Airport Encounters

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” 
? Lao Tzu

There is a bit of the wanderlust in me. Traveling is something I seek, something I crave. It doesn’t have to be to far off places necessarily, though that is wonderful, but can be a short trip just hours away from my home. Someplace I’ve been before or someplace yet to be discovered. I know people who are contented to be in one place and who never desire to venture far from their home. In some ways I have envy for that way of being. Others still have a myriad of reasons that traveling is impossible even if their hearts are pulled toward other places. But I’m always up for a trip…to any place.

This deep nudge toward travel has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. And I have been blessed to be able to scratch that itch when it happens. I love what being able to travel has brought to my life. The chance to see how others live, how they have created beauty, what they value, the food they love, how they gather, how they worship, what infuses joy in their lives…all these have enriched my own way of seeing and being in the world. I come back from nearly every experience changed in some way. As the author Henry Miller wrote:” One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”  And that gift of seeing with new eyes is one I am so grateful for. 

A few months ago I did training to be a volunteer at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. I have always loved airports and the opportunity to spend time in this beautiful one has opened my eyes to new glimpses of the vast world that spins around me. My work is to simply be present and to help people make their way from one place to another. I answer questions, try to calm anxieties, point people toward their next flight or the car or train they need to catch. In those encounters I sometimes get to hear some of their story and then silently bless them on their way. And in some way I get to travel vicariously through them. I leave the airport at the end of my shift full of their excitement and energized with this chance to walk alongside a stranger for a short leg of their journey 

Increasingly it seems to me, the need for encountering other humans whose lives may be different than ours is in short supply. Mostly we tend to surround ourselves with those who look like us, think like us, pray like us, vote like us. At the airport all this melting pot of people gets stirred together in the lines and the gates and the baggage and the anticipation of people’s ‘what next’. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” writes Mark Twain. I have found the wisdom of this American sage to be true both in my own travels and in witnessing to the travels of others. What most often rises up is kindness and a genuine hope that we are all traveling together in some way. 

Every time I go to volunteer I am reminded of the opening scene in the movie Love Actually. Do you remember it? The voice of actor Hugh Grant is heard over scenes at Heathrow Airport of people reuniting and greeting one another as they arrive from their flights. His words point out that when the Twin Towers fell the words shared by people calling family and friends were ones of love and not hate. In the film the individual scenes at the arrivals gate is multiplied over and over until there is a full screen of people expressing delight and welcome, love and joy. 

I get to see this nearly every time I volunteer. Of course there are sometimes frenzied, crabby, even exhausted people every now and then. But they are not the norm. Most people have faces reflecting anticipation of what lies before them…a vacation, an interview, a life change, a new grandchild, an adventure, a loved one, a surprise. Or at least that is how I see it. I hope  my face reflects back to each person that it has been a privilege to have my life brush against theirs for this one moment in time. I hope our encounter makes their journey just a little bit gentler. I’d like to think that they will arrive at their destination knowing that someone noticed them and felt gratitude for what we shared.

In case you have forgotten…or never saw that scene here it is…

Old Friends

Over the last weeks the Star Tribune has been running a series on loneliness. Statistics state there is an epidemic of it. We have been talking about this since Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community was published in 2001. The series has offered ways people have addressed the loneliness in their lives, a loneliness that seems to be present no matter age, gender, occupation, education or economic status  Of course, some of this has been heightened by the isolation many experienced during the pandemic and has lingered, perhaps even grown in the confusion of living into the what next.  People describe how they have searched out making friends. Friends in their neighborhoods. Friends at work. Friends that share interests.Sometimes there is success and other times not so much. 

Friends. As I have read these accounts I was reminded of the Simon and Garfunkel song from my earlier years…

Old friends, old friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes of the old friends… 

The memory of listening to this song when I was in my twenties always brought about such a melancholy. The image of these people sitting on a park bench was outside my reality and probably something about it conjured a kind of fear in me. It might have actually been a fear of loneliness. Certainly it was a fear of what growing older might mean, might be like.

