Dear Friends: I am sending this note to let you know that The Practicing Life: Simple Acts, Sacred Living has gone into a second printing. This book, written a few years ago, seems to be hitting a nerve with folks as we traverse these often chaotic times. For this I am grateful. I have announced this on Facebook already so if this is a repeat message, I apologize. In addition to the book, it is also available for Kindle. Both can be ordered through Amazon or Kirk House Publishers. If you know someone who might find it helpful, would you please pass on the information to them?
I thank you for subscribing to these occasional writings. I feel blessed by your reading.
Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made. I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say. ~William Stafford
It is not lost on me that I have the privilege, the deep and awesome privilege of living near the Mississippi River. Every day, sometimes many times a day, I cross its waters and once again marvel that this is truth in my life. I look out over the skyline of St. Paul and wonder at the many events and experiences this river has witnessed. I have stood by its flowing at all seasons and seen any manner of things being dragged in the current as it makes its way to the ocean. In these summer months, it is a joy to watch the various kinds of boats that make their way up and down…small kayaks, motorboats, large cabin cruisers and canoes. Most for pleasure but some for the important work of carrying cargo to various ports along the way. This mythic river feeds our country in unseen ways.
Over the years I have learned much from the river. It has calmed me. It has received my tears. It has inspired me. It has been a source of awe and perhaps even fear as I stare at its force from the top of one of the bridges it flows under and I stand above. There is strength and a constancy about the river that cannot be rivaled. It is flowing…going somewhere…at its own, sweet pace. Of course there are times when it carries ice from the north, large chunks that started someplace else and got taken along for the ride. The same is true for the small and large limbs and trunks from trees dislodged from another shore. All of this grounds me in some primal way. And when the winers are severe and the waters rise, it can be a source of destruction and devastation. You can learn much from observing a river.
Yet, it is not just the river itself that is a teacher. Often I am blessed to watch the barges lined along the rivers’ edge. I wonder at what they hold. And then along comes the lowly tugboat to push them on their way. Just last week I watched as the small, white boat made its way upstream and came to rest behind the long, flat, inelegant metal barges. I don’t know what the barges carried…sand, rock, grain perhaps. All I know is that the tiny, toy-like boat gave the huge barges a shove and there they went. Down the river! Watching the graceful way the tugboat propelled the barges into motion, I thought of all the ways we humans often feel unable to move, held captive by mistakes we think we’ve made and countless other things. We are stuck on the shore like a waiting barge, carrying a load that seems impossible to dislodge. And then along comes the smallest thing…a kind word, a smile, a look of love…and something shifts. The movement may not be as strong or as powerful as what moves the barge but it creates a change that gives courage and hope and the current of it carries us to a new place.
Like the river, the tugboat is quiet. The river is moved by currents unseen to us and yet we know wisdom hovers near, is present, is true. The tugboat is built in and moves with humility. There is gift in that for both boat and human. Standing on the shore, if we wait and watch, we can be held in something that goes deeper than what appears on the surface. Both river and boat ‘hold the stillness exactly before us’.
Recently, I attended my high school reunion. It was a big one…with a zero. I drove across four states to get there and looked forward to meeting up with people, some who had driven only a few miles, those who had made their life not far from home. It was great to see people, to catch up with their lives, their children’s lives. It was also wonderful to remember stories of the antics of high school, things we did and things we should not have done. Words like: “You haven’t changed a bit!” were bandied about but we all knew better. Life had been kinder to some. Many resembled a parent I had known and loved as a child. We had all seen some hardship and also great joy. It showed on all our faces. And we were happy to be in one another’s presence for a short time again.
At one point, one of my classmates expressed the depth of feeling he had for the others present, a depth of feeling that seemed to surprise him. Looking out at the gathered group, I said: “Well, this is where we started.” This group of people had been in our classes from kindergarten on…for twelve years. Our parents knew one another and their parents knew many who had traveled far back in our family trees. It was a chain that led back a few generations and then forward to us. Some of us may have traveled farther afoot than others but some part of us always comes back to where we started. The people, the place, the soil and air of where our story began.
