Becoming Native

A year ago this week I finalized the purchase of my home in the North Carolina mountains. Though I didn’t actually move until June, I’ve been thinking this week about that memorable event of a year ago. Committing myself to a new place after forty-five years in one community is significant, and I didn’t do it gradually. I couldn’t afford nor did I want to have a vacation home and an apartment in Macon. Wherever I was living, I wanted to be all in, fully committed to a place.

As if to commemorate the purchase of my home, I discovered a Catesby’s Trillium blooming near the porch! First, I love trillium (who doesn’t) and second, the place it was blooming did not seem a hospitable place for it, so near to recent construction and all the debris that the builders left lying on the ground. I was so excited to discover it, and another one, not yet blooming, nearby. Along with the serviceberry, dogwood, and flame azaleas that have been blooming this spring, I am reveling in the colors and discoveries offered by the land here.

A few years ago my word for the year was “native.” When I shared that at work in our weekly staff meeting (we were all sharing our words for the year) I got a few chuckles. Someone said something about deodorant and I had to explain why the word chose me. I won’t go into detail now about how that word shaped my year, but since moving to North Carolina and committing to plant only native plants on this land I am tending, I’ve thought about the long-lasting impact of that word in guiding my life, and in ways that were totally unknown to me in the year I was living into it.

Living on land that for centuries had been the home of the Indigenous Cherokee people, I have a strong sense of responsibility to honor this bit of earth by avoiding non-native plant species, with the exception of daffodils a friend in Macon gave me prior to my move here. As the wild places in our nation are increasingly at risk of being damaged or lost, I want to do what I can to promote habitat for plants and the creatures that depend on them. I know I am not native to this land, being of European ancestry, but I want to live as though I was native, with a strong degree of love and care for this place that is giving life to me.

I’ve been moved by reading Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who is both a professor of environmental biology and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. While my ancestry does not connect me to the Indigenous people of this land, I appreciate Kimmerer’s words that “for the sake of the peoples and the land, the urgent work of the Second Man (non-native peoples) may be to set aside the ways of the colonist and become Indigenous to place.”

The Catesby’s Trillium and the flame azalea blooming now and the mountain laurel that is just about to bloom all urge me to become Indigenous to this land that more and more feels like it is adopting me as its own. I hope to bloom here in this soil, just as they are.

A Sense of Place

In June, I moved from middle Georgia to western North Carolina. I went from living in a loft apartment in downtown to living in a cabin with trees around me. I was excited to put out feeders for birds, because I expected to get more variety than I did in downtown Macon. There, I had English sparrows, house finches, and doves. The hummingbird feeder seldom had much activity but still I reveled in the occasional hummingbird visitor.

One of the first things I did when I got settled into this new place was put up bird feeders. The hummingbirds came almost instantly to the feeder I hung for them. The seed feeder languished for about two months before being visited. I thought chickadees would be the first to find it, because they seem so fearless and curious. However, goldfinches actually began using the feeder a good month before I finally saw a titmouse on it. Shortly after the titmice, I had chickadees and nuthatches. From a lifetime of feeding birds, I know those three types of birds often hang together.

Now that I have four kinds of birds using the seed feeder, I sense my presence is accepted on this little hill I share with them. I am well aware that I’m the intruder, that elements of the more-than-human world were displaced for the cabin I inhabit to be built, and even long before construction began here, Cherokee peoples were displaced by my ancestors, so I sense a strong obligation to tend and honor this little piece of land, for the sake of others who were here long before I showed up.

I don’t feel comfortable saying I own this land or this cabin. At best, I’m a temporary steward of a place that God created and others have lived in. My desire is to be a good neighbor to the trees and other plants, to the birds and other creatures, as well as a good neighbor to the people that live around me.

I have delighted in learning about the native plants and the animals that depend on them. I want to only add plants that belong here, because I am learning that the web of living things depends on so many beautiful and intricate interdependencies to survive and thrive. As much as possible, I want to support and strengthen the interdependencies, not disrupt them. To have a sense of place, the ability to love and connect with the world, and to be a good steward of all creation (including each other) matters. These are small acts done with great love and they can change the world.

