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A Work of Love and Duty

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“I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.”  –Rose Kennedy

I don’t think I’ve ever run across a quote that so closely aligns with the way I felt about raising our three children.  I had worked in the profession of child care for four years before having our first child, and it was a joy to provide care, structure, learning activities, and fun to the children at the YWCA.  However, deep dissatisfaction crept into my soul when I was leaving my baby with another woman while caring for many other’s children—not because of the work I was doing, but because of the time of not being with my own.  It was only another year or so before we made the decision for me to stay home.  We had another baby on the way by then, and I was happy to provide care to another little girl full-time and to a few others on a part-time basis.  How I loved our days together!  I set up learning stations in our old house where messy art projects trumped new floor coverings and reading books and playing outside were more important than how things looked or how much money we had.  It was a time of joy for me!

We were fortunate to spend time on Goodners Lake this weekend with our good friends Rick and Lynda.  The lake is always beautiful but seemed particularly so after a week with nourishing rains and abundant sunshine.

The resident Loon pair had returned to Goodners Lake in late April, made a nest among the cattails, and hatched out one baby Loon.  Even swimming among the boaters, it was evident that the Lake belonged to the Loons.

What was also evident to me is how dedicated and attentive the Loon parents are to their offspring.  When the chicks are very young, they can swim but will climb onto their parent’s back to ride and rest.  This chick still has its downy feathers but will have its adult voice and be fully feathered by two months old.

The chick mirrors the parents’ actions of peering under the water with their excellent underwater vision to find fish to eat, to preen and clean their feathers, and to rear up out of the water and flap their wings in a territorial display.

The parents will continue to protect and teach their young one until he can capture all his own food and become a strong flyer.  In Autumn, the parents leave the lake to migrate south.  The young ones will gather and migrate together a few weeks later.  The following April, the parents will return to the Lake to begin another season of raising young ones.

 

Loons, Eagles, Bluebirds, and others are dedicated, hard-working parents.  One only needs to watch how they work to build a nest, how they protect their young, how long and hard they work to provide food for them, and how they teach them to do what’s necessary to become full-fledged adults.  Parenting in the animal and the human world is hard work, and as John Steinbeck understated, “Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.”  Courage indeed, along with a whole host of other noble and life-affirming traits.  Parenting is a work of love and duty, a full-time, honorable position whether you are home with your kids all day or you return after working elsewhere to build the nest and give them the wings to fly.  Regardless, I hope you bring your best and make it a time of joy!

Island Ice Walkers

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“In a sense, each of us is an island.  In another sense, however, we are all one.  For though islands appear separate, and may even be situated at great distances from one another, they are only extrusions of the same planet, Earth.”  –J. Donald Walters

Last weekend, I got away to an island.  It was sunny and warm—so warm that the snow was melting!  Down the hill from our house is the Sauk River which winds its way through the Horseshoe Chain of Lakes—thirteen connected lakes with convoluted shorelines, jutting peninsulas, and a multitude of islands.  We parked at a boat ramp at Horseshoe Lake as a group of ATVs raced around on the ice.  Cars and trucks crept through the rushes on an ice road to the little village of fish shacks.

But we were going a different way by a different mode of transportation.  We followed the snowmobile tracks to the island.

Most of the ice was snow-covered, which made walking easier, but there were places of clear ice where I peered into the depths of it, wondering how thick it was.

We weren’t the only creatures walking the ice to check out the island.

The island was like an incline rising from the water (ice) with the highest point facing the northwest, from which we came.

Oak, Basswood, Box Elder and Ironwood trees populated the island, and I was surprised as one of the fluffy-tailed inhabitants ran past me while I was gazing at the jet trail in the azure blue sky.

Most of the snow had melted from the island, and it was rather startling to see the vivid green moss at the base of the trees and crawling up the trunks.

Just as vivid was a scattering of Red-twigged Dogwoods along the shore, reaching out to the sunlight.

