Passing the Unworked Field

Queen Anne's lace is hardly prized but all the same it isn't idle look

how it stands straight on its thin stems how it

scrubs its white faces with the rags of the  sun how it

makes all the loveliness it can

Two days ago my spouse and I went for a walk in San Felasco Park as opposed to where we often walk, La Chua Trail.  The Park  is a wooded expanse and the Trail  is wide open to prairie views and water.  In the park the walk ways are  arched with the tops of the tree; sun, moon, and birds hiding behind the towering green.

About 4 miles into the walk my partner said, "I love trees" meaning he had a preference for this walk with evasive birds versus the other walk where birds nearly jump on your binoculars demanding that you see their beauty.  I replied, "Yes, I hear you, however, these trees are evidence of the scarred land, for they are small and the woods are not diverse. It's been centuries since this last was the original forest. They tell us how this land has been worked over as fields for generations.  I see pain and loss here."

"Yes he said, but I see trees that are working hard for the rest of us."

These trees, indeed, healing the land, healing us, bringing beauty, being beauty.

All praise unworked fields which are working.

What is "unworked" and "working" in your life?

I Want - February 10, 2011

I want to be in partnership with the universe

like the tiger lily poking up its gorgeous head

among the so-called useless weeds in the uncultivated fields

that still abide.  But it's okay if, after all,

I'm not a lily, but only grass in a clutch of curly grass

waving in the wind, staring sunward: one of those sweet, abrasive blades.

I wonder if Mary knows that the translation of the words lilies and grasses to English is very similar in the Christian Scriptures.  When Jesus then asks us to "consider the lilies" we are also "considering the grasses."

We have been trained all our lives to be the rising star, and the emerging lily. We know that there is something beautiful inside of us.

We have been trained all our lives to be the course, abrasive grass. We know there is something fundamentally wrong inside of us.

What if we are neither beautiful or wrong, and are both?

Today I saw a sick squirrel on our outside water bath. S/he looked weak and had a hard time walking.  We agonized in our family what to do besides throwing out some peanuts for the squirrel.  Do we take the squirrel into captivity, only to have its last hours probably interlaced with heavy stress as we do invasive and manipulatory procedures to determine diagnosis and implement treatment?  Or do we let the squirrel be in her/his home yard, with friends and home trees and nests, and let the owl take her/him hopefully quickly?

In the midst of such suffering and beauty, how can anything I do or not do be anything but wrong, for I cannot assure that beauty never dies or lessens?

But if I am wrong, then so too is the owl and the squirrel. 

I want to live in a world beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing, which means being fully partnered with the universe and all of what we are, and can be!

How do you wish to partner today?

The Chance to Love Everything

All summer I made friends

with the creatures nearby ---

they flowed through the fields

and under the tent walls,

or padded through the door,

grinning through their many teeth,

looking for seeds,

suet, sugar; muttering and humming,

opening the breadbox, happiest when

there was milk and music. But once

in the night I heard a sound

outside the door, the canvas

bulged slightly ---something

was pressing inward at eye level.

I watched, trembling, sure I had heard

the click of claws, the smack of lips

outside my gauzy house ---

I imagined the red eyes,

the broad tongue, the enormous lap.

Would it be friendly too?

Fear defeated me. And yet,

not in faith and not in madness

but with the courage I thought

my dream deserved,

I stepped outside. It was gone.

Then I whirled at the sound of some

shambling tonnage.

Did I see a black haunch slipping

back through the trees? Did I see

the moonlight shining on it?

Did I actually reach out my arms

toward it, toward paradise falling, like

the fading of the dearest, wildest hope ---

the dark heart of the story that is all

the reason for its telling?

Once, a thrice of decades ago, I was in a tent on a New Mexico plateau.  In the night there came a sniffing and prodding at the tent, much as Mary describes in her poem.  The animal(s) circled many times and I held my breath trying to not be noticed in the silence, and to also listen. Were those the feet of bear, coyote, wolf?  And depending on which, what was the best strategy?  To charge, to run, to cower? I had no weapon in the tent.  Fear defeated me and I had no courage to step outside to see who was stalking my body and my house for possible food.

