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.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
? Jorge Luis Borges

Last week I was driving near my neighborhood library and realized I had not been there in a while so I turned in. I didn’t really need a book…I had one or two I was reading…but I felt like I could just use a good dose of library. Summer and the library are inextricably linked in my experience. I have fond memories as a child of riding my bike to the library on hot, sweltering, southern Ohio summer days. The library must have been air conditioned and walking through those doors brought instant relief from the heat while filling my nostrils with that library smell. What is it? Paper? Leather? People? Words floating in the air? Stories just waiting to be told?Wisdom to be discovered?

Walking in I noticed a dad with his three sons. They were lugging an enormous bag of books, that IKEA sized bag that holds nearly everything but the kitchen sink. They were in their summer uniforms of shorts and t-shirts and the older one, a new teenager I imagined, was exhibiting his independent streak by wearing one running shoe and one bright red Croc with mismatched socks. I smiled and silently wished the father all the best. Lugging the bag through the door, the younger one stood with his parent and put the returned books one at a time onto the conveyor belt that took them to that mysterious place that would prepare them for their next reader. The dad exercised great patience and presence.

As I roamed around the library I noticed those who sat at computers and those in some quiet listening areas with large headsets over their ears. In the children’s area, some little ones read with a parent while others worked with puzzles and a few played games on a screen. I thought of the great gift of this institution and how it has shaped not only individuals but our culture. So it was with joy that I watched a story on CBS Sunday Morning about the importance of libraries and the many ways they have grown and changed over the years. No longer a place for simply borrowing books, libraries have become a center of a community. They have always been and continue to be one of those safe havens for so many…different generations, people living on the margins, the curious, the searching, the creative, the shy, the hopeful. Choosing a book and taking it home to explore without cost is a freedom not to be taken lightly.  In fact T.S. Eliot said: “The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.” 

And aren’t we all looking for a little hope in a future for us all? With all that is happening in our world, I will take any good glimpse of it that I can. The library seems a very good place to start. 

As I was checking out the stack of cookbooks that I will likely never use but whose pages give me great joy to flip through, the dad and his sons were checking out yet another huge stack of books and packing them into their big bag. They were laughing and enjoying their time together. Much happens at a library and this is just one snapshot. They headed out the door to the reading that will happen this week, these summer days, that will be, before we know it, autumn days.

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” 
? Henry Miller

For the last two weeks I have been traveling. I was privileged to spend time in the south of England before walking along a path known as the Cotswold Way. Spending my days among places and people I did not know allowed me once again to remember one of the true gifts of travel. Navigating streets and fields, hills and valleys that have known a life outside anything I had experienced confronted me with the fact that we live in a diverse, multi-layered world filled with people whose lives are so very different than my own. Ways of getting from one place to another is different. Clothing takes on a variety that can be startling and surprising, beautiful and eye-stopping. Sounds fall in new ways on the ear. Foods common to those in the place you are visiting seem exotic. 

All this combines to create a sense of humility in me. Noticing the ways that other people move through their world in ways that are so different than my own helps me to realize how wide my lens needs to stretch to be a true citizen of the world. Coming face to face with all I don’t know about the wants and needs of others is humbling. The French novelist Gustave Flaubert puts it this way: “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” 

Of course, a person really does not need to leave home to realize this. Yet I am feeling thankful for the opportunity because in the every day walk of my life it is easy to think others see the world pretty much the same as I do, experience it with the same enthusiasm, boredom or anxiety as I do. When placed on soil not our own, challenged to navigate language and life with the hope of being welcomed or at least tolerated, I believe our hearts and minds expand. And in the world in which we are living right now, this seems a very good thing to me. 

Travel writer and novelist Pico Iyer says: “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.” 

Today I am grateful to have been ‘taken in’. I am feeling blessed to have sensed my heart and eyes opened even a little, to have looked past headlines and news stories and seen the beautiful humanity with which we spin on this globe. It is a sacred wake up call. I hope I offered what I could… in my ignorance and what little I know. And I hope and pray that it has brought me to the place of being a young fool again, one who can fall in love once more with this world, this planet, these humans, this life with which we each have been gifted.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
~Pablo Picasso

“People are hungry for it.”, I said to the two women standing before me. “Oh, no, we are desperate.”,one replied. These words were spoken at last weekend’s Art in Bloom at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This event which showcases floral arrangements interpreting pieces of art from the many galleries had been on hold during the last years. It was another treasured spring ritual that had been sidelined by the pandemic. But this year it was back and in full force as people came in droves to bask in the color and creativity of both professional floral artists and those who simply love art and the opportunity to do something with flowers that is perhaps a little out of their comfort zone.

