CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith and Life from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter…
My whole life, at least
from age 22, when I moved away from Bloomington, after four years as an
undergrad at IU, I yearned to be in Bloomington. Finally, after sojourning more
than 65 years in foreign lands, like TX and IL and IA and the UP of MI, my
yearning was fulfilled. We moved back to Bloomington. Now I’m sort of sorry.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m
delighted to be here. Bloomington is great. Music, theater, basketball, autumn
leaves, friends, churches, Carrie Newcomer, libraries, Buddhist monasteries, lectures,
fried chicken, humidity, redbud and dogwood and magnolia trees, green beans, skies,
bittersweet, persimmon pudding, hills—all great. But now I am without my
yearning spot. For 65 years, whenever I did not like where I was, I could say,
“It’s great in Bloomington, and some day I’ll live there again.”
That “some day” has come.
Now, when I don’t like where I am--and those times come even in the nicest
spots, because all places have people, and people can get on your nerves—I have
no other place to yearn to be.
Maybe that’s why heaven is
always described in such heavenly ways, so we’ll always have a yearning spot.
JRMcF
“A man’s reach should
exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Robert Browning.
I tweet occasionally as
yooper1721.
The “place of winter”
mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula
[The UP], where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is
explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] I did a lot of yearning there.
Having met and married while at IU in Bloomington, IN, we became Bloomarangs in
May of 2015, moving back to where we started, closing the circle. We no longer
live in the land of winter, but I am in the winter of my years, and so I am
still trying to understand Christ in winter.
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