It has happened every morning for perhaps the last two weeks. At around 6:20 a.m. as I drink my morning coffee and write a few thoughts that have come to me in the middle of some form of sleep, I hear it. The song of a cardinal someplace nearby. Singing. Giving voice to one of the few bird songs I can identify. The first morning it happened I was jolted out of the early morning fog that is winter by its pure sound. When it began to happen every morning and at the same time I was filled with wonder. What is happening for this scarlet beauty at just this particular time of every morning? Do birds have some internal alarm that says the day is new and on its way? Now I wait for it and would be not a little distraught if I didn’t hear it.

The other thought that came to mind was whether or not the cardinal has any sense at all as to the hope its song sings into the world for this particular human. Tired of snow. Depressed by gray. Weary of having so many layers of clothing to carry around on my bones. Did this small act of Creation have any idea the joy its melodious voice brings to the world? My sense it is simply doing what it does and there is a reason unknown to me for the time, the tune. I pray there is some joy in its body as it sings out in the still frigid hours of the morning.

I was reminded of the poem by one who seems to be able to know the birds in ways I cannot. Mary Oliver in her poem Red Bird writes:

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows, 
those dun-colored darlings,
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason-
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens –
I am grateful

that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

It is true we do see the cardinal all winter in these places I call home. But the song is not always present. Perhaps this winged one is also sensing spring and is urging its arrival with the beauty of its music. I am full of hope for that as well.

These days find some of my closest friends and I holding a sacred space for one of our dear ones whose life was driven by the love of those who could take wing. He is walking his last days on land and is slowly inching toward taking wing. He has lived a life ‘bold in spirit’ and has taught so many of us a love for those whose flight is beautiful and seemingly impossible to the gravity held ones. As we walk this path with him, we are trying with all our might to cause our too often narrow hearts to open with gratitude. For him. For the birds he loves.For this life we all are privileged to live.

Over the next mornings I will listen for the cardinal’s song and I will allow my heart to open and be filled. With grace. With gratitude. With love. With hope. Knowing that the red bird is ‘firing up the landscape as nothing else could.’ It is as it has always been and will be.

Nature teaches nothing is lost.
It’s transmuted.

Spread between rows of beans,
last year’s rusty leaves tamp down weeds.
Coffee grounds and banana peels
foster rose blooms. Bread crumbs
scattered for birds become song.
Leftovers offered to chickens come back
as eggs, yolks sunrise orange.
Broccoli stems and bruised apples
fed to cows return as milk steaming in the pail,
as patties steaming in the pasture.

Surely our shame and sorrow
also return,
composted by years
into something generative as wisdom.

It is not a usual title for a poem…Compost Happens. I came across this little bit of poetry by Laura Grace Weldon while searching for something for a friend. Reading and then rereading it helped me name what seems to me to be happening outside my window. As the snow melts away and the Earth begins to move in ways that are not always lovely but are full of promise the ground is reminding us that ‘nature teaches nothing is lost.’. These are the days in my part of the world that float between sun and melting and freezing and re-icing. Dangerous walking. Yet if a person is careful and observant they can be present to much ‘transmutation.’ Also, not a word used every day. The very ground around us is shape-shifting, changing form and we are wise to pay attention.

I often think of this time of year as the ‘not yet’ time of year. Oh, we can sense what lies beneath those crusty, grimy mounds of snow. Some of it is not pretty especially if your paths are also frequented by the four legged that live in the neighborhood. But other glimpses provide the opening act of what is yet to appear in this drama of life we are privileged to be human actors in. It is the time when I am reminded that we are the ones with the ability to notice, reflect, and make meaning. It is a huge responsibility. As the ones with words we are cast as the storytellers and it is an awesome role to play. 

This morning as I walked out to begin my day outside the four walls that house me, I looked down to see that the snow that had been several feet deep had receded and the soil that had been revealed had a gift to offer. With the early morning sun splashing the ground there appeared…tiny blades of green grass waving their new life my way. Though surrounded still by not only hard-packed snow but large hunks of ice that had fallen only a few days from my roof, these little bits of green shouted into the world: “See me! Look at me! I bring you good news!” The Earth is changing form…transmuting…all around us. The sight brought a spring to my penguin shuffled step. 

