What is Important

It's evening. I've already taken the dog out for a nice walk. It's not our dog, but belongs to our friends, the Huffmans. Along the greenway a light fog hugged the grass as walkway lamps illuminated the hovering water vapor in the cool night air. Yet a certain unseasonal warmth prevented me from feeling chilled. The walk did wonders for me. A walk usually does, or especially a good run down Hill Road into the countryside. I love to gaze across the fields, green with wheat shoots or grass tufts, towards the hills whose silhouettes can be seen faintly through the mists and stripes of fog typical of winter. Fog often encourages a sense of mystery in me. This is important to me. Many things are important: things of import, of meaning and significance. Under the clear, sharp, blue sky of summer, things seem so clear, stark and ... mere, at times. Everyone is out and about and everything appears commonplace, even drab. Such clarity of air and sky lends a sense of transparency that causes you to be too sure of things, because they are so clear. But during the winter when most folks huddle inside by the fire or space heater, or lounge in easy chairs if their homes are heated centrally, I venture out to breathe the chill air and smell the scent of smoke drifting my way from brick chimneys. And to behold the fog concealing details of things not far away and letting the mind imagine things beyond the outlines the fog allows. Enough light gets through so one can perceive shapes, but still wonder at what is truly behind or inside those shapes.

Translucence leads one down paths that transparence doesn't encourage.

So what is important to me, besides mystery? Many things come together for me at school. I go out to watch my children ... my students, but I think of them as my children ... during recess. My eyes will wander to the hills half hidden behind homes and houses. Stands of Douglas fir will congregate here and there that during the winter show only an uneven saw blade outline in the mists that wreath the hills. I will yearn to be there. Perhaps out on my bike, climbing the hills on a winding road. Or maybe out under the branches of the firs, scuffing the duff in search of chantrelle mushrooms. And then my eyes are torn from the longing for adventures in nature by the sound of young voices in glee or distress nearby. I wonder how many of the children that argue and chase, shove and blame one another ever bother to raise their heads to look with wonder at the hills not so far away. Are they moved by the fog as I am? Do they allow feelings of awe stir within, to quiet them or arouse them to care for others, to care for mysteries, to care for nature, or to be thankful for God? I don't know. I do know why some people feel that childhood is wasted on the young.

But nonetheless, these children are important to me. Boys with their unruly ways, unkempt hair, bright eyes and energetic limbs; and girls with auburn curls or wisps of blond, flashing smiles and giggles of delight. I know that all children are by definition immature humans in process of growing. At times it doesn't make their immaturity and self-centeredness less a thing to be outgrown, but at least something that is much more bearable knowing that these levels of growth are...in the grand scheme of things...something temporary.

To outgrow childishness and ingrow childlikeness is the task of youth.

For these things of importance we give Thee thanks, o Lord. Amen.