spring

so beautiful. spring is here.  the air is warm- even the breeze- and i'm surrounded by all the little buds and flowers, all those little life signs- hope- renewal.

i've been thinking about the dismantling of our lives.  we are in this place of taking down our life- striking the set- at a time when most of our friends are settling in, having already arrived at their final destination.  we are selling things, giving things away, minimizing, pairing down, announcing our leaving at work, preparing our kids, telling our friends.  it's a weird feeling - especially at 40.  i look around at our home, the path walking jude to school in the morning, and i see it from my memory next year-when i'm far from here- when the dirt is dusty red and the trees bear bananas and papaya- and the roosters crow- and the air smells of things burning.  i see it from across an ocean. i see it from an evening without electricity, from underneath a mosquito net, from bare feet on a cement living room floor, from the first time my child gets a high fever and i'm worried about malaria,  from a corner market where i can't find peanut butter.  i see the familiarity that i take for granted, from another world where i will be living.  and i know that i will be missing here deeply.  that i will cry for home, as i make my new home.

to dismantle- to take apart in a systematic way- to break a whole- to separate- to undo- to shred- to rip to bits.

i have been dismantled before.  life can dismantle us.  but this is by choice- which can be harder- because we're responsible.

at the same time- we are in another process- an opposite one- assembling, building, putting together.  we are constructing what it is we're doing.  we are building a common language to express who we are- why on earth at mid-life, we're dismantling our physical world,  why this, why now. we are creating ourselves as a team.  and this is a beautiful thing- relationally and personally.

but construction and deconstruction involve hammers, or nails or saws.  there is some pain involved. it's like bryn again last night, growing pains.

when we lived in san francisco, our pastor used to say, "breakdown leads to break through, which leads to break out."  i wonder where we are in that? i usually think we're in the process of break out.  that the events in life so far have broken us down- yes- that is true- and that each time we've experienced break through- a further nudging of what we should be doing with our lives- and that has led us to this place- breaking out.  but then i somehow feel that we are really just now in breakdown- the dismantling- that this is a new stage- awaiting a different type of break through.  maybe it's like stages of grieving or the stages of behavior change- things aren't linear- they are like a stretched out slinky. curlicues. loop-de-loops. you can circle right back to one place over and over- backwards then forwards.  either way- they all have the word "break" in them- and that means something.

this is what life is all about. we transform, whether we are active or passive in the process, things change us. we wait for it in the characters of the books we read and the movies we watch, but it can be hard to see in ourselves, or at least it can be hard to embrace.  but the slice we live is just one piece in a great pie of a world.

i'm reading the book 'as the great world spins'.  the book starts with a beginning quote, "All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is."

so, dismantled and raised up, i'm still here. somewhere, where ever i am or will be . budding, then blooming.