The Poet Goes to Indiana

I’ll tee you a half-dozen things

That happened to me

In Indiana

When I went that far west to teach.

You tell me if it was worth it.

I lived in the country

With my dog…

And there was a pond with fish..

And I saw coyotes

And once a deer…

And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses…

And there was, one morning, an owl

And there was once, oh wonderful,

A new horse in the pasture..

And she put her face against my face,

Put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets,

Against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me

To see who I was,

A long quite minute-minutes…

She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough

Such a fine time I had teaching in Indiana.

Mary feels good enough living in an altered rural landscape that intersects with domestic and wild animals. She could breath in who she was, a primate who alters the land around her, domesticates herself and others, and still marvels and the wildness glimpsed sometimes menacingly close. I awoke this morning to a very altered urban landscape. Here in Edmonton I have seen English Sparrows, European Rock Doves, gulls (gosh help me I don’t know what species), and Black-billed Magpies or rather as my spouse calls them, flying saddle shoes. The city sidewalks appear oh so very tame. But the skies, Lord, the skies. I don’t have a very clear view of the sky because the skyscrapers hem me in up here on the 16^th floor, but it’s like I can still see forever in the reflected panorama in the windows across the way that catch the sun rising amongst colorful clouds. Then this morning, around 5:30 a.m. a rainbow wove it’s way among the buildings right in front of me and indeed, I did feel as if I was good enough, if Edmonton was good enough, if our species was good enough, and if our efforts to conserve this planet are good enough. So let me rest today, a conservationist who has gone to Canada.

What leads you to feeling good enough? To feeling wrong?

Beans

They’re not like peaces or squash. Plumpness isn’t for them. They like being lean, as if for the narrow path. The beans themselves sit quietly inside their green pods. Instinctively one picks with care, never tearing down he fine vine, never not noticing their rips bodies, or feeling their willingness for the pot, for the fire.

I have thought sometimes that something-I can’t name it- - watches as I walk the rows, accepting the gift of their lives to assist mine.

I know what you think: this is foolishness. They’re only vegetables. Even the blossoms with which they begin are small and pale, hardly significant. Our hands, or minds, our feet hold more intelligence. With this I have no quarrel.

But, what about virtue?

I am working with a group of philosophers who are developing the understanding of animals as having virtue, for nonhumans can be compassionate, kind, nurturing, and empathetic. By looking through a lens of virtue ethics at other beings we may break down our preconceived notions that humans are separate from nonhumans and that we are alone on the evolutionary tree. Now Mary here goes a step farther. What about the virtue of beans? What about the virtue of the earth, the sun, the universe, the “watcher” of our lives? Virtue, it may be argued, is something we intentionally create within our characters over a life time. What then of a young toddler who gives her toy to her friend? I do not see much preconceived intention in that act, or a lifetime of refinement. I am not saying that we can’t change who we are as we strive towards the future, in fact, I’d say the blessing of life is that each of us, where we are, can change and move towards the virtue we wish in the world. Yet at the same time there is virtue with which we are born. So why cannot virtue be born in plant and pig? Which virtues might that be? The one that comes to mind is the virtue of interconnection. Interconnecting is not a classic virtue, yet it seems to be the one I hold in common with bean and beaver. We are born interconnected, the gift we give to one another, the silent embrace that watches over us all.

What virtues do you see in nonhuman life? In your own life?

Freshen the Flowers, She Said

So I put them in the sink, for the cool porcelain

Was tender,

And took out the tattered and cut each stem

On a slant,

Trimmed the black and raggy leaves, and set them all-

Roses, delphiniums, daises, iris, lilies,

And more whose names I don’t know, in bright new water-

Gave them

A bounce upward at the end to let them take

Their own choice of position, the wheels, the spurs,

The little sheds of the buds. It took, to do this,

Perhaps fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes of music

With nothing playing.

What is it with flowers and music? They just seem to go together. I see in my mind fields of flowers swaying in the wind with soft music, melodic in intent, harmonious in nature. I also see music playing as someone places flowers over a grave, and this music is darker, slower, upheaval in nature. Perhaps I am linking these images to the song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” Maybe it’s because flowers are just music – their colors, their life, their promise of beauty and regeneration. Somewhere in our brain pathways we link flowers to song. Even when there are no flowers, even when there is no music, there is life playing. But it’s great to be reminded of it the colorful sprouts of heaven in our homes, gardens, and wild meadows, and forests.

What do flowers mean to you?

Bone July 4, 2010

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

What the soul is,

And where hidden,

And what shape-

And so, last week,

When I found on the beach

The ear bone

Of a pilot what that may have died

Hundreds of years ago, I thought

Maybe I was close

To discovering something-

For the ear bone

2.

Is the portion that lasts longest

In any of us, man or whale…

And I thought: the soul

Might be like this-

So hard, so necessary-

3.

Yet almost nothing

Beside me

The gray sea

Was opening and shutting its wave-doors..

I looked but couldn’t see anything

Through its dark-knit glare;

Yet don’t we all know, the golden sand

Is there at the bottom,

Though our eyes have never seen it,

Nor can our hands ever catch it.

4.

