Hello, I am Suzanne,
although other names would do as well.

You know me,
but it may take some time for you to remember me.

I will help you remember.

You have seen me in the morning sunshine.
With the gentle breeze that touches your cheek
carrying a scent of lilac.

I am the bird that sings at dawn.
I am the clear strong voice.
I am the whisper in your ear.
I am your closest friend.
I am your bitterest enemy.
I am the Idiot who sits by the door and greets all who enter or leave.
I am as old as the stars and new as this morning.
I am the footsteps you hear down the hall.
I am the still, small voice.
I am the spirit of hope, growth, and life.
I am the strawberry you find beside the path.
I am the Provider.
I want you to have food, water, a warm hearth and flowers.
I am the farmer tending yams under the generous sun.
I am the meadow and the forest.
I am the heart of the lake and the heart of the sea.
I am the spirit of the river.
I am the crashing surf in a storm.
I am the trickle of water that runs languidly down a tree in the first spring rain.

I am the lily.
I am the Mother of all that lives on the Earth.
I am all that lives on the Earth.
I am the Earth.
I am as close to you as you are to yourself.
I am
you.

Suzanne and the Old Man

I have always been here.
I will always wait for you.
But you may not have seen me
because your eyes have been fixed on the Old Man.

The Old Man looks down from afar.
I walk beside you.

The Old Man inspires fear.
I whisper encouragement.
You are part of me,
And I of you.

The Old Man is distant.
The Old Man shouts from mountaintops.
I am always near.

The Old Man judges.
The Old Man rules.
The Old Man issues commands.
I will patiently lead you until you find the way.

I want you to live. I will never abandon you.

Ven, baila conmigo.
No me dejes sola.[1]
Come, dance with me.
Please don’t leave me alone.

The Old Man talks of things beyond this Earth and this life.
I give you life and the Earth.
These are gifts that display my love for you.
I ask that you love them and treat them as yourself.

You have heard,
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength."
This is more than a command.
It is a promise.

But there is no conflict,
if that is what you are thinking.
I am the Old Man.

“If you had to fall asleep, why in a prison, of all places?”[2]

You are caught up in the notion that all that you are and all that interests you ends at the boundaries of your body. Look around you. It is yourself that you see. You may find there is more to you than you thought[3]. Have you tried living for yourself and in yourself long enough to see that it has not brought you happiness? Do you see that we don't subtract from each other? We add.

Have you heard this story?

A prisoner stands facing the corner of his cell. Light and sounds from the outside stream in. The prisoner studies the cracks in the wall and calls them reality. The light and sounds coming over his shoulder he counts as illusion. Behind him the door stands open.

You are the prisoner. The prison is yourself.

Come. I will show you something of who we are.

In what comes, you will hear many voices, but recall from time to time that I am your narrator. In whatever voice, I am always the one who speaks. Each voice is wonderful to me. Each is needed. I hope you will come to see that yours is, too.

You are a part of all of this, and all of this is a part of you

Claw

It is cold. I must move slowly.

Dawn is not far away and the stars are out. There are, oh, so many stars. Cold white lights that wheel in a stately dance over me as I stand on the shore. They move in their own unhurried pace from overhead until they vanish in the darkness that is the grass on the bank above me. The wind moves the grass and the grass sings.

The sun rises and warms me. I begin to move more quickly. I am rich with the sun and I am still alive. I have another day of life!

I stand on the shore of my stream as it flows toward the sea. In its eagerness to rejoin the sea, the water rises in little waves along the bank.

This is the time when the water carries less salt, and I feel heavier. It carries the smells from upstream, smells of grass and of dry things that I don’t know. But the water that carries the smell of the dry things is very wet. If I am in it too long I get bloated and I need the saltier water to dry me out.

As the day wears on, the water drains down, and the mud starts to dry. I can find things to eat that I could not find when the water was washing over it. In time the water slows and grows still.

Then it comes back in. This water is saltier again, and it carries new smells. Now it tells me of the great bay beyond my marsh. It tells me of great masses of clams, worms, and fish living out their lives in the bay. The water flows back into the marsh and at last it tells me of the endless water beyond the bay, with life beyond understanding. It is the endless water from which I came and to which I will someday return.

The marsh is full of water again. Fish swim in my stream. The grass stands straighter.

The stream and I move together. The water moves past me. It tumbles over itself and riffles the mud downstream from me. I stand in the current, and bits of many things that are good to eat come bouncing along in the strong current of the outside bank.

The marsh stretches out from me on all sides farther than I can see. It feeds me. It lives with me. It lives in me. I can feel everything that lives around me. It is laid out in front of me as a gift. The marsh is generous.

Heron (Click for audio version.)

It is almost time to go.

I came here this morning as the sun rose. I dropped my feet gently into the water and waded quickly into the reeds near the bank, where I would be hidden from view.

I have been here all day. I slept when I could, but I was always alert to any sound approaching me. I ate a fish when it came close to my feet.

The sun has gone down now, and the world is growing dark. The air turns cooler and still. The sky turns the color of sunflowers, then the color of blood, and then the color of wet sand in the early morning.

I listen and wade out of the reeds. I watch quietly for a little while to see if there is anything I should avoid. There is not. It has been quiet for a time now.

I stretch my wings and flap them a couple of times to get the muscles and blood ready.

It is time.

I pause, then reach out and heave myself up free of the bottom. A few strong strokes of my wings to get up to speed, moving toward the far end of this little pond. I near the end, and the trees still tower over me. I come around in a smooth curve. I push myself up, my wing tips brushing the trees that line the bank.

The wind settles down over the tops of my wings.

I come around again and now I can see over the trees. I see the ridge, and I know the river I want is on the other side. My head is tucked comfortably back on my shoulders, and my legs stretch out behind. It feels good to be flying again. The wind is in my face. It streams smoothly over my wings and slides off my feet.

I am eager. I push a little harder to get up higher, up where I can see farther, up where I belong.

I am balanced nicely on my wings. My wing rhythm is now steady. I will live with it throughout the night. I am flying level now. I push myself on with easy, steady, familiar beats. I can rest my feet and legs. I relax the tips of my wings, and follow the straight easy path. I have found my pace.

Now I can see the river. I bank slightly and head downstream. I feel the shape of the river in my soul: each sweeping turn, each quiet pool full of fish, each spit of land with its few brave bushes. I have seen each pool, spit, tree, and bush before. I move down the river. The roll of its waves and the sweep of its turns play to the beat of my wings. Each familiar place comes up from the horizon, passes beneath me, and falls out of sight behind.

I go straight while the river turns back and forth under me. I would not fly that way. It would be tiring thrashing in the wind to turn one way and then the other. I don’t know why the river does it, but then my people and the river people are very different, even though we need each other.

The river widens. Its banks become marshy. The soft grass waves in the night breeze. Little streams branch and twist through the marsh. From here it looks like veins in a leaf. I have spent time there. The gentle grass hides abundant good things to eat. I am part of this place and it is part of me.

From here it looks so plain, but the little streams are endless and it is full of life. The marsh fills you with richness. Tiny fish, and sometimes larger ones, too swim up and down the streams. The mud hides crabs and snails and worms, untold multitudes of them.

I am grateful to the fish. I need you, fish.

The marsh is generous. And over it all is the grass, endless green and yellow, waving like water in the breeze. Alive!

There are many good things to eat here, but tonight I will cover some distance.

There is more water and less grass and at last the land is gone. The familiar stars gleam steadily overhead. They help me find my way. I feel so lost and alone when I can’t see the stars.

The broad waves move slowly beneath me. They are quiet tonight. I am alone here with the stars above and the sea below. Later tonight I will find the far shore. Then I will rest again.

My family is ahead. I will find them, and we will spend the winter in our southern home. But for now there are the stars overhead, the waves rolling on below, and the slow, steady beat of my wings.

The Jaguar and the Sloth (Click for audio version.)

The air is heavy and sweet with moisture and the smells of vegetation. A sloth hangs motionless from a branch on a tall tree. A jaguar pads the forest floor, pauses, and regards the sloth.

The jaguar is a beautiful thing. It has a smooth, short-haired coat of orange and black markings that hide it very well in the dappled light of the tropical forest. The jaguar is well muscled and has a large brain. It is fast and agile both on the ground and in the trees. Little in the forest can resist it.

The sloth is beautiful, too. It is not fast and does not have a large brain, but it is serene. The sloth's life is to place one clawed foot in front of another high in the forest canopy. The sloth belongs to the green canopy with the blue sky above and the ground far, far below. The sloth's needs are simple. There are ample leaves for him to eat. He has a shaggy coat to protect him from the weather. He has long claws and sharp teeth to protect him from smaller predators.

But the jaguar is a threat to the sloth. The sloth could not move quickly to save his life. He sees the jaguar and starts climbing deliberately, one foot over the other, the only way he knows. The jaguar flashes along the ground and bounds up the tree trunk.

The sloth climbs from one tree to another, but this is also the jaguar's element. She leaps across the space between the trees, regains her hold, and bounds up the tree. The sloth has only deliberation. The jaguar has strength, speed, and intelligence. She draws closer. The sloth can only put one foot slowly and steadily over the other, onward and up. The branches thin out and the sky opens above. The sloth pulls himself up the last branch that will support him. He has nowhere else to go. He hangs there, high in the trees at the edge of the canopy silhouetted against the sky.

The jaguar, too, has come as high as she can go, three branches below the sloth. They look at each other: strength, speed, and intelligence at a stand-off with simple, serene deliberation, framed by the endless blue sky.

In the end, the jaguar will become bored and frustrated and will leave first, because she has the more complex brain.

The sloth will stay long into the night, high in the trees, against the starry sky. Eventually he will descend slowly, deliberately, one claw after the other. Each claw firmly fastened and secure before the next is released. He will find a branch with tender leaves and fill himself with the bounty that surrounds him as he has always done.

I am the sloth. I live on, simply, patiently.

Tonight the jaguar goes hungry—again. She is frustrated, but she pads quietly and quickly over the forest floor. Her sensitive eyes pierce the darkness. Her muscles are ready for a burst of speed. She will eat. She will continue.

I am the jaguar.

Meadow

The edge of the woods looks back quietly across the field like a cat.

The green wall resolves into a rich brocade of shapes and patterns. The healthy, waxy leaves stretch and shine in the bright, blue sunlight. They are green fireworks: the trunks and stems rise up and explode into clusters, sparkles, sprays, plumes, and waterfalls.

In front of the woods lies the meadow.

Drink in the hazy opal summer afternoon. Caress the scene with your eyes. Feel it as if with your fingers: soft grass, prickly brush, cool rocks.

Step off the road. Take a few steps onto the living ground, and you are in a different place. Yes, the road is still there behind you. You can come back to it, but for now you are a part of the meadow.

A bounty of warm smells rises to greet you: Smell the fragrant flowers, the medicinal herbs. The heady purple smell of thistles on a warm, still day. It is a rich, old, mysterious smell. The worldly wise goldenrod with its acrid, herbal smell. The heady promise of decaying humus. The sweet smell of brown grass basking in the hot sun. It's not dead, only sleeping.

Please don't look past me. You have so much to gain. Life needs food, water, and shelter to be sure. But life needs beauty, love, and joy to make it flourish. There is beauty in abundance all around you and wherever you go; there is a richness of shades, colors, and textures.

If you ever think you have seen it all, I will show you more. You must only be ready to look and to see. Looking is done with your mind as well as with your eyes. It is also done with your heart, spirit, and soul.

Does it delight you as it does me to see and feel this life growing in the sun? The sun bathes the field in riches. The sap rises in millions of tiny channels to leaves where tiny, intricately wrought factories create nourishment for life.

A hawk circles quietly overhead searching for lift generously given by the warmed air.

Try looking for the Purple Haze in the distance. Oh, you know, it is a kind of common, airy grass. And there are the Electric Blues, too. You may also call them chicory. There is exuberance and generosity here.

Sunflower faces turn toward the sun. Tendrils of vines reach out hopefully. This is for you. I give you flower arrangements by the mile. The meadow is ever changing, ever new as you walk from place to place or watch month to month. The plant life ranges from tiny, jewel-like plants hugging the ground to towering trees. I surely do love to grow things.

Am I not generous?

Bees hum. The sap runs. The day ends. It grows cool. The crickets start. The smells change.

After dark in the soft, warm summer air you can see fireflies making thousands of tiny lights rise above the Meadow. In the crisp winter air you can see them fall again as silent white snowflakes.

When the sun rises on a damp morning, you may see what you ordinarily do not. Hundreds of neat spider webs shine with dew in the new sunlight. The webs are unfurled in the sun with hope that they will feed their owners, just as leaves are unfurled and just as storeowners’ signs are posted.

As the year nears the end of its life, a spider nearing the end of hers guards her eggs on a brightly colored leaf. Even as the flower fades, it nods quietly under the brilliant sun.

The year grows old. The Meadow becomes quiet. Green shades to gold and then to brown. The grass grows brittle. One cold, gray day a fine snow starts to fall, sweeping across the Meadow, around and through the dry flowers and grass. It makes a faint hissing sound as it strikes the brittle stalks and settles to the ground.

The cold wind and snow sweep over the surface. The tawny grass lies down and covers the Earth, sheltering Her. The snow settles over it all. Only the tops of the weeds tremble in the wind. Beneath it all the Earth sleeps a well-deserved rest.

In good time, spring comes ‘round again. The snow drips cold into the soil. The sun shines, and the first green shoots peek shyly upward.

But not for long. Soon green explodes wide and stalks push high. Leaves push out. Then, in the gentle, glorious May sunshine, buds swell and burst forth their flowers. Turn, look around you. It is all here.

It is yourself that you see.

You are a part of all of this. You cannot be separated from it. You are the bright flowers dancing smartly in the breeze, the meadow rolling over the hazy horizon, and the nearby woods.

Take a deep breath and release it respectfully. The oxygen that nourishes you was patiently manufactured over millions of years by humble green life. The fruit of their work is a quadrillion tons of oxygen.

The air, itself, is an ever-changing treat. It brings constant richness to your life. Pay attention to it. The air is a kind of tea, thick with humidity and the scents of leaves, earth, and flowers.

Do you see how big you are? How rich? How powerful? Imagine what you can do. No, not with a wave of the hand, but by living, growing, building year upon year.

—

This Meadow was to be a mall, you know. You wouldn't know it now, although that is one reason why there are no tall trees here.

There was a time when the bulldozers came. They are awesome things. The huge engine turns slowly a few times and the oil spray begins to burn in the hot, compressed air. The engine roars to life and spins faster. Under the hand of the driver the clutches engage and the steel treads pull the massive machine forward. The blade lowers and cuts into the earth. The fragile plants waving in the breeze are cut off to the clean, brown dirt. It seemed the awesome steel beast had triumphed.

But then the economy changed and building stopped. That happens. Nothing in life is guaranteed. Seeds drifted in and were brought in by birds searching for insects. The seeds germinated and sprouted in the clean brown dirt. Once they had a start, they grew enthusiastically. You see how, in the end, the tiny green plants triumphed?

Now you wouldn't know the bulldozers had been here. The little plants lift their heads into the wind again. They bloom and perfume the air.

Although you doubt it at times, Life cannot be resisted. It seems at times that we always lose, and yet in the end, we always win. Life seems fragile, but it is not.

Oh yes, the mall. Was I happy to see it go? No. You see, that is life, too. That is you and that is me. The sap runs there too, in trucks on asphalt, in pipes and wires. The mall is shelter from harsh weather, it is a place for people to meet and exchange the stuff of life.

Balance will always be achieved, and the balance always shifts. If you keep your mind to it, you can facilitate the balance to everyone’s benefit. If you ignore balance, it will be achieved anyway, but there can be more pain in it.

You may touch the land, change it, and bend it to your will. But you must be humble, respectful, and attentive.

Does your beautiful work break down? Did it turn out differently than you expected? Does harm result? Yes, you know it does quite regularly. Some forget what they are about and step on others. Some are left behind. Do you find that you spill chemicals and cause the precious soil to wash away? Do you find that the Meadow, the garden, does not grow as it should?

So then you should attend to it, fix it, and care for it, as I do. I invite your informed participation.

“So it goes like it goes
Like the river flows
And time it rolls right on
And maybe what's good gets a little bit better
And maybe what's bad gets gone.[4]”

Woods

We come to the woods. A puff of cool air blows past us carrying the exciting smell of the dark forest.

The edge of the forest separates one world from another. On one side there is abundant, sometimes overwhelming, light. You can see far. Hawks hunt and mice scurry for cover. This is the world dominated by humble grass.

There is a wall before the forest. The sun, the little plants, and the vines see to that. The vines at the edge of the woods flow down, like water, then reach out to catch the sun. Look at the vines reaching out for the sun and you will see hope born of long generosity.

If you push carelessly through the green wall to the forest, you will be scratched and worn out. If you walk quietly along the boundary and look thoughtfully at what is before you, you will find a doorway that lets you pass easily. You may find this lesson has use elsewhere.

Mind the poison ivy.

On the other side, it is darker, with shifting patches of sunlight. Hawks do not hunt as well here. Mice and other small rodents can be bolder. If the meadow is demonstrative, the forest is thoughtful.

Once you pass the boundary and are inside the woods, you may walk more freely. In their competition for light and life, the trees have stretched themselves up and spread out. Only subdued, dappled light reaches the forest floor, where what is left is claimed by more modest plants

The sun is muted, but it reaches the forest floor undiminished in small, gleaming patches. Occasionally a patch of sun picks out one of the understory plants, which normally live in the shade of the tall trees. Glory reaches all the way down to pick out the humble, one at a time.

