Life in the upside-down climate

Each season seems to bring with it a certain ethos that serves to define the season in our emotions. For example, winter instills a feeling of introspection and isolation as the cold weather drives us indoors to warm ourselves by the fire on a snowy eve. Summer, on the other hand, encourages us to sit back and appreciate our surroundings or else play in them. The heat anethsetizes our thoughts and allows us to simply enjoy the moment. Spring makes us feel open and adventurous; the world about us teems with life and discovery and young love.

Unfortunately, none of this is present in western Washington today. It is Memorial Day, the tail end of May, but the weather is far from the appropriate combination of spring's charm and life and summer's promise of languid dog days in the sun. It is cool, darkly overcast, and melancholy. The clouds absorb the sun's warmth but do not threaten any storm. On the horizon the clouds break to reveal a slice of the maritime sunset, as if to taunt the land beneath cloud cover.

Overall it has the somatic impression of autumn. The vivacity of nature feels diminished and the air, though soft, is still and disinterested. The indifferent and diffuse light, gradually failing with the evening, carries emotions of regret, apprehension, and the inevitability of diminution.

I cannot comprehend the significance of the relationship between climatic change and our moods. Perhaps it's an explicitly personal thing; I happen to dislike autumn the most. But whether or not my emotional interpretations of each season differ from yours, I'm sure you can agree that the weather deeply affects us, as do all things in God's creation.

It makes me long for something, however, and I'm not sure what. It's as though something desperately needed remains just beyond reach. Or perhaps it's a longing for the past, a grasping at some former pleasure or happiness. Solomon might have resonated with me as I get a deep sensation that this world is vanity and chasing the wind. Furthermore, the same regretful tone with which he composed Ecclesiastes permeates that sentiment. One other interesting thing to note is that this is the exact feeling I always got in the fortnight surrounding the start of each school year. The newness of the school year seemed anachronistic and though the weather drove us indoors, our presence there felt initially amiss. Stories of each one's summer left the air of an experience unfinished or interrupted by compulsory education.

If left to ourselves, though, it's my guess that we would have desired to continue those freewheeling summer experiences to excess until they lost all the flavor of pleasure that made them so enjoyable. In a way, the inevitability of autumn was necessary to cement those events as truly pleasurable. It's that way with all earthly pleasures, though. In order for them to be pleasure, they must come to an end. It is truly stated that "We see dimly, as in a mirror." So much wasted energy is spent on this ball in the pursuit of unending pleasures. If we were given the full measure of orgasmic extacy our narrow minds chase here as often as we think we desire it, it would become so distasteful to us that we would be utterly defeated by it. If there is pleasure in hell, I'm sure this is it. It will take a global shift of paradigm to make us realize that the only true pleasures do not exist in this material realm, but in the spiritual realm: serving and worshipping the Lord. In that realm pleasures do not diminish with time, nor are they required to end. We are fortunate to have Jesus Christ send his Spirit among us so that we may sample these pleasures in our mortality if only we have the courage to try them.

I set out to write a diatribe expressing this unsavory mood, and ended up describing the true nature of our longings. I suppose it only demonstrates that He understands even our grayest emotions and His power can permeate them in spite of ourselves. Lucky us that we cannot stop Him when He feels like making a statement. All we can do is sit back and marvel, then praise Him.