Mushrooms and Monguette

Plants are amazing. They have the power to take up inert, non-living elements like minerals from rock dissolved in water, combine them with energy captured directly from sunlight, and assemble them into living/growing/ever-changing structures of great beauty and complexity. Poetically speaking, animals are just parasites, living off the hard work of plants, either directly by eating them or indirectly by eating other animals that ate plants. But it's plants that work the transformative magic, from non-life to life.

That, at least, is the rather simplified picture of the natural world that reflects the state of biological understanding I grew up with in the 1950s, before ecology and genetics came into their own in scientific circles. Now of course we know that it's actually a lot more complicated.

Consider fungi, for example. Scientists now classify them as neither plants nor animals, but instead as living beings comprising an entirely separate kingdom in biological taxonomy.  And their work is the opposite of plants. They are the decomposers, life forms that take apart the structures plants and animals create. And they are just as essential to a healthy ecosystem as the plants who bring life out of non-life.  They too--the decomposers--wield the power of transformation.  By disassembling the complex structures of no longer living plants and animals, they make the elements bound into those now-dead structures available again to be incorporated into new and different living beings. Sauteed mushrooms, anyone?

So what prompted these musings? Quick answer: two occurrences in the garden, plus the fact that today is Labor Day.

The garden first. About a week and a half ago, I took this picture of Mongo:

 

Never having been a foster-mother to a pumpkin before, I wasn't sure, but that really looked to me like a pumpkin approaching harvest time.  So the next day (last Tuesday), I seized the opportunity to consult with Emily of Mile Creek Farm (we are the downtown pickup point for their CSA). She said that yes indeed, Mongo was now harvestable, and their practice was to go ahead and harvest, not leave things sitting around. By that time, Mongo looked like this:

 

If you look closely at this picture, you will notice that by then Mongo's warts had turned entirely orange, and that I followed Emily's advice and cut Mongo's stem from the vine. Mongo is now adorning our kitchen table, along with some of Emily's sunflowers:

 

I'm pretty sure it was Thursday when I cut Mongo's stem, Friday when I brought him inside, and Saturday when I washed him off and gave him the place of honor on the table.  Sunday--yesterday--we had a good soaking rain for several hours, very welcome, as the garden had gotten quite dry.  Sunday afternoon, on impulse, I checked the pumpkin vine, and what do you suppose I found?

 

Mongo has a sibling! That little green bulbous swelling at the base of the flower is exactly what Mongo looked like at the same age.  Since it is impossible to determine the gender of a pumpkin, and since Mongo sounds to me like a boy's name, I have arbitrarily decided to balance things out and designate this one a girl.  I'm calling her Monguette, the French feminine form of Mongo.  Now it's a race against time. Today is already September 1--will there be enough growing season left for Monguette to ripen? We'll see.  Even if she doesn't ripen fully, I bet there will be enough time for her to become an excellent Halloween decoration.

The arrival of Monguette is the first of the two garden occurrences I referred to above. The second happened this morning.  As I mentioned, yesterday we had a good soaking rain. This morning when I went out to retrieve the newspaper, here is what I saw:

 

So lovely, so delicate, these little decomposers that sprang up overnight! Look in that second picture, how they seem to be embracing my birthday rock.

So here I am on Labor Day, the first Labor Day of my retirement, reflecting on mushrooms and Monguette. My birthday rock, symbol of my life so far, embraced by lovely decomposers. One structure of my life, the formal work of spirituality ministry, is over. Now it's time for the lovely decomposers to embrace that dead structure, disassemble it, and make its elements available for reassembly into something new and full of life--something perhaps as unexpected, untamed, and vigorous as the vine that gave me Mongo and Monguette.  Will there be enough time for whatever fruit comes to ripen fully? Who knows? But I bet there will be enough time for it to be a blessing in some way.

My job is to welcome both the embrace of the decomposers and the wild unruly new sprouts. It's a different kind of labor, but well worth celebrating on this Labor Day.

 

 

 

Mongo and the Rock

Since I live in a 19th century town house, I don't really have a yard. My garden is a strip running around the four sides of my house, forming a hollow square from one to three feet wide.  In the last month or so, two new roundish objects have appeared in opposite corners of my garden. In the southwest corner in the back, a volunteer squash plant which appeared mysteriously in June has completely  commandeered the limestone walkway there. At first, when I just saw the leaves and flowers, I thought it might be a zucchini plant. But this is no zucchini! Meet Mongo:

A bit of online searching suggests that Mongo is a Knucklehead pumpkin. Mongo started out deep dark green, but in the last couple of days a bit of orange is starting to show, as you can see in the picture.  Despite the warty appearance, these pumpkins are perfectly edible.

Diametrically across from Mongo, in the northeast corner of my garden in front, an early birthday present has been installed, a lovely chunk of granite with streaky dark spots and flecks of mica and quartz. Meet Rock:

Landscapers call such objects boulders, but in this case that word strikes me as overkill.  It's really just a biggish rock. Michael and I had a lovely time last weekend visiting sand and gravel companies and landscape firms until we found a rock I like at a place that would deliver and install it (aging backs must be respected). 

