When times do not make any sense, when it seems that our lives are filled with more darkness than light, then that is the time to remember that what each of us does each day for good, matters most of all.  Every act of kindness, of helping, of thoughtfulness, ripples out across the lives of others in ways that we will never see.  It is not for us to witness the results of what we do, it is to feel the need and then set forth and do it.  We are only one light, but we are bright, and whenever we shine, we prove the dark will never prevail.

"Father dear, can you hear? the little ones, you gave to me, your children?  The world they face is not a friendly place.  Protect them there with love and care and grace."   Gaither

"Every year at about this time, the world lights a candle to Peace.  It is a universal gesture, immune to politics. It pays tribute to no narrow philosophy, materialistic or messianic. The candle when lit by men of good will serves the good that is in us all; it cauterizes all that in us is evil. To every force arrayed in anger against an opposing force in the world, the candle's message is simple: "The sum of the good you share in your hearts is far greater than those evils that seek to divide you." The candle, when ignited, does not detonate.  It illuminates.  It doesn't challenge the heavens in a thundering roar. It makes its pleas in a steady flame, reflected in the eyes of a wondering child, or the squint of an elder who has seen it all. The candle graces the menorah as it fits the tree. It is at home in all the windows of the world.  Its reassurance cannot be measured.  For the good news is that Peace is not be be found in the frantic mathematics of the megaton.  It reposes calmly, in the magic of the candle."

On a clear winter's evening

The crsecent moon

And the round squirrels' nests

In the bare oak

Are equal planets.

Ann Porter,  "Winter Twilight"

December is the month of afternoon twilight in the Real World.  The long sultry daylight of summer has packed up and left for foreign shores. In its place winter arrives filling the sky by 4 o'clock with soft blue and lavender.  Nightfall comes quickly and by early December it is dark here on the ridge by 6 o'clock. The sun  no longer the star of the sky crowding out the night, now takes second fiddle to the moon, stars and planets.  In the sharp evening air, the floor of heaven blazes more clearly  with the paths of Jupiter and Venus, Saturn and Mars, their bright faces rising up even before the dark has fallen, as they chase the rising moon.  The trees and landscape are now drowsy with sleep, drawing into themselves, their bare branches forming a beautiful dark lace curtain across the lake, filtering the starlight across the water. The sparkling dark seems full of excitement and anticipation, as if it is setting the stage as we all turn inward ourselves, and await the arrival of Christmas.

In a complicated world it is easy to forget the enormity of the good that surrounds us and how stunningly simple some of it is. The glamour and excitement of the big events can easily blind us to the countless blessings that wash over us everyday. What would it be like if each evening before we went to bed we were given a list of all the blessings that came our way that day?  The kindness of the person who let us in get in line in traffic, the co-worker that alerted us to an important mistake, the smile on the check out clerk's face?
What about the kitty that nudged your face as you tried to sleep, or the dog that jumped for joy at seeing you?  Then there was the smell of fallen leaves, the tenderness of early morning and the restfulness of sleep.
Did you notice that your mail came?  That someone got up early to make that 6AM cup of coffee you always stop for? Did you enjoy a truly funny joke or hear your children giggling in the next room?
Was there the fragrance of a good dinner in your house?  Were you about to drift off to sleep in a warm bed secure in the knowledge that you would be safe in it?

It is the season of counting blessings.  Above all others, Thanksgiving is the one holiday that is for everyone. It isn't about loss of life, or a victory over others, or any poliltical or religious persusasion.  Instead it is a recognition that the good that comes to us is not something we create all by ourselves but receive through the grace given to us from the hands of others and the selflessness of the earth that surrounds us.

Lord, it is time.  Summer was very great.               
Now cast your shadow upon sundials,
Let winds remind meadows it is late.

Mellow now the last fruits on the vine.
Allow them only two more southern days.
Hasten them to fullness, and press
The last heavy sweetness through the wine.

Who has no home can not build now.
Who dwells alone must now remain alone;
Will waken, read, write long letters, and
Will wander restlessly when leaves are blowing.

