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. 

There is no reason to regret that I cannot finish the church. I will grow old but others will come after me. What must always be conserved is the spirit of the work, but its life has to depend on the generations it is handed down to and with whom it lives and is incarnated.~Antonio Gaudi

“Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.” This child’s hand game is one many people know. It may have been created to teach and remind us that all those waving fingers really represent what church is meant to be…people gathering in a variety of ways, worshiping, praying, singing, caring for one another. The message was meant to convey that the church is more than the building. Those ten wiggling fingers made up the most of what church is.

During these last months as the pandemic swirls around us putting everyone at risk, especially those most vulnerable by virtue of age, ethnicity or health condition, this message that church is people has never been stronger. Each Sunday I am in awe of those in church leadership who do amazing, creative work allowing people to worship virtually…something none were trained to do… and yet they are about the work of calling people together and reminding them what it means to be true church…people. It has been inspiring to receive. As the time has lengthened from a few months edging into nearly a year, as Easter came and went, and now as we move into Advent and the Christmas season, it is clear that this way of coming together as the church is not going to change anytime soon. And the truth is, many of us have learned new ways of being church.

I am a self-described church nerd. I have always loved being the church. And I also love the buildings in which people gather to act on being a faith community. While I totally agree that the pandemic has been a powerful reminder of what it means to be church, I also miss being able to go into a space created for acting on what it means to experience the Sacred. I miss the strength of the stone, the dark wood, the smell of candles and the light that shines through stained glass. To be able to sit in a less than comfortable pew and have the wash of color illuminate images from stories that have shaped my life brings a deep comfort. Not being able to be in the buildings that illicit this weighs heavy on my heart.

I live within a five minute drive of the Cathedral of St. Paul and while it is not my congregation, over the years I have found solace within those walls. Especially at this time of year, I will miss going to kneel at the alcove that holds the statue of Mary and to make my way to the Celtic corner where St. Francis, St. Brigid and St. Columba look down at my upturned face. I will, of course miss the church buildings where I have worshiped. The one where I served on staff for many Christmas seasons has a bank of stained glass images of women of faith…having those women reign down on me gave me such strength. And the church building I have now come to call home has an image of Jesus whose face has a green tinge to it. I have loved it since the first time I noticed it. Whether it is the aging of the glass over time or the intention of the artist I do not know. AlI I do know is that it reminds me of the call to be present in Creation, to care for the land under our feet and to grow, grow, grow.

Over the years I have visited sanctuaries large and small and I have found each and every one sacred space. Sitting in the chapel at  St. Hywyn’s Chapel in Aberdaron, Wales I was astonished that one of my favorite poets, R.S. Thomas had been a part of the community. I could feel his words emanating from the stone walls as the powerful winds off the Atlantic whipped at the outside walls. Standing in awe and climbing the precarious stairs of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, I was folded into Gaudi’s dream of creating a sanctuary that would express Heaven and Earth. Stone, wood, glass, the play of light and darkness, each building holds not only the stories of those who worship there but of the architects and artists who tried to give form to what words cannot express. 

More than once I have been asked what I’ll do when we can leave our houses and move about freely again in the world. Yes, I do want to eat in a restaurant and go to a movie and attend a concert. And I really want to go and sit in a sanctuary, in a pew, feel its hard surface digging into my back and legs, stare up at the windows and breathe in the scent of candle and story, listen to the play of music bouncing off stone and space, and savor the silence of sanctuary. 

Signs. Over the last months I have found myself driving through several states and have been aware of the various billboards that dot the highways. I’ve noticed that some states seem to gravitate toward more signage than others. In some sates they are nearly constant and in others you can drive for countless miles and see no messages calling from the fields. During an early drive, I saw the message “Billboards work.” Clearly this was placed by a business that sells billboard space. I wondered. Is this true? Is anyone really pushed toward a product or idea by a message blazoned on a billboard, one difficult to read at breakneck speeds as one drives? 

Given the weeks in which I was driving, clearly, some of those messages placed by folks running for political offices were counting on the impact. I saw lots of those. Some of the other messages that actually stuck with me, causing me to write them down when it was safe to do so were: Live more. Worry Less. I liked that one. Iseemed to be a series because that billboard was followed up with: Start fresh. and a little further down the road, Use Your Outside Voice. It was unclear who was putting these messages into the world but they did give me something to think about as I drove. Another: Forgive Like Jesus caused me to think about the depth of those three words. Pretty big stuff to think about while moving at sixty plus miles per hour. Do I forgive with the open hearted, unconditional nature of Jesus? Mostly, not so much.

