Come walk with me in the peak Autumn beauty of the Northwoods. To say that I love this time of year is an understatement. Most everyone can appreciate the colorful falling leaves---it reveals the 'true self' of a tree when its leaves are no longer producing chlorophyll. Their true colors are revealed, and there is something simple … [Read More...]
Archives for December 2015
The Last Sunset
My Dad is an enigma. He can be infuriatingly bigoted and yet childishly kind. He has always sworn a blue streak, which to this day makes me cringe when I hear bad words, but he has a tender spot for children and animals. He is stubborn, moody, and close-minded, yet he loves to read, learn new things, and watch the Discovery Channel. He’s had dark bouts of depression and loves to joke around and make people laugh.
He went into the hospital before Thanksgiving with pneumonia, which landed him in ICU on a respirator on the day for giving thanks. And like many times before in his life, he rallied–got off the respirator, out of ICU, and into rehab. But the rally was short-lived, and he felt like he was getting weaker instead of stronger. He was back in the hospital before Christmas. And from 800 miles away, all I could do was think of him, pray for him, and remember him.
On Christmas Day he was moved to hospice, and still, many times, I believed, I hoped he would get better. Sunday, after a very un-merry Christmas weekend, I stared out the large picture window in our living room. The cold, snowy sunset was soft and pastel–another beautiful end to the day!
As I worked on getting supper ready, the intensity of the colors caught my attention again–wow! So beautiful!
As I watched and took pictures, the colors deepened and intensified as the light of the sun disappeared below the horizon. Suddenly, I wondered if this was Dad leaving this earth in a blaze of glory. And with a feeling of peace and awe, I confirmed that this enigmatic man deserved such an amazing display.
The next morning I got the phone call that said my Daddy had died the evening before, taking his last breaths around the eleven o’clock hour. I was a little shook that my thoughts of the brilliant sunset were indeed true–it was his last sunset.
It’s only been a few days–I have nothing to do, yet I feel exhausted. It’s as if each half of my chromosomes in every cell of my body is struggling not to follow the source from which they came. I am a part of him, and he a part of me. And so it goes…
Happy Winter Solstice!
This is an abbreviated excerpt of “A Celebration of Winter Solstice” fromThe Circle of Life by Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr.
“There is a tendency to want to hurry from autumn to spring, to avoid the long dark days that winter brings. Many people do not like constant days bereft of light and months filled with colder temperatures. They struggle with the bleakness of land and the emptiness of trees. Their eyes and hearts seek color. Their spirits tire of tasting the endless gray skies. There is great rejoicing in the thought that light and warmth will soon be filling more and more of each new day.
“But winter darkness has a positive side to it. As we gather to celebrate the first turn from winter to spring, we are invited to recognize and honor the beauty in the often unwanted season of winter. Let us invite our hearts to be glad for the courage winter proclaims. Let us be grateful for the wisdom winter brings in teaching us about the need for withdrawal as an essential part of renewal. Let us also encourage our spirits as Earth prepares to come forth from this time of withdrawal into a season filled with light.
“The winter solstice celebrates the return of hope to our land as our planet experiences the first slow turn toward greater daylight. Soon we will welcome the return of the sun and the coming of springtime. As we do so, let us remember and embrace the positive, enriching aspects of winter’s darkness. Pause now to sit in silence in the darkness of this space. Let this space be a safe enclosure of creative gestation for you.”
Snow Light
I could tell as soon as I opened my eyes–even though only the slightest hint of light was making itself seen in the cloudy, misty morning. It had snowed! Snow light is that magical, reflected light that changes how one sees from the inside!
The east wind–usually the bearer of rain or snow–had plastered the wet snow on the east side of the trees.
The snow highlighted the strong, arm-like branches of the oak trees, showing a picture of them that cannot be seen in the other seasons.
The sedum wore snow caps of white as the snow continued to fall.
Snow light reaches into the house in a different way than sunlight. It reflects off the ceiling, off the glass of picture frames, and from the glass doors of the old pie safe cupboard.
It does not create shadows like a ray of bright sunshine. It causes a glow that warms the house with happiness–like snow days for kids, like hot chocolate after building a snowman, like a fire in the fireplace. And we begin to see differently.
Is it a photograph or a pencil drawing?
Snow light is the magical reflection of light off snow. It doesn’t change the way we look at things, which implies a conscious action on our part, but it changes the way we see.
I had a brief written conversation recently with a person I don’t often see–some questions, their opinion, their honest view of a situation–and it was a new light reaching into my heart. That person’s honest reflection made me see things in a different way. I hope that all of us can see and be seen in a different light, in a way that cannot be seen at another time, and with a glow that warms our heart with understanding.
The Extraordinary Ordinary
On the first of December, we had six inches of snow–the perfect start to our meteorological Winter!