Desperate. While the women and I laughed a bit at her rather dramatic statement, her words have stuck with me. She made this statement after remarking that she felt there were more people than ever in attendance this year. She could have been right. I don’t know. But I do think she was on to something about the deep desire and need that brought the crowds to this four day event. Even with masks hiding partial expressions on faces, their eyes told the story. The sheer joy at being at something that focused on beauty, that lifted people above the ordinary of their days. With the memory of quarantine and daily doses of bad news in the not too distant review mirror, perhaps there was a certain desperation that people carried with them.

As people we are created for making meaning of our lives. Over the last years that meaning has taken on some very sharp edges. I, for one, do not always like what I see and how I interpret the movement of the world. And so, to be surrounded by art that spans backs centuries is a good reminder that we humans have prevailed, we have come through many terrible things and are still here. To add the gift of taking those pieces of art…paintings, sculptures, statues, masks, tapestries…and asking people in the here-and-now to make a likeness of them in flowers carries with it a balance of sorts. These floral arrangements last only a few days. The pieces of art continue to tell their stories from all over the world, from cultures that no longer exist and those that have thrived and evolved. Together they speak to the fragility and the strength of the human experience.

The great artist Georgia O’Keefe said: ”I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” As people roamed the galleries last weekend they were likely looking for things they had no words for. Some of it may have been a healing of the desperation that can come from being bombarded by the messages the world is sending daily.  Some of it may have been a pursuit of color and shape that has been so remote in this spring that is slow to arrive. Some of it may have been a starvation for beauty that can stay hidden in the cold and brutal temperatures of a Minnesota winter, that gets shut out by media messages that focus on all the negative things happening.

Of course, I write all this knowing that the desperation I may feel is minute in comparison to that which others feel around the world. Looking at the women and children standing in lines to escape from Ukraine and those of the men who have been pressed into military service from what had been a normal, regular life gives new meaning to the word desperate. Their stories and lives haunt us and should cause us to count our blessings and offer whatever aid and prayer we can. Actress and artist, Stella Adler, remarked that “life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” Maybe another thing an experience of an exhibit like Art in Bloom does is to nurture our souls so we might be more caring and generous to those who are in pain, those who suffer. 

Outside our walls, spring is generously arriving now. How we name and hold our own desperations and hopes will help us tell our stories of this particular year, this particular spring. In the meaning making we do, may we wrestle with both the fragility and the strength we carry within from a long line of ancestors…artists… on whose shoulders we stand. And may we find some morsels of beauty and art along the way.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
~ Aristotle

April is National Poetry Month. These designations that focus on certain things for certain months always boggles my mind. Black History Month. Women’s History Month. It seems we ought to be aware and in celebration of both black history and the history of women all the time, every month. And as far as I am concerned, every month, every day is a time to be in awe of poetry and those who struggle to write it. 

Poetry is the beautiful collection of a very few words that can tell a story. A good poem can make us cry or laugh and sometimes all in the reading of a few, short lines. Poetry makes us feel in ways long paragraphs cannot. Poetry expresses our love, our longing, our devotion, our hopes, our dreams, our failures, what haunts us and what fills us with sacred knowing. 

As someone who existed for a long time in a profession that is often given to using too many words, for too long, the gift of poetry cuts through all the banter and brings the hearer to a stripping away of all that is unnecessary. The talent of the poet is in the choosing, the careful choosing of just the right combination of words that create phrases we can remember perhaps for a very long time. And poetry is often the words that rides the lift and fall of a tune in a song that lodges itself in our heart and stays there till our last breath.

Many Thursdays I make my way to the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul to the Schubert Club’s noon concert series. This respite in the middle of an ordinary day never fails to lift my often downcast spirit especially on a day like today when the snow is flying and the wind cuts through my refusal to add another layer. Today’s concert featured the choir ComMUSICation, a group of singers of various ages whose mission is to ‘amplify young people’s voices and cultivate skills for success through equitable access to music, collaboration, and opportunity.’ Today’s performance featured these young people singing with professional singers from MPLS (imPulse). The music was luscious and seeing one young girl given the opportunity to conduct the singers and doing so with such precision and grace gave this former music teacher a very full heart. 