This past week I had the privilege of spending time with old friends. Friends I had known at the same time as this song was playing on turntables in bedrooms and dorm rooms, spinning sweet sentiment in the hearts of listeners. With this group of old friends, there were no park benches but there was a sense of knowing we had, by this time, lived some life with all its joys, losses, triumphs and failures and that we were there,blessedly present to one another. The melancholy was absent but the knowing and the  laughter and the gratitude was full. 

Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

These old friends and I had made music together in a choir when we were on the cusp of discovering what our grown up lives would be. We had traveled together and had experiences in places far away from anything any of us had known up to that point, experiences most of us had not ever imagined for ourselves. We were shaped and changed by the music making and the travel and the friendships that were forged by it all. The dust that settled on us has recently been stirred up by reunions and memories and a desire to honor what we had together. Though we all now live in different places around the country, we are drawn back to place a marker on what once was and to tip our hats to the places we now find ourselves. This coming together carries a sweetness, a sweetness that I now hear in this song, something I had missed listening with my younger ears.

Friendships come in all shapes and sizes. As the reporting on loneliness describes, it takes effort and intention to overcome. The friendships that endure from childhood and youth are rare as people are more mobile and stray farther from home. The intense friendships we had in college or early adulthood, those we thought would last forever, get interrupted by partners and growing families, by careers, by transience.  As years unfold, friendships get lost and new ones are formed and if we are lucky…or blessed…we find one or two people who are the ones we call our besties. Those that know us for who we are, warts and all, that will walk with us through the mud and mire and can laugh, hard, until we are weak from it all.

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be 70
Old friends, memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears.

I think back to the times when I listened to this song and felt all those conflicting feelings about these imagined characters created by the pen of Paul Simon. I know these people now. And I feel such gratitude for knowing there are people with whom I can share fears and memories and maybe even a park bench. 

****Have a listen here…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A76lTte8qE

Teachers

‘But ask the animals, and they will teach you;
    the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
ask the plants of the earth,and they will teach you;
    and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
    that the hand of the Holy One has done this?’
Job 12:7-9

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by those who have been named as Saints. Certainly, I have known many humans who I would call saint but here I am talking about those who have been named by the Church as those who have lived a life extraordinary enough to be somehow set apart a bit from the rest of us. For this Protestant this is something to admit I realize. Yet it is true. I have any number of amulets and icons scattered about my house that speak to this fascination. In the places I travel I am always on the look out for images that celebrate these sources of wisdom and devotion.

Perhaps the most well known is, of course, St. Francis of Assisi. A few years ago I was privileged to travel with a group of people to the places in Italy where he lived, walked, taught, and urged simplicity. Even writing these words brings a flood of memories and feelings that were imprinted upon my soul in those places. Walking the streets of Assisi and Gubbio which still seem to carry the essence of his simple yet profound spirit can wash over me in a flash. Somehow the people who live there carry forward the light and wisdom in his honor. Or so it seems. 

I was reminded of this last week as I was walking along Summit Avenue in Saint Paul. It was one of those crazy days we had when it was 50 degrees and the humans making their way down this historic, stately street, had the goofy look on their faces of those who did not know quite where they were…what month it was…how this temperature was even possible. In February. In Minnesota. As I passed one of the row houses built at the turn of the 20th century, I saw flittering and fluttering of the winged kind. As I got nearer, I saw that it was not only the humans who seemed ecstatic in their praise of the day, so were the birds that swooped and swarmed around a bird bath and several feeders. These feathered creatures were simply giddy with the prospect of taking a dip followed by a snack. I stood and watched and laughed out loud at their enthusiasm. What lessons were they imparting?

