Doors

Spring has been struggling to come to Memphis. Six weeks ago, I could walk in shorts and a tee shirt one day and then have to bundle up a day or two later. Much more bundling has been going on than shorts and tees at our house. We’re a month later than usual in having to water the lawn and shrubs because of the abundance of rain. And usually I’ve mown the lawn four or five times by mid-May. Not this year. Even with lots of green and lots of pollen, spring has been coming in fits and starts.

As I write this, we’re in the low 80s--shorts and tee day. But the house is still a little chilly because of the very cool days we’ve had. Still, when I look at the forecast, I’m given hope that maybe, just maybe, spring is actually here now.

So what? Well the strange weather made me think of my personal spiritual journey. I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of spiritual time in the kind of variable season I’ve been describing. I feel renewed and alive and then a “cool spell” sets in and all I can say is, “Not so much.”  There are certainly “winter days” to deal with, but some blessed “summer days” as well. Still, most of the journey is in a spring that can’t make up its mind. To put it another way, “sometimes I feel ‘it’, and sometimes I don’t.” 

Am I the only one? After all, I know people who seem to be continuously in the warmest of spring seasons, even lots of summer days. “There’s a reason for everything, and the reason is God’s will ‘cause God knows best,” they seem to say--and in fact, have actually said to me, just not recently. Not that they don’t believe it; I just tend not to be around people like that very much--by choice. Maybe that’s a mistake. Maybe I need their spiritual cheerfulness to rub off on me. 

All this reminds me of a book I read when I was a young teen. It’s science fiction and named The Door Into Summer.  The book opens with the narrator telling us about his cat. He and the cat live in an old house that has almost a dozen doors to the outside. In the depth of winter when snow and ice cover everything, the cat will still want to go out. He will go to his favorite door and yowl until the narrator opens it. The cat will gingerly touch the cold frozen stuff and, wisely, refuse to go out. But, then on to another door and another, all with the same results. Certain there is one door that leads to summer, he tries them all.

I suppose, bottom line, I’m like that cat. I keep thinking, “not every door leads to the frozen world out there.” I must truly believe that, because in my high school yearbook under “ambition,” I wrote: to find my door into summer.

Hope you have or will find yours too.

Jerry