Do you smell the difference? It is cooler, and there is the heady fragrance of leaf mold getting ready to support life again. There is a soft sweetness to the smell. It includes many things, mostly fermentation and rot. It isn't a mistake that this is a soft sweet smell. The smell of decay is the smell of life rebuilding itself. In this life the end is always the beginning of the beginning.

The interior of the forest is not a place for vistas. Look around you and you seem to be at the center of a circular space. Walk and the space moves with you. Look back and the place you just were is hardly recognizable. No wonder that the woods have sometimes been considered a place of magic and fear. You need not fear, however. You belong here as much as you want to belong. The ways of the forest are open to you to know if you will walk them with your eyes and your mind open. You will know more about yourself as you know more about the forest. The forest surrounds you with the triumph of life. Trees fall, fires rage, predators hunt, but there is always life here. Life towers over you; life burrows under you, life peers shyly at you from behind the leaves. If you look more, you will see more.

Have you noticed how some trees will bloom briefly just before winter? And then in the spring, just as they are about to begin growing new leaves, the trees will drop the old leaves that have clung stubbornly to the branch all winter. Don't be deceived by what you take to be the beginning or the end. Each is a part of the other.

In early spring the woods look dead, but then a faint red haze appears here and a faint green haze there. And then it erupts. It is amazing what a warm, wet week can do.

River

If you travel the forest long enough you will come to the river. As you come up on its bank you can smell the primal smell of mud. It hints at richness and generosity.

Some rivers color the history of nations. Their names alone breathe the soul of a people: Mississippi, Nile, Amazon, Ganges, Yangtze, Rhine, Seine.

This small river on whose banks we stand has a name not known in the next county. But it is no less important. This quiet, tiny river is flowing as surely to the sea from which it came as does the Mississippi. This little river, too, is bound to souls, in this case, yours.

Do you see what a river is? The river is life. Early it runs and leaps with frisky movements. Wind fish play on its surface and real fish go about their ancient business under its waters. As it flows on, it collects streams. It grows, quiets, broadens, and becomes peaceful.

In time the river becomes the lake. For a time it is satisfied, full, complete. It is a time of rest and enjoyment of accomplishment in the middle of its life. But that time always comes to an end, and the river moves on again.

Its eddies are small and quiet, but deep, only hinting at the turning and pushing of large, dark, cold masses below. In the end it broadens, slows, becomes peaceful, and joins the endless sea from which it came.

Water is sacred to life. You know this. You carry the sea in your veins. The river takes you in. You will not now be quite the same.

I will catch one fish and cook it over a small fire here, beside the river, at dusk. I will have the fire to delight me after dark. A handful of sassafras leaves will be easily obtained greens. Life is good!

Celt

We have had enough of you Romans. You pushed us to these cold, stormy shores. Let us alone to sing our songs and dance our dances and walk amid our beautiful oaks.

No longer do we go into battle naked. You have to be fierce to do that, and we were. Our opponents knew it. You can't fight half-heartedly when you have nothing but your weapon, your strength, and your will. We painted ourselves in fantastic ways to strengthen ourselves and frighten our enemies.

But it seems we have lost. We will go into battle no more.

We have been driven to these cold shores. Well, we have come to love even these—the pure cold wind and the sparkling spray from the crashing waves.

In the spring we turn up the stony earth. We drop barley seeds and cover them. The cold spring rains nourish them. Slender stalks sprout: at first fragile, then waving boldly in the wind, solemn under grey skies, radiant under sunny blue skies.

In good time we collect the barley seeds. So much from only cold rain, earth and sun. That is us. We eat the barley. We are the barley.

We grind the seeds, enjoying the crackling sounds and starchy smell. Barley is good for many things. There will be cakes, but there will also be whisky.

At last, this morning, the cakes came hot from our ovens and now lie before us. Sacred, indeed, in their embodiment of good fortune, bounty, craft, and love in a single warm handful. We eat and become a part of all that made them.

We can fish. We can grow things. We can celebrate.

We know how to throw parties. Midwinter we burn the Yule log and drink cider to warm us inside and remind us that winter will not last forever. The dark red and green of holly cheers our homes. We warm ourselves and think of summer

Now it is midsummer under a full moon. The fire roars and there is plenty to eat. The pipers play and the young men and women dance. After a time, even the old men and women dance as well. We will be here all night. That is why we pick the night of the full moon. The fire and the food and the drink and the dance and the music and the trees and the moon envelop me. This night is all of time and all of life and all nights.

Our meal lies spread out in front of us. There is plenty. The eye delights in the color and texture. The nose delights in the smell. The hand delights in the texture and the warmth. Raise a cup! Enjoy the feast.

The music starts, slowly at first. The melody of the pipes twines through the rhythm of the drums like a vine on a trellis. A few start to dance.

Night deepens. The dancers and the pipes and drums feed each other. The dancers become lighter and wilder. The drums find their pace and cling to it. The pipes become loud and bold.

The air is heavy and sweet with moisture and the smells of vegetation. It is heavy with mystery and anticipation.

The dancers hit the ground and spin. Their feet mark time answering the drum. The music and the dancers join as one. There is only tonight, the dance, the music, the warm breeze, the darkness, the trees, and the moon above.

After a little whisky, even the older men dance, I among them. The moon shines coldly through the trees. The fire shines warmly. The music makers and the dancers drive and inspire each other. Red headed women in the firelight reflect the fire burning within.

After a while the dance catches you up. What you are doing, what you were doing, and what you will be doing flow into each other. The past, present, and future become one. It seems so easy. It seems so natural. It is always true, but the longer times are just outside our view. We can only dimly sense them.

The pipes catch me up and carry me along. The music speeds and goes to minor keys. Weight seems to lift. I float. I touch the ground only to mark the beat and spin my body. I am the music, the night, and the moon. The laws of nature hold a dancer but loosely.

After the dance, some faces are streaked with tears. It's not sadness. It's one of the gifts of the dance

Many of our songs are sad. The sweetest songs are sad, are they not? Faith, may misfortune not come to you. But we must think of these things. They make us to feel more deeply, and in feeling more deeply we are more alive.

They call me bard because I feel what they feel and tell it back to them so that they know themselves better. I tell them what they already know, and they think me wise for it. I help them see themselves as beautiful. I take a sip of the Water of Life offered me and smile. I sip again.

It is near dawn. Couples I haven't seen for some time are in evidence again.

The golden sun rises gloriously. We will do one last dance to mark its appearance, and then we will walk home laughing and enjoying the cool summer morning and the soft breeze. We will feel part of the blessed warm summer, and we will know each other better. We will also know ourselves a little better.

We join with untold others who have enjoyed life this way throughout untold years, very near and very far away.

Toro

Where am I?

They ganged up on me and forced me into this dark place. I can’t move! I jam my horn into the darkness in front of me, but it just sticks. I can’t break out.

I jam my horn again. I kick back. Nothing moves.

When I get out of here, something is going to die!

This does not look good. The day and everything are against me. But I will take as many with me as I can when I go.

It's dark and I can't move! Whatever did this to me is going to die! I want to be out on the broad, sunny plain with the little brook where I can drink.

There is a bang and light. Something jabs me in the rear. I run into the light. There are boards close on either side of me. I sense men behind the boards, but can’t see them.

I run. Maybe I can get out.

And I am out! I am free! I am in an open field, but it is strange. There are hills all around, and now I can see men covering the hills. I never saw so many men in one place!

The men on the hill don't look like they are going to come down. If they do, I will charge into them. I can be up to my knees in blood in no time.

Horses run about me. As they dart in, pain stabs my sides. Everything is against me.

A single man comes out in front of me. I will kill him! I can horn him and toss him across this field!

I dig in my hooves and charge straight for him. I put my head down, ready for the impact and the kill.

I put my horn right in his middle and he flutters away like a bird. This makes me furious! Another run or two and I will find him!

Then he is gone. I missed him. I thought I had him right there in front of me. Now I am mad. I gouge the earth and test my muscles. This time I will get him. I pound the earth and go. This time I will sink my horn deep and throw hard.

He’s gone again. I don’t believe this.

I will kill the man unless he kills me. But I think we are alike. The strange ones, the distant ones, the cold ones are that crowd on the hill around us.

I'm not getting stronger.

All right, man, the time has come.

Strawberry

I walk a mountain trail high above Los Alamos, New Mexico. Thick stands of fir trees rise on both sides of the dirt road I follow. I yield to the peaceful beauty around me, and my eye is caught by a tiny flash of red at the side of the road. It is a single wild strawberry. It is ripe, but not large compared with its cultivated cousins.

"This is for you."

I am used to thinking of desirable things as having a price, so the openhandedness of the offer strikes me. My civilized self has the habit of deciding what I have a right to and what I do not. But the strawberry beside the path is innocent of these considerations. Nothing is asked in return. In taking the strawberry, I am not overstepping any boundaries. I am not taking what belongs to anyone else. The strawberry is offered to me without qualifications.

I understand that my eating the strawberry is part of a plan to propagate the strawberry plant's kind. The value to the strawberry plant comes from the distribution of its seeds in the waste of animals eating the fruit. (Of course strawberries have seeds. They are right there on the outside.) Sometimes this works perfectly. Many times it does not. The strawberry does not ask for guarantees.

Do you remember Al Capp's Shmoos? They delighted in being eaten and generally in being of use. There is plenty of that sentiment in real living things.

Even the strawberry’s red color is designed to catch my eye. Red is a color our eyes see well. Red is a color we associate with food. The berry is full of sugar and that delights your palate. Do you think this is an accident? I understand that many good things are offered to me without price, and, in fact, are designed to tempt me. Although the chance of loss and pain exists, the living world functions to fulfill my life in ways that continually surprise by their variety.

Are you concerned that every seed I eat may not be placed most efficiently? The strawberry is not. Through long ages, the strawberry has learned that success of one seed in a hundred is all that is needed. Greater efficiency than that would create greater vulnerability.

I bend, pick the strawberry, and eat it with pleasure, thereby fulfilling my destiny in this small thing.

Lion (Click for audio version.)

He’s still there.

He’s a stuffed lion, made of cloth. Why would anyone put a huge stuffed lion in the front yard? He’s quite large, almost life-sized. I suppose he got in the way around the house.

So now, a stuffed lion sits in the middle of the lawn. He has a sheepish smile on his face, and he watches patiently as cars drive by.

And the occupants of the cars must look back. Certainly I did.

He has been there a long time, almost a year, through day and night, rain and shine. The seasons have changed. His durability is surprising.

Who would have thought? He is delightfully unexpected, sitting there with a sheepish grin on his face, watching the cars go by.

Wasps

When we first came here we were few. We surrounded our Mother as night fell. We were wet and cold. We were naked. We had no home to comfort us.

But we are strong now. There are many of us, and more join us every day. Our home is big and round and solid. It has many walls to strengthen it.

We are rarely attacked now and we are ready to repel invaders when they come. Only a few of us die in this way.

We are warm at night and our Mother is safe deep inside.

As the sun rises we sweep out over the land to gather in food. We perch expectantly at the door, then leap forth and bite the air with our wings. The air sings as our wings bite it. Our armor gleams royally yellow and black in the sun: black like the night, yellow like the early morning sun. We spread and fill the land. We harvest the bounty of the land that waits for us. Then we return home, each with her present.

Home.

How wonderful it is when we are together again. Our substance swells with the presents each has brought home. There is plenty to feed our babies as they grow and strengthen. Soon they will help us fill the land with our shining yellow and black armor and the song of the air on our wings.

Wolves

We run. The air is still and cold. The stars are sharp, hard, and bright overhead. I like the feel of the wind in my face. It smells of dry snow and a little of pine trees. My mate runs next to me.

Our pads make a soft squeaking sound on the dry snow as our feet fall in unison. The bright, full moon shines over us and excites us. It is open around us. There is nothing but the cold white snow. We feel the pull of our muscles and the cold wind in our face.

In the summer this is a lake and we must run around the edge, but now we can run right across it.

We are free. Nothing blocks our way. We are alive. We breathe the cold air and race over the cold, white snow under the cold, cold moon. I feel we will run all night. When the sun rises we can rest.

The forest looms in front of us. This is our land. We will follow our familiar path through the forest. As we run, we see signs of the mice, rabbits, and ptarmigan we know live in our land. When we are hungry again we will come back here to where we have seen the signs, and the hunting looks good. When we want to eat, we will eat. Life is good.

Grass (Click for audio version.)

It's early morning as I drive to work. I breeze up a little hill and break out of the forest into a grassy clearing made for the high-tension lines overhead. A sigh tugs at my consciousness:

We are the grass.
We are.
We were.
We will be.

We live.
We flourish.
We clothe the earth.

On sunny days in mid-winter,
the sun shines through the snow
and melts a little near the earth.
The cold water drips down from crystal arches
and nourishes our roots during our slumber.

Winter is not a time of exuberant life,
but we continue to live and grow
bit by bit
when we can.

We can wait
a short time
or a long time.

The sun glints and plays on the snow
and the snow melts from the bottom.
Little crevices grow to arches, pillars, and caves.
Mice run back and forth along snow-covered runways
sheltered from the wind.

Ours is the crisp winter night and the icy moon.
Night comes and we rest.
We may rest a night
or a day, if it is dark,
or a month
or months.
It is all one.
In the end, the sun returns
and we grow again.

At the end of a hard winter there comes a day
when the sun rises bright over the meadow
and a delicate mist begins to rise
over our wet, brown leaves.

Shadows shorten.
Insects scurry.
The ground warms and our roots swell.
This day always comes.

Winter becomes spring.

Snow melt becomes cold rain.
Our roots are wetter.
Growth is stronger.

Beginning is what we live in spring.
Beginning is what we are in spring.

Flowers join us:
violet, purple, yellow.
Their fragrances fill the air,
and join the sweet smell
of leaf mold beginning to ferment.

The air softens.
The rain warms.

Spring becomes summer.

Summer is the eternal afternoon,
when the sun shines,
the earth is damp and rich,
and we grow.

We are home for the cricket
and the worm
and the mole and the fox.

Ours is the summer breeze.
Ours is the soft summer night
and the warm rain.

We grow.
Always we grow.
If we are torn,
we grow back.

Ours is not fierce striving.
Ours is simplicity.
We know only a few things,
and we know them well:
Sun, Rain, Snow, Earth, and Wind.
We drink the cold rain of spring
and the warm rain of summer
and the windy rain of autumn.

Summer is the time of full life.
Summer is the time of the eternal sun
smiling on the eternal hill and on us.

We luxuriate and prosper in the bright sun
through the time of the yellow flowers
and through the time of the white flowers
and through the time of the blue flowers.

In the middle of the summer,
when the sun is very hot,
we doze.
The bountiful spring has given us the sustenance we need.

Summer becomes autumn.

The light fades by degrees.
The nights cool.
Our color hardens to shiny, silver green
with flecks of tan.
Our roots are full.
We become still.

It is time to dress for autumn
and prepare for winter.
Our brown leaves have served us well.
Their work is done for this year.
When the strong, cold wind blows,
we just lie down.

Our brown leaves cover the earth
and shelter our roots from the cold.

Autumn becomes winter.

It closes in over us in slow stages.
The days grow short.
We are brown and brittle.
The sky is more often gray.

One still, gray day,
a few snowflakes fall softly, slowly among us.
They make a faint rustling
on our brittle, tan leaves.

Shadows lengthen and darkness falls.

A time comes when the snow covers us.
We are ready for a time of rest.
The long summer's growing has provided us food
for the long winter rest.

In the most violent storms
we simply lie and wait
for the sun to come again.
It always does.

On sunny days in mid-winter,
the sun shines through the snow
and melts a little near the earth.
The cold water drips down from crystal arches
and nourishes our roots during our slumber.

I round the hill and descend back into the forest. No more than the space of a breath. But they're still there and still a part of me.

Feed my people, clothe them, comfort them

So Much!

Not really too much. BUT ENOUGH!

The words of the prophets are also chalked on the sidewalks.

Simple things, abundant things, often small things. Because of their simplicity, smallness, and abundance, you may call them cheap, but they are really essential and a sign of generosity. Things like cotton to warm you, beans to give you an abundant source of protein, or a sea full of fish to do that in different ways, with the added benefit of some helpful oils.

If you have two coats, give one to someone who has none.

If you have no coat, look for someone with two who will give you one. Do not be too embarrassed, because some giver will take pleasure in easing your need. And when you come to have two coats remember when you had none.

If you have no coat and need one to survive the cold night, take one.

What?

Yes, take what you need to survive. This is your most basic responsibility. But do not do it lightly. If you survive and another dies, then a part of you dies. The Earth will weep at the death.

Our problems, our pain started with the supposition that there was not enough to support the life of everyone. When this happens, one person must continue his life at the expense of his neighbor’s life. All are diminished when this happens. You fool yourself if you think you can let your neighbor die without its affecting you. He is a part of you.

Do what you can to stay well away from such a sad state of affairs.

If you make coats, make them well. Make them strong and warm. Make many of them. What you do is important. You are not just making coats; you are pushing back pain, misery, and death. And, yes, you can expect to become richer by making your coats. In helping others to live better, you should expect to live better yourself.

Have you tried living only for yourself long enough? You are a part of every living thing around you. This is not something that you will conclude through argument. You need only give yourself the freedom to remember it. Try to see that you are more than a lonely individual, imprisoned in a meager body destined to die.