Listen for yourself…

Watching them I remembered a dear friend who left us this year and his love of birds and the above verses from the Book of Job. The idea that we are taught by the birds of the air was the sermon he preached anytime he was given the chance. Just as St Francis did. Francis was said to have remarked “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” and also “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” Watching what appeared to be a joyful sermon from those little birds brought a peace and grounding to my day. In all the turmoil of our world, these feathered teachers proclaimed a kind of peace from their very tiny hearts.

Francis was born in the tiny hilltop village of Assisi, Italy in 1182 and died in 1226. The writer and historian Coleman Barks said of him that he “was so empty of nervous haste and fear and aggression that the birds would light on him.” And when he died at twilight on October 4, 1226, it is said the larks rose up to the roof of his cell and circled it with wing beat and song. What a wonderful image!!


Teachers come to us in a variety of forms. On that particular day on a street far from Assisi, the birds and the spirit of St. Francis offered lessons. Of how to be present. Of how to be joyful. Of how to celebrate the gift of warm temperatures and blessed sunshine. And above all, how to be grateful.

****Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Francis of Assisi

Expectations

If you search the internet for words people have spoken about expectations, you will find something to the effect of “Expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.” attributed to many people. It seems a tidbit of wisdom that many live by. I have been thinking of expectations over these last weeks as the temperatures in Minnesota have been very warm and what little snow we had on the ground has melted. The truth is, living in this state known for cold and ice and snow, we expect this to always be the case. A Christmas without snow? Travesty! Not being able to skate, walk, or drive your car onto the ice from sometime in December till March? Unheard of. No need to layer upon layer before headed out to shovel or dig or simply walk to the car? Crazy talk! We have expectations.

Yet our expectations have been shattered along with records for temperature, snowfall, and ice depth. Yesterday I saw people running in shorts and t-shirts. Today’s paper carried a photo of a young woman cross country skiing in shorts and a tank top. The snow had been made by a machine, no doubt the same kind of contraption that created the snow for the snow sculptures that were created for the St. Paul Winter Carnival that now lay in lumpy heaps.  Make no mistake about it this weather has made for an easier life…no digging out, no chopping ice, no spreading of salt or other compounds to melt the sidewalk. Yet, I’ve come to expect the cold and the work that winter brings. It helps to keep my life in balance…makes me appreciate the spring and warmth and eventually the summer. Talking with others we express our confusion and general sense of how to behave in any rational fashion in the face of it all. Choosing to live here means having certain expectations and certain concessions to the life we chose.

Today, February 1st, the Sun is shining and it promises to be nearly 50 degrees. This day in the Celtic calendar marks the first day of the season of Spring,called Imbolc, sitting midway between the Winter and Summer Solstices. I have always loved this. While the weather may be messing with my seasonal expectations, marking this date as this shift has always brought me a certain sense of order and hope. The fact that it is also the Feast Day of St. Brigid, one of the patron saints of Ireland, makes the day twice as sweet. 

So, this morning I made a kind of homage to the bridge of the day. I pulled out the paper white bulbs that had been resting in a brown paperbag in a closet and prepared them for what they might become. The weather outside may not be what it normally is on the first day of February but the bulbs do not know this. The Sun that will draw them to their green and white height will be their own kind of expectation. And I will get to be present to it and revel in its power. 

The wise woman and author Caitlin Matthews writes this Song of Imbolc for this day:

I am the unopened bud, and I the blossom,
I am the life-force gathering to a crest,
I am the still companion of silence, 
I am the far-flung seeker of the quest.
I am the daughter gathering in wisdom,
I am the son whose questions never cease,
I am the dawn-light searching out glad justice,
I am the center where all souls find peace.

My expectations of winter may have been dashed for the time being. But there are weeks to go in this new year and who knows what they will bring? For the time being, on this first day of Celtic spring, I will celebrate the unopened bud, the blossom, the life-force, the silence, this quest. And I will pray that my soul…and all souls…find peace.