Downed trees had fallen into the water after years of erosion had loosened the roots from their moorings.

The branches gathered seaweed and algae from high-water summers…

and were polished to sculptural driftwood by summer waves.

We dubbed the island ‘Lone Squirrel Island’ as we walked back over the ice.

 

Islands are sort of mysterious.  They lend themselves to exploration, enticing the boater, the squirrel, and the ice walkers to come see what lies within these shores.  I was impressed with the quality of the woodland ecosystem on Lone Squirrel Island—the acorn-bearing Oaks and the beautiful Ironwood trees.  It’s not as easy to get to know an island when a watery moat surrounds it as it is when thick ice supports cars, trucks, snowmobiles, or walkers.  What if each of us is an island?  We appear separate.  Some of us are situated at great distances from one another.  What is the quality of our ecosystem?  Has anything loosened our roots from their secure moorings?  Yet, like the underlying Earth of the islands, we are all connected.  “Love is the binding force of the Universe.  It holds us together.  It makes us One.” –J. Donald Walters  The thick ice was our bridge to the island.  What bridges us together?  Listening.  Understanding.  Empathy.  Patience.  Kindness.  Let’s all be ice walkers.  As we peer into the depths of Love, can we even fathom how deep and wide it is?  

Wrath of the Northwest Wind

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We decided it was time for some Winter hiking.  Beautiful blue skies accompanied the single digit high-for-the-day temperature.  We drove to a small state park west of us that we had never been to, traveling by snow-covered fields and signs for rural Lutheran churches.  The roads leading up to the entrance and throughout Monson Lake State Park weren’t plowed, so we guessed on the parking at the office building where I found an outside box with maps of the park.  We were the only ones there.  Next to the office building was an historic site sign, and as we read it, we both had a dark, sinking feeling, like watching horrid news on TV that you should turn off but you keep watching.  On this site on August 20, 1862, thirteen Swedish settlers living on the edge of the frontier were killed by native Dakota Indians who had been displaced from their traditional homelands, placed on reservations, and who endured broken treaties and increasing hunger and hardships.  The park was established in 1923 as a memorial to the Broberg and Lundborg families who lost their lives on that day.  Usch då.  

In the late 1930’s, two buildings were constructed in the new park by the Veterans’ Conservation Corps—a picnic pavilion and cooking area and a restroom—using local granite and white oak timbers. 

After a stop at the very cold outhouse, we walked the one-mile hiking trail.  In the middle of a frozen slough we saw a muskrat house and followed the tracks that led to it.  The new snow was fine and powdery and had blown into the prints, so it was hard to tell who made them.

But as we got closer, we realized the trekking critter was also just checking out the house and moving on.

A wind-made sundial was etched into the snow beside the muskrat house, marking the Winter sun’s path to the Spring Equinox. 

From the center of the ice- and snow-covered slough we looked back on the Oaks and Basswoods that lined the hiking trail.

We hiked along West Sunburg Lake where the wind had made stripes of snow and ice.  The sun was warm on our faces.

We saw what looked like coyote tracks on a food-finding mission at the edge of the lake.

After making a hairpin turn in the trail on the narrow isthmus between two lakes, we faced Monson Lake and the wrath of a northwest wind.

The trail was covered in drifts, and Ironwood understory trees, with their rusty leaves, chattered in the wind.  The frigid, relentless wind pulled tears from my eyes, hurt my cheeks, and froze my breath.  It felt like we were at a different place on a different day.

We hurried back to the picnic area that was sheltered from the wind and where once again, the sun warmed us.  We saw little vole tracks under the snow…

…and coneflower shadows stretching in the low-slung midday sun.

We celebrated the old beauty Bur Oak tree that spread across the blue sky.

As one of Minnesota’s smallest state parks, it is largely unchanged since its establishment.  It is easy to see why it was a desirable location for the Dakota people for millennia and for the Swedish immigrants over 150 years ago.  On the edge of the park in a small rectangle of land carved out from the park border is a little white Lutheran church and cemetery.  Some of the graves date back to the late 1800’s, and the words are engraved in Swedish. 

