I promised you, summer world, that when the snow was deep and I had begun to believe that winter was eternity, I would remember you. I would remember your countless shades of green, your plush grass buzzing with bees and clover, and the smell of it. I would remember the warmth of your sun and the blessing of the breeze singing through your dancing leaves, and the sheer, inviting welcome of your being.
And now that day has come, the one where I began to believe that winter would go on forever. I confess that I didn’t choose to remember; the memory of you came to me on its own, drifting across the cold, gently emerging with a touch of kindness that I could not ignore.
And so I sit here, before my fire, waiting for the another assault from winter’s cold, and I lose myself in your rolling verdant hills until my eyes tear with gratitude for comfort of you, for remembering you are as real as the cold, and will return.
“Every now and then,” I think to myself as I stand at the edge of the pond in the clear winter air, snow sparkling on the ice, and near the pond’s center, skim ice giving way to smooth water, as I take in the pines, and the way sunlight dances with shadow through their boughs, and how the far water mirrors them, and how the silence almost makes me want to hold my breath as the thought completes: “Every now and then,” it says in hushed tones, “there’s a moment like this that makes all the rest of them worth it.”
Every year, I forget how deeply the beauty of winter trees touches me. Instead, I only remember how unpleasant I find the cold. But here I stand, in freshly fallen snow, in the midst of all these trees, bereft of their leaves now, and I’m caught in a spell of awe. I realize I don’t mind that the air is cold. And somewhere inside myself I quietly say, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
I say it to my spirit. “I’m sorry that I let what I labeled as discomfort eclipse the memory of the astonishing beauty of bare trees. And just look how the frost on this fallen leaf glistens in the morning’s pearly light!! “ Please forgive me,” I ask, “for overlooking such incredible gifts.”
Instantly, I feel a shower of bright, warm, unconditional acceptance wash around me. It tastes golden, like joy, and my face spreads in a smile. I am humbled by it, and I whisper, “Thank you; I love you.”
All this because of the forms of the trees, naked against the clouds, and the shimmer of light on this leaf. But beauty isn’t the only thing that evokes my appreciation. Sometimes encountering plain-spoken truth will do it. Sometimes it’s kindness in one of its myriad forms.
I happened to notice my copy of Letting Everything Become Your Teacher again yesterday. It’s been sitting on my coffee table for weeks, unopened. Seeing the title is often reminder enough. Everything brings the gift of fresh lessons.
For me, the lesson brought by February’s bare trees and frosted leaves is to be aware that not everything I label as unpleasant is so. In this case, I could see that cold was just a sensation. I could call it brisk or crisp as well as bitter or biting. Then, having reclassified it, I could let it go and see what else there was to see.
Remember the game I told you about where for five minutes you let yourself notice whether you‘re labeling things as either “pleasant” or “unpleasant?” (That’s all there is to it, in case you don’t recall it.) You just notice which way you’re judging things. Then you can turn the secret power-question on yourself, asking if your judgment about a particular aspect of yourself is true.
You know what you’ll find? You’ll find that it’s only a judgment, whether you currently agree with it or not. Realizing that’s the case is good because it opens you to options. It keeps you from overlooking things by slapping a judgment on them too soon. Things change. Our perception of things changes. The world truly is a kaleidoscopic place, you know. Try to see what’s in front of you with an open mind. Keep a good helping of openness handy. It will wake you up if you’ve fallen asleep. It will say “You think what?! Think again!”
You never know when what you thought was a barren February landscape was in fact a scene of stark beauty, alive and dancing. It could be. You never know.
Beyond the seen, whole worlds dance, formed and unformed, coming into being and disappearing again. Beyond these woods, butterflies, the likes of which you’ve never dreamed, flit through a rain forest’s branches. Above the clouds, jeweled birds fly across the lands and seas.
No one can count the variations that the Great Song of the Yes brings forth. It chants the sky and whispers the rainbows. It laughs out stars and breathes out life. And here, on this monochrome day, it chimes in silver snowflakes that melt on the lake like sighs as fishes waltz beneath the frozen waters. Right here, beyond the seen.
It was hardly bigger than my hand, a piece of sycamore bark on the bed of fallen pine needles, just a bit of litter strewn on the path. But it drew me to look closer and I bent down to hear its story, and there were many of them, about unexpected animals and birds the tree whose bark this was had known. All this, on a mere scrap of pastel bark waiting to be noticed, on this path in the woods.
I think of the winter woods as a gallery that features the art of its trees. On my desk an index card is inked with words, hand-printed, to remind me what to notice when I visit there: lines form textures colors rhythm patterns motion. They silently sing link a mantra as I wander through the gallery’s arched wooden halls.
Today, a mild and damp mid-February day, shrouded in mist, I felt called to visit. As I walked on the leaf-strewn ground, packed hard now by the winter, my eyes focused on the details: the fallen needles and cones strewn on an oak leaf carpet, the barks of the trees, the depth of color in the misty light, the images that the curves evoked. I was quite intent on these, yet fully aware of the thickness of the air and the way it seemed to wrap everything, including me, in dream-like mystery.
I drifted along in this mesmerized state for some time before I turned toward home. And that’s when I saw the shaggy horned creature emerging from the mist, a giant of a beast. We stared at each other, assessing the situation. Then I bowed in acknowledgment of it and greeting, and the air between us grew clear and we became for each other an old woman, hiking with a camera, and the muddied roots of an old, fallen tree.
Here’s to all the lovers, who count not the flaws, but see to the depths of the heart of the beloved, who treasure a glance, a wink, a smile as the key to life’s meaning, who give to the beloved as easily as they breathe, who feel in each touch of the lover’s hand a new sunrise, who weather the days when love’s light wanes, believing in its inevitable return.
Here’s to those who find love on the street, in the face of a child, in the kindness of a stranger, who see love in the eyes of the aged and dying, who behold its light in neighbors, in pets, in flowers and trees, in roaring oceans and starry skies, who celebrate how it’s love that holds the world together.
Here’s to those wrapped in the illusion of loneliness, who believe they have missed love’s smile, to those whose pain or fear hides love’s presence, whose wounded hearts wait for love’s kiss. It will come, dear ones; it will come. It envelopes and upholds you now.
Here’s to the song of the universe, that rises from Love’s heart, that carries its tender strength to each particle of being, to every star, to every world, endlessly and forever singing Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yesterday I saw geese in the sky, great V’s of them heading north, mighty wings pushing their thick bodies through the air, their boisterous honking calling me to note their flight. Today I found them skating on skim ice at the pond, silent, but playful, still moving as if they were cells of a single body, turning together, heading in a common direction, connected by some innate sense of relatedness, understanding harmony down to their bones.
As much as I admire the kind of curiosity that wonders why the skin of the pine differs so from that of the birch, and what it can tell us about its history and evolution, and those minds, too, that want to know what names have been given to each species and to the kingdoms to which each belongs, it is my lot, it seems, simply to see the way, say, tiny seeds nestle here, just so, amidst these wondrous slabs of clay-red bark.
