Tales From the Burning Prairie

It rained today; a soft, forgiving rain. I walked out in it, not to stand in its cool mist, but sadly to get from one place to another place. Only after it had stopped did I fully appreciate how beautiful it was. Dinner over, family winding down after the day, a spare moment at loose ends. And how did I spend this rare, precious thing? This fragile gift of time? Taking out the trash, naturally. What an ordinary, necessary task. But this silly, utterly utilitarian job put me outside in that time of day called “gloaming”, when the sun has officially set, but there is still light to see. I”m not much of a daytime girl; sun, sand, lake, never attracted me, never struck me as fun. Stormy days, rainy days like today, always hold sway over me. There is a quality to the light, a clarity in its dimness, that charms me every time. This twilight graced my neighborhood and lent a painterly quality to the driveways and shrubbery, the shade trees and trashcans, the cars and telephone poles. The houses were just beginning to be lit from inside, but children were still playing noisy games outside. Two frogs sang back and forth to each other, sometimes in unison, but slightly off-pitch. The rain-slicked road reflected the trees and the remnants of the sunset. Standing there, watching the day give up the ghost, enjoying my first moment of complete peace for the day, I was put in mind of a saying from Buddhism. “Before enlightenment, there is chopping wood and carrying water, after enlightenment there is chopping wood and carrying water.” Apparently, after enlightenment, there is also dumping rainwater out of trashcans, dragging them back up the driveway, and ridding the house and myself of the day’’s detritus. Clutter in the house is easy to see but sometimes hard to remedy. Clutter in the spirit is impossible to see and sometimes impossible to cure. Maybe we should deal with spiritual mess the same way we deal with household mess–take it out everyday, so the job doesn”t become too large. So everyday, in the gloaming, I”ll slip away from my funny, noisy family and our chaos-house, and stand outside and throw away the mess.