Ted Berrigan, After Rilke-"Autumn's Day"

Despite all its fire and glory fall is essentially about endings.  The brilliant landscape and exhilarating weather is pierced through with the reality that our lives as everything around us in the Real World, is leaving behind all the effort of the receding year. Even though we would like the feast to last and last, to stay in the golden moments, to not grow older and fade, something inside of us is restless for what comes next.
Now we too are given time to drop things we no longer need in our lives. We may discover all the energy we poured into building and growing has left behind a sweet elixir  heavy with a richness and intensity that only comes from a long slow distillation of experience.  The last brown leaves, the emerging skeletons of the trees reveal what is happening inside of us. No longer full of green leaves and new life we wake in the night, reflecting on what was and what remains. In the descending restlessness wandering through our memories and dreams we can come upon this last great treasure from the press of living--the understanding that now we are truly ourselves.

The bright fall leaves take on a special beauty when seen against a gray November sky.  Without the brilliance of a bright blue backdrop drenched in sunshine the colors deepen and quiet themselves. Now the subtle difference in tone and shade is more easily seen.  Red is becomes burgundy and wine.  Brown so easily dismissed as drab, reveals itself to be mahogany and hazel, the yellows carry bluish green with orange shadings. Instead of being swept away we are drawn in more slowly by the restfulness of the softened scene. I wonder if the colors are resting? Are the leaves remembering their newly green spring dresses, the deep vitality of the dark green summer? Is there anticipation and perhaps trepidation of their approaching release that will end their life in the sky and begin their unknowable new life on the woodland floor? 

The dazzling landscape of living always carries a quiet November gray.  We are not meant to blaze away continuously.  Whether it is the unfolding of our elder years, or a threshold we come to in the vigor of life, all of us will encounter moments to reflect on the brilliance we have created. A time to consider if what we have done with our lives truly reflects the mystery of who we are.

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,        

our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,

an hour even, of pure (almost pure)

response to that insouciant life:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light,the dancing

pilgrimage of water, vast stillness

of spellbound ephermerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voice, mineral hum, wind

conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering

of fire to coal--then something tethered 

in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch

of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers

just where we've been, when we're caught up again

into our own sphere (where we must

return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)

--but we have changed

 a 

little. 

Denise Levertov, excerpted from "Sojourns in the Parallel World"

In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near

to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking

heaven's paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them.

Safe in heaven's calm, they take each other's arm,

the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone.

But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept

as Eden would be with the walls knocked down, the paths littered

with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes

for children of the Fall.  The light is gold, the sun pulling

the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome.

The last roses of the year nod their frail heads,

like listeners listening to all that's said, to ask,

What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light?

What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom?

What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare?

Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might,

if we were roses, too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves,

tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere.

It is the last of many days.  Is it enough?

To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun?

To watch the lineaments of a world passing?

To feel the metal of a black iron chair, cool and eternal,

press against our skin?  To apprehend a chill as clouds

pass overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow?

And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun shining brightly?

as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure

leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth.

My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.

To a garden in autumn.  To a heaven of impermanence

where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.

The light is gold, And while we're here, I think it must

be heaven.

Elizabeth Spires, "In Heaven It Is Always Autumn"

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive

with one another, we walk here

in the light of this unlikely world

that isn't ours for long.

May we spend generously

the time we are given.

May we enact our responsibilities

as thoroughly as we enjoy

our pleasures.  May we see with clarity,

may we seek a vision

that serves all beings, may we honor

the mystery surpassing our sight,

and may we hold in our hands

the gift of good work

and bear it forth whole, as we

were borne forth by a power we praise

to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.

"A Prayer Among Friends" from Of Earth, by John Daniel

One of the best parts of fall is the fragrance of leaves.  Have you noticed?  Not that they are all over your lawn and driveway and need to be raked, but that going out the door in the morning, or pulling in at the end of a long day, you open the door, step out and can smell their wonderful brown crunchiness?  Remember jumping into piles of them growing up?

The pace of contemporary life is overwhelming.  The schedules of job, family, all the responsibilities of running our existence can quickly seduce us into believing this is all of who we are and we need nothing else. But then a morning arrives and the air is clear and light and a part inside of us we had completely forgotten existed wakes up. It wants us to stop, sit down, rest. Somewhere inside we know how soothing it would be to linger with all the beauty around us. Fall has been called nature's last, most beautiful smile and it was meant for us.