Squirrels

Most people no doubt missed the celebration on Sunday, January 21st. Not to worry. It was neither a religious or a patriotic holiday. It was one that went unnoticed for most except a couple of my Facebook friends who are ‘in the know’. What was special about this past winter Sunday you ask? It was National Squirrel Appreciation Day. So there. Who knew? Who names these days continues to be a mystery to me. But on the new calendar I opened for 2024 graced by the art of someone I much admire and have followed for some time, the date is clearly marked and honored. National Squirrel Appreciation Day was lifted up by David M. Bird as a part of his whimsical images of acorns turned into human-like figures doing all manner of precious things. If you have not seen his work, I commend it to you. https://www.davidmbird.com/gallery

So it is time for confession. Squirrels are often the bane of my existence. The ways in which they get the birdseed I place in the feeders is maddening. During tulip blooming time, the way they knock the blossom off the tulip without even eating it has, on occasion, caused me to run from the house chasing them back to their safe perch on a fence or tree limb looking back at me like the crazy person I must seem. So it was a good reminder that, at least according to this calendar, there is a day to appreciate these little beings with long, fluffy tails. 

And while I may not always appreciate them, I can say I always have a certain admiration for the ways they live in the world. Watching from the deck on a summer’s day as they scurry along the wires like acrobats fills me with awe for their balance and agility. Watching them propel their gray furry bodies from wire to limb to the metal pole of the bird feeder is quite impressive to say nothing of their speed in crossing a street safely.  Gazing up at the bare winter branches and seeing their nests, their homes, gives me pause on these bitter, windy, winter days. Is this appreciation? I hope it is. Maybe there is some absolution in that. 

Of course, there is also their playful nature which is something I wish I could emulate more often. The ways in which they run and jump and chase one another brings laughter to my heart and I hope some kind of squirrel joy to them. That playful quality is echoed in a poem by the equally playful poet Bill Collins in a poem titled Palermo:

It was foolish of us to leave our room.
The empty plaza was shimmering.
The clock looked ready to melt.
The heat was a mallet striking a ball
and sending it bouncing into the nettles of summer.
Even the bees had knocked off for the day.
The only thing moving besides us
(and we had since stopped under an awning)
was a squirrel who was darting this way and that

as if he were having second thoughts
about crossing the street,

his head and tail twitching with indecision.

You were looking in a shop window
but I was watching the squirrel
who now rose up on his hind legs,

and after pausing to look in all directions,
began to sing in a beautiful voice
a melancholy aria about life and death,

his forepaws clutched against his chest,
his face full of longing and hope,
as the sun beat down
on the roofs and awnings of the city,

and the earth continued to turn
and hold in position the moon
which would appear later that night

as we sat in a cafe
and I stood up on the table
with the encouragement of the owner

and sang for you and the others
the song the squirrel had taught me how to sing.

While one could say that National Squirrel Appreciation Day has passed for this year, I suppose there is nothing to keep any of us from appreciating them any day we think of it. Appreciate and salute their agile abilities…their jumping…their leaping…their scurrying…their courage…their resilience…their  playfulness…their song.

Endings and Beginnings

Slowly the remnants of what held the Christmas holidays is being dismantled. My Mother took our Christmas tree down on the day after Christmas. No Boxing Day or Twelve Days of Christmas for her. Time to begin a new year and get the living room back to normal. I tend to linger over the process. It is a slow practice of putting things back into boxes and then into the attic. First the small Santas and trees that line the mantle and tabletops. Then the various pictures with Christmas and winter themes that have been hung on the wall for these December days, to be replaced by others that hang there at other times of the year.

But the Christmas tree is the last. I can’t seem to let go of the light that dances from its branches during these dark days. In the last years I have appropriately, I think, named the emotion that accompanies this necessary act of removing the tree: Grief. There is a certain amount of grief that rests on the removal of the ornaments, of the tree. Just as there was the bittersweet feeling of each colorful bauble out of storage, remembering where they came from, when they were purchased or received, allowing the memory of it all to make its home on the branches of this tree that literally gave its life for our enjoyment. When the ornaments are removed and placed again in the red and green box, those same memories are tucked away for another year. Much will happen between this season and its arrival again in twelves months. The way in which our hands reach for them again will have another year of living etched upon them. So there is the grief of letting go of what has been and the uncertainty of what experiences will shape their removal when the time comes again. In so many ways this act of decorating a tree carries with it more than the experience of festivity. It can be, if we are awake, a yearly marker of our life. 

