…any father, particularly an old father, must finally give his child up to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God.
It seems almost a cruelty for one generation to beget another when parents can secure so little for their children, so little safety, even in the best circumstances. Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents’ love for him by assuring that there will indeed be angels in that wilderness. ~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
A reassuring truth for many families during this graduation season – in past years, we too watched our children leave home to begin a life of their own. We trusted in God’s providence that in our absence, there would be angels in the wilderness waiting to guide them.
Indeed there have been angels and continue to be – you know who you are!
In turn, over thirty two years of clinical work in a university health center, I had opportunity to be that refuge in the wilderness for thousands of young adults who had left their parents’ home to seek out their own journey. Sometimes they found themselves stranded on a path that was twisting, rocky, full of pitfalls and peril.
Despite plenty of my own limitations over those years, I found keeping this perspective helped me greet each new face, not only with a physician’s skill and knowledge, but always with a mother’s embrace.
Are there angels in the wilderness? I don’t know I’ve got my doubts, but if you say so But I’ve got a feeling we’re doing ok We’re doing our part, to make the brambles seem less sharp
Beneath the wing of an angel Far away from the night Carry me till I am able Beneath the wing of an angel
On the wing of an angel Fly me on to the light Hold me close till I’m able Beneath the wing of an angel
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Though I know well enough To hunt the Lady’s Slipper now Is playing blindman’s-buff, For it was June She put it on And grey with mist the spider’s lace Swings in the autumn wind, Yet through this hill-wood, high and low, I peer in every place; Seeking for what I cannot find I do as I have often done And shall do while I stay beneath the sun. ~Andrew Young “Lady’s Slipper Orchid”
How strange to find you where I did along a path beside a road, your legs in graceful green dancing to music made by wind and woods.
Like ladies from a bygone age, you left your slippers there to air in dappled shade, while you, barefoot, relaxed your stays, let loose your hair.
The treasures of this world might be as simple as an orchid’s bloom; how sad that so much time is spent in filling coffers for the tomb.
If only life could be so fresh and free as you in serenade, we might learn we value most those things found lost in woodland shade. ~Mike Orlock “Lady Slipper Serenade (in 4/4 time)”
My grandmother’s house where my father was born had been torn down. She sold her property on Fidalgo Island near Anacortes, Washington to a lumber company – this was the house where all four of her babies were born, where she and my grandfather loved and fought and separated and finally loved again, and where we spent chaotic and memorable Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. After Grandpa died, Grandma took on boarders, trying to afford to remain there on the homesteaded wooded acreage on Similk Bay, fronted by meadows where her Scottish Highland cattle grazed. Her own health was suffering and she reached a point when it was no longer possible to make it work. A deal was struck with the lumber company and she moved to a small apartment for the few years left to her, remaining bruised by leaving her farm.
My father realized what her selling to a lumber company meant and it was a crushing thought. The old growth woods would soon be stumps on the rocky hill above the bay, opening a view to Mt. Baker to the east, to the San Juan Islands to the north, and presenting an opportunity for development into a subdivision. He woke my brother and me early one Saturday in May and told us we were driving the 120 miles to Anacortes. He was on a mission.
As a boy growing up on that land, he had wandered the woods, explored the hill, and helped his dad farm the rocky soil. There was only one thing he felt he needed from that farm and he had decided to take us with him, to trespass where he had been born and raised to bring home a most prized treasure–his beloved lady slippers (Calypso bulbosa) from the woods.
These dainty flowers enjoy a spring display known for its brevity–a week or two at the most–and they tend to bloom in small little clusters in the leafy duff mulch of the deep woods, preferring only a little indirect sunlight part of the day. They are not easy to find unless you know where to look.
My father remembered exactly where to look.
We hauled buckets up the hill along with spades, looking as if we were about to dig for clams at the ocean. Dad led us up a trail into the thickening foliage, until we had to bushwhack our way into the taller trees where the ground was less brush and more hospitable ground cover. He would stop occasionally to get his bearings as things were overgrown. We reached a small clearing and he knew we were near. He went straight to a copse of fir trees standing guard over a garden of lady slippers.
