The Circle Is Now Complete

I believe in circles, as odd as that may sound. As a kid I flipped through National Geographic magazines and clipped out photographs of circles: planets in rotation, oranges resting in crates waiting for shipment, time lapse streaks of light circling the North Star, dew drops glistening in morning sunlight.

There are circles in the conventional sense: watches, compasses and doorknobs. But these things acquire meaning far beyond their intended functions. A watch tells time, but time is the knowable unknown. A compass points the direction, but we must still find our own way. And even a doorknob is not just a doorknob when it leads to a new life.

Circles influence our lives often without our acknowledgment. While we worry about paying bills and returning library books, the earth spins on its axis, circling around the sun while the moon circles around us. The seasons change in relation to the tilting axis of the earth and distance from the sun.

In my Midwest home each season arrives in its own pronounced way. I spent my youth in the company of creaking frogs in spring. My father turned over the rich earth for our summer garden. Each fall the crows congregated by the hundreds in the bare silhouette of the tallest tree. Owls called us into the woods on blue snowy nights in deepest winter. Each season completes a cycle of change.

Circles connect us to our world and to each other. A pebble dropped into a pond sends circles rippling across the placid surface. It is the imagery behind the ripple effect, a fact of exponentiality that can change the world and change our hearts.

Circles are the swollen bellies of my sisters on the eve of giving birth. Trees 1,000 years old tell their stories by their rings. We sit around campfires just as we have for millennia and tell our own stories. We’ve honed our skills. The best stories begin with character’s we know becoming character’s we love, but with the weak now strong, the cowardly now courageous, and the ignorant now wise.

The story ends where it began, the circle now complete.