A Splash of Wonder from Nubs of Nothing

Well, I'm still alive.  And it's wonderful.  While I'm not quite ready, like Simeon in the New Testament after glimpsing the baby Jesus, to pray, "Lord, let me now depart in peace, for my eyes have seen..." I do feel like something of a milestone has been reached.  I suppose that in the grand scheme of things it isn't all that important, but I would call it wondrous -- and something of divinity within my reach.

When the nursery man first handed it to us at the store -- a pot of soil with two short protruding nubs -- I asked pessimistically if I would still be alive by the time it finally had anything to show for itself.  He didn't so much answer as merely knowingly smile. 

Since that day it has hardly been left to itself.  We have been attentive, and more or less patient.  It has grown -- surprisingly so -- from those two little nubs into a nascent stalks and eventually into bush-like proportions.  A few weeks ago buds appeared -- barely berry-size, but there dotting the branches.  Day by day they swelled -- prune-sized, and then more.  And then something began to peek out from the tips of the buds -- a purple so deep is was almost black.  Then time, it seemed, stood still.  It was as though after all that climbing, a plateau had been reached and all creation would have to wait while it gathered in its second breath necessary to finally reach that vista.  Or having crowned, a rest before birth's final push.

I have a love/hate relationship with patience.  Anticipation can almost consume me -- which is wonderful when planning a vacation.  That is the very reason we choose to plan them so far in advance; that way we get to enjoy the trip over and over again -- before we even begin it.  The trip itself becomes less the main event than the sorbet at the end of an already glorious meal.  But that kind of distractedness is not all that great when other matters demand some of that attention -- like work.  That, and I am only in my old age beginning to make peace with this notion of delayed gratification.  So it is that I have both hated and loved these months of anticipation.  All this time, and in the face of driving rain and ferocious winds, I have watched and watered and worried and waited and fed and frequently fretted over this fragile, emergent life; anxious to finally behold its floral denouement.

Waited, that is, until yesterday afternoon.  When I left for a meeting early in the morning I could see that something was different.  Looking back, I suppose it had finally emerged, but not yet opened.  Returning home later in the day, the distractions finally satisfied, we crept back to the soil bed beside the house.

And smiled...

...a delight that, given the swarm of surrounding buds...

...is the first of many to come.

The Energetic Production of ... Patience

"Humans reward enterprise, while nature rewards patience."
"It became clear to me that there is more to be discovered than invented..."
(Wes Jackson, Altars of Unhewn Stone, p. 8)

When Lori and I became trainers in the Couple Communications curriculum, we were struck by how much of the focus was on listening -- listening to self, and listening to your partner.  Anchoring the teachings is something called "the Awareness Wheel" that helps focus ones attention on different aspects of internal and external messages -- raw data, thought processes through which we filter the data, emotions, resident wants, and both attempted and intended actions.  Real communication occurs, according to the curriculum, when we become mindful of all those aspects of ourselves and also our partner.  Awareness.  Attentiveness to what is going on.  Listening. 

From the wisdom of his farming, land management perspective, Jackson seems to be echoing this essential insight.  There is, he says, "more to be discovered than invented."  Listening.  Discerning what is already there.  Discovering -- the interplay of earthworm and earth; the circle of sun and water and mineral and cellulose and animal and waste and sun and water and mineral...; the various patterns of consumption of one crop as opposed to another; the inter-dependence of grasses and trees and topsoil and stream, butterflies and bees and blossoms and fruit.  Listening.  Watching.  Discovering.  Discerning.  He might also add to that process of discernment, discovering where and how we best fit into those circles. 

I think about how much of my time is spent trying to be inventive -- creative, imaginative, clever.  Interpreting a biblical text; writing a sentence; bending the grammatical form of a word.  It isn't, I would argue, a waste of time.  For one thing, it's fun.  It gives me a buzz.  For another, I do believe that creativity reveals one dimension of the image of God within us.

But recognizing, as well, that my crafty imagination pales in comparison with the Divine one that took mud and made it Me, discovery promises, indeed, to be an inexhaustible well into which we might dip whatever buckets we can find.

Is it possible that patience, itself -- time abandoned, attentive listening and looking -- could be grace-filled enterprise?

Summer Longing in the Making

Wearing comfortable sweats and curled up on the sofa before a warming fire, I watch the falling snow. It's been coming down since before 6:15 a.m. when I dropped Lori off at the market to meet her ride. Already the deck was thoroughly blanketed in white, and the lawn, at least what I could see of it from the porchlight glow, was white as well.

And it is April 12. The belly-swollen robins must be scratching their heads. As if to remind us that we are not in charge -- that our wishes are not commands -- winter has returned. The forecasters are assuring us that this will be a brief visit-- 70-degrees is the mid-week prediction -- but for now it is chilly, wet, windy and white. I think back with a smile to that first glimpse of flake -- early December, or was it November? -- and how exciting it felt. I love snow; indeed, winter has been one of the attractions of this home for this southern boy who seldom experienced it. But what I'm now confirming is that it was less the winter, itself, than the contrasting seasons it helped set apart.

And I'm ready now for the contrast. I have known for years now that there is no more beautiful spring than the one which follows a bitter winter. Bitter this winter has been. I'm ready now for that beautiful spring. I can wait, of course. I have little choice. But my imagination is alive with the colors forthcoming, and the singing I hear from intrepid birds even now only makes the longing deeper.

Just to galvanize my patience, I think ahead to those late summer days when the temperature, like a sweater caught on a splinter, will almost certainly and humidly hang at triple digits, leaving me desperate for a cooling breeze. I'll look back wistfully on this mid-April snow...

...and laugh.

Discerning the Music and One's Place Within It

The CD player malfunctioned. It happened Sunday evening during a Christmas program while a visiting liturgical dance group was performing. Propped up on the organ bench, the operators had labored with some difficulty to get it to play in the first place, and then scurried to find a microphone they could lay nearby when the volume proved inadequate. But then halfway into the routine, the music simply stopped.

I wasn't familiar with the song, but had noticed that I was in the minority. Most of the congregation had started singing along. So when the technology failed, several supportive onlookers tried to undergird the dancers from the pews. But it limped. Then, out of the corner of my eye I noticed movement from the guest musical director who had been leaning against the wall beside me. Precariously he threaded his way between the music stands and the microphone cords, the extra chairs and the guitars leaning nearby and took his place at the keyboard where his hands stopped short, hovering above the keys.

And he listened. He listened to the handful of people still singing the song. He listened to the fading memory of the melody through the speakers. And after patient attending, his hands adjusted over the keyboard, landed, and began to play...

...exactly on key. Exactly on melody. Seamlessly. Beautifully.

I never knew quite when, but eventually I realized that the CD player had revived, and the keyboardist gradually withdrew to the background of the music -- while remaining involved, just in case. So deft had been the musician's finesse that the line between his involvement and the recording was almost indiscernible.

It was, I'm sure, musical excellence and expertise. I commend his training and his craft. But I am just as sure that the artfulness of the moment emerged from his patience between the fall and the rise. He waited. He listened. He paid attention. And only then -- only after discerning the moment, the music, and his place within it -- did his fingers begin to play.

As one too often impetuous, too often quick to fill the silences and the gaps with words or motions any one of which will do, I learned something Sunday night about pausing, listening, and discerning the key.