Then forty degree temperatures and rain, not ordinary for Central Minnesota Decembers, wreaked havoc with our snow. This is the first December in nine years of living here that we have lost snow instead of accumulated it. The moisture-laden air from the melting snow transformed my morning walk one day this week. Night temperatures fell below freezing, coating the winter remains of plants with a layer of frost.
The sun rose above the horizon on the clear-sky day, striking the frost with the power of light, transforming the ordinary into extraordinary, shimmering creations! The asparagus stems lit up.
A crumpled Linden leaf glowed in the grass.
Each rimed stem of lavender and all the other frosted things dazzled like diamonds, but only the snow sparkles showed on the photos.
So imagine each little frost crystal glimmering in the sun!
After only a few minutes of direct sunlight, the frost began to melt, and the shimmering landscape returned to the sunny normalcy of a late fall day.
Photographer Annie Leibovitz said, “I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.” With my very amateur photography skills, I could not capture the shimmering effervescence of my morning walk, yet the combination of photos, words, and imagination stretches us toward that reality.
And what of us? A photograph of ourselves cannot capture our magnificence, our emotion, or the spirit of us. In fact, most face-to-face meetings only expose the ordinary image of ourselves. And what do we see when we look in the mirror? What stretches us toward the reality of who we are? Perhaps it takes the Water of Life, a cold night, and the Light of the World to shine on us in order to transform our ordinary self into our extraordinary brilliance.
Gleanings from October and November 2015
October and November were all about the wedding–preparing, traveling, participating, writing, and thanking people. After the wedding ceremony and reception, as we were cleaning up, we noticed a praying mantis on a post by the stairs. What a peculiar little creature! They have two large compound eyes and three simple eyes between them and can turn their heads 180 degrees–the only insect with that ability. They have quick reflexes, and their front ‘praying’ legs have spikes to hold their prey while they eat. Mantis is from the Greek word meaning prophet–a good sign from Nature to bless the newlyweds!
Another amazing creation of Nature is a nondescript deciduous shrub that began to bloom the second week of November! Witch Hazel or Hamamelis virginiana is a shrub or small tree that produces yellow flowers and whose bark and leaves are used to produce the astringent witch hazel. (Hamamelis means ‘together with fruit’–it blooms with the maturing fruit from the previous year)
Most of my gleanings this time comes from the Andersen homestead shelterbelt. A shelterbelt is a line of one or more rows of trees and/or shrubs planted as a windbreak to protect farmsteads and fields from blowing winds and erosion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the Great Plains Shelterbelt Project in 1934 in response to the severe dust storms of the Dust Bowl years. Shelterbelts save energy for the farmstead, help prevent soil erosion, provide wildlife habitat, and protect livestock and buildings from wind and snow.
This shelterbelt was planted by the Conservation District in 1979 when we built our house on eighty acres we bought from my Grandpa. I spent a few summers weeding those seedlings, trying to keep the scourge of leafy spurge at bay, which could easily engulf the whole planting. As the trees grew, our little homestead grew. We built a barn, put up a corral, set posts, and strung barbed wire. We raised a small herd of Herefords and had a few head of horses. Soon I married and moved to Missouri, and the Past began accumulating at the end of the shelterbelt. My parents divorced, my Dad moved away, and my Mom continued to raise the white-faced calves for a number of years. But now the feed bunk resides in the tall grass.
The old manure spreader and elevator collect fall leaves, winter snow, and spring rains.
Neatly rolled barbed wire and a stack of posts punctuate the end of the rows of trees.
The corn sheller and disc have morphed into farm sculptures.
I would guess that most farmsteads have some old machinery tucked into the shelterbelt. Most of these were hand-me-downs from my Grandpa or bought on his farm sale, including the Farmall M tractor that still scoops snow, so they are much older than our newish homestead. I know my Dad would say he could get the old things working again with his mechanic skills and some ‘persuasion.’ I would also venture to guess that most of us have a box or two in a closet or attic that hold the old things from our past.
Gleanings are ‘useful remnants of a crop that can be gathered from the field after harvesting.’ Perhaps our shelterbelt sculptures and boxes of memories are the useful remnants of the crops of our lives after we have lived that particular time. Maybe we are ‘Hamamelis’–we bloom (again) at the same time we reap the fruits from the past. In other words, we can return to the past as we gaze upon an old feed bunk or hold a small gift made by our child and lovingly given to us for a Christmas present, and we can learn (or remember) something new about them and about ourselves. My Dad can no longer fix machinery or stretch a fence or tamp in a post, but as he sits now in infirmary, I can turn my head to the past and ‘see’ him doing those things. And then I pray–with thankfulness for the past and all we have done together, with gratefulness for the present–even if it isn’t the way I would like it to be, and with hope for the future–that our gleanings will bless us and keep us in love and peace–amen.
Praying mantis photo by LAn