 Look, the trees

are turning 

their own bodies 

into pillars 

of light

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,....

Mary Oliver, excerpt from "In Blackwater Woods"

 
 

The leaves are slowly turning.  The dogwoods are always first and over the years I have noticed which side of the ridge the trees stand or how close they are to the water seems to contribute to the arrival of their fall dresses.Subtle differences in the light, moisture, temperature are all part of a complex series of events that trigger the arrival of Fall.  I always grow impatient about this time each year, thinking that if its October they need to be blazing forth. But then an afternoon or morning arrives and there it is, happening all around me.

The modern human love affair with time sometimes obscures our awareness of the great clock of the Real World.  There seasons change, living things reproduce, rest and feed on the timing of events threading back to the origins of all of us. Scurrying about to keep up with the schedules we make it is easy to be impatient and frustrated when things are not happening when we think they should. Sometimes it's only an inconvenience, but sometimes it can be a powerful lesson in humility and control.  Perhaps in the coming days, as we are all harvesting and scheduling our own lives and things start to get knotted up, we can take a moment and step back a bit, look outside, take a deep breath and remind ourselves there is a greater calendar  which can be trusted to bring events together as they should, just as it has been doing from the beginning. 

"In its time and great patience

beauty had come upon us,

greater than I had imagined."

                                                             Wendall Berry, A Timbered Choir

The slowly cooling days and nights of fall are bringing with them quiet, foggy mornings here on the lake. Until the sun rises higher in the sky and burns off the mist, the lake remains hidden from view by a pale gray curtain, making the trees closest to its shoreline invisible as well. Up near the house the fog is already lifting, although the upper branches of those trees are still caught in a lingering embrace as it steadily retreats turning all the spider webs into lace handkerchiefs. It seems a gentle transition in the cycle of the seasons, for when the heat lifts, so does our energy and our plans, We shift from vacations to the delights of fall rituals and the immediacy of busier schedules. It is a beautiful time of year, but a busy one.

Quiet moments like this morning often carry an invitation to attend to our own well being.  Taking time to stare off across our coffee cup and out the kitchen window into the world of landscape helps steady us, gives us an opportunity to drift off the terrible time on task we hold ourselves to and hear the quiet voice we carry within. All around us the Real World of wood and field is bringing in its harvest, living creatures everywhere deciding if there is enough to sustain the days ahead,  We are no exception.We also need time to decide if we have enough to sustain us, not just from what we have done, but for who we are.

.

              What has been written                                                        and toward something.
              about whittling                                                                    For God's sake
              is not true                                                                           and your own
              most of it                                                                            know when to stop
              It is the discovery                                                                Whittling is the best example
              that keeps                                                                           I know of what most
              the fingers moving                                                                may happen when
              not idleness                                                                          least expected
              but the knife looking for                                                         bad or good
              the right plane                                                                       Hurry before
              that will let the secret out                                                       angina comes like a pair of pliers
              Whittling is no pastime                                                          over your left shoulder
              he says                                                                                 There is plenty of wood
              who has been whittling                                                           for everyone
              in spare minutes at the wood                                                  and you
             of his life for forty years                                                          go ahead now
             Three rules he thinks                                                               may  you find
              have helped                                                                            in the waiting wood
             Make small cuts                                                                    rough unspoken

             In this  way                                                                             what is true
             you may be able to stop before                                                or nearly true
             what was  to be an arm                                                            or
             has to be something else                                                           true enough.
            Always whittle away from yourself

                                                                   John Stone, "Whittling: The Last Class"

Adinkra is a word that refers to the collection of symbols used by the people of  West Africa to convey concepts that were so mysterious and unknowable they could not be expressed or contained by the meaning of words.  Recently I heard a discussion with an eminent physicist who said  adinkra was now used to describe the mystery of theories they knew were true but could not yet be proven. What an adinkra kind of statement that seemed to be-- holding the paradox of science and faith in the same space.
A few years ago Mary Oliver in an interview remarked how so many of us live most of our lives seeking the answerable and somehow demeaning or bypassing those things that can't be answered. In doing so, she felt we lost our capacity to tolerate and accept the necessity for mystery. A world without a capacity for mystery cannot make room for the needs of the soul --that mystery at the heart of everyone much less hold the paradox at the core of living.
Fall is quietly arriving. The light is already different, evening slips in a bit earlier.  Nights are cooler. Maybe at the end of the day you will let yourself out into the falling dusk or starry night and do some wondering about those things in your own life which cannot be proven but only felt, in the heart. I hope so.