Thinking of this reminded me of this poem by George Ella Lyon. It made its rounds a few years ago and never fails to cause me to stop and think of what I would write if given the task of describing Where I’m From:
I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride. I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening it tasted like beets.) I am from the forsythia bush, the Dutch elm whose long gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.
I am from fudge and eyeglasses, from Imogene and Alafair. I’m from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons, from perk up and pipe down. I’m from He restoreth my soul with cottonball lamb and ten verses I can say myself.
I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch, fried corn and strong coffee. From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger the eye my father shut to keep his sight. Under my bed was a dress box spilling old pictures. a sift of lost faces to drift beneath my dreams. I am from those moments — snapped before I budded — leaf-fall from the family tree.
Perhaps it was the zero in the reunion year that caused me to want to attend so fiercely. But mostly I think it was the deep need in all of us to connect to that place where we started. Though some may remember it more fondly than others, it is still a reminder of the beginning of a story we are all still writing, still living out…if we are lucky, if we are blessed to do so. We can see the seeds of what was planted in that early soil. We may want to rearrange the garden plot a bit, change the nature of how things have grown, weed out some of the less than lovely parts, give sun and water to others we still have hope will flourish. But our original soil still holds us. We are each leaves fallen from trees planted with the evolving history of who we are and of where we started.
How would you write a poem entitled “Where I’m From”? Whose names are tied forever with yours whose ‘faces drift beneath your dreams’? It is something to think about. It is something to cherish.
“I thank you God for most this amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is ‘yes’.” – e.e. cummings
We are beings grounded by our bodies upon the Earth. We walk upright looking out toward the landscape that holds our attention, that holds our lives. We move here, live here, make relationship here, create here. And when we allow our eyes to travel upward, we are confronted with the blue expanse of sky, of what we think of as ‘the beyond’. This ‘beyond’ calls to our imagination in ways that is often shaped by those winged ones, the birds, that seem to live between landing on the Earth and lifting above it.
What would it be like to be able to rise above our planted feet and soar over the ground that anchors us? I used to have a recurring dream of being able to fly…like the birds I watched and wondered over. It was not an anxiety driven dream. Instead, I would simply begin to move my arms as if I was swimming and before I knew it, there I was, rising above the Earth. Flying! It was exhilarating and carried an overwhelming feeling of freedom that stayed with me for a few moments upon waking.
Over the last days I had the joy of simply being able to watch the sky as I sat by one of Minnesota’s lakes. Once again, I was drawn to the magic and mystery of the sky. The expanse of it. The beauty of it. The colors being painted by light, weather and other elements I don’t claim to understand. Watching the changing shape of clouds and hues was mesmerizing. Standing on the shore with my feet firmly planted, watching the Sun slowly sink into the horizon of water, I was reminded of another time I stood with total strangers watching the sunset on Lake Michigan. All ages of people lined a bluff, mostly silent or speaking only in whispers, eyes trained on the sky. When the Sun seemed to dip into the stretch of water, everyone spontaneously applauded. I remember the joy that flooded me at this affirmation of Creation doing what it does everyday. Yet with these witnesses it became applause worthy. Observing the sunset show as I did this week, I applauded in my heart.
Sky. Clouds. Sunsets. Sunrises. We are poorer if we do not pay attention to their movement, their beauty, their magic, their mystery, their constancy. As land bound beings, it is wise to let our eyes wander upward and take a moment… or two… to give thanks for the blue that is our canopy. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.” Indeed. And there are many ways to be nourished.
May we gaze upward this day to see how the Sky is offering bread for our eyes and, in turn, our souls.