 

The wrath of the northwest wind coming off Monson Lake tells the story of pain and suffering of Native and Immigrant people.  History is buried under the soil, under the water, and under the snow.  I like that the little Lutheran church sits so close to the memorial park where the homes of the Dakotas and settlers once stood.  I like how prayers are said every Sunday morning at 9:30 with coffee and fellowship following the service.  I like how the Swedish words are etched in stone.  I like how the cross and steeple track the Winter sun’s path year after year, decade after decade, stretching Grace and Spring’s Hope out to all who enter these gates.  Life is hard.  May you walk in Peace, may you celebrate Beauty, and may Love warm your face and heart.  Gud välsigne dig. 

The Bringer of Hope and Light

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“We live in a world of constant juxtaposition between joy that’s possible and pain that’s all too common.”   —Marianne Williamson

I have been burdened by pain lately.  Pain is a funny thing—it can be the physiological reaction to a purely physiological phenomenon—you burn your finger, and pain is the messenger that automatically pulls your finger from the heat source.  You don’t have to think about it.  Pain is your friend in this instance.  Emotional pain can also be ’embodied’—emotional anguish, especially prolonged, can sink into your tissues and find a vulnerable spot.  From there it calls out for attention with inflammation and pain.  Eventually it can wreak so much physical havoc that disease occurs.

I like the word ‘juxtaposition’—an act or instance of placing close together or side by side for comparison and contrast.  Artists consciously do it or use it all the time in their act of creating.  Nature and Nature with the influence of humans, create scenarios where side by side comparisons and contrasts are sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring, sometimes puzzling.  Human nature, as Marianne Williamson alludes to, is no less likely to contain a myriad of juxtapositions where we stand between two ideas or possibilities and have the power to choose.   

One of the most striking juxtapositions we encountered on our hike at Warner Lake County Park was the sandy swimming beach and the ice-covered lake water.  The sand extended up from the water into trees that would provide shade on a hot, summer day.  Benches were tucked under the trees for moms and dads to sit on while the kids built castles in the sand and splashed in the water.  But at this time of the year, the ice crawled up the beach, and instead of kids and castles in the sand, there were sticks and leaves.

Ripples in the sand, sculpted by wind and waves, are now preserved and displayed under a layer of clear ice.  From movement to stillness.

Most of the time we think of ice as relatively smooth, but the sheltered north side of Warner Lake had an intricate design etched into the ice.

The white brightness of a piece of birch bark lay among the brown, fallen leaves in the woods.  The postcard size and shape made me imagine that it was a harbinger of season’s greetings, a bringer of hope and light in the dark and ‘dead’ time of year.

One more puzzling juxtaposition we found at Warner Lake Park was a stairway in the middle of the woods.  Stairway to where?  The lure of the answer compelled me to climb the leaf-covered stairs.  At the top was….a parking lot!  From the top, it made perfect sense to have a stairway from the parking lot to the fishing pier, but from the bottom, it looked like a stairway to nowhere.

 

I took a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class.  The program began at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center almost forty years ago as a way to empower patients with chronic pain and disease.  Six weeks into the program we had a retreat day with six hours of meditation, movement, and silence.  As I lay on my back on a mat during a body scan meditation, all I could think about was the pain in my back and how uncomfortable I was—silence and pain, breathing and pain, relaxation and pain.  MBSR teaches awareness and acceptance—including of pain, but I just wasn’t having it.  The pain was too big.  But as I stayed with it and gave it the attention of my breath, something shifted.  All of a sudden I felt deep gratitude for my body and for all it had been through over the decades.  The feeling of deep gratitude reached over to Chris for his love and loyalty to me through all those years.  The deep gratitude grew and enveloped our children and the rest of our families.  It spread over our teacher and the other people in the class who were challenged by this MBSR process in a myriad of ways.  And then….I felt joy!  The juxtaposition between pain and joy.  There I was—right in the middle of the two, right in the midst of them both.  And the pain lessened as the gratitude grew. 

