In gratitude to the writing and wisdom of farmer Wendell Berry who, at age 92, passed through his porch’s dark doorway yesterday 8/31/26
All day he’s shoveled green pine sawdust out of the trailer truck into the chute. From time to time he’s clambered down to even the pile. Now his hair is frosted with sawdust. Little rivers of sawdust pour out of his boots.
I hope in the afterlife there’s none of this stuff he says, while I broom off his jeans, his sweater flocked with granules, his immersed-in-sawdust socks. I hope there’s no bedding, no stalls, no barn
no more repairs to the paddock gate the horses burst through when snow avalanches off the roof. Although the old broodmare, our first foal, is his, horses, he’s fond of saying, make divorces.
…he says let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset and off we go, a couple of aging fools.
I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools. ~Maxine Kumin from “Chores”
photo by Emily Vander Haak
They sit together on the porch, the dark Almost fallen, the house behind them dark. Their supper done with, they have washed and dried The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses, Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak, And when they speak at last it is to say What each one knows the other knows. They have One mind between them, now, that finally For all its knowing will not exactly know Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone. ~Wendell Berry “They Sit Together on the Porch”
If just for a moment, when this world is tilting so far we just might fall off, we pause to look at where we’ve been and get our feet back under us.
The porch is a good place to start: a bridge to what is beyond without leaving the familiar.
Outside, looking square at the unknown, yet still hearing and smelling and tasting the affection that dwells just inside these walls.
What could we want more than to be missed when we step away?
Our voice, our words, our heart, our touch never to be replaced, its absence a hole impossible to fill…
When we are called back inside where Love made us who we are, may the “in between” of time spent on the porch, be even more treasured, because two aging fools sat together there a spell.
front porch
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Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.
So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”
When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.
Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.And he said, “Where have you laid him?”
They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” John 11:17-37
Beauty, to the Japanese of old, held together the ephemeral with the sacred. Cherry blossoms are most beautiful as they fall, and that experience of appreciation lead the Japanese to consider their mortality. Hakanai bi (ephemeral beauty) denotes sadness, and yet in the awareness of the pathos of life, the Japanese found profound beauty.
For the Japanese, the sense of beauty is deeply tragic, tied to the inevitability of death.
Jesus’ tears were also ephemeral and beautiful. His tears remain with us as an enduring reminder of the Savior who weeps. Rather than to despair, though, Jesus’ tears lead the way to the greatest hope of the resurrection. Rather than suicide, Jesus’ tears lead to abundant life. ~Makoto Fujimura
When I read that Jesus weeps as He witnesses the tears of grief of His dear friends, I am comforted.
He understands and feels what we feel, His tears just as plentiful and salty, His feelings of love brimming so fully they must be let go and cannot be held back. He too is overwhelmed by the pathos of His vulnerable and visceral humanity.
Our Jesus who wept with us becomes a promise of ultimate joy.
There is beauty in His rain of ephemeral tears.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year alongside my church family. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
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‘Regret has to be useless or it’s not really regret.’ ~Simone de Beauvoir
Rescuers did not find my uncle’s body. But they found his axe at an icy altitude impossible to navigate without one.
A little higher up, they found my uncle ’s sleeping bag at an altitude unsurvivable without one.
You likely have a pen in purse or pocket. Take it out and write a list of all you need at your present altitude.
Next, change altitudes. Now, make another list: the two biggest regrets of your life. Take your time. Get it right. Because
here is all you need to know about need: That list of regrets—cross one off. You are going to need that space later. ~Jessica Goodfellow, “Unreachable” from Whiteout
I’ve known people who lost their lives while hiking/climbing in the mountains or due to some other tragedy – the cascade of decisions leading to their death are sources of regret for all who mourn them, even decades later. Somehow regret is a difficult feeling to let go; we cling to it as if it is somehow an essential part of us.
