Home About us Daily Reflections Special Issues Publications Ecospirituality Through The Seasons Donate Environmental Resource Assessment Service   The Latch String Is Out by Al Fritsch, S.J.

  Introduction

   How does one make the lessons of life a tool for helping others?  I've
tried to address this in the autumnal colors of my life while delicate
memory, fragile eyesight and hands steady enough for word processing are
still serviceable.  All three bodily functions now show signs of wear, and
thus it's time to bring my life experiences together in such a way so as to
become a model of reflection on my spiritual and ecological journey.  As we
age, we are prompted to perfect the art of listening to others, the exercise
of praying for others, and the skills of working with others.  Hopefully,
this narrative will give me as writer and you as reader insights and
opportunities to communicate a little better through prayer and service.

    Some have said that my thirty-two year ministry as a public interest
scientist is overly focused.  According to these critics I should have done
other things as well, or at least take on more  pastoral or academic roles.
However, I have constantly been bothered by the plague of generalists, that
is, the distractions of many problems and concerns.  Anyone who deals with
environmental and other public interest issues knows that staying focused is
a problem.  The problem is there are so many desperate and urgent requests
for help, loose ends, complex issues, and untried approaches.  Besides, some
of us with a more experimental flare prefer to take on several challenging
issues at the same time, confident that some problems will be easily resolved
and others will remain unsolved for long lengths of time.

    It has become apparent when documenting activities from record books and
files that reporting things on a day-by-day or a month-by-month basis would
be even more confusing for readers than for me.  It became obvious that one
should work with general themes which are a propos to a certain year of life,
and include related experiences from other life periods.  Weather, for
instance, was important as a youth on the farm when we harvested hay or
silage, but weather has remained important when it affects one's moods and
interpretation of events long after leaving the farm.  From attention to
weather, I have learned that we must give great attention to place and time
and season, yet I didn't learn this in a formal ecology course.  Themes
require a broader time perspective allowing us to trace their evolution.
Process counts as much as product, and spiritual process can be of interest
to others who are traveling on their respective pilgrimages in life.  

    I am keenly aware of the seasons of my life.  As I reflect on my
personal journey, I hope to show that the physical circumstances which
surround one's life can have a definite effect on a spiritual formation and
the type of spirituality that one follows.  During our own life's senior or
autumn years we strive to harvest choice produce.  Through an examined
journey at this time in life we discover how things go wrong and include bad
turns and stumbles, which in themselves may become valuable lessons for
others.  Autumn is the time to harvest our experiences and store them for
others to use wisely in their seasons of life.  As a rural person who has
always been sensitive to the seasons, I can look back on each season and
admire them for what they contributed.  

    During the first winter of life-- the gestation and preparation period
of our life's pilgrimage, we learn to crawl, climb, stumble and walk on
wobbly legs.  The tumbles are hard, but we are more resilient and we laugh,
rise quickly, and try again.  Yes, winter is the beginning season, accepted
instinctively through my European-American agrarian culture.  Uncle Louie
Burke, who lived a high quality ninety four years, documented his seventy
years of gardening with annual day books which started as the one in 1927 --
January 2  "We prepared the hotbeds," (outdoor manure-banked seed beds for
early spring plants).  

   The farm year starts in January, or at least the twelfth day of
Christmas.  Such feasts as the wassail ceremony of England awakens the apple
trees in the depths of winter, and has for centuries been celebrated with
lots of banging, clanging and toasting with good hard cider, no less.  The
traditional apple farmers knew that work begins in seemingly sleepy winter,
and anyone waiting until spring to begin would be off to a late start.  For
children of the soil winter is the launching season -- and that holds for my
life as well.

    In spring, we move out for the security of home to the growing fields;
we detect and listen to the first vocational sound intermingled with the
sounds of song birds and honey bees.  The warming early spring weather brings
on the cabin fever, that nervousness in our bones to get away and see the
world.  We spread our wings and fly out farther and farther from the home
nest;  we want to explore the world, feel the awakening of new forces from
within our physical being, and yearn to widen our horizons physically and
intellectually.  The morning sunrises over the distant hills from the milking
parlor gives a sense of a world beyond, calling, calling.  That world needs
conquering way beyond the art of milking cows.  Vistas extend beyond the
mind, time stretches infinitely before me.  Nothing can hold me back.  
Springtime can be shorter in Kentucky where the span from cold to hot weather
may be short.  