Yesterday as I removed the ornaments from our tree, I lingered a bit over a few. There are ones with names printed on them. Gifts from friends and family members. We continue to hang the ones with my husband’s name on them even though he left us four years ago. So those carry special meaning. There is one given to me by a five year old, a small guitar painted in Christmas green and red, her name printed by her Mother who also left us this year. This five year old has become a sweet friend/sister/daughter over the years and I always send a quick photo to her of the ornament to remind her of how long our lives have been entwined. And there is the oldest on the tree. A gift from my grandmother’s friend it catches the heat and shine of the lights sending its wheel whirling. It was a fascination for me as a child and became the same for my sons. 

Yes. There is much that happens in the decorating of a Christmas tree. Beginnings and endings. Memories both beautiful and raw. I was pleased to read this poem by Jane Kenyon called “Taking Down the Christmas Tree”:

“Give me some light!” cries Hamlet’s
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. “Light! Light!” cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it’s dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother’s childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.

With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it’s darkness
we’re having, let it be extravagant.

A bit of the scent from the tree lingers… mostly in the needles that seem to appear no matter how much I vacuum. In the endings of last year and the beginnings of this one, there is the darkness and the promise of light that will replace that which shone from the tree. May they, may we, live on in extravagance. 

Flying

Over the last two weeks, I have been witness to flying…people flying. I am not talking of the many airplanes in the sky that I observe over my house which sits quite near the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. I am talking of humans lifting off the ground and flying…like birds. The freedom of it is still thrumming in my spirit.

The first was at the performance of Peter Pan at the Ordway Center for Performing Arts. This reworking of the story that first inched its way into my life as a small child was pure magic. Though I knew the actors were not really flying, I could not see the wires which lifted and catapulted them into the air. The exuberance and delight on their faces and those in audience lifted me above the ordinary of a late December evening. As Peter urged us to clap our hands and say “I believe.” to bring Tinkerbell back from the brink, I knew I was also saying I believe in the power of flight.

Then in yet another tale meant for children but with messages for adults to ponder, the movie Wonka also had characters taking flight. Some of them were exercising their power of imagination and fancy while others were sent up in the air as a kind of time out for bad behavior. Sitting in the darkened theater I again felt that sense of freedom the idea of flying brought to me.

The truth is I have been captured by the idea of flying more than once in my life. When I was just a young child, perhaps three or four years old, I was in the upstairs of my grandparents house with them and my parents. They were moving something up into the second story of the house and had the window open to allow its entry. While they were busy talking I walked to that window and saw my opportunity. I stepped up and was just about to launch myself off the ledge when my Dad grabbed megrim behind and pulled me back. Since the night before we had watched Mary Martin flying as Peter Pan on the yearly broadcast of the movie, I believed I could fly and I was going to give it my best shot. Clearly imagination and reality collided.

For many years I had a recurring dream in which I would be in a situation in which tension was high and I wanted to escape. The situations differed but the feeling was the same: Get Out of Here! In the dream I would begin running and then I would use my arms in a swimming motion and soon…very soon I was lifted above the ground and was hovering over whatever was causing me such turmoil. I had escaped because I could fly.

It is a new year and though I am fairly certain the ability to fly is not in the cards for 2024, I was delighted to see this excerpt from a Mary Oliver poem: 

“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.” 

I am not much for resolutions in the new year but this lovely, playful poem seems not too bad to shape an intention for the year. Many people are remarking that it could be a tough year given all that is happening in the world and the political climate in which we find ourselves. Perhaps imagined flying could be a gift. So…Noble. Light. Frolicsome. Beauty. No fear. 