The final piece of music sung by the choir was a musical setting of the poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem ‘One Boy Told Me’ set to music by composer Timothy Takach. One of the young women introduced the song and, after saying the title, beamed: “I just love this poem!” This poem is really a compilation of phrases spoken by Naomi’s son as he was growing up. She had kept a notebook of all his statements…something many parents think they will do and never actually get around to doing. I had heard her tell this story at a workshop I had attended. To hear the poem set to music was thrilling. 

On this gray, April Day with snow spitting onto the daffodils that are trying desperately to push their way into the world, I am thankful for poetry. I celebrate its creation every day but especially today. And I celebrate the musicians who can take the poetry and make it sing. 

Happy Poetry Month!

One Boy Told Me by Naomi Shihab Nye

Music lives inside my legs.
It’s coming out when I talk.

I’m going to send my valentines
to people you don’t even know.

Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop.

Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground
when they swing. I hate that.

Look at those 2 o’s with a smash in the middle—
that spells good-bye.

Don’t ever say “purpose” again,
let’s throw the word out.

Don’t talk big to me.
I’m carrying my box of faces.
If I want to change faces I will.

Yesterday faded
but tomorrow’s in BOLDFACE..

When I grow up my old names
will live in the house
where we live now.
I’ll come and visit them.

Only one of my eyes is tired.
The other eye and my body aren’t.

Is it true all metal was liquid first?
Does that mean if we bought our car earlier
they could have served it
in a cup?

There’s a stopper in my arm
that’s not going to let me grow any bigger.
I’ll be like this always, small.

And I will be deep water too.
Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?
Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?

Your head is a souvenir.

When you were in New York I could see you
in real life walking in my mind.

I’ll invite a bee to live in your shoe.
What if you found your shoe
full of honey?

What if the clock said 6:92
instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?

My tongue is the car wash
for the spoon.

Can noodles swim?

My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?

From now on I’ll only drink white milk
on January 26.

What does minus mean?
I never want to minus you.

Just think—no one has ever seen
inside this peanut before!

It is hard being a person.

I do and don’t love you—
isn’t that happiness?

To hear Naomi Shihab Nye read the poem:

“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”
~Vincent Van Gogh

This past weekend I listened to an interview with Krista Tippett and author Kate DeCamillo. It was a charming and inspiring conversation between two people that seem to truly admire and appreciate one another. During the interview in response to a question, Kate DiCamillo said:“Life is chaos. Art is pattern.” These words pierced both my heart and my imagination. And they hit home to the world as I know it these days. Her statement also sent me to the dictionary to refresh my memory about the actual definition of chaos. “Complete disorder and confusion. Behavior so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions.” And of course, there was also the definition that exists in the beginning of the sacred texts many of us hold dear…“the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe.”

It seems that over the last two and half years chaos has been the food of the every day. Some days I find myself overwhelmed by it all. Am I alone in this? Yet in those feelings I have found myself drawn more and more to art. And not just art we might find in museums or on stages and between the pages of books though that has been particularly helpful in counteracting the experience of disorder and confusion. The every day arts of cooking a meal or arranging flowers in a vase have lifted me out of what seems the randomness of it all. Taking time to pay attention to how I wipe the kitchen counters or arrange books on a shelf also has done the trick. And in just a few weeks (please, God!) spring will be here and the art that is the garden will begin to take shape.

“Art is pattern.” I had really never thought about it in that way before. But the patterns of the buildings we know to be great gifts of architecture can bring a grounding to our world. Noticing how a chair we have housed for years is put together with form and purpose speaks to the patterns of bringing wood and design together. The coat we have worn all winter and are desperately tired of was fashioned from patterns of what fits on our needy, welcoming body. That favorite recipe takes random ingredients and through the process of weaving them together feeds us, even delights us. 

No matter your faith tradition the stories shared round fires and passed down from generation to generation all begin with some kind of disorder that moves through the acts of creativity to birth patterns that bring order, calm, purpose and even beauty. “The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface”…and then light was called forth and the patterns of Creation began to build.

So why did those six words spoken by the great teller of stories for children capture me so? Perhaps it was a challenge. A challenge to take what often feels like the chaos of thought and experience and find a pattern that will make something more of it, perhaps even art. If we take seriously these traditional stories that ground us in who we are as humans, it seems a central message is to create. So on these days that seem to want to hang on for dear life to the grayness of winter and in the face of those voices who want to stir up evermore chaos, there might be the challenge to begin to see, to create the patterns that can make artists of us all. 

It’s worth a try.