Shimmering

"There are so many people in the world and, for the most part, they do not know what to do with it." William Dwight Tryon

I heard today with expected rainfalls, Lake Lanier will make 'full pool' this November. That's the expression which means "the natural projected level of the reservoir under its normal projected range has been reached". Translation: "It's full". That's quite a recovery considering last summer it was at its lowest recorded level ever. The drought is officially over in North Georgia.

Years ago I watched a television interview of Bette Midler during which she was asked if during the meteoric rise of her career, she realized what was happening to her. I found her response remarkably honest and discerning. She said that yes, she somehow did know the wonderfulness of the experience was right there in front of her, shimmering, she said, but because she was caught up in the now of her career, she would not let herself see or enjoy it.

When the reservoir is full, the lake is brimming. The red clay banks withdraw their long sun baked fingers and return to being a lovely crimson necklace between the water and the trees. The surface of the lake takes on a shimmering freshness, the way a pail of water looks just after you turn the hose off leaving the water swirling and rippling with aliveness. During the drought the lake had become torpid and slack. It looked as if it took all its energy just to be there day after day, slowly receding off the banks, abandoning the docks and boats in the shallower coves. Most of us know what that feels like, don't we?

When the weather pattern finally shifted, it took a while to comprehend that the rain had returned to stay. The pitiful, almost spiteful short showers that before had only increased the humidity and kept the mosquitoes going, slowly morphed into long soaks, watercoloring the roads and coves milky red. Gardens perked up. The corn got up beyond 4 feet and didn't dry up on the stalk before maturity. The angry dry thunderstorms came less often in the late afternoon. Something hard and anxious in the air and in people, let go into a soft sigh. It kept raining, intercepted off and on with cool sunny weather. Eventually the creeks and streams, their long thirst quenched, rose and began overflowing the culverts and road side ditches. Lowlands areas south of the piedmont flooded out—the ground rock hard for so many months, was finally awash in more water than it could absorb. The newscasters, almost incredulous, began to predict the possibility of Lanier reaching full pool before the end of the year. A drought that had taken over 2 years to drop it to its lowest recorded levels, was being corrected in a matter of months.

Today the lake shimmers from my view on the ridge and I am thinking about Bette Midler's remarks so long ago. Living often demands so much of us. Like the lake, we shrink back from the banks of our lives, the juiciness of our natural liveliness being drained by the constant focus of our attention on day to day burdens and responsibilities. Even though we know life is meaningful, and everyday has shine and freshness, like Bette, rarely do we pause to savor any of it. I think that happens in part because so many of our workplaces and communities create an insulated world. We are not out in the world very much. We are in offices, in our cars, in our homes. We only seem to manage at best, small glimpses of if as we move back and forth between them. What we lose in our isolation is the renewal of our spirits that the beauty of the natural world provides. Connecting to this beauty is an essential part of being human. It makes us more human; deeper, kinder, wiser, richer. Registering within us the magnificence of the wider world, is much like a long soaking rain on our parched and drought- hardened hearts. A good soaking in the beauty around us lets us see what the shimmering is all about: reverence, discernment, reflection, rest. And when we let that beauty rain down on us, we may find that we, like my lake after the long drought, still have a capacity to reach full pool.