“The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on. We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it. It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women…” ~Joy Harjo, US Poet Laureate
I would venture a guess that most people have engaged in the conversation of ‘what will you do when this ends?’ What will be rushed to first when this pandemic no longer holds us in its time warp? This question is likely tied to the other question that has been asked frequently: What have you missed most? I know that I have asked and been asked both of these queries. It has been easy for me to answer both as they have the same answer. As the pandemic lingered on, what I have missed is sitting around a table with other people, eating, talking, over something as simple as a bowl of soup, a glass of wine, a cup of coffee. Looking into the faces of friends, family, those I love, whose lives have traveled a similar trajectory as mine. This is what I longed to do.
This is why I was so drawn to this poem by US poet laureate, Joy Harjo. She says in words more beautiful and deep than anything I could ever conjure, what I’ve missed, what I want to run toward when the time is right. Sitting at a table. Eating. With other people. And I am so pleased to say that over the last weeks, I have had the opportunity to do just that. Twice I have been blessed to sit and look into the welcoming, beautiful faces of others as we shared a meal. The experience carried with it all the gifts of the past haloed with the golden glow of how precious this time is. Full of memory. Full of understanding of what we had lost, what we hoped to regain as we sat together.
“…At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers. Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table…”
The act of eating together is one of the great levelers of being human. As the poet says ‘ we must eat to live.’ Over the last year we have been aware of many of the levelers…illness, death, fear, grief, uncertainty. We have also seen the fractures in so many of the systems that are meant to help create a workable and livable society. Healthcare, technology, food sources and work all favored those of us with privilege. The tables have not been equal and the pain of the last months have once again been carried inequitably on the backs of the poor. It is something with which we must grapple.
“…This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun. Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory. We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here. At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks. Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.”
Our tables have been empty. Our tables have longed to welcome us and challenge us. More and more, we are emerging from our homes to find our way toward living in ways for which we never knew we would yearn. I hope I have learned to never take the act of sitting down at the table to eat with others for granted. I hope these months have helped us all to watch out for those who live on the margins and to reach out with care when we can, to work to change the systems that keep others at arms length, in shadows we don’t want to notice. We all have our own story of what it has been like to live through our varied experiences of COVID. May we look and listen with grace to everyone’s story, perhaps becoming that table that is ‘a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun. May all our tables help us be birthers of a new world which is kinder, gentler, more compassionate and full of love for each ‘sweet bite.’
We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties, Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. ~Paul Laurence Dunbar
It is really interesting what you find when you go looking for quotes and poems about masks. It is something I do with regularity…searching for what has been said or written about a particular subject that gets stuck in my head. Some of these discovered words can affirm my own thought process. Others confound. Still others challenge and bring me up short.
For more than a year, we have added a mask to our daily act of getting dressed. At first it was so odd and felt so confining. But like most things, over time, it became second nature. Now I sometimes realize that I am in my car, completely alone, or walking down the street with no one around and I have forgotten to take off my mask off. From my observation, I am not alone in this.
Some people now have masks that match what they are wearing for the day. Others carry messages. A friend has one that says “Mom”. She realized if she wore it upside down is says “Wow”. Pretty fun. Some carry in words a cause they are passionate about and tell those they meet what the wearer values. Without the mask, we might never know that about a particular person. Informative. And then there are those masks festooned with sequins for lace or special occasions.Creative. Fun.
Now and then while wearing these face coverings, I have wondered what we will do when it becomes unnecessary to wear them to protect others and ourselves against this virus that has brought our world to a screeching halt. Will there be backyard parties with bonfires that include a ritual of mask burning? I have thought about what it would be like to create art using them…framed remembrances of the masks we wore in a year we will recall again and again…quilts sewn with different colors and fabrics that got us through the last months. It would bring new meaning to ‘crazy quilt’. Will we decorate with them, pack them away to remember this time?
In my internet sleuthing, I found the words written over time about masks are often literal and metaphor, pointing us toward a deeper meaning, a wiser truth. As the poem above written by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Mr. Dunbar (1857-1906) was an African American son of former enslaved parents. He was a bright student in his Dayton, Ohio school but did not have the financial means that allowed him to go to college. Instead, he became an elevator operator which, he said, gave him time for his great love…writing poetry. He later became known as America’s first published Black poet. You can find out more about him at the Poetry Foundation. It is fascinating.