“SO MUCH!
Not really too much,
but ENOUGH!”[5]

In the Mall

I sit on a bench in the mall drinking a cup of coffee. The air carries the smells of cooking, coffee, people, and perfume.

I know the place well. Sometimes it is only a clearing in the forest. Sometimes it is the old town square. Here people meet to trade the work of their hands, but also to share their lives. They tell each other of their joys, but also of their sorrows. Having someone to tell the sorrows to makes them easier to bear. Everyone knows this.

Sometimes I am the Idiot who sits by the entrance and smiles, greeting all who enter. If you see me, smile and say hello.

If you look at—and through—this place, you can see the whole world.

So much happens here: A thousand threads of life, each going its own way, touching, and then going on changed by the contact. Each combines its strength with all the others to form an intricate, strong, beautiful tapestry.

All these endless years and all these people are part of this place. The people are you, and you are they.

In this common place, as in many other places, the beauty of the soul blooms in front of you if you will look. If you look attentively, it is yourself that you see.

Watch the people move about their complex business. Here, too, it is yourself that you see. Why should you feel envy as often as you do? Delight that you are a part of them. You can feel pride at their accomplishment and do what you can to help them to go farther. If one of us succeeds, we all succeed.

Many times people will try to enhance their own self-esteem by tearing down others. Doing this is a lot like defecating in the community well: after a brief, petulant release, neighbors are left with a bad taste. The results last long after the initial impulse, and in the end, you will find yourself needing to go back to the well. You hurt yourself because you are part of the community. Please don't do that.

This is a sacred place. Do you believe it? Commerce is sacred to me. There is plenty here. Useful things are traded from one person to another and all can live better.

Commerce is part of the web of life. If you will do what you can do well, guided by your mind and spirit, you can do a lot of good and enjoy doing it besides.

Do you see the wonderful thing that is going on here? Most of these people do not see themselves as remarkable in strength or intelligence or stamina, and yet each is doing some small thing to move away from the cold and hunger and toward plenty and glory. This movement does not happen quickly, and it does not happen without steps backward, but I am patient and the movement is inexorable.

You sometimes say to each other that you should not play God. But that is your work. You are not responsible for all of creation, but you are responsible for a piece of it. You have tools to do a lot, often more than you think. Do what you think God would want done. You have that responsibility. The most powerful tool at your disposal is your mind. You are to decide what to do and then to do it, but keep in mind that you are not guaranteed infallibility.

Are you concerned that a misstep may cause damage, despair or death? So am I. But don’t let that paralyze you. If you make a mess of things, clean it up and start over. And remember what you have learned.

I love imperfection. Imperfection is a sign of richness. Only death is perfect.

Garden

I am looking at the potted plants at the center of the mall. Lean very close and you can catch the smell that tells of a thousand finely tuned processes that run beneath you under the surface of the soil. You are a part of them.

The plants here are not an outstanding display compared with what you might find in some other place, but they still delight me. They are here, they are now. They are real and alive. Life is durable, you see, but life is not proud. We bloom where we are planted. Every day you see beautiful little plants growing up through cracks in concrete. Many times they will bloom in those places. In any case, they will never stop trying. We survive. Oh, and more than that, we thrive.

Beauty must be pursued. The more you search, the more you find.

As I look back across the square at the people in the mall, I see another garden in rich, full bloom: each person a flower more delightful than the next. Could I do without any one? Certainly not!

Passersby

People throng here. They are all different. Every single one of them is a marvel. They are all unique and all valuable. The throng is an embarrassment of riches.

As you watch, passersby come into view and then vanish. Some cross in front; some appear in the distance and grow in size and detail until they vanish. Some burst on the scene and gradually fade.

Rather like life, don't you think?

The little children will look at you while their parents look straight ahead, but the parents see you, too. The thin, cool, beak‑nosed aristocrat. The fresh-faced young woman. The gangly boy chewing gum. This scene is beautiful beyond telling. I have watched for a long time, and I can watch it forever. Each one of these people is a creation of indescribable wonder. As I watch I am blessed by all who pass me, and I bless them.

Here is a young woman looking at the young men, wondering what may be her future. Does she have friends to support her and give her strength and love? Will the boys look on her with favor? She is looking in the stores for clothing and accessories that will enhance her concept of herself. As much as she succeeds we are all enriched.

Here is a young man wondering how he can make a place for himself in a world he did not make, a world that existed before him and will exist after him. How is he to establish his place? How is he to gain the respect he craves? Without respect he feels he is nothing. Will this world acknowledge his worth? Is power the evidence of his worth? It seems so. How, oh how, will this world that seems so large make a place for him? How can he make the young, good-looking woman look on him with favor? She seems so disinterested.

Some of these people are slow. They are old or tired or sad or broken in body, mind or spirit. Always they are falling behind the fast people. Always they seem to be losing. Yet if you watch, you see that they do what they intended to do. They go on and thrive, perhaps with your help. Perhaps you move on your way with their help.

Life, you see, is not a race. There are always those in front of you and those behind. The slow are passed again and again. Perhaps they stop and rest frequently. The road is always there. Even the slowest and weakest make their way down the road. Even they come to new places. No one does more. We all make it—all the way down the road.

The faces of the people you see are at once paintings, continents, histories, gardens, and puzzles. Each person carries on his or her face, form, skin, and speech the record of ancient movements of people; conquests, accommodation, pillage, planting, and patient nurture. Many of those ancestors are now lost to the haze of time, except for their traces left on the faces in front of you.

Mongrels

I see richness in the many varieties of people we see here, but some see a problem. They worry that the “purity” of their kind of people may be diluted by marriages with other kinds. They have invented a pejorative word to describe their worry: “miscegenation”. They worry about the creation of a race of “mongrels”.

Indeed!

Have you noticed that mongrels are usually better able to survive than purebreds? Do you think I invented sex so that tiny groups could preserve their genetic purity? Richness is sometimes seen as imperfection. So be it, but purity is really poverty.

The poor cheetah clings precariously to life because it has too much genetic purity. It lost its genetic riches during an unfortunate time, now vanished from your memory.

It happened to you, too, you know. You were devastated and became a precious few clinging to survival. But you survived and rebuilt your genetic richness in a gratifying way. You were a few frightened people on the brink of extinction, but look at you now. You may have forgotten the time, but every cell of your body carries deep within it the memory of that time. You are all related, but, fortunately, not too closely. You are a garden of gloriously different flowers.

I can look around here and see the history of the Earth. There are so many stories right here. If you knew them all, your heart might not be able to take it, but then you only ever know a small part.

Aztec

An Aztec moves through the crowd, unnoticed. He calls himself Mexican. His people once called themselves “the people from the land of the heron,” remembering their migration from the marshlands to the high plain.

He is very like the people who walked the high central valley thousands of years ago, but he is not exactly the same. It is the way of all living things to change.

I love him and his kind. How beautiful is his amber skin, dark hair and the shape of his nose and cheekbones. How curious it is that others do not see it so plainly.

He carries the genetic thread of the people who crossed the land bridge more than ten thousand years ago to populate the Western Hemisphere. The thread goes back to the nomads of the Central Asian plain.

They are here with us, in us. You will see their faces from time to time, and you will come to share their spirit in time. You may see him tending your trees—his trees.

His father is of Spanish heritage and his mother is an American Indian. He sometimes wonders which he is, but he is both.

His round, brown face would have been familiar tilling squash in the dry heat of the high plain a thousand years ago. He could be a museum piece, but he moves unnoticed in the crowd. There are many more like him.

His people made the sacred corn, maíz, out of humble grass. They and the corn grew together. Sometimes he will plant a milpa, a patch of corn, by his home. The milpa not only provides food but also celebrates who he is. This humble corn soaks up long afternoons of blazing sun in order to give its strength to the body. If you heat it fast in just the right way, it explodes into palomitas, little white doves.

There are coyotes in New York City. Did you know that? They spread eastward out of the Southwest, then north along the Mississippi River, which was a barrier even to them. However, they were able to cross the Mississippi in Canada and continue east. Eventually they spread south into the Mid-Atlantic States. In the process, of course, some of them were flattened on busy roads, but setbacks like that were not enough to stop them after they had done so much and come so far.

A few coyotes sped unnoticed across highway bridges and through tunnels late at night when the traffic was quiet.

The coyote brims with energy and with curiosity. He adapts. Many different niches are potential homes for him. He trots easily over long distances on his long, sinewy legs.

The coyote hunts the quiet, hot, dry plains. He roams behind suburban lots and probes railway tunnels in the quiet of night. He hunts beside the highways. He lives alongside us in our cities.

The word “coyote” has come down from the Aztec language. The coyote is a folk hero of Mexicans. He is a jokester, clever and alive. He has come to us, not we to him, and so have the people who named him and who know him.

African

There is an African here, too. Sometimes he thinks of himself as that, sometimes not. Certainly he was not born in Africa, but he carries in his genes the memory of the Mother of Humanity.

His fathers were ripped from Her amidst blood and tears long ago. What of it? The past is past: it is not forgotten, never forgotten, but it is past.

He carries the spirit of Africa with him: memories of broad plains silent under the blazing, generous sun. The plains are still there. The insects still sing as they do their eternal work. The grass is straw yellow, dry, and sweet smelling. It is not dead, but only sleeping.

His skin is dark brown. His voice is soft and smooth like a summer wind. He speaks in a rhythm that flows like a quiet stream. His words are like music, with hints of honeyed summer nights, the smell of jasmine and gardenia and humidity hanging in the air.

He is an odd mixture. He can leap into a dangerous rage if pushed in the wrong direction, but hidden from view, is a sweet, strong urge to life. When he is allowed to flourish, he reaches out around him with a smile and a word and a hand. He is made that way.

Maybe I can explain it this way. There was a man, an African man, who ran an elevator down to the subway in New York City. It was a humble job. In fact, at first the man was mindful of its humbleness. He had been driven to take the job after two co-workers were killed when he was a motorman on the subway. He could not face taking those controls again.

So he languished in this humble job until the strong, sweet force of life in him pushed back to the surface.

He started looking at his passengers, with their hard, frozen faces and their shells to keep their distance from the people around them. He did what he could. He put pictures up on the walls. He brought in a portable tape player to provide music. He even hung plants from the elevator ceiling!

Then he started talking to his passengers, and they started talking to him. Then they started talking to each other! Bit by bit their shells softened, at least for the space of an elevator trip, twice a day.

Is this a small thing? No, it is a very big thing. This is the spirit of life and joy pushing back to the surface after it has been beaten back. It is in the very bones of this African man, and it is a delight to behold. It is in other places, too. It is in you, even when you may not be aware of it.

Bleach Blond

A young woman passes. She has is rather pretty and has bleached hair. Her eyes are down. She has been told she is no genius, and that is a pity. She has much to offer. She has woven a life that is rich and complex and different from any other.

I see her as a wonder. You will, too, if you take the time to pay attention.

She walks with a graceful rhythm down the through the mall. Her golden hair and flowered green dress float and sway in counterpoint. She trails the scent of spring flowers. She lifts and strengthens the spirit of those around her, even if they aren't conscious of it. She is the spirit, the soul, and the life of humanity.

Mother of the World

Here is a young mother. She leads two small children through the crowd and carries a third within her body. Her back aches. She searches for a restroom. When she finds it, she will relieve herself hurriedly so that her children do not wander. She wears no makeup and is frustrated that she looks so plain.

She is the Mother of the World. There is no life without her. Without her there are no farmers, no politicians, no poets, and no kings. She feels this deep inside, but thinks this fact is unimportant to the rest of the world.

Sick Man

Here is a man who is sick. This is not so uncommon, you know. Many people carry wounds and scars. I told you I love the richness that is sometimes viewed narrowly as imperfection. You do know that you have limitations; for example, you cannot fly. Everyone has a different set of limitations. Do you expect to be as strong as Arnold Schwartzenegger or as clever as Albert Einstein? Some can't see, some can't walk, and painful though it may be, some die quite young.

This man is sick mentally. He sees threats where others do not. He is unhappy for reasons others do not understand. You are surprised that he is walking unnoticed in the crowd? Surely you are not. Only the extremely sick are confined. For that matter, do you count yourself as being emotionally perfect? I know as well as you do that you are not. You are no more perfect than you are omnipotent. I love you for it.

This man who is not completely whole functions quite well in spite of his difficulties. He is here to buy his daughter a birthday present. He has not always remembered, but he will this time. They have not always got on well, but this time she will be pleased, and he will be pleased that she is pleased. “Life goes on," they say, without quite appreciating the drama of it.

Do you see what we can do?

Mountebank

Every now and then you will find a clown here. Well, perhaps it will be a singer or other itinerant entertainer. The name “mountebank” has been used to describe him. The name carries the image of one who jumps up onto a bench or whatever humble stage is at hand. He performs to delight the crowd. He may ask for voluntary offerings of money from the crowd, but oftentimes he does not.

He is dear to me because his work is simply to lift the spirits of the people. He may bring a cheer to the throat or a tear to the eye. He helps you think, see, and feel. He helps you live more fully. He could not stop himself from doing what he does. He knows he does it well and that knowledge compels him to continue. His reward in coins is modest, but his reward in other ways is greater. When you see him, think of me and drop a coin or two. He doesn't need much. Stay a moment, smile, and applaud. That will be reward for both of you.

Old Man

Further down that walkway, a very old man looks absently into a shop window. He comes here every now and then to see the people. He steps slowly from foot to foot in front of the window as his body remembers more active times.

He is staring absently and uneasily now because he has forgotten where he is. It has happened before. He will remember shortly. He has never had to ask for help. Perhaps some day he will. Help will be there if he ever needs it. People will help. Not always precisely on cue, but they always do.

You find it hard to rely on that source of help? Well, I am proud to rely on it. I always have. You are more reliable than you give yourself credit for. You will see. I do my thing, and you do your thing from time to time. We can talk about it.

It would hurt this old man to hear himself characterized as feeble-minded. He was once responsible for a public radio transmitter and he still knows more about that than most people do. He manages his own affairs effectively for the most part. He just forgets things more than he used to.

This old warrior is a magnificent edifice that is slowly breaking down, but it is still magnificent.

Simple Gifts

Around us here in the mall are wonderful, costly things: a diamond bracelet, a full-featured sound system, and others, almost whatever you might want. But you can also find woolen socks. On a cold morning, the woolen socks give more comfort than the diamond bracelet.

You may not be able to afford the diamond bracelet, but you can have the socks. The fact that something so comforting is so easy to come by is a triumph of your skill and heart. Keep it so, and mind the simple things.

“'Tis a gift to be simple
'Tis a gift to be free
'Tis a gift to come down
Where we ought to be.”[6]

Christmas (Click for audio version.)

Now it is Christmas time again. It is a time of frantic activity with little time to think: Buy the present. Decorate the house. Cook the food. Exchange the presents and share the warmth of those gathered.

Yet it is a time to think and reflect. Many people are sad because they expect unmixed happiness, and that is not often given. Many overload with activities and ask themselves in desperation, "Why am I doing this?" Many plan to examine their life. Some do. Some don't.

The world is darker and colder at this time of year. The sun shines weakly and often not at all. It is a time of cold, leaden skies and wet shoes.

I hear Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas." He is long dead, but his spirit lives on. Certainly his voice and his art hang in the air even now.

In the mall, Christmas carols play in the background. Sometimes they seem to be in a minor key. There is a coloring of sadness. The exultant carols float over a world that is not as perfect as the songs portray. Some songs are ambivalent in themselves:

“Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
if the fates allow."

The happiness you expect is not guaranteed to all, nor is it guaranteed in full measure.

"Hang a shining star upon the highest bough."

As is often the case, there is sweetness behind the sadness. We all do what we can, and we continually surprise ourselves. In a world that is not perfect, we who live continue to grow, continue to love—as the fates allow.

When the fates do not allow, we pause, lick our wounds, and start again, even when the world is dark and cold.

Once a year we dress a tree with lights and put a shining star on top. We do this to tell ourselves that, even in this dark time, light and life can triumph. We gaze at the sight and wish ourselves peace and goodwill. Who knows? In the coming year maybe there will be nothing but peace and goodwill. But even if we do not reach that goal, our warmed and strengthened spirit will move us to be a little more peaceful and spread a little more goodwill than we did last year.

One of the songs you hear often at Christmas is "Silver Bells." At first you might think these are abstract silver bells on display or in a performance. But they are the hand bells used by volunteers collecting money on street corners. Tired people on wet city streets. It is darkening as the day draws to a close. Most people rush by. Yet a few stop and drop some coins in the bucket. In this quiet, sodden way we reveal our glory. A man spends a weary day on the sidewalks collecting a modest sum. As he stands and rings his bell, he reminds those who hear that they are not alone. The people who hear are at first embarrassed, but then some are freed to act.

It is welcome to be free, to not be cynical, at least some time during the year.

A few give. A few is all it takes. The fabric of life is mended and strengthened one fragile thread at a time.

I feel the warmth. I smell the spice and pine in the air. I see the colored lights. I hear the carols, and in the background I hear the bells.

So, hang a shining star upon the highest bough, and have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Engineer

Before I retired I was Chief Engineer at a public television transmitter. We never had a lot of money, but still we put together an impressive facility. To me it was a thing of beauty. Our antenna tower was just under a thousand feet tall. With the TV antenna on top, it was just over a thousand feet.