Trail Review

 Just for fun--a poem about an actual trail review.

There were bears.
That was it.
A three word
trail review
on All Trails.
Syllables—
only three,
fewer than
information,
ample though.
What to know
ere you go.
 
There were bears.

Rabbit-Foot Clover

Many years I didn't notice you

growing chiefly in neglected city spots:

sidewalk cracks, patches of overgrown grass,

near derelict buildings. Common as dandelion,

equally overlooked. It took a slow, contemplative walk

for you to get my attention, fuzzy spot of cheer.

I fell in love, took you home, enjoyed you more than

the showiest bloom.

To find you each spring delights me,

your persistence, willingness to grow anywhere,

especially inhospitable places. You possess

strength and beauty of wildness.

I want to be like you.

Hold Life Lightly

Seasons teach us to hold life lightly.

Everything dies, yet birth comes

in equal measure, if not more abundantly.

We have to wait years for apples

after planting the tree, watching

summer leaves die and fall,

winter’s bareness too, before spring’s 

buds. All the time, the tree grows.

Winter’s death no hindrance, but

necessity for strength to bear fruit.

Even the fallen apples, uneaten,

carry new life within them.

Everything dies and is born.

Hold it all tenderly, lightly.

Santa Monica Sunday Afternoon

Breeze, shade, sand, sun.

You are here in gull’s cries,

palm trees, undulating ocean,

blue cloudless sky.

But just as much present

in the scraps of music, 

sounds of conversation, people

moving in every direction.

I am here,

taking it all in, no agenda

but presence, which is prayer, is it not?

A slice of time on Santa Monica beach,

an act of worship because you are here.

Marveling at the Mundane

When things are stressful in the world around us (and aren’t they always) and it is tempting to think the world is in danger, I find it helpful to think about all the ordinary things that bring me joy and remind me that there is more that is good than there is evil.

Here are some things that have been causing me to marvel lately:

·       the sound of wind in the trees, and the ways it sounds different in pines than in deciduous trees

·       the way sunlight makes one tree’s orange leaves pop in a thicket of trees

·       the soft, sweet, sort of creepy song of a white throated sparrow

·       the different ways leaves fall—some spin like whirly-gigs, some roll like a barrel rolling downhill, and others float slowly to the ground

·       the way a large hawk can fly through thick woods without running into branches

What are you seeing or hearing that makes you marvel? Can you make a list, either written or in your head, of these things so that when you feel anxious, they can remind you of the simple, mundane goodness that is always all around us?

Feel free to share in a comment your marvelous mundane moments of joy. When we see what brings joy to each other, it improves our own ability to find the marvelous in the mundane.

Overflowing Joy

At that very moment, Jesus overflowed with joy from the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You’ve hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and shown them to babies. Indeed, Father, this brings you happiness.”

                                                                                                    Luke 10:21

I would have loved to see Jesus overflow with joy. I don’t recall having read such a description of Jesus elsewhere, but I can imagine it. Can you? 

This verse is part of the story of the seventy-two who have been sent out and have now returned to share their experiences. Imagine the excitement they brought, and Jesus, in the thick of their excitement, exclaiming with joy to God! It is a glimpse, surely, of what heaven must be, and the overflowing joy that is part and parcel of eternal life. 

I’ve had those moments of overflowing joy, and I’m sure you’ve had them too. Last weekend, I was in the North Georgia mountains, and one morning, as I sat outside in the crisp, cool air, I saw the sun strike the mountain in front of me. It brought tears to my eyes, a moment of overflowing joy. We experience such moments, and most of them take place in events of everyday life. Something clicks, and we are present in a way that is hard to describe. If we do try to describe it, we cannot adequately convey why it is such a moment for us.

Maybe such moments are when we actually experience the world with childlike wonder. Jesus speaks of things being hidden from the wise and intelligent and shown instead to babies. To overflow with joy requires that we lay aside being “reasonable” and embrace imaginative delight, that we receive God’s kingdom, which is everywhere, all around us, as a child.

Are you open to experiencing overflowing joy? Are you willing to let go of stiff, stuffy adulting to see the ordinary as extraordinary, with the eyes of a child?

