Loss. As humans we are acquainted with loss from a very early age. It is a constant of our growing years…for some more than others. But each of us had the experience of losing our first tooth, an event that was both exciting and traumatic. We have all heard…or maybe experienced…the stories of children who did not want to let go of that smile gem that had traveled with them for five or six years. There was the fear that it might hurt. There was the confusion about what would take its place. There was the sheer terror of the tales of strings and door handles and slamming. In those moments, even the promise of the Tooth Fairy and the cold, hard cash under a pillow could not ease the discomfort felt. 

We are swimming in a sea of loss these days. Since the pandemic hit we find ourselves in an endless cycle of stories of loss. Loss of life. Loss of jobs. Loss of businesses. Loss of the freedom to go to many of the places we normally would if there wasn’t this invisible threat that could make any of us ill while we also become carriers to others. There is also the loss of the rhythm of our days and weeks and the activities that make up what we would be doing this summer. There is the loss of school schedules and work schedules and the predictability of ‘how we live our lives.’And of course, there is the loss of human contact we all lament as we stay closer to home to keep friends and strangers safe. Where the loss exists, other beings ooze in and takes up residence…uncertainty and its byproduct, fear. And I think most of us have realized over the last months that we really, really, really do not like uncertainty.

I have been reflecting a great deal about loss over these last months and observing how I live with this unwelcome companion. What I have been noticing is how intricately woven loss is in our every day lives and in the flow of Creation. We don’t like to recognize this or honor its presence but, since our first, lost tooth made its way into our tiny hand or even before, loss has always walked beside us. We see it reflected in the change of the seasons and in the ebb and flow of the Moon’s round fullness that grows from a tiny sliver and then back again in its glowing orb in the night sky.  And the now there is the ever-increasing loss of light as summer begins to turn toward autumn . Soon the trees will let loose their leaves and the loss of color will give way to the starkness of winter stillness.

Earlier in the summer, as I was walking I came upon this tree whose brilliant pink blossoms struck me with awe for several days in a row. But the tree…through wind and rain and the inevitability of time…had let go its blossoms that now formed this enchanted path of color. Loss, I thought. This was all a part of the life of this tree which I had so enjoyed but through loss was now creating a magical carpet I beheld but could not bring myself to walk on. I just stood and noticed the beauty of this loss. 

Another walking route takes me by the Mississippi River allowing me to stand and watch as pieces of trees, large and small, float slowly downriver. Someplace along the flow of this mighty body of water, an unseen tree has lost a part of itself through storm or erosion and is making its way to another place. Those that veer too close to the tiny Raspberry Island get hung up on a large ever-evolving sculpture of driftwood while others keep flowing to another unseen place. I like to think some make it all the way to New Orleans. This river-made sculpture is made entirely of loss. Something to think about.

The 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi says: ”Anything you lose comes back to you in another form.” I want to believe that and do think that the losses we have experienced and will continue to experience have the potential to teach us something we had not yet imagined we needed to learn. Of course, I say this from the comfort of my home knowing I have all I need. I cannot know nor understand the devastating suffering so many are experiencing through these many losses. My privilege is not lost on me. And neither is the desire to hold this time of loss in open hands, with an open heart in the deep hope of coming to the other side of this somehow honed for living in the world with a more compassionate heart and with a stronger sense of how loss can be more a friend than an enemy. 

There is great joy when that new, permanent tooth breaks through the skin and begins to grow, altering our faces into the more mature ones to come. Unless there is some accident of storm or nature, the beautiful pink blossoms will emerge from the tree in the spring and my awe will once again be stoked. As snow begins to fall and temperatures plummet, ice will form on the sculpture that sits on the cusp of Raspberry Island changing it into a thing of shimmering, frozen magic. Loss will become another form.

May the same be true for each of us as we hold the losses we are experiencing in these strange, life-altering days.

