Falling into Rhythms of Grace

My grandfather called them horse chestnuts. My dad taught me to collect them. We called them buckeyes. I gathered them with my son. When I find one on the ground it brings my dad strongly to mind. I can feel his presence when I pick one up and roll it around in my palm. My dad‘s death anniversary is at the beginning of October. I always start thinking about it near the end of September. Autumn has always felt more like the new year to me than January. Perhaps it’s my Jewish roots. My mother’s father’s people came from Sicily but their last name was Maer. I’m sure they were Jews who fled some Eastern European country even though no one can remember them being anything but Italian. Maybe it’s because of all those years in school as a student, then a teacher, and then a professor that fall always feels like a new beginning.

Everything has a pattern. We notice the pattern of the seasons. It is a natural phenomenon we recognize that appears to happen separately from us. But does it? Our own bodies have many automatic and involuntary functions. Maybe this isn’t just limited to our physicality. Perhaps grief and other emotions roll around in our subconscious and come to the surface in some kind of cyclical manner to offer themselves to us like an appetizer at a fancy party held aloft on a plate by somebody dressed in black. The question isn’t really, did we summon them or did they appear on some schedule connected to the world at large that we don’t even realize exists but rather, do we take them when they are offered? Do we taste them? Do they whet our appetites for more? More knowledge. More awareness. More connection.

Many cultures believe everything is interconnected. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it isn’t. But aren’t we as individuals a part of multiple collectives? Doesn’t everything bump and sometimes merge if only for a moment? Does it matter what’s true? Some of us claim we can feel the flow of our own lives. It’s like a stream that carries us smoothly when we step into it. It’s the perfect comfortable temperature when we voluntarily let it carry us. It feels like floating on Grace. It laps with ankle-aching frigid water when we stand at the edge afraid to enter further. It sends hot waves of malodorous swampy funk if we turn our backs on it. Maybe I’m imagining all of this. Maybe I’m not. It’s my religion even though there aren’t any commandments that are written down. They swim inside of me instead. I have to have faith to feel them. And, just like all the other believers, all I can say is that I just know it is so.

Cinse Bonino
2022