So I found myself reflecting on Mongo and the rock. Unexpected (weird, gnarly) life in one corner; solid, steady rock in the other corner.

The Mongo vine is such an extraordinary outburst of life-force, with huge tough stems and gigantic leaves, that just appeared, unbidden and unexpected. And the rock was very deliberately chosen, brought in on purpose, and just sits there, connecting me both to my own roots and to all things that abide. Connecting: around here, the rock below the soil is limestone, because long before the dinosaurs this used to be the bed of a shallow inland sea. But where I grew up, in the piedmont of the Appalachians, the bedrock is granite, often breaking through the surface as real boulders and filling the streambeds as pebbles. Hence my granite birthday rock connects me to my roots.

Somewhere in between the sprouting of the Mongo vine and the installation of my birthday rock, I came to a decision. Last week I notified my directees and colleagues that I am retiring from spiritual direction ministry, after 30+ years. A number of factors came together into that decision, but one of them was surely a sense that it's time to embrace the new life springing up in unexpected shapes and directions--the Mongo factor. There were other factors as well, and the decision took its time crystallizing, but it did and still does feel right.

What comes next I will discover by going there. Some things already in place will now have room to flourish, and there is room for more to emerge. But what is clear is that as I face forward, it feels like I am standing on bedrock--hence my choice of birthday present.  And the gratuitous, outrageous vigor and lushness of Mongo are hope incarnate, enfleshed in a warty Knucklehead pumpkin.

P.S.: UPDATES:

The owl has been glazed and fired, and has found a home.

And the crape myrtles that I thought I had lost are in full and glorious bloom.

Come Feel With Me

"I don't really want to watch any more of this," he said.  I agreed, so after only five minutes or so of the second episode of a streamed series Netflix had suggested to us we switched instead to a recorded episode of Big Bang Theory.  Ah, the joys of TiVo!

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I kept puzzling over this little episode. My husband's full comment had been, "I don't really want to watch any more of this--it's coarse." I agreed that I didn't really want to watch any more, but "it's coarse" didn't seem to fit quite right for me. It felt a little off, a little imprecise.

I've known more or less forever that my tastes in leisure/relaxation/entertainment experiences don't quite track with the cultural mainstream. I suspect that people have sometimes thought of me as a bit of a prude or a goody-goody, and I've always been a bit irritated by that, because it doesn't really fit my inner experience. But I've never been able to articulate exactly why it doesn't feel like a fit.

And then, some time after that little experience of switching from Netflix to Big Bang, a word popped into my head: empathy! Yes! That's the common thread: I strongly prefer books, movies, TV shows, activities that stretch and exercise and strengthen my empathy muscles.

They don't have to be deadly serious. They don't have to track perfectly with my personal value system. But they do have to engage, and ideally expand, my capacity for empathy.

I like things that give me an empathy workout. I feel good, in a way directly analogous to the "good tired" one feels after a physical workout, when I've had an empathy workout.

So I thoroughly enjoy Big Bang Theory, with its ongoing themes of the pain of feeling like the odd one out and the goodness and healing power of friendship.  I love Huckleberry Finn and Jane Austen and One Hundred Years of Solitude, so different in tone and setting, but so alike in keen and ultimately loving insight into human relationships.

Empathy workouts don't have to center only on human-with-human relationships. It can encompass human relationships with the rest of the natural world as well. For an experience of pure awe and delight, watch My Life As a Turkey.

And I could not fail to mention that most magnificent, many-layered empathy workout, To Kill A Mockingbird (both book and movie).

Foyle's War, Modern Family, Schindler's List, Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti detective novels--I'm sure you could name more.

I'm a sucker for history museums and archeological sites, places where I can feel a connection to lives lived long ago.

At a Tavern Dinner, recreating an 1840's tavern experience,

at Dayton's Carillon Historical Park.

 

I love art museums, where entering into an artist's perception of reality can expand my own, and especially public art, where that can become a shared experience building a sense of community.

 

What I don't like, and even fear, are experiences offered as entertainment that in fact serve to numb or deaden our capacity for empathy. It's not coarseness, exactly, but callousness that repels me.  I also dislike and fear addictive numbing-out presented as recreation, whether it takes the form of violent video games, gambling, substance misuse and abuse, or objectified sex.

 

What I value and seek is that empathetic feeling-into experience, whether somber (the D.C. Holocaust Museum, Of Gods and Men) or light-hearted (Strictly Ballroom, The Princess Bride).

 

Empathy, connection, community, fellow-feeling--call it what you will. This is what refreshes me, re-creates me. And I think it's not just me, it's our whole hyper-polarized world that could use a little more of it.

Learning to Speak Clay

Two sessions of Handbuilt Pottery classes are now over, and I think I am starting to learn to speak clay.

And isn't it interesting that it should occur to me to say it that way? I can write and speak with at least reasonable fluency in two languages, with fair fluency in another two, and at least smatterings of three more. Language is my home turf.  It has always flowed easily for me and been a source of delight.