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

~David Wagoner

Stand still. In these days when not only standing still but sometimes also staying put is the food that nourishes us, we are all finding ways to make sense of where we are, who we are. While the impetus is to jump ahead to ‘who we might become’, the reality is that we are Here. Here. This place that holds our lives, perhaps not the lives we planned or imagined, but nonetheless our lives. While we are in this place called pandemic, each of us has been finding ways to cope with our individual life situation while we recognize the need to stand still, stay put for the greater good of our beloved community…family, friends, co-workers, strangers, those with whom we share much and those with whom we share very little. This place called ‘Here’ has taken on a larger picture than any of us would have admitted a mere two months ago.

I do not know the circumstances under which poet David Wagoner wrote this poem titled “Lost”. But I do know his words have come into my mind over and over again as I engage in what has been the calming, saving grace for me of walking. Walking along streets lined with trees emerging from their winter slumber. Walking on paths paved for easy going as bikes zoom by declaring freedom. Walking in the woods and allowing the wisdom of trees to bathe me in the oxygen they so beneficently offer us all. 

Trees have always held a special place in my life. I am drawn to them and sense their strength and their energy. I believe that some people are drawn to water or mountains or cornfields in similar ways knowing that, when the human allows the mind to stop its fluttering and invites the gift of pure Presence to arrive, we can drink from the well of deep wisdom. Trees do that for me. 

A few weeks ago, I walked through a grove of trees in Carpenter Nature Center. As I moved my feet along paths recently covered with a springtime snow, littered with last year’s leaves and pine needles, all created a crunching noise under my hiking boots. The songs of birds, unseen to me, provided the soundtrack for my life story that day. The air had that mix of winter and spring all rolled into one, wore a freshness that can only be described as hope. At one point I looked up and simply stood still…in the place called Here…and for that moment the sense of being ‘lost’ in this pandemic whirlwind fell away and the towering trees washed over me and I was at peace. 

On another day, I sat at the Dodge Nature Center in the early morning. The geese were flying overhead, honking their arrival, some headed for a nest just over my shoulder while the red-winged blackbirds sang the morning into its new light. From the barn the roosters crowed and the clouds formed a moving picture of white cotton in the brilliant blue backdrop. But what had my eye was the giant Weeping Willow whose shade of green is a fleeting color mixed with yellows and greens and, I swear, we do not see this color any place else in nature. It is the signature of this dancing tree, a favorite, as it wakes up from its winter of barrenness. 

Weeping Willow. I wondered at its name. The scripture I have read tells me that “Creation is groaning”…was the Willow groaning with our loss, with our confusion, with our uncertainty? My experience that morning was that it was holding the space for the collective groaning of the humans who pass by with looks of loss, despair, fear, hope, love shining in our eyes. As the wind picked up, I watched its limber branches dance to greet the day and to bless me, reminding me to savor the gift of Here. 

“Stand still. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you.” Many of us feel lost these days. Many of us experience the behaviors of others that emphasize a sense of being lost. Perhaps we would be wise in our standing still to remember that the forest, the trees, know where we are and to let it find us. It has worked for me and I pray it might work for you also.

We are a people hungry for color. After spending nearly six months in Minnesota winter, white and gray are our daily companions. And while the snow was still in its dirty piles all around, the pandemic descended and we moved inside, looking out the windows hoping, praying for a spring that would bring multiple signs of hope. Green grass. Purple crocuses. The early yellow of daffodils. The red-flecked petal of bloodroot emerging. Color. If we could just have some color, we might be able to see another page of this sheltered existence in a new, more courageous light. 

Every year the Minneapolis Institute of Art hosts the perfect prescription to our deep desire for color when Art In Bloom takes up its fragrant presence alongside some of the museums most treasured art pieces. This weekend would have been that weekend when those known as ‘pedestal artists’ create an interpretation of paintings, sculptures, tapestries using flowers. I am mourning this yearly dose of beauty and creativity. Last year my friend Carol and I had the privilege of interpreting a piece called Hannukah Lamp and it was a treasured experience for me. But this year…the museum is closed…and Art In Bloom was cancelled. The color faded into the distance. There has been a smaller, virtual show online which is lovely. I am assuming those who have created these pieces worked alone or with someone else with whom they share a home. Because my friend and I had dreamed of our piece together, this virtual creation seemed impossible from our respective homes as we sheltered-in-place.

