Musings 3: Turnings

Turning points, flickr photo.

I'm having another turning in my life. I turn 71 today. Amazing grace! Last year I turned 70 in Toledo, Ohio, when I was visiting my family to celebrate the turning from one decade to the next. The English Club had a surprise 70th birthday party for me when I got back to Starobelsk (photo, below right). I thought I’d be turning 71 in Starobelsk, too, but it didn’t happen that way. A turning, and I am in Washington, DC.

It seems like everything turns. The seasons turn. Our lives turn, like the old soap opera, “As the World Turns.” Maybe that program’s still turning, I’m not sure because I don’t watch TV much and never during the day. But the world is definitely turning, on its axis, around the sun. The sun has crossed the equator, and winter is turning to Spring in the Northern hemisphere. The moon is turning closer to the earth, closer than it's been in decades, and we will have a huge full moon on 19 March. I'll be watching it with Loren, and all those I love all over the world.

And so we are turning corners in our lives, turning the pages, turning from one chapter to another.

Now comes another turning. My Peace Corps service in Ukraine is nearing an end, whether here in the States or there. I am also turning another chapter altogether in my decision to move from Florida to Toledo after Peace Corps. I had no idea this would happen when I left St. Petersburg. Some turning, and I will be re-turning to the place where I raised a family, and where my family still lives.

Sometimes these turnings and changes are great and sometimes they feel terrible, I remarked to a PCV friend. “Yeah, but if we aren’t turning and changing, we aren’t alive,” the friend said smartly. Looks like I will have more turnings ahead. It’s inevitable. It’s how we deal with them that matters, as the sages tell us. It reminds me once again of the Byrds' great rendition of the great Pete Seeger song based on one of my favorite verses from Ecclesiastics:

To everything (turn, turn, turn),
There is a season (turn, turn, turn).
And a time for every purpose under Heaven.