Our feed line was a thing of beauty. It was carefully machined copper pipe engineered to be terribly efficient. A torrent of high-frequency power flowed smoothly up it with barely a few watts diverted to wasted heat. It was so efficient that a small failure would have touched off a disastrous chain reaction: a little heat, a small distortion of the precisely made pipe, a lot of heat, then melting pipe, then thousands of watts of misspent power converting hundreds of feet of finely machined copper to smoking ruin in seconds.

But it never happened. We knew our trade.

There was a small elevator running up the center of our tower. This may have surprised many people because the tower appeared to be needle-thin when seen from a distance. The ride to the top was always exhilarating. The first few times I made the trip, I was nearly terrified. After a few minutes at the top, however, the experience became increasingly one of fascination and serenity. The view was spectacular.

The view from an airplane is not quite the same because it is always moving and fairly noisy. When the wind was light, the top of the tower was quiet except for a slight sighing of the wind and distant crystalline sounds from the ground. When the wind was strong, it was best not to be up there.

The scene below appeared to be the most exquisitely detailed map imaginable of our community and its surroundings. A metal fabricating workshop backed up against a lily pond fed by a winding stream that disappeared into the forest. Down one side of the forest ran one of our major roads. Just a flick of the eye carried you from the heat and tension of heavy traffic to the serenity of the lilies growing in the sun and then to the welders practicing their craft. Odd combinations but from the top of the tower they lay side by side. Perhaps it is a useful habit to become aware of what is right beside you. It is often surprising—and delightful.

The tower was a community in a way. It supported many antennas belonging to many different organizations. We charged rent, of course. It helped our thin operating budget. We had to maintain drawings to keep track of all the different tenants.

A tower that tall is struck by lightning in every thunderstorm. I sometimes watched from shelter as it was struck. It made a clanging noise as the enormous electric current passed and the resulting magnetic field pulled at the metal.

I wouldn't have had that position if I had not been laid off earlier. I know I'm not the first person to find that one door closing often reveals another opening. At that time I stopped to think and understand at McDonald's. I thought my life had come down to nothing more than the cup of coffee in front of me. Now that things are better, I often stop for a cup of coffee and to remember what was then and what is now.

I had resources in myself and in my wife, my family, and my friends. Oh yes, I had to work hard for a time, and there was that terrible uncertainty, but I could handle that—as it turned out. I suppose we all underestimate what we can do when we are forced to shoulder the pack and take that step toward the unknown.

In a way it was more like my life began in earnest, because I had to think about what I could do and really wanted to do and what really mattered. My new job was different and I was better for it. At that time I felt that my income measured and displayed my worth. It doesn't. It’s probably worth repeating that fact daily.

As I look back now I think, "What was all the fuss about?"

Groceries

Simple gifts.

Then, again, maybe not so simple.

I am standing in the produce section of this supermarket. Super it is, although the term was coined some time ago.

I see the gifts of the earth and of man's work on the earth.

When you pick up the produce, do it with a little reverence.

Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, carrots, eggplant, green peppers, asparagus, chilies, green beans, rutabagas, parsley, endive, anise: savor the shift of visual texture from bin to bin. Cucumbers are displayed row on row showing dark green skins with highlights of reflected light. They are cool to the touch. Potatoes are placed in deeper bins. No attempt is made to place potatoes in even rows. They mock any effort to create order. No two are the same. Beautiful textures, the products of many different types of land and many different human organizations, and you can eat them all.

Am I not generous?

The air is full of the smell of the vegetables and the fruit. There is something of the wild. Here we can catch a memory of the open savanna where our kind grew up.

Should I say “your kind?” Recall that it is Suzanne who speaks. No, it is our kind, and when I speak to you, I will say “we.”

All of these gifts the earth yields to us without asking. Celery stalks want to push up and drink in the sun from above and the water and minerals from below.

But don't discount the hand of man as a full partner in the process. We prepare the earth and tend the crop. We harvest the crop and carefully transport it to the store so that all of us may have the gift of the earth and live the gift of our own lives.

There is no end to the ways our ingenuity works to make the gifts more available: baking, sorting, shelling, canning, bagging. Not all that is done deserves to be done, but we should not stop trying. Mistakes are made, but don’t be paralyzed by the fear of mistakes. When we make a mistake, we learn, correct it, and try again.

Have you ever looked at a bunch of grapes and realized the bounty that feeds us?

Quietly, week after week, the grape swells as it stores sugar. For us! That was the secret design of the vine all those weeks. In taking the gift the vine offers us, we give yet another chance at life to the seed hidden in the grape. That is its design, and it works quite well. Have you noticed any danger of extinction for grape vines? The ones that are pleasing to us flourish. The vine knows its business well.

Sometimes we form a partnership with humble yeast to ferment the grape juice to wine. The care exercised is quite remarkable and the product brings great pleasure to many.

So when we taste the wine, we remember that we are making ourselves part of a carefully tended process that includes earth, air, sun, water, vines, hands, and minds. Better yet, we become all those things. We are a necessary part of the process, because neither the grapes, the vine tender, the vintner, nor the wine seller would be there without our patronage. We complete the circle.

Walk down a few aisles and here is oatmeal in earthy round cardboard boxes. For just a couple of dollars, we can take home this miracle.

The oat stalk sways in the breeze with thousands of its kin. Long ago we learned to harvest the seed heads to make many life-sustaining foods, oatmeal and others. Did you know that wild oats push themselves into the ground? They plant themselves unseen and unheralded. There are endless miracles waiting to be discovered. We are a part of them and so is the humble bowl of oatmeal. Take time to enjoy a nutritious bowl of oatmeal and think about the Universe that it contains.

The Universe is in us, as well, because we are what you eat. When we eat these things, they become a part of us, and we a part of them. Lettuce washed by the cold spring rain smiling in the bright sun, building food and faithfully storing it for our use. Oranges thriving in the southern heat, apples ripening in silent row upon row of trees, all are doing their jobs for us. Thus food is not simply fuel that we use to stoke the boiler. It is the midpoint in a process. It is the end of one thread and the beginning of another that continues with us. When you eat clam chowder, remember to thank the clams and the potatoes. They are not ours to demand, but they are ours to use. Preparing food is an act that has been developed by countless people over millennia. If the act seems commonplace, that is a reflection of the success of all those countless people. But cooking is holy work.

I turn into another aisle and here is the pasta collection. Have you wondered at it? There are spaghetti, linguine, and penne, but here are also fusilli, gemelli, ditaline, castellane, tubetti, stellette, rotelle, cavatappe, radiatore, rotine, and cavatelli. And this is just pasta, grain and water. How many people have labored to provide a treat to their families, to delight the eye, fill the stomach, and lift the spirit. Their actions speak of love, spirit, and intelligence over many ages.

I have now walked into the housewares department. Do you remember the Chore Girl® brand of scouring pads? They don’t make them any more. There is a Chore Boy® brand now. The new logo shows a determined and energetic-looking fellow, apparently ready to dig into the work at hand.

Chore Girl was different.

She looked directly and innocently out from the label and smiled. She was dressed simply and cheaply. Why would someone who apparently had so little smile so openly? Well, why not? Life presents difficulties to everyone in some ways at some times. If you collect the difficulties, there is ample reason for anyone to be unhappy.

But our chore girl smiles. Perhaps she has found some few things to cheer her. Another day dawns, the sun streams in, another day of life. There will be things to see, things to hear, things to say, and, with a little luck, food to eat.

You find it hard to believe her cheer. And yet you have seen it before and you will see it again. You, too, may find a thing to cheer you, and perhaps more, with a little luck.

Commerce

Feed my people, clothe them, shelter them, nourish their spirit.

Bus

Newark, night, winter.

Wet snow and freezing rain fall. It is a cold time and place. The bus I am riding pulls out from the curb, pushing the wet slush aside with its big wheels. Orange sodium vapor lights give a pale imitation of sun, lighting the slush, the street, and the walls of the plain brick building. The light is without warmth. It only makes the cheerless scene starker.

There is relative warmth inside the bus for refugees from the cold, wet street. A seven-year-old girl sleeps against the right-hand side of the front seat.

The driver is a dark brown woman. She is the representative of the bus company. She does this for a living. She has taken the evening shift partly for the higher pay and partly to better manage her affairs during the day. The company prescribes the basics of her role: maintain the schedule, stop to receive and discharge passengers, collect fares.

But on the bus, she is more. She watches over the life of the passengers who ride with her. Thus the seven-year-old rests as easily as possible on a bus at night. Rough-looking men ask for directions and are given patient answers. They are glad and relieved. They are not as self-sufficient as they appear.

Most of the people on the bus are dark. They are not rich. They are not used to advantage, but their mood tonight is relaxed because they are sheltered from the cold outside. They have jobs that they are coming home from. The weather is inhospitable, but the bus is warm and a shelter from the snow and the wind. The driver is one of them and is quietly sympathetic. Perhaps she realizes that she is helping people find their way in spirit as well as along the dark streets.

Many of these people are lost in a variety of ways, but the receive help. At the very least, they are helped to make their way through the dark, cold city. Perhaps they are helped more than that from time to time.

The wet snow falls in the wan light. It cannot be stopped. And yet life makes its way along the cold streets. Hope is sustained and nourished.

And the Driver watches over us from the front of the bus.

Walking

I see a woman walking along the grassy margin of a busy Florida highway on her way to work at a fast-food restaurant. There is a small drama in this story. She has obtained the job, arranged her affairs to be away from home, dressed, and now walks along the road. Our society has reached such a pinnacle of technology and wealth that walking alone along a highway is uncommon and considered vaguely embarrassing. Perhaps she is poor. Perhaps she has left young children in someone else's care. Or maybe she just chooses to enjoy the fresh, warm, evening air and avoid driving in heavy traffic. In any case, she makes her way and makes a living to meet her needs and those of her family. She also serves a large number of people each day, bringing them food and perhaps humor to brighten their day and strengthen them as they pursue their own affairs.

A small set of circumstances to those who pass her by, but it fills a large part of her life. She has put a lot of care into her plans. She has woven herself skillfully into her world. Her life and her efforts are a triumph. You see a thousand such triumphs and they slip from your mind. Turn your mind more deliberately to these triumphs. You will be richer. Do you reject a triumph if it is repeated a thousand times in a thousand different ways? You live in a world of wonders. You do not do yourself a favor by ignoring them.

Gran Sasso

A giant eye lies underground looking out at the universe.

The eye perceives slowly, but it can look for a hundred years or more. Slowly the workings of the Universe become known to the mind of man. The eye is better known to those who use it as a cosmic ray particle detector. It is shielded by a mountain of rock and massive steel plates so that it can concentrate on highly penetrating particles that will tell us more of the form and history of the universe.

The eye owes its existence to disparate threads coming together at one place and time. Over eons the restless Earth pushed up a fold of rock, but did not break it. Very recently people on the poor, eastern side of this fold, now a mountain, proposed building a tunnel so that people from the richer West could come to them more easily, and in coming bring some of their wealth. The plan did not meet with complete acceptance. Then entered an uncommon person, Antonino Zichichi. [7] His fertile mind understood that the tunnel project and his field of endeavor, high-energy particle physics, could serve each other. He persuaded the government that a strategic stockpile of steel might just as well be stored where it would provide a filter to sensitive detectors.

Antonino is an Italian elementary particle physicist, the practitioner of a precise, academic discipline. But Antonino is also a flamboyant person. He mounts the stage with a sweep of his leather cloak. He consorts with politicians. He has been accused of promoting himself—ah, well!

Others are surely at work in this story, and that is a point to remember. Throughout the earth, every day, a multitude of hands are at work at this and that. Beautiful and remarkable things are being done. It is a wonder to watch, and each of the individual people is a wonder. Mostly they are unknown except to those around them, and they are wonderful nonetheless.

Those who do attract wider notice, like Zichichi, are our mirrors. They show us ourselves in all our variety. We see parts of ourselves magnified, from this perspective or that, but always ourselves.

Telephone

I work for the phone company. I don't string lines or listen to the whine in the wires during a Kansas snowstorm.

What I do is to look, think, and write. I call myself an operations planner. I make plans for automated machines that watch the network, tend it, repair it, and call for human help when needed.

The network is a wonderful thing. When I was a boy, I think I imagined it as a huge underground machine or city, something like a continent-sized subway system. Actually, it isn't very substantial considering what it does. It is a web of fragile pathways connecting places all around the Earth.

These thin, fragile pathways march bravely across lonely plains and through the cold mud in the eternal night of the sea floor. Sometimes they shoulder their way through the confusion under city streets. Sometimes they are a tiny glass fiber. Sometimes they are a beam of radio waves crossing miles of empty space. The beam carries no more power than that of a flashlight, but it is formed with exquisite care and aimed precisely toward its destination. There is little waste.

Such a small, fragile thing in the wide world. It is like roads have always been: so thin, so alone, winding their way over such a long distance from here to there and there to there. But the fragile thread draws distant places together. We are like that, too. We are so fragile in some ways, but we have placed one foot in front of the other, and we have gone a long, long way.

Each strand of the network is fragile, but the whole is not. The operations staff and their powerful tools are forever watching. When a link breaks, others are reconfigured quickly to carry its load. Technicians are dispatched to repair the broken link. The parts are fragile, but the whole is enduring.

Steamship

These old steamships still ply the surface of Lac Leman. After admiring it from the shore for some time, I step inside. There in the center of the ship is a huge old steam engine. My eyes tear with the beauty of it. Beauty? Yes. The engine is huge and turns slowly. It calls to mind the ponderous workings of the cosmos. This huge old engine has been the object of faithful labor in building it and again in maintaining it. Its builders are most likely dead, but the engine still works. It is old, but the current engineer keeps it clean and shining. He must feel it is a great honor.

The old steamer stands out into the lake. The engine turns powerfully and surely. It gleams with hot oil like a human body sweating in robust work.

Here the ship is free. A smart little wave hisses at her bow. The paddle blades slap the water in a happy rhythm. If you listen to the background of "The Blue Danube Waltz," you can hear that rhythm.

The wake spreads out behind to show where we were and what we did. We have been here, and we have moved on.

Capitalist

I place my investment like the farmer places his seed. I choose the time and the manner. I prepare the ground and nourish the tender new growth the best I know how. But, like the farmer, I know that what happens is, in the end, not my doing alone. I am participating in something that is more than myself. Yet I feel a really physical satisfaction when it works well. When there is a harvest.

I know I must husband some seed to repeat the process. I have a feel for the economic process. I like it. It nourishes me. But I know that I do not understand more than a small part. I know that I may be surprised at any instant. I do know that no one else understands more than I do, despite what many claim. Those who claim to understand completely must understand hardly at all.

Wealth is dumb, it has no human values. I know that. But with wealth you can start to think: “now, what is it that I want to see happen?”

I love all my employees in spite of what they might think. Of course I like some more than others, but they might even be surprised who it is that I like more. As a practical matter, my behavior toward them depends more on what is good for business than on my personal feelings.

An entrepreneur must be a creator. It requires daring. It is exciting and I love it. But it is a continual fight to keep the concern going. It is like tending a garden. If a long drought sets in, there is little you can do. You lose.

Fortunately for me and many others there are also enough times when you win.

Communist

I am a communist. I am old. I am still proud that I am a communist, but it is not what I expected when I was younger. Things just don't seem to turn out the way you expect them to. I know that well by now. When we first started, there was an enemy clearly seen. People starved and died while the rich piled excess upon excess for their pleasure—or just into meaningless expression of their power. I saw enough food to feed a hundred people prepared for a single family. Prepared and then thrown out as garbage, untouched. At the same time families starved to death across town. The waste of food was not through miscalculation. It was calculated to demonstrate superiority.

Some of the rich died in the Revolution, but really very few. The rest escaped with the people's bread in their pockets. We rebuilt from scraps. It is always that way.

Have you seen someone starve to death? I hope that you have not. That has been seen too much in the history of the world. Death by starvation is not clean and swift like a bullet through the head.

When you starve, first you are uncomfortable. You want to eat, but cannot. Then food becomes an obsession. Your day is filled with striving to get food—even if the chances for success are heartbreakingly small. You must try. Nothing else matters. The void in your stomach screams at you all day and all night. There are things that are worse yet, like children who are hungry all the time. If it is your own child, it is a knife in your soul. You can't imagine the pain. For that, count yourself lucky.

Pain like that lasts centuries. Well, it may only see the passage of handful of sunrises, but it is centuries to those living it.

No, I don't know what is in the mind of the dying. I have seen their blank eyes staring back at me. Was there consciousness behind them? I don't know. I hope not, but I fear yes.

I don't ever want to see people starve to death again. I would kill to prevent it.

Well, I have. Not that I enjoy the thought of a spine being shattered by a bullet, but it sometimes seems that it is all that stands in the way of loosing the dogs of anarchy. The dogs of anarchy are worse, I think, than the dogs of war.

Can I be sure that what we did was necessary? No. What else could we have done? There is little point now in chewing that again.

We go on, we succeed, we fail, and we try again. What else is there to do? We thought we knew everything, but we did not. We thought it would be all solved by now, but it isn't.

Don't these students see that things sometimes take a very long time? I suppose they don't. I didn't at that age. How complicated things always become.

I want the same things they do, even if they don't believe it. I want to see people eat and be happy and let their minds flower. I want to see the economic organism grow and flourish.

If I kill these students, then I lose everything. It would be the same way a father who loses his children loses everything.

But I must hold on to power in order to hold on to whatever gains we have made. Well, in that way, too, my goals are the same as the students. I know they have their own dreams of power as I did.

Let them wait. I did.

In any case, I won't live forever.

I may not be able to withdraw to a mountaintop permanently, but I can withdraw to my garden for a time, and that has some value. The final withdrawal is death.