Peppered among these road side signs were the trucks carrying various large pieces of farm equipment and parts of wind turbines destined for farm fields along the way. I am always in awe of those who can maneuver one of those enormous rigs. Luckily their message, strapped across the back of their vehicle, “Oversize load”, makes clear that I am wise to not only be in awe but to stay back and stay safe. I thought of all the people who are carrying an oversize load in these very challenging times, how most don’t have a visible sign to nudge us into being careful and caring in their presence.

One of the most telling signs came to me not on the road but at Yellowstone National Park. Walking along the plank path created through the many geysers, I witnessed this sign: Unstable Ground. Boiling Water. Stay on designated paths. Slippery when wet or icy.. I thought about how this seemed an apt message for our times. We are certainly on some big old unstable ground right now which feels like something is boiling under our feet. The urging to stay on our designated paths lest the slippery ground causes us to falter seems very wise.

In the uncertainty of 2020, many of us are looking for signs. Guideposts that answer such questions as: When will this pandemic be over? Should I go or stay home? Can I be with those people but perhaps not others? Is this safe? Is this wise? We would love some clear, certain messages that tell us what to do. Others believe they have clear answers and seem to move with an assurance that baffles many. It is probably within the human DNA to search for signs, to hope for signs, to rely on messages we believe must lurk just outside our vision. 

While signs that come through words are almost always present, it has been my experience that the wordless signs are often the most powerful. The messages that come without verbal nuance are often more difficult to notice. And noticing is our real work, isn’t it? The being awake and aware to those signs that can be right before our eyes and yet so easily ignored.

On my kitchen table I have just such a sign. Resting in various vases and glasses,  narcissus bulbs are sitting on stones and water. Very early in the time when I placed them there, the bulbs began to put forth roots and the green shoots began reaching upward. I watch them several times a day and notice their growth, sometimes it seems I might be able to sit and see the growth happening. It seems miraculous to me. This message of hope and beauty and the infinite goodness of nature is a wordless affirmation. It says to me: Even in what perhaps promises to be a cold, difficult and uncertain winter, beauty is still emerging. It is a message. It is a sign.

And I am deeply grateful.

Dear friends: I woke up in the middle of the night realizing I misnamed the flower I wrote about in yesterday’s post. It is a marigold not a chrysanthemum! Sorry about that.

Resilience. I have been pondering resilience often these days, wondering if I will be able to conjure this state of being as we head into a pandemic winter. Resilience…the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties…toughness…the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape…elasticity. Instead of objects or substances, I have been thinking about human resilience. Predominantly, mine. And the resilience of those I love and whose lives brush up against mine. Also, the resilience of our nation and the resilience of our world. It seems to me that we are living in days that are calling us to pull from some deep well, perhaps yet unseen or known, to fill our lungs with the sweet, strong breath of resilience.

Looking around I have been trying to observe those with seemingly more resilience than I feel I can muster. Those that seem to be able to be more optimistic than my mind can fathom. In the density of harsh words and inescapable untruths that fly toward us daily, I have a desire to slather on the power of resilience like the sunscreen that keeps my skin from burning in the now waning days of summer. I long for the ‘capacity to recover quickly from difficulties’ for it to fill my veins and pump its way into my heart. A heart that feels so weighed down with uncertainty that ‘elasticity’ seems to evade me. My sense is that I am not alone in this feeling, this desire.

In her popular memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama writes: “Grief and resilience live together.” She describes how she has learned this over and over in her life, as a human being and in her role in public life. Each day we see the faces of those who are caring for people whose lives have been affected by COVID-19. Those who work in hospitals, nursing homes and in various health care settings are confronted daily with grief on so many levels. And also resilience. Families whose lives have been upended by this virus, whose jobs and home life has been changed forever are swimming in a sea of sorrow. And also resilience. This week children, teachers and parents are grieving the ways their fall once looked as school resumed and dreams of what the year would be like are put on a shelf until some yet to be known time. Daily doses of a longing for what was and what might be forms into a communal grief that holds us, holds the whole of the world. 

And yet. And yet. Arriving at the cabin this week, I witnessed a sight that somehow spoke to me of a resilience that rises out of discarded hopes.Staring up at me from a woodland path, a sunshine shape held space. My sister-in-law had pulled out a marigold stalk and thrown in out onto the path of the woods, discarding it from its pot near the cabin. But this blossom was not yet done with its living. It found a place to burrow into the soft soil and grew anyway under the branches of a birch tree. Its brilliant yellow face lighted up the greens and browns of a dying, autumnal landscape saying, “I am not done yet. I have more life in me.” Seeing this gave me such joy and hope. Resilience was alive and well and offering itself to all who would see.

In her poem, Optimism, Jane Hirschfield writes:
More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Resilience. It may be difficult to live into all the time over the next months. But perhaps if in our socially distanced circles one or two of us can muster it on one day and two others on another and so one and so on, we can birth enough elasticity and capacity for tenacity to see us through. When ‘finding the light newly blocked on one side’, may we all find the strength to ‘turn in another’ until resilience lives in us and through us. 

It is my hope and prayer.

During this COVID time, like many people, I adopted several new activities to break up the monotony of the days and to find some way of seeing a future that is different from the present, chaotic void in which we find ourselves. Most of us have heard the stories of the bread bakers, those who stripped the store shelves of any sign of yeast and caused a run on flour usually only seen at holiday baking time. There were those who put together puzzle after puzzle, staring and fitting small pieces together well into the nighttime hours until…voila!…the completed picture was visible. Others had weights and yoga mats delivered to their homes and began the exercise regime they had only dreamed of before they had such time on their hands. Many also tackled the stack of unread books that had gathered on the bed side table or on the shelf. What a perfect time to finally read War and Peace, right?

I was one of the people who planted seeds in small containers to be ready to deliver tender plants to the warming, hopeful soil of a spring that would spell the relief of being able to be outdoors, no longer wearing the parka of quarantine. I watered and tended seeds for zinnias, bachelor buttons and sunflowers. Rotating them in the ever-evolving light of the season, I watched them grow and then repotted them when they outgrew their early nests. Just seeing the change in them helped to engender a change in me. When the time was right, I planted them outside and continued to douse them with water and care in anticipation of what was to come. I can report that the zinnias have been plentiful and I have created many beautiful bouquets to grace the table. The bachelor buttons were not as successful serving up only about a half dozen lavender-blue blossoms. Next year, maybe?

But of all the sunflower seeds I planted, only one…ONE…grew into fullness. And yet, it is this one single flower that has given me such joy and provided many lessons. For weeks now I have watched as this plant has grown tall, then taller still, until finally a brilliant, golden flower stands at attention overlooking the garden and the house next-door. I have marveled that this flower, known for always bending its face toward the Sun, had to grow so tall to do so. Knowing nothing about plant science, I find it very interesting that so much green stalk needs to be present to give birth to this yellow, orange beauty. So much reaching upward in search of the light.

Perhaps it is the sign of too much pandemic reflection but this sunflower has become a kind of spiritual teacher to me. All the work it took to continue to stretch and grow and push upward all in search of the gift of sunshine, of the hope of opening to something more beautiful, something that offers food to something smaller, more fragile. I have watched as both Monarch butterfly and several kinds of bees have feasted on the sweet nectar at its center. All the while it continues to stand tall and hold its precious face toward the light that drew it and nourishes it. 

Sometimes, almost always really, reaching for the light is hard work. It takes being able to stand strong in the winds of storms and the pelting of rain and the hail that batters. I have observed the sunflower doing this. Reaching for the light also takes patience, patience in being still and turning ever so minutely toward the rays that promise something more than we can even imagine.  There is a Maori proverb that says: “Turn your face toward the sun and the shadows fall behind you.” In a time when shadows dance all around us bringing confusion and fear and uncertainty, the opportunity to face the light is a gift.

This week I will continue to bask in the beauty of my solitary sunflower. I will check the progress the feasters have made on its center. And I will turn my own face toward the light of the Sun hoping the shadows that can hover over our days will fall behind me. At least for a little while. 

At least for a little while.