I have been thinking a great deal about how it is we are emerging not only from the winter but also from these years when the pandemic has been our unwelcome dance partner. Each week I spend time with second graders who are crawling their way back from the losses of school and learning. At the beginning of the year their struggles with reading had me thinking and worrying about how our children could rebound from what had been sidelined in their lives. Teachers, parents, volunteers and administrators have been spreading every bit of helpful compost to these young ones’ learning, making plans, trying this and that and all out of a great love and belief that each one is capable and unique. This past week it was as if all that turning of soil, watering, sunshine and intellectual nutrients generated what was needed. My joy was overflowing as words were sounded out, stories read, letters written and faces lit up with the knowledge that they were reading. I whooped and high-fived and made quite a scene as their faces flushed with pride and recognition.

‘Nature teaches nothing is lost.’ writes the poet. This is true for the Earth returning from its frozen state as we move toward the season of Spring and the greening of the landscape around us. And it is true for the children who are walking with more and more confidence every day toward a future they are dreaming with renewed abilities as the world of reading opens its doors wider and wider.

It is enough to bring not only a spring to the step…but an outright skip! 

January is nearly over…the beginning days of another year. The marking of a new year comes with a certain promise that people embrace in a variety of ways. Resolutions come to mind. Those promises we make to ourselves to do things differently…try something new…change…let go…take on…forgive…reshape…re-create. It is difficult to allow the flipping over of the calendar to a new year without making a silent or verbal assent to make this year better than the last. Perhaps it is ingrained in us to do this. Certainly our culture encourages this behavior. The messages and signs are all around us and it becomes big business as the ball is dropped and the minutes flow from one year to the next.

It really is about marking beginnings, isn’t it? And yet we need not wait for the year to move from one to the next to embrace the power of what it means to begin. I was reminded of a small book I have had for a long time simply entitled Always We Begin Again. It is an updated primer in the way of Saint Benedict by John McQuiston II. For some reason as I felt this January slip away into the shortest month of February, the title of this book came to my mind. In pulling it off my shelf I read these words:

At the beginning of each day, 
after we open our eyes
to receive the light
of that day,

As we listen to the voices
and sounds 
that surround us,

We must resolve to treat each hour 
as the rarest of gifts,
and be grateful
for the consciousness
that allows us to experience it,
recalling in thanks
that our awareness is a present
from we know not where,
or how, or why.

This bent toward marking our beginnings is available to us at the beginning of every day, perhaps even at the beginning of every breath.We need not wait for the turning of the year. Each day represents a beginning that has never been before. The gratitude of consciousness in recognizing the power of it is nothing to be squandered. And yet I know I do. I have a sense I am not alone in this. Opening our eyes to receive the light…the precious light…of a new day is a gift to be savored and celebrated. And yet I forget. My hand reaches for the coffee and my mind begins to immediately make the lists of things I must do, should do. I rarely take the time to savor the beauty and the mystery of it.

For a few years during the first days of a new year I have created a practice of placing paper white bulbs in water and placing them near a window on my kitchen table. I watch them in their beginning as the days of the new year emerge. Slowly their roots reach down into the water as their bodies reach toward the light. It is a visual reminder of how beginnings work. Always…always…some bulbs grow quickly while others stay in their round, brown form holding onto their inner greenness as long as they can. Eventually all will blossom into tiny, fragile, fragrant flowers, a testament to a spring life that is doing its own waiting before it is time to begin. I do not understand why there is such a variation in their emerging. Someone wiser than I may have the answer to this question but I simply believe that some things simply take more time to root, grow and blossom. It is perhaps as true for the two legged as it is for plants and other growing things.

The light that graces our days is beginning to grow and the darkness is retreating. In just a few weeks we will see the snow begin to melt and the ice become a memory. It will signal an ending to winter and the emergence of warmth that seems now but a dream. In both the endings and the beginnings we are invited to ‘treat the hour as the rarest of gifts’ and to allow gratitude to bubble up like a refreshing…unfrozen…spring. Always we begin again.

My mother used to tell the story of a child who cried so hard when the family was going to take down their Christmas tree that the parents relented and left it up till spring. (This child was not me!) It seems to me each time we passed their house she told that story. I am sure that is not the case but it is how I remember it. I have thought of that child, that house, several times over the last week. Though I have not been reduced to tears at the prospect of taking down my tree, I have chosen to let it stand and turn the lights on every morning when I get up. It is still dark outside so it brings that little thrill of light that happened the first time the lights lit up the limbs of this sweet evergreen that has accompanied my family through the holidays. Morning and night the lights are burning.The lights bring such warmth and joy in the midst of the frigid cold and the gray days. Why rush getting rid of that brilliant sight?

