If we only steward them well

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.

12 x 16, oil on paper, Storm clouds over San Miguel