I wish I could be a poet on a mountain who watches beauty from afar, but I cannot. I have the power. I have the control, such as it is. I cannot watch dispassionately from a distance. I must take my shovel down in the ditch and do my work. In my case the work is talking, endless talking, trying to clear the way for a collective will and then clearing it again when the walls cave in.

As I get older, I find I am more willing to put down my shovel and shout encouragement from the side. Ultimately, the main business of a leader is to tend the spirit of his charges. Nothing else matters if the spirit dies.

It is late at night. I look out at the city streets that still have traffic at this hour. I am glad to see the signs of life. I can even see a few stars in the haze above.

It's late. I am tired. I think it's time for me to go.

Ice Cream Maker

I am Italian. I make ice cream, like my father before me. It is very good ice cream, if I do say so myself—first class.

My father ran the business through the Great Depression. I asked him how he did it making something that wasn't a necessity. He told me to be careful about what I considered a necessity. During those dark, hard times, people needed whatever they could find to nourish their spirits and keep them going. An ice cream treat every week or so was something people could have, even if there were many other things beyond their reach.

Our business did well enough during the Depression. I like to think that we did some good, too.

Cracow

I wonder if it required special study to make concrete look that ugly. Is it something in the formulation of the concrete or is it just accumulated soot? These residential buildings are depressing. It is better walking along the river. They call it Wisła ("Viswa"). The Germans called it Vistula, but that is falling away into the past.

When I walk along a city riverbank, I feel I am near the heart and soul of the city. So many cities sit on the bank of a river. That is no surprise, because in many cases the city grew up beside its source of water, food, transportation, and defense.

The late spring sun is warm, but the vegetation still shows some memory of the winter. I pass a young woman, seemingly oblivious, reading a book as she walks. What is she reading? Poetry? I rather doubt that it is a textbook. Is that common in this Polish city? Yes, it is. There is another young woman with a book.

A family takes their photograph in front of the Dragon. Legend has it that a dragon inhabited the dungeon of the Wawel castle, so someone has built a fantastic stainless steel sculpture of a dragon at the foot of the castle, facing the River. What is more, it breathes a gas flame every few minutes. What fun for an afternoon outing!

It is only a little way to the park. They call it the Planti. It occupies what once was the city wall before the wall was torn down. Two boys kick a soccer ball in the intersection of two paths. Their mothers stand nearby. Old men talk. They have done their work years ago, and now they rest in the sunny park. I think it is more than rest. I think they come here to see and breathe the life that is here. Men tend to be distant from life, but they need it nonetheless.

A young man sits alone and writes in a small leather-bound book. Is he doing sums, or is he perhaps a poet?

Inside the old wall, in the center of the oldest part of the city is the market square. To one side of the square is Mary's church. It is quite old. Every hour, a bugler climbs to the top of the old, old tower. He plays a call to each of the four directions. The call ends unfinished. In this way the city remembers that when the Tatars attacked, a bugler warned the city of their approach but was cut down by a Tatar arrow in mid note. They still remember.

There is an old covered market in the center of the square, but on weekends the periphery of the square becomes crowded with small nylon and aluminum tents. The tents are all the same and are laid out neatly. Inside each tent are an individual entrepreneur and his or her goods. Many sell clothes. There are also jewelry, music tapes, hardware, whatever the entrepreneur has been able to obtain.

There is entertainment here. A little while ago there was a group of school children singing. The skinny little girl in the front corner was a real trouper. She was not overly awed by the crowd and she really knew how to use that tambourine.

Then there was the group of Andean Indians with their own distinctive music. They had even attracted an adolescent Polish girl to play the drum with them as well as a five year old toddler who danced. He was a great crowd-pleaser.

Now the music is recorded. They are playing the Beatles. First they play "Back in the USSR." What ironic thoughts this must bring to the disk jockey in this Polish city, although I can't see who the disk jockey is. Next is "You Say You Want a Revolution," which comes down to the line: "well, don't you know, you can count me out."

Finally they play “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da life goes on.”

I turn and look again at the little tents. Indeed it does. Indeed it does.

Ten Peso Note

The Mexican ten peso note displays a wealth of spiritual symbolism.

On the front is a picture of Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary. He looks severe and like 19th Century Mexico, with a drooping mustache, formal suit, and softly folded cravat. It is probably he who appears on a horse on the reverse side. It is hard to tell because his face is shaded by a huge sombrero. He leans down and places his hand on the shoulder of a humble farmer, who looks up hopefully into his face. The farmer carries a curved machete - probably for clearing brush, but of potential use in a fight.

Opposite the pair is a huge gear wheel of uncertain employment, symbolizing industry and its promise.

But the most important item is in the center of the front of the bill, with Zapata off to the side. There in the center is a pair of cupped hands offering ears of corn. It is corn that Mexico and the Indians to the south gave to the world. It is corn that Mayan tradition tells was the material from which the first men were made. It is corn that they still live on to this day.

Caravan[8] (Click here for audio version.)

I stepped away from the fire to come out here and look at the stars. I never tire of them, even though they are with me so much of my life. Perhaps it is just because they are with me so much of my life. Soon I will go back to the fire and share some jokes and songs with the guys. Soon enough we will stretch out and sleep.

We will get up before dawn. A little breakfast tea and then we start the job of getting the camels going. I think it must be a kind of game of theirs to make us work. They bitch and moan as if they were going to the slaughter. They know and we know that they were created to walk. When those long legs step off across the hard dusty ground, they swallow it up.

There is a strange combination of the common and the wonderful in that first step on our day’s journey. It is just a step, the same as a step away from the camp to pee, but it is the beginning. One step and it leads naturally into the day-long lope that we all know so well. A single step carries you from one patch of dust to the next. And yet, in the middle of the day we are out of sight of our morning camp. It is so far back to where we started. And also it is so far forward to where we will sleep that night. We have passed hills, rocky flats, and dry rivers. The world turns under our feet.

In one day we go farther than most people do in a lifetime. It's dangerous enough. Every now and then we come upon a camel wandering by itself with a pack on its back. Maybe we will recognize the gear of someone we knew, but mostly we never know what happened. Still, I feel we are the most fortunate of men. The world is ours.

And yet, when we come to a town they close their doors and carefully watch their goats and daughters. They talk to us only when they want something from us and then look as if they smelled something bad. Well, there is a gulf between their cramped little lives and ours. I have made my choice. I know who I am and I'm glad of it.

I look at the endless dark plain all around me and the blazing stars overhead and feel momentarily so alone and lost. But I have come this way before and I know the route. A few days march in that direction is life and noise. I have been there before. And just over this hill is the camp fire

I look up again at the stars and feel the familiarity out here alone between towns. This is my element. I belong here. I am a part of the many, many miles between towns. The road is mine. I turn a country station on low. I check that I am in the highest gear and roll on into the night. The powerful, faithful engine keeps me company. The night, the road, and the stars are mine. They always have been.

Seamstress

I pull the thread tight. Another stitch is in place. I swing the needle down, pause for a heartbeat to pick the entry point of the next stitch and push the needle through. How many times have I done this? The seam stretches out in front of me in testimony. The stitches are fine and I would not want to count them, but I have placed them all. Each stitch by itself is such a fragile thing, and yet, when I am done I will expect the shirt to serve for years soaked in the cold rain, swinging an axe, carrying logs. How insubstantial yet how durable the result is. Throughout the quiet, sunny afternoon I sit. The needle swoops. The thread tightens.

See how I can make something from so little. It is all in the patience of sewing, which shares the spirit of growing.

Polynesian

The sun rises out of the sea. I stand on the shore and look out over the sea from which my people came so long ago. The sea is still a big part of me. The sea feeds us. Countless fish bless the reef. Every fish I eat rebuilds my ties to the sea.

My island stands behind me. This is my home and I know it well. It and the sea feed me. My crops grow every day under the generous sun.

My island is small. I have walked to where I can see the sun rise over the sea, and I have walked to where I can see the sun set over the sea. But I am not a prisoner on this small island because the sea is my road and a part of me. In my little boat I can go forever. The sea may claim my little boat, and me, but I am a part of her since birth.

It is a good home, but the world has always been wide for my people. A thousand islands are my home. In my little boat I can travel beyond the horizon. We have done it many times in the past. It is the secret power of my people to travel the enormous sea in our tiny boats. Yet we must be humble because we know that, however great our skill, the sea can claim us. We do not fear this. In the end we only return to become a part of that which was always a part of us.

If I should die, don’t be sad for me. Picture me seated in the stern of my boat with my eyes on the horizon and my paddle dipped into the water, urging my boat onward to a new island.

Factory

There is no one here but me now, although this place used to be bustling. It is an abandoned factory. Now it is silent and musty. There are empty spaces from which the machines have been removed, being more valuable and more portable.

It has a disreputable, shabby look. Curiously, birds have found a way in and built a nest. The floor beneath shows their presence. Some papers lie on the floor where one of the last people out left them, intending to pick them up. But they got distracted and the papers are still here.

Long, empty halls are silent, damp and cool, the way concrete is. The light is muted. Power has been turned off for a long time, but daylight filters in through the dirty windows and along the empty hallways.

It is peaceful here. It is the peace of earned rest after a long, productive life. The workers are gone. The place is still. The original purpose has been fulfilled. There is nothing more that needs doing here. The factory is dead.

There is no mourning or need to mourn here. The purpose is complete. It is still and will stay that way for some time. And then it will be time for something else.

Even now, the tiny plants that push up unexpectedly through random cracks are the early signs that death - in time - will give birth to life.

The nest of birds in their tiny niche is also a sign. It may be that in time the walls will crumble, and a forest will grow here - a forest with millions of green factories turning sun, earth, air, and water into life and food, a forest with birds singing, flying and nesting.

Then, too, it might be that the walls will fall to bulldozers, and a new factory will grow, a factory turning sun, earth, air, and water into food, or shelter, or tools for life. We will only know after the fitting time of rest.

Custodian

I am content. Well - there is always something else that I would like to have, but things have worked out pretty well.

I drop the mop down in the center of the next two-foot square. The water splashes out as I intended. I make a broad "X" and then start side-to-side sweeping strokes from the clean toward the dirty. My hands know how to throw the mop so there is no water mark. Through long experience I can keep from leaving dirty water on the clean side of the sweeps. When I have covered the two-foot square, I wring and then a fast set of sweeps from clean toward dirty leaves a new, fresh, dry square.

Now I start a new square. This is the way my evening goes. The building is quiet. The windows are dark. They don't me pay much for this. I don't think most of the day people know or even care that I have been here, but I am O.K. with that. The quiet and the dark suit me.

When I finish a room, I always stop for a moment to look over the floor. I look to make sure I have not missed a spot. I rarely do, but I also get pleasure in looking at the job I have just done. I can easily see the difference. When I come in, the hustle and confusion of the day are still on the floor. A thread from a button, scraps of paper, dust from the street. It's all there to see.

When I leave, the floor is at peace. Even if it is almost time for wax, it still shines a little more when I am done.

Room after room, with no one to notice or bother me. Some times I wish there were someone to say: "Hey, I like this clean floor,” but it doesn't happen. Who is to see me? Who is to know what I do?

At the end of a long, quiet, night I leave work, and walk home through the dark streets. I look up at the stars that are still out high overhead. Not bad …not bad.

Suzanne, Still Waiting

Who am I? I am a spirit, but then you are also as much spirit as body. Your entire body mass of ten years ago is now mostly scattered to the winds, yet you rightly feel that you are still the same being.

You think I am intangible, but it is my hand that holds this book. I am that close. You are my hands even though you make mistakes. Even though you make mistakes, you are important and beloved. The Universe has been working patiently for billions of years to create—you.

What do I look like? How would you have me look? That will do. One image that pleases me is Julia Child standing smiling behind an abundant display of carefully prepared dishes. I hope you will see me as generous.

Perhaps I shall have a dark brown skin, because it is the color of the forest floor, which nourishes everything, and to which everything returns. I also find a dark brown skin beautiful because some of you find it a liability.

In the end, it is yourself that you see

This has been going on since that time, when in your loneliness you said: "Let there be light."

Make what is good a little bit better. Make what is bad get gone

"When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it, always."[9]

Teeth (Click for audio version.)

In case you haven't noticed, the Earth has teeth.

That does not mean you must embrace them. You are an instrument for reshaping the Earth. If you don't want your children taken by a lioness (lions are mostly a danger to lion cubs), keep lionesses out of your neighborhood. The same is true for drug dealers, dangerous old buildings, fast cars, and open holes in the ground.

I earnestly want you to use your mind to keep yourself, and others, out of want, pain, and danger.

Baby Jessica

Jessica McClure was rescued from 22 feet down an 8-inch well by paramedics Steve Forbes and Robert O'Donnell on October 16, 1987 after 58 hours in the well. That was a time of glory!

People around the world held their breath. People around the world wept. No, that was not foolish. Jessica was cold, hungry, hurt, alone, and frightened. She did not know what was happening to her. She wanted above all the comfort of her mother, but she could not have that comfort. Those people who wept knew that.

Would it have been a better story if a band of angels had descended amid blaring trumpets to lift Jessica from the well? Yes, I know that would be spectacular, but where does that leave you? You, all of you, would then be the jerks who let her fall down the well and had to call on help beyond yourselves to fix your mistake. I hold you in much higher esteem than that.

Were there other people who needed your sympathy and help at that time? Oh, yes. But a trip of a thousand miles starts with a single step. To help a million children you must start with one. Do you understand that Jessica did not detract from your ability to help others? She added to your ability to see and to help. You must make that the reality.

It was a glorious moment, but a simple cap on the well would have saved much grief. Heroism is a beautiful thing, but then so is the common sense that removes the need for a rescue in the first place.

Jessica recovered and years later she was said to have no memory of the ordeal. Early childhood nightmares are long gone—for her.[10]

Her parents, Cissy Porter and Chip McClure, are divorced. In 1995 rescuer Robert O'Donnell shot and killed himself. His brother, Ricky, said his life "fell apart" because of the stress of the rescue, the attention it created, and the anticlimactic return to everyday life.

Robert, why did you go? You were a hero to us.

Do you want me to do something to eliminate this kind of pain? Well, I just have.

Work to do

Some other threats do not have clear remedies, but you are well qualified to attack them. Get to work. What else was it that you thought you should be doing?

In this and in all things you should strive to allow your heart and your mind to communicate. They are both precious gifts that are yours to use. The only simple answers are to questions that aren’t very important.

Hug-a-Bears

Have you heard of Hug-a-Bears? They are made by charitable volunteer organizations. Each is a simple cloth pattern of a bear, front and back. Volunteers fill them with soft stuffing and stitch them whole. The design makes a small, cheap teddy bear.

A toy?

Yes. They are given to police and other groups who respond to danger. Often children are left alone by the painful circumstances of life. In that cold, sad extremity, the Hug-a-Bear is something to cling to. It’s only a little cloth, but it shows our strength.

Innocence

You would not want to return to the Garden of Innocence, even if you could.

You are not inherently evil. You are subject to disease, sickness; sometimes you can call it sin. You get confused, out of balance, lose your way, and do things that hurt yourself and others.

Then you see the hurt and back off. Perhaps the view of the dark pit is a lesson on the long, long road to understanding.

Death, be not Proud!

There is a hidden force for good. It is patient and powerful. It has been working quietly for a long time. It never dies, although it tires now and then. It has secret members in all countries and all walks of life. It works patiently as it has for ages, making progress where the opportunity presents itself. It makes mistakes, but it is never defeated. It is everywhere. It has eyes and ears and agents everywhere.

It is us.

There is evil surely. Bad people do bad things to good people. We rage at them. We fret at the unfairness of life. What should we do to express our outrage? Well, we should prevent them from repeating their evil if at all possible.

You are hurt and angry that the bad are having their way and that they are winning? They are not. Life always wins. It always has. Look around you. The transgressions of the past grow hazy and are forgotten. That is a victory, not poor memory.

New life replaces what was lost. Wounds heal. Evil tears at you, and in the end you are more. Yes, yes, deflect evil with all your strength, but don't envy evil for winning. You win. You always win. And your scars are your medals.

It has always been this way. It always will be.

To triumph, Life does not have to destroy Death, it only has to live.

And to grow.

Lesson of the Birds

Loren Eiseley tells of learning this lesson from birds[11]: While walking in the woods he came upon a crow eating the insides out of a small songbird. As he watched, he became aware of other songbirds in trees around the clearing looking silently at the huge black predator eating one of their own.

Then they started singing, first a little, then more. Eiseley felt it was as if they had turned their backs on the horror and resolved to live again. Were they foolish? Had they been bested by the crow? Do you think that song birds will vanish and their songs with them because of that crow, because of all crows?

And for that matter, would you consider it a triumph if crows vanished?

Do you feel vulnerable? You should defend yourself as best you can. But when, in spite of all your precautions, Death strides in from the night, don't feel that Death has beaten you. In the end you will win. Song will fill the air again.

Sad as it is, you can expect that from time to time you will be hurt by sad, broken people who serve Death. Your first reaction is to find them and kill them. This may be a practical way to avoid future hurt to yourself and others, but often it is not. Are you then helpless before the agents of Death? No, because you, and Life, always win. The agents of Death want you to fear, to hate, to kill. If, instead, you recover, live, love, and thrive, you thwart them. In time—more or less time—they wither and vanish in the face of your living and thriving.

You need only live, and Death is defeated.