This past week a poem by Jane Kenyon came to me in two different emails. Its title says it all…Taking Down the 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.

It really is about the light and the desire to have more of it. And, I believe, the inner push to keep it up also is about all the memories that hang on its branches. Ornaments that offer up little messages from years and years of gifts received and collecting. They stand as a monument to certain parts of life and the fact that a person thought of someone in our family enough to choose an ornament that would travel through months and years… even if we don’t remember the giver. But that is not really the case. Each year as I lift a fragile creation from its eleven month home in the attic, I recount how each one came to find a few weeks stay on the tree. There is one ornament I cherish, given to me by a five year old girl, who is now an adult, a mother and yet when I pull that ornament out of the box I always send a little photo of it to her reminding her of the sweet child she was. 

Decorating the Christmas tree has many layers of meaning.It carries the traditions that have lived in a house and those that perhaps so longer find room there. Taking it down signals an ending of one year and the beginning of another. And sometimes we are just not ready for the letting go, for the energy needed to begin the newness that is calling. 

Eventually I will take the tree down. I will tuck the ornaments safely back into their little compartments in the red and green plastic box that keeps them safe and ready for next year. But I may just hold onto some of the lights and drape them over the mantel so I can yell out like Hamlet’s uncle: “Give me some light!” It seems a good thing to do until the light outside begins to grow and shed some warmth once again. Seems like a plan to me.

“This is the irrational season when love burns bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.”
~Madeline L’Engle

We are people ruled by seasons. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. These seasons determine what we wear, where we go, how we live, how we play. And then, for those of us who have made a life in faith communities of the Christian sort, there are other seasons, ones that divide the church-going year. We are now two weeks into the season of Advent…those weeks leading up to Christmas when there is talk about waiting and preparation and anticipation. Not quite the words we hear reflected in the commercials and advertisements that are also flooding our eyes and ears from television or radio or social media. 

Advent is my favorite season. I love the need to grapple with the darkness that comes seemingly too soon every day. The songs we often sing are in a minor key and call for brooding and thinking and listening with a soul deep sense. There are candles to be lit and a nudge to simply be, to rest for awhile. No need to rush. It’s okay. Really…it’s Advent.

This year I was struck with the power of the question that comes in the reading from scripture that sets the Christmas story in motion. Mary is visited by an angel who tells her she is going to give birth to a boy child and her response is “How can this be?” Thinking of how many times I have heard this story it seemed strange to me that any part of it could be nagging at me the way it is. But two weeks have passed since I heard it once again and I still keep thinking back on that one question.While over the years I have heard many a sermon on this scripture and the various explanations for Mary’s response, still the words won’t let go. Then I realized why the question is staying with me.

“How can this be?” What has captured my attention with these words is that I have thought of the number of places I can imagine people asking…aloud or silently, inwardly…how can this be? Over the last years there have been many times while watching the news and what has unfolded in our country the thought has come to mind…how can this be? When our whole world shut down and we watched in a state of disbelief and confusion as a virus we had never heard of killed people, divided people, confounded people, didn’t we all mutter…how can this be? Then I think of the people who receive a diagnosis or must watch a child struggle with addiction or anxiety or depression while feeling helpless who whisper…how can this be? Then there are those who lose a loved one in a sudden way or watch someone suffer slowly and the only words that seem to fit the situation are…how can this be?

As a lover of questions, I am not completely surprised that this has been my Advent gift. And of course, one question often leads to another which brought me to another that I have often pondered. As someone who started their life out in the theater, a question that often guides improvisational acting is: “What if?” In any scene, like in any life, there are myriad choices that can be made in our actions and responses. What if I move toward this person…what if I walk away? What if I show anger or what if I offer compassion? What if I make a judgment or what if I listen with an open heart? What if I choose kindness no matter the situation, no matter what? This tiny, two word question holds much power.

Two questions. They somehow seem related to me. And while we don’t actually hear Mary’s ‘what if’, clearly it must have been in her mind.  Her affirmative answer has shaped the story we tell once again after more than 2000 years. Maybe in the waiting and the preparation and the anticipation of Advent both questions that have been my companions will lead me to the gift of Christmas with new eyes. It is worth a hope.