   Summer slips in unnoticed with longer days, humidity, mayflies,
dandelions carpeting the landscape green one week and fuzzy balls of seeds
the next. Summer -- that long hot season of reckoning, of endurance, of
bearing down to doing life's work, of seeing dreams unfulfilled, of coming to
terms with our limited selves, and at begging the Almighty for patience.  And
when we succeed in summertime we are too discomforted to celebrate;  when we
stumble we find it harder to laugh and rise quickly for infancy is behind us.

    This description of my Earth's pilgrimage is colored by a desire to be
evangelistic; it attempts to proclaim Good News in order to encourage and
persuade others to find their seasons in life.  See the revelations found in
your own experiences and share these by removing the latches of silence.
Baring one's soul is only inspirational if accompanied by remedies or better
ways of doing things.  In my soul's quest there are emerging areas which can
become further themes -- if God gives me length of days in the age of wisdom.
Rest assured that total accounting is for another day -- and hopefully the
soul's Ultimate Reader will be most merciful.

    One has to be an early Kentucky pioneer to appreciate the title, "The
Latch is Out," and most have long since hung up their coon caps.  This old
expression refers to a leather string hanging out of a hole from a cabin door
which welcomes strangers by allowing them to enter -- in this case I invite
you to some of my life's experiences.  When the door string was pulled in,
the internal latch was locked and the door was temporarily closed to
outsiders.  In actuality, perhaps the only remaining place where this
expression is operative is the door to a cordwood cabin at the Appalachia --
Science in the Public Interest (ASPI) demonstration center, which I built
with the help of some volunteers in 1983.  We installed the door and frame
which my dad had made, that was modelled after the alleged Abe Lincoln
Birthplace Cabin at the National Historic Site at Hodgenville, KY.  On second
thought, you readers may know about strings and latches.  However, on
entering my home, you may discover some interesting furnishings.

    The seasons of my life are arranged in early years (first winter),
formal higher education (spring), the first part of public interest work
(summer), and reflections on these experiences (autumn).  Each of the
following sixty-nine essays, which correspond to a year of my life, is
constructed with a title that tells something that could be naturally
associated with that particular year or time, along with a quotation which in
meant to set a particular tone.  But there is more to the topic and subject
matter than random selection.  This is meant to show the journey through life
and how my ecological consciousness grew through time from a consciousness of
place to that of passing on a tradition or way of thinking.  

    The reflection at the end of each essay seeks to summarize what was
achieved during the particular part of my life's journey.  Each section ends
with a prayer which attempts to portray my stance before God and the need to
turn to the Almighty One to help in bring my life's work to completion.    



                   THE SEASONAL CALLS

     Icy stillness in that timeless span,
           A cipher in the majestic divine plan,
         Spoken against first winter's spell, "God-man."
           Within that majestic spoken Word
         Our names are called, though the sound be blurred,
           But, by another, first heard.
                     
    Spin the rushing wind, the earthquaked rocks rend,
          --Or is it maybe a kid's boom-boxed din?
           And then a blissful moment's silence when
        God speaks to me in gentle whispers hence,    
           Mockingbird, dogwood, redbud dispense
        Early springtime's luminescence.

    Summer's bright red comes rightly soon,
          Blazing sun, heat waves at life's high noon,
        Drifting upward as though an endless tune.
          Vows and promises of youth seared heat, a retreat                
 And within God's sweet sounding drumbeat --
           Repeat, repeat the words, repeat.

  Gold and crimson autumn's scene arrived,
          Fast lane's withered leaves survived;
        But mercifully my soul is not deprived
          Of the chance to soar.  Wiser I can't ignore
        No whisper, no roar; still God does implore --
          There's more in store, explore the more.  

   Then finally winter's frost-covered finality
          or is it unworthy dignity
        In reaching to the light of eternity?
          An Ave's mercy at the hour of death;
        Only a curtain call is left, encore bereft;
          Beseeching new birth in dying breath.
                   

The Latch String is Out -- Copyright © 2002 by Al Fritsch