What gorgeous thing
I reached for the bacon and found a poem.
It’s Sunday morning; I am making our weekly brunch in the kitchen: southwestern grits with cheese and salsa. Yellow grits that need the final garnish. I open the freezer, and when I reach for the bacon out falls an envelope addressed to no one. Inside the envelope is a sheet of paper with a typewritten poem beginning I don’t know what gorgeous thing the bluebird keeps saying. The poem is accompanied by a tiny songbird feather, smaller than my little finger, that floats down to my feet. The delicate feather of a bluebird fallen from an unaddressed envelope with a poem found next to the frozen green beans.
Wherever the poem with its bluebird song, and a feather, wherever it came from (no one has yet confessed to putting it in the freezer), the day was permanently altered by mystery and gratitude. I consider it another blessing, regardless of how it came to be beneath the bacon. And why not? There is the continuing story of our bluebird house — it sits in full view of our kitchen, and I am thrilled each spring when the pair returns. But last spring the bluebirds were chased off by the house wrens. This was after they had laid four beautiful blue eggs. When the house wrens took over we grieved the bluebird eggs until the day we found a fledgling struggling alone on the ground. This baby bluebird, whose vanquished parents would not return, died in my son’s open palm. We buried his feathered body with its tiny feet, and its lovely beak that will never sing, with my father’s ashes. Three generations in love with winged things.
Study in Blue
The first question from the students in my January online class was:
What do you mean, it’s the small things that are important?
I paused. This simple question struck unexpectedly deep. What I was thinking about was beginning the new year with something small, slender or secret— rather than pledging to do something big. Rather than make a splash, make an offering. Something you can hold in your hand, or your heart. After a pause I thought, that is where the power is.
What do you mean, it’s the small things that are important? She asked.
What I found myself saying was:
I just watched my father die. When someone goes, they leave a space behind. What does one who goes leave you? What memory strikes your heart? Is it their accomplishments, their possessions, their image? I saw clearly, it was not my father’s inventions or belongings, his work, or his beautiful hand-crafted Japanese knives. It was the small acts of kindness.
Fishing the River
The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.
— Barry Lopez
Anyone who has spent time in the desert, watching and listening, has felt the sense of depth and presence that defies the initial barren glance. I have taken many road trips to the New Mexico desert, and what follows is a true story of one I took years ago, headed toward Ghost Ranch.
Fishing the River
I am almost to the New Mexico border where the sign says, in big red letters, "You Are Leaving Colorado." Further down the road there's a second sign: “Welcome to New Mexico, The Land of Enchantment.” I have always wondered about that place between the two signs. It is some kind of demios oneiron, a village of dreams, that does not exist on any map.
Highway 17 is a rural mountain road circling above the Chama River. I have traveled it countless times on my way to teach at Ghost Ranch (named by the Spanish as a place of witches, “Ranchos de los Brujos”). This route is marked by reminders of our mortality. Rural New Mexican byways are decorated with descansos, a pastoral cross with flowers, honoring the resting place of one who has died on the road. Often I have stopped when seeing an old cemetery guarded by iron gates and filled with plastic roses and small figurines of the Virgin Mary. The gravestones have old writing and engravings of crosses, of which I have made many rubbings. New Mexican graveyards are distinct — flavored with Native American and Mexican roots. Mary is represented as the Virgin of Guadalupe, "a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." There are many stories of The Virgin of Guadalupe, going back to the 1500’s. She symbolizes the bridge between heaven and earth.
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Find a place you trust
I am reconsidering this theme of finding a place you trust. This idea is needed more now, during the uncertainty and loss we all find ourselves in. Suddenly, as quick as lightning, a dear friend is gone.
Sister Corita’s first rule for her students was find a place you trust and try trusting it for awhile.
I cannot improve on this as a place to begin. When fear arises, as it does in the face of change and unpredictability, what do you do? Anxiety is a natural and universally human response, and can even be an aid to taking action. Yet we need to prevent anxiety from taking over. Everyone has gone through narrow passages, and the one we are in now is world wide. Everyone has the possibility of choosing courage over fear. With the courage it takes to traverse difficulty, something good inevitably comes. You muster the nerve to navigate the narrow passage, in spite of your fear and anxiety. Looking back at my life, I can see that when I was able to do this, coming through that door offered its own reward. Taking the risk to choose courage cultivates a trust in life, a resiliency that abides in the bigger picture, and the awareness of other forces at work.
This attitude translates to being a creator…