I am sure that there are as many ways of going about this creative process as there are pedestal artists. Carol and I had met and we had plans! We had ordered flowers, purchased vases,  measured and sketched and had an outline for what we were trying to portray. Just as last year, our way of interpretation was through metaphor. It is how we both think, I believe. Our art this year was a painting by Édouard Vuillard called The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door. In our conversation, we explored what doors really mean in our lives and the question: Aren’t all our mothers the original door-openers for us? With her very being a mother opens the door of herself so we might enter the world. And then there are all the other doors that mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, ancestors open for us so that we might move from one place to another. Doors are both literal and metaphor.

This led us to a poem by Marge Piercy, an American poet and novelist:

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But
while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies.
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters
most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place to another
one state to the other, boundaries
and promises and threats. Inside to
outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind 
into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see
ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.

While Carol and I did not, as yet, get to create our interpretation of this painting, I was struck by the metaphor of doors and how these days of being inside our homes has offered the liminal wisdom of doors. We are indeed held in “a matter of going through into something else”, “passing from one place into another one state to the other, boundaries and promises and threats”. On a daily basis we do not know what the ‘something else’ is and the “boundaries”, and “threats” are held in “promises” we try to feel assurance in. “Light into dark”, “dark into light”, “known into strange”, “safe into terror”. All this sometimes within a mere hour. All the while “we slice our life into segments”, “see ourselves progressing from room to room”. Our hope is that at some point we will open the door, pass into a place where we can look back at the “was” of this pandemic and recognize there the mercy, wisdom and power of this time for how we will move into the present with understanding that is still mystery. 

Color. May we know it. May we see it. May it nourish us in these emerging days of spring. And may we continue to watch for the doors that invite us and walk away from those that do not bring life to us or those we love. Some time in the future my friend Carol and I have promised one another that we will once again meet and at that time we will create our floral art based on Édouard Vuillard’s painting. Until then, we live in liminal space between one door and another. 

***Special thanks to Carol Michalicek for the photo of The Artist’s Mother Opening a Door

Last summer I visited my family in Ohio. While I was there my nephew, who is a senior in high school came home with a t-shirt meant to set into motion this momentous life passage we have all anticipated. On the shirt was the message, “ 2020 – A Class with Vision.” At the time it was really just a very clever take on the diagnosis we all hope to receive at our most recent eye exam. We chuckled at the cleverness of it all. But I have been thinking much about that shirt over the last weeks. We have seen the mounting evidence that these young people, who started the school year with the simple hopes of completing not only classes but celebrating all the traditions that catapult them into their ‘what next?’, watch as those events fade into an uncertain future. Will prom happen? Will they be able to walk across the stage to receive their diploma? Parents, teachers, and students wonder how they will mark this passage without the well-practiced rituals they have watched others take for years. This is happening all across our country.

I have no answer to those questions and the outcome likely depends on where the young people live and the creativity of the schools and adults that have accompanied them on their journey so far. 2020 – a class with vision. Certainly, this year is not turning out as they and their families imagined. And yet, what ‘vision’ have they been given for how their life will emerge from this passage to the next? What do they see around them that is teaching them about the world they are walking into, are inheriting? How are they envisioning a future for themselves and those with whom they travel the planet?

This week people have started sharing their senior pictures from days gone by on Facebook as a way to celebrate and be in solidarity with the Class of 2020. I have been struck by the faces of people from many decades smiling at the camera with the hope and possibility that is mirrored in most senior photos throughout time. Oh, the hairstyles can bring quite the chuckle but nearly every face carries the hope of youth and the longing for a future yet to be realized. I venture a guess that most had a vision for what their lives might become. For some it worked out just as they planned. For others, not so much.

As we walk these days of pandemic, aren’t we all in some way a part of the class of 2020? Regardless of age, we are making our way through a year filled with experiences most have never traversed before. Each day carries questions, uncertainty, fear, confusion. The days also contain hopes, possibilities, discoveries, creativity, lessons we had not considered. It is a year that asks each of us to be a ‘class with vision’. Vision for how to live more  simply, more justly. We are called to reach out to help those who need it, given the opportunity to listen  more deeply. And we are being offered the chance to be ‘a class with vision’, considering what the future is we hope to create after this is all over. 

