Much to my husband's chargrin I'm a Joni Mitchell fan.
Him, not so much. So my Joni CDs are in the same category as Miles Davis and Tori Amos...relegated to listening status only while in the car alone or in the apartment when he's not around. So I've had "hits" by Joni Mitchell in the van (that's right van...at 26...echoes of another life) for about the past three months. Lately this song has been finding new significance.
...The warriors of winter they gave a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out
See the geese in chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow
They've got the urge for going, they've got the wings to go
They get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in
I'll ply the fire with kindling and pull the blankets to my chin
and I'll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in
I'd like to call back summertime and have her stay jut another month or so
She's got the urge for going and I guess she'll have to go
And she get the urge for going when meadow grass is turning brown
All her empires are falling down
winter's closing in...
Of course the seasons of the song are flip flopped in my life. My itchy feet come when winter leaves and spring bursts in. I guess this may just be a course of habit. Each summer for the past four years I have packed up everything I own and found a new home. So each of the past four Springs has brought not only spring cleaning...it's been spring cleaning, sorting, deciding, packing, giving away....saying goodbye.
After so many homes, so many chances to rearrange our donated furniture and wedding gifts, I really don't think it's the urge to move...again...that is hitting me this spring. I think it's the desire for something new, fresh, a change in my life.
As early as junior high I have had a wandering spirit. Sometimes I would feel so suffocated in my childhood bedroom that I would sneak out of the window at midnight and lay full length in the front yard. I would feel my weight press down into the Earth and know that I was a part of something greater. I would lay there, feeling the world rotate on its axis, only to sneak back in with dew-soaked pajamas a few hours later.
Other times I would yell a quick "Hey mom...going for a walk!" and hit the front door. A mile past our front door the ranch homes would give way to towering corn stalks and expansive soybean fields. A few more miles and I'd find small trails blazed by local Eagle Scouts through old Native American ceremonial grounds. I'd pick my way over mushroom caps and white violets and somehow the pounding in my ears would ease for a while.
However, the only true reprise from the inner frenzy has been when my soul is in concert with God. When I have allowed this urge for anything new to draw me back to the One who gives peace, this is when I have known it. So if there is a purpose in the urgency for change I find it in shifting my direction away from my Robert Frost-existential-angst and looking to the One who knows me truly. The One who draws me up into something greater than my urge for going, and replaces it with intimacy.
"...the Holy Spirit, whom God has placed within us, jealously longs for us to be faithful...Draw close to God and God will draw close to you." James 4:5b, 8a
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