There were almost thirty of them blooming, scattered about in an area the size of my small bedroom. Each orchid-like pink and lavender blossom had a straight backed stem that held it with sturdy confidence. To me, they looked like they could be little shoes for fairies who may have hung them up while they danced about barefoot. To my father, they represented the last redeeming vestiges of his often traumatic childhood, and were about to be trammeled by bulldozers. We set to work gently digging them out of their soft bedding, carefully keeping their bulb-like corms from losing a protective covering of soil and leafy mulch. Carrying them in the buckets back to the car, we felt some vindication that even if the trees were to be lost to the saws, these precious flowers would survive.
When we got home, Dad set to work creating a spot where he felt they could thrive in our own woods. He found a place with the ideal amount of shade and light, with the protection of towering trees and the right depth of undisturbed leaf mulch. We carefully placed the lady slippers in their new home, scattered in a pattern similar to how we found them. Then Dad built a four foot split rail fence in an octagon around them, as a protection from our cattle and a horse who wandered the woods, and as a way to demarcate that something special was contained inside.
The next spring, only six lady slippers bloomed from the original thirty. Dad was disappointed but hoped another year might bring a resurgence as the flowers established themselves in their new home. The following year there were only three. A decade later, my father left our farm and family, not looking back.
Sometime after the divorce, when my mother had to sell the farm, I visited our lady slipper sanctuary in the woods for the last time in the middle of May, seeking what I hoped might still be there, but I knew was no longer. The split rail fence still stood, guarding nothing but old memories. No lady slippers bloomed. There was not a trace they had ever been there. They had given up and disappeared.
The new owners of the farm surely puzzled over the significance of the small fenced-in area in the middle of our woods. They probably thought it surrounded a graveyard of some sort.
And they would be right – it did.
An embroidery I made for my father after he replanted the lady slippers — on the back I wrote “The miracle of creation recurs each spring in the delicate beauty of the lady slipper – may we ourselves be recreated as well…”
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Just as we lose hope she ambles in, a late guest dragging her hem of wildflowers, her torn veil of mist, of light rain, blowing her dandelion breath in our ears; and we forgive her, turning from chilly winter ways, we throw off our faithful sweaters and open our arms. ~Linda Pastan, “Spring” from Heroes in Disguise.
Spring dawdled this year, arriving at least three weeks behind the usual timeline due to chill winds and soppy ground. I waited impatiently for the transition, begging the first dandelion to appear.
Then it hit. Shocking in its suddenness, a few May days of uncharacteristic 90 degree temperatures, forcing everything to push to the surface and swell to bursting.
We’re playing catch-up. Grasses leaped to jungle height, and bold weeds dominate every square inch.
Now I must adapt to summer heat and smoky horizons; no more sweaters needed when the sweatiness begins.
I already miss Spring’s soft dandelion breath as I swelter in a premature Summer sauna.
Yet all is forgiven, delicate Spring. You will come ’round again next year. Only you know the timing of your grand entrance when we’ll throw flowers at your feet.
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I dare not look away From beauty such as this, Lest, while my glance should stray, Some loveliness I miss.
The trees might choose to print Their shadow on the lake; The windless air might glint With aspen leaves that shake.
Over the mountains there A thin blue veil might drift; Then in a moment rare This thin blue veil might lift.
Ah, I must pay good heed To beauty such as this, Lest, in some hour of need, Its loveliness I miss. ~Jesse Belle Rittenhouse “In the Green Mountains”
Steeped in my own worries and thoughts as I go about my housework and barn chores, I could be missing something lovely happening outside while I’m not looking. Perhaps the gray fog is clearing to reveal a cloudless blue sky, or the sun angles just right for everything to appear gilded, or magical rays of light and rainbows appear behind my back.
If I glance out at such a moment of irreplaceable beauty, I grab it and hang on as long as I can. It spreads balm over my soul and provides a gift to my spirit. It’s a wonder I get anything else done.
It is as if the loveliness was meant just for me, but I know better. Beauty is best when shared.