We are each an intricate design of creation—our physical bodies are the most amazing living mechanisms, yet paired with our mind, emotions, and spirit, we transcend even our most abundant, far-reaching definition of ourselves.  If we become curious about the juxtapositions in our lives, curious about the pain, aware of our breathing, aware of connections, and accepting of where we are right this moment, we have a better chance to see our lives from the top of the stairs where things make perfect sense.  The Bringer of Hope and Light can suddenly appear and chase away our pain and darkness. 

Where is Your Winter Dwelling Place?

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“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.”

This prayer of thanks is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson whose family celebrated an extended Thanksgiving with family, friends, feasting, and fun.  Shelter and sustenance.  Protection and nourishment.  Dwelling place and daily bread.

When Winter comes, the importance of shelter and sustenance is magnified, not only for humans but for all creatures.  Where are their dwelling places, and how do they get enough food to sustain them during the sometimes harsh conditions of snow-covered land and frigid temperatures?  On our Thanksgiving trek to Warner Lake County Park, we passed a corn field with a flock of Trumpeter Swans grazing on left-over corn kernels.  Their aquatic home is the Mississippi River, just miles north, where the warmth of a power plant keeps the River free from ice.  Some swans and geese stay here for the winter, while most migrate to warmer places in the south.  Do you migrate to a warm winter climate or hunker down in the frosty North in your toasty house?  Do you have a preferred ‘winter’ food?

Animal homes come in all forms.  We wondered what lived in these holes on the bank of a creek near Warner Lake.  The burrowed home among cedar tree roots gave the resident critter quick access to the water.  Where is your refuge from the elements?  What environment gives you security and happiness?

Pileated Woodpecker holes in trees provide protection and nourishment for these hard-hitting birds as they search for insects and construct (destruct) nest holes.  The holes they make in dead trees are often used for shelter by owls, bats, and pine martens.  What is the source of your livelihood?  How do you stay healthy?

As we walked through the pine forest on our trail, we saw little pathways of trampled-down pine needles diverging through the woods.  What paths do you travel in your daily life?

In the sandy mud by the creek, we spotted a Raccoon track.  Many of their meals are acquired in the water—crayfish, frogs, and insects.  Raccoons store fat through summer and fall and spend much of their winter asleep in a den made in a tree or fallen log.  How do you spend your winter?  What do you do in this season of rest?

How do animals find their winter dwelling places?  This tree probably had a small hole at its base, and some little creature has been working hard to make a home for itself.  Sawdust and wood shavings line the floor of the tiny cavern at the foot of the large, moss-covered tree.  Where is your dwelling place?

Life and nourishment are a little easier for the birds and squirrels who live close to our home.  This Black Squirrel and his friends come for a meal of black-oil sunflower seeds on a near-daily basis.  How do you ask for and receive your daily bread?

 

Our literal dwelling place may change completely in Winter, but most often the home we live in during the Summer is also our Winter home.  But there is a change—we are boarded up, bound up, and bundled up.  There is a quiet security in the dark evening with the fireplace crackling and throwing out heat, while a pot of soup on the stove sends out delicious smells of onions and herbs.  Rest and sleep seem to come easier with the longer night, and the morning light is welcomed and appreciated.  Nourishment is extended from food for our bodies to food for our souls.  Time for reading, meditation, prayers, and self-care is available if we make the decision and commitment to ourselves.  Time with friends is more about being than doing—tell me about your struggles, your joys, your sweet memories, and the dark burdens that may re-surface with the long, dark nights.  We can wrap it all up in a bundle of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness.  Our dwelling place can be Love.

