ITALY in Winter - PART ONE

3 weeks ago I traveled alone to the Alta Val Taro region of Northern Italy.

I knew this was the birthplace of my great grandparents, and was following an inspired gut feeling that I should go. It was the most spontaneous and unexpected decision of my life.
What I ended up experiencing filled my heart in the deepest way. The payoff of listening to a mysterious longing, of noticing the signs pointing me toward what I couldn't explain, was beyond what I could have imagined.
Here are a few images of beauty which captured my heart, from my daily wanderings.

I will be sharing more stories soon from what was a sacred pilgrimage to connect with my Italian heritage. If you're interested, I hope you'll follow along.

Enjoy!

- Sarah

Seasons of change

We are deep into fall here, and things in the garden look different.

The Colorado seasons are abrupt, and unlike my childhood home in California, there is no subtlety about leaving summer and turning toward fall. It is a sudden experience, with drastic, visual changes. We will be enjoying a sunny fall day in the 70’s and that same night, the temperatures can drop into the teens and it’s over. Summer’s lush colors and fruitful plants are reduced to brown piles of mush in a matter of hours. That blow hits me hard - seeing everything dead, but it’s not as easy as just noticing the change. I must do the work of cutting away vines from trellises, hauling piles and mountains of heavy, brown plant matter to the compost pile, then truckload after truckload to the recycle center. As I work to drag away the remnants of the fruitful season that filled my heart and our bellies, I can’t avoid it. I am forced to feel my sadness. Summer is over.

I look out my kitchen window and see what was once a glossy, vibrant vine - full of grapes. It gave me such joy to see it’s green beauty all summer, a thrill - to tuck my head under that sprawling canopy, cut off a cluster of ripe fruit, pop in some grapes and taste the explosion of summer bursting in my mouth .

But my fall view out the window is different. The leaves are bent, brown and are drifting away with each heavy gust of wind. It’s a visual image of the sadness tied up in the changing seasons. Of watching one season fade so another can be born.

This drastic shift that moves us into winter has it’s own distinct beauty too, of course.

Can I hold the sadness and the beauty at once?

Nature has to pull the joys of summer from my grasp with force. The force of a hard freeze. After my hands have been pried open, and the painful clean up work is done, I realize how much rest and reflection are needed, and I let go.

Cozy days by the fire, simmering pumpkin soups, tea, books and cozy socks fill me in a different way. Once the winter solstice brings the return of slightly longer days, I begin my plans of seed starting for the following year. New life and rebirth will come again - but for now I must sit with the sadness of change.

Seeing, feeling and experiencing these life, death and renewal cycles in nature through my garden gives me a lens for processing change in other parts of my life as well.

I feel awash with sadness as I remember each of my daughters’ tiny baby voices, and the singular sweet smell of their newborn heads. The years they spent playing dress up seemed to last forever and then vanish overnight. The safe nest I enjoyed creating for them, and how much control I had around what they were exposed to - I loved that sweet, safe season. Learning together at home was a precious time of connection and sharing that I will never regret … or get back.

It’s true that I also appreciate watching them enter into new stages of growth and independence. They stun me by their beauty and confidence, with each new challenge that they face and overcome. Even still…it hurts to watch the leaves of their childhood fading and blowing away.

There is sadness mixed in with the beauty.

I also feel loss as I process how my faith has shifted. Being raised in evangelical Christianity, I was given very specific view about what to believe. I had to know my theology was sound, to be certain I was living in line with the teaching of the Bible, and that my views about God were correct.

I never expected that to change.

Somehow over the course of many years, I found myself being led outside of church, and outside the walls of what I had always believed were the ‘safe’ boundaries of curiosity, questioning and learning. As I continued to seek and grow, I went through a lot of change.

I traded certainty for an embrace of mystery and trust.

I shifted from ‘us vs. them’ to ‘everything belongs’.

I’m grateful to be here now: connected to God in my own deeply meaningful way, and thankful for the widening circle of dear ones (from all spiritual traditions) who influence and enrich my life. My life is guided by love, and the story and example of Christ will always be central to who I am. Releasing my need to understand sacred texts, define, or explain the Divine has also meant that I don’t fit neatly inside the box of the Christianity of my youth.

Being on the outside of a tribe you once belonged to - (even if you love the view from where you sit) - is painful.

There it is again. Sadness and beauty at once.

Seasons that are over still offer us much.

I treasure the framed photos of my baby girls. Old videos of us dancing in the kitchen, little faces smeared with baby food, and excited girls in matching jammies waiting to open Christmas presents. Tears glisten in my eyes when I look through these old memories, because life now looks so different. It’s a joy that makes my heart hurt, and I love to sit and look at them.

I get excited to thaw out pesto from the freezer. I know I can glimpse last summer in jars of tomato sauce and frozen green beans through the winter. They won’t taste like they do when they’re plucked fresh from the vine, but they offer a unique gift in mid-winter that I cherish. That longing to smell fresh basil between my fingertips keeps my desire strong to dig in again once the ground thaws.

I recall the years I spent memorizing scripture. Of singing in church with hands raised in praise. Of spending summers in the redwoods learning to reach out for a God that knew my name. What a gift to have had a secure sense of belonging and a confidence that the universe was safe and I was loved. I wouldn’t trade any of it, even as I struggle with the way it taught me to categorize everything into black and white and to see myself as separate from others.

I expect there will be many more shifts and changes to come as my husband and I watch our girls move out and on to start lives of their own. As our bodies soften with age, and as we discover new insights and wonder at this mysterious, beautiful world.

Nature gives us no choice but to experience the changing seasons.

We are swept out of one and into another without any say in the matter, and usually saying “how did this happen?”…

I hope that as I grow, I am able to move more gently in and out of seasons of change. That I will allow myself to feel the sadness as life moves me (without asking) out of warm times and into colder ones. How beautiful that nature has a built-in sense of certainty within it’s rhythms. We can always cling to the hope and thrill of spring.

So maybe I still do carry some certainty. I’m certain that I deeply trust in the mysterious One who is behind the changing seasons. Who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all I could ask or think.