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do can stop time’s unfolding.
You never let go of the thread.
~William Stafford

Last week I went to see the Botticelli exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. To imagine these amazing paintings and sculptures traveling from the Uffizzi Gallery in Florence boggles my mind. How do you even pack such treasures?! It was a stunning and beautiful exhibit and reminded me once again about the enduring nature of humans. The last years have been challenging and, on some days, we have seen some of the ways those of us who walk upright can be less than what we were created to be. Seeing this art, created so long ago, reminded me once again of the long line of ancestors on whose shoulders we stand. Over the hundreds of years since these artworks have been in the world much has happened that is tragic and much has happened that infuses the world with beauty and lifts us up to the greater good. It is the way of life.

Standing in front of a sculpture that dates back 2000 years, I wondered at all that it had been witness to over the years. The faces of the women have been worn away with time…except one…who continues to look down in her dance(?) and the features of her face give us a glimpse into her time. What did the artist hope to communicate in this work? Who were these women? What were their lives like? Being the young country that we are it is so easy to believe we are the pinnacle and forget all that has gone before. I believe we do this at our peril. To be in the presence of something that has held ‘onto the thread’ for so long brought me a sense of comfort and hope. 

I have been privileged to see amazing places and beautiful art that has transcended the upheavals and the triumphs of countries, of generations. To see the actual signature of an artist that became known and appreciated only after their death can give us the courage to make, to do, to speak, to act because we never really know how what we bring into the world will contribute in a way we never imagined. Sometimes we have to explain ourselves at the same time knowing we may not be understood. Yet, ‘we follow the thread.’ 

As we enter this week when we offer gratitude for so much, I will be lifting a quiet voice for the artists that have been vigilant through time. The artists whose work allows me to glimpse a time gone by… who survived the trials of their time. The artists who chose to bring their voice of beauty and truth into the world without knowing if anyone would ever appreciate it. The artists who knew they could do ‘nothing to stop time’s unfolding’ yet held onto the thread until it could be passed to those of us in this millennium, this century, this decade, this day, this moment. For these and for all who continue to create, I offer thanksgiving and make a silent promise to hold onto the thread.

Something I’ve forgotten calls me away
from the picnic table to tall trees
at the far end of the clearing.
I remember lying on grass
being still, studying forks of branches
with their thousands of leaves.
While trees accrued their secret rings
life spread a great canopy
of family, work, ordinary activity.
I mislaid what once moved me…
~Margaret Hass

I know a tree. It sits at the intersection of two roads I travel over and over daily. Sometimes on wheels and sometimes on foot. It is a tree that has lived in this neighborhood for so many more years than I have and has kept watch over the comings and goings of lives past, present and future. Its shade has been comfort to a bus stop on hot, summer days and a cool, housing place for a tire swing for the children who live nearby. 

But in the last couple of years, this tree has been visibly dying. Its leaves no longer sprout in the way it once did. In one of this summertime’s windy days, of which we have seen many, an entire large limb was cut off by the unseen forces and fell to cover a part of the well traveled road. Its secret rings, its great canopy is folding up. And yet, part of this connector of earth and heaven refuses to give up. In the hollow of it a green shoot has begun to show forth its inner life. What a spirit of resilience! Seeing it was a sign of an enduring hope that filled my own spirit. I am so glad I noticed its arrival and how it continues to hold space into what is now unfolding into winter.

…Today I have time to follow
the melody of green wherever it goes,
a tune, maybe hummed
when I was too young
to have the words I wanted
and know how a body returns 
to familiar refrains…

Clearly, this tree has decided it has just a bit more within to return to ‘familiar refrains.’ Reflecting on the last years and all that has happened in our world, like many folks, I find I am reawakening every day to another piece of what was once familiar. And within that awaking there is such joy, such promise for what may still become. I also find that I am aware of those parts of this beautiful Creation that have continued to point we human ones to the life that always beat, the life that stands rooted and points us toward the impetus that lives at the center of our beating heart and at the center of this beating Universe. Life. Life in all its fullness. And its strong desire to pull us into becoming all we are capable of. 

…Now like a child, I sit down, lie back,
look up at the crowns of maple,
needled pine and a big-hearted boxwood.
Fugitive birds dart in and out.
In the least little wind, birch leaves turn
and flash silver like a school of minnows.
Clouds range in the blue sky
above earth’s great geniuses
of shelter and shade.

