Yesterday
I watched an old white oak cut down in the neighbor’s yard. Although I don’t really know, I imagine the
tree to be over 100 years old. They say
it had root rot. Still I felt sad to
watch this enormous tree and canopy cut piece by piece until it was gone.
Life. What an amazing thing – to not be and then to
be; that we were not and then we were; we are – alive. How absolutely amazing and mysterious to have
this opportunity to be alive, to have this gift of heart, mind, body, and soul.
Last
week I was able to spend time with my son and his family, his wife and two children. I was able to hold my new granddaughter. She is now three months old, healthy,
happy. My grandson, two and half, now
has an extended vocabulary, wanting to know about everything. “What’s that?” “What’s grandpa doing?” “What’s grandpa doing now?!” Amazing how we begin
and are able to grow and learn, develop and create, love and dream. And how important it is along the journey to be
conscious and pay attention to the things that matter most, to be present to
this moment and the people in our lives and around us, to love kindness, mercy,
and justice, and to walk humbly with our God.
A dear
parishioner recently died at the age of 92, a long and good life. And still...it is hard to let go. The way he lived, active, present, kind, and
engaged, is an example for me of how I want to be if I should live a long life;
and even if not a long life, how I want to live nonetheless, active, present,
kind, and engaged.
Mary
Oliver (my favorite poet) in her poem Circles
writes:
In the morning the blue heron is busy
stepping, slowly, around the edge of the
pond. He is tall and shining. His wings, folded
against his body, fit so neatly they
make of him, when he lifts his shoulders and begins to rise
into the air, a great surprise. Also
he carries so light the terrible sword-beak. Then
he is gone over the trees.
I am so happy to be alive in this world
I would like to live forever, but I am
content not to. Seeing what I have seen
has filled me; believing what I believe
has filled me.
The first words of this page are
hardly thought of when the bird
circles back over the trees; it floats down
like an armful of blue flowers, a bundle of light
coming to refresh itself again in the black water, and I think:
maybe it is or it isn't the same bird-maybe it's
the first one's child, or the child of its child.
What I mean is, our deliverance from Time
and the continuance, if we only steward them well,
of earthly things. So maybe it's myself still standing here, or
someone else, like myself hot with the joy of this world, and
filled with praise.
I would like to live forever, but I am
content not to. Seeing what I have seen
has filled me; believing what I believe
has filled me.
...If we only steward
them well.
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| 12 x 16, oil on paper, Storm clouds over San Miguel |