As though I, as though we, had wings.

Sea of Mending

This is a core sample
from the floor of the Sea of Mending,
a cylinder packed with shells
that over many years
sank through fathoms of shirts –

pearl buttons, blue buttons –
and settled together
beneath waves of perseverance,
an ocean upon which
generations of women set forth,
under the sails of gingham curtains,
and, seated side by side
on decks sometimes salted by tears,
made small but important repairs.
~Ted Koser

Over the last couple of weeks I have been in two different conversations about zippers. Broken ones. Those out for repair. Those we had put into garments and torn out seeming to wreck the fabric and even the sewing machine. I am not a sewing historian but would imagine that before zippers were closures there were buttons. I have seen such things in museum displays of ancient finds.

This poem by Ted Koser is so evocative about this small, simple utilitarian item. Reading and rereading it the words conjured such a deep sense of melancholy and also hope. I was reminded of my grandmother’s button box which I inherited. It was a favorite plaything when I was a child. I would pour out the buttons and look at all the different tiny, round spheres…plain white, blue or black, sunshine yellow, rhinestoned gold, a white sailboat on blue background. These miniature jewel-like objects captured my imagination as I thought about how my Gram came to possess them and what they had adorned. 

Gram’s button box is only a small sample from the Sea of Mending the poet speaks of. We are living in times that are in deep, if not desperate need of a Sea of Mending. As the images of the crisis in the Middle East and in Ukraine and on our own southern border flood our eyes, the kind of mending that is needed is so much greater than buttons could accomplish. And while those images are mostly of men whose faces rise in anger and violence, there are also often in the background the women who care for the children and try to create home. They are “settled together beneath waves of perseverance, generations of women, seated side by side, salted by tears, making small but important repairs, participating in the Sea of Mending.” It seems to be as it is and always has been.

Buttons are small in the grand scheme of the world. Yet they represent our desire to repair, to protect, to adorn, even to remember. Some are passed down from mother to daughter to grandchild, from one generation to the next. Zippers may have their place but a well placed button can tell a story.

This summer I was working on a project with Gorilla Glue. I thought I was being careful and for the most part I was. But later in the day I looked down at the jeans I had been wearing to notice a round spot where the glue had made its way, creating a stain. I tried all the tricks for removing it to no avail. I looked at its little round spot and was resigned to making these jeans my ‘gardening’ pants. 

Then I thought of the button box. I retrieved it from the closet and found the perfect fit to cover that glue spot. The jeans took on that look of much more expensive, decorated denim with this single, white, lacy button covering my sticky mistake. I can now still wear them in public with my held held high…and be reminded of my Gram and her button box.

It was a tiny drop in the greater Sea of Mending.

Collections

People collect things. This can happen with intention or sheer accumulation. My mother collected tea cups and had them displayed all around her house. It always made for an easy Christmas or birthday gift. Her friend collected thimbles which I always carried back from a trip to add to her the display case she had needed to purchase to house these tiny treasures. I admit to collecting stones and shells…inexpensive reminders of places that have etched themselves on my heart. At one point I had started collecting small pitchers and have still purchased one or two even after I decided that I was heading down the road of needing to buy a piece of furniture to display them and wanted to nip that prospect in the bud.

Last week I was searching for some materials I need for an upcoming retreat I have agreed to help lead. That’s when I realized that I, too, have a collection. I collect poems. In files. Between the pages of books. Inside my calendar and those of years past. In small stacks that can be found inside a desk drawer. Tiny pieces of paper with the poet’s words stashed into places where I will find them again. Just when I need them. And this says nothing about the actual books of poetry that line my bookshelves and sit on available table tops. Poems that have been read or written for a particular event or worship service or within a facebook post or in a magazine. I have held onto them with a collector’s mind and heart…and grip.