Inhaling the Color

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When the kids were younger, we spent hours each day on art projects—finger paints, crayons, sidewalk chalk, markers, watercolors, acrylic paints at the Fisher-Price easel with stubby, color-coded brushes, and many more.  Emily was a visual learner and artist from a very young age.  She held a pencil correctly when she was one year old, she drew detailed pictures of our family, and she would come home from kindergarten and describe the color and style of clothes and shoes her teacher wore (fast forward to Stitch Fix!)  I can’t remember how old she was at the time, but she went through a period when she was coloring with crayons that she would put one in her mouth and pretend she was smoking.  When I gently admonished her for emulating smoking, she replied that they were special good rainbow ones with vitamins and fruit!  That memory was recently revived for her when she saw an ad for rainbow-colored personal essential oil diffusers—cylinder-shaped diffusers of essential oils that you inhale into your mouth and out your nose—just like her childhood idea!

Color is a scarce commodity in Nature as late Fall morphs into Winter.  Our Thanksgiving weekend hike at Warner Lake County Park was devoid of much color, but we were able to find some interesting hues by looking closely at the gray-brown landscape.  Red berries of a woodland perennial persisted among the pine needles.  Red-violet branches of Red-twigged Dogwood brightened the lake shore, and scarlet berries of a Viburnum looked enticing against the sleepy gray background.

Rusty orange leaves cling to the understory Ironwood trees through most of the winter, making them easy to identify.  Bittersweet vines produce vibrant red-orange berries perfect for Fall decoration.

Happy yellow-gold seedheads remain from a prolific-blooming wildflower.  Golden stands of grass lined the ice-covered Warner Lake.

Healthy green moss covered a fallen tree, outlining the upended roots and trunk.  A fallen cluster of green pine needles, thanks to a nibbling squirrel, intertwined with the brown needles that were shed earlier in the season.

The hiking day began with blue skies and active, fluffy clouds of white before a front of gray clouds and sprinkles covered the cerulean.  A few days later the day ended with a rainbow-colored sunset painted on the western easel of sky.

 

One of the gifts of Winter, when the landscape is devoid of color, is the simplification of sight.  With the leaves gone, the structure and essence of a tree is obvious.  There are less things to look at—no flowers or colors to capture our attention for a second before it moves to the next thing.  Time seems to slow a bit.  The things that do capture our attention are worth noting and examining.  Late Fall and Winter open up the opportunity to look closely at ourselves—what is our structure and essence?  What is the understory of our life that has been covered up with the exuberance of Spring and Summer and that is now easier to identify?  How do we outline a healthy life?  How do we intertwine the old parts of ourselves that need to be shed with the green, growing parts that need to be expressed?  The season of my life when the kids were young was busy, fun, full of laughter, love, and creativity—an exuberant, colorful Spring!  Emily taught me that we can look at things differently, that we can re-create a negative into a positive, that we can breathe in the special healing rainbow goodness of Life. 

When I Breathe, I Thank a Tree

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“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.”   –Martin Luther

Have you ever felt like you couldn’t breathe?  Whether from asthma, smoke, pneumonia, or fear, the strangling, helpless feeling of not being able to replenish the body with oxygen kicks us into survival mode.  The only thing that matters in that moment is to breathe.  The physiological processes of breathing, delivering oxygen to all cells of the body, and removing carbon dioxide waste are miraculous!  Just as miraculous are the processes of trees and other green plant materials taking our waste of carbon dioxide, using it to provide nutrients for themselves, and in turn, providing oxygen for us.  We and trees are partners in this thing called Life.

Our Black Friday consisted of heading to Warner Lake County Park, spending energy via leg muscles, and buying a great day at a bargain price.  It was unseasonably warm with sun and chances of passing showers, and we eagerly hit the trails.

The wooded trails were eclectic with areas of conifer and deciduous forests, which is common in this area of Minnesota.  One uncommon aspect of this park was the high population of mature Red Cedars that grew among the mighty Oaks and Pines.

A small walk-in campground area in the mixed forest seemed like an enticing place to camp.  Deciduous trees were like ghost trees among the evergreens.

The sun broke through the clouds and shone on the butterscotch bark of a Scotch Pine tree.