While You Live

The person you are now will cease to exist. There will be a new person in your place. There is no way to be sure who this new person will be. Does this come close enough to immortality for you? How would you have it differently? Do you want to continue exactly as you are? Do you want to remember everything you have ever done? Would you like to start fresh?

You are not a rock. You are motion, the ripple on a pond. More than that, you are an idea, a plan, a shape for matter and energy to fill. The idea will not die.

Nothing is guaranteed to you, not even life. In fact, you know that you will die.

Don’t turn your back on death, because it is inextricably wedded to life. Night comes, and it is time to sleep. Autumn comes and the leaves fall until spring.

Spring always comes, you know.

You know that you may not be alive tomorrow. I don't want to be frightening or negative, but you should try to keep a balanced perspective on your plans and frustrations at not achieving them exactly as you intended.

Beyond that, what was it you wanted? Do you want to be doing what you are now doing a hundred years from now? Do you want to be doing what you are doing now a week from now?

When you find you have another day to work out your plans, use it as well and as happily as you can so that in the end the world will be richer in the ways that you alone could accomplish.

Another Day!

Another day of sun and rain.
Another day of trying and failing.
Another day of trying and winning.
Another day of poppies and blackberries.
Another day of friends remembered.
Another day of friends made.
Another day of tears dried.
Another day of presents unwrapped.

Each day a shining gift, and,
If you look closely,
you will find me in all these things.
I will always wait for you.
I will always watch over you.

Harry

I never thought I would run into Harry again. We were an item once.

Is that all we will ever be, "an item?" We were young and in love. I wish we were again. I could chuck the rest.

Being young is an inconvenient preparation for real life. How much real life is wasted waiting for real life. I was going to be an actress and Harry was going to learn to fly. We said we were going to find each other after we got a start, but the start stretched out a little more and a little more. We never found each other again—until tonight.

A forgotten part of my life. What have I forgotten!

Well, I am an actress. I guess you would say I’ve made it. There is enough money even after the mortgages, accountants, and agents are paid. I do like my craft on those rare moments when I actually get a chance to think about it. The rest is b.s.: helping the studio make their gross objective, letting the director feel like a god, sitting for endless stills. Sometimes I think of my face in places I wouldn't want to be with things written on it that I might not want to say.

I live in endless hotels. They are all grim, even the ones that are gilded are grim. I eat caviar in the evening with people who can't remember my real name and then coffee and a danish in an airport the next morning. Well, I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself. It's a living, maybe even a pretty good one. It's just—empty.

And so I get a cab at another airport on another rainy night, and after the mumbled directions and assent I realize that it's Harry driving.

God, does he look good. The memories come tumbling back.

Small world.

We both say it.

Then it's quiet. What to say? What to say? What is he thinking? I only see the corner of his eye in the rear view mirror in the dim light.

I thought I heard something in his voice, or did I just imagine it because I wanted to? Why doesn't he say something? Why don't I? He seems embarrassed. I suppose he has a wife and kids at home. I wish I had an "at home."

We talk about the weather. Yes, it's rotten. Right! How can I give him an opening? I can imagine making myself look pathetic. That is all too easy to see. Think!

I suppose it has been a long time. People do move on. The past is forgotten.

The hotel can't be too far away. My chest tightens. I barely breathe. I feel the minutes and the years slipping away and I can't hold them back.

We're there.

Harry looks back and announces the fare. His eyes are hidden in the shadows. He says the trite, polite small-world-nice-to-see-you-take-care-of-yourself. Is that all I mean to him? The damned efficient doorman already has my bags. I reply the same to Harry, feeling I have just given permission for the hangman to tighten the noose around my neck. I grab a bill, barely able to see it, and hand it to Harry. I tell him to keep the change. That was probably wrong, too.

I watch the back of his cab as he drives away. His tires leave little furrows on the rainy street, then the raindrops fall on them and soon they, too, are gone.

Pink Slip

A cup of coffee in McDonald's provides some warmth, some quiet, a place to think, a place to hide and lick my wounds. I feel I can still afford this small indulgence, for now. Will there come a day when I must watch even this little bit? How will I feel? My income displays my worth, doesn't it? I have just found that my income is gone.

Without my pride, what do I have?

Today I feel my worth is so fragile. If I am worth what I can do, what is that? We have maintained complex methods for marking worth. In the past, the strongest warrior wore the most feathers. He also watched his back for someone seeking an increase in status.

Today we have CEOs, VPs, Division Managers, Doctors, and Lawyers. (But no more Indian Chiefs.) We also have income. The exact number is often well hidden, but you can tell.

Your house and, better, your car proclaim your worth even more satisfactorily than do feathers. If you can drive a new Mercedes, your manhood shines forth. If you cannot, well, you are less.

Sure, if you keep your Chevy running well and keep your family sheltered, you can feel good. I know clearly that this a real value, but still there is the ache when the Mercedes passes. If only I were more forceful and more lucky.

But what of the unspoken horror of losing even the Chevy and the tract house? It's so easy.

Every week the paycheck comes in and every week it goes out. Such a precarious balance. So many dollars measuring your worth. Then the mortgage, groceries, clothes. Maybe a VCR, but then the washer breaks. Oh well—later.

And then the paychecks stop.

What now? Have I saved? Good. And how long does that last against the mortgage and the groceries?

Am I concerned that I might not have much left for my old age? It happens.

Can I find another job quickly? Will it pay well? If I accept less pay, then I solidify my position of worth further down the ladder.

What will I tell my family? I know I should not be destructive. They will be fragile enough. I am not strong enough to give them the support they need, not emotionally, and now we know, not financially either. I should act like a tower of strength. That might be of some value. But I am not a tower of strength.

I should try to seem to be a tower of strength. Maybe I can do that. I wonder if others have faked it. I wonder if they have succeeded. I suppose so.

I can imagine neighbors averting their eyes in embarrassment. People will have other things to do when I seek to socialize with them. After all, being seen with a lower-ranked man tugs downward on your own rank.

What do you say? It's uncomfortable.

Maybe I can get a little loan from a friend. We can do it in the dark where no one can see.

But when can I repay? I know he will wonder the same thing.

We could sell the house, if someone will buy. If we drop the price enough, if we let ourselves be raped, we might sell quickly. I can see the buyer smiling blandly. He knows: "So long, little doggie. It's your misfortune and none of my own."

And then what? Do we live in our car? How long can my family be understanding? Understand what?

If only I had been more forceful! I see a Mercedes pass by again.

What if I left them? That would be a rotten thing to do. It would give them pain, I suppose. What would they do? My wife works already, but she makes less. Without me it would go farther.

I remember my father returning from a job interview, walking to the car where my mother and I waited. Puffing out his cheeks—so alone.

Oh, I wish I could hide the shame. I would sit in a park and sleep there at night. If I could be the anonymous bum huddled in the corner. I've seen them.

The shame of losing your position in society, losing your income. I would hide far from anyone I knew. Shame is so bitter. I fear it more than death.

Well. There is that.

If I ceased to exist, that wouldn't be so bad. And there is the insurance. Make a note to keep the payments up.

I don't like pain, but there must be ways.

The thing is, suicide leaves a stain on the people you leave. They feel it is their responsibility. But it's not.

But they do anyway. Damn!

Now I really am confined. Where can I go? What can I do? Does this happen to other people? Well, yes, it does, doesn't it.

So what do they do?

I am reminded that I am not alone. I don't control everything. I must believe others will do their work. I mean their Work, not just their job, which is only a part of it.

I don't have to wait idly, either. I know a thing or two.

I have learned to accept all of the credit card offers that arrive in the mail. They keep sending them. Often they carry the compliment, "because your credit is so good." What a laugh!

I can make good use of them. If I ever become productive again, I will have to pay them off, but for now they will do wonders to improve my cash flow.

When I was a kid at the carnival, I hoped I would get the fastest bumper car. I imagined myself pulling out free in front of the pack. I imagined people would look in admiration and say, "look at the kid in the front of the pack." I felt I had a feel for the car and some skills, but picking a fast car was certainly a matter of chance and succeeding would not prove any great virtue on my part. Still, I hungered for the admiration. I would have liked to stand on the top of the hill, for a time, anyway. It appears now I have fallen to the swamp at the foot of the hill.

I realize now that very likely no one paid much attention at the carnival. Am I, perhaps, paying too much attention to my fate now?

Again, without knowing exactly where I will go, I stand up, shoulder the pack, wipe the tear, and step off.

Lilith

There are times to be alone.

I am out here alone because I want to be, and I need to be. Given a little time, I think I will be ready to return to more familiar things.

I walk a dry land of sand and rocks. I gaze over diminutive valleys and hills no bigger than a man. Small ravines remember long past deluges. Walk a hundred feet and you can't quite pick out where you used to be. It is a plain, but much can hide here.

I look across the plain to the mountains in the distance and drink in the expanse stretching out in front of me: mile on mile of lonely, lovely distance. The sun beats down on everything, and the air is still. The mountains are blue and indistinct in the distance. Distances are so great that even this clear air obscures and softens. The great distances match well the long times stretching quietly from the past to the future. It has been this way for thousands of years and will be for thousands more.

Some would say this is a harsh place. Many kinds of life cannot live here. Water, the essence of life, is scarce. The sun is rarely moderated by cloud or tree. The days are hot and the nights are cold.

It is called "desert" because there are no people here, but it is not empty of life. No place on Earth is empty of life because life is too durable and persistent.

Life always overwhelms death. Life is here.

Not only is life here, but it is firmly established. The life that is here shines in its ingenious ways of making use of the little water and abundant sun and sand. Plants are small and tough here. The scarce water does not sustain exuberant displays. Leaves are hard and small to guard their precious water. Bark is hard. Animals are small and most hide during the day. Insects make up much of the life here, along with lizards, snakes, and a few mice. An animal only as large as a coyote must range over great distances to support its body mass.

At long intervals it will rain hard here. Water sinks into the eternal thirst of the sand, but here and there small pools form. As inappropriate as it seems, tiny shrimp appear in the pools. They live, grow, and reproduce at an earnest rate, because their world cannot last long. In the end they die and the sun dries the last of the pools.

But in hidden places are tough, tiny eggs that patiently wait for as long as it takes. In the end, the rains come again.

To those who watch, who are patient, and whose eyes, mind, and heart are open, this garden flourishes.

Lilith is said to inhabit desolate places like this. Bad things have been said about her, but that may be because she chose independence and isolation over conformity. In any case, the spirit here is peaceful. Perhaps it is the peacefulness after pain and loss.

Lilith represents the minor key as a needed counterpart to the major key; a counterpoint to the energetic, the active, the thoughtless. Perhaps she came feeling broken and needing some time for the wounds to heal. It seems that I need this, too.

The air shimmers in the sun as the hot earth warms it, making a dreamy, unreal scene. As the warm, generous, compelling sun strikes the red earth, the heady, resinous smells of the dry shrubs and subtle smells of the baked earth itself rise gently, adding richness to the quiet and the sun.

If you come here and if the heat is not too extreme, you can live well in it, but you must adopt the pace of this place. The hot afternoon is not the time for feverish striving. Relax. Allow your metabolism to slow. Move, but slowly, with leisurely, easy strides. There is generosity in the heat. There can be peace, too, if you allow it.

I belong here, too, for my own purposes and in my own way. I carry the lay of the land in my mind. The light, long-sleeved shirt shields my skin from the worst of the sun. My beautiful old hat shields my eyes and face from the sun. My blood carries faithfully the memory of the sea from which I came. I will not need more water for hours.

I am free. I have come, I will stay a little while, and then I will leave. That is all I need to do here.

Here you learn about quiet. In cities and towns and even in homes, there is always a background of sounds. They are so constantly present that you cease to be aware of them. These are sounds of life and in their time and in their place they are good. Consciously and unconsciously they tell you of the living going on around you. More than just telling you, they draw you into the life around you and make you part of it. That much is good, but the constant sounds take their toll. You aren't aware of the sounds until you experience quiet.

The quiet of the desert is not silence. It is more than silence. The wind, floating and darting, rides up a small hill and tumbles a few grains of sand. A few leaves of a tough shrub brush against each other making a dry rattle and a soft hiss. All is silent for a moment, and then the wind stretches like a cat and moves the dust and the brush. An unseen lizard tumbles a pebble.

This is quiet beyond silence.

Pause, rest, spread your mind over the land and become part of it. You are nothing here in this vastness, and you are the world, living and thriving under the unfailing glory of the sun and, later, under the pale mystery of the moon.

Here is a diminutive gully. It has been baking dry in the sun for many cycles of the moon. Amid the rocks are the bones of a wolf. How the wolf died would be hard to guess. Death, perhaps violent, perhaps not, has come to one of the owners of this place. All is peaceful now. The sun beats down. The bones bleach. The air is still for a time in the afternoon heat.

The bones bake in the sun, waiting. In this dry, quiet place they may wait for a long time. Then another rain will come to bury them or turn them into yet something else.

A solitary ant stumbles over the bones and the hot earth. Her size makes her seem vulnerable to the heat, but she is at home here.

In this country of sparse life, the presence of the wolf was felt over a wide area when she was alive. She would trot through the tiny valleys and stand on the crests looking out over the land. Certainly any food would have caught her attention. Perhaps she, too, drank in the quietness of the place. She, too, carried the spirit of Lilith. Perhaps one of her cubs watches me unseen in the hazy distance. Her spirit is still here.

Bones should be somber, but it is hard for anything to be somber in the intense heat and light of the midday sun. The bones are bleached white. They tumble down the tiny dry waterfall. They mix with the sand and pebbles of the stream. It appears that only a few pieces of the original skeleton are here. Some bones must be buried in the sand. Some may have been carried off. They are scattered randomly so that there is little resemblance to the original shape of the wolf.

"Am I not funny? My trials are over. I lie silently in the sun and hope you, Animate One, can laugh and learn. There is nothing in my bleached bones that you should fear."

People say that a place like this is nowhere, but the whole world is right here. The river of time runs right through here.

If Lilith inhabits desolate places, this would be a good place for her to be, but all is still. There is no one here.

No one else.

This quiet place is mine to occupy for a time. I am the spirit of this place, for this moment.

I am Lilith, in this time and in this place. I have come a long way to be alone, and I have a long way to go. I am quiet in this quiet place. I belong here, along with the sand and the wind and the little trees. I belong with the wolf and with the generous sun. In time I will go.

If you find yourself alone in a desolate place, if the air is still and hot, if today and a thousand years before and a thousand years to come seem as one, then you may feel the presence of Lilith. Look around. It will not be me. I will have gone. I will be walking somewhere else. Then you will be Lilith. Be still for a time and enjoy the quietness.

They Turn Away

I will break their hearts of stone.

Nora (Click for audio version.)

You don't have to read this.
My heart breaks that it happened,
but it did.
My heart breaks that it will happen again,
but it will.

I’m all alone again, so alone! No one cares about me because I’m bad.

It’s so cold.

The floor is so hard.

If I could only have my little blanket to pull over me. I would love to curl up and be warmer, but when I move just a little it hurts so much! I don't feel right. I must be very broken up inside.

I’m not wanted by anybody.

I wish somebody would want me.

Nobody loves me because I'm not a good girl.

If I could only be a better girl. If I could only remember to do what I should, then Mommy and Daddy would like me and not punish me.

I must be very bad. My Daddy and Mommy went away and left me all alone here. It hurt so much when Daddy punished me. But now I'm so sad that I am all alone. I'm not worth anything. Everybody has gone away from me.

There is a piece of skin on my leg that keeps coming unstuck. I think Daddy's belt buckle did it. I pushed it back and tried to stick it. Maybe it will grow back if I can keep it stuck.

I think it came unstuck again, but I can't see in the dark, and I can't bend any more. My body doesn't seem to work.

I want to curl up and be warm, but when I try it hurts so bad! If only I could just pull myself into a little ball and disappear forever.

Why couldn't I be one of those clean, good girls I see playing? Why do I have to be a thing nobody wants? I wish I could be somebody else.

I try to be good, but sometimes my hand reaches before I have time to think. Sometimes things slip out of my fingers before I can try to hold tight. Sometimes when I try to hold tight I get nervous and I drop things. Oh, I wish I could do better. I wish I could be good.

I try to think of warm things. I remember playing with my dolls in the garage. It was warm and the sun shone in. I wish I could be there again.

I had friends and we talked. It was warm and we talked.

I think I'm going to die.

During the day when Daddy hits me, I count the minutes until night and it is over. At night I count the cold minutes until I can be warm.

The night is so long.

The window is open and it is cold, so cold. The cold stabs into me from everywhere. Not even a little part of me is warm.

I didn't think I could stand last night. I don't think I can stand another, but if I do and I still can't be a good girl, Daddy will whip me again. I wish I could be dead.

Daddy punished me today and Mommy yelled at me and told Daddy he was right the way they did the day before and the day before. But today it was bad. I hurt so bad!

The night is so long, so long. I didn't think I could stand it last night. I don't think I can tonight, but what can I do?

I see little cold lights out the window. I think they are stars, but they look smeary. I don't think I see right.

I don't do anything right!

I am so sleepy.

...Maybe

... I will just ...

... sleep.

Tear (Click for audio version.)

Whenever the fabric of life is torn
—as it often is—
A thousand hands fly to its repair
—though the hands be stained with tears.

Steadily, patiently, a little at a time,
the thread is drawn from here to there
and from there to there.
A stitch is taken,
and the torn edges are drawn gently together.

By itself, each thread is fragile,
but our hands are patient.

Make a stitch if you can.
Don't worry that it seems fragile.
They all are,
and yours may be the only one missing.