Since that time whenever I go camping, I take something to bludgeon life with me in the tent - a bat, a golf club, my camping knives. I've heard too many bear stories to have my life story end with, "The bear ran with her off into the wilds and she was never seen again."

Yet, what better ending might there be?  To be taken into the wilds, to become one with teeth, earth, the spring's cubs, and droppings?   

In fact, is any other ending possible?

How would you have your life end?

Boundaries

There is a place where the town ends,

And the fields begin.

It’s not marked but the feet know it,

Also the heart that is longing for refreshment

And, equally, for repose.

Someday we’ll live in the sky.

Meanwhile, the house of our lives is this green world.

The fields, the ponds, the birds.

The thick black oaks-surely they are

The invention of something wonderful.

And the tiger lilies.

And the runaway honeysuckle that no one

Will ever trim again.

Where is it? I ask, and then

My feet know it.

One jump, and I’m home.

Hearing this poem I am reminded of the song, “Gentle Arms of Eden” by Tracy Grammer and David Carter. The chorus goes:

This is my home, this is my only home
This is the only sacred ground that I have ever known
And should I stray in the dark night alone
Rock me goddess in the gentle arms of eden.

The green world is our home. Earth, our sacred ground that we know now, not fathoming if we become sky people at some future time as we ascend to the stars, or to heaven. Is there some invisible boundary between this “nature” and the expanse of urban life? Isn’t home all over the planet, even the places we have defiled and desecrated?

Later in this same song we hear:

Now there's smoke across the harbor, and there's factories on the shore
And the world is ill with greed and will and enterprise of war
But I will lay my burden in the cradle of your grace
And the shining beaches of your love and the sea of your embrace

I was speaking with my spouse about the future of the earth and how humans have changed the planet so. The topic came up as I explained how difficult it was for me to read historical novels of my home area. I had recently finished reading Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier and have begun reading Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen. The span of history told of how the Southeast was once full of abundant oaks, fish, and birds, and now to my eye it appears devastated.. I don’t know if I can finish this second novel, so painful is my response to what we have lost.

I mourned that we had lost paradise. To which my spouse replied, “The parrots you love are not so different or any more or less innocent than we. Perhaps the only difference is that they know they have not left paradise.”

Ah, my beloved homeland. Earth, my only home. We humans and what we build is nature and are the fruits of eden. Paradise never left us. Only in some artificial construct of human knowing and culture, we set up an artificial boundary of whether who we are and what we do belongs.

May today in my actions and thoughts, welcome and be welcomed.

Where do you feel the most at home? The least?

On Thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate (Psalm 145)

5.

So it is not hard to understand

Where God’s body is, it is

Everywhere and everything; shore and the vast

Fields of water, the accidental and the intended

Over here, over there. And I bow down

Participate and attentive

It is so dense and apparent. And all the same I am still

Unsatisfied. Standing

Here, now, I am thinking

Not of His thick writs and His blue

Shoulders but, still, of Him. Where, do you suppose is His

Pale and wonderful mind?

6.

I would be good-oh, I would be upright and good.

To what purpose? To be shingling not

Sinful, not wringing out of the hours

Petulance, heaviness, ashes. To what purpose?

Hope of heaven? Not that. But to enter

The other kingdom: grace, and imagination,

And the multiple sympathies: to be as a leaf, a rose,

A dolphin, a wave rising

Slowly then briskly out of the darkness to touch

The limpid air, to be God’s mind’s

Servant, loving with the body’s sweet mouth-its kisses, its

Words-

Everything.

7.

I know a man of such

Mildness and kindness sit is trying to

Change my lie. He does not

Preach, teach, but simply is. It is

Astonishing, for he is Christ’s ambassador

Truly, by rule and act. But, more,

He is kind with the sort of kindness that shines

Out, but is resolute, not fooled. He has

Eaten the dark hours and could also, I think,

Solider for God, riding out

Under the storm clouds, against the world’s pride and unkindness

With both unassailable sweetness, and consoling word.

8.

