How Turtles Come to Spend the Winter in the Aquarium, Then Are Flown South and Released Back Into the Sea

Somewhere down beach, in the morning, at water's edge, I found a sea turtle,

its huge head a smoldering apricot, its shell streaming with seaweed,

its eyes closed, its flipper motionless.

When I bent down, it moved a little.

When I picked it up, it signed.

Was it forty pounds, or fifty pounds, or a hundred?

Was it two miles back to the car?

We walked a little while, and then we rested, and then we walked on

I walked with my mouth open, my heart roared.

The eyes opened, I don't know what they thought.

Sometimes the flippers swam at the air.

Sometimes the eyes closed.

I couldn't walk anymore, and then I walked some more

while it turned into granite, or cement, but with that apricot-colored head,

that stillness, that Buddha-like patience, that cold-shocked but slowly beating heart.

Finally we reached the car.

The afternoon is the other part of this story.

Have you ever found something beautiful, and maybe just in time?

How such a challenge can fill you!

Jesus could walk over the water.

I had to walk ankle-deep in the sand, and I did it.

My bones didn't quite snap.

 Come on in, and see me smile.

I probably won't stop for hours.

Already, in the warmth, the turtle has raised its head, is looking around.

Today, who could deny it, I am an important person.

They say there are 9 Whooping Cranes at Payne's Prairie today - I am itching to be done with this blog so that I can run there to find something beautiful.  I think for the rest of this year I shall run towards beauty wherever I might find it so that I can be filled with challenge. 

Perhaps the real challenge is to see beauty everywhere, and let that love and awe fill us with bone snapping, urgent purpose.

Shall we all be important people this year?

How do you plan to be important this year?

Logan International

In the city called Wait,
also known as the airport,
you might think about your life --
there is not much else to do.
For one thing,
there is too much luggage,
and you're truly lugging it --
you and, it seems, everyone.

What is it, that you need so badly?
Think about this.

Earlier, in another city,
you're on the tarmac, a lost hour.
You're going to miss your connection, and you know it,
and you do.
You're headed for five hours of nothing.
And how long can you think about your own life?

What I did, to save myself,
was to look for children, the very young ones
who couldn't even know where they were going, or why.
Some of them were fussing, of course.
Many of them were beautifully Hispanic.

The storm was still busy outside, and snow falling
anywhere, any time, is a wonder.
But even more wonderful, and maybe the only thing
to put your own life in proportion,
were the babies, the little ones, hot and tired,
but still
gurgling, chuckling, as they looked --
wherever they were going, or not yet going,
in their weary parents' arms (no!
their lucky parents' arms) --
upon this broken world.

Mary asks what is it that we need so badly. I desire that children would not be looking upon a broken world. Yet, if the world is such a bad place how is that that gurgling, wondrous babies came into being? Airports are such places where we look at the baggage of our lives, open it up, and perhaps leave some of it behind. Or take home more to ponder at some later date.

A few years ago I was in a busy airport when I saw a bat flying at people level on the walkway between gates. People were ducking and darting. I set down my baggage, took of my jacket to use as a net, and set off to catch the bat. I was not having much success when one man took a swipe at the bat to harm it. I told him that I would catch the bat and let it go outside. I almost had the bat when the same man took off his shoe, threw it, and the bat fell to the floor. I just stared at the man. Why would he kill an innocent being when he knew that I would take care of her? I scooped up the bat, still alive, and went to the airline attendant at the gate and asked if she could let me outside so I could let the bat die in peace, or perhaps recover. She just started at me and asked, "What are you, a veterinarian?" She did let me out side and I placed the bat on the connector walkway on the tarmac.

Returning inside, many eyes were on me. I wanted to shout, "What are we, humans?" In that moment the world indeed seemed so very broken.

When have you experienced "brokenness" and what reminded you of wholeness?

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

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."

I wonder if trees are the true heroes of the world. Mostly they are in the background of sagas, fables, and myths. Now and then they rise to prominence, such as in the movies Lord of the Rings and Prince Caspian. The trees move, fight, and are on the good guy team. I don’t think though that we’ll ever see them as McDonald Happy Meal toys or action figures under the Christmas Tree. Ah, see that, there is a celebrated tree whose reverence dates back thousands of years when we prayed to trees and they responded.

When I was a small child I went to the woods. I would sing to the birds and to trees and would be at rest for a while. These were prayers of gratitude and a heart’s call to be one with them. In the rush of my days, I believe I forget this except when I am purposively on a nature walk, meditating in nature, or have been part of a conservation team studying parrots in some towering tropical tree. Deep down though I believe that here has not been a forgetting, for my subconscious knows that trees, at least for one such as me born in the southeast of the U.S.A, hold up my world with hope and beauty. Let me leave these words and go hug a tree in the morning light.

What do you think/feel when you hug a tree?

The Moths - March 31, 2010

There's a kind of white moth, I don't know

what kind, that glimmers

by mid-May

in the forest...

If you notice anything,

it leads you to notice

more and more...

I was always running around, looking

at this and that.

If I stopped

the pain

was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe

the world

can't be saved,

the pain was unbearable.

