“Nature is the infrastructure of our communities…Nature enriches us economically and culturally and historically, but it also enriches us spiritually. God talks to human beings through many vectors: Through organized religions and the great books of those religions, through the prophets and wise people, and through art and literature and music and poetry, but nowhere with the same detail and texture and grace and joy as through Creation. And when we destroy nature, we impoverish our children. We diminish their capacity—and our own—to sense the Divine, to understand who God is, and to grasp what our own potential is as human beings.” —Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Confession
Before I started writing in earnest I didn’t know how much I love nature
I should have known by the way cicada summersong stirs sacred memories
I should have known by the certain slant of light on fiery autumn trees there’s hope within which never leaves
I should have known from the brilliant beckoning of silversharp stars on a clear winter’s night or by Venus, glittering bright over the ocean as the sun rises that the soul must keep reaching for what it cannot grasp
I should have known that once I start seeking I will find just as I discover hawks perched high above me every single time I think to look up
I should have known by the poignant scent of fallen pines and freshcut grass that newness returns after the pain
I should have known how much humans have lost by not living close to the earth as we were meant to (as we did, in ages past) or how this void is behind the longing of every soul crying out for belonging healing restoration and peace
I should have known all things are interconnected and sustained
by the voice speaking through nature…
Before I started writing in earnest I didn’t know how much I love nature
but the important thing is that I know it now
I will always know it, now
for, like finchsong at my door, untold glories surround me
weaving their way into my writings so that I recognize holy rhythms of life
spoken into being into my being
—let me listen oh, let me listen.
One of last year’s baby bluebirds hanging out by its natal home, on my back deck
******* Composed for Day 13 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
Let them be a memento of the first day I came to see you and of God’s divine grace.
I shall keep them for you until such time that you can understand the story.
I picked them up, brought them home, and washed them. Never mind that we’re not Catholic, your father and grandfather being Baptist preachers.
Considering the significance of my visit, their appearing seemed a rare and holy thing.
A set of rosary beads, right there in the parking lot, with no one else in sight. Perhaps meant for a child, as the beads are plastic, mostly bright blue, with six orange, three green, and a little white crucifix.
When I left the hospital to head home, the rain had ended. The sun sparkled on the wet pavement. My heart danced with the beauty of the day, of the whole world. I stepped gingerly around puddled water shimmering with rainbow swirls, and that’s when I saw it.
Grandparents and grandchildren are a special gift to each other, especially if many years together are granted. Time to love, to live all our own stories, to always be close ’til you’re all grown up and I must go… this is my prayer.
I sat in a chair and your dad placed you in my arms. Joy and awe flooded my very soul…my cup runneth over, and over. I could have held you forever and it wouldn’t have been enough.
And there you were…so little, so perfect…I’d cried when your dad texted the first photos on the previous day. Now, seeing you with my own eyes, I could hear my grandmother’s voice, her narrative: You looked just like a little angel. And that’s exactly how you looked to me, my beautiful Micah. A heavenly being sent straight from the hands of almighty God.
Down came a gentle rainfall, spattering the windshield as I flew to the hospital that morning…once I answered the COVID questions and passed the temperature check upon arriving, I was allowed to go the room.
The end of October is a lovely time of year here in North Carolina, when the sky takes on sapphire hues. I wore a light raincoat because the meterologists predicted sprinkling.
I had to wait until the day after you were born to come see you.
You came during the pandemic. The world struggled with masks and distancing. The hospital limited visitors to two a day…and your dad counted as one.
My grandmother loved to tell me the story of my birth. I shall love telling you yours.
Me holding Micah for the first time.
******* Composed for Day 9 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge with Two Writing Teachers
In the fading light on the last day of January, I hear it:
a loud, merry squawk! on the front porch.
First time I’ve heard that precious sound since last April, when the silence set in without warning, when the whole nestful of beautiful finch fledglings in my door wreath died.
Season after season, tiny life came into being on my portal, taking wing from sky-blue eggs to blue-egg sky, until the April day when it stopped.
The hardest part of loss apart from the emptiness is the unanswered why.
For now we see through a glass darkly, wrote the Apostle in his chapter on love. Those words echo in my memory as I look through the etched-glass window of my door, where the silhouette of the visitor perches on the replacement wreath.
I don’t know, but I suspect he’s the father, returning to scout for a safe nesting-place as in seasons past.
I don’t know if I am hoping he’ll choose this wreath as bird courtship goes into full swing.
