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Looking From the Inside Out

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At the beginning of the week I was planning to do a post about all the things I love about Nature in honor of Love and Valentine’s Day.  There are so, so many things I love about Nature, about all the life-giving forces that surround us in our daily lives.  Wednesday was a busy day starting with a circle of wonderful women sharing love for one another and discussing Desmond Tutu’s ‘The Book of Forgiving’ and ending with an Ash Wednesday potluck supper and worship service.  And then the news of another deadly school shooting….  It takes a while for the story to unfold.  It takes a while for the horror of it to sink into our minds.  It takes a while before our bodies register the threat and menace of a normal day turned deadly.  Oh, God, help us all.

And then I returned to the post I wrote just last week, to the place where thirteen men, women, and children were murdered on a day in 1862 when the traveling pastor came to visit, when the adults fled the gathering to try to save the children.  It was chilling to visit that memorial state park last week, and it was chilling to hear the present-day news of yet another school mass murder this week.

The social media fallout and subsequent bipolarization of the issue of innocent lives lost made me want to cry out in anguish.  One meme had a Sesame Street character as the picture with words linking gun deaths to abortions.  Incendiary and incriminating words are useless in every situation.    

I realized that we all see things from the inside out.  We do not see the big picture.  We look through the window of our own lives and experiences.

The window we look through is shaped by our upbringing, our culture, our parents, and our education.  Were we loved and cared for or neglected and starved?  Did people nourish and encourage us or hurt us and abandon us?  Were we free to learn and be curious about the world or were we in survival mode day after day?  It makes a huge difference in what we see when we’re looking from the inside out.  But even the most loved, nourished, and educated person doesn’t see the whole picture—and that’s where community comes in.  That’s when questions are asked, when experts are consulted, when data needs to be examined, and when we walk outside of our limited box of experience in order to experience the situation through the window of one who actually lives it.  We each contribute a puzzle piece in order to see the whole picture.

On the left side of the picture above is a tree.  Looking from the inside out, we can only see a part of it.  Our minds extrapolate to build the image of the rest of the tree—because we know what a tree looks like.  We, in essence, make up the rest of the image.  By stepping out of our limited view of the tree, we see it in a completely different way.  We behold the bigger picture and get a better sense of the reality of the tree.

And yet, we still don’t see the whole tree.  We notice the ground now, but we don’t see the extensive system of roots below the ground that are intrinsic to the life and existence of the tree.  We discern the bark and trunk of the tree, but we don’t see the inside layers of phloem and xylem that coordinate the nourishment of the tree.  We distinguish the branches and impressive crown of the Oak, but we don’t see the leaves that power the life of the tree.  We are humbled in the face of this Oak and in the face of Nature.  As we look from the inside out, let’s gather together as a community of people to add our pieces, ever so humbly, in order to see the bigger picture and take steps to not only try to stop the senseless killings, but to also help those vulnerable people whose windows are small and desolate.  

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.