Messages From Carrie
The Ten O'Clock Line
January 23rd, 2008
It was in October, at that glowing hour just before sunset, when my daughter and I took a walk along a ridge top trail that the locals call The Ten O’clock Line. The Ten O’clock Line an old name left over from a dubious treaty signed by then territory Governor William Henry Harrison and the Miami Indian tribe. The agreement created a boundary line for white settlement, running from Raccoon Creek on the Wabash River to Seymour and marked by a shadow cast at 10 AM each September 30th. And so the trail was named in a time when promises were made with no intention to keep, and boundaries were drawn using something as insubstantial as a shifting shadow. But that late afternoon with my daughter in October of 2007, the air felt unusually dry and sandy for Southern Indiana, which is a place known to manifest humidity as dense as pea soup, and summer air so thick it could be poured into a metal jello mold and set into the shape of a pineapple. This summer and early autumn had come and gone without rain, and the leaves that were still holding fast to the branches of trees displayed shades of muted gold, yellow and orange. The color of autumn leaves is appreciated in this part of the country, it is our pride and birthright, we brag about the brilliance of Brown County in October, and we feel truly sorry for people who live in areas without maple, oak, yellow poplar and beech trees. Folks in southern Indiana actually discuss the vitality of leaf coloration while waiting in grocery lines or in the doctor’s office. “Yes, the leaves aren’t so bright this year, we really could use some rain’ or “gosh the poor farmers, they must have taken a hit.” Old timers will say, “I remember the fall of 1944, the leaves were so bright you’d think someone slapped the colors on with a paint brush.”
And yet, even though we all can remember brighter, more abundant times, it never diminishes the leap in the heart or the intake of breath one experiences when walking through this year’s canopy of glowing colored leaves.
I don’t know if the leaves were really that much brighter when I was a girl, or perhaps my eyes were just that much sharper, or that my heart was still experiencing the autumn colors as something entirely new. Yesterday I was chatting with a friend who is close to my age, and we both expressed a wistful surprise at the fact that the world we were born into, so recent by historic standards, is now nothing more than a memory. Gone is the time when gasoline was cheap, and children were expected to respectfully call their neighbors Mrs. Dousman and Mr. Jones, not by their given names of Jackie and Bill. Gone was the never to be duplicated post WWII area of power, growth and affluence. It was a time when we knew we could travel to the moon, a catholic could be president, and stay at home mothers could send their children out in the morning to play without worrying where they were, or with whom they played. But it was also a time when black families lived mostly in defined neighborhoods, girls who had sex were considered fallen, divorcees were not allowed to take communion or remarry, and homosexuality supposedly didn’t exists except in scary bible stories where people were zapped into pillars of salt. We now can turn on a television and chose from five hundred channels of nothing worth watching. We can play virtual tennis without ever picking up a racket or stepping into the sunshine. We are now instantly aware of tragedies that happen half way across the planet, but bewildered despite this staggering profusion of information, how to effect positive change. We are now so inundated with distraction and activity outside ourselves that we are losing contact with our inner landscape, and have begun to think that it is normal to plan and schedule time to be still. We have a woman and a black man running for president, television shows where suave gay men teach awkward straight guys how to dress, cook, and be more socially acceptable, and yet there is still a question whether women, persons of color or of different sexual orientation are entitled to civil rights, equal justice under the law and even a rightful place in kingdom of God. We have the ability to start wars and set whole regions of the world afire, but we have not yet learned how to collectively or individually forgive and move forward. In an instant we can call or email a hundred people programmed into our computer mail programs or cell phones, an yet we feel increasingly isolated and detached. With all our new advanced weaponry we still do not how to stop feeling so afraid.
How can the world be so bright and so sinister at the same time? How can so much good live side by side with so much sorrow? What is really important and what is only distraction? What do I love beyond measure? What is the sound of my own true name, the shape of my own true heart and what is this voice that continually calls me back to wholeness. These are questions that seem to have no answer now or in the near future. And yet, these are questions that now more then ever seem imperative and essential to consider personally and in community.
On that day in October my daughter and I were walking the Ten o’clock line, tracing the contours of an old promise based on shifting sunlight. We chatting about school applications, boyfriends, books and her job working at the public library. I was feeling like a contented mother and a trusted friend when we rounded a curve on the path and were both stopped dead in our tracks. Across the ridge top the forest was on fire. The leaves were shades of yellow and all the spaces between the leaves, branches and trunks glowed intensely with a wild orange-red heat. I gasped and took my daughters hand. “Oh my God, the ridge is on fire.” I breathed. My daughter squeezed my hand, our hearts beating fast, stunned and awed at the same time. “We should run and call the fire department,” she said, and yet we didn’t move, standing there transfixed. Eventually we both realized that there was no smell of burning wood or leaves. There were no smoke signals being sent into the sky to announce the end of this ridge top forest. What we had taken to be the red glow of fire and flame was an illusion of light. What we had chanced upon was the convergence of the evening sun setting exactly at the right angle, at exactly the right time of year, and with exactly the right number of golden leaves to amplify and bounce the light like a pinball, echo or prism. In a few moments the sun would fall below the horizon line and the illusion would be past. We continued to hold hands, but now we were laughing and smiling at one another, amazed at how we’d been hood-winked and delighted at our good fortune. We had rounded the curve of a familiar path, and had unexpectedly been presented with a miracle.
I don’t have a single definitive answer to all the most important questions. I don’t know how such beautiful trees can grow up in the shadow of a broken promise. I only know I was born to ask those deeper questions, consider them faithfully and carefully, peel back the layers of distraction and to try one more time to get to the heart of the matter. But this much is true, I can chose willingly to walk with my eyes open down this human path into astonishment and wonder, or be drug down the same path with my eyes closed and miss the show, either way we will take the inevitable journey and face the unavoidable questions.
I am at home here in Southern Indiana, where we love our autumn leaves and we call our ridge top trails by old unlucky names. I am grateful that I took that specific afternoon to walk with my daughter at sunset, and found upon that path an unexpected miracle. I am relieved that I’ve learned to laugh at my own lack of understanding and I still thank an unnamable God for rain. And so today, and everyday until that time I leave this world for the next, I stand with my head bowed in the faithful return of unanswered questions.