Whispering Pines

In the 1980s we considered buying one of several available houses in a former resort community of pre-turn of the century homes. They were simple and hardly outfitted with modern electricity. There was one bare bulb hanging from the center of the room with a pull chain to turn it on and off; you could see the electrical conduit running over the plaster to reach it. No switches existed on the walls. You had a kitchen with space to eat, a parlor or living room, a couple bedrooms and a single bathroom. All were painted white or pale green, chipped and peeling underneath the newest coat.

The old home was not really neglected, just never remodeled as if it was content without outlets on every wall, appliances filling the kitchen and fancy fixtures in each room. It could provide light at night, a roof over your head and a place to cook and eat your food.

What an act of defiance to find the homes intact and present together, almost as if they had collaborated daring anyone to modernize, saying, “We have been here for almost a century and do not require changes to be viable; we need not take on the accessories of modernity to be worthy or useful.”

We Should Have Taken Better Care of Him

Paul Laurence Dunbar and Byron Herbert Reece - two poets who both died young, suffered with tuberculosis and struggled to achieve time for their craft with so much of their energy necessarily spent simply earning money to live.

Today I recognized the similarity while reading a short biography of Dunbar. Occasionally you will hear someone say, "If you could sit down and talk with anyone from the past who would you choose?" I want to speak with Paul Laurence Dunbar; better yet, I want to meet with him and James Weldon Johnson together (they were friends). I would love to be a fly on the wall while they conversed.

It is said verse literally flowed from Dunbar. He wrote:

"I do not believe that a young man, whose soul is turbulent with a message which should be given to the world through the pulpit or the press, should shut his mouth and shoe horses."

How many messages from Reece and Dunbar and so many others have gone unheard? I like to think a time will come when the import of unspoken yearnings and unfulfilled achievements will be realized.

Many are familiar with Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This is the full poem the title comes from, written by Dunbar entitled, "Sympathy."

I am grateful he chose to speak the turbulence of his soul though he died at the age of thirty-three. We should have taken better care of him.

Spark in a Dying Fire

Reflections on “Frost at Midnight”


If only we could be free, as ash floating from the embers.
No restraints, no responsibilities; no schedules or accountability.

The infant sleeps soundly, at peace in such a way no man could ever be.
And according to the poet’s recollections of childhood, no child could ever be.

The babe’s peace hinges on fulfilled needs. There is no real freedom there.
What then, is freedom’s identifying mark?

Beyond the monotony of routine and the prison of dim surroundings.
Even nature, a healing teacher, becomes dull as a constant companion.

Where is the spark?
The small speck of rightness surrounded by all that is cheap and temporary?


I am appalled and humbled frequently at the recognition of my own ignorance, spending years confident that my understanding of a particular aspect of the world is sound. And then, in a single discussion with a friend or in a few sentences from a book I realize what had always seemed accurate no longer works. How can this be? How can I know less after years of life and study? Must I resign myself to the apparent fact that I perceive and intuit details, yet am simply unable to correctly interpret or synthesize them?

Coleridge speaks to his sleeping child, and to me. Though his stanza tends toward a pantheistic view of God, the words are memorable:

“He shall mould thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.”


I may not have all the answers or even the right questions. It does not matter how often I encounter thoughts or ideas clearer than my own. But what is imperative is the desire to wonder, to explore, and reason.

“He shall mould [my] spirit.”
“And by giving make it ask.”

This is a gifted mark of freedom.

And from a master . . .

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

from “Frost at Midnight”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You can read the entire poem here: The Poetry Foundation

Reverie

Time it just right and you can sit by the water’s edge where the golds of autumn not only wrap above you, but blanket the earth like snow obscuring path and stream where all vision belongs to one scene. There is no boundary, no regulation, no protocol as to how you should interpret the surroundings. For a few brief days the world can be anything. And that is true freedom, isn’t it? To receive no dictation.

But it does not last. We are not allowed the reverie. We are taught repeatedly the lessons our seasons reveal.

One of Ben Witherington’s favorite phrases in his books and lectures is that God reveals enough to give us hope, but not so much that we don’t have to live by faith.

So I await the time when experience will retain eternally all the vividness of fall, purity of winter, creativity of spring and abundance of summer.

Acorns and Graces

The rains were plentiful this season—for weeks now acorns have been dropping. They pelt the roof like hail even in the absence of storm winds. It is startling. All hours of the day and night they fall.