We walked on, and then this…

” And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.”  –John Muir

The tall Pines were mesmerizing as they swayed and whispered in the breeze.  Chris said this is the place to take a sleeping bag and spend the night!  Imagine lying on a bed of pine needles, safe in the bosom of Mother Earth.

Breathe.  One tree provides 260 pounds of oxygen a year, while absorbing more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  The burning of one gallon of non-ethanol gas produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide.

After we left the Pine forest, we saw other interesting trees and a grove of Birches.

When we circled the lake, we looked across the ice-covered water to see the Pine forest rising above the other trees.

 

It is great fun to discover a Pine forest of such beauty and serenity.  I’m thankful someone created the park around the small lake and big trees.  The deciduous trees in our area are not contributing to the oxygen levels in the air we are breathing during their dormancy, and the evergreen trees have slowed their production of oxygen in their non-growing state.  But trees around the world are doing their part in their active, green growing state to provide us with what we need to breathe and to clean up and recycle what we do not need.  This is a world-wide endeavor.  Silver and gold, shopping and gifts, spending and gadgets are moot points if we do not have clean, oxygen-rich air to breathe.  Trees are our real treasures, if we rightly consider—their gift to us is the only thing that really matters.

 

Nature and Nurture—Who We Are

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She was a listener from a very young age.  Her large brown eyes and beautiful, expressive face shone with excitement, cast woeful sadness, or conveyed a myriad of other emotions, all without the use of words.  In fact, she didn’t talk much at all early in life, even when I knew she knew how to do it.  Her older sister was a words person at a young age, and with her caring, intuitive spirit, she ‘interpreted’ for Anna.  It was apparent that Anna allowed it—she would look at Emily to answer, and I could see the approval in her eyes when Emily got it right.  I was never worried; I knew she would talk when she was ready.  And she did.  It was soon evident that she was an articulate auditory learner—she would be playing on the floor with toys and suddenly sing a complete jingle that she had heard on tv.  All of our kids were exposed to music from birth—classical music, fun Raffi songs, cultural songs and lullabies, my singing songs at bedtime, interactive song/story tapes and books (remember Abiyoyo?), along with the Emmylou and CCR records in our collection.  Anna showed a special affinity for all music and instruments—she loved the toy piano passed down from the cousins, she taught Aaron how to play the toy xylophone, we bought her a beautiful wooden zither for Christmas, and she would play songs for us—and this was all before she started school.

How do we become the persons we are born to be?  How do all creations end up where they are in order to do the work they are intended to do?

Why do the gold-leaved Cottonwoods and Willows prefer to grow with their roots near water instead of on an arid hilltop?

Do muskrats choose to live near the cattails in order to use them for food and building material or is it happenstance?

Rango’s herding instincts apply to cattle, geese, or people.  He enjoys his work and takes his job seriously.

And yet, the geese have their own sentries doing their job to keep an eye on him and us.

What makes one dog a herder and another a retriever?

What happens when opportunities for doing one’s work dry up or are never available to begin with?

We live and grow in this complex, multi-layered environment with synergism and competition, support and censure, dependence, independence, and interdependence.

 

We returned to Brookings to meet our grown-up listener and to hear her musical voice being presented as a flute solo at a faculty recital.  Anna is what she has always been and more—a listener, a lover of music and instruments, a composer, and a music scholar to name a few.  She learned to play the clarinet, sang and played in church, pleaded for piano lessons, began composing, participated in band and orchestra, learned to play many more instruments, went to music camps and on to college to major in composition.  She has written a book and is now in graduate school—all the while composing new music from her creative, brilliant inner being.  Doing what she was born to do.  Being who she was born to be.

We sat in the Performing Arts Center waiting for her piece to be performed.  It was the same place we had gone to school choral concerts.  It was the same room where we had sat in awe as Itzhak Perlman played his violin.  It was the same stage with the Fazioli grand piano where Anna recorded her first cd of compositions as Chris and the sound guy watched from the control room.  I proudly present Anna Brake’s composition performed by Dr. Tammy Evans Yonce.

