Nothing To See Here!

The other morning I took a trail out to the northern end of the island on which I was spending some time. When I emerged from the tree covered trail onto what is labeled on the map as "Pebble Beach" two women were there already. One was sitting, looking out to sea but the other was curled up in a fetal position with her back to the water, her face tucked in and eyes determinedly shut. I couldn't help asking if she was alright.

"There is nothing here," she said, gesturing wildly with her arm without changing position. "I carried my painting supplies all this way and there is absolutely nothing here to see! Nothing worth painting, for sure!"

I looked around at the large, colorful rocks that make me think Pebble Beach was named by giants with a different sense of proportion than me. I looked at the shoreline where I could see some cottages hunkered down near the water's edge. I looked out at the small islands where I knew I would see seals if I was patient enough to wait for them to move. I looked at the sky and the water surface where ducks, gulls and cormorants lazed around, and I wondered how she could possibly think that there was nothing here to see. 

Her friend ventured a careful suggestion that she needed to look around, and I might have said what I was thinking out loud, "it helps to open your eyes, if you want to see anything." 

I walked away, to a place where I could get closer to the water, took off my sneakers and socks and settled in for awhile, soaking my feet and watching what was going on in the natural world. The water was bracingly cold, as it slipped over the kelp, moss-covered rocks and my feet in a way that soothed me and also woke up a lot of nerve endings. 

I felt bad for the woman who lay curled up with her eyes closed. She reminded me of how easy it is for us to shut ourselves off from joy if we are not willing to be open to simple pleasures and small joys. 

When I am having a bad day, an approach that helps me climb out of the doldrums is to pay closer attention to every little thing around me. I might go outside and encourage myself to look for something interesting, surprising or beautiful - a tiny yellow flower blooming in the driveway, an ant carrying a crumb leftover from Gary's and my breakfast, an orange butterfly flitting past, a bird singing or a chipmunk insistently chirping nearby. 

When I am in a funk, it is the little things that lift my spirits more than anything else. Mostly, it is the things I might not notice otherwise, the things it might be easy to pass over with barely a glance, declaring, "there's nothing to see here!" But my eyes tell me otherwise, especially when I keep them open, especially when I am willing to look beyond the surface and wait for the details of each place to emerge more clearly, to show themselves to me. That is when I recognize that there is plenty to see here, plenty to take in and appreciate, plenty of things that make the journey well worth my while.

 

Resilience Lessons from Ducklings

I am on Monhegan Island in Maine for a couple of weeks. It is a place Gary and I have spent time for the past ten years, finding here a sense of respite and calm that soothes my soul. Mostly what I do here is sit on rocks or cliffs, and watch the ocean and her inhabitants go about their lives.

Yesterday, I was sitting in a place called Gull Cove, on rocks pretty near the shoreline. What looked like a floating log appeared on the water moving toward shore, but as it got closer, I realized that it was actually not a log at all, but rather a mother duck and her long line of progeny following closely behind. As they moved into the cove, the little ones started attempting to tip forward putting their bills under the water, desperately trying to capture a bite of something yummy. The problem was, that they were so buoyant they kept bobbing back up to the surface, often with quite a bit of force and a big splash!

The mother duck led them up to the very top edge of a rock where they started jostling for position. As they each tried to get themselves settled on the rock’s ridge line, they kept bumping into one another, and inevitably one or two of the little balls of fluff tumbled down the side of the rather large rock. The first time this happened, I gasped, worried that the little ones who had lost their place in the line-up would be hurt or worse, but as soon as they stopped rolling, they righted themselves and started climbing right back up to the top of the rock.

Soon, the ducklings were lined up in a row along the edge of the rock, happily nestled next to one another. Calm reigned for a little while.

It was not very long before the mother decided it was time to get up and move again. As soon as she climbed off the rock, her little ones followed, a line of fluff balls waddling and tumbling down into the water. As they paddled around in the cove, they started practicing their bobbing again, dipping their little bills in the water, and amazingly soon, actually diving down under water where they stayed for longer than I thought possible. Somehow, in the course of a very little amount of time, they had figured out how to stay under water long enough to achieve their goal of finding some delectable snack. Maybe it was that period of rest that allowed their little duck minds to open up to the next lesson?