This morning, a single seed rested in the crevice of a rotting tree stump. The acorn had balanced there in the moist, dark air until warmed and stirring, it wound a curl of root into the bark, more soil than wood.

Gathered in a circle last evening, a group of women expressed, each in turn, a strength they possessed. There was giving, intuitiveness, humor, friendship, parenting, listening, music, and singing. Their gifts were simple, their field of influence small. Likely none of their achievements would ever be grand or noted by many. Yet it did not matter. For they were joined in purpose, connected in spirit to continue offering the graces they possessed. And it was good. And thus, linked together, they were also linked to other women in other parts of the world persisting to be what the God they loved had made them to be.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Today a friend munched a crisp golden apple its juices running down her arm as she commented on how crazy the deer were over them. They never left her more than a handful of apples from her tree, and she could certainly understand why. I started thinking about fall and cool weather and delicious cider, but also, how even good things can turn bad.

As children we played around and under the two apple trees in the far corner of our backyard. The trees were close enough to each other to form a roof of spring blossom-lace with slightly rosier petals on the Red Delicious side. The fruit would bud and grow in gentle rains, and the grass thickened beneath the limbs thriving in the natural fertilizer that fell to decay the year before. We cooled our bodies in the shade, buried our toes through the rich blades of grass, and ate whenever we felt hungry.

But soon worms embedded themselves in the fruit, and the boys next door threw rotten apples from their trees into our yard, and the yellow jackets swarmed intoxicated by the sweet pungent air, and Dad would threaten to make us squish the brown pulpy dead fruit through our fingers if we didn’t hurry and mind his continued requests to clear them all out from under the trees so he could mow.

And then I wondered why things seem bad only when they don’t seem good for us.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree?

What would be the chance in the same week of reading two references to tree bark? First, I found within the pages of the Fall 2009 issue of Ruminate: faith in literature and art a note to the editors from David James Duncan (he is judging their short story prize). He quotes Eugene Peterson’s phrase, “the bark of the tree of religion,” and goes on to question in his own words if a “de-barked, religionless, broken invocation of stripped faith” couldn’t unveil a “living Center.”

Duncan makes a good point suggesting the content of our prayers need not be “agreed-upon.” Is it really necessary to approach our God (my word) using established creeds? I think most would answer no, at least not always, for a prayer called out instinctively can equally be heard. But implied in his letter is that the living Center is there simply because we have “called to It by Name.”

My second encounter with “bark” for the week came from Ben Witherington in his book, The Living Word of God. He writes that it is the fruit (not the bark) that draws us to the tree. Once there, it seems to me, it is our own fruit that signifies “who” or “what” our living Center is.

Secret Stirrings

I sit surrounded by volumes of old and contemporary literature, journals of varied styles and file cabinets of papers wondering when in my life poetry first became a voice. What poet contributed an image or word that lingered in my mind long after the page was closed? And why the poem over story that spoke with equal honesty to the questions of living?

I saw in lines of the poets, things I could learn about life at a time when I knew nothing. And there were covert messages, secret stirrings that hinted at ideas beyond the literal. I delighted in decoding them. Nothing in life seemed literal to me; the echo of similar stirrings within myself pointed to what I later discovered to be the voice of truth.

Here, a few samples of those who spoke earliest to me:

. . .

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

. . .

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

. . .

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

. . .

from Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

~ ~ ~

. . .

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

. . .

from And Did Those Feet by William Blake

~ ~ ~

. . .

A fearful hope was all the world contained;

. . .

The brows of men by the despairing light

Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits

The flashes fell upon them; some lay down

And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest

Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;

. . .

And War, which for a moment was no more,

Did glut himself again—a meal was bought

With blood, and each sate sullenly apart

Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;

All earth was but one thought—and that was death

. . .but two

Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies: they met beside

The dying embers of an altar place,

. . .

And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands

The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery; then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other’s aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died—

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. . . .

The populous and the powerful was a lump

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—

A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.

. . .

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were withered in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need

Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

from Darkness by George Gordon, Lord Byron

~ ~ ~

. . .

With all the numberless goings-on of life,

Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets, everywhere

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

And in far other scenes! For I was reared

In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mold

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

. . .

from Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

All photos courtesy of Vengiletti