It is easy for me to come up with a long list of regrets in my life. They seem to grow like weeds – useless, unplanned, unwanted and prolific, threatening to take over any good fruit being produced.
Few of us volunteer to share openly about our current guilt or shame unless we are sitting in a therapy group, a confessional booth, or AA. Instead it gives us permission to beat ourselves up, going over and over in our minds how we could have done things differently.
As a physician, I heard about such heart-ache in my clinical encounters – a patient will regret an impulsive sexual encounter that turned out badly, or drinking and drugging too much, or regret an ongoing conflict with a family member, or wish they had decided to get that vaccine before becoming ill with a potentially preventable infection.
Our list of regrets can be endless and life-destroying.
I understand the pain of regret as I too am a flawed and fractured person with an eight-decade history of things done and left undone, words said and unsaid. Even if I think I can somehow manage to cross a regret off my own list – perhaps I apologized and was granted forgiveness, or I tried to make right what I’d messed up — I still know a new regret will occupy its place before long.
I can’t simply fix my own regret list.
No matter what altitude we’re at — down in the pits in the lowest of the low, or up in the highest imaginable, I have come to realize that forgiveness is only possible through a knowledge of God Himself. He came to walk beside us in our low spots and our high spots, no matter where we find ourselves. His work on earth has crossed off our regrets and mistakes and wiped us clean of them.
He did this because He understood our desperate need; thanks to His sacrifice and love, our heart-aches are left at the Cross.
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How easily happiness begins by dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter slithers and swirls across the floor of the sauté pan, especially if its errant path crosses a tiny slick of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.
This could mean soup or risotto or chutney (from the Sanskrit chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions go limp and then nacreous and then what cookbooks call clear, though if they were eyes you could see
clearly the cataracts in them. It’s true it can make you weep to peel them, to unfurl and to tease from the taut ball first the brittle, caramel-colored and decrepit papery outside layer, the least
recent the reticent onion wrapped around its growing body, for there’s nothing to an onion but skin, and it’s true you can go on weeping as you go on in, through the moist middle skins, the sweetest
and thickest, and you can go on in to the core, to the bud-like, acrid, fibrous skins densely clustered there, stalky and in- complete, and these are the most pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare
and rage and murmury animal comfort that infant humans secrete. This is the best domestic perfume. You sit down to eat with a rumor of onions still on your twice-washed hands and lift to your mouth a hint
of a story about loam and usual endurance. It’s there when you clean up and rinse the wine glasses and make a joke, and you leave the minutest whiff of it on the light switch, later, when you climb the stairs. ~William Matthews “Onions”
I don’t mean to make you cry. I mean nothing, but this has not kept you From peeling away my body, layer by layer,
The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit. Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.
Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine Lies another skin: I am pure onion–pure union Of outside and in, surface and secret core.
…It’s true it can make you weep to peel them, to unfurl and to tease from the taut ball first the brittle, caramel-colored and decrepit papery outside layer, the least
recent the reticent onion wrapped around its growing body, for there’s nothing to an onion but skin, and it’s true you can go on weeping as you go on in, through the moist middle skins, the sweetest
and thickest, and you can go on in to the core, to the bud-like, acrid, fibrous skins densely clustered there, stalky and in- complete, and these are the most pungent… ~William Matthews from “Onions”
…I would never scold the onion for causing tears. It is right that tears fall for something small and forgotten. How at meal, we sit to eat, commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma but never on the translucence of onion, now limp, now divided, or its traditionally honorable career: For the sake of others, disappear. ~Naomi Shihab Nye from “The Traveling Onion” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems.
Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared, and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency…
…You make us cry without hurting us. I have praised everything that exists, but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers, heavenly globe, platinum goblet, unmoving dance of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives in your crystalline nature. ~Pablo Neruda from “Ode to the Onion”
Everything smells of “eau de onion” here in the kitchen when the onions are brought in from our garden to be stored or dehydrated and frozen for winter soups and stews.