I imagine Mr. Dunbar knew much about wearing masks. The kind of masks required of him to stay true to his gift of writing in a world that denied him access to much we take for granted is something I cannot even try to understand. My mask of privilege will not allow it. And yet his words find a place within each of us. In 2020-21 we have worn literal masks but the masks we have placed upon our faces to keep people from knowing the fullness of our ‘torn and bleeding hearts’ is something all humans experience. This past year with all its losses has offered many opportunities to hide behind our cloth and skin masks. Perhaps in that way, these now common coverings have been a blessing that goes beyond our caring for one another.
But as the masks come off for us all, which they eventually will, how will we look at one another with great compassion for the unseen masks that we all wear? May the next year find us standing more fully in the gift that has been given each of us with no need to hide any of it. May we welcome each we meet with the care and kindness we want so deeply for ourselves. May it prepare us for an unmasking that brings both joy and hope to the whole world.
…I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ~Mary Oliver
All the seasons have gifts to offer us, I believe. Summer holds out the experience of abundance and the warmth of the Sun’s rays. Winter reminds us of the wisdom of stillness, of hibernation, of looking inward. Autumn brings a visual lesson of letting go. As leaves fall, we, too, can reflect on what needs to be let go and gently open our arms to release.
This particular spring, at least in Minnesota, seems to want to unfold in a Zen-like manner. No rushing. The lower temps have kept us wearing down jackets on one day and shorts on another. The cool mornings and evenings have given way to warming afternoons but sometimes not. Spring is, of course, the season of rebirth. We see brilliant greenness push up and bulbs who held their life underground begin to emerge. Their welcome blossoms dazzle our eyes and we breathe deeper in expectation.
Yes, it is about rebirth, and yet, this spring has also caused me to notice its fleeting nature. Those tulips and daffodils only last for a very short period of time. The wise person drinks them in at every glance. And the flowering trees now showing themselves like showgirls around every corner do so for only a very short period of time. So this year, I am naming another lesson of spring…fleeting. Spring also offers the opportunity for each of us to remember the transient nature of life…the reminder that, as poet Mary Oliver writes: Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
This is not meant to be a morbid noticing. Instead, it is an invitation to do as she urges…be wide-eyed and pay attention, fall down in awe, embrace idleness, honor the blessing of the beauty and color that is an ephemeral gift. Which is what I’ve been trying to do as I watch the lily of the valley plants that have been growing with amazing speed in my yard. I have remarked to several people that I feel if I sat still long enough I might actually be able to watch them grow. Just a few weeks ago, there was not a hint of their presence. Having slept in the cold, dark soil over the winter months, they were invisible when I raked the dead leaves that had offered winter’s blanket. And now, any day, they will fill the yard with their distinctive May fragrance. I will cut bouquets and place them all around the house to try to hang on to this scent, this season. The rooms will be a gallery of May.
Come June, however, the delicate, white flowers will dry up. Their fading will be a memory that can only be regenerated when passing someone on the street who is wearing a certain, faint sweet scent that reminds me of my grandmother. Two beautiful memories in one.
Fleeting. How can we honor all that is fleeting in our lives, in our world? Mary Oliver’s words send a call to noticing and names it an act of prayer. And who are any of us to argue with this wise poet who has given us such joy and created a script that can accompany our lives?
If you are in the spirit to celebrate and honor the learnings of this short-lived season, then maybe it is more an act of prayer than any of us ever imagined. So, let us pray…
“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.
~Jeremiah 6:16
Several days a week, I sit in a coffee shop in my neighborhood reading, writing or, truth be told, sometimes just staring. Amore Coffee sits at the crossroads of Annapolis and Smith Avenues in West St. Paul. It is a crossing of roads that leads to the Mississippi River in at least two of the directions and forms a border that becomes St. Paul. I sit and watch as people make their daily rounds taking them along various routes that are mystery to me. But for the one moment I notice their passing, I like to believe we are linked in some way.
