Horrible Things used to happen around this time of year, not every year, but often enough that certain combinations of light and weather can still give me a minor case of the willies. And some music is equally associative, bringing back memories of states-of-being that weren't any fun at the time. Music can lift the soul and bring God closer in, but it can also give a person that shivery sort of feeling, bringing back past perceptions and emotions that you'd just as soon not feel again. Wednesday had both: that kind of weather, and one of those pieces of music on the CBC. And suddenly I found myself transported right back to One of Those Times, a long, long time ago--a time of lostness, a time when I felt as though I was walking through cold wet cotton wool, psychospiritually speaking. I found myself feeling what I'd felt all that time ago, sliding back into my own younger skin. It had been very miserable then, and remembering that time made me miserable again.

I might be doing deja vu all over again, but the banking still needed to get done and I had to get to the post office. So I shouldered an umbrella (it was mizzling hard) and stepped out, bracing myself for the sort of dank, dispassionate chill I remembered from that dark time long ago. And surprise! The weather was actually warm and quite pleasant--rainy, but with a sort of intimate, friendly feel to it. It was almost a shock, it was so different from what I'd been preparing for.

Reality hit with a gust of warm air: I was not back in the cold dead city all those years ago; I am in my own grotty unprepossessing little town, in the here and now. Feelings that had been appropriate for Then were totally out of whack for Now. I walked down to the post office and found myself loving my town anew, not for anything it does, not for what it looks like (it's a sort of neither-this-nor-that sort of place) but with deep gratitude simply for what it *is*. I could look with affection at each tree and house on my street and be flooded with a sense of well-being: here's where I am and belong for now, and the past is just the past.

I think it was Scott Peck who defined mental health as "devotion to reality at all costs". Some situations may remind a person of bad old times, and it's easy to slip the mindset you had back then--depression or defensiveness, anxiety or anger--without first checking whether or not the similarity is real and your response is appropriate to what's happening here and now. You may have to struggle hard to recognize and contain those old reactions when they're wrong for the new situation--and that struggle can, of itself, be exhausting and difficult.

But if you don't make the effort, the results can be truly lousy. I found myself, a while ago, almost poisoning my relationship with another person because I couldn't see that I was putting another person's mask on her face--I was transferring old anger and pain to her, without even knowing I was doing that. Once I'd realized what I was up to and stopped myself from imposing my past on her, I could turn about and see her a little more clearly, as the person she is. I hope I can salvage the relationship, but if I can't, it's my fault for misjudging her.

We need to get our noses out of our navels and look around ourselves, noticing with clear-eyed love whatever lies near to hand. But the love has to be honest. It would be as wrong for me to idealize my town as it would be for me to overlay it with the mask of the past. It's as wrong to make others our gods as it is to make them our devils. Either way, we're putting a mask on the other's face, and the beautiful mask is just as wrong as the ugly one, because we're attending to the mask, not to the real face behind it.

It's a little like calling Person A by Person B's name, because something in A reminds you of B. But that's misnaming A, and names do matter; they can be love and recognition, or the opposite. Each of us needs to be called by our right name, not someone else's; each of us needs to be recognized for who we are, truly, not for who we are not. God's love sees us truly and clearly; why do we have such trouble doing this for each other?

The past slipped away from me as I walked back from the bank and the post office: all the old cold lostness blown down the street by the warm, embracing wind and washed from my face by the gentle rain. Yes, it's Mud Season again, that greybrown time between fall and winter. But even in Mud Season, there's a solid friendly feel to this plain landscape, a natural tangy sweetness like that of the good local apples. Then was then; now is now, and the future doesn't exist yet, so who's to tell what it will be? I'll be right here, right now, loving this place that seems to have been given me to love for the moment. That's God's will, and in doing that, there lies such happiness.

(for NHC, All Saints' Day, 1998)