I don’t know, here on the cusp of Valentine’s Day, if my heart is willing to risk giving itself away after such a shattering
but at the sound of that squawk! it instantaneously leaps
and I can’t help remembering how Grandma used to phone me, saying I just wanted to hear your precious voice.
You cannot know, little Finch on the other side of the glass, how precious your voice is to me or how I marvel at your resiliency.
In the long continuum of things, our stories are interwoven as much as the grasses and tiny flowers and random sweet feathers in all your former nests.
If you dare to build again here in my sanctuary I will dare to love again.
If you do not, I will understand that your new life will go on elsewhere as I go on cherishing every bright memory and the sound.
This week I’m honored to host fellow Spiritual Journey writers who gather on the first Thursday of each month.
In choosing the theme of renewal, I note that one definition of the word is resuming an activity after an interruption. That’s exactly what I’m doing now: writing my first blog post in two months. My blogging life went on hiatus while a lot of other life happened. I spent the summer keeping granddaughters. I returned to work at school in a new role. And my husband, a pastor, slowly succumbed to debilitating back pain. Unable to stand for very long, he’s been preaching while seated in a chair. Surgery was inevitable. Having spent four days in the hospital at the end of October, he’s now home and slowly ‘resuming interrupted activities’ like sitting, standing, and walking, which are, at times, excruciating.
Considering my husband’s journey, I might have chosen the word endurance. He lost an eye to a rare condition in 2015. In 2019, he survived two heart attacks, cardiac arrest, and two subsequent surgeries. He was still convalescing when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Through it all, something he came to enjoy, and which helped him regain his physical strength, was hiking at a nearby dam. I’d return home from work and he’d tell me: “I saw an eagle at the dam today!”
I started accompanying him on weekends, armed with binoculars and my bird identification apps. We saw (and heard) a wondrous variety of birds, most notably the ospreys with babies in their nest, the great blue heron at the waterfall, and the gorgeous red-shouldered hawk that flew ahead of us in the woods to perch on a low branch, where it stared right back at us, with considerably less awe.
No eagles.
As time wore on, my husband’s back wore out, and there were no more hikes.
When the pain relegated him to preaching from a chair, he finally scheduled the surgery. It was more than he wanted to endure. He was tired of enduring.
Which brings me to the need for renewal.
Circle back with me, for a moment, to the eagles.
A few years ago I had a medical issue which required an outpatient procedure. My husband drove me to the hospital and back home afterward. It was winter; I watched the bare trees and old farm outbuildings whipping by my window when I saw… could it be? A bald eagle sitting, big as life, at the roadside! If I’d been on a bike I could have held out my hand and touched it (theoretically).
I was, however, still woozy from anesthesia…perhaps it was a figment…
But my husband cried out: “That was an eagle!“
He turned the car around.
The eagle might have ignored our passing again, but it grew suspicious when we slowed down. It unfurled its mighty wings and headed for a gnarled old oak.
Call it fanciful, if you like…sighting that eagle reassured me that all would be well with my medical situation.
So it was.
Four months later my husband’s heart stopped; he was resuscitated, with a shattered sternum; he survived emergency stents and bypasses.
He went walking at the dam as rehab. He saw eagles.
Although I’ve looked and looked, I haven’t seen one since that unique roadside appearance.
Until this last surgery.
Our oldest son offered to stay the first night with his dad in the hospital so I could come home and sleep. I was exhausted. I would stay the next night.
Early on the following morning, somewhat rested, I drove back to the hospital. October in the North Carolina Piedmont is breathtakingly beautiful. Along both sides of this particular highway the forest stretches out in a visual paean of orange, red, and yellow. That day, the blazing colors were framed by a brilliant blue, cloudless sky. Our son had texted that his dad had a rough night. We all knew to expect it it; the intensity of post-op pain for spinal surgery is severe. My husband has already been in tremendous pain for so long. He’s already suffered and endured so much…he knew he needed this surgery, but will he have the strength to endure the aftermath?
Will I?
Such were my dark thoughts that bright morning, inching my way back to him in the congested workday traffic, when a solitary bird glided into view in the tranquil blue above the gridlocked cars. A big, dark bird with long, broad wings, white head shining bright in the sun…
It can’t be, I thought. After all the times I’ve tried to see one…that it should be now…I leaned as far as I could toward the windshield, taking advantage of the stopped traffic to stare upward.
It came nearer, sailing with easy grace, low enough for me to see its gleaming white, fan-shaped tail.
No mistaking it.
