May 21, 2020 - Gratitude

What is gratitude?  Is it mere thankfulness or appreciation?  Is it the realization that something has been shared or given?  Pah!  None of that.  How ordinarily and unexceptionally human.

Do you not know?  Do you not know what it is?  Ah….yes, you do.  I know that you know.  It is the feeling of going along every day in every way in the silence, in the drudgery, in the unending workload, in the confounded sorrow of being forgotten . . . and suddenly something happens.  Who knows what it is?!  Who cares?!  We can argue about it later.  But for now it is enough to know that something happens.  And you stop in your tracks.  You look up.  You see the ceiling, but the ceiling is not enough.  So you look out the window, but it is not enough either.  So you open the d o o r, and you look to the heavens.

And you are struck.  Suddenly it all makes sense, it all fits.  You smile at the simplicity of it all.  How could you not have seen it before?  It is so simple.  Even children could figure it out.  In fact, they often do.  But….it lasts at best for a few minutes and often only a moment or two.  Yet it is there.  It is enough.  Like an Earthquake.  Like a dam bursting.  Like that moment before you fall when you forget there is one more step on the stairs you are descending.  It is like that.  It is unmistakable.

You see it.  Not with your eyes—so unreliable, those human eyes—but with your heart.  With your soul.  At last, you say.  I get it.  I finally see it.  Thank you.  Oh my God, thank you….  It all makes sense now….  How could I have been such a fool?

I knew you would not abandon me.  I knew somehow the light would shine again.  It comes in strange colors through the tears of my eyes, the water prisms catching the one source and turning it into all the colors of the spectrum and beyond.  Shimmering and sparkling into eternity.  I should have been a great fool for not believing.  For forgetting.  For wallowing in self-pity.  For my childish anger.  For my sullenness.  For my ignorance.  But here, now, see me.  Look at me!  I am whole again. 

The wood floor in my house, its boards are not hard enough for my knees.  I will go down to the ocean and fall upon my knees on the hard and jagged rocks, and they will speak to me.  And I will know that it is good.

This is gratitude.

May 19, 2020 - Sweet Afton

“Flow gently, sweet Afton, amang thy green braes.

Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise . . .”

So said Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1791, only 229 years ago, but it seems as though he wrote it yesterday.  I could swear he was visiting me on my walk today.  Surely more than two centuries ago, he must have seen the same things I saw today, else how could he have written so lovely a verse?  And if so, did he hear my conversation with the young Sun King (whose coronation is not yet official)?  It is a possibility.  Perhaps he knew Him well; that is my suspicion.  And I am full of suspicions.

“You did it again, did you not?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Again.  Truly?” more exasperated.

“Yes, again.”

“But why?  Why??”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I was afraid.  Everything happened so quickly, and the world turned to ice.  Everything died.  I kept trying to catch your eye, but you were looking elsewhere.  Again.”

“Yes, I was,” He said, “Yet again.”

“The world froze,” I went on, “And though I tried to hold on, at some point I left the land of the living—once more—and walked in the Underworld.”

“Did you not love me?” He asked, pained.

“Of course I did—and do!”

“Then why could you not you believe me?  Why could you not wait for me?  I told you I would come back!”

“I know,” I faltered.

(You will re-member that it was Nathaniel Hawthorne who said, “We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.” – 1850.  But we will not speak of that here.)

So now the King returns to us and life is renewed, and what am I to do about the forest?  This time I thought I was done for, but once again, spring has returned.  Why can I never believe completely?  The forget-me-nots bloom yet again, spectacular as always, and never where I expect them to be.  The plain dandelion barges in among their frailty and carries a strength they will never suspect.  But no matter.  There is room for all today.

“Here this now,” He said.  “I will always come back for you.  You need never worry.  I will never forget you, not in a thousand years, not in a million years.  Each bloom is the most precious bloom in existence.  Each bloom is the only bloom.  Each life is the One life.  And you are more precious to me than a thousand rubies.”

“I know,” I said, “Now I remember.”

“But you will forget again?”

“Yes.”

“Take my gentle reminder, then.  Splurge it in the sunset.”

“Already done,” I said.

I continued on my walk for a while, meandering down the river and following where it led.  The Sun began to slant lower in the sky, already sailing away on His cosmic trip, sailing into the Underworld.  There is no hurry, though.  We shall all be there presently.

“My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

Thou stockdove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen,

Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den,

Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear.

I charge thee, disturb not my slumbering Fair.”

 ~ Robert Burns, 1791

May 14, 2020 - Wind-Kissed

This invisible sea all around us, that which we call “air,” must be the holiest thing on Earth.  We can live three weeks without any food, three days without any water, but only three minutes without any air.  We walk in it, sleep in it, laugh and cry in it, and love in it.  In everything we do, we are constantly exchanging the air around us.  It is never not a part of our lives.  It is the very foundation of our existence.  And yet, we don’t think of it at all.

Is it because we can’t see it?  Is it something as trivial as that?  “I can’t see it.  Therefore, it does not exist.”  What a narrow way of looking at the world.  But all around us, the evidence exists.  Take, for example, the dandelions in this patch of grass.  They are not random.  Each one is placed precisely where it ought to be, blown in a pattern by a wind we cannot and will not ever see.  What you see here is evidence of a kiss from a gust of wind late last fall, and only now can you see the fruit of His hand.

“I am hungry.  I need to eat.”

“I am thirsty.  I need to drink.”

“I am lifeless.  I need to breathe.  Ah, that is much better.  But more.  And more still.”

It’s a constant thing.  We don’t inhale and then stop . . . and then exhale and then stop.  There is no interim time in between an inhale and an exhale.  It is just a continual motion.  So I have always wondered, when I breathe in, am I breathing in this thing called “God”?  And when I breathe out, is He breathing me in?  Simultaneously?  I breathe/He exhales.  I exhale/He breathes.  Back and forth, ceaselessly.

I cannot remember a time when I was not alive.  I am told such time existed, but I cannot be certain that is true.  It is just something someone told me, and I’m not sure if I believe it.  Because I cannot remember a time when I did not exist.  Can you?  Not what you’re told about time and life and the world—but reaching as far back in your mind as possible?  Can you find a time when you weren’t there?