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Late in May as the light lengthens toward summer the young goldfinches flutter down through the day for the first time to find themselves among fallen petals cradling their day’s colors in the day’s shadows of the garden beside the old house after a cold spring with no rain not a sound comes from the empty village as I stand eating the black cherries from the loaded branches above me saying to myself Remember this ~W.S. Merwin “Black Cherries”
Let me imagine that we will come again when we want to and it will be spring we will be no older than we ever were the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud through which the morning slowly comes to itself and the ancient defenses against the dead will be done with and left to the dead at last the light will be as it is now in the garden that we have made here these years together of our long evenings and astonishment ~W.S. Merwin “To Paula in Late Spring”
Yes, let us be astonished that any spring happens. That the dull gray of winter yields to petals and fruitful blossoms, then to fruit that is both sweet and sour on our tongues. That the air resonates with birdsong and flower perfume and the sun warms enough to dissipate the mist and tears.
Let us remember this, oh let us remember so it is never forgotten: all is made right and good as eternity itself will taste like this.
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Oh, to be the washed linens and sheets the towels and blouses and trousers, all the underpinnings of dailiness—all sailing and flapping on a sturdy line, releasing their music of fabric to the air— to be so wind-rinsed and cleansed, so sun-seeped down to the deepest thread. ~Andrea Potos “Small Ode to Laundry on the Line”from Her Joy Becomes
All day the blanket snapped and swelled on the line, roused by a hot spring wind…. From there it witnessed the first sparrow, early flies lifting their sticky feet, and a green haze on the south-sloping hills. Clouds rose over the mountain….At dusk I took the blanket in, and we slept, restless, under its fragrant weight. ~Jane Kenyon “Wash”
I may walk the streets of this century and make my living in an office but my blood is old farming blood and my true self is underground like a potato.
I have taken root in my grandfather’s fields: I am hanging my laundry beneath his trees. ~Faith Shearin from “Fields”
Here we stand breathless And pressed in hard times Hearts hung like laundry On backyard clothes lines Impossible just takes A little more time ~Carrie Newcomer “You Can Do This Hard Thing”
For me, clean laundry freshly dried on the clothesline is a daily sacrament. True, the towels and sheets are rougher when the wind has snapped them into shape rather than a rolling dryer drum with fabric softener sheets. The scent of the outdoors more than makes up for the sandpaper feel. I love burying my face in the pile as I bring it inside to fold and put away.
Smoothing, folding, stacking, creating order out of a quotidian mess – laundry will be undone and redone in merely a week, yet is such a comforting routine.
Even when we ourselves are in disarray, when we are soiled and smelly, when we feel discarded into the dirty clothes hamper, we can be restored. Soapy water and fresh air readies us to be folded and smoothed and stowed away until we are needed.
We find our way back to purpose and meaning. We are loved so much that grime no longer defines us because we always (always) can be made clean.
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Lord, who hast form’d me out of mud, And hast redeem’d me through thy blood, And sanctifi’d me to do good;
Purge all my sins done heretofore: For I confess my heavy score, And I will strive to sin no more.
Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me, With faith, with hope, with charity; That I may run, rise, rest with thee. ~George Herbert “Trinity Sunday” (modernized)
Spend your life trying to understand it, and you will lose your mind; but deny it and you will lose your soul. St.Augustine in his work “On the Trinity”
In the Beginning, not in time or space, But in the quick before both space and time, In Life, in Love, in co-inherent Grace, In three in one and one in three, in rhyme…
Our God beyond, beside us and within. ~Malcolm Guite from “Trinity Sunday”
A story has been told that Augustine of Hippo was walking on the beach contemplating the mystery of the Trinity. Then he saw a boy in front of him who had dug a hole in the sand and was going out to the sea again and again and bringing some water to pour into the hole. Augustine asked him, “What are you doing?” “I’m going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.” “That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole you have made” said Augustine. The boy replied, “And you cannot fit the Trinity in your tiny little brain.”
I accept that my tiny brain, ever so much tinier than St. Augustine’s, cannot possibly absorb or explain the Trinity – I will not try to put the entire ocean in that small hole. The many analogies used to help human understanding of the Trinity are dangerously limited in scope: vapor, water, ice shell, yolk, albumin height, width, depth apple peel, flesh, core past, present, future.
It is sufficient for me to know, as expressed by the 19th century Anglican pastor J.C. Ryle:
It was the whole Trinity, which at the beginning of creation said, “Let us make man”. It was the whole Trinity again, which at the beginning of the Gospel seemed to say, “Let us save man”.