I sat on the edge of the cove for more than an hour, watching the ducks until the mothers began to lead them out into the deeper waters of the ocean. Waves washed over them, scattering the ducklings every which way. I worried that some of them would be lost in the fray, but eventually mother and babies were reunited beyond the roughest waves and they set off to their next destination.

Reflecting on what I had seen, I was struck by the resilience and resolve of those little ducklings. No more than a ball of fluff, each of them had a fierce determination to accomplish every new task. It didn’t matter if they bobbed to the surface when they tried to dive, they just kept at it until they figured out how to manage the mechanics. It didn’t matter if they got knocked off the rock by a restless sibling, they just got their feet under them and climbed up again. 

I know that we humans have far more tasks that we need to accomplish in order to achieve competence and adulthood, but I think we can learn from our fluffy companions that a little resilience and a whole lot of resolve goes a long way. If we think we can, then chances are, we can!

Where Stewardship & Ownership Meet

 I am getting ready to preach for the first time since I retired last year. The scriptures focus on Creation, which usually makes me smile. But just yesterday the Supreme Court pulled EPA protections away from wetlands, leaving room for the erosion of over 50 years worth of careful stewardship of these precarious and precious places. The wetlands are the spaces that absorb excess waters when extreme rains come, they protect the integrity and clarity of lakes, rivers, and oceans by filtering sediment and toxins.

The case that brought this to the Court's attention has to do with the concept of “ownership” of land. Some folks bought land, for a pretty penny, and they want to do what they choose with it. On the surface that sounds perfectly understandable, but if we rush to defend "ownership" we often do so by casting the idea of "stewardship" into the shadows.

Gary and I live on land that is in part shared space. We are part of a community of 6 homeowners who each "own" 10 acres and share in the care and stewardship of about 80 acres of orchard, meadow and woodland. When the community was conceived, nearly 50 years ago, the original participants had a loosely defined desire to protect the land and hold it in reserve for future generations. About 20 years ago we placed a good bit of the land into the Vermont Land Use program, agreeing not to develop the land and to care for it in special ways in exchange for a reduction in taxes.

We have interpreted this responsibility in different ways over the years, and for the most part, have been able to agree on what that looks like - mowing the meadow after the Bobolinks and Savannah Sparrows have fledged, cutting trees in the wood lot so as to increase habitat and mast for creatures and also to encourage the growth of healthy trees. Our orchard has presented a challenge, however. It turns out there are a wide variety of approaches to managing an old orchard, and divergent views of what we are working toward with said management.

All of this contributes to my asking, "so, what is good stewardship? What does it look like to take care of an orchard, a meadow, a woodland or a wetland? How much should we be interfering with the natural course of events, and for whom are we managing the land, anyway?" My ready answer is that we are taking care of the land for future generations, but does this mean our children and grandchildren or does it mean the people who will be here seven generations and more from now? 

I would hope that this is the same thing, but recent discussions have proven me wrong, or at least out of synch with the perspectives of some of my friends and neighbors. As I reread the creation story in Genesis, I became aware that my perspective has been shaped by this scripture and how the environmental movement interprets stewardship. It has been shaped by the Indigenous perspective that says the land does not belong to us, but rather we belong to the land. In this vein, I have to put aside my personal needs and desires and bow to the needs of the earth and all of the living beings who depend on her, not just us humans.

It is difficult for us to give up the personal perspective. It is difficult for us to let go of the notion of ownership and all of the rights and privileges this entails. It is difficult to move from a place of bending the land to our wishes and instead, putting ourselves in service to the land, but this is what is needed. It is necessary to do this in order to ensure that there is a sustainable future for any of us.

Obligation or Joyful Pleasure ?

 I was swimming today, reflecting on how nice it is to be staying with my daughter and able to make easy use of the very close-by community pool to swim laps. There was a subtle but important difference between the pleasure I was taking in the feel of moving through the water as I relaxed into the strokes I know so well and the concern I had felt earlier in the day when I thought, “I need to get to the pool so I can do my laps.”

