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Show THE PAGE 8 ZEPHYRJAN-FE- 1995 B earth falls into the sun. There are changes are 75 billion more years to go before the Life and death - coming and and wonders to come beyond our wildest imaginations. From the Pack Creek Basin Desk of the Zephyr... going all the little the first .nhaUj at b.rth and thc Ust exhale at death are For an impatient person like deaths and revivals. Some part of us is always dying. or on waiting, waiting-- is deadly. me, just waiting-- in line or in traffic Td rather die than wait." And 1 die each night, buried under thc coffin cover of darkness. to waking life again-- at dawn. Only to rovivc-co- me When 1 graduated from school and left home, a world died. if I Most of the people 1 had seen every day, never saw again, as surely as I moved to a new when changed jobs, they were dead. And the same thing happened Thc another. to people and places, thc habits of a day, city, or from one part of town of a way of life became the routes to work, the sidewalk scenery and the framework dead. Those who leave their native land to take up life in a new history-finish- ed, who get divorced. country know about this. As do those When we've changed our religious views or political convictions, a part of our past dies. When love ends, be it the first mad romance of adolescence, the love that will not sustain a marriage, or the love of failed friendship-- it is the same. A death. Likewise in the event of a miscarriage or an abortion: a possibility is dead. And there is no public or even private funeral. Sometimes only regret and nostalgia mark the passage. And the last rites are held in the solitude of one s most secret self service of mourning in the tabernacle of the soul. Nevertheless, most of us seem to be stubborn about surviving these lesser c fight back reach deaths, finding ways to get up off our knees and get on with it. new reasons for and new and places out to find new ways and new friends g is a rite of passage. Revival is a scrambling on. Crossing these thresholds ritual. this capacity for revival. Nothing about being human amazes me more than secm-on- ly to become life can and How dull and meaningless hopeless Whole nations come back from exciting, vibrant, and filled with hope thc next day. destruction and opprossion-wh- on great problems get addressed and resolved. All our exits become entrances. The human capacity to take whatever life dishes out and to come back is never to be underestimated. How amazing it is, knowing we arc all going to die For all anyhow, that we arc so determined to live as well as we can, no matter what. and yet again. our little deaths, we defy our fate and come to life again and again, we renewal. of rituals in ourselves redeem we get up and go Daily, unspoken Daily, to work in the construction business of building and repairing and remodeling a life. The ritual of revival is has many names: "bom again" and "healing" or simply" getting our act together." Whatever the name, however large or small the act, the urge to reassemble the fragments of our lives into a whole is the same. And it happens to me each December 21st. Like thc earth, tilt - strain my final miles from light and heat. And right myself to spin again toward larger days and shorter nights - toward a revival of spirit and a rebirth of wonder - toward more abundant life. In the midst of winter, I find again and again within me an invincible spring. Manalive! hold-wait- 7 ing, -- -a By Robert Fulghum life-lon- Spring came on December 21st at 5:23 p.m., mountain standard time. How can that be? According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, Spring is not clicks supposed to happen until late March. But I don't go by the book. Something in my head when I know the shortest night of the year has come and gone. The earth has tilted as far as it will, and from now on there will be more light and longer days. This December 21st dropped like a dark guillotine - by four o'clock it was deadly dark, icy cold. But there are the calculations and tables and records kept by human beings for thousands of years that say the end has not come. The earth tilts on this night, strains in its mysterious motions, rights itself, and wobbling slightly, spins on in its journey around the sun, leaning in my favor once again. If you check around you will see that other living things have the same Cottonwoods agree they have translucent green leaf buds at the ready. Even the dry sticks on the limbs of apricot and apple trees bear soft fuzzy nubs. All the willows have pushed up the beginnings of new growth. Bulbs in the ground have already begun the swelling that is the beginning of a reaching for light and flower. In the bellies of The gravid wombs of mammals are in cubs are nearing term. Spring lambs and calves and fawns are hibernating in utero, even as their mothers paw at snow seeking food. People, too: young mothers' winter coats bulge at the middle buttons as the rising results of summer love begin to show. Everywhere 1 look in this dead if winter I see the tenacity and fecundity of life. The grass that grows in cracks in the highway. The patchy little gardens that grow untended around the base of a telephone pole, surrounded by concrete. At the Trinity site in New Mexico where once there was only shards of fused glass there is cactus, mesquite, and grass at work. And in the mountains of Nevada, bristlcconc pines stand firm through their two thousandth winter. The fossil record is dear. Unbelievable varieties of life have persevered here under every condition imaginable. Life has been here for 4.5 billion years. And there attitude by December - 21. mid-producti- she-bear- s, Pack Creek Ranch... 1 BBSS Well , I was gonna i suggest you make your reservations 7 for 99 5. But this 1 a country inn the Lame so the hell is j Issue , with it. Vv YV ih 'VTi tZjF. m m. 'T rA 1 1. id Si !iw S3 ' iri 45 J P.O. Box 1270 Moab, UT 84532 (801)259-550- 5 16 miles south of Moab on the La Sal Loop Rd. |