All one, equal, harmonious, unchangeable, bound together with faith, with hope, with charity, to save us from ourselves.
I run, rise, rest in Thee, all Three.
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No Ansel Adams but the snapshots we captured through the open car window on our eight megapixel cell phones
on the side of the road off an exit ramp as truck taillights streaked eastbound opposite the earth’s rotation in startling calm that evening a mere dot-glow above dun fields
Look, life is like this, filled with moments of meaning paid attention to or not but we tried we lingered
and sure enough it is here looming in memory-mind the fat orange ball above horizon inching up into blank navy air the full moon in early spring
we drove toward in silence ~Twyla M. Hansen “Moonrise, Aurora, Nebraska” from Rock. Tree. Bird.
photo of supermoon by Harry Rodenberger
I now take photos of a cherished moment; before owning a camera, I only took brain snapshots. In my memory, I tend to embroider and edit what I see to make things stick. Usually, photos tell the real story.
However, moon glow is always better in my memory than it is in my photos. The lucent light is something I can feel more than see. Last night, moonbeams woke me by touching my sleeping face. That glow in the shadow of our bedroom was at once ethereal and palpable, something a photo simply can’t capture.
Still, I attempt to preserve these moments to share with others. I linger longingly whenever my eyes are drawn to such a heavenly light, hoping it might touch and illuminate us all.
…to create a happier future for ourselves and others… three simple messages: You are not better or more special than others; you are not alive simply to work; happiness comes from loving and being loved. ~Arthur Brooks “Don’t Avoid Romance”
Most of what happens happens beyond words… You are a language I have learned by heart.
Let the young vaunt their ecstasy. We keep our tribe of two in sovereign secrecy. What must be lost was never lost on us. ~Dana Gioia from “Marriage of Many Years” from 99 Poems
To be amazed by love is not to be blinded but to let the flare of wonder fill you like air filling a sail.
Isn’t this the voice of God at work?
Even his silence breathes life into you, a golden sigh as fresh as Eden. To love someone is not to lose anything, but to gain it in giving it all away. ~Luci Shaw from “Amazed by Love” in Water Lines
We are more together than we know, how else could we keep on discovering we are more together than we thought? You are the known way leading always to the unknown, and you are the known place to which the unknown is always leading me back. More blessed in you than I know… ~Wendell Berry “The Country of Marriage”
Love – of another, and another for us – betters us; it is truly the only way we, who were created by Love, are special. Nothing else in this life really matters, does it?
And it is beyond words to describe, so why try?
Yet, I love Words as well, so I had to try. As we speak the same language, I hope you understand.
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Here, I place a blue glazed cup where the wood is slightly whitened. Here, I lay down two bright spoons, our breakfast saucers, napkins white and smooth as milk.
I am stirring at the sink, I am stirring the amount of dew you can gather in two hands, folding it into the fragile quiet of the house. Before the eggs, before the coffee heaving like a warm cat, I step out to the feeder— one foot, then the other, alive on wet blades. Air lifts my gown—I might fly—
This thistle seed I pour is for the tiny birds. This ritual, for all things frail and imperiled. Wings surround me, frothing the air. I am struck by what becomes holy.
A woman who lost her teenage child to an illness without mercy, said that at the end, her daughter sat up in her hospital bed and asked:
What should I do? What should I do?
Into a white enamel bath I lower four brown eggs. You fill the door frame, warm and rumpled, kiss the crown of my head. I know how the topmost leaves of dusty trees feel at the advent of the monsoon rains.
I carry the woman with the lost child in my pocket, where she murmurs her love song without end: Just this, each day: Bear yourself up on small wings to receive what is given. Feed one another with such tenderness, it could almost be an answer. ~Marcia F. Brown “Morning Song”
I am comforted by rituals, as most of us are. The feeding, the cleaning, the washing, the nurture, smoothing of the wrinkled and ruffled, noticing who or what is near me, the sacred time of soothing rest.
It is those small things that get us through the day, that create holiness in each breath, each moment.
What should we do next? What might we do?
No need to wonder. With loving tenderness, we shall feed the hungry all our days.
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