This May Be The Last Winter I See

You think this may be the last one and you are not frightened.

That is the whole situation, and it is a good deal stranger to the people around you than it is to you.

Because when it comes up, and it does come up, the people you say it to move quickly. They say something about how you have years yet, or they change the subject, or they get a look that says a thing is happening that they were not prepared for.

And you have stopped mentioning it, mostly to save them.

You are not in denial, and a man at peace about his own last season has never once been a man who has not looked at it properly.

Let me say what I think is going on around you, because I do not think it is about you at all.

They cannot tell the difference between peace and denial.

From the outside, a man who is calm about his own ending looks exactly like a man who has not thought about it. There is no visible difference. And the charitable assumption people make is that you have not looked, because that is easier for them than the alternative.

So they hurry to correct something that is not wrong, and you let them, and the conversation closes.

I have finished my course

There is a line in Paul's last letter that has the tone people usually miss, and the tone is the thing.

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. (2 Timothy 4:7, King James Version)

I have finished my course.

Now, read the tone of it. That is not a man bracing himself. It is not a man being brave about something. There is no strain anywhere in that sentence.

It is a report. Three things stated in the perfect tense, the way a man says what he has done at the end of a day.

You are looking at somebody reporting rather than steeling himself, and a man at the end has never once been required in that verse to sound like he is coping. 2 Timothy 4:7 states three things plainly with no strain in any of them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who has stopped mentioning something to spare other people.

And notice what he does not say.

He does not say he is ready, which would be about his state. He does not say he is at peace, which would be about his feelings. He says what he did, which is a different kind of sentence entirely and rests on nothing that could fluctuate.

You are able to stand on what was done rather than on how you feel about it, and a report of a finished thing has never once depended on a man's mood that morning. The Holy Spirit is the one who settles a person on facts rather than on feelings, and the written word gives three completed actions and no description of a state anywhere.

And the whole letter around it is not a farewell in the mournful sense. He asks for a cloak he left behind, and for some books, and for somebody to come before winter.

A man writing that letter is not floating away. He wants his coat.

You are able to be entirely settled and still want your coat, and peace about an ending has never once meant a man had stopped being interested in ordinary things. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man in his own life to the end of it, and the word has him asking about parchments in the same letter as that sentence.

The peace does not need explaining

Let me say something about the explaining, because it has been getting attempted and it has not been going well.

You cannot account for it and that is not a problem.

You have probably tried, once or twice, with somebody you trusted. And what you found was that any explanation you offered came out sounding either falsely cheerful or slightly morbid, and neither of those is what you actually have.

You are holding something that has never once been easy to put into words, and a peace that resists description has never been a peace that was not real. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives what a man cannot account for, and 2 Timothy 4:7 reports rather than explains anything about how it feels.

And here is the thing that I suspect is actually true about it, offered rather than pressed.

It is not resignation. Resignation has a flatness in it and a giving up, and that is not what is in you.

It is closer to the feeling at the end of a long day of work. Not relief, exactly. The particular quiet that arrives when a thing that needed doing has been done, and the doing is behind rather than ahead.

You are at the end of something rather than at the failing of it, and a man who has finished has never once been in the same condition as a man who has stopped. The Spirit of God is the one who distinguishes the two, and the written word uses the word finished rather than the word ended.

Say it out loud at the ground

So here is the assignment, and it is the last one on this site and it is the smallest.

Walk out to the ground once and say the words I have finished my course.

Out to the resting beds, in the low light, in this winter. And say it, in your own voice, where nobody can hear.

I have finished my course.

You are able to say a true thing about your own life out loud, and a sentence spoken in a bare garden has never once required a witness to have been said. 2 Timothy 4:7 is a man stating what he has done, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there while an old man says it to nobody.

Here is why out loud and why there.

Because it has only ever been internal, and the people it got said to hurried past it, which means it has never actually been out in the air. It has been a thing held privately, in a house, in the evenings.

Said outside, at the ground that is resting, in the winter that may be the last one, it is in the world. And a thing that has been said in the world is different from a thing that has only been thought.

You are able to put a settled thing into the open, and a sentence said once outdoors has never once been smaller than years of holding it quietly. The Holy Spirit is the one present when a man says something true about his own life with nobody there to manage it, and the word puts three finished things in a row without one word of explanation.

And do not tell anybody afterward. Not because it is a secret. Because it does not require a second person and you have already tried that.