This is weepy business, but these are good tears like I spill over the whistled Greensleeves theme from the old “Lassie” TV show, or during any childrens’ choir song, or by simply watching videos of our grandchildren who live too far away to visit every day.
It takes almost nothing these days to make me weep, so onions are a handy excuse, allowing my tears to flow without explanation:
I weep over the headlines.
I weep over how messy things can get between people who don’t listen to one another or who misinterpret what they think they hear.
I weep knowing we all have layers and layers of skin that appear tough on the outside, but as you peel gently or even ruthlessly cut them away, the layers get more and more tender until you reach the throbbing heart of us.
We tend to hide our hearts out of fear of being hurt, crying out in pain.
Like an onion, each one of us exists to make the day a bit better, the meal more savory, to enhance the flavors of all who are mixed into this melting pot together, trying to make sad things new.
We aren’t meant to stand alone, but to disappear into the stew, and be sorely missed if we are absent.
So very dish needs an onion, and for the sake of the dish, every onion vanishes in the process.
No, I don’t mean to make you cry as you peel my layers away, gently, one by one, each more tender until you reach my heart. Chop away at me if you must but weep the good tears, the ones that mean we weep for the sake of our meal together: you eating and drinking, and me – consumed.
Lyrics: When the dark wood fell before me And all the paths were overgrown When the priests of pride say there is no other way I tilled the sorrows of stone
I did not believe because I could not see Though you came to me in the night When the dawn seemed forever lost You showed me your love in the light of the stars
Chorus: Cast your eyes on the ocean Cast your soul to the sea When the dark night seems endless Please remember me
Then the mountain rose before me By the deep well of desire From the fountain of forgiveness Beyond the ice and fire
Though we share this humble path, alone How fragile is the heart Oh, give these clay feet wings to fly To touch the face of the stars
Breathe life into this feeble heart Lift this mortal veil of fear Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears We’ll rise above these earthly cares
Lyrics: Light after darkness, gain after loss Strength after weakness, crown after cross; Sweet after bitter, hope after fears Home after wandering, praise after tears
Alpha and Omega Beginning and the end He is making all things new Springs of living water Shall wash away each tear He is making all things new Sight after mystery, sun after rain Joy after sorrow, peace after pain; Near after distant, gleam after gloom Love aftеr wandering, life after tomb
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Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers.
Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions. ~Carl Sandburg “Under the Harvest Moon”
I mistake the sound of a recycling cart hitting the curb
for the latch of our gate and picture him instantly:
my father stumbling into the light of the backyard
to shoot himself.
I’d been looking at the fruit trees and the fire pit,
the loose board of the old fence in the wind.
I’d been thinking of how lost you’d have to be
to believe you knew everything there was to know
about yourself. And now this sound
I mistake for my father going through with it: one
I might hear or see or smell something completely benign and insignificant, but my brain processes it differently, its similarity to past memory or experience bringing it front and center and real again.
Often it is a song, or a smell, or a date on the calendar. It can be an unexpected, sudden sound, like a slammed door or a recorded voice or photo from long ago.
This can lead to time travel back to that previous moment in time, with the feeling of being right there again.
It can be a lovely memory, warm and comforting, or it can be a total nightmare I never want to remember or reexperience.
When it happens to me, to distract from the distress it can cause, I instead admire the stickiness of my stored memories, how powerful chemical connections are between my body and my feelings.
There is poignancy in how I relive those moments of past joy and struggles, trying to capture in words what just happened, all the while knowing, for the rest of my days, some questions will forever remain unanswered.
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When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it. ~Boris Pasternak
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:— ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone. ~Walter De La Mare “The Listeners”
Years ago, a young woman I’d been treating for depression for several weeks in my clinic called unexpectedly on a Friday afternoon and canceled an upcoming appointment for the following Monday and did not reschedule.