Stubbornness or Adventure

Last week I was in the mountains for some time away. I didn’t go to the mountains with a plan to hike to waterfalls, but most days, those were the trails I chose.

One day I found a great place to eat lunch by a waterfall. As I ate, I noticed leaves that, instead of being washed downstream, were stubbornly clinging to rock, even though water was rushing forcefully over them. I cannot explain how they managed to hold on tightly where they were.

Certainly, there is a time to hold fast, but also there is a time to let go. I thought about the adventure of riding the current of the stream, and how, if we are too intractable, we miss out on the grand adventure that is life. To let go makes one vulnerable, because we cannot know what lies downstream for us.

However, staying stuck to the rock means those leaves will slowly disintegrate right where they are. We can wither when we are stubborn. We can stick so hard to a belief, a way of living, a job, that we wither away in that position. I have certainly known people whose stubbornness kept them from experiencing growth and adventure in their lives. To take hold of life means a willingness to live in the flow, even when that flow takes us through difficult or painful changes. A life immune from risk isn’t much life at all.

Praising Plants

Even the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you;
    all the trees of the field will clap their hands.                                                       Isaiah 55:12

Anthropomorphic descriptions are plentiful in scripture. Maybe you’ve watched a tree sway in the wind and imagined it clapping its hands.  As fall colors begin to appear, mountains do look like they are bursting into song. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The earth laughs in flowers.”

A couple of weeks ago I repotted a very potbound spider plant. Its leaves were brown on the ends and when I watered it, the water quickly filled the dish under the pot. It had several plants in it that needed to be separated into their own pots. I had known for a long time that it needed some attention, but it kept making the “do later” list.

This past weekend I was looking at the repotted plants. I felt I could almost hear them exclaiming with delight at their new digs. They truly look happy! In fact, one of the plants is making spider babies already!

All of which makes me wonder, what is it within me that needs space to grow? What do I need to stop putting off and give time and attention to so it can spread its roots and thrive?  When I actually took the time to repot my plant, it really didn’t take that long. It mostly took being prioritized. I just needed to commit about half an hour to the project.

Maybe what is languishing in you, suffering from lack of attention, just needs a small amount of time and space to take root and grow. Making the time and space for a dream to root and grow is an act of praise to God. A thriving desire given time and attention to flourish is a way you show your delight for the gifts and abilities God has placed in you.

I am inspired by my spider plants to tend my “inner garden.” I hope their example likewise inspires you!

Letter to a Fly

Dear fly, (though I don’t really mean the “dear” part)

why must you ceaselessly circle my head,

occasionally tangling in my hair, or

clumsily crashing into my cheek, or worse,

my lips?

I know you are a child of God, as am I.

St. Francis would have called you brother.

I’ve tried to imagine you as guardian angel

keeping me safe as I walk in the woods, but it

stretches beyond the reach of my imagination.

Were you more calm, maybe marking the place

in my psalter, as your kin did for Saint Colman

I might have more affection for you.

Your presence, however, reminds me

I do not yet fully love as God loves.

I have some growing to do.

Forest Silence

The silence of forest isn’t

absence of sound. Rather the sound

belongs. Wind rustling leaves, a

woodpecker’s thrumming, chorus

of tree frogs or crickets, bird song.

 

Nothing out of place.

I breathe.

My feet crunch leaves lightly.

I try to belong, let myself be wild.

Deep Questions

Here it is,

Eight thousand years later, and I still remember.

                                                          From “Looking at the Stars,” by Robert Bly

 

How much is stored in the memory of our bodies?

I wonder what I’ve carried for thousands of years, unconsciously,

events of ancient times that have shaped who I am.

When I look at the full moon, or watch the sun rise

what is triggered in my being,

how many sunrises are stored within?

 

What wildness lies deep in my DNA, at the core of my identity?

When I walk through the forest am I bridging

gaps in my soul, traveling neural pathways

ancient as earth itself?

What, finally, will I know of myself

when I come to the end of knowing?

Origin

 

Happy are those who trust in the Lord,

   who rely on the Lord.

