We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— 
This debt we pay to human guile; 
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile 
And mouth with myriad subtleties,
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs? 
Nay, let them only see us, while 
We wear the mask.
~Paul Laurence Dunbar

It is really interesting what you find when you go looking for quotes and poems about masks. It is something I do with regularity…searching for what has been said or written about a particular subject that gets stuck in my head. Some of these discovered words can affirm my own thought process. Others confound. Still others challenge and bring me up short. 

For more than a year, we have added a mask to our daily act of getting dressed. At first it was so odd and felt so confining. But like most things, over time, it became second nature. Now I sometimes realize that I am in my car, completely alone, or walking down the street with no one around and I have forgotten to take off my mask off. From my observation, I am not alone in this.

Some people now have masks that match what they are wearing for the day. Others carry messages. A friend has one that says “Mom”. She realized if she wore it upside down is says “Wow”. Pretty fun. Some carry in words a cause they are passionate about and tell those they meet what the wearer values. Without the mask, we might never know that about a particular person. Informative. And then there are those masks festooned with sequins for lace or special occasions.Creative. Fun.

Now and then while wearing these face coverings, I have wondered what we will do when it becomes unnecessary to wear them to protect others and ourselves against this virus that has brought our world to a screeching halt. Will there be backyard parties with bonfires that include a ritual of mask burning? I have thought about what it would be like to create art using them…framed remembrances of the masks we wore in a year we will recall again and again…quilts sewn with different colors and fabrics that got us through the last months. It would bring new meaning to ‘crazy quilt’. Will we decorate with them, pack them away to remember this time?

In my internet sleuthing, I found the words written over time about masks are often literal and metaphor, pointing us toward a deeper meaning, a wiser truth. As the poem above written by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Mr. Dunbar (1857-1906) was an African American son of former enslaved parents. He was a bright student in his Dayton, Ohio school but did not have the financial means that allowed him to go to college. Instead, he became an elevator operator which, he said, gave him time for his great love…writing poetry. He later became known as America’s first published Black poet. You can find out more about him at the Poetry Foundation. It is fascinating.

I imagine Mr. Dunbar knew much about wearing masks. The kind of masks required of him to stay true to his gift of writing in a world that denied him access to much we take for granted is something I cannot even try to understand. My mask of privilege will not allow it. And yet his words find a place within each of us. In 2020-21 we have worn literal masks but the masks we have placed upon our faces to keep people from knowing the fullness of our ‘torn and bleeding hearts’ is something all humans experience. This past year with all its losses has offered many opportunities to hide behind our cloth and skin masks. Perhaps in that way, these now common coverings have been a blessing that goes beyond our caring for one another. 

But as the masks come off for us all, which they eventually will, how will we look at one another with great compassion for the unseen masks that we all wear? May the next year find us standing more fully in the gift that has been given each of us with no need to hide any of it. May we welcome each we meet with the care and kindness we want so deeply for ourselves. May it prepare us for an unmasking that brings both joy and hope to the whole world. 

…I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
~Mary Oliver

All the seasons have gifts to offer us, I believe. Summer holds out the experience of abundance and the warmth of the Sun’s rays.  Winter reminds us of the wisdom of stillness, of hibernation, of looking inward.  Autumn brings a visual lesson of letting go. As leaves fall, we, too, can reflect on what needs to be let go and gently open our arms to release.

This particular spring, at least in Minnesota, seems to want to unfold in a Zen-like manner. No rushing. The lower temps have kept us wearing down jackets on one day and shorts on another. The cool mornings and evenings have given way to warming afternoons but sometimes not. Spring is, of course, the season of rebirth. We see brilliant greenness push up and bulbs who held their life underground begin to emerge.  Their welcome blossoms dazzle our eyes and we breathe deeper in expectation. 