The receptionist sent me a message as was our policy for patients who “cancel and do not reschedule.” It gave me a bad feeling that she was turning her back on her treatment plan and I was uneasy about the upcoming weekend without knowing what was going on with her.
I could have just put on my coat and headed home at the end of that long Friday after a very stressful work week and even more stressful year. I was discouraged about many aspects of my clinic work load and my after-hours responsibilities only seemed to get heavier. I was frustrated at how ineffectively I was communicating to administrative supervisors about the need for change.
I was ready to quit and walk away.
Even so, in a moment of clarity about my role and commitment to those I was responsible for, I called my patient to find out how she was doing. She didn’t answer her phone.
I mulled over my options. Protocol was to call the police to go to her address for a “well-being” check. I looked up her apartment address and decided instead to drive the few blocks to get there.
As I approached her door, I could hear someone moving around in her apartment, but she ignored my knocks and my voice and when I tried to open the door, it was locked.
So I stayed right there, talking to her through the door for about 15 minutes, letting her know I wasn’t leaving until she opened up the door. I finally told her she could decide to open the door or I would call 911 and ask the police to come to make sure she was okay. She then unlocked the door, tears streaming down her face. She had been drinking heavily, with liquor bottles strewn around on the floor. She admitted an intent to overdose on aspirin and vodka. The vodka was already consumed but the unopened aspirin bottle was in her hand.
I was the last person she expected to see at her door.
Miraculously, the inpatient mental health unit at the local hospital had an open bed. I told my patient that we could save time and hassle by heading over there together right then and there, and avoid the emergency room chaos and delay, and the possibility of an involuntary detainment.
She agreed to come with me and be admitted voluntarily for stabilization. When I went to the hospital to see ger the next day, she greeted me with a hug and thanked me for not giving up on her when she had given up on herself.
In sobriety, her eyes were brighter and she was more hopeful. She never expected anyone to care enough to come knock on her door when she was at her lowest point. It was the start of her climb out of her pain and depression.
Four years later, a small card arrived in my clinic mailbox on another most challenging work day from an unfamiliar address two thousand miles away. The name looked vaguely familiar to me but when I opened and read the contents, this time it became the knock on the door to get my attention, to focus the beating of my heart on what was most important – not the stresses of my work place — and it was my turn to let tears flow:
“Dear Doctor,
I am not sure if you will remember me considering you see a number of patients daily; however, I am a patient whose life you changed in the most positive way. I never truly THANKED YOU for listening to me and hearing my silent words of grief and hearing my cries for help. If it had not been for you, had you not knocked on my door, I would not be writing this letter to you today. I don’t know exactly what to say to the person who saved me from hurting myself fatally. You were a stranger in my life, but a dear friend in my time of need. THANK YOU, for everything that you did for me. You have a permanent place in my heart, you have given my spirit hope, you have reminded me that a life is worth living. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Sincerely, L_____”
Somehow I had the sense that I needed to go knock on her door because I was keeping my word to take care of her at her lowest point. I had the stubbornness to stay put until she responded, and most of all, I’m appreciative for her gracious note letting me know it made a difference.
When I needed it the most, she made a difference for me that kept me on the job for another twenty years.
With her letter, she knocked, oh so gently, on my own locked door. I opened it, amazed that someone cared enough to let me know I kept my word.