Every morning I want to kneel down on the golden
cloth of the sand and say
some kind of musical thanks for
the world that is happening again—another day—
from the shawl of wind coming out of the
west to the firm green

flesh of the melon lately sliced open and
eaten, its chill and ample body
flavored with mercy. I want
to be worthy of—what? Glory? Yes, unimaginable glory.
O Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am
not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.

I went to Vanderbilt Divinity School because of a professor there, Sally McFague. I read her book, The Body of God where she speaks of God being immanent in the world, and being the world. Sally would describe this as panentheistic – God is in everything and also timelessly extends beyond everything. In her world of Christianity, or so as I understood her, one could not be pantheistic and be a Christian, for a pantheist says God is the world, and nothing more. I wondered why she and others feared taking the final step? Is it because they felt somewhere in them such puzzlement in their minds, or perhaps a call to goodness and kindness that could not be explained by the mere world around them? Or was it that they feared the loss of self that knows no distinction between self and slug?

Also while attending Vanderbilt Divinity School I would tire of statements that contained this phrase, “Humans are the only ones that_________.” Every instance where I heard that I would think, no, that’s not true, this or that kind of nonhuman animal also does this. In the secular world I hear the same thing. When ever I hear such sentiments, I offer a kind thought to the author, for they will be found out eventually. Either someone will show them current scientific understanding, or it will only be a matter of time before we discover, no that’s not true. Nonhuman animals also do what humans do. For instance, a news article this week argued that that nonhuman animals have spiritual experiences.

Similarly I also heard in Divinity school that evolution leads to humans so the universe would have a mind to comprehend itself and could know itself. Again, I shudder at the audacity of our kind to think that we are the purpose of the Universe, as evidenced by the fact that no other animals are like us.

Enter Mary and her poem. She wonders where God’s mind is and aspires to be that mind – to be goodness and kindness and to love the body earth and all her beings. She does not say that humans are the only ones who can be God’s mind, only that she devotes her life to glory. This glory is to be God’s servant with intentionality to love all bodies, which are also hers and herself.

Reading Mary and thinking back on school and countless theological discussions and sermons written, I think she has captured almost all of my imagination. We are here not to be separate from others, or God. In fact, we cannot be. We are God’s body. Where I differ from Mary, perhaps, as I haven’t asked her, is that the mind is body. So if we are God’s body, so is our monkey mind – imperfect yet perfect, and fumbling and bumbling yet graceful. We have no climbing towards an external perfection to do. As my favorite poet said, we only have to love what the soft animal of our bodies love.

Today, what do you struggle to love? Wherever or however you struggle, I invite you to think of this as you take with me today one breathe. As you breathe in, ponder the peace of interconnection, and as you breathe out, breathe out love.

Letter to ______________ - October 3, 2010

You have broken my heart.

Just as well. Now

I am learning to rise

Above all that, learning

The thin life, waking up

Simply to praise

Everything in this world that is

Strong and beautiful

Always-the trees, the rocks,

The fields, the news

From heaven, the laughter

That comes back

All the same. Just as well. Time

To read books, rake the lawn

In peace, sweep the floor, scour

The faces of the pans,

Anything .And I have been so

Diligent it is almost

Over, I am growing myself

As strong as rock, as a tree

Which, if I put my arms around it, does not

Lean away. It is a

Wonderful life. Comfortable.

I read the papers. Maybe

I will go on a cruise, maybe I will

Cross the entire ocean, more than once.

Whatever you think, I have scarcely

Thought of you. Whatever you imagine,

It never really happened. Only a few

Evenings of nonsense. Whatever you believe-

Dear one, dear one-

Do not believe this letter.

I wonder how many people each of us would like a letter like this to. I am thinking of one or two. How, after our parting I did not know how to deal with the pain and my heart that had broken open. So I turned without and as my heart mended it healed a little bit larger to take in the beauty of the world around me, and in me. I was determined that love would not destroy me, but grow me. If I could but just let those of past now how well I’ve done without them – my parrot companions, my father, my Mayan. What I would also tell them that still in the night, they come to me in dreams, and in the morning the heart sighs and I must rewrite that letter and the story of my life.

To whom would you send such a letter?