“To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
~Ecclesiastes 3:1
Last week as I drove west of the Cities, I was surprised to see the majority of the lakes now held open water. The ones that didn’t were now open in the middle with shards of ice floating near the shore in some of the more shaded parts of the lake. I imagined the ice pieces moving against one another as the wind moved across the water making a ‘clinking’ sound I have heard on Lake Superior in the deep of winter. It is a sound I remember hearing nowhere else. The magical sound of glass eternally breaking.
Observing this open water phenomenon, a phrase floated through my brain: open water, out of season. And so it was. The water I saw lapping in the warm wind had thawed much sooner in the year than normal. I wondered at its own experience of this out of season thawing. Was this a good thing or one that would change the nature of what was happening beneath the ice, the growth of water plants or fish for instance? Since I know little of such things, I settled on being content with my wondering. Remembering the adage that the Native people speak of knowing when to tap the maples for syruping when the frozen water turns black, I wondered at the relationship between the season of the trees and this early thaw. In just this one observation there is so much to contemplate.
The following morning I was gazing out the window at the lake where I was on retreat. Open water took up much of the lakes’ expanse but just near the shore was a beach shaded by shore and trees. In this stretch of water that same slick of ice chunks clinked against the sandy beach. As the morning sky was brightening, the sun was able to pierce through clouds creating a pink that lit the sky and reflected on the water. I kept my gaze on the small patch of ice crystals still visible. And while I was watching, the ice was somehow swallowed up by the open water and disappeared from sight. It had been a blessing of the morning for me to watch the ice go out of the lake. Literally.
Since that time I have reflected on this experience of open water, out of season. It has become metaphor for other of life’s experiences. There are several people I know who have found themselves in open water at a time when they thought the ground, the ice, underneath them was solid. For some it has been a surprise which was welcomed and they have flowed in the change with the comfort of a seasoned swimmer. For others, there is the sense of an unwelcomed feeling of having the rug pulled from beneath their feet. Slipping into the freezing, life-threatening water, they are struggling mightily.
As humans, we like to believe that we not only understand the seasons of the year but also those of our lives. And yet sometimes the seasons have a rhythm of their own, one that brings challenge or blessing or merely surprise. Perhaps we might learn something from the wisdom of the water as it flows and freezes,laps and thaws and teems with possibility. Seasons sometimes have changes that are unexpected but when we lean into those twists and turns, we might discover yet another way of walking the sacred path that is our life. Rather than fighting against what may be changing, too slowly or too quickly, perhaps the wisdom is to rest in the ebb and flow of what is.
It’s just a thought given to me by the open water, out of season.