Program Notes
“Oh Rapturous Hour! Is this Fulfilment?” is a monologue for flute.  The poem, “Fulfilment” by Harold Monro (1879-1932), serves as the skeleton for the contour and articulation for the music.  The romantic poem has intense emotional changes and the characterizations are key to this piece.  I use word painting throughout with techniques such as breath tone, whole tone scales, flutter-tonguing, trills, multiple staccato and key clicks to represent words or themes in the poem, such as wind, nature, laughter, etc.

Nature—our genes and innate gifts, the spirit of who we are when we enter this world.  Nurture—the complex, multi-layered environment we grow and develop in.  The interaction and synergy of Nature and Nurture form who we are.  Later, there are choices that steer us in certain directions, while at the very same time, happenstance—those things we have no control over—can change the course of our lives in an instant.  It takes a hardy soul to navigate it all.  That’s how we all do this thing called Life.

Call of the Wild Geese

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We were heading home again when we traveled through the storm.  The last time we were home was two Januarys ago for my Dad’s frigid funeral.  My body and soul love the prairie, the clear blue sky, and the call of the wild geese—all of which run down my nervous system like a calm stream and fill my soul’s cup to frothy fullness.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

–Mary Oliver

The cows have left my Mom’s pasture for the season, leaving behind the geese who gladly claim this domain as their own again.

They graze and lay on the cowpie-strewn grass, decorating it with their own little fertilizer pellets and down confetti, and loudly chatter to one another as we humans approach.

What is it about the prairie?  On the surface, it’s simple—sky and grassland.  Many travelers call it boring or lonely.  I think the prairie allows a person to see one’s Self.  It takes away the distractions of busyness and gives away freedom in its openness.  We ask ourselves the questions, “Who am I in relation to the expansive blue sky?”  “What is my place in this green, good Earth?”  Many aren’t ready for the questions or the answers, but the invitation is there.

Meanwhile, the geese have made the prairie their home.  Most will be traveling on to warmer lands for the winter; some will find open water and stay despite the cold.

Unlike most animals and birds, geese are at home on land, in the water, and in the air.  Wherever they are, they claim it for their own.

Meanwhile, the sun moves over the prairie, moves over the unnamed water…

…moves over the geese swimming in sunshine.

 

The geese have staked their claim in their temporary home, and they will carry that assurance and presence with them as they travel through the air to other lands and other lakes.  If only I had their assurance.

When I first read Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese poem, not that many years ago, tears welled up in my eyes with the first line.  “You do not have to be good.”  ‘Being good’ had been my internal mantra, motivator, manager, and ball and chain for a handful of decades.  And I had walked many a mile on my knees in self punishment for not being ‘good enough.’  Oliver was gently and with assurance stating that I don’t have to do that anymore.  I could lay down my black and white thinking that if I wasn’t ‘good,’ I was ‘bad.’  ‘Being good’ in this sense is not the intrinsic, God-given goodness we are all born with—it is the man-made, mind-made perfectionist roles and rules that society or family places upon us or that we place upon ourselves in order to get the love and attention we need.  Oliver was saying to just let my mammalian body be present and love what it loves.  I could decide, from my own inner, God-given goodness.  Oliver tempers any egoistic instructions with the fact that we are always in relationship with others—there is a give and take—tell me about your despair, your loves, your struggles, your joy, and then, I will tell you mine.  Built into that exchange is a container of safety—that we will be listened to, protected, believed, and beloved.  (Therein lies the grounds for betrayal.)  Then Oliver pulls us out of our little worlds to remind us of the big world.  In our despair, the world goes on.  In the midst of our struggles, the sun moves over the land and water.  In the energy of our joy, the wild geese call.  Not only are we in relationship with one another, we are in relationship with all of Nature!  The wild geese are calling to all of us announcing our place in the world—it is our job to claim it for our own.

