springtime awakening | pull up a chair

April 3, 2020

in which we pull spring from out of the earth…

file this under “desperately seeking proof.” or perhaps, “it’s so necessary this time round.”

the subject is the eruption of spring: that moment, year after year, for as many years as there’ve ever been, when the whole chorus of buds, the vocal cords of feathered flocks and the tips at the ends of the trees, all decide at once to clang the cymbals, pound the drums, and explode like nobody’s business.

it’s so necessary this time round. so necessary when the airwaves fill us with cataclysmic reports, when going to the grocery is an exercise in holding your breath, when reading the morning news just might have you heaving before your first spoon of cornflakes.

Unknown here in my little corner of the world, about three fingers in from the east coast (if you’re looking at a palm-sized map), a whole thumbprint down from the canadian border, hard against that blue pendicle we know as lake michigan, there is the faintest rumbling of spring. not nearly enough. not enough for a vast swath of humanity staring out the kitchen window on high alert for the invisible virus, not enough for worn-down souls on the lookout for hope.

so i’ve been doing my part: i’ve put serious thought to my latest rube goldbergian plot. my plan to coax the eruption out of the earth. i’ve pictured myself out in the deep ink of the night, knees folded into a crouch, fist wrapped tight around a flashlight, pointing the beam onto stem after stem, branch after branch, seeing if a little light therapy might coax things along.

i’ve got friends in far-off-enough places who are sending me dispatches of itty-bitty finch eggs already laid. cherry trees awash in their seasonal meringue.

here in sweet chicago, here so close to the lake you can hear it lapping the shore: nada, zilch, practically zero. certainly not enough for a soul hungry for spring in the same way some of our bellies growl at the first whiff of oozy cheese in a griddle…

perhaps it would help if i scrawled paint onto a banner, spelled out the plea, “dear mama earth, PLEASE HELP!” we are in serious need of emotional rescue down here. we would do well to fall into the arms of magnolia. might cheer to a bluebird riding along on our shoulder. might fling ourselves face-first and eyes wide open into a bed of tulips and daffodil. fill our lungs with parfum de lilac instead of the fear of the red-ringed demon.

oh, there’ve been the subtlest of cues: goldfinch feathers dropping their wintry drab, taking on the sunshine-gleam of gold that gives them their name; the first lilliputian daffodils putting up their periscopes of promise (see proof above); the birdsong that cannot wait for first light of dawn, birdsong so thick you might think it a recording.

but this is no year for subtlety. this is a year for all the hope we can find. we are holding our breath down here on planet earth, where the whole globe is at a standstill. we need a vernal exclamation like never before.

those faraway friends tell me it’s coming. a friend in cambridge says, except for corona, this would be the most perfect spring she’s seen in a very long while. except for corona…

because my days are a checkerboard of occasional plug-ins — chanting with monks on mondays and thursdays, inhaling celtic spirituality direct from galway nine days in a row, chiming in on a once-a-week book group based in seattle — i’ve plenty of time for prowling my plot. i make the rounds at least twice a day, on the lookout for any sign of eruption. all but wander the walks with measuring stick and string, all in the hopes of seeing some progress.

this is a season for turning our keenest attentions to the rumblings of earth, to this most intoxicating science and faith that never fails, that offers page after page of wisdom and truth.

this unforgettable spring we are learning the art of deep patience. “ride it out,” is the mantra. “stick close to home,” the instruction.

i, like you most likely, have hours when my knees go wobbly. i’ve wiped away the occasional tear or two (or five). i’m trying to be something of a lifeline for a kid i love who’s all alone in a faraway place, where the walls sometimes press in. trying to make life here at home as tranquil and gentle and sometimes delicious as i can possibly muster. (for reasons that don’t quite escape me, i’ve taken keen fondness for a spritz bottle of lavender mist, which i spritz till the sheets and the pillows are soggy. and i figure the more delicious aromas i can stir from the kitchen, the better the chances i can steady the kid in the room up above, the one whose spring semester has — like everyone else’s — gone up in red-ringed vapors.)