Other signs, literal signs, are popping up to bring us into a greater awareness with high school seniors and what they may be missing. I saw this one on a walk yesterday: #allinthistogether. Yes, indeed. We are all in this together, regardless of age or economic status, gender, education, all the many ways we can think of to divide ourselves into categories. And the truth of the matter is that it has always been so. We are all, after all, spinning on the same big, beautiful planet. Most often, we just don’t remember that, just don’t behave as if this is the case. 

Poet Theodore Roethke wrote:”In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” We may look back on these days as a dark time. We may also look at this time as the time when we began to see. 2020 will not be over for several months. But this learning how to be ‘the class with vision’ will go on for some time. May our eyes…and our hearts…be open to what is best for the whole global village… and our Earth Home.  We are all in this together.

Friends: While it appears on the website version and Facebook post, apparently the link to Peter Mayer’s song did not appear on some of your Pause postings.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaGnQc5Vmhs

Hope this works!

In the Christian household, this is the week we call holy. Holy Week. During these days leading up to Easter we attempt to remember the ways in which Jesus, someone who lived more than two thousand years ago, walked his final days, how he spent them, who he interacted with, how he staked his very life on his understanding of God’s presence in his life and the life of the world. Depending on one’s tradition and flavor of Christianity, the marking of these days look different but that doesn’t take away from the name: Holy Week. These days we name as holy move toward the holiest day of all, Easter. Again, depending on the faith community in which you travel, even if it’s only in a once or twice a year kind of traveling, the celebration of Easter has many traditions. 

But I think we can all agree that this year, 2020, will be a different kind of Holy Week, a different kind of Easter. This has had me thinking often this week of what we really mean when we call anything ‘holy’. I have been privileged to visit many places deemed holy. Cathedrals designed to point people toward an experience of what is Sacred, to lift them above the ordinary and strike their senses with something of the More. These places are often ringed with images in colored glass or artwork that attempt to tell stories of people’s sacred experiences. Stories of scripture. Angels. Saints. Walking through such places people often light a candle to mark that they have been in the presence of the Holy. I know I have countless times. 

Still other places, while not technically called holy, hold a place of holiness to many. Sacred landscapes that have been discovered, preserved, held in trust so we might be reminded of the Creator who breathed the Universe into being. We fulfill our role in that greater creativity by being witness, by standing in awe, by being bathed in Mystery. For me places like the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, the Isle of Skye, the island of Iona come to mind. These and so many more remind me that I am such a small player in the grand scheme of things and I would do well to tread lightly and with great kindness each and very blessed day.

These places are mostly empty now. Cathedrals, sanctuaries, some national parks have been shuttered as we try to do what needs to be done to stop the spread of an invisible menace that is killing many, causing suffering to others and those that love them, affecting us all in ways that are knowable and yet to be experienced. The ability to travel any place in search of ‘holy’ is impossible as we are seeking the shelter of our own homes, those places of ordinary, daily tasks of living. 

So, what is Holy Week this year? On Holy Thursday, Jesus gathered his friends and shared a meal, one that would be his last with those he loved. Before they ate he washed their feet to remove the dust, to show his love and humility. Never has washing been more of a saving, holy act than in these last days. Perhaps not feet…but hands, counters, doorknobs. Holy. Holy water. Holy soap. Holy washing.

On Friday, we would have gathered to remember and tell once again the story of how Jesus was tried and killed for his way of living out the love of God in the world. His suffering would be lifted up…will be lifted up…as we name the many ways people, all God’s people are living daily with the suffering of fear, pain, loss, grief, sacrifice, death. I only need look at the images of the workers carrying bodies from the New York City hospitals to know what crucifixion looks like. Holy. Holy caring. Holy exhaustion. Holy grief.

