July comes in, barefoot and sleeveless, ready to pour it on. She opens some paper-thin orchid-hued petals and smiles at the sweetness of their hue. She has a thousand more blossoms in her bag. She’s fond of high color, after all.
But mostly she’s interested in pushing out the veggies and the fruit, in driving the nuts and seeds toward ripeness. She’s all about widening the leaves, deepening the green, making edibles from light and air.
She has countless mouths to feed and she intends to satisfy them all.
“Ripen!” she trumpets as she glides on the sunbeams. “Grow! Become what you were born to be!”
Patiently the lily waited, soaking in the light, storing it in her liquid cells. Hers, she had been told, would be the honor of acting as June’s parting gift. She held her petals in place even as her swelling bud pressed toward the day.
Finally, as the sun rose through a luscious pink and lavender sky, June came to her and whispered, “Now, child. This is the day.” And with utmost grace the lily opened and began her ballet, dancing as the music of morning sang June’s Anthem of Farewell.
“May all your days be golden. May your hours be kissed with joy. And although there be storms and darkness, may your heart forever glow with the love of the shining endless sun.”
“And so may it be,” sang the lily. “So may it be, and Amen.”
Sometimes when I hear a thought or phrase that I like, I jot it down on a scrap of paper. One day I made a collage with some of the scraps, pasting them onto a finger-painted background. Usually I walk past it without glancing at it; it’s been on my office wall for a fairly long while. But one day I heard a poll that stunned me and called one of the thoughts to mind.
The poll asked Americans how often they felt afraid. To my astonishment, a little over 50% of the respondents said they felt afraid at least once a day—even when they were in their own homes.
It wasn’t so much that people were feeling anxious that surprised me. We are, it seems, being pummeled by threatening events, both natural and man-made, these days. Every day it’s something new and dire—floods, fires, erupting volcanoes, rampant inflation, violent crime, looming diseases, domestic contention, international unrest. If you pay attention at all, feeling some level of uneasiness is a given, however slight it might be.
What surprised me about the survey was how many of us said they felt outright fear at least once a day, and that they felt it even when they were secure in their own homes. Frankly, that alarmed me. The “fear porn” craze that’s beaming at us from every form of media is having a greater impact than I imagined.
“News,” of course, from whatever source, has always featured the most alarming or tragic events. It’s drama that sells. But these days the news seems darker than ever, as if some thick, ominous cloud was enveloping the world. A lot of us feel a kind of tension in the air, as if a dangerous storm is looming. And maybe it is. Life on this planet comes with storms.
We’re also living in a time of rapidly accelerating change. We hardly have time to learn how to operate our daily systems and tools before they need an upgrade. We’re constantly adjusting to something different, and that can be nerve-wracking in itself.
But you know what? Even if this stretch of the road is a mess and we seem to be going too fast, we’re alive. We’re alive, and we’re human beings. And that’s a lot. Humans are remarkable beings, after all, capable of amazing feats. We’re resilient and creative. We’re prone to kindness and hope. We’re inventive and resourceful. We persevere and endure. We have spirit and reason and beating hearts and pumping lungs and voices. And more than that, down deep, we love each other.
When the world’s moving too fast, slow down. Take in your surroundings. Chances are the things around you are pretty much the same as the last time you noticed them. Same scene, same people, same sky. And here you are, alive and breathing in the midst of it, right this very minute. Let yourself notice that. Think about all that had to have happened, exactly as they did, for you to be here at all, experiencing being human in a complex, ever-changing world. Then decide to make the best of it—no matter how paltry your best, from time to time, might seem. You matter, you know.
Oh, and that quote on my bulletin board? It says, “Alertness and paranoia are not the same thing. Be aware and at peace.” Personally, I think that’s good counsel.
Listen, it’s all a gift. No matter how it feels. This moment is larger than we imagine and could not exist as it is but for our part in it. Our seeing stitches it together. Our words are notes in its song. When we move, we move the whole atmosphere. We breathe air and drink water that has circulated through countless other bodies before ours. Our thoughts shape the future and color its days. We give time its meaning and rhyme. And it all shines back at us, a perfect reflection in the grand cosmic mirror, of who we are, each of us, and all of us together.
What if we who are here now will be the last ones to walk among the trees. Ever. To walk anywhere, for that matter. The push of the final button in a world that has gone insane seems well within the range of possibilities after all. Any day now, everything could be gone. All of it. But today I walk in the woods on a perfect summer day, breathing in the smell of it as if this were the first time I ever experienced its perfume. I give thanks for the vibrant green life of it, for the packed dirt path beneath my feet, for knowing that I, too, am alive, right here, right now, remembering words from an unknown poet: My cathedral has no walls. Amen.
Then, when you least expect it, a glint of garnet red so radiant that you can only gape and stare pulls you into its depths, all the lush green that flooded your mind a minute ago, utterly gone, leaving in its place a crown of golden flowers rising from vermilion petals, their only mission to sing to your eyes in joy.
This is my world now, this dance of green, with all its stories and lessons, its healing, its comfort, its flow, its movement, its peace. I stare at the trees, as astonished as always to realize anew that they are living beings, fellows on the journey through this particular moment and place, astonished, too, that such beings could be, and me, with eyes to see them and a heart that hears their songs.
Great choruses of orange day lilies line the roads now. They arrive in troops, singing from their golden throats, their petals opening into fat, happy stars. I drive past them smiling, Somewhere in a corner of my mind, I hear ice cream truck music and my mouth is remembering the textures and tastes and cold of an orange creamsicle on a hot summer day when I rode my bike down the sandy road, dime in my pocket, to buy one. It’s the memories these wild lilies evoke that make us smile inside at the sight of them. We think that we take them for granted. But they bring memories to all our hearts of summer days like this one. That’s their gift.
Oh Yes! This is it! This is what we wanted, what we longed for the whole winter long, this summer day with a breeze pushing the tall grass and giant clouds transporting us back to our childhoods when we stretched out on the green fragrance and found circuses sailing overhead, when even the ants were a matter of utter fascination. Yes! This is it exactly. The perfect summer day. Oh, at last! Oh Yes. Oh Yes. Oh Yes.
I’m pouring my morning coffee when a motion catches my eye. Two fawns scamper from the woods to stand in the clearing at its edge. They graze on the grass and nibble leaves, pausing, heads raised, to survey the surrounding sights and sounds. Awareness is their only protection. That, and their speed. They can vanish in an instant. But they stay for maybe three minutes. Then they are gone, leaving me to think how lucky I am to live in a time and place where young deer can appear mere yards away. Like them, such a time can vanish in an instant. That’s the plan, you know. I sip my coffee and give thanks for this now, my mind still awed by the privilege of seeing baby deer.