Isaiah 40:31 came immediately to mind:
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
Renewal. An infusion of new strength, sufficient for the day. An assurance of more for the difficult days ahead. These words were originally given by the prophet Isaiah to the Israelites, foretelling the end of their Babylonian captivity. The people would make the seven-hundred-mile journey back home; they would be restored. The chapter begins with Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. The phrase they shall walk seems especially significant in light of my husband’s situation, that he shall soon walk without the pain that’s plagued him. There’s more to say about the biblical symbolism of eagles, but in this verse, the original language seems to allude to feathers rather than wings and an ancient Jewish belief that when the eagle molts, his youth and vitality are restored.
My husband’s battered body will not be restored to youth in this life. Vitality, however, means strength and energy, which brings us to another definition of renewal: a return to vigor. A return of physical strength and good health. That is our prayer for his healing.
Most importantly, the verse speaks to strengthrenewed by waiting on, or depending on, or clinging to, the Lord. More than renewal of physical strength. It’s spiritual rehab.
That eagle, appearing on the morning after my husband’s surgery, buoyed my spirit. As did the other I saw by the road on the day I was concerned for my own health.
We continue to wait on, to cling to, the Lord as we travel this long road of recovery. Daily renewal of strength comes from nowhere else.
Let me close by saying I’m awed, anew, by His use of visual aids for the spiritual journey.
Harbingers
I. That Morning You Drove Me Home From the Medical Procedure
back country byway, winter-brown grass trees, old gray outbuildings, zipping, zipping past small pond clearing, wood-strewn ground bald eagle sitting roadside—too profound—
I thought it was the anesthesia until you saw it, too, before it flew.
And I knew.
II. On the Morning I Returned to the Hospital After Your Surgery
lanes of heavy traffic, day dawning bright our son says you had a painful, painful night dew on the windshield, fog in my brain all hope of moving past this gridlock, in vain but for the glory of autumn leaves, a-fire against cloudless blue where a solitary flier glides by, white head and tail gleaming in the sun…
I promise, beloved one.
Your healing has begun.
Bald Eagle by Gary Rothstein, NASA. Public domain.
Usually it’s the sound of cicadas that stirs my soul, their rattling courtship-chorus reaching a feverish crescendo in late August. Summer hits its brutal zenith just before it begins to die. Interesting how August means to increase.
On the last Sunday of August, it’s not the sound of cicadas which captivates me.
It’s the sight of one clinging to the screen in the kitchen window, early in the morning.
So still that I wonder if it’s dead.
I am tempted to go out and see, but I don’t. Let it be. If it’s dead, it will still be there after church and I’ll save its body to show the granddaughters. Cicadas are big insects that evoke terror in many people; I do not want the girls to fear them. The antidote to fear is understanding. Study. Fear not. Maybe even learn to love.
I take a photo instead.
It is a dark morning, like the one in the sermon text for this day, Mark 1:35: Jesus rises “very early in the morning, while it was still dark” to find a desolate place to pray. He’d spent the previous day healing the sick, including Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, and driving out demons.
When I return home, the cicada is gone.
Not dead.
All I have is this snapshot of it resting alone in a quiet place on the grid, with the crape myrtle by the old dog’s grave blooming in the background.
I could write an entire book, perhaps, on the symbolism and metaphor here.
I settle for a poem.
Clinging to the grid In respite from work Crape myrtle abloom August’s crescendo is the last Defying death in the wings As love drives resurrection
The cicada and crape myrtle are symbols of life, longevity, immortality, and resurrection. Summer is dying, but only for now.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge
And so it comes to pass, at long last, that I return to the site of my sun-kissed childhood summers.
My ancestral homeplace in eastern North Carolina. Literally the land of my fathers: My dad, my grandparents, my great-parents, my great-greats were all born within a small radius of a tiny town and crossroads that were old long before my appearance on this Earth.
Thus began my fascination with Time.
In the bend of a dirt road stood my grandparents’ home, where my father grew up. My youngest aunt was born here in the same room where her father, my Granddaddy, would die fifty-three years later at 92. He wanted to die at home. He did, peacefully and “full of days,” as the Scriptures say of Abraham, Isaac, and Job: After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days (Job 42:16-17).
Likewise, my grandparents saw four generations. They lived to see my children. Incidentally, Granddaddy had a brother named Job who died in the 1920s (he drowned, if I recall correctly; this is a coastal area).
So it was that I grew up on stories of the old days and ways, a little city girl mesmerized by my deep country roots. In my time the once-thriving community was already history; nature was reclaiming the unpainted houses, one by one. Some were still visible through the woods (an early memory: a cypress shingle roof in the treetops, if you looked just right) and others were in various stages of falling down with yards still mowed by descendants.