Homecoming

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“Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.”      —Charles Dickens

An old black pickup pulls into the driveway every weekday afternoon and parks in front of the garage.  An old black dog inside the house who’s waiting and watching by the floor-length window gets a shot of adrenaline in anticipation.  The homecoming has begun!  Chris exits the pickup, gathers his small red cooler and extraneous sweatshirts, boots, and clothes that are mud-streaked, oil-stained, and grass-smelling and walks slowly toward the house.  If he’s dug holes, planted trees, or been on his hands and knees pulling weeds for too many hours of the day, it shows in the limp of his gait.  But pure happiness and joy meets him at the door in a rush and a dozen rubs against his legs.  There is a smile on Chris’ face as he sits on the bench, looks at his gray-faced friend, and rubs behind her ears as she wags her tail in contentment.  The three of us then take a walk down the road—Chris and I check in with one another about our day as Tamba checks out the new smells on the old pathway.

It was Homecoming at Saint John’s University last weekend.  Aaron and his friends met to eat breakfast in the Reef—the cafeteria on the basement floor of the thick stone walled Quad building.  After a short walk across campus, they entered the pine tree enveloped football stadium where the Johnnies whomped the Auggies in a no-surprise win.  Tailgating, catching up, reminiscing, and sharing a beer and a game of pool rounded out the day.  Chris and I joined Aaron for a hike at Saint John’s the next day—it was a beautiful, sunshiny day, and the Maple trees were in spectacular color.  Families, students, and alumni hiked the extensive network of trails, reveling in the magnificence of the place.

What does a place one wants to come home to offer?  What brings people back ‘home?’  Saint John’s emphasizes a sense of community and friendship that I witnessed during Aaron’s four years there and that has continued in the years since he graduated.  It is a place where you can fall, and there are people there to help you back up.

Home is a place of beauty, however you define that.  Saint John’s University is surrounded with hundreds of acres of natural beauty—lakes, streams, Maple forests, grasslands, and Oak savannas—and contains historical and modern architecture that awes and inspires.

Coming home should be a safe haven in the rough seas of life.  The heart-breaking reality is that many children don’t have a safe haven at home; they consider school and their teacher a place and person of safety where they can have food, kind words, and care and help with learning and being.  We never know when we are someone’s port in a storm.

Home lets us be who we are with no pretenses, embraces us no matter our size, color, mistakes, or shortcomings.

Home is a place to hang out, to get close, to have a conversation, to hold one another accountable, to soak up the good things in life and to deal with the bad.

Home is a place of encouragement when a task is daunting, when we wonder how the heck we’re going to climb this next hurdle, when the steps are right in front of our faces but we are unable to navigate them for whatever reason.

Home is a place of growth and learning where books and experiments, chores and hands-on doing, creativity, mistakes and solving problems of every kind are used daily.  We learn, we grow, we shed our old ways and constantly become new creatures.

Home is a place that helps us out of the muck, that throws us a rope when we’re stuck, that will wade into the mess we find ourselves in, pull our boot out of the mud, and help us back to shore.

Home is where all the paths of life lead back to—often we lose our way and wander through the trees.  We get confused about what direction we’re going and whether it’s the right way.  We get scared of what’s to come because of the dark nights that have come before.  But always, the Light of home is calling us forward through the shadows.

 

For Aaron, homecoming at Saint John’s was fun and nostalgic, satisfying and bittersweet (Jake, you were missed!)  For Tamba, Chris’ daily homecoming is a time to celebrate with joy and contentment.  So what does a place or person offer that one wants to come home to?  Safety in all realms, acceptance of who we are, beauty for the eyes and soul, responsibility of internal and external dynamics, help when we need it, a culture of learning and growth, and fun, happiness, contentment, and joy!  Home is the place we return to, it is the people we can count on, it is the God who sustains us, it is the path we travel on the journey back to ourselves.  Home is truly where our hearts are, where we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we matter.