Working with clay, not so much. I enjoy it greatly, and I've been drawn to it for a long time, but that easy fluency isn't really there. Or maybe it's just that working with clay is such a different language family, compared to the Indo-European and Semitic families I have at least a nodding acquaintance with, that I am back to a baby's pace in learning this one.

[Pause while she savors the memory of her baby granddaughter's gurgles and squeaks in the background of phone conversations with her son.]

First there's just crying, then a whole repertoire of different kinds of crying. Then there are sounds deliberately made that are not crying. These go on for a long time and become quite varied before anything resembling a syllable emerges. And the syllables, in turn, become quite varied, and gradually assume the rhythms and melodies of the language the baby hears, while still remaining nonsense babbling.

Eventually, meaningful syllables, then words, then grammar and syntax emerge. Then you get your six year old grandson explaining his Magformers creations by saying, "The mating season is over, and now the pterosaurs have to defend the eggs from predators." (The kid watches a lot of nature specials on TV.)

[Parenthetical note: If you have kids on your gift list, get them Magformers. Heck, get some for yourself. Phenomenal toy.]

But do you ever finish learning to speak language? I don't think so. We can and do reach a state of effortless fluency, but there are always new words to learn or invent, new observations or insights to express, that keep stretching the limits of our language skills.

But back to clay. I think maybe these two sessions of classes have taken me through the repertoire of crying and varied non-crying sounds stages, with maybe some syllables and an occasional flash of fluent babbling emerging. I won't claim more.

So here are some of my gurglings and babblings in clay, and some of what I learned in making them.

The little green vase (or planter or whatever) is the very first piece I made. It was a class assignment to make a slab-built vessel with curved sides, plus encouragement to experiment with textured surfaces.  I added feet, because I like footed things. It was just a whim. I still like how it came out. The slight texture was from a texture block borrowed from the teacher.

The lidded jar came not long after. Actually, the lid came first, when I had been experimenting with coil-built vessels and had some leftover coils. The teacher suggested weaving them, then commented that they would make a good jar lid. So I added the outside rim to the lid, and piece on the underside to prevent slipping. Then I had to make a jar to go with the lid, so I used my slab-building skills for that. The idea for the decoration was mine, combining a stamped small flower and freehand grass stems. My teacher clearly wanted me to glaze the piece, but something in me resisted--I didn't want to lose the texture of the design. So I wiped it with red iron oxide and left it unglazed. I was happy with the result.

And here we have three coil-built pieces, from which I learned that it is very easy to make bad-to-average coiled pieces, and very very hard to make good ones. 'Nuff said.

 

Several people in the class were making very practical pieces like bread trays and dishes with very regular designs, so I thought I should at least try that approach.

The piece on the right in the picture above is the result: very regular and rectangular, with a very regular, symmetrical design pressed in. It's fine, but I'm not particularly excited about it. The one on the left, though, I like much better.  I made it later, during the second session of classes, when I was becoming a bit more confident in my own style. Instead of cutting a neat rectangle, I just left the clay edges in the shape they had upon emerging from the slab roller. The textures I made with a jar lid opener, a texture roller, and a piece of seashell that was deeply eaten away by marine worms. I actually like this piece a lot. I wish the glaze color came out better in the picture. From these two I learned that I like irregular, abstract looking textures and shapes better than ones where it looks like I have completely imposed my will on the clay.

In between making the two dishes seen above, I did some experimenting with deliberately cutting designs into the clay, rather than just impressing textures into it. Here are two examples.

 I was very excited about these two pieces while I was working with the clay, drawing the trunks and roots and branches freehand, using a small scallop shell for the ground texture, and using the wormy shell for the leaves. But once they got glazed, I was underwhelmed with the result. More experimentation, maybe with added layers, is needed.

I have discovered that I am resistant to scrapping leftover clay. As with the leftover coils that became a jar lid, I try to find ways to use my scraps.

These soap dishes result from that impulse. I didn't think out the design ahead of time. I was just fiddling with some leftover rolled-out clay, trying to make it interesting, and realized that the resulting shape would work as a soap dish that would hold a bar of soap upright, so it wouldn't get all soft and squishy. I added feet, of course--I do like feet!--and in the first series, represented by the brown one on the left, I tried punching holes for water to drain. I discovered that the glaze would fill in the holes, so in the second series, represented by the one with the sort of octopus design on the right, I just made designs. 

I even like using other people's leftovers. This piece was made from a leftover bit of extruded clay that a classmate shared when she put more clay into the extruder than she really needed.

To me it has a kind of 1930s feel to it, an era whose design I have always loved. I'm particularly happy with how the glaze worked out on it--I'm nowhere near as far along in learning the language of glaze as I am in learning the language of clay.

And finally, I did some experimenting with making pinch pots, again discovering that it's easy to make bad ones, hard to make good ones.  This is the only one I've made so far that I really like.

Do note the feet. He has a third one in the back, because three are very stable.

Like all human beings, I love the feeling of competence, of mastery. But this adventure in working with clay has given me a chance to revel in the delights of being a beginner, even now late in my seventh decade. It's wonderfully refreshing. I recommend it.

Sabbath Prayer

I attended Shabbat Morning Service yