Open your bold simplicity, and let your song be clear and strong. This is the moment for which you were born, the now in which you unfold your grace and make your mark on the eternity of our hearts, so that we may sing the Yes with you until the last star disappears from the deep and infinite sky.
While I was doing some research this week, I happened on a website dedicated to providing guidance to Native American youth facing various social issues within their Tribes. I found it interesting that their site had a page addressing the joint Tribes’ view of Elders. Depending on the particular Tribe, an Elder is someone over 60-65 years of age. The page emphasized the respect the Tribes give their seniors. For instance, here’s what they say on their page:
“When an Elder speaks, an informed individual knows to listen. An Elder’s wisdom is invaluable to a tribe’s prosperity and well-being. Elders are sacred bearers of golden truths and know many valuable stories about the Old Ways. God often speaks through Elders.”
Later on, I happened on a collection of responses from seniors when asked what life lesson they would like to pass on. I had time to go through the list slowly, to let each thought sink in. That’s the only good way to read quotations, I’ve found. It lets you extract the juice from them.
Try it as I share with you a few of the seniors’ offerings. Read them one at a time, pausing after each one long enough to let it settle in. Maybe consider, as you read, which ones apply most for you right now.
Here‘s a dozen that I thought were worth tucking in our pockets . . .
Guard well your thoughts when alone and your words when accompanied.
The fact that you aren’t where you want to be should be enough motivation.
Done is better than perfect.
Don’t let anyone ever make you feel like you don’t deserve what you want.
Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.
Your future needs you; your past doesn’t.
Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
If someone tells you that you can’t, they’re showing you their limits, not yours.
Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.
Your strongest asset and worst enemy is your mind; train it well.
Sometimes being alone is the best medicine for your soul. And finally . . .
Remember, some of the best times of your life haven’t even happened yet.
Yes, especially that last one.
Wishing you a week of fine accomplishments and ease.
It’s not that nature’s beauty consumes me. It’s the refuge it provides from the rest of it – from the conflicts and disasters large and small that cover the globe; from the endless prattle of the lonely because talking is the only way they know to mark the world with their presence, to connect, to find meaning; from the struggles for survival, for status, for power, for control, and for all the touted doodads that promise to convey them or to provide relief from the fight.
Walk in the woods. Listen to the trees. Observe the details in the smallest flower. See the seasons unfold. Watch the clouds and stars float above you. Take solace in an order beyond our knowing, a power and intelligence we cannot comprehend. Feel how you are a child of it, how you move within its omnipresent embrace, loved even when you are asleep in it, unconscious of its plan and grace and mercy. Wonder at its intricacy, its obedience to inviolable laws. Think how this is but the skin that the Yes wears, this mysterious, ever-dancing curtain of matter. Think how majestic is that which brought it into being and bestowed on us our capacities to see, to taste, to move and desire, to seek, to find, to love, and, finally, to know.
Mimicking nothing, following nothing but its own inner song, trusting that being is its own reward, reaching only toward fulfillment of this moment’s highest possibility, it unfolds its exquisite perfection.
Except that the Yes is the source of joy, spring needn’t have come with such beauty. A limited pallet might have served as well, a handful of standardized designs. We could have as easily performed our daily tasks without being caught in spring’s web of wonder, without being stopped in our tracks to gaze and smile at wee pink flowers whose centers burst with polka dot stars. But the Yes, which is made of love, cannot help but leave its beauty everywhere, just in case your heart might need to hear its song.
It’s odd, the memories that a sight can trigger. When I saw the newly opened tulip In my garden, for instance, glowing orange and magenta and pink and gold, at first I just stopped, and held my breath and stared, mesmerized by its hues. Then it came, the memory of the teacher on the first day of art class telling us that some things are beautiful, some not. As an example of the latter, she said a mix of pink and orange could never be considered beautiful. I dropped the class. Had she never seen a sunrise? Or the petals of a tulip?
It’s not the circumstances that matter. So what if, at any moment, the world may explode? It has nothing to do with me, with now. The trees are dancing in green hurrahs and the earth is covered in flowers. The mammoths, they say, died eating daisies. If the world ends in ten minutes, I shall leave it dancing with joy.
Frost warnings went out last night. Again, tonight, it’s a possibility. As I walked across the lawn, I thought it felt more like March than April. Wait. What was that? A black netting hanging from the jonquil. I walked to the front of the garden, then stopped, unbelieving. A swallowtail! So soon! And in this cold! Oh, Springtime, every single one of your gifts comes as such a delightful surprise.
Because they could taste spring’s mild air even when the world was frozen, their sap rose.
Because they spent the long winter dreaming that robins built nests in their limbs, dreaming that the world was green and that sunlight danced warm and golden all around them, buds formed at the tips of their branches.
Because their dreams were so vivid that they heard the songs of summer winds even as the snow piled around them, their roots grew deeper, their trunks added rings.
Because they believed in springtime, their leaves sprang forth.
I woke just before dawn yesterday morning. The birds hadn’t even begun to sing. I’m not an early riser. Yet here I was, wide awake. I made a cup of coffee and took it out to my front porch to experience the beginning of the day. As I took my first sip, I noticed a faint ribbon of pink just above the eastern hills, gradually growing brighter. Looking directly overhead, I saw that the sky had gone from dusky gray to a light blue graced by soft clouds. When I looked down again, a whole panoply of color was lighting the sky—pale gold, coral, robin’s egg blue, soft lavender. And as if to acknowledge the coming of another day, the birds woke and began their morning chorus.
I let myself drink in the peace of it. The world has been such a brutal place these last few weeks, its violence and mayhem loud and sickening. Yet here I was, enveloped in birdsong and sunrise, sipping freshly brewed coffee. I felt lucky, and grateful, and kind of humbled to be so blessed. But I wasn’t alone in that. More of us live unscathed by mayhem than are directly touched by it.
Most of us live our ordinary lives, attending to our daily routines and chores, relating in our usual ways with family and coworkers and friends. We share our smiles, and sometimes our tears. We share our rituals, our news, our opinions, our gossip. We play together. We squabble. We make up. All of us. All over the world. And isn’t that beautiful!
That we can go on, determined to live ordinary lives in the face of extraordinary times, is remarkable.
I read a couple paragraphs by American historian and professor Howard Zinn this week. He said:
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”
I get the impression that Zinn is thinking of acts of high bravery and daring when he talks about how magnificently we can behave when tested. And indeed we can. But I think courage is more than the extraordinary act performed at great risk. I think it’s also the determination to go on living ordinary lives as well as we can even when the world seems upside-down. Our small acts of everyday generosity and compassion, consistently performed despite it all, are testimony to our courage.
Mark Twain had this to say about courage: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.“
When we live our ordinary lives in the face of what seems almost omnipresent threats, we are being brave. By refusing to surrender to fear – however loudly and persistently the media screams about the world’s evils – we tell the world that it cannot take the best of us. We will behave magnificently, holding to the dignity of our ordinary lives. And sometimes we will pause to recognize that despite it all, we are surrounded by extraordinary goodness and beauty, and, sometimes, when we are bathed in sunrise and birdsong, we will savor long moments of transcendent peace.
Wishing you a week of courageous, ordinary, everyday life.