Mornings lately have started off gray for weeks now, the sun unable to break through until late morning or early afternoon unable to decide if it will have a fresh start or still be lingering in the remains of the day before.

We are all familiar with that.  The complexities of living and caring often sleep on the doorsteps of our lives where they are the first thing we greet in the morning, waiting to be picked up and carried, their heaviness already filtering into the new day.

Responsibilities and obligations all have there place, but when they begin to regularly change the climate of our daily lives, we know we have lost our relationship to the present and all the possibilities for renewal that it carries.  After days of gray starts, we might want to consider what needs changing, what is cutting us off from the freshness and optimism of life. It's tempting to believe we don't have a choice, but it really isn't true. In that moment it might be helpful to remember the smallest, simplest acts of surrender often have the most power. There is a natural flow and rhythm to living. Letting go of control, easing our belief that we alone have to accomplish everything, opening ourselves to receive the countless blessings we already have, and pausing to appreciate and soak up the bits of beauty all around us realigns us with that rhythm bringing more lightness to our load,and most important of all, light to our hearts.

I've gotten very good at rescuing wrens. They consider the deck their personal domain and zealously patrol it. Invariably on those cool mornings when the doors are open to the fresh air, curiosity will get the better of one of them and I will suddenly hear the unmistakable sound of anxious fluttering as one of them zig zags through the house bumping into the glass searching frantically for the way back out.  I've learned the most successful tactic is to open the doors wide and wait.  Sometimes I can ease them towards the opening just by moving in closer from the opposite direction they need to go. Eventually they do all make it out and often within minutes I hear them trilling their success proudly from the deck railing.

Sometimes we can't find the way out in our own lives.  We make a choice or unforeseen events propel us into disaster.  The initial realization is so like the panicked fluttering of my wrens. It clouds our thinking, shuts down our ability to perceive either a rescue or a way out. But if we can just be still, calm ourselves, and be willing to wait, we will discover there always is one. It is one of life's mysteries why often the only way it is able to redirect where we need to go is to catch us mid flight, spread wide it's arms and slowly corral us towards the open door, a new direction and another chance to sing.

" This afternoon a thunderstorm crossed the valley.  One moment the ground was dry, and the next there were torrents running down the hillsides and arroyos.  A quarter-mile off I could see a downpour bouncing off the sage and the fine clay soil.  I could see the rain approach, and then it hit, drenching me, and moving on.  Ten minutes later I was dry.  The rain comes from heaven, and we are cleansed by it.  Suddenly the meaning of baptism is clear to me:  you can begin again, and we are saved every day."
 
Gary Young, "In the heat of late afternoon" from Even So: New & Selected Poems

If you look carefully, you will see the path the deer take each evening as they move down from the ridge.It's not always visible. I wonder how long they have been traveling this way towards the lake and before the lake, the valley it filled? Even if you have an idea where it is there still has to be the right combination of light and angle and of course intent for it to show itself. We come upon those same kinds of pathways in our  own lives. Some we never venture away from, others we abandon because the terrain is too challenging or its a dead end.  But the most important ones I think, are the ones that appear  only when the conditions are just right: when we had no idea which way to go next, or had given up hope or refused to see and grace helps us stumble across them.  All of sudden, we find a new way opening before us with an unknown destination, no guarantee of ease or provision, only an invitation to come and see. It happens over and over all through our lives but each time it always remains up to us to decide whether we will take that first step. 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry, "The Real Work"

Humans are planners. The world we have created is constructed entirely of those plans and countless technical marvels extend and enhance our capacity to keep our focus on what comes next. While ll that has its obvious benefits, it has cost us our understanding of the value of right now.  From the moment we get up we are thinking about what comes next; what the day will bring, the errands that need accomplishing, the schedules kept. We have taken all the new found space that the wondrous conveniences of modern life have given us and crammed it full with more and more doing. What happened to being?  What would we feel if we slowed down to take in right now? And most breathtaking of all-- what might possibly change?