On this return journey a few weeks ago, I discovered that my grandmother’s homeplace from the early 1900s is being swallowed by the forest:
A terrible jolt, as I can remember it having a hedge, a lawn, a porch swing, a screen door. I remember the layout inside and my great-uncle living there, tending to a patch of sunflowers.
And I knew, prior to this journey, that my grandparents’ house, which stood on the corner a little farther on, is gone.
This story is a little different, however. Instead of the forest reaching its veiny green fingers to reclaim its own, a young couple has built a home right in the middle of what was once my grandfather’s garden. I can’t help thinking how Grandma would marvel at the beauty of this new house and its lovely landscaping.
All that remains here from the enchanted summers of my childhood half a century ago (and from time before me) is the pumphouse, one of Grandma’s crepe myrtles (now wistfully draped in Spanish moss, which never used to be in these parts), and the sidewalk that once led to the front porch of Granddaddy and Grandma’s home:
As a teenager I wrote a song about a sidewalk. Haven’t thought about it in ages:
Where does this lonely sidewalk lead? You think by now I’d know Footsteps into yesterday That’s where I want to go…
I had no idea, then, that only the sidewalk would remain in this place I loved so well, where I used to play outside in the sweltering bug-infested heat, where Grandma would sit at her piano in the evenings to have me sing old hymns with her as Granddaddy listened from his recliner, where I felt loved and wanted and sheltered and that I belonged…
The old dirt road remains, too, of course.
There was another dirt road branching off of it here in the shadows to the left; it once led, Grandma said, to a two-story antebellum house with a double balcony. I could hear admiration for that house in her voice. In my childhood the road was just two tracks through grass and thickets. The path faded more and more with every passing summer. Now you would never know it had ever been anything but woods.
From this vantage point, my grandparents’ yard is on the right, and to the immediate left is an old family cemetery. Not my family’s, although I walked it often with Grandma over the years. When I was a child, I was afraid ghosts would come out here at night. Grandma assured me they would not. She offered this dubious comfort: No need to fear the dead. Fear the living.
When I wondered at the graves of so many babies, she said people just didn’t know what to do for them when they were sick.
It’s clear how much the children were loved and mourned. This tiny cemetery remains painstakingly tended and strangely outside of time:
Hello again, baby Leafy Jean and big brother Leon Russell.
These siblings died a month apart in 1917. Grandma was born three months after Leon, almost a year to the day before Leafy, in the soon-to-be obscured homeplace just around the bend of the road.
Four-month-old twins Audrie and Aubrie died a week apart during that same summer.
The greater wonder, in its way, are the children who survived disease and mothers who died giving birth to them, which almost happened to Grandma: her mother delivered a stillborn baby three months before she was born. My grandmother was a twin. Grandma journaled this because I asked her to; in her writings, she says several women in the community who recently had babies helped nurse her while my great-grandmother was so ill that she “almost didn’t make it.”
—Why am I just now realizing that Grandma’s lost twin would have come around the same time as Leon Russell? Could his mother have been one of the women who preserved my newborn grandmother’s hungry life? if so …imagine saving someone else’s child and losing your own…
So many mysteries in this place. I’ve always felt the pull.
Over fifty years after I first walked this cemetery with my grandmother, I’m awed by the good condition of the headstones. I halfway expected them to be eroding into illegibility — after all, these people’s earthly homes have long since crumbled. No greater mystery than Time…
I cannot linger here, ruminating, for there’s another place to visit. Really just a good walk “around the horn” to the church, a journey I’ve made many times.
This was once the heart of the bustling farm community. The church was built on land given by my grandmother’s predecessors. Her father, mother, brothers, and other family are buried to the right of this crossroads.
Granddaddy and Grandma are buried in the churchyard, to the left.
Such a beautiful little resting place, presently bordered by a lush cornfield. An old live oak felled by a hurricane in recent years has been replaced by a new one nearby.
Grandma would be so pleased to see how well-tended everything is.
There’s even a new footbridge over the ditch at the churchyard, for easy access to the little community center across the road. This building stands where Grandma’s three-room grade school used to, she said in her journal.
Here’s where old and new converge most for me, where Time is most relevant and paradoxically elusive. The spirit of this place is old; my own memories are growing old.
My father as a teenager, in the churchyard
I am the keeper of memories older than mine.
But I came for the new.
I brought my granddaughter, you see.
All along the journey, I told her stories. Of the old days, the old ways.
I brought her to dig for fossils at the Museum in town (which is where the phosphate mining company sends its rejects now, instead of scattering treasures on the old dirt roads).
