsake...and one of Mom's sacred objects, or SO's as she fondly called them.

But back to Easter.  We always had a Easter basket, hidden in the yard, for us to find after church was over.  I look out over my fields and woods and can imagine where I might hide an egg or two for a child to find...hunting and happily finding one here and there.  My parents didn't really hide eggs...they went in for the  "Let's put all the candy and stuff together in a nest of green cellophane grass and put it outside...where the kids can tear into it and not get their good clothes dirty crawling around."

Spring and Easter.  New things growing.  Hope abundant.  No matter how old..or young you are, Easter and spring meld together, the perfect metaphor for that Eternal Promise we all have. A  Happy and Blessed Easter to you and yours.  Take lots of pictures.  Kids are only young once.

Spring is calling...

I know that it is still early in the year to be looking for spring.  But I hear it calling.  I see it coming.  Every day the sun rises earlier and sets later.  Mist hangs more gently in the valley.  The wind has a definite softness to it, the sharp bite of ice is gone.

Everywhere we look we see jonquils and daffodils, some lining the former paths of houses long gone, some planted only recently on new ground.  How forgiving and generous these yellow flowers are.  They pop up in ditches and fence rows where they have been pushed aside by huge machines that weren't able to crush their plucky spirit.  Hooray, they seem to say.  Here's the sun.  Here is our time to bloom and smile and lend some hope to a winter-weary world.

Don't you know that long ago, when farm wives and early settlers saw these signs of spring-to-come, they smiled and felt a lifting of their spirits.  The long and dark days of winter are almost over.  The rains will come and the land turn green.  The birds will build their nests in high and arching trees.  The redbud will brighten the hills and the dogwood will bless the valleys with sweet blossoms.

Spring is calling.  And soon it will be here.