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~Lustravit lampade terras~ (He has illumined the world with a lamp) The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter. – Blaise Pascal from “Miscellaneous Writings”
Tired and hungry, late in the day, impelled to leave the house and search for what might lift me back to what I had fallen away from, I stood by the shore waiting. I had walked in the silent woods: the trees withdrew into their secrets. Dusk was smoothing breadths of silk over the lake, watery amethyst fading to gray. Ducks were clustered in sleeping companies afloat on their element as I was not on mine. I turned homeward, unsatisfied. But after a few steps, I paused, impelled again to linger, to look North before nightfall—the expanse of calm, of calming water, last wafts of rose in the few high clouds. And was rewarded: the heron, unseen for weeks, came flying widewinged toward me, settled just offshore on his post, took up his vigil. If you ask why this cleared a fog from my spirit, I have no answer. ~Denise Levertov “A Reward” from Evening Train
Flee for a while from your tasks, hide yourself for a little space from the turmoil of your thoughts. Come, cast aside your burdensome cares, and put aside your laborious pursuits. For a little while give your time to God, and rest in him for a little while. Enter into the inner chamber of your mind, shut out all things save God and whatever may aid you in seeking God; and having barred the door of your chamber, seek him. ~Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works
And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment … a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present… ~Wendell Berry from Hannah Coulter
There were long days during my doctoring years when I would be near tears, physically spent, too fried to keep listening, problem solving, comforting.
I needed to feel something other than needed. I needed neediness myself — a sorry place to be for a physician and healer.
Of course it had happened before, many times: middle of the night mothering a vomiting child, middle of the night mothering a frail mother, middle of the night reassuring a frightened patient, middle of the night worried about the state of the world.
Yet morning always comes because God has never left, maybe not bright and shining and wondrous, maybe still hidden behind a fog, maybe not hidden at all but waiting inside my muddled thoughts –
I found if I gently closed the door to all that is not God, I would find Him looking for me and all would become clear.
Text by George Matheson: O Love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee; I give thee back the life I owe, That in thy ocean depths its flow May richer, fuller be.
O Joy that seeks me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain, That morn shall tearless be.
When the dawn O’er hill and dale Throws her bright veil, Oh, think of me!
When the laugh With silver sound Goes echoing round, Oh, think of me!
When the rain With starry showers Fills all the flowers, Oh, think of me!
When the wind Sweeps along, Loud and strong, Oh, think of me!
When the earth Sleeping sound Swings round and round, Oh, think of me!
When the night With solemn eyes Looks from the skies, Oh, think of me!”
-Frances Anne Kemble
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At dusk, everything blurs and softens. From here out over the long valley, the fields and hills pull up the first slight sheets of evening, as, over the next hour, heavier, darker ones will follow.
Quieted roads, predictable deer browsing in a neighbor’s field, another’s herd of heifers, the kitchen lights starting in many windows. On horseback I take it in, neither visitor nor intruder, but kin passing, closer and closer to night, its cold streams rising in the sugarbush and hollow.
Half-aloud, I say to the horse, or myself, or whoever: let fire not come to this house, nor that barn, nor lightning strike the cattle. Let dogs not gain the gravid doe, let the lights of the rooms convey what they seem to.
And who is to say it is useless or foolish to ride out in the falling light alone, wishing, or praying, for particular good to particular beings, on one small road in a huge world?
The horse bears me along, like grace, making me better than what I am, and what I think or say or see is whole in these moments, is neither small nor broken. For up, out of the inscrutable earth, have come my body and the separate body of the mare: flawed and aching and wronged. Who then is better made to say be well, be glad,
or who to long that we, as one, might course over the entire valley, over all valleys, as a bird in a great embrace of flight, who presses against her breast, in grief and tenderness, the whole weeping body of the world? ~ Linda McCarriston, “Riding Out at Evening” fromTalking Soft Dutch
photo by Emily Vander Haak
On this, my 72nd birthday, I pray for this troubled world, reminding myself: be well, be glad…
I’m still here by the grace of God who carries not just me on His back through each day, but all earthly burdens.
I pray like a bird embracing the air which lifts its wings, tenderly holding to its breast a soaring freedom to transcend the weeping world.
I have seen so much goodness over 72 years, sometimes through tears of sorrow. I know there will be more joy and sadness before I’m done.
I am grateful, so very grateful to have lived all these years seeing tears shed, then dried, learning how love heals, knowing the only thing to last forever is God’s covenant promise to always carry us home.
photo by Brandon Dielemanphoto by Brandon Dieleman
video by Peter Tamminga
Whilst the world is weeping, let us do our bit. We have the time to sympathise, to listen and to sit. No needless thoughts, of the things we cannot do. But appreciate all the good bits and look at them anew.