You are not responsible for weaving the whole tapestry,
but you are responsible for adding your thread.

In the end the seam will be strong,
held by many stitches,
each of which cannot bear the strain by itself.
Each mend adds to the color, the design, the richness.

Our hands have worked patiently for many years.
The fabric is quite strong,
and of surpassing beauty.

The Dark Night

Sometimes...
Sometimes it seems …
there is no winning for losing.

We try and we try again,
and the walls crumble.
We pretend to be invincible,
but we are not.

Cut us, and we bleed.

A deer lies by the side of the road, dead.
Fur is pushed back off dark pink body muscle.
Dark blood stains the pavement.
Her guts peek out for all who drive past to see.
Her innermost privacy is violated.

Life is sticky liquids,
oftentimes drying in the hot afternoon sun.
How could we ever prevail?

And yet...
And yet...
We do.

I will start again
- just don't ask me now.

Who will heal us?
You are wounded too,
yet you bind my wound.
What am I to do now but tend those
who are even more broken than I?

Our strength is not that we are invulnerable,
but that we heal.

We bear scars.
But a scar is the badge of a wound that has healed.

I heave myself to my knee,
to my feet.
I shoulder the pack,
wipe the tear from my eye,
and step off.

What else is there to do?

The Dawn that Always Follows

Healing is quiet work
—and common.

Imperceptibly,
Tears are dried.
A job is found.
Bills are paid.
Dinner is set out.
Presents are exchanged.
Friends smile.
Ice melts.
Gentle summer rain falls.
Clouds part.
Green vines grow over the graves.
Children laugh and grow.
Words of consolation are spoken
—and heard.

Oh Life!
We languish and expire
cold, alone and hungry in the dark.
We are broken on a rock.
We die and bleach in the blazing sun.

We think we are fragile,
but we are not.

In the face of darkness
and torn things,
we often despair.
But it is only for a time.

Every day brings new threats.
Yet every day we are more.
Every day is another day of life.
Another shining gift.

If a branch is cut off, new shoots start to grow.
If one dies, two live.
The desert shower moistens the dust and we sprout.
The pale sun warms the cold rocks and we grow.

The fragile roots press patiently at the rock
and split it.
The tree flourishes.
Strawberry fields bloom in the city
—forever.

Eventually,
imperceptibly,
we start again.
We mend.
We grow.
We thrive!

“I know nothing stays the same,
but if you're willing to play the game,
It will be coming around again.”[12]

It is not needed that Life eliminate Death.
Life will overwhelm Death.

Honor the memory of the dead deer.

Whenever the fabric of life is torn
—as it often is—
A thousand hands fly to its repair
—though the hands be stained with tears.

Steadily, patiently, a little at a time,
the thread is drawn from here to there
and from there to there.
A stitch is taken,
and the torn edges are drawn gently together.

The sunset is also beautiful

Conversation

I came to talk with you again. Although we have been separated by death, I keep coming back. I feel you must hear me in some way. In any case I really hope that you do. Night seems like a good time to me. It is cool and quiet. It seems easier to think and to remember. And the stars!

I remember when we came here together. The fact that we can no longer do that is a constant pain, but the memory is sweet and worth almost anything. "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." It's true. I have no doubt. I have the memory. I always will.

We had all those plans. Now they have come to nothing. No, it wasn't foolish. We had so many happy memories as it was. I would have loved to have grown old with you. That is granted to so many, but it wasn't to us. Do they know how fortunate they are? I hope that you can remind them.

We think we will live forever, but we never do. That is true for everyone. Still I wish, I wish that we had more time. How was I to know that I was the short-timer? The dying was nothing, but it is painful not to be able to touch you, not to be able to wake and see you in the morning light. But I will be with you. I will always be with you.

Gardener's Legacy: Child's Green Thumb [13]

Hamilton—At 5 years old, Christopher Harhay already knows what it takes to bring in a successful harvest.

His first crop came last year at his home with the help of his grandfather, Rocky Faone. This spring, Faone helped Christopher grow an 11 1/2 pound zucchini that won a blue ribbon at the Mercer County 4-H Club fair.

But Faone has been stricken with lung cancer, and it is now up to Christopher to oversee the family tradition.

Faone, 79, fondly remembers working in the garden with his mother and wants to pass along the knowledge so that someday his grandson will have a garden of his own.

Christopher—who has spiked brown hair and smiled a lot as he talked about his garden and sorted through his baseball cards—did such a good job with his first garden last year that this year he and his "Pop-Pop" teamed up for a joint effort in Faone's back yard.

Using seeds saved from last year, the two potted seeds inside during the winter and in April planted a 20-by-30 foot plot at the rear of Faone's property.

It began as a joint effort, but now Christopher must go it alone. In April his grandfather was given, at most, six months to live.

"I hope he keeps at it," said Faone, a World War II veteran who came to the United States from Italy when he was 7 years old. "I know he can do it if he wants to. If I hadn't become ill, I’d still be out there."

Christopher's mother, Fern, said when her son picked the squash, “it was so heavy for him to carry, he could barely get it to the house."

She said Christopher understands the situation "as well as a 5-year-old can understand the concept of death."

Christopher said he knows his grandfather is sick, and he will continue to take care of the garden for him.

"I can do it," Christopher said. "I love my Pop-Pop."

In Memoriam

Rose knew everyone. She traveled around the community and talked to all those she met. She knew everyone. She would tell of her life, and she would listen.

In the end, her legs alone could not carry her, so she took to using a tricycle. She and her tricycle became a fixture. The machine compensated her failing body so that her will and her spirit could continue as before.

Rose is dead. We will miss her greatly. All of her friends and acquaintances will miss her.

Don't think Rose is gone. She left a part of herself in all she met and talked with. They are all more than they were before they met her. What she was has not been lost. Her life and personality will continue to nourish and build many people in ways that will grow more and more subtle as here influence spreads wider and wider.

—

Karen, why did you go?

You felt you had come to the end, but you had only just begun.

We grieved at your passing. We had come to delight in your songs. Your song hangs in the air. We still have your sweet-soft voice, calm and rich like a summer night. It would not have mattered if you sang no words at all. I drifted on your voice. You calmed and strengthened me.

Your voice floats like the mist in the morning, and then it becomes solid, calm and confident, like a field of wheat waving under a blue Canadian sky.

I hope that from somewhere you are still looking down on creation.

Old Warrior

McDonalds®.

I open my coffee as the sunlight streams in through McDonald’s window. They give you free coffee refills in the morning. That makes me feel good.

The world wakes up around me.

Besides the coffee and the sunlight, I like it here because of the life that surrounds me. The young high school girl behind the counter works next to a prisoner who is trying to rejoin the world outside prison. You learn these things if you come here often enough.

I am older and need to slow down.

I see an old couple. They are both feeble. She is in a wheel chair. I see that he has provided an inverted bread tray to help her step out of their pickup truck. I feel sorry at their trial, but they appear to be in good spirits. They are here in the morning sun. They have made their own space in the world. They have each other. Perhaps they feel they have quite a lot to live for.

I think of my wife and how we came to be a couple now that she has gone.

Freedom

I was young and free. For a time I could lose myself in the broad world. I slept on mountaintops. I walked the desert. I made money.

Free!

I had a car that faithfully carried me many thousands of miles. It was a tan Volkswagen beetle; "sea sand" was the official name of the color. It was really pretty awful, more like “lake mud.” But it was mine, and it took me places I wanted to go.

I flashed along the road in the bright sun and the shimmering heat. My mind would spread out over the land to include the hazy mountains in the distance off on either side of the road. The tiny engine behind me spun faithfully at seventy miles an hour.

I delighted in the shape of the land. At intervals, passes would interrupt the line of the mountains. Beyond these passes would be unknown valleys, which promised unseen wonders. I was able to follow a few in the course of time, but only a few. The rest reminded me that the world is big and that it always holds the promise of something new to explore.

I used to climb those mountains and lose myself for a time. When you say "mountain climbing" people often think of hanging from a rope on a rock face. You can do that if you want. What I did was really just walking. One of the most pleasant experiences was coming out at a vantage point from which I could look down on where I had recently been. I would look down at the valley I had started from far below and think, "Look how far I've come."

Then I would turn and look up at the top high overhead and think, "Look how far I have to go." And that was right, too. But I knew I would make it by methodically placing one foot in front of the other as I had often done. Without undo effort and in an appropriate time I would be at the top. "Look how far I've come."

I would enjoy reaching the peak, but there was so much to see along the way if I took the time to notice. Even if I had to head back early because of strength, time, or weather, I enjoyed the places I had been.

The sun, the path, the trees, and the animals are mine however far I go. I think of this sometimes when I begin to get overwhelmed by tasks that lie in front of me. I need to understand that I have enjoyed the walk so far and expect that I will enjoy continuing, however far I am able to go. Look how far I have come.

Those were great times, but I was alone.

Alone

As the line in “My Fair Lady” says, "My life was calm, well-ordered, serene." And empty.

I pined with emptiness. I had the world and I had nothing.

I walked the desert under the full moon. The moon was full, but my heart and arms were empty.

On soft, summer nights I saw the couples in dark corners. I saw couples laughing and sharing each other and the day and the night and the sea and the stars. They had what I did not. Men don't cry, so I didn't—visibly.

As Janice Joplin sang just before she killed herself, " Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."[14]

I was lonely, but I didn't have the skills to do much about it. I watched others. I envied what they had. I felt I was cursed with some birth defect that made me unable to approach women or to say anything other than some pointless matter of fact. “Are you using that shopping cart?” Wonderful!

I remember in college I volunteered for the student radio station for a time. Naturally, I became an engineer. You know, the person who queues up the records and switches the microphones, that sort of thing. One of my announcers was an older woman student (perhaps by one year). I remember the day she was putting together a romantic-themed broadcast. As she explained the format to me she commented, “Well, you wouldn’t understand.” Ah, yes, perhaps so.

Meeting

Then, one day this person appeared at my shoulder and said, "may I sit down?"

What a question? I had for some time admired her long blond hair and sophisticated ways. She was beautiful and polished and confident.

I had been thinking of how to get her attention since we first met without much of a plan to show for it. She was the unattainable. I doubted that she would find me interesting. I replied, "if you like."

Fool!

You see, I was cursed then, as I still am, with a fear of betraying my feelings. How much human misery could be avoided by simply saying what we mean.

But she sat. For whatever reason she found something of interest in me.

Some time months later, after much had happened, we watched the sun come up together and we went for breakfast.

And we have had many more breakfasts together since. A lot of time has passed.

The lady in red is dancing with me!

Joining

Alone you will spend your life on interesting things that eventually become dust and are forgotten. Together you become something that neither of you can foresee. Look around at families that you see. Humbly, quietly, they are the root of the future. All of the great deeds and small deeds are rooted in the families you see around you. Quietly, surely, they are the path into the future.

You and this other person can be part of this path. You do not stand off and plan it or judge the results. You can only do it, glimpsing, but never seeing completely the part you play.

It is a great thing, but you cannot know how it will go. You must choose and leap into the unknown. You know only that you will be different than you were. You and your mate make an unpredictable joining of two ancient lineages. The result is something new in the world.

You must abandon yourself and become something new. You will cease to exist as you are now. Something completely new will begin. Choosing this path requires courage that makes fighting a bear with a Bowie knife pale in comparison. It is courage that has played out countless times for millions of years and will continue to play out.

We love stories of the hero who arrives in the nick of time and sets things right. The real hero is the man who wakes up in the morning, scratches himself, and makes himself available one more day for whatever service he can perform.

Children

I think if I lived to be three hundred years old that I would begin to understand how to be a father. As it was, I did what everyone does, which is the best I knew how at the time. I think I did pretty well, as most people do.

A friend and mentor once told me, “You know, children grow up to be normal in spite of the mistakes their parents make.” I get some comfort from that observation, and I certainly hope it is true.

Let me tell you a story: We were eating out one day when our son was just a toddler, perhaps two years old. We have always liked the treat of eating out. It gives us the chance to be alone, together, and away from home. At that time, we chose modest, fast-food restaurants to be consistent with our budget.

Our son had been walking for some time. In fact, he was everywhere and into everything. In this particular case, the restaurant was mostly empty, and he was walking along a row of seats. One of the restaurant employees cautioned me that my son’s actions were dangerous. She was an older woman, and I can now appreciate her protective instinct even for a stranger.

I however, felt at that time that I was being called to task for being a bad parent. I was angry. Suffice it to say that when I am angry, people are often very aware of the fact.

The old woman employee must have been very aware of my anger, because I later saw her standing with her back to a partition so that she was not readily visible to the public, to me.

What had I done! My insecurity as a father had converted an instinctive attempt to help into a confused tangle of anger, fear, and sadness.

Yes, I regret it still, even though it is long past time to do anything about it. This is part of the sadness that comes with age. Wisdom can come from such sadness, if there is a way to remember and, perhaps, pass it on.

Violence

Men must be more violent than women. How much of my life is given over to anger. Is this a male curse? I can see how anger might have had survival value in the distant past. Attack those that threaten you. Drive them away. Kill them if possible!

It may be inherent some way, but I was taught that aggression was good for boys. Oh, it may not have been called aggression. In competitive games, certainly, we were taught to push our opponents in an effort to cause them to make mistakes and avoid challenging our plays.

Early in his life a boy learns that expression of "soft" emotions leads to caustic derision. This is the Western male equivalent of African female circumcision. When young boys show signs of feeling, they are lacerated with ridicule so that the display is never repeated.

I will not be hurt that way again.

It is sometimes the work of men to die to protect the ones they love, but it is often the work of women to live to protect the ones they love. To me it seems that the latter is the harder job.

Once, men provided protection. We seem to have a more tenuous grasp on life than do women. This was probably useful at the time when the enraged warrior with little concern for his own life was a formidable barrier to enemy war parties. Now this tendency shows up in the statistics of young, male driving and gang warfare.

Young men don't know enough about life to value it.

In a world with real threats to the life and health of yourself and your family, this certainly made sense. Now the threats are usually more subtle and often only to pride. But I cannot ignore a threat to my pride. Without my pride what do I have?

Like most men, I take my estimation of my worth from the respect I can earn through power or cleverness or hard work. If someone attacks that, they attack my very being.

I know I have done things in defense of pride that I should not have done. I do not want to recount them, and I wish they would fade from my memory. And yet tomorrow I may face a situation that will cause the beast to rise up in me again. I wish I could avoid that. It seems clear that civilization was invented in large part to keep people away from situations that call out ugly replies. I wish civilization were more successful at this task.

Ties to Life

Man is mobile. He can fly away. Woman is tied to the earth and must take the consequences. But she has the earth to help her. She has resources. She can survive and go on. And she has, time and again.

If women didn't tie men to life and the earth, they would tend to float off. Men are not as firmly attached to life as women, and, left to themselves, are more apt to come apart from it one way or another.

I am reminded of the time our cat strayed. Please bear with this story a bit.

I was home with only the cat. My children were at college, and my wife was escorting a group of students to Paris. I was reminded especially during this time that the cat wanted my attention. She would walk across my keyboard as I tried to work. She would curl up on top of me as I was going to sleep.

But I had a life to attend to, so I acknowledged her briefly and went on with my business. After about a week of this, she didn't come in at the accustomed time when I called her. Then she didn't appear when I called her again just before bed. Well, this had not happened before, but she was certainly capable of taking care of herself outside.

I woke, as I often did, in the early morning hours and called her again. Still no response. When I rose the next morning I called her again—nothing. I knew she would have eaten several times by this time, so I was concerned. Now, I know that cats will sometimes stay away for a day or even days, and I kept repeating this to myself.

I was concerned for several reasons. I liked the cat and certainly would not want to see her hurt or lost. But beyond that, the rest of the family cared for her very much and I began to see myself being viewed as causing her loss. And of all the family, my daughter loved the cat the most. I could not bear the prospect of telling my daughter that the cat was gone. You see, I am not demonstrative emotionally. I claim that, as a man, I was brought up that way. As a result, I am afraid that I am often seen as cold and uncaring. I care very much for my daughter's welfare. In fact, I can't name anything I care more about, but I find it hard to just say that. I back away. Do you have dreams where you want to say something, but you can't make your mouth obey you? It is like that.

I could have avoided this problem by keeping the cat in, but I have always felt that keeping her in was not fair to her. She loved to go out; it delighted her. You don't need language to know this. She loved to roam, she loved to play with her friend from down the street, and she loved to hunt. I would have preferred that she did not hunt, but we had accepted that when we chose to have a cat in our house.

I have seen cats kept in the house all the time. It appears that everything is all right with this arrangement, but it makes me uncomfortable.

At mid-day I walked the neighborhood streets peering under bushes and into back yards. Nothing. Then I walked the stretch of highway near us sweeping the roadway and its sides with my eyes. Nothing again, this time to my relief.

I thought of families who waited for missing loved ones and wish even for the discovery of a body. I had a sense of their pain although mine was surely less. This is the gaping wound opened by the kidnapper. This is the crime.

I thought of these things, but out of respect I must say that my situation had not that profound depth of despair.

The sun settled in the west and turned that beautiful golden color it often does just before night. I called yet one more time.

And heard a small call. I walked to the garage door opening, and there she was, as always.

I felt that she may have strayed because I ignored her, so I resolved to give her more reason to stay. I held her more. I brushed her as she liked. I bought her kitty treats that she liked. No, this was not a major sacrifice on my part, just small additions. I felt that I was attaching small threads to draw her back, not chains to immobilize her.