Crossroads. When I think of this intersection, I often remember these words from ancient lips…”stand at the crossroads and look…ask for the ancient paths…where the good way is…walk in it…find rest for your soul.” I would love to also believe that the road each of these travelers is taking brings some rest, some soul nurturing experience. I would also hope that they are finding good ways in which to walk, ways that bring life to themselves and others.May it be so.
The image of crossroads is both real and metaphor. One of the most influential literal crossroads in my life is found on the Isle of Iona, a small island off the west coast of Scotland. It is a place that has been a deep, soul-feeding place for me. On this little three mile island there are two roads. The roads come together and cross in a place that provides the many pilgrims that travel there a choice of which way to turn. Each choice will eventually bring them to the sea(it is an island after all)but the path will be very different. Each person traveling these roads searches for something different yet all have hopes of moving into a deeper soul place. Never has the experience of crossroads been so palpable to me, so visual. Since that time, the metaphor of crossroads has traveled with me, lives someplace within me.
Of course, crossroads appear to us daily. There is the sunrise and sunset, the crossroads of a day into night, night into day. December 31 and January 1 invite us to the crossroads of a year. There are the many choices, decisions we must make each day that imply a crossroad. This or that? Here or there? There are the big life experiences of birth, death, relationship, graduation, accident, illness, career choice. All crossroads of sorts.
And here we are at some given point of this pandemic. For more than a year we have lived in ways that were unfamiliar and difficult and confounding. The isolation we all experienced in varying degrees seems to be opening. And yet to what? This crossroads has no clear direction for which way to turn. We each will, in the end, have to find our own GPS that will lead us to the ‘what next’, our post-COVID crossroad turn.
One of the most famous pieces of wisdom about this experience of crossroads comes from the poet Robert Frost:
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
I have to admit that I was unacquainted with the two lines that lead up to the last three that many can quote. “I shall be telling this with a sigh…somewhere ages and ages hence.” These words capture the depth of spirit with which most are approaching this crossroads between our pandemic life and what life may be like in a few months. Sighing…deeply sighing. A sigh that will breathe us into ages and ages that are yet to come. With that in mind, may we stand at this crossroads and look with wisdom, patience and compassion toward each turning. Our turning may make all the difference. For ourselves, our communities and our world.
Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams. ~Paul Gauguin
The winter leaves us starved for color. Especially this past winter. One that found us cocooned inside with threat knocking at our door and fear swirling its meanness in corners like dust gathering. For those of us in the northern climes winter has its own language but this year’s words were particularly unkind. No warm gatherings with friends except those we could do outside round a fire calling on the wisdom of our ancestors who did stoked their own circles of fire before us. Though the fire was warm, our layers many, the freezing temperatures kept our meetings short and sweet reminding us of the control we didn’t have. And while the spring is slowly unfolding there are still days shot through with cold winds, low temps and even the stray snow flake.
All this has led me to reflect much on color. I have often thought that it is the absence of color that finally gets to us after a long winter. Many of us seem to strengthen the cold’s hold on us by wearing black, brown, gray, as if to mirror the colorless world outside our window. Days of white and gray become our only vision which the seed providers must know well as they send out little pages of hope in the catalogues that begin to arrive in January. Sitting in my colorless clothes, leafing through those pages is a balm.
Right now I am standing watch over yellow tulips that have emerged in my garden. I am guarding them from the squirrels that like to snip off their heads as soon as they bloom. I have nearly wept at the orange-reds the little rascals left laying on the ground after decapitating the green stems that stand nearby. Perhaps the squirrels are hungry for color, too. They do not know the depth of my need for this color and will likely encounter an enraged woman running at them to protect the bloom reaching its green body toward the heavens as I scare them away. My neighbors are hopefully turning a grace-filled eye.
It is not a coincidence that artists speak boldly about color. “Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” writes Claude Monet. “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any way.” says Georgia O’Keefe. And Wassily Kadinsky spoke,”Color is a power which directly influences the soul.”