As we move toward Easter, the thread we cling to as we walk into the labyrinth of this faith story we honor this week, is that all that holiness leads toward a Home. A place where there is healing, hope, rebirth, resurrection, where the ‘we will get through this’ nods and says “Yes. See?” While it may not be accompanied this year with trumpets and bonnets and lilies, we can walk toward it with confidence because this is who we are and this is what we do. Our faith story includes those who have known hurt and healing, suffering and grief and have come to a place they call Home living one holy day after another. 

Holy Week? As any good Minnesotan would say, “You betcha.” Holy Week…holy days…holy moments…holy year. Here’s a link to Peter Mayer’s song that says it better than I ever could.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” ~Meister Eckhart, 13th century mystic

For many years I was a part of a book club that met monthly at church. It was, by design, a group for women only and over the years we read some amazing books. We read fiction and nonfiction, books that were aimed at teaching lessons, others that carried spiritual wisdom. The books we read were chosen by the group in a mostly random process and yet there always was something to be gleaned from each one. One year, perhaps because of that randomness, we realized every book we had read or were about to read was set during World War II and dealt in some way with the Holocaust. Though the books were wonderful we all agreed that we needed a break from such a steady diet of these difficult stories. Our randomness in following years had us looking more carefully for balance.

Regardless of subject matter or the particular genre, near the end of our time together, I began asking a question that became our way of bringing closure to our reading for that month. “Where was God in this book?”, I would ask. This question also started in a random way. I am not sure I had even thought through asking the question. It just happened. But once it did it became a hallmark of our time together. 

For some reason I thought about that question this week. What I remember about the question and its ensuing conversation was the variety of answers. I also remember that, over time, several of the folks talked about how they ‘looked’ for God as they read, anticipating that the question would be asked. As is always the case, we see the Holy with the only lens we have…ours. 

This week I think the question and the memories of those experiences came to me because I began wondering how people might answer the question, “Where is God in this story?”, this story we are living as we make our way through these days of uncertainty and this virus. This is a chapter in our individual and collective life stories that we didn’t see coming and have no idea of how it will play out. There is so little control we can have over its writing. And for those who think about questions of God, or whatever words might be used to speak of the Something More, all will answer using their own lens. Perhaps it is a question that some will only be able to answer when the chapter is drawing to a close and our stories are moving to some yet to be imagined new chapter. Or for some of us maybe we are, like the women in my book club, keeping watch for the ways the Sacred shows up and dances in the words and pages of the every day. Even in social distancing…and hand washing…in keeping our hands away from our faces…on empty shelves and shortages of this and that. Certainly in the lives of the suffering, the deaths and the grief that surrounds it all.

I know I’ve seen what I know of God in a multitude of ways over the last days. In all those faces of health care workers whose eyes are often only visible to us above masks of protection. Their exhaustion must be overwhelming. In the grocery store staff who try their level best to be upbeat and helpful in ways they had not imagined, which included one of our local checkout ladies who dressed like a butterfly one day just to lift people’s spirits and probably her own. In many of our leaders who continue to keep abreast of information that is coming at them fast and furious as they try to bring facts, compassion and a level head to calm our anxiety. In the dedication of teachers who are learning new ways of teaching so they might continue to serve those students entrusted to their care a few short months ago. And the artists and musicians who have been showing up online and on sidewalks, making art and playing music to remind us of beauty and all that has power to lift us above despair. So many people digging deep to offer a very piece of themselves for each of us and those who suffer. 

And I have not said anything about the crocus blooming purple outside my window or the birds whose songs are creating a choir to stand in for the human choirs that cannot gather right now. And the greening grass now showing itself as tulips push as hard as they can to prove to us once again that life can come from a cold, dark, hard place. 

Where is God in this story? Our story? My story? Your story? We can answer the question as we go along or when we come to a conclusion. Both are equally right and will be given through the lens we use every day. May we be blessed in the seeing and in the telling.