Looking through one file marked simply, “Poems”, I became lost in the wash of words. I could no longer remember from where the particular poems had come. I only know that I had decided that I simply could not live without these words…and those…and especially these very specific ones. Tucked among them all was this poem by Catherine Barnett:

Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more.
Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know.
Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord 
to keep it from fraying?
Not the man who called my life a debacle, 
a word whose sound I love.
In a debacle things are unleashed.
Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary.
I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate, 
the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing. 
They don’t use words, but they can be said to love. 
They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree.
And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing
stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect 
or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare, 
to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth.

Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth
and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.

I am not sure how this poem came to me or what was going through my mind…or my life…that caused me to add these words to my collection. It could have been the word ‘debacle’. If nothing else it is one of those words that just feels good in your mouth to say regardless of its meaning. It could have been because its title, “Epistemology” took me back to my seminary days when, like the word suggests, I was in the pursuit of all kinds of knowledge. 

These days dedicated to living my retirement with some manner of intention, I find I have more questions that answers and am more fascinated by words than ever before. This is a strange surprise of age. Yet I find I love the questions and the words that connect and the learning that results. (Life’s debacle…things are unleashed.) 

But if I allow myself to unravel the reason for the poem’s presence in my collection file, I am sure it had to do mostly with the trees and their communication and the notion of their loving. The ways in which they send sweetness to the root of suffering like a mother bakes cookies or adds sugar to milk to soothe the illness of her children. And the ways in which they stubbornly grow through obstacles and will not be deterred by wire or stone in an effort to connect and speak that love into the world. 

“Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.” I am grateful to the poet for affirming my conversations with trees, birch or otherwise. My heart is particularly full these days with love for the trees that are showing such devotion to beauty and letting go and waking us all up. Over the weekend I was witness to humans standing, simply standing, in awe at the color and the majesty of what autumn speaks through these grounded oracles. 

My big little mouth wanted to shout praise and joy at being alive and connected to these great teachers. Me, a birch among birches, a black walnut among others, a maples among them all.

October

“I’m so glad to live in a world where there are Octobers.”
Lucy Maud Montgomery, Ann of Green Gables.

October. Last week it dawned on me that October is kind of the Wednesday of the seasons. Even though it is the tenth month, it feels like the middle of the week…hump day. The glow of summer is moving into memory. Much like a weekend that has not yet been fully planned, the fullness of winter lives only in the imagination. For those of us who live in the northern hemisphere and in the midwest, October is the month that can feel like we are suspended. Some days are warm enough for short sleeves. Others require gloves and sometimes a hat. And of course there are those who live in the before and the not-yet, wearing shorts and a warm, fleece jacket. 

All seasons, all months, bring a definitive kind of light. October brings its own special golden glow that bathes trees full of surprising color which spills onto our floors inviting us to think about embracing a feline nature. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to crawl into the sunlight moving slowly, ever so slowly, through the window and across the floor? That action would also help stifle the message of wonderment about how dirty the windows have become and the urging to wash them before the snow flies. 

For those of us who rise early, there is also the darkness that has crept into the morning hours. No longer is there the greeting of pink-tinged morning light and the sound of birds trumpeting a wake up call. With windows closed and darkness lingering longer and longer, we are reminded that a shift is happening and we are wise to stay awake to its invitation. As the author A. A. Milne writes: “Yet, I can face the winter with calm. I suppose I had forgotten what it was really like. I had been thinking of the winter as a horrid wet, dreary time fit only for professional football. Now I can see other things—crisp and sparkling days, long pleasant evenings, cheery fires. Good work shall be done this winter. Life shall be lived well. The end of the summer is not the end of the world. Here’s to October…”

Yes. Here’s to October. There are places in our world where it seems like ‘the end of the world’. Their world as they know it. In these days bathed in changing light and leaves that show themselves as the artist of limb and trunk, we can hold those places and those people in our hearts and, if we are praying people, our prayers. And we can toast October with the hope that it sends us gently into a winter that might offer a calm. For all the people. For all the places.