Yes. The soul. It is the healing power of color that reaches out to touch our wintry souls. Souls that are weary of the pandemic and all the pain and suffering of this last year. Weary from isolation and staying away from those they love. Weary from tragic headlines and compassion for the lives they hold. Weary from winter’s cold and hibernation. Weary of our dark wardrobes and multiple layers. Soul weary.
Last week I had the great privilege of being bathed in immense swaths of color as I visited the tulip fields in Washington. Seeing the large numbers of people filling their hunger for color(socially distanced, of course)was like sitting down at a soul buffet. While their faces may have been covered with masks, their eyes were smiling and the air around us danced with beauty and hope. My soul was soothed and ready to once again face life’s beauty and terror.
Color. It is not the only healer of the soul but it is a good place to start. What colors are you seeing in your daily rounds? What color will lift your weary spirit? It is definitely a time to be awake, wide awake to all the color that is being offered up to us. May the colors of this spring dance before our waiting eyes and may we all be present enough to see because as poet Savita Tyagi says in her poem, Tulips:
…But I didn’t know much about tulips then. Soon I came to realize that each stem Bore just one flower, and their delicate Flashy bloom lasted only for a week most…
This blast of color is short-lived. Eyes open…and now I have to get back to my post, guarding yellow!
Regrets…I’ve had a few… ~Lyrics by Paul Anka…sung by Frank Sinatra
There are changes happening in this world we have been traveling in since the pandemic began. The days of total isolation are finding openings and with those openings people are assessing what has happened to us, looking for markers of accounting for the days and months that have passed. Of course, there are the very real markers of lives lost and grief deferred for so many. How will we reckon with those wounds on our souls both individually and collectively? As more of us are vaccinated, we are confronted with the inequities of racial, social, medical, economic realities that have always been there but been made both more visible and palpable. How will we heal and make a new way in this wilderness? During the months that have passed we asked ourselves so many questions, searched for answers that eluded our grasp and brought home the truth of how little control any of us have over the simplest and deepest of life’s realities. What have we learned from this…and how quickly will we forget its truth once, as many like to say, “Life gets back to the way it was. Normal.”?
I have been reflecting over the last weeks about what I’ve really done with this last year. In the first days, when we were told to stay home, when many of us were having everything delivered(another point of privilege), when I washed my groceries, sanitized everything in sight, and washed my hands countless times a day, I had some ideas of ‘things I would accomplish’ since I had to stay at home anyway. I may have cleaned a drawer or two. I worked a puzzle. I walked many miles. I read a lot of books and Netflix and I are intimately acquainted.
Unlike many, I could not do much more than that. I am in awe and inspired by many of my friends who did so much with the time…created beautiful things, took online classes, organized all those closets, drawers and files that had just been sitting there waiting for ‘when there is more time’. My confession is that I could not do any of that and now I have the feeling of regret. This regret is seeping into my thoughts with great regularity.
In between the times when I am putting on my regret coat, I have remembered that one of the things that did sustain me and kept me uplifted was poetry. And since April is National Poetry Month, I think it is a good time to give thanks for the poets…those artists who give us just enough words, but not too many, to help us feel, clarify, lament, and celebrate whatever life is dishing up. The poem that I kept going back to during the last year is a familiar one that always has the power to put me right: The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Just imagining myself into those words brings me to a depth of wisdom that never fails. In the despairing moments that have visited in both the daylight and the darkness, the image of taking what is stirring the fear monsters and placing them where the great heron feeds, causes me to remember the rhythms of the world that hold fast. I can scatter my regrets of what I didn’t do, what I didn’t accomplish, on the still waters allowing it all to settle into forgiving peace. Maybe that is enough.
For those who have much to show for these last months, blessings upon blessings. For those who have difficulty remembering one month from the other, grace upon grace. May we all know the freedom of letting go of any regrets knowing we have all been doing the best we can.