Lest we would sift it down

Into fractions, and facts-

Certainties-

And what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

Truly I know

Our part is not knowing,

But looking, and touching, and loving,

Which is the way I walked on,

Softly,

Through the pale-pink morning light.

Today I have a talk at the International Congress of Conservation Biology for a workshop on Religion and Conservation. I spoke of how avian conservation is a living religion, and others spoke of Christianity, Tibetan Indigenous faiths, and Islam as mechanisms to conserve nature. Here was this room of people, trying to figure out how to harness the soul for the good life. There was some tension about the various ways we look at “soul” and “god” and “spirit,” in the room, or perhaps better said, I just know there was suspicion in the air. How can there not be when for thousands of years our kind has tried to tell another what is a soul and how to save it. What if it is really just this simple. We cannot know much, but we can love. It reminds of a line in the Forest Gump movie. He says, “I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is.” Maybe all we professionals in conservation and religion can just let go of all the complexity of theology and figuring out the best way to save the world, and embrace the simplicity of loving. I should like to follow my own advice.

Could you live your life based on just love?

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who make the morning

And spread it over the fields

And into the faces of the tulips

And the nodding morning glories,

And into the windows of, even, the

Miserable and the crotchety-

Best preacher that ever was,

Dear star, that just happens

To be where you are in the universe

To keep us from every-darkness,

To ease us with warm touching

To hold us in the great hands of light-

Good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day

In happiness, in kindness.

Up high in a skyscraper in down town Edmonton, Alberta I face the window while reading Mary’s poem. I too awoke early, which is easy to do here given how early the sun rises this far north. The sun emerges out of my vision, but the rays hit the windows of the office building across the street, and they reflect mightily into my eyes as I write. Sun, do you see my tears of gratitude, which are the tears of so many of us who struggle with the tension of whether to be crotchety or kind? How might we come together to choose kindness? Isn’t this what religion is all about? To address these questions, I am attending a conference on Conservation Biology and will present a paper, “Avian Conservation as Lived Religion.” I speak of how conservation teams go into the field to save and savor the world, and how they experience transcendent meaning making moments amongst them. I speak of how the emerging nature religion guides conservationists into choosing to give themselves over to a better thing as they strive to be kind so that the world may know happiness. I am a preacher who has been gratefully bested by the Sun, life giver, creator of love. Today. This moment. Amen.

What helps you be kind?

Little Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond

As for life,

I’m humbled,

I’m without words

Sufficient to say

How it has been hard as flint,

And soft as a spring pond,

Both of these

And over and over

And long pale afternoons besides,

And so many mysteries

Beautiful as eggs in a nest,

Still unhatched

Though warm and watched over

By something I have never seen-

A tree angel, perhaps,

Or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world

To be dazzled, then to be reflective.

It suffices, it is all comfort-

Along with human love,

Dog love, water love, little-serpent love,

Sunburst love, or love for the smallest of birds

Flying among the scarlet flowers.

There is hardly time to think about

Stopping, and lying down at last

To the long afterlife, to the tenderness

Yet to come, when

Time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever

And we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.

As for death,

I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,

Can you?

I awake today in Edmonton Canada, attending the International Congress of Conservation Biology. Last night I arrived to streets thronged with pedestrians on their way to see the firework display that began at 11 p.m. (the sun sets very late this far north). The day was Canada Day, similar to the U.S.A.’s July 4^th celebration. This day, 143 years ago, Canada became Canada. Such a huge celebration it was to celebrate difference, distinction, and tribal affinity. I bristle with emphasis on nationalism, however is Canada love like USA love, like Africa love, like Iraq love? Are we already each of us everyone else? So if I smile at waving white and red flags with the Canadian maple leaf on it, is it not the same as my dazzlement at hummingbird and flower? I can’t wait for the world to be in awareness of this wondrous internconnection, but wait, aren’t you already? I don’t want to pretend that it takes physical death to become you, I’m ready now to die to the false believe that we aren’t bonded in love. Francis David, a 16^th century Unitarian theologian in Transylvania said, “we need not think alike to love alike.” And we need not swim, crawl, hop, fish, hatch, or die alike to love alike, or to be loved alike.

What’s keeping us from seeing the love that bonds and binds us to one another

While I Am Writing a Poem to Celebrate Summer, the Meadowlark Begins to Sing

Sixty-seven years, oh Lord, to look at the clouds,

the trees in deep, moist summer,

daisies and morning glories

opening every morning

their small, ecstatic faces-

Or maybe I should just say

how I wish I had a voice

like the meadowlark's

sweet, clear, and reliably

slurring all day long..

the meadowlark' whistles, its breath-praise,

its thrill-song, its anthem, its thanks, its

alleluia. Alleluia, oh Lord.

This morning upon the back porch I took in the song of birds in the near dark during my morning meditation. Following which I had the sense that no matter the coming aging years, I would have gratitude for how life flowed through others, if not through me. Then this poem. Am I channeling Mary these days? How did she know what I was thinking? Maybe we both are conduits for bird song and for the deep moist days of summer amongst the trees. We've heard the melody that come the end, there is nothing but gratitude for having heard the song of life. We still into eternal listening, knowing that the earth cannot keep from singing.

What song do you hear today?