Finally, I had noticed enough.

All around me in the forest

the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering

in and out of the shadows?

You aren't much, I said

one day to my reflection

in a green pond,

and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight.

and burn

so brightly...

Mary is watching the moths, and who is noticing us? Who looks at us as so short lived, burning so brightly, and nurtured in the sweet abundance of the world out of which we metamorphosed? I could answer this that we humans notice one another, but is there not a greater Watcher? Life itself? And of course I ask, are we not life itself? The mirror held up to the sun?

If I don't notice my reflection in the pond, the pain can be unanswerable for I want to run around saving everything. When I slow down, and over the long years this has come somewhat naturally, I notice more and more that there perhaps isn't anything to save, only to notice. No action needed other than a grin, a smile.

In the movie, The Thin Red Line, the hero sees a baby parrot bombed out of a tree and says:

"Why is it that one man looks at a dying bird and sees unanswerable pain. Another man looks at the same birds and feels the glory, feels a smile shining through."

Where do you see your reflection in the world around you and what is your response to seeing yourself in the world? What do you notice today that you might not have noticed years before?

A Visitor - March 23, 2010

My father, for example,

who was young once

and blue-eyed,

returns

on the darkest of nights

to the porch and knocks

wildly at the door...

Finally there came the night

when I rose out of my sheets

and stumbled down he hall.

The door fell open

and I know I was saved

and could bear him...

And I greeted him and asked him

into the house,

and lit the lamp,

and looked into his blank eyes

in which at last

I saw what a child must love,

I saw what love might have done

had we loved in time.

A young Mary wakes in the night and goes to stare at her father, perhaps passed out on the sofa. If she feels safe enough or if grace visits her night, she might love her father and know in the center of her being that her love is enough, even if his isn't. In her loving she is saved, and in her saving, perhaps there will come a night when she can open to her fears, to her wounds, to her disappointment, and bear the world upon her worn shoulders, love reborn.

Just yesterday morning at 5:30 a.m. a young man that we took in from Honduras came knocking at our door. He had lived with us for two years, called us ma and pa, and we had managed to bear one another until we asked him to move out due to his issues with drugs and breaking laws and home covenants. I had not seen him for a year, and there he was. We invited him in, poured him a cup of coffee, and was reminded how easy he was to love, even if his actions could not be born. He reminded how in the midst of my disappointment and hurt, how easy it is to love.

Who in your past might come knocking at your door and how will you greet the reminder of what might have happened if love could have found a way?

The Journey - March 22, 2010

The Journey - March 22, 2010

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

This seems to be Mary's crescendo of my favorite poems. Wild Geese and The Journey are two I use a lot. Then in between was that lovely surprise of Starfish. I hear my own heart in her words - that love will save me. And in saving me, I save the starfish, the geese, the world. Also, the world in being beautiful, love worthy, and tragic, saves me. I have great company in the struggles of life, for their struggle is my own. In solidarity we journey ever home.

How do you save yourself? Are saved?

Ice - January 31, 2010

My father spent his last winter

Making ice-grips for shoes...

...My father should not have been doing

All that close work

In the drafty workshop, but as though

he sensed travel at the edge of his mind,

He would not be stopped...

...Plainly the giving was an asking,

A petition to be welcomed and useful-

Or maybe, who knows, the seed of a desire

Not to be sent alone out over the black ice...

...Mother writes tome: I am cleaning the workshop

And I have found

so many pairs of the ice-grips....

...What shall I do?..

And I write back: Mother, please

Save everything.

My father, in his last year, went out one fall day and raked up leaves. He'd had a heart transplant with many complications, in and out of danger in the 5 years after that surgery. A few days later he got a fungal pneumonia, perhaps born out of the decaying, wet leaves. Into the hospital he went, again, and this last time, he did not get out. .

He should not have been doing that work. But he wanted to be of use, to take part in the annual family ritual of raking leaves, and avoiding raking leaves. One year while I was away in college he sent me an envelope in which brown leaves from our yard were enclosed, with a note saying "Wish you were here."

Now in every leaf I see, my heart says, "Wish you were here" to my father. I too share the desires of fathers, to not be alone and to be of use. Any giving I do is really an asking, please, save me and save everything.

How does working or giving bring you connection to others? What will you do in the last year of your life?

On Winter's Margin - January 12, 2010

...By time snow's down, the birds amassed with sing

Like children for their sire to walk abroad!

But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk

Who floats alone beyond the frozen vies;....

They are what saves the world: who choose to grow

Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

Here I think of charity of crumbs for birds, for the marginalized of the world, the poor. Here I think how we mindlessly throw off what has gone stale for us and rejoice in how the oppressed will sing our praises if we but show our scant love in trails of broken crusts for those breaking upon earth's crust. Here I think in this month of 2010's beginnings I strive to grow thin so that I might in each moment begin again in love. May this thinness not be of sacrifice, but of joy as the light from within which reflects the bright beauty without has an easier and easier time of shining through.

Where do you choose to grow thin so that you might see beauty, and empower your community beyond acts of charity into actions of justice's strength?