For more than a decade I have experienced and embraced pilgrimage. This has included leading several groups on pilgrimages to Scotland, Ireland,  and Italy, to the sacred island of Iona, the holy sites of Glendalough and Inishmoor, the birthplaces of St. Francis, St. Clare and St. Catherine of Siena. I have walked a part of the pilgrimage path of the Camino de Santiago and been privy to the highs and lows of that ancient pathway. This pursuit of pilgrimage has, over time, shaped my life and my way of seeing the world. It has allowed me to call myself a pilgrim…someone who steps out each day perhaps with a plan but one that can be changed in a moment’s notice depending on the weather, my stamina, what resources are available, who shows up to walk alongside and who can no longer share the journey. While this way of seeing the world is not for everyone, but it has worked for me and I have found seeing our life’s travels with this eye has always had me seeing the presence of the Sacred in the midst.

When my daily work was in the church I loved that my life was governed by the seasons of the church year. Advent, Christmas. Epiphany. Lent. And the very long, season of Ordinary Time. I have always seen Lent as a pilgrimage, as a mirror of Jesus’ own pilgrimage of self discovery in the wilderness. As we are now in the season of Lent, I began these days by picking up again the book by a favorite author Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark. Little did I know how prophetic this title would ring out in the days that have unfolded. Walking in the dark. It is what we are doing, aren’t we? Though the Sun arrives every morning as pure gift our days are drenched in certain inability to see what the next hours or even minutes might offer. As we find ourselves isolated not only from the regular activities of our days but from those we often did those activities with, we are learning to walk in new ways. For some this has brought acts of creativity and making our ways through the lists of things we had put off for another time. Stacks of books have been conquered. Puzzles have been figured out. Closets cleaned. 

But for others these days are not so productive and are shrouded with loneliness and furrowed brows. Our anxiety is a constant companion and we try to stare into our crystal ball to predict an uncertain future.  Brown Taylor writes: “To be human is to live by sunlight and moonlight, with anxiety and delight, admitting limits and transcending them, falling down and rising up.” Depending on the day, we can embrace the negatives of this statement with greater certainty that its positives. And yet each day the balance of anxiety/delight, falling/rising is held out to us, hoping not for limits but transcendence.  To allow ourselves to feel what we feel and to be okay with that is also a gift. How we dig deep to tip the balance in the favor of creativity, transcendence and light is perhaps our life’s work right now. 

When viewed through the lens of pilgrimage words by poet Pablo Machado has been a mantra for me. Truth be told it has been a mantra for many months. “There is no path. The path is made by walking.” And walking is what I have been doing. Each day what is not forbidden is walking outside in the fresh air, being present to the spring that is itchy to appear. I can feel it, can you? While I know walking outside might not be available to everyone, I am reminded of the days I spent on the Camino when each day we dedicated our walking to someone and held them in prayer as we walked. Arriving at chapels along the way, we lit candles to hold our prayer in light. A good practice for the days. A good practice right now.

This time in which we find ourselves is a pilgrimage path we did not choose. Of course, this happens all the time in our sunlit, moonlit lives. Illness arrives. Death surprises. Relationships end. Jobs are lost. There is no map for these paths. It becomes a path we make by walking. 

If we are lucky…or blessed…we witness the face of the Holy along the way. As companion. As faithful companion. And light is shed on a path that seemed dark only a moment before. May it be so.

I have not written in these pages for some time. There are many reasons for this on which I may elaborate at some time in the future. But over the last few days I have been drawn back to this place I named “Pause” over a decade ago. It seems these days we are living are bringing their own pause, a stopping point none of us anticipated or planned to take. A pause that is filled with a tapestry of emotion and much anxiety. A pause that has many in a heightened state of fear and feelings so raw that sometimes we hardly know what to do with ourselves. Listening to the news and the rapid fire changing landscape that swirls around us provides what we feel is the information that we need. At the same time, taking all this in can have us walking in circles trying to figure out what we should do next, worrying for our future health or that of those we love or have never met, watching well laid financial plans roller coaster up and down. It is unnerving and perplexing to feel so out of control. It is as if the very air around us is pulsing with an uncontrollable energy…an energy that threatens to overwhelm us.

