The Annual Meeting of the “Study Retreat Associates of Rolling Ridge” (our official name) is a gathering of the residential community, the Board, our Partner Groups, and friends. It occurred on Saturday, five days after the election. I wrote a piece for the opening of the gathering. It was meant to be both a report about life and activities at Rolling Ridge and a reflection. What follows is an abbreviated version.

...Hope, for me, means a ….sense of uncertainty, of coming to terms with the fact that we don’t know what will happen, and that there’s maybe room for us to intervene…. Rebecca Solnit (from an interview with Krista Tippett on “On Being”)

We men and women are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea. We owe to each other a terrible and tragic loyalty. GK Chesterton

I have been thinking about this two-sentence quote.  I saw it first in paraphrase form in an email from a friend.  The paraphrase collapsed the “men and women” into the collective pronoun, “we”. It left out “and tragic”, and the preposition “to”, and made the whole quote one sentence, so that it became,

We are all in the same boat, upon a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.

By the time a small group of us gathers for our Advent and Winter Solstice retreat The Gift of Story in early December, it is probable that the U.S. presidential election will at last be over. Perhaps the ads, mailings, rallies, debates, harangues, solicitations, and polls will have ceased.  What is certain, however, is that the rancor and bitterness, the isolation and anger, the pain and suffering here in this country, in the Middle East, and around the globe will have dissipated not at all.  The forces that marred the summer and now the fall don’t care that the holy seasons of Advent and the Winter Solstice promise light in the darkness.  Fear and anger rampage on through the world. We will gather in December with full and breaking hearts. 

The first mist in many months appeared and lingered all morning, curling among the trees and around the garden and sheep shed.  Everyone knows I have long loved this insubstantial Being: an interim element, neither air nor water. Around here, autumn is her homecoming.  The arrival of mist signals that change is afoot, a shift in atmosphere and temperature, a turning of the seasons.

The afternoon and days following were clear, sun-soaked, and warm, the trees mostly as full as ever, the moss on the forest paths lush and bright emerald; the forest glowing green all around.  Seasonal change is all in good time.

It rained early one morning, a brief respite in the dry spell; not a determined rain at first, it fell softly, a low patter in the canopy. Nevertheless it was a presence, a caress on my jacket and the stony path, gentle droplets condensed somewhere in the pale grayness far above misting on my face and hands. I was thinking about Jesus.  In early December we will have a retreat that falls in Advent, and that season, for me, is rich with wonder and the poetry of Incarnation. The stories tell of a baby to be born, a Holy Child, embodied Love, a child fully human and Divine.  It is amazing to me, how the unseen can become tangible in this world.

David Whyte’s poem “What To Remember When Waking” has these lines:

To be human
is to become visible,
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

After days under a sultry blanket, the woods and the air all around this morning swirled with wafts of coolness, and Billy and I decided that the day called for a walk.  As we walked up the path called Peachey Trace, trailed by our cat Olive, patches of light and shadow in the trees made a crisp, motley pattern in the clear, dry air.  For the first time in weeks I wore a cotton sweater. 

I was on the lookout for a red leaf.  Three years ago Beth Norcross, founder of the Center for Spirituality in Nature, led a retreat here at the end of July.  She noted that the black gum tree begins turning before all the others, throwing out small, crimson teasers of autumn’s possibility one by one, even in August.  I found four.

I cannot cause light;
the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.
Annie Dillard

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen

It’s summer, the sun’s shining season at Rolling Ridge, and everything is a riot: wine berries, honey suckle, sunflowers, mint, Queen Anne’s lace, kale, garlic tumble over one another in the garden and across fences and railings.  Grasses spring up behind the mower five minutes after it has passed.  The grape arbor is leaning, barely able to stand under the weight of the ripening fruit.  The forest floor is awash in green growth, barberry bushes, and paw paw

One beautiful morning at Rolling Ridge a few days ago, the sun-kissed air was serenely cool and fresh. The tall and slender trees in the luminous forest arched overhead like a cathedral ceiling. Even the call of the jay was music while the mist curled in graceful mystery through the branches and the sun gleamed just beyond, turning the edges of the green oaks and maples to gold. I couldn't help but know myself blessed and lucky, to be dwelling here, not just among the trees, but with a small and valiant community of people who are constructing a life together as much as we can in connection with the earth and this place, and in our best moments humbly willing to be taught and to learn together.