We found a bit of coral skeleton, shark’s teeth, and some bony things I’ve yet to identify:
Making new memories from the old… even from the ancient, from time before recorded time.
As we were leaving, I discovered that the old library in this old, old town looks the same as it did five decades ago when Grandma drove me to pick out books to read at her house in the summer. I halfway expected to see her coming out with the armful she had to help me carry…
And I think this is used to be, or is at least near, the butcher shop where Daddy worked as a teenager.
There’s so much more to be said about memory, legacy, endurance, overcoming, and family… about the whole spiritual journey of life. The greatest gift my grandparents gave me, beyond their unconditional love and their stories, is that of faith lived out. I learned long ago that eventually there comes a homecoming so bright, so glorious, that all the former shadows are forgotten.
I expect I’ll recognize my little corner of Heaven, having had such a foretaste here.
Until that time, I carry on in the footsteps before me, praying I walk even half as well.
My now, my tomorrows ❤
From Everlasting to Everlasting: A Prayer of Moses
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!” For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night…
Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands! Psalm 90: 1-4;16-17
*******
with thanks to my Spiritual Journey friends who write on the first Thursday of each month and to host Carol Varsalona who posted this reflection and question for July:
Pause and praise God for His wondrous gifts! What are you rejoicing over this summer?
And so this festive feast day rolls ’round again, leaving me pondering my (supposed) green roots.
I grew up wearing green on this day just so I wouldn’t get pinched at school.
We weren’t Catholic, so for a long time I didn’t understand the history of saints and feasts.
I did understand leprechauns, however, because I loved books of legends, lore, and mysterious creatures.
The generations before me were Protestants hailing from rural eastern North Carolina, and despite my ancestry of Rileys on one side and Mayos on the other, our Irishness wasn’t discussed.
Except.
I write about this every year: My Granddaddy’s middle name was St. Patrick.
For real.
He didn’t love it at all (being a Methodist, or… because that’s really odd?) He had it legally changed to the initial S. in my lifetime.
But my aunt Pat was already named for him.
When I was a young adult, my dad tried to trace the Irish family line, maybe in search of a reason for this peculiar name choice borne by his father (whose brothers mostly had Biblical names like James, Hosea, Job Enoch, Asa…). And Granddaddy’s rustic accent bore traces of Elizabethan English: His brothers Hosea and Asa were Hosey and Acey; a neighbor, Etta, was Etter. Listen to Brits pronouncing Diana today and you may catch it: Dianer.
In short: All I can recall from my dad’s research is a convoluted story without a clear end.
But.
I did hear Granddaddy mention his grandfather speaking of Dublin. Just once, long, long ago.
Nowadays, with all of them gone, I am left to wonder, except that my DNA report says my ancestry is 92% British and Irish. As for strongest Irish evidence, County Dublin is listed second; County Mayo, fourth.
I do know that Saint Patrick’s Day wasn’t an official public holiday in Ireland until 1903…Granddaddy was born in 1906, so…hmmm…
All in all, despite the mysteries, I feel an affinity for the ancient Apostle of Ireland and his Christian ministry. My grandparents were devout salt-of-the-earth people. I am who I am largely because of their faith, their prayers. My husband and oldest son—with a surname tied to an ancient Irish family seat—are ministers.
That’s enough green threads for me to honor the day with a few favorite quotes attributed to the saint. There are prayers that I find profoundly beautiful and worth meditating upon, every day.
But I’ll leave you with these little pearls that make me smile:
Never trust a dog to watch your food.
May the light always find you on a dreary day.
We cannot share this sorrow if we haven’t grieved a while. Nor can we feel another’s joy until we’ve learned to smile (#WhyIWrite).
And from one of my life’s verses, Psalm 46:10:
Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be.
I shall, Saint Patrick.
I shall.
Honestly, Granddaddy did resemble this a bit, sans beard.
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge
Today on Ethical ELA’s Open Write, Stacey Joy invites participants to lift a line of poetry and use it in creating a Golden Shovel poem.
I was thinking about it being President’s Day, so I went in search of poems written by our presidents. This led me to Jimmy Carter, the first U.S. President to publish a book of poetry in his lifetime. He is our longest-living president; at age 98, he has just entered hospice care. I have lifted a line from his verse.
“To hear the same whale’s song” – Jimmy Carter, “Life on a Killer Submarine,” Always a Reckoning and Other Poems
Homeward Hymn
when my life draws to its close I imagine the last thing I hear will be cicadas rattling high in the green oaks as I pass, fervently calling, calling the way, same lost and found returning sound of whale’s pulsating destination song
lit bits and pieces 