“Good work joins earth to heaven.”
~Lu Chi

Noticing is a full time job these days. Papers pile up on my desk. Emails need to be answered, phones calls returned, meetings attended. There is the usual work around the house…..laundry to be done, meals to be made, the cleaning of this and that. But noticing is the real work and the other jobs have, I am happy to say, suffered.

Our winter was incredibly long and it is still cooler outside than is normal. And so I find myself clinging to the work of Creation with ever greater tenacity. Noticing how the impetus of Earth is toward rebirth, to respond to every warming place by bringing forth life, color, beauty, a glimpse of hope. This has become the real work. I have made a pact with our garden that each morning I will walk about, like a pilgrim in search of salvation, to notice the changes. I will notice how, despite temperatures that require layers and sometimes gloves, the soil is being pushed aside by green shoots that must be born, must make their way into the promise of a May day. I will notice how the chipmunks run wildly when I begin my inspection, their bodies fat with the birdseed they nuzzled into in the garage, a welcome gift from careless humans to a tiny four-legged that survived a harsh and frigid winter.

Noticing has become a full time job and so yesterday I gave up, pushed myself away from all that seemed imperative and gave myself to the work. I was rewarded with a paycheck from the mysterious work of the Creator. I marveled at the tulips whose colors seem impossible, their patterns seemingly designed by a hand artful at both color and pattern,feathered with the daintiest of brushes. I stooped to look at how certain spring grasses rise from the Earth in perfect circles like mandalas formed by fairies for their own tiny world. I wondered at the ways in which the bleeding hearts in their more nubile form never gave a hint at the brilliant pink heart shapes that were to come. I spent time inspecting the tiny feathery buds of a volunteer chestnut tree that decided our yard was a good home. The buds have now opened into fans of chartreuse that waved in the cool, morning breeze. All this noticing in only a few minutes. My head was spinning!

As if that weren’t enough work for one day, my husband and I visited a rookery in the afternoon on our way to our church’s retreat center. We had visited there before without seeing many birds, only the tall, spindly trees rising from cold, autumn water, looking forlorn for want of residents. But yesterday, yesterday was a whole other story. Great blue herons swooped over the water spreading their prehistoric wings like the pterodactyl I always imagine as their ancestors. The swooping often took them to the top of a rookery tree so thin it would seem to break under their weight but didn’t as they stood atop the gray-brown pinnacle looking out over their kingdom. They shared air space and tree limb with cormorants, black as coal, and equally as impressive. Further noticing through squinted eyes and then the magic of binoculars showed nest upon nest of beaked heads……parents sitting, quietly warming their next generation. All around us in the bushes and smaller trees that blanketed the shore, warblers sang and chirped their migration song.

Sometimes our work can be exhausting. Other times it can be stressful. If we are lucky, or blessed, our work can be fulfilling and lift us to a place of illumination, a place only the mystics seem gifted to experience. This work of noticing often does just that. We are reminded of the great canvas upon which we have all been painted. A canvas that is ever evolving, changing and re-creating itself. In this life of art of which we are all a part….human, animal, insect, bird, plant, soil,air, water…..we all have a job to do. Mostly as humans our work is to notice. The Great Artist has seen to it by allowing us words and the ability to tell the story.

The poet Mary Oliver reminds us that our real work is to ” Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” My job description, and yours if you so choose, simply reads ‘Noticer’. It is a job that is never finished, always rewarding and often illuminating.

And now…..back to work.