it’s a master class in surrender to which we’ve been enlisted. no one asked first if we’d choose it. it was thrust wildly upon us.

the questions are these: how quiet can we go? how calm might we settle our souls? what new and wondrous epiphanies might drop before our eyes, our hearts, our imaginations? what brings you peace? where is your joy? what pulls you out from your darkest hours? who is your lifeline?

and, where oh where, is the promise of spring?

and suddenly, the holiest of weeks is almost upon us: holy week and easter for churchgoers; passover for jews. as i sink deep into the braiding of those two ancient traditions, i leave you with this from our rabbi, a page from the prayers of passover, as we mark the exodus — safe passage — from egypt, in search and hope and belief in the promised land. it’s a theme with particular resonance this year….

In our prayer book,Mishkan T’filah, we read about the crossing of the Red Sea:

Standing on the parted shores of history

we still believe what we were taught

before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot;

that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt

that there is a better place, a promised land;

that the winding way to that promise

passes through the wilderness.

That there is no way to get from here to there

except by joining hands, marching

together.

join hands, march together; believe in the promised land….

have you stumbled into epiphanies? found yourself a lifeline? what are the saving graces in your days?

10 Comments

March 29, 2019

rufus sings a morning song

my friend rufus

the plot out back, the one i pretend is my so-called “acreage,” is, at this moment in its history, nothing more than a pastiche of variegated browns, in shades of drab and drabber. (and that would be the politest way to put it.) it’s stick upon stick, dry grasses tumbling in the wind, detritus from the alley scattered hither and yon. as far as gardens go, it’s something of a shipwreck, desiccated timbers strewn upon a sandy cove. it’s faded, tousled, worn from winter’s torment.

in a word or two (or four), it’s the farthest thing from hopeful. at least by botanical standards.

when it comes to animation, however, my sorry plot is awash, aswirl, alive. it seems rivers of airborne currents have carried north a whole new flock of feathered passersby. if you close your eyes and ignore the goosebumps on your arms, you might pretend you’ve landed in a lush big-leafed aviary, a bath of birdsong launching each new day.

here’s the soundtrack of this morning:

among the curiouser and most ear-catching of my vernal crew was one whose high-pitched trill broke through the chatter. i couldn’t help but leap from my typing post to press my ear against the glass. its call was certain and insistent. and it came again and again and again. but i could not, for the life of me, find the megaphone from which it poured. ah, but then it got thirsty — all that warbling dries a fellow’s throat — and it hopped right before my eyes. i’d never seen anything like it. even for an unschooled bird girl like me, the sight of someone altogether new to the neighborhood makes for quite a morning’s thrill.

i did the only thing i know to do when bird spotting is the challenge. i called my Original Mother Nature, aka the one who birthed me, and who at 88 is a master of her bird identification tomes. i put in my description: long tail, white belly, looks like a rose-breasted grosbeak only it’s got robin-redbreast pumpkin-colored patches on its flanks, where the grosbeak sports a splotch of rosy raspberry.

i held the phone up to the wind, so my mama could catch a swatch of this fellow’s mellifluous song. and, presto, not an hour later, my mama was back on the line with full ID: this warbly bird was Rufus, aka rufous-sided towhee. rufous, i’ve since found out, comes from the latin, rufus, for red. it’s the color of a rusty nail, an oxidized-iron sort of orange. but then, in an ornithological twist, just as i was poking under branches scrounging around for so-called Rufus, i found out that while it’s true he remains a rusty-spotted species, the ornithologists have gone and ditched that part of his name. nowadays, all the Rufi in the eastern half of the u.s. landmass are named, simply, “eastern towhees.” in some parts of the country, they’re called “chewinks” because that’s what it sounds like they’re singing. others insist they’re singing, “make your tea.” (i heard no such thing, but i am listening now, i tell you…)

have a listen for yourself.

i find this rush of flight and feather invigorating as all get out. there are loop-de-loops, and swoops galore out there. games of catch-me-if-you-can. doh-si-dohs and pas de deux, of the birdly variety. even my housemates, home for spring break, have taken to pressing noses to windowpanes.

the reinvigorations of the spring come in waves. it’s all as if to say, hold on to hope, the cavalry is coming. what was dormant, sound asleep, is rousing. the birds, keen to shift in sunlight, keen to earthly repositioning, they know what we’ve yet to comprehend: the promise of the spring is in the works. the world will pulse with beauties soon enough. our hearts and souls will soon be dizzied, up-swooped by the glories of the world reawakening.

rufus says so.

a poem for today, blessed reminder that even the most ordinary acts of each and every day are ripe with sacramental possibility, and ours to anoint with our simple attention:

Daily

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(The Words Under the Words)

what sacramental blessings define the contours of your day? and what’s stirred your vernal soul this week?

fun factoid from the ornithological nomenclature department, especially if you like your birds to have a foreign flair: in french the little fellow is known as “Tohi à flancs roux,” towhee with red flanks. i still like Rufus best,

12 Comments

May 4, 2018

perceptible growth

i must be one of those people who needs things klonked over my head. and thus, the simple act of walking past my kitchen window yesterday took my breath away. a quick glance out the window set my eyeballs in direct gaze of what had been the straggly, misbehaving leathery-brown vines that snake along my garden fence.

only, the thing was, yesterday — just a day after the day before when i swear the straggles were mostly stripped naked, without more than a paint drop of green anywhere in sight — they had decided to erupt in a tapestry of sawtooth-edged leaves and cauliflower buds that come july or august will unfold into nodding white hydrangea heads.

that’s the thing about spring: it catches you unawares. it all but grabs you by the cheekbones, holds you in its clutches, and bellows in your face: “there is growth by the hour here, something beautiful is unfolding.”

and then the one-two punch: “pay attention. it could happen to you.”

yes, my wise old professor of a vine seemed to be telling me, even you. even after all these weeks and months of feeling about as fruitful as a stripped naked, leathery-skinned vine, even you might be growing just beneath the surface. perhaps not yet erupting into cauliflower-budded bloom, but keep the faith; there is rumbling, stretching, reaching for the depths and heights. even you, little pewter-haired flower, even you just might be unfolding by the month — if not the week or day (let us not set our growth expectations too high here…).

it’s why spring makes me dizzy.

it’s why, i think, God invented the season of promiscuous advancement and rambunctious take-your-breath-away-ness. because it comes after the long season of stillness, of winter’s deep-down stirrings, the ones that can’t be seen. and then, the very instant we’re at the end of our hope rope, the days when we’re sagging like nobody’s business, God decides to wallop us with undeniable, whirling-all-around magnificence.

the flocks of feathered things arrive as if a river, saturating sky and bough with their shots of color and their song. the trees practically poke us in the eye, with frilly, lacy shades of velvet green and white and caution yellow and lipstick pink, as if slathered with a paint brush. and then there’s the best-of-show for those who dare to bend their knees and crouch down low: there, just above the crust of earth, that’s where all the tenderest unfurlings are. that’s where fern literally unwinds from its tight-wad comma — or is it a question mark? it’s where the itty-bitty baby leaves first reach for sky. it’s where you might even spy a worm, drowsy from its long winter’s snooze, out and about for its first seasonal constitutional (if one can apply such a noun to a walk without legs), slithering in between the rising stems of daffodil and lily of the valley.

year after year, it happens: i fall deliriously in love with the opening-up hours and days and weeks of spring, the ones where the volume is dialed to blaring, so clogged-ear folk like me can’t help but catch the message, the one that beats a billboard along the side of the highway.

if it can happen to a bush, you might find yourself thinking, i suppose it could happen to plain old me. i suppose i too just might be unfurling in the tight spots deep within. i suppose i too could dare to believe that something bright and beautiful dwells deep down inside. and something gentle, too. and, like the magnolia or the hydrangea vine, if i dared to let it out, if i found the faith to strut my stuff, the stuff that God has tucked there for a certain purpose, maybe the world around me might glow a little bit more heaven-sent.

it’s the wisdom and the glory of the book of spring: the world bursts into beautiful all around, undeniably all around, so that we too might know that at the end of our seasons when no growing, no perceptible beauty is apparent, there is something breathtaking astir, something take-your-breath-away just beneath the surface, coming soon to bloom.

what lessons do you extract from the beauties — or the heartbreaks — of the spring?

bleeding heart dew

and one more little wisp from the pages of The Blessings of Motherprayer…..

wonder

8 Comments

March 2, 2018

necessary harbingers

harbingers (1)

it hits me mid-morning, when i notice the light streaming in the grimy windowpanes, the panes streaked from winter wear and tear, when i notice the light has shifted toward its vernal blue. there is an undertone in spring, the light all but reaches out and wraps my shivering shoulders, the light promises: “you will breathe again. you will bask one day soon.”

so too the crust of earth. it breaks open in the early morning hours, once the thaw gives way, and only in certain patches, the ones where sunlight falls undiluted. that’s where soil softens, and insistent bulge of stem nudges through. not unlike that baby’s head crowning through the birth canal, that nub of newborn green exerts invisible, unrelenting force. it wants to breathe. it strains to make it to the light.

we strain too. we strain this time of year.

and so the earth and sky join forces, the earth and sky and their inhabitants, they give all they’ve got — full moon, sunrise streaks of tourmaline and tangerine, morning song arising from the robin’s throat — they dial it up a notch, a holy notch. they must sense that we’re inching toward end-of-winter full surrender. and if not for their employ, if not for their emphatic labors we might, well, shrivel into tight-wad commas, curl up and call time out.

to catch the earth in the act, in eternal sacred act, you need to pay close attention. need to all but rub your nose along the thawing garden fringe. but when you do, when you inspect the earth’s perimeter, the rim where underworld meets all the rest, you feel your heart go pit-a-pat at every rising quarter inch. in one wee patch along my bluestone walk, a patch where sunshine lands from 10 bells till sometime after two, the little nubs have sprouted frilly collars, have unfurled lemon-yellow petals, and emerged into a borderless swath of hope. they are the necessary harbingers, the first-line rescue squad. the ones the earth sends out to meet the winter’s end, and beckon coming spring. there they lie, morning, noon and even into night: my cheery patch of promise. as if the earth is sending up a lifeline, begging us to not surrender, not throw in the trowel, hold onto hope for just a minute longer.

at about this moment in history, this sorry moment at the end of winter’s hibernation and the daily dirge of downbeat news, when all the earth seems awash in gray and drab, we human species, we need a jolt. we crave a heavenly injection, a many-colored cloak to shake us from our doldrum. and, after these millennia of shared inhabitation, the earth — in all her glory — she gives and gives what we so deeply need.

earth, so often dispatched to be the messenger from heaven. earth, without a single word, pulses with life-saving, soul-searing homily and, in time, the hallelujah.

all earth asks is that we listen, is that we open wide the pores. earth and heaven will indulge us. will bathe us in a holy light, in skies awash in pink, in flutterings of wing, and stem and bloom that will not, will not, shrink from vernal task: to whisper the coming once again of hope.

holy hallelujah.

daffydills

what signs of hope have tickled your consciousness this week?

