Time's a-Wastin'!

"Cows in the Morning" courtesy Michiel1972

It was the morning ritual.  My Aunt Arlene’s dad, Gust Kopack, would sweep into the back porch of the farmhouse after milking the cows, peeling off his striped denim coveralls with their faint sweet smell of fresh milk, the first strap off his shoulder before the screen door thwacked behind him, and he’d hang them all in one motion on the hook next to the door to the house, calling to my Uncle Joe, “Come on, Joe, time’s a-wastin’!”  And off they’d go to fish for the trout we’d have for breakfast.

Time’s a-wastin’.  “Gust” was what

everybody called him, short for Gustavus.  While the unknowing person would have called him the conventional form of his name, “Gus”, that added t gave him a truer name, a name more befitting him.  He was like a gust of wind that made it hard for any of us to stand still.   And this ritual greeting of his seems to have found a home in me.  I seem to have left the farm that summer of my childhood with a restlessness, a leaning forward.  And like Gust Kopack, I waken well before dawn.  While he was stirred by cow bells and the quiet crunching of placid bovine hooves on the well-browsed grass outside the milking barn, what wakes me is foggy faces and whispered words.  The night has given the previous day’s gridlocked traffic in my mind time to diffuse, to dissipate.  My mental roads are empty, and from the silence I begin to hear the quiet whoosh of a few words approaching, emerging from the fog of the night, the night with its alchemy of memory and yearning.  And as my pulse begins to quicken, my mind plays a highlight reel of the day that had gone by too fast to stop and see.  I waken with words and faces.  My feet move to the floor, and I follow them, like Uncle Joe followed Gust, to see what I can pull out of the quiet stream of my consciousness for this breakfast blog.

As I walk from our bedroom to my study, the winds are squirrely, turning back and forth, trying o carry me in every direction at the same time.  Exercise.  No, workshop.  No, yardwork.  An act of the will stops me at my computer, and I listen over the cacophony of these obsessions for echoes of those waking words.  Sometimes I fail, even in the twelve paces from bed to keyboard. Wednesday waking is different from any other day of the week, because Tuesday starts and ends at profoundly human gatherings.  In the morning I meet with some men for prayer and fellowship, our talk and musings are about God and man.  In the evening I meet with homeless men and women, and our talk is about hope and despair and clinging to belief in human dignity. 

My waking word was more.  Please come back tomorrow for the more.