During all this, for some reason, I have kept thinking of the times when our sons would be in a state of frustration or anger that led to what might be called a temper tantrum. I can honestly say this did not happen very often but when it did I always felt as if I wanted to do something…anything…that would make them stop. Their tears, their hurt, their behavior was so painful to watch. The first time it happened I remember allowing my own frustration to rise with theirs as I tried everything I could think of to stop their crying or halt their tiny fists from pounding. I learned quickly that my entering into their frustration and anger only seemed to escalate what was happening. Over time I realized that the best way to help them and to keep my own heart from breaking as I watched them work out whatever it was they needed to do was to simply sit quietly and hold space for them, making sure they were safe and knew they were loved, allowing them to take control of their own emotions, their own frustrations and come to their own peace.

These memories have brought me a certain calm over the last days. I have asked myself what good it will do if I enter into the anxiety of the moment, whipping myself into a frenzy. There are so many elements of this global crisis and I have no control over any of them. What I do have control over is my own emotion, my own reactions, and the energy I put into the world. What I can do is hold the space. I can breathe deeply and send that breath into the world. What I can do is call people and offer kindness. I can walk outside and notice the change of seasons that is arriving without knowledge of the whirlwind we are experiencing. I can listen for the geese making their homing call as they return and watch for the early push of green from the earth. I can smell the earth returning to itself.

During these times which we continue to call unprecedented,  we each will find our role to play. Many people are working countless hours to mend what has been broken, to heal what needs to be healed, to right the ship of our world. For this I am thankful beyond words. Some have chosen the role of hand wringing and hoarding. Perhaps it will always be so. Others are using their gifts for caring and compassion, for offering what they can to be of help. The truth of it is that we are all in this together and at times our role may be to simply hold the space, quietly, deeply, bringing calm as best we can. 

The poet Pablo Neruda says this: 

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still

for once on the face of the earth,

let’s not speak in any language;

let’s stop for a second,

and not move our arms so much…

…Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead

and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.

Rain. It has been a particularly rainy spring and summer. As I write this the heavens are once again pouring down as water flows from downspouts and drains into the downward slant of our street. Many are lamenting this gift of the sky. Some label it is ‘the new normal’ as climate change lives more and more with us daily. Farmers are having difficulty planting on what was a schedule they had come to rely upon. Basements that have never been wet are feeling damp and have a certain unpleasantness. 

All these things are true. But perhaps one positive spin on these rainy days is that the landscape all around is particularly green. Green. Various shades of green burst out from yard and field, from tree and bush. Outside it is positively Irish in its greenness. Driving back from northern Wisconsin over the holiday, I allowed my eyes to take in the vast swaths of green that unfolded and thought about the physical response that gets elicited by the color green. There is such hope in its hue. Over long, white-painted winters we long for green. The smallest shoot of grassy green lifts the spirit out of the cold and sends minds dreaming of flowers and fruits to come. But it all starts with green.

Looking at those undulating fields reminded me of the 12th century mystic, Hildegard von Bingen, who wrote so beautifully about the color green, even using it to name the Holy, the Creator, the Sacred One. She often used the word ‘veriditas’ meaning ‘the greening power of God’. 

“O most honored Greening Force,
You who roots in the Sun;
You who lights up, in shining serenity, within a wheel
that earthly excellence fails to comprehend.
You are enfolded
in the weaving of divine mysteries.
You redden like the dawn
and you burn: flame of the Sun.”

I share Hildegard’s sentiment of the way in which green carries that creative, life-affirming, hopeful spirit. Looking around for symbolism that is associated with the color green, I learned that it is seen as the color of balance, restoring a sense of well-being and sanctuary. That feels right. And while there doesn’t seem to be any break in the rains that have held our summer days, I am thankful for the palette of green that is painting my days. It is a good reminder of more of Hildegard’s words: “The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.”

Though all creatures are not literally green, we all carry some cell of that verdancy within. Perhaps if we clung more closely to it we might live more fully into that sense of balance and sanctuary. We might speak more kindly, “light up” the difficult places and become a “shining serenity” to all we meet. 

As long as the rain continues, we are likely to see more and more green. I will take it as gift and a nudge toward a hope that longs to grow.