Turtle Wisdom

"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure." William Saroyan

There was a turtle in the road this morning as I drove out from the lake house. This is the second one I've seen in the past few weeks. The first sighting appeared early, early one morning on the back gravel path. It was a female and she was methodically digging in the coarse gravel in preparation for laying her eggs. She worked slowly and deliberately all morning, pushing the earth aside tablespoon by tablespoon it seemed. I stopped to watch her each time I walked by the glass doors overlooking the path being careful not to disturb her but anxious about her location and the potential for egg raiders. The spot she chose seemed very exposed. Fanny, my resident raccoon, would make short work of those eggs if she got wind of them. At midday, as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone, her work abandoned for some mysterious reason. The only thing left behind was one turtle egg shell partly torn. Something must have threatened her and perhaps managed to get some of her eggs, for there were none left in the shallow earthen nest. The meager remains tugged at my heart. She had worked so hard, for hours, to dig the hole and despite all her efforts, her nesting failed.

Years and years ago in Florida, I followed a nesting turtle. There were several of them, making steady headway towards a secluded sandy spot back in the undergrowth. Who knows how many years they had been nesting there. I remember the trees were full of crows cawing and making all kinds of racket. When I arrived at the nesting site, to my horror I discovered why. The crows were dive bombing the nest sites and grabbing up turtle eggs from the nests as soon as they were laid. It was an awful thing to witness and a powerful reminder not only about the laws of nature but about a lesson in living. We have all at one time or another, poured ourselves into an important endeavor, worked hours and weeks, even years towards its completion, only to have marauding crows and hungry raccoons steal our eggs and cause us to abandon our dream. It's a terrible place to arrive. Everything seems a wasteland: the time, the effort, money, resources, all our blood, sweat and tears. We are left with nothing it may seem, but an empty shell and a rough scratched nest to show for all our hard work and determination. We are desolate.

I do not pretend to understand why some dreams or people do not bear fruit, but I do wonder about it. We are not turtles, but there does seem on reflection to be a meaningful parallel to draw between ourselves and those failed nests. There does exist in the world a timing that is not our own. The great kingdoms of the natural world all operate on a timetable that we might interrupt but not control. Amid what appears to our eyes to be ruthless or chaotic, pulses a framework of order and intent and purpose and the farther removed we are from it, the less we revere, much less understand or respect it. Nonetheless it is there and I am thinking this morning, that our lives are no exception to it either. There is an exquisite orderliness to the universe--the 'above', 'below' and 'within' which the native peoples have always honored. Their concept of 'fullness of time' draws on an understanding of the ripening seen in the natural world. In their world view all things are born, grow, create and die in context with the flow of all life. Sometimes that process can be wildly and effortlessly successful. Other times it can be slow and painful and arduous. And sometimes beyond reason events arise which prohibit the possibility of either happening and we as my dear friend Faye would say, 'we got no understanden'. In those cultures this time is seen as an invitation to leave the land of explanation and retreat to the sweat lodge of the heart. Here in this inner world of self, is the opportunity to rest and await the 'fullness of time' that is attuned to a greater clock. The reflective time may give space for a new idea, or allow us to discover a helping hand or produce the hard truth that this dream is not going to be as we had envisioned and we may never know why. But if we open ourselves, lay down our agendas then we may discover everything lost is not.. We will find that life is not denying, it is inviting us instead, to try, try, again. We will experience the possibility for wisdom.

Turtles are the oldest symbol for our planet Earth. As the personification of the womb of the Earth its heavy, gravid body is a powerful witness to the cycle of life and all creative energies. It lives close to the ground and reminds us to stay grounded ourselves, especially when confronted with the give and take of life, remembering to use our shell for protection when necessary. It's slow, steady pace is a witness to the value of trusting in the timing required for whatever we pour our energy and hearts into.

Our modern world is very hard on failure. Perhaps it is human nature to fear it so. After all, we are very taken with ourselves. Yet it is part of everyone's life for a reason. If we let ourselves there is much to be learned on the short end of the stick. When we rigidly structure or artificially construct our lives to eliminate risk and failure, we never learn the lessons that come through weathering life's challenges. We lose our ability to trust ourselves, to have love and compassion for ourselves and others. Gone is the opportunity to gain wisdom from our experiences good or bad or have intimacy with a force greater than ourselves. We do not come to the end of our lives grateful for everything that has happened to us and with the understanding that some of the most beautiful and meaningful moments of all had their roots in our failures. I am thinking this morning, could this be what is really meant by not bearing fruit.?

The Turtle Mary Oliver

breaks from the blue-black
skin of the water, dragging her shell
with its mossy scutes
across the shallows and through the rushes
and over the mudflats, to the uprise,
to the yellow sand,
to dig with her ungainly feet
a nest, and hunker there spewing
her white eggs down
into the darkness, and you think

of her patience, her fortitude,
her determination to complete
what she was born to do—
and then you realize a greater thing—
she doesn't consider
what she was born to do.
She's only filled with an old blind wish.
It isn't even hers but came to her
in the rain or the soft wind,
which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.