“Actually, I don’t have to swim laps today if I don’t feel like it,” I realized. “I can go if I want to, but I don’t have to. And I can swim if I want to, but there is nothing saying that I have to do laps. I could just splash around for awhile without worrying about how long I swam or how many laps I completed.” 

I sat back on my heels and pondered the possibilities for a little while, savoring the freedom I recognized myself to be luxuriating within. Given this new sense of limitless possibilities, I felt myself released from the need to conform to expectations. I decided I would go to the pool, but once I was there I would simply do whatever felt good and right in the moment. 

When I arrived, I was greeted with a warm welcome by the women at the desk, who are getting to know me. And as I walked into the pool area, the lifeguard and I talked about how quiet it was. She told me just a ten minutes before, the pool had been pretty busy. As a lap swimmer, I was glad for the quiet because it meant I would probably have a lane to myself and could swim without worrying about bumping into other people, especially when swimming the backstroke.

My swim today was just right, because it was just what I needed to tap into the simple pleasure of, not only swimming, but of being alive and of appreciating my body for all it does for me, not least of all carrying me through the water with a certain ease. 

This whole experience reminded me of an interaction I had with a dear woman who directed the choir at a church I served for quite some time. I sang in the choir there, and I have to admit that I did it out of a certain sense of obligation. “You have a good voice. You ought to sing,” was the message the Protestant work ethic and all of my ancestors who espoused its principles imposed on me. But one day Sue, the director, and I were talking. With a sparkle in her eye she said to me, “you know, some people sing because they actually enjoy it.”

Caught red-handed by her incredibly perceptive comment, I thought long and hard about the place of joy in my singing and in my life. Somehow I had managed to take something joyful and fashion it into a “should”. Wow. That was not how I wanted to live my life. From then on, when I sang with the choir I set my intention for experiencing the sheer pleasure of singing. Sometimes, despite my good intentions, I have to admit I grumbled a bit as I made my way to choir practice on a cold winter night, but Sue had definitely helped me see the value of tapping into the joy whenever I could.

I feel like today’s experience with swimming was a reminder to tap into the joys of my life as much as I possibly can. Obligations have their place, but not when they crowd joy and pleasure out of the picture.

A Centering Place

Whenever I am at home in Vermont, I like to make a daily trek to this little stream that runs behind our house. Sometimes I carry a stick of incense, but I always bring a little bit of well water from our tap as I make my way along the wooded path my feet have created over the years. When I arrive at the stream, I offer a prayer of gratitude for the beauty of the day - whether sunny or rainy, warm or cold, and for the gifts that life brings to me. Sometimes this is a highlight of my day - recognizing the simple gift of being alive and able to take in the beauty and sources of wonder evident all around me.

Once my prayers are done and observations of all there is to be grateful for feel complete, I settle in at the edge of the stream and watch the water flow for a while. If I am feeling off, unsettled in any way, spending time with the stream helps. As the water flows, my frayed nerves calm down. The waters refresh and soothe me, clearing my mind of chatter and worries. I like to imagine the water washing my cares away, carrying them down stream and out to the sea where they are diluted into the vastness of the ocean.

This ritual grounds me in the place that I call home. It helps me to feel more centered, especially when facing challenges or dealing with worries. The picture above shows the spot where the water pools and some incense burns over it. You may be able to sense the peace and calm of this place through my words, but it is even more likely that you are calling to mind a place that offers this sense of centeredness for you. I encourage you to go there whether in person or through your memories, and let your heart be at home for a while today.

Like a Butterfly

When Gary and I stopped in Virginia to spend a week with Sarah and Kyle, their neighbors, Debby and her daughter Callie invited us to come over and learn how to work with stained glass. During the pandemic, they had set up an entire studio in their home so they had everything we would need to try it out. When we arrived to take them up on their offer, Sarah and I were entranced by all of the beautiful and unique stained glass pieces displayed throughout their home.