Yes, it is about rebirth, and yet, this spring has also caused me to notice its fleeting nature. Those tulips and daffodils only last for a very short period of time. The wise person drinks them in at every glance. And the flowering trees now showing themselves like showgirls around every corner do so for only a very short period of time. So this year, I am naming another lesson of spring…fleeting. Spring also offers the opportunity for each of us to remember the transient nature of life…the reminder that, as poet Mary Oliver writes: Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

This is not meant to be a morbid noticing. Instead, it is an invitation to do as she urges…be wide-eyed and pay attention, fall down in awe, embrace idleness, honor the blessing of the beauty and color that is an ephemeral gift. Which is what I’ve been trying to do as I watch the lily of the valley plants that have been growing with amazing speed in my yard. I have remarked to several people that I feel if I sat still long enough I might actually be able to watch them grow. Just a few weeks ago, there was not a hint of their presence. Having slept in the cold, dark soil over the winter months, they were invisible when I raked the dead leaves that had offered winter’s blanket. And now, any day, they will fill the yard with their distinctive May fragrance. I will cut bouquets and place them all around the house to try to hang on to this scent, this season. The rooms will be a gallery of May. 

Come June, however, the delicate, white flowers will dry up. Their fading will be a memory that can only be regenerated when passing someone on the street who is wearing a certain, faint sweet scent that reminds me of my grandmother. Two beautiful memories in one.

Fleeting. How can we honor all that is fleeting in our lives, in our world? Mary Oliver’s words send a call to noticing and names it an act of prayer. And who are any of us to argue with this wise poet who has given us such joy and created a script that can accompany our lives? 

If you are in the spirit to celebrate and honor the learnings of this short-lived season, then maybe it is more an act of prayer than any of us ever imagined. So, let us pray…

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. 

~Jeremiah 6:16

Several days a week, I sit in a coffee shop in my neighborhood reading, writing or, truth be told, sometimes just staring. Amore Coffee sits at the crossroads of Annapolis and Smith Avenues in West St. Paul. It is a crossing of roads that leads to the Mississippi River in at least two of the directions and forms a border that becomes St. Paul. I sit and watch as people make their daily rounds taking them along various routes that are mystery to me. But for the one moment I notice their passing, I like to believe we are linked in some way.

Crossroads. When I think of this intersection, I often remember these words from ancient lips…”stand at the crossroads and look…ask for the ancient paths…where the good way is…walk in it…find rest for your soul.” I would love to also believe that the road each of these travelers is taking brings some rest, some soul nurturing experience. I would also hope that they are finding good ways in which to walk, ways that bring life to themselves and others.May it be so. 

The image of crossroads is both real and metaphor. One of the most influential literal crossroads in my life is found on the Isle of Iona, a small island off the west coast of Scotland. It is a place that has been a deep, soul-feeding place for me. On this little three mile island there are two roads. The roads come together and cross in a place that provides the many pilgrims that travel there a choice of which way to turn. Each choice will eventually bring them to the sea(it is an island after all)but the path will be very different. Each person traveling these roads searches for something different yet all have hopes of moving into a deeper soul place. Never has the experience of crossroads been so palpable to me, so visual. Since that time, the metaphor of crossroads has traveled with me, lives someplace within me.

Of course, crossroads appear to us daily. There is the sunrise and sunset, the crossroads of a day into night, night into day. December 31 and January 1 invite us to the crossroads of a year. There are the many choices, decisions we must make each day that imply a crossroad. This or that? Here or there? There are the big life experiences of birth, death, relationship, graduation, accident, illness, career choice. All crossroads of sorts.

And here we are at some given point of this pandemic. For more than a year we have lived in ways that were unfamiliar and difficult and confounding. The isolation we all experienced in varying degrees seems to be opening. And yet to what? This crossroads has no clear direction for which way to turn. We each will, in the end, have to find our own GPS that will lead us to the ‘what next’, our post-COVID crossroad turn.

One of the most famous pieces of wisdom about this experience of crossroads comes from the poet Robert Frost:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I have to admit that I was unacquainted with the two lines that lead up to the last three that many can quote. “I shall be telling this with a sigh…somewhere ages and ages hence.” These words capture the depth of spirit with which most are approaching this crossroads between our pandemic life and what life may be like in a few months. Sighing…deeply sighing. A sigh that will breathe us into ages and ages that are yet to come. With that in mind, may we stand at this crossroads and look with wisdom, patience and compassion toward each turning. Our turning may make all the difference. For ourselves, our communities and our world.