Each time I pass by this sentinel of wood, I will glance up toward the leaves that want to continue to grow. Like the ‘fugitive birds that dart in and out’, I will allow the wisdom of this tree to be a strong reminder of the possible, the hopeful, the promising. When you are in the presence of ‘earth’s great geniuses’, it seems the proper thing to do.

It arrived just in the nick of time. I had been on the waiting list for months and on a morning when my spirits were teetering on the edge of really, really sad and despair it showed up in my inbox.. Over the last years I have added audiobooks to my reading regime. I know some people don’t think of this as actually ‘reading’ but it works for me. Along with the words my eyes take in of both fiction and nonfiction, I have added words whose impact come to me through the voices of people I cannot see but who read to me just as I was once read to by my mother. These books mostly accompany me on the walks that continue to bring sanity and, hopefully, health to my life. 

The book that arrived was The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede. Truth be told, I think I had actually read the book before not long after its release. Another reason for audiobooks is that you get to hear what you read before in new ways. This book recounts the stories of so many people who were diverted to this small town, Gander, in a part of the world most of us know nothing about, Newfoundland.  I don’t really know how the author collected the stories but he manages to weave the variety of characters that may have been on any random plane coming from various places across the Atlantic when the Twin Towers and Pentagon were attacked. As air space was shut down, these people, thinking they were on a trip that was perhaps exciting or boring or exhausting, suddenly found themselves on the ground in a place many had never heard of unable to make their way to the destination they had planned. At the beginning they had no idea why they were where they were or what had happened to create the situation. 

What follows are stories of such unbridled hospitality and kindness it simply makes a person weep. As word got out that the people were stranded, the people of Gander mobilized to provide housing, meals, transportation, entertainment, even friendship to complete strangers. People gave freely of their time, their resources and their homes. The newly arrived were invited into people’s houses to shower and do laundry. Since their luggage was still on the planes and they could not access it, folks were given clothes or driven to places to buy new ones. Underwear seemed to be the main concern. Pharmacists rallied to find what prescriptions were needed and made contact with physicians in the States who could confirm medications. Animals…did anyone think about the animals on those planes?…were rescued from the bellies of the planes and cared for, soothed, seen and loved by people who might never meet their owners.

This book, these stories, came at the right moment when my heart was breaking for what is happening in our community and our country. As the political parties throw poison darts at one another it seems many have forgotten what the purpose of politics and government is really for. This system, this body has the work of creating a living space for all people. All. This is difficult and sometimes painful work. But when it works, when it really works, we get a glimpse of what humanity in its best form looks like. That’s what happened for six days in the tiny town of Gander. People reached out and treated complete strangers as they would hope to be treated in the same situation. Someone much greater than me said this and implored us to live our lives doing as the people of this town no one had heard of did.

Many times while my feet were hitting the pavement, earbuds firmly inserted,  and  I was being washed in the beauty of these stories, my eyes filled with tears. The tears were for those who behaved with love and kindness and for the many ways I have witnessed the failings of this over the last weeks.

As I came to the end of the book and heard of how those who came to town went home forever changed, I was struck with the name of where the planes had landed. Newfoundland. New. Found. Land. I wondered if those whose lives had been changed, both the guests and the hosts, still carry at least a glimmer of those days. Do they think of those they met and those they served and wonder why it can’t be more like that more often?

Then I was reminded that the poet Judy Chicago said it much better than I ever could:

And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another’s will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth’s abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life’s creatures
And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again. 

As the days tick away toward this election, may there be just an ounce of what happened in Gander as people cast their votes. Perhaps then we might all be in a New Found Land. 

**This book was the inspiration for the amazing Broadway musical Come From Away.

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” 

?L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

To live in a place where there are distinct seasons is a gift. Of course, every season and every landscape has its lessons, its gifts. The season of autumn is, for me, one of the richest. Oh sure, in summer a person can soak up the sun and feel the freedom stitched in our bones of those weeks when our young selves ran wild in the neighborhood and escaped the rhythm of school days. Spring brings days filled with such promise of what might bloom, what might yet happen if we have planted well. And winter carries the wisdom of silence and what can be birthed from cold and darkness and quiet.

But autumn is the season of letting go, of noticing how color can emerge from what was full of life on its way to the what next. On my part of the planet, these last days have been filled with letting go as leaves make their way to yards and fields and sidewalks offering those of us who walk upright another chance to learn. Letting go is perhaps one of the most difficult things we do as humans. Letting go of fear, of anxiety, of expectations, of judgements, of grudges, of dreams that were perhaps not right for us. This is to say nothing of the letting go we need do when children grow and make their own way into the world or when those we love most are gone from us forever.