Downstairs in the workshop, we each chose a simple pattern to work with - a butterfly for me and a hummingbird for Sarah. Our hosts assured us that if we caught on, and they were sure we would, that next time we could make something more interesting and complicated. Speaking for myself, this project was just the right amount of complicated for my first attempt, and the process itself certainly proved to be plenty interesting!

With our patterns in hand, we looked through several rainbows worth of colors to find just the right ones to match the finished products in our imaginations. We cut the glass carefully using special tools, and then sanded the edges of each piece with a grinder. This was the first aspect of the process that worked on me like a meditation. Holding tiny pieces of glass up to the grinder as the machine spun, my attention was transfixed as I watched for the moment when each edge perfectly fit my pattern. 

Once they had been ground just right, Callie showed me how to apply a special metal tape around each piece. Some more grinding was in order as I refit the pieces together with the tape in place. Once the tape was secure, it was time to solder the pieces together. This turned out to be yet another opportunity for mindful focus as it was tricky to get the solder to lay down smoothly with no bumps or sharp spots.

Since I wanted my butterfly to have black edges, the last part of the process was to coat the cooled solder with a patina, let it set overnight and then buff it into a nice shine. Saying a grateful "goodbye" along with deep appreciation for Callie and Debby's patient teaching, I was excited to bring my butterfly home.

I learned more than the basic skills of working with stained glass during the hours I spent bringing my butterfly into being. As I said, it was a meditative experience in many ways because so much of the process required patiently shaping and reshaping each tiny piece of glass until all of the pieces fit together just right. It was a deep teaching about the importance of paying attention to detail and of the value of each and every part of the larger whole, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it was. Every little piece of glass mattered. Paying careful attention at every stage of the process made a difference in the butterfly and in me.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.” As I was learning how to work with stained glass, a deep sense of contentment settled on me. It came to me as an unexpected gift that I had not even thought to pursue. 

My completed butterfly in a sunny window at home in Vermont. 

(I took this last picture, but all of the previous ones were taken by my daughter, Sarah Colletti.)

Mud Season Blues

Photo by Gary Lindorff

This in-between season is one of the toughest ones for many of us who live in the Northeast. We know that spring is coming, but winter is not quite done with us yet. There are tantalizing days when the sun shines brilliantly in a crisp blue sky, but when you walk out the door, the freezing temperatures shock the breath out of your lungs. Then there are days when the winds are warm and invite you to take a stroll down one of the trails in the woods, only to sink into mud that threatens to pull the boot right off your foot. 

I live on a dirt road, so driving during mud season is particularly fraught. It can feel as if your vehicle is being taken over by some alien being that grabs your wheels, jerking you this way and that. Staying on the road can be quite a challenge! The ruts are sometimes deep enough that smaller cars have to be abandoned for a couple of days until someone can deliver a load of gravel and make our road passable again. My Subaru can usually negotiate the mud, but there have been a few times when I had to leave it behind and hike home.

I am pretty tired of mud season already, and there is no guarantee of when it will be over. But there is one sweet glimmer of joy that makes its way into our lives this time of year along with the mud, and that is sugaring season. The conditions that make the mud so ubiquitous are the very same ones that make the maple sap flow. Warm days and freezing cold nights. When the conditions are right you can see and smell the sweet vapors rising out of sugaring sheds as the carefully collected sap is boiled down into delicious maple syrup. 

Photo by Meredith Pratt

Anticipating this treat takes the edge off of the frustrations that accompany mud season for many of us. Even if you don't have much of a sweet tooth, it is nice to sample the wares of local maple sugar producers. Before coming to Vermont I didn't give much thought to the difference between light fancy and dark rich grades of syrup, but an early spring taste test can be enlightening. To take a break from the mundanities of mud season, you could try sugar on snow or one of the wide variety of baked goods to be found at a maple festival in one of Vermont's small towns. If you are feeling particularly ambitious, you could try a cup of tea or coffee brewed with maple sap collected from a back yard tree. 

A little maple syrup may not cure you of the mud season blues, but it is a nice respite for sure.

Photo by Ethan Pratt