The warmth and comfort of our homes, the food we have to eat. The family and friends we have, although we cannot meet. The village that we live in, and the community we share. So precious to us right now, so sit and think and care.
Whilst the world is full of sadness, anxiety and pain, It’s hard to imagine our lives ever carefree again. But nothing lasts forever, the clouds will always clear. Let’s heal the world with love, so the sunshine can appear. ~Sandra Rickman
Lyrics: Drop, drop, slow tears, and bathe those beauteous feet, which brought from heaven the news and Prince of Peace. Cease not, wet eyes, his mercies to entreat; to cry for vengeance sin doth never cease. In your deep floods drown all my faults and fears; nor let his eye see sin, but through my tears.
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It’s the immemorial feelings I like the best: hunger, thirst, their satisfaction; work-weariness, earned rest; the falling again from loneliness to love; the green growth the mind takes from the pastures in March; the gayety in the stride of a good team of Belgian mares that seems to shudder from me through all my ancestry. ~Wendell Berry “Goods”
photo by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waard
The plow has savaged this sweet field Misshapen clods of earth kicked up Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.
I have plowed my life this way Turned over a whole history Looking for the roots of what went wrong Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.
Enough. The job is done. Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be Seedbed for the growing that’s to come. I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons—
The farmer plows to plant a greening season. ~Parker Palmer “Harrowing”
photo by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waard
It’s not likely anyone would say I didn’t work hard enough.
After all, I come from a long line of human work-horses who knew it takes sweat and tears, and sometimes bleeding.
Even so, all those years I know I could have plowed more deeply than I did.
I could have thrown myself more fully into the pull on the tugs, shared the load more effectively, shouldered the yoke with greater enthusiasm, bent my neck down low with unbroken determination.
You could say somewhere I lost the gayety in my stride, and you would be right — toward the end, I was trudging through the furrow, bruised from turning up too many submerged rocks, bumping into immoveable tree stumps, tripping on hidden roots, stuck in the deep mud of long and lonely post-midnight hours.
You might even say the knowledge of a job well-done lay at a depth my plow could ever reach.
I had seen others die in the harness, never able to rest easy.
A few years ago I knew the time had come to shrug off the yoke, shake off the bridle and bit, shudder free of the harness.
On this side of the ground, I find myself wondering and wandering, the blinkers no longer impeding my vision, feeling the morning sun on my unyoked withers.
Yet when I see an untilled field, something in me even now still tries to hold on to the plow —
photo by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waardphoto by Joel De Waard
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Henry Polis 1968Pouring the sidewalk by handGrouting the tile perimeter
Thirty-one years ago today we watched by your bedside as you labored, readying yourself to die; we could not help other than to be there while you slipped farther away from us.
This dying, the hardest work you had ever done:
harder than handling the plow behind a team of draft horses, harder than confronting a broken, alcoholic and abusive father, harder than slashing brambles and branches to clear the woods, harder than digging out stumps, shoring up foundations, fixing roofs, harder than shipping out to war, harder than leaving behind a new wife after a week of marriage, harder than leading a battalion to battle on Saipan, Tinian and Tarawa, harder than returning home so changed there were no words, harder than returning to school, working long hours to support family, harder than running a farm with nothing but muscle and will power, harder than coping with an ill wife, infertility, job conflict, discontent, harder than building your own garage, your own house, a pool, harder than ending your marriage, a second wife dying, and returning home forgiven.
Dying was the hardest of all as no amount of muscle or smarts could stop it from crushing you, you, who could do nearly anything you put your mind and muscle to, taking away the strength you relied on for nearly 73 years.
So as you lay helpless, moaning, struggling to breathe, we knew most of your hard work was complete; what was yet undone was not for us to finish up for you.
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