9 Comments

April 21, 2017

“wake up!” shouts the world to its sleepy citizens

perhaps, over the long winter’s months, you dozed into somnolence. sleepy-eyed, you shuffled, as if in your scraggliest house slippers, through the days and the hours. why bow down to sniff the gnarly branches when nothing but snow — and icy cold — bumped into your nose?

ah, but then, as it’s been doing forever and ever — since the dawn of creation, as a matter of fact — the old globe turned on its axis. inch by inch. or galloping yard by galloping yard. whether we notice or not, it keeps on with its celestial work. it’s the job of the earth, for heaven’s sake, to not slow to a crawl, to not stop in its tracks. it’s the job of the earth to carry us all on its curious merry-go-round, a ride for which we don’t need a ticket, needn’t stand in a queue, waiting our turn. we’re on — strapped in or not — for the whole of the whirl.

and so, here we are, back in the part where, if we’re paying attention, we find ourselves in the minute-by-minute explosion of all that’s been quietly waiting out the winter. it’s slow seduction, this day by day, hour by hour, unfurling of all that’s within. mama earth doesn’t give away all her hallelujahs at once. she wants you back, she wants you keeping close watch on her show, so she lures you in, a slo-mo unveiling of all of her secrets.

one day you might notice a nub where the day before there was nothing but stick. and then, should you sashay back to the scene, say by mid-afternoon, you’ll see a bit more of the skin, of the bulging protrusion that is the bloom in the making.

it’s all newborn right now. the leaves, just beginning their term, as if cut from a fat bolt of velvet, pinned onto branches, by the night seamstress, the sorceress of spring, who wisps through the dark delighting our senses, making way for the morning show, when the curtain of dawn rises.

everywhere, the earth is shouting: wake up, you sleepy heads. wipe the goop from your eyes, slip on your galoshes, and come give it a gander.

and lest that all be too subtle for you, lest you miss the whisper of the garden, well, old mr. robin has a wake-up for you. and he starts his warble in the wee, wee hours. not long after three, perhaps. certainly by four. in the morning, i mean. the american robin is no dawdler, sleeping in, taking his sweet holy time. nope, he’s up well before the crack of dawn, and he’s in full throat these past coupla weeks. has he not awakened you?

here, have a listen: mr. robin singing his song.

he’s out there in the dark, poor warbler of night. good thing he’s got a fairly fine song. a clarion call of 10 consecutive notes, the ornithologists tell us. clear whistles. some folk, the ones who try to put words to the script of the birds, they say he’s calling out “cheer up, cheer up.” or “cheerily, cheerily.” i for one can’t quite make out the words, but i do hear the song, i hear it for most of the night, these past few insomniac nights.

my friend tim the birdman tells me it’s all about hormonal overdrive, of course. and the poor robin just can’t sleep when he’s got one and only one thing on his mind: he needs to procreate, plain and simple. so he’s awake at the first lumen of light. and that’s where the problem comes in, says ornithological tim. those peachy-breasted birds are suffering a modern-day plight: the extreme wattage of the world, the herds of high-intensity light poles lining our highways, the bizarre habit of planting floodlights in branches of trees, they’re all doing a number on the chorister of dawn — they’re pushing his start time closer and closer to midnight. some robins, says tim, are singing their lungs out “almost all night long.”

egad.

the over-illumination of our planet — the daylight that stretches from dawn to dawn — it’s mucking up the works in a serious way.

but, back to the lone robin who sings out my window — and likely yours too.

seems to me, he’s all part of the magnificent plot to shake us all out of our stupor, our natural-born inclination to doze at the wheel of this thing called “a life.”

there’s divine wisdom, indeed, in this once-a-year whirl through the explosion of spring. the earth is literally bursting with the beautiful. it’s beckoning, begging: crouch down, pay attention. give a sniff. plop your bum. inhale. watch me unfurl. i’ll give you a wallop, minute by minute.

in a thousand million mind-spinning ways the whole of creation is clued in to the infinite wisdom: this is your gift, it’s yours for the taking. all you need do is open your eyes, open your ears and your nose, pry open your heart — and your soul while you’re at it — and let in the holiest whisper.

it’s the wake-up call of heaven and earth.

the springs of our lifetime are numbered, they won’t last forever and ever. the beauty is now, go bury your nose in the whole of it.

and whisper a fine hallelujah.

(mr. robin might be pleased to know that you’re adding your notes to his noisy spring chorus.)

if only someone had invented a scratch-n-sniff for the whole of the springtime….

what are the ways the explosion of spring slows you to deepest attention?

9 Comments

March 13, 2015

i spy: hope

sometimes i wonder how the world knows. how it knows that we’re worn-down ragged, out of breath, slogging.

sometimes i wonder how, just at the very minute and second we need the globe to turn just enough for light to fall at just the right angle, for warmth to rise, thermal watt building on thermal watt, sometimes i wonder how deep in the earth the stirring begins, and as the baby’s head crowning at birth, the tender resilient slips of green, of spring, come nudging their way through sodden leaf and over-stayed winter?

how is this turning earth, this warming, awakening, how is it quite so intricately wired to the stirrings deep down in my heart? how, so often, does it answer the call before breath is put to the words?

ah, but here’s the rub: it comes with no more sound, no more folderol, than it takes for a leaf to ease out of the way, for the rubbing-up of shoot against snow crust, against compost in the making. the coming of spring, the turning of season, comes in barely perceptible measure.

you need to crouch down low. you need to step outside with intention, with searching. you need to scan the landscape, not from a distance, but close as your knees will bend.

sometimes, you need to pull your hand from your pocket. you need to brush away the sodden. you need to play peek-a-boo with what’s birthed. winter aconite, the nodding head of yellow, the one just above, it’s coaxed from its slumber by radiant light. light that barely perceptibly turns up the heat. shakes off winter.

and indoors, too, you begin to get restless. you scamper around tossing out dried snips of winter. you trade up for pots stuffed with bulbs, bulbs with the girth of a garlic clove, bulbs that exist for one purpose: to shoot for the sky, unfurl, offer up color and configuration that befuddles the imagination.

who thinks of these things, you wonder? who stacks bud upon bud, a pinecone-like stacking of color and softest perfume, the one that beckons the bees, brings on procreation of the pollinated kind.

and so it begins again, the circle of life. of bursting forth after months of quiet, of stillness, out in the garden. after snow tumbling upon snow. and cold so cold a two-legged someone could barely survive.

but the growing things grow. the winter does not strike them down, not most of them anyway.

the birds come back on a river of wind. warm wind.

the buds return to the branch.

our hearts give a startle. pump with a two-step again.

just when we think we’re on our last wavering gasp. spring comes. promise again.

hope for another round.

and so is written the script, the one that some of us need year after year, never quite learning its lessons fully enough, lastingly enough. we need to be knocked upside the head — knocked by the crocus and snowdrop and the quiet little aconite. professors masquerading as delicate petals.

“hold on,” they whisper, “just a few breaths longer, just a few breaths past when you think you can’t go on. the awakening will come. the birth breaking out of the bleak.”

even the sticks plonked in the vase of warm water: they’ve wriggled with life, with color, with what seemed impossible. and now blooms:

so the lesson is this: the season that comes after the long hard winter, the season that comes with the light and the slow-rising warmth, it is the moment when impossible surrenders. when we breathe in hope. fill our lungs with believing again. when all around we are stirred to remembering, rebirth will come. in one way or another, in ways expected or not. it’s our job to crouch down low. to inspect with intention. to note the stirrings, and breathe in the possible.

the promise of spring comes on quiet, rustles just barely. it demands our attention, those of us who are taught by the turning of season. soon enough it will rise to crescendo. but now, for those who listen to its opening measure, the spring is whispering the promise of delicate but most certain hope.

some fridays i can barely muster a whisper. this is one of those fridays. i’m leaning on pictures more than words to whisper the miracles unfolding all around. i need to bundle up and inhale me some springtime. we’re just on the verge, but the verge it is here. and it beckons…

have you been out inspecting for springtime’s awakening? and if so, what’s tickled your fancy?

16 Comments

Tag: springtime awakening