                                                                We are moving forward
                                                                or in some direction up,
                                                                down, east, west, to the side,
                                                                down the canyon walls,
                                                                watching the light fall
                                                                on the cliffs, which makes
                                                                the light seem ancient because
                                                                the red stone is hundred
                                                                of millions of years old,
                                                                but the light is from today,
                                                                it is what the plants are moving
                                                                out of the earth to meet,
                                                                it heats the air that lifts the birdds
                                                                that float and hover
                                                                over what is made from now.

                     Stuart Kestenbaum, "Prayer for What is Lost"

August is the last stretch of summer and it is not always welcome. Unrelenting heat, irritable people, the pressures of modern life all weigh as heavy as the air. Although the poplars begin to drop their bright yellow leaves about now, it will still be weeks before that rush of coolness arrives that soothes our blood and our spirits and lifts the great wheel of the heavens and earth into autumn.  Even deep in the woods there is a new stillness left as the enormous energy of growth begins seeping away. Already any new life that is not sturdy enough to last the winter is being winnowed out. The leaves are becoming a grayer version of green as they drain off to make room for the brilliant hues of fall.   The fiercely beautiful and wondrous cycle of life goes on.
When we feel a growing desperation from the devices and constructs of our own making, it might be good to remember what is happening in the deep woods. This is the beginning of a shift in both nature and in all living things, including ourselves.  What we are feeling is the natural pause of our own juices signaling to us not just in our weariness, but also deep inside, that our bodies and spirits are preparing to move into what comes next.  It is the way of all creatures in the Real World.  Sometimes remembering what we belong to, where we fit in the luminous order of the world helps us let go, let out a deep sigh and bend gently into the moment.

The steady afternoon showers and cooler night temperatures have filled the woods with mushrooms.  Looking out through the trees their bright faces shine in the falling rays of morning light milky white, brown, purple and deep cardinal red.  The sunlight was also catching a long abandoned tent caterpillar nest which had managed to survive intact late in the season lighting up its fragile shape like a lantern that seemed to belong more to the soft dusky tones of evening than to the brightness of the green canopy. Seeing these fleeting moments of light I was reminded again at the mystery of awareness and how often light is its messenger illuminating the beauty and pain of the world around us in ways that move and change us with what Rilke called 'a bright sadness', when our eyes not just look, but look again and see.

There is nothing like the smell of freshly mowed grass. The tractor and farmer were nowhere in sight as I drove past, but despite the chilled exclusion of the interior of my van, the unmistakable fragrance drifted in anyway.  It never fails to make me smile, maybe because the fresh tang of its scent smells so full of life and expectation. It feels good in the same way it felt as a child to have the long lazy days of summer stretching out ahead.  But the shorn grasses left in the tracks of the mower don't last long, quickly turning to straw in the scorch of the summer heat.  That too happens to us.  We start out hopeful and eager and as our life unfolds our green begins to deepen and soften with the ripeness of age.  All the striving, living, loving slowly distills our juice. I remember one summer on my uncles' farm.  He had cut the lower pasture and after it had dried out, loaded it into the hayloft of his barn, our favorite place to play and escape the heat.  Inside it was cool and the scent of the dried grasses a rich, mellow version of the sharp green of the mowing, the stacked bales full of comfort and joy. Now all these years later seeing the fallen gleanings in the row I couldn't help but think of how in bourbon making, they call what evaporates off in the cask, the 'angel's share'.  The more the angels share, the  more deep and intense the pour.  There is nothing about living that isn't important. Every stage we go through enriches us. The beauty of all that living is never more evident than in the lives we live past the flush of youth. In that holy time we are rich and full with our true harvest--the one meant not for the body, but the soul.

"In old age wandering on a trail of beauty lively may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty living again may I walk.

It is finished in beauty."

                                                      American Indian "Nightway" chant

  There is a struggling catalpa tree, that ancient tree form that produces gigantic leaves, growing in the ditch alongside the big hill to the house.  Each time it manages to get any real height on it, the road crews come by and cut it off at its base.  It's the tallest I've seen it get right now as the crews haven't been as attentive lately and watching its enormous leaves sway in the breeze is a lovely sight. Down near the bottom the trunk has become gnarled and twisted from it's continuing attempts to grow back. The first leaves from this most recent outreach are now fading having made their initial contribution to the beautiful fans above them.  No longer huge and a lush green, they have curled their edges in, turning yellow and speckled with brown. The sunlight filtering down to them makes them glow with an inner light as if celebrating their gift of life for the tree as well as the beauty of the fading form they now inhabit.
 The fading glory of the catalpa leaves reminded me of what I am learning over and over these days. The arrival of old age is the pinnacle of life.  It is the gift that comes from living and growing and having deepened from the experience.  Nothing in our culture seems to remember that, but it is true. We've been told that when we arrive there we are all used up, done, finished and should fade away quietly so as not to remind everyone younger this will also come to them.  But the great gift will not be hushed. It is not about being used up, it's about being filled up--- with life, memories, wisdom, insight, forgiveness, joy, contentment, time.  It celebrates the beautiful ripeness of living and those who accept this become capable of providing sustenance and encouragement to a world which at its peril, has forgotten life's riches lie not in what we have gathered or achieved, but in the remains of what we have learned and endured..

Each morning that I walk, I always set out with a sense of anticipation about what I might come upon along the way that I find meaningful.  I am rarely disappointed. Living is an experience that if we are truthful, eventually includes every adjective we can come up with. That means there will be times when we wish it didn't have such a large vocabulary at its disposal.  Over the years when my life is using more than its share of descriptive terms, I have found  I most often encounter the mysterious ability of the natural world to provide something to steady me. It's usually not dramatic, more  small and subtle, perhaps almost missed. It is though,always beautiful; often a glimpse into a parallel universe entirely consumed with living its own life, all within it being what they were born to be and reminding me to do the same. But what I've found lifts me the most is when I come upon something that carries with it the feeling of being secret and wondrous, as if it were meant just for me to see and take in. Then the moment transcends from only looking and seeing  and opens itself up into meaningfulness. Like this morning. I was rounding the curve before the last long rise to the house and I stopped my steady scanning of the woods and sky to look down at the pavement.
                                           

Bird on branch

Bird and nest

                                                                                                 
 There in the scars of the asphalt I found these simple images created from who knows what dripping off the cars and trucks that had passed by. I smiled and smiled.  Just think of what we miss.  What little bit of beauty calls out and asks to be seen? What little piece of wonderfulness and wonder is waiting for you?


              

"Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, "Stay awhile."

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,

"and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine."

Mary Oliver, excerpted from "When I Am Among the Trees"

"It seems to me that all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we feel as paralysis because we can no longer experience our banished feelings.  Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us, because we feel momentarily abandoned by what we've believed and grown accustomed to; because we can't keep standing as the ground shifts under our feet.  That is why the sadness passes over like a wave.  The new presence inside us, that which has come to us, has entered our heart, has found its way to its innermost chamber, and is no longer even there---it is already in our blood.  And we don't know what it was.  We could easily be persuaded that nothing happened, and yet something has changed inside us, as a house changes when a guest comes into it.  We cannot say who has entered, we may never know, but there are many indications that the future enters us in just this way, to transform itself within us long before it happens.  That is why it is so important to be alone and attentive when you are sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than any loud and accidental point of time which occurs, as it were, from the outside."           Rilke

The last leg of the state highway on the way home runs past a small once upon a time cove. Rising sediment, less consistent rainfall and demands on the lake for water resources have all succeeded in choking off its connection to the lake. The fishermen who used to park just past the bridge across it no longer come.  As the water receded, the bottom land was exposed, full of rotting grasses, old trees and heavy muck from years of being under water. It became an eyesore. But last fall it somehow reached a turning point.  Whatever had needed to be recycled back into the earth had done so and the original stream that once fed what was a small pasture began to reclaim its banks.  This spring instead of a swamp of dead brush and decaying trees, tall green grasses and early saplings rose up almost overnight. Now there is a beaver nest along the shoal and  red winged blackbirds and goldfinches work the canes of blackberry and thistle. Out of the richly fertilized lake bottom, it had transformed itself into what it was naturally meant to be

Our human lives operate in the same way..  Events and challenges of every sort expose our built up resentments, denied sorrows and all the other places in us we have been careful not to think about.  But it's all there anyway, rotting away below the glossy surface we project. Breaking down old ways of being and having the courage and faith to wait while the waters recede and the ground of our lives becomes dry enough to support new growth is painful. What we find there may feel like an eyesore to us  and our hope to work through it all, scarce. At those times the Real World is a wonderful ally.  Everywhere you look it reminds us not only can new life be built out of the leftovers of the old, all of what we see as so unlovely about ourselves is exactly the necessary nutrient we needed to rise up green and full of new life.

 Living in the woods is a wonderful experience most of the time, although it is not without its challenges. No matter how often you think you have cleared and established boundaries, every year they have to be revisited.  Here on the ridge the nemesis is wild grapevine.  Give it a season or two unchecked and it will swallow everything.  So every once in a while there is need for a major clean out. This past weekend armed with all sorts of power tools, we waded into long neglected areas and began the arduous process of cutting back  and hauling out the numerous volunteer saplings, rampant grapevine undergrowth and fallen limbs. At the end of two days of steady work, the old boundaries were coming back in view, the lake was more visible and there was a huge stack of firewood to be split for the winter.

Boundaries are a curious contradiction.  They can serve to protect us and give us a place for retreat, but they can also close us off in ways that stifle.and limit possibility.  Wading through the waist high grapevine whacking away was not an enjoyable experience,(chiggers, gnats, spiders, ground bees, ticks and scratches) but being so close to the border between the house and the wild made me feel I was getting a chance to see the Real World in ways I usually don't. My perspective was broadened. It's the same in our world.  It is good for us to wander out and check our own boundaries from time to time and reconsider why our line runs where it does.  What is on the other side? Does it still need to be shut out? or do we need to open up and expand? Sometimes the process is painful, but on every level from the most intimate to the most far flung, it provides a way to regain balance, to strengthen our bonds, and also just as important, to clear out the undergrowth that has grown up and separated us.

I did think about all that grapevine.  I decided again, it needed to remain on the OTHERSIDE of the line.... 

Here's the surprise of the weekend: a huge ball mushroom about 8 inches across--one of several.

Wrens of Opportunity

Seeing this nest reminds me of two truths about the Real World.  First, despite all our attempts we can never fully protect ourselves from the impact of nature. This mailbox flattened by a  falling limb is a good example. And secondly, nature always reuses what is broken down, man made or not. Now instead of receiving mail  it is the new home for a pair of wrens.

Wrens are the most optimistic of creatures. I think of them as being the role models for seeing opportunity at every turn, card carrying members of the 'if you get lemons, make lemonade' philosophy.  Nothing delights them more than an abandoned shoe, a pile of cardboard boxes, hanging baskets, old baseball hats or football helmets. What looks like junk to us and produces guilt that it ought to be cleaned out to them is the perfect nesting site!

May has an intensity all its own in both the Real World and ours. Most of the young are out now. Feeding and rearing them is intense.  Birds are working on their second broods. In our world, children are ending school years, high school, college. We are planning vacations, starting jobs, working on home projects.  Together with our natural world cousins, we are experiencing these same endings and new beginnings. The celebratory feel of accomplishments is lovely, but it can be a scary time launching into something new. If there has been an especially hard or painful ending, having the energy to go on may just be too much.  That's all right.  We all come to times we need to rest and recover from joy or sorrow.  But just like weeds will always pop up in the cracks of concrete, you can bet life will eventually come calling. Perhaps when we find ourselves in that place, we might think about this little pair of wrens and their modest home. They took what was provided and went on. Somewhere in the leavings of what we have lost or finished, will be what we need to do the same.  And you know what?  The wren is one of  the most jubilant singers in the bird world.

Of  the three little raccoons born winter a year ago, only one now remains a frequent visitor to the deck.  I don't know what has become of the rest of the family.  The Real World is full of lots of unknown endings. After a long absence of any of them, she turned up one evening with a large bare patch just above her tail which is slowly filling back in with fur. The Real World is also full of lots of unexplained mysteries.

We each have our own unsolved endings and unexplained mysteries. I read a story once about a woman who was keeping a list for God on the back of an envelope of the events in her life she wanted explained to her when she got to heaven.  That does bring a smile, but also a bit of amazement on my part.  I don't think the back of an envelope would provide near enough space for me.

The young raccoon arrives faithfully each day about an hour before dark. From the way she moves about the deck it seems she is relying more on her sense of touch and smell than her sight as she searches around for the peanuts left for her. We do the same thing-- searching for our own understanding by thinking, touching, feeling until we are finally accept some things we will never know this side of the chariot. That is when we are most able to come to know the heart of trust. In the end it is the only response to the unexplainable.  Trust believes the events of our lives have meaning and purpose; trust, even when we don't know the how or why of what we are experiencing, affirms we are moving towards something essential. The kind of trust that comforts and encourages us to keep on in spite of all the backs of envelopes we fill.

"I never will have time
I never will have time enough
To say
How beautiful it is
The way the moon
Floats in the air
As easily
And lightly as a bird
Although she is a world
Made all of stone."



For those watching the evening skies, the moon is moving toward fullness this week culminating this weekend in what is known as a "super moon", when its orbit brings it closest to us and it appears larger than usual.

Night time does have its own special beauty. It brings a quiet peacefulness with it that is much needed after the brightness of day no matter how much we love the going and doing of our lives.  When night falls we are gifted with an opportunity to rest and relax. A different world awakes in nature and begins to stir.  That happens in us as well, although our ability to make day last into the late hours often steals from us this time to go to our own inner darkness where we live with our deeper selves--the landscape of dreams and ponderings.  Sometimes we are not keen to go but like the beautiful heavens above us perhaps we can remember there are lights to guide us there as well.  Like the moon and stars their glow is softer so what we see can be gently and compassionately taken in.  I am reminded of something I read years ago about early travelers.  They would travel during the day by the direction of the sun, but it was at night, by the stars and celestial bodies, that they made any necessary corrections to make sure they ended up where they really wanted to go.

 "I will never  have time enough
To praise
The way the stars
Hang glittering in the dark
Of steepest heaven
Their dewy sparks
Their brimming drops of light
So fresh so clear
That when you look at them
It quenches thirst."

 Anne Porter, "Looking at the Sky"
 
                                                                                       "

All around, the woods

 that had been stark

 in the harsh air

 of March, had turned

 soft with new leaves.

 Birdsong had returned

 to the branches:

 the stream sang

 in the fold of the hill.

 In its time and great patience

 beauty had come upon us,

 greater than I had imagined.

 Wendell Berry,  excerpted from "1992, IV", A Timbered Choir

I am listening to the insistent pulse of the cuckoo's call.  The tent caterpillars are out, their fuzzy brown bodies dropping from their  host trees  and crawling everywhere on the deck; turning up in all sorts of unexpected places. The cuckoos who feed upon them, sound positively delirious with delight over their good fortune.  I wonder who among you remembers catching those gentle little crawlers when you were little?  They seemed tailor made for children--easy to catch and safe to enjoy as they meandered all along little arms and legs eliciting peels of ticklish glee.  It was an early lesson in pleasure.

The demands of making our way in the world today haven't left much time for caterpillars.  But I am thinking this morning as I look through the trees towards the water, about the endless boundaries of the natural world. We have insulated ourselves from it in remarkable ways with our technology, but it remains steadfast, turning up in stray seedlings sprouting between the concrete cracks in the deepest urban center, dropping gentle crawlers on us from the sky,  leafing out beside bleak gas stations and right of ways.  Could it be when these small slivers catch our eye something inside us realizes it is an invitation to a beauty we had forgotten we needed? And then, here it is before us, a key to open the door that leads us back to the beautiful, the wild and green.  We might understand then, why the cuckoo sounds so joyful and the spring leaves somehow soothe us.  Beauty is a compress for the heart.