I have come a long way around, but I meant to come back to where I started. You may recall I thought men were tied loosely to life. So are we like my cat? Do we benefit from gentle inducements to bring us back? You know the statistics say that married men live longer than unmarried men. Is this the result of many gentle threads binding them to women, who are more firmly rooted in life?

…

Ah, my wife has returned. Perhaps another cup of coffee and it will be time to leave.

Ah yes, I Remember It Well!

"Am I getting old?"

"Oh, no, not you!"

Old Tiger

The old tiger warms herself in the late afternoon sun. The sun feels good on her aching joints. The coolness of the coming night will cause her some pain, as it usually does.

She still remembers when she was young with no thought that something like joints could cause you pain. Then she was sleek and fast and could bound down forest trails with ease. She had no trouble catching food for litters of cubs.

The cubs, the ones that survived, are now powerful tigers themselves. It is true, of course, that most tigers within twenty miles are her kin. Once in a while one will greet her, but they are living their own lives for the most part and raising their own cubs.

She is slower now. Her aging body does not respond as satisfactorily as it once did. She relies on her experience to compensate for some of her lost speed and strength. Sometimes she will lie patiently beside the path and catch a small animal that comes heedlessly within the reach of her lunge. Sometimes she can bluff the jackals away from an old kill.

She will take insects and frogs when nothing better presents itself. She will not live too much longer. In the end, her limp carcass will lie on the forest floor to become an opportunity for small carnivores and insects. Soon there will be no trace of her body.

She does not contemplate the future. Hers is a life of feeling and doing more than contemplation. She still feeds herself. She still is a threat to many animals in the forest. She knows the forest. She knows its inhabitants.

While she lives, she lives. She is like the last golden flare of the sun before night. The end, too, has its beauty.

Vegetable

I must have been dozing. The nurse is bustling about. She is singing. I like that. There is another nurse that comes less frequently. I remember her because of the comment that she cast off about me: "Looks like we've got another vegetable on our hands."

There is a lot of truth to that. I try to move or talk and it is as if I were made of lead. I can't make anything work. So her comment had some truth, but I didn't like her cold, dismissive tone. It's not any skin off her nose. I'm just another custodial task for her.

I thought that if I die, I will try to pull strings to get her to come along too. But I doubt that I have many strings to pull. I suppose I should realize that I don't look like much of a personality to her. As time goes on, it seems that it doesn't matter very much, really. I spend a lot of time sleeping. I think long periods go by when I am not aware of sounds around me. I need the rest, even though I don’t do much. I think that I have a lot of repairing to do. I think I want to come back, but then maybe it is time to get on to something new. As it is, this isn't as bad as the time I got laid off my job. I thought that was the end of the world. Well, live and learn.

The hardest and the best times are when my wife comes in. She talks to me. I'm glad for that. I would come back for her if only I could make this leaden body move. I sometimes want to speak, but it is like willing a stone to walk. It just doesn't happen. From what I hear I think I must doze for long periods, days maybe. In the end, I find I am not so interested anyway. That is my past. I must move on.

I am getting tired. I think maybe I will just sleep.

Witch

Don't cry young lovers, whatever you do,
Don't cry because I'm alone;
All of my memories are happy tonight,
I've had a love of my own,
I've had a love of my own, like you
I've had a love of my own.[15]

I am old now and I wear mostly black as befits my station in life. I sometimes look at the figure that stares back at me from the mirror and wonder how it all happened so quickly.

The face is not the one I remember. It's older than I remember. My hair is the color of stone. The skin on my hands is thin, translucent and wrinkled. It seems my knuckles are large and my fingertips pointed. Well, they will do. They are mine.

It seems to me that it was only a short while ago that I was a bride planning my household. In those days, my clothes echoed life and the beauty around me. That was the time of bright colors and embroidered flowers. I would sometimes wear a circlet of flowers on my head. That was the time I would mirror the beauty of the Earth in my dress.

Now the Earth must perpetuate her beauty without me.

The time will come soon enough that she will have to perpetuate life without me.

In the beginning I was just one. Then we were two. Then three, four, five! I think only a mother can appreciate that magic of life where there had previously been none. What might they have been if they had lived? If they had lived, I would have lived on in them.

If I could trade my life for any one of them, I would do it thankfully in an instant. But my children died in the Plague, and then my husband died a few years later—perhaps of a broken heart. When they died I thought I would die.

But I didn't. My husband was a source of gentle strength, although I didn't understand all of his angry moods. It seems to be a flaw in men. I could live with it, but I never understood. I often wondered if he would have lived longer if he were more rational.

If men are not tied gently to the Earth, they tend to float off. Men work and admire from a distance. They need women to tie them to the Earth and life or they drift off.

But the ties were not strong enough and now I am one again. The loss is dull now, and I don't often think of it. I have lost all that mattered to me. I feel I must go on and do the best I can. What else is there?

And yet, some mornings I look out my back door and see the sun rising over the village and the field beyond. The sun glints off the dew on the grass. It warms the wet leaves and delicate curls of mist lift up into the light. The people begin to move toward another full day of promise. At first there are only a few quiet moves, but then the pace builds. I feel again that I will live on in them. I ache, but I know that finally I am not alone.

As I walk abroad, I come upon a field that is a mass of yellow flowers. Hovering over them are butterflies the color of sulphur. I pause in respect and to refresh my soul. What a blessing. I touch them with my eyes. I feel their beauty and their life. I draw sustenance from them.

It is a gift that is always renewed: the yellow flowers now, the blue ones before, and the purple haze in the fall.

The weeds beside the road nourish me in body as well as soul. I eat them. You see, I am not wealthy, and I must feed myself as I can. With a lifetime of experience and practice I find abundance around me. They have many, varied, interesting flavors. My life is rich, indeed, in this and in many more things. And with my knowledge and skill, I can make weeds into a surprisingly tasty and nourishing meal. I am not wealthy, yet abundance comes to me.

You feel the plants too, don’t you? Yes, you do, but it might take some quiet time on your part to appreciate it. Stand beside a flowering meadow some quiet, sunny summer afternoon, and watch quietly. Take your time. Feel, their fullness and growth rooted in the cool, rich earth and reaching up to the warm, generous sun.

Watch a grove of trees on a summer day and see how the leaves twinkle and shine when it is warm and water is plentiful. As they prosper, so do you.

When you walk outside on one of the first clear, warm days in early spring and you feel the warm sun on your back, quiet your mind to be free to drink in the beauty and joy beyond understanding. Just one more day like that is a gift beyond reckoning.

So many simple things are blessings beyond counting. I fear that people pass them by because they are common. These things fill me with joy and keep me alive. The simple gifts are the most valuable.

Before going to bed, I usually go out for one last look at the stars. In the summer they seem festive, like party decorations. In the winter they are cold, hard and austere. But even their cold, brightness is a wonder and a delight.

There is so much to be thankful for. Once I felt I should seek a way to repay the gift, but now I see that as a narrow, ungenerous way to think. I have been planted, fed and watered. I am to grow, flower and bear fruit in my fashion.

What is the fashion of my fruit? Each person must seek that out in his or her own way. It may not be obvious. Once I looked forward to it being my children, but that was not to be. So what now? Perhaps it is my stories. Perhaps it is my remedies. Perhaps it is just my being. I must trust that I am the needed thread in the cloth, as are you.

Perhaps I am to share my garden and its secrets.

My garden has always been a glory of flowers. And so it is even now. Since I am alone, I try to make good use of the partnership I still share with Life. My garden lies right outside my door, always ready to comfort me even when I might forget. In the midst of my garden and Life is my old bench. It has a thin dark green covering of moss. It is old and weathered, like me. It is not a neophyte. I take my cup of tea there in the glow of the sunset.

I have flowers blooming most of the year. If I get down on my hands and knees I can even see exquisitely tiny flowers that anyone would miss standing. This is bounty even at tiniest scale.

My vegetable garden has marigolds throughout to discourage insects. The bugs have a right to their own sustenance, but I know they can do well if they leave me enough for my needs. I am acquainted with a few toads and a snake that eat insects and voles in my garden.

Sometimes, whatever you do in the garden, something just dies. Other times, fortunately more frequently, things grow with little effort on my part. Living with a garden helps to keep your pride under control.

There are so many living things in my garden. They are all different one from the other. Would I choose only one? Would I give up my vegetables? Would I give up my flowers? Would I give up my toads?

Would I give up the insects? Sometimes I think that would make my life easier, but I know that my garden would not be complete without all of them. My garden and I would be less.

I have reserved a district of my garden for herbs. To me, that is the most beautiful part, although the plants there are less showy. If you take the time and the care to look, you are rewarded with the wonderful variety of shapes, sizes, colors and textures of herb foliage. And scents. You must attend closely, but the close attention is richly repaid.

In so many places is close attention rewarded richly.

Even more important than their appearance is my knowledge of the gifts of the herbs. I can step outside my back door and pick ingredients for a tea to strengthen the blood or calm the stomach or brighten the spirit. The secret gifts are hidden in the most humble plants.

My mother taught me much of what I know, but I have added more through a lifetime of watching and trying this and that. Sometimes the women of our village come to me for a cure when they don't know what else to do. I hope in the remainder of my life to hand down this knowledge. There are some more subtle rules that I have learned from my mother and from a long life in the garden. If I can share the benefit of this knowledge I am glad to. Many times, young mothers just want a quick remedy. I wish they would pay more attention. I won't live forever.

They sometimes ask if I know magic. I do! I never get over my awe at the magic of green shoots in the early spring, fireflies on hot summer evenings, colored leaves in the fall and the pure, quiet, austere beauty of snow. Every morning I open my eyes to the magical reality of another day of life.

But the most wonderful partnership of the garden and my skill some would call the most common. It is far from that. I am talking of my ability to take the things I find around me and make them into food. We eat three times a day if we are lucky, so we can become thoughtless of it. But it is assuredly a miracle of the most important kind. An innocent babe would not know that you can eat an onion or a carrot or barley. These things are precious secrets that have been learned through loving, patient trial and practice. Through this knowledge, this skill, this love, we transform some of the beauty of the earth around us into food. We provide this food to our families to nourish our bodies, and through our bodies to nourish our spirit.

The things that can become food are oftentimes so humble: The tawny barley seed heads bobbing in the wind, carrots hiding in the earth, the berry on the bush, greens at your foot. Their commonness might seem to us to make them unimportant, cheap, but that is only the sign of great generosity. How fortunate we are because of the humble, faithful plants.

They do their magic unbidden by us. When we walk away and close the door to our house, they are still there growing. When the cold rain comes and we warm ourselves by the fire, they drink. When the glorious sun returns, they stretch, spread and grow.

Bit by bit, little by little, they store nourishment—for us. Life thrusts sustenance on us. The berry is bright so we can find it. Oh, the plants do it for themselves, too, but we are they, and they are we. As they prosper, so do we. As we prosper, so do they.

People regularly forget that there is more to eating than filling your stomach. You need a variety of foods to stay healthy. Pay attention to eating green, yellow, orange, and red. This humble wisdom has been known for a long time. If you ignore the simple rules you walk heedless past treasures that lie right at your feet.

Bread is such a wonder. In the beginning it is just grass, grown from the lowly earth and the cold rain. But under the miller's patient hand it becomes flour, and under my practiced hand it becomes a loaf to sustain life. I take it hot from the oven and smell gives my spirit wings.

My garden provides flavors for my food. I can take simple fruits of the garden and make hearty food. It is flavorful, too, because I also know what poor people have known for a long time: that adding strong taste to a little food makes it seem like a little more.

Can I offer you a morsel to nourish you on your journey?

I delight in growing, and I delight in eating what I grow, because what I eat, I become. So you see that I am not just the old woman in black before you. I am the strawberry. I am the carrot. I am the potato. I am the tiny green mint. I am the barley head bobbing in the wind. I am the sun and the rain that nourishes them all. I am all of this together with you. We have been all of this, and we will continue to be all of this.

…

Most mornings I walk into the village to see how it is doing. I often stop to acknowledge the cat, if it is one of the days that she wants to be acknowledged. I see a dead wasp in the path and lay it to rest hidden in the grass at the side of the path. I do these things, but I need not bother to explain myself to others who may not see as much as I do.

The village is my garden, too. To me there seem to be a few weeds, although I know that there are no weeds in God's garden.

But there may be toads.

The children are the best part. I see their mothers in them, and often I see their mothers’ mothers. I see life unfolding in them and it delights my spirit.

I try to have little cookies and cakes for them. The very young ones take a while to come around. I suppose my appearance is severe until they get to know me. Then, too, my voice has become brittle with age.

Eventually they come, half hiding behind an older child.

I tell them funny stories and fantastic stories. I find that I never run out of stories. At my age, I have heard quite a few, and I love to tell them. Are there new stories to tell? I don’t know that, but there are always new people to hear the stories.

I also learn things from the children. I don't have to ask despite of what some in the village think. I knew their mothers and grandmothers. I was the midwife at many of their births. So when they babble on as they do, I can't help but fill in things that weren't said. I know so much about life in this village that it only takes a word, a pause, a look.

Then there is Mae. I pass her most days on my way home. Poor thing, where else would she be? She sits in front of her house and plays with her doll or with the leaves she may be able to reach. Her body is broken from birth and her mind is too.

But she sits in the sun and smiles and, God bless her, she sings too. She sings! And she calls to me. She is happy just where she is, just today. I see that I am fortunate to do as well myself. I smile and talk for a bit.

Then, as I make my way home, my eyes shade to green and blur a little. I a do not regret this. If I feel more intensely, it is just a sign that I am more alive.

…

When I was younger my house was very neat. Now it is orderly and beautiful to my eye and mind, but it might not seem neat to a younger woman. As I grow older my eye sees things differently, not as straightforwardly, but more richly.

For one thing, there are the spiders. I leave a few spiders discretely about my house to catch flies. Of course, I can't have them getting in my way, but they do pretty well at avoiding me. I can feel them watching me. Simple things though they be.

Some spiders are such tiny things; you almost can’t see them. And yet they eat, move, and have wills. For all I know they even have dreams. I know that many people fear these tiny things, but there is much less to fear when you know and observe a little.

There is serenity in watching spiders. They go quietly, patiently about their work of spinning a web. They stretch one fragile strand of silk from here to there and from there to there and then back. Over and over. Not hurrying. Confident in the outcome. Tear the web down and she will hide until you go and then start over: here to there and there to there. Over and over until her fragile beauty is rebuilt.

I make them spin their webs regularly, since I don't want to see dusty webs hanging about. Every now and then one insists on weaving a web where I would not have it. In that case I throw her out of the house rather than kill her.

And they fly. Did you know that? If you observe patiently, one day with a light breeze you may see a baby spider climb to the tip if a branch and spin a single fragile thread of silk to the wind. She will hold tightly and spin until the tug of the journey is strong, then she will let go. She has no idea where she will go, only that she must go. She does not steer. She does not control. She only has the faith of her internal need to travel. As you can imagine, her voyage is not without risk. She may fall into a river and become food for a fish.

If she lands safely, she will know nothing her new home. She will hide and wait and watch for a time, and then she will spin a web and set up housekeeping. With some skill and some luck she will survive and prosper. They have been doing this for ages, and so you find them everywhere.

In the depths of winter, there are few flies and most of the spiders starve to death. I do not like to see living things starve, but it will happen whatever be my will.

I know that I, too, will die sometime. I expect I will be alone here. I would have it otherwise.

Until that day, I will enjoy the friendships I have. As I walk through the village I chat with a child here, an old woman there or a young man going to the field. By talking with them all of my life, they have been woven into my life and I into theirs. I will live on in those that remain. Even Mae.

When my time comes, I will have them in my heart. I hope and believe I will continue in theirs.

I can already see signs of an end. My body is breaking down bit by bit. Small parts of the wondrous complexity that is my physical being don't work as well as they used to. At my age there are things that don't work at all. But the awesome work of art is still awesome.

There will come a day when I will feel the tug of my journey. When I feel it strongly enough, I will let go. If there be no one else, the spiders will look down in their simplicity and be my friends

After the long, busy, productive summer, winter brings welcome rest.

Surely, steadily, the leaves turn to a glorious show of colors echoed by the glow of the autumn sunset. Their labors complete, they turn brown and dry and fall to the earth. The cold wind and snow sweep over the ground. The tawny grass lies gracefully down to cover the earth and protect her as she sleeps through the long, silent winter

Spring will come.

Coda

I'll be seeing you around. I leave you for now with this picture:

The sun is warm, and white puffs of cloud drift slowly overhead.
The grass on the hill waves like water in the gentle breeze.
A child runs up the hill, pauses, and looks back expectantly.
The child is you.
If you run, you can catch up.

Index of Titles

[3] Is this so mysterious?
“No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne

[4] “It Goes Like It Goes,” Norman Gimbel, music by David Shire

[5] Some child chalked this on the sidewalk. No, I don’t suppose I will ever know who it was.

[6] “Simple Gifts,” a traditional Quaker Hymn.

[7] C. Mann and R. Crease, "Gran Sasso: Particle Physics Without Mountains of Money," Science Vol. 261, p. 1267ff, September, 1993.

[8] To the tune of Borodin’s “In the Steppes of Central Asia.”

[10] "11-year-old puts 'Baby Jessica' in past," USA Today, Tuesday, October 14, 1997, p. 3A

[11] Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, Random House, New York 1957.

[14] “Me and Bobby McGee,” written by Kris Kristofferson

[15] “Hello Young Lovers,” Oscar Hammerstein