Which Season Is It - Really?

Looking down N. State St., Lowville, NY (1911)

Yesterday's posting explored the question of faith boundaries from the perspective of Southeast Asia's historical experience with European colonialism and its need for precise geographical demarcations of territory (i.e. boundaries).  The point was that religions and faiths also have boundaries, which can be loosely constructed or narrowly drawn.

So,  last week, I was walking up N. State St. in Lowville and felt a definite winter chill in the air.  The sky had that steely overcast grayish aspect associated with winter.  It was a winter sky.  The cold was colder, whatever the thermometer claimed the temperature was.  The morning warned that "real" winter is coming.  Then, a couple of days later, I walked up the same street again in what felt like very late summer or early onset fall.  The air was warmer.  I was in shirt sleeves.  Not a hint of winter, but a lingering memory of summer instead.  Within 72 hours, late fall with a promise of winter "regressed" to early fall with a memory of the summer.  Now, according to the calendar it is fall, but the calendar is a human invention for setting limits on time.  In the real world, the first hints of fall this year came in early September and, we can be sure, will linger into November.  Winter usually comes before the calendar says it is "winter".  The seasons are real, but the boundaries between them are porous, uncertain, and ever shifting.  And if you go 30 miles in any direction they are also liable to be slightly different.  A few snow flakes have already fallen in the North Country, although none in Lowville.

When we look around at the created world, it is much more like the seasons than the calendar.  It operates with only loose boundaries.  So, if God is indeed the creator of our natural, evolving, always shifting world of porous and uncertain boundaries, what does that say about God?  The second hand on a clock sweeps steadily around the circle, but we do not experience time that way—sometimes it drags, sometimes it passes quickly, and for children it seems slow while to those in their 80s it rushes onward.  What does this say about the way God created us?  Nature, we're told abhors a vacuum.  Apparently, it also isn't keen on sharply drawn boundaries of any sort.  And, theologically speaking, that is worth a thought.