They will be like trees planted by the streams,

   whose roots reach down to the water.

They won’t fear drought when it comes,

   their leaves will remain green.

They won’t be stressed in the time of drought

   or fail to bear fruit.

                                           Jeremiah 17:7-8

 

Down—the unlikely way to go,

but it is where the water of life dwells.

My roots went down to the Source and I found

my origin: to be one with nature, to play

outdoors, to see the world with child’s awe.

I am reborn by descent. I lived serious

far too long.

Now is the time to play, to be curious,

to live in wonder.

Pond

Though stillness seems to define its surface,

a closer look gives hints of what lies beneath.
Small fish, tiny I should say, active at the surface,
create sparkles as they pop up to feed, and less frequently
a splash speaks of larger ones deeper within.
Unseen current, life force, revealed in the sound
of water through the dam pipe
reminds me that this is not the same water I saw yesterday
and will be different tomorrow and the day after that.
Is this how my unconscious looks to God?
Is this the point of pure nothingness that surfaces 
in dreams I don’t recall?

March Ferns

 

Coming up a rise in the trail I spied them,

poised, still life of a dance beginning.

Some stick-straight except for their fiddle heads

bent in a formal bow as if preparing to contradance.

Others, more unfurled, a bit wilder, looser,

looking almost raucous in their heady celebration of spring.

It is this dance I want to join, moving loose, lanky, free,

intoxicated by new life, waving wantonly in the spring breeze.

Tastes of Heaven

 

But our gusty emotions say to me that we have

Tasted heaven many times: these delicacies

Are left over from some larger party.      

--From Tasting Heaven by Robert Bly

 

If tastes of heaven are the tidbits from a larger party,

then what was the larger version of the soft mist I enjoyed on my cheeks

this morning? Was it the residue from some heavenly celebration,

where bottles of champagne erupted to celebrate

the blooming of tulips, or the woven engineering of a swift’s nest?

 

I wonder what gets celebrated in heaven.

I imagine the minute, tiny, barely noticed (by us) events,

fattening buds, pink hue on a cloud, the way

sunlight filters through upon forest floor,

the first breath drawn by a foal—these

surely elicit uproarious response.

If I could count the misty drips as they touch my skin,

each drop a celebration to last a lifetime, ah,

this is a foretaste of eternity!

Blackbirds

 

Settled, at least for now, in the act of feeding, 

birds blanket the ground, their chirps and cackles 

drench the morning air with sound. 

I could not count them if I tried, the volume 

and their movement muddle any hope of totalling. And why 

would I want to count? Better to stand in awe, 

witness to abundance, communion, energy of life. 

Enjoy the gift, marvel at the scene, for it is fleeting. 

A sound, movement, something I don’t sense, disturbs, 

in a flurry of sound, a thousand wings lift the mass 

into the sky. I stand, agape, in the silence they leave behind, 

 recognizing the place I stand as holy ground, 

 receiving their mantle and their lesson. 

Sing, eat, share life with friends, live in this moment, 

turn aside, be awed.

Close to Water

What is it about water that soothes the anxious soul?

Sound, sparkle in sunlight, the rhythm of waves or current,

the concealment of what lies under. . .

Water wears many faces,

lives differently depending on location,

but woos and mesmerizes in its varied forms.

Rushing, undulating ocean waves,

singing, shimmering stream flowing through forest,

peaceful pond reflecting moonlight.

I am drawn to water, soaking in its call to calm, my soul

slaking its thirst for peace.

Is it the water in me that makes me feel at home,

at one with water in the world,

joined by our common nature?

Somewhere Near the Edge of Life

 

Inspired by a line from a poem by Robert Bly, “It’s As If Someone Else Is with Me”: I am here, somewhere near the edge of life 

Who could not believe in magic

walking on a misty morning?

Jewels hang, diamonds, from every bare branch.

The pines, proud in their winter green, sparkle,

each needle adorned with light on this gray day.

The bite of winter air, the mist hitting my cheeks,

gentle as feathers, stimulates me.

I am fully alive and magic everywhere I turn

in this thin space, somewhere near the edge of life,

somewhere I know, yet meet anew today.