Last week I was aware of the letting go that was happening with one of my favorite trees…the gingko. I have always loved this tree with its fan-shaped leaves. As I made my daily rounds in the neighborhoods I frequent, I noticed that the gingko had done what it is known for doing…letting its leaves all fall on the same day. No single fly away of a leaf for this tree. While there may be a few lingering leaves on branches, for the most part, the leaves all let go at once. It is as if they need company when deciding to make their exit from their summer home to the ground below. It can make for a very dramatic sight if you are lucky enough to see it happen. The wind picks up and it’s goodbye tree-home, hello soft, cooling earth.

I believe I may have shared this poem by Lucille Clifton at this time last year but it is so good here it is again:

the lesson of the falling leaves

the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves

Seeing the gingko leaves nestled into one another in the afternoon sun I had the sense they felt some comfort in being together in their letting go. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the same comfort in our own free falling? I know their carpet was one I walked with awe and not just a bit of gratitude. I felt grateful for their presence…throughout the summer and now in autumn…knowing that their on-going life as fuel for winter’s waiting will help bring about the spring that lives only in our hopes. So much to learn from these trees, these leaves. Love. Faith. Grace. God. I agree with the leaves.

****I have taken a break from the pages over the last months but hope to be back in this space again inviting the reader to ‘pause ‘once again in the busy-ness of the every day. Thank you for reading.

The season is turning. You can feel it. You can smell it. You can sense it. The seeds planted in spring have come to fruition, mostly. Some flowers are past their prime while others are hanging on by a thread hoping the bees and butterflies will still find a drink or two before flying on their way. Harvest is happening…zucchinis galore, tomatoes mounting up, sweet corn finding its way to hands aching to drip of butter and yellow beauty. 

Driving through a neighborhood on the westside of Saint Paul, I saw this sign standing tall above a community garden. “Garden of Good Hearts: All are welcome here.” The site of it made me smile and I felt the warmth that happens when you are in the presence of something bigger and better than your own small self. Whoever decided to create and place this sign knew the goodness that can happen when people garden, when others witness to the gardening, when humans remember our deep dependence on Earth’s goodness. Our hearts are warmed. Our spirits are lifted. 

Seeing it I was reminded of a paragraph in a book I have recently been reading. In Kent Nerburn’s book Small Graces: The Quiet Gifts of Everyday Life, he writes: “Life, death, earth and sky all come together in the intimacy of a garden’s space. It is a metaphor too rich to exhaust, a perfect microcosm of the universe’s deepest wisdom, a constant reminder that we must accept the forces of nature if we are to survive.”

Yes. The garden is both reality and metaphor. We would be wise to remember this as we look out at gardens we planted or that were planted on our behalf for our nourishment and enjoyment. The flowers that are fading in my garden right now remind me to stay awake to the beauty that is offered to me on a daily basis as it will soon fade to memory. The vegetables I am enjoying are the gift of labor that is not my own nudging me to never be cavalier about the food I eat or the gratitude I need lift to both the farmer and those that brought it to my plate. Remembering how all these are in communion with the Earth and Sky, the Sun and rain, the soil and pollinators should make me a humble, light-footed being. 

Outside my door there is a clematis plant that is the Queen of the garden in these days. All summer it has been reaching for the Sun, digging its roots deep into the soil, making its growing magic happen with only a teeny, tiny bit of help from my feeble hands. Its glory always shines forth during the days of the Minnesota State Fair where we first saw it blooming and knew we had to have a plant like it in our garden. Its lavender flowers are opening to the world and delight of countless bees that hum and eat and eat and hum. Walking past it…if you are able to not stop and stare…you can hear the music of the universe alive and at work. I often think it looks like the fireworks that signal the day’s end of the Fair bursting color all over the sky. 

In the changing of the seasons there is the reminder of the fleeting nature of life and also its rich offerings, its infinite beauty, its bending toward goodness. The invitation of the garden, the garden of good hearts, is to be present, awake, aware and to welcome it all,to celebrate it, to store it up for a time that will soon turn less colorful, more frigid. The invitation to ‘accept the forces of nature’ is always there filled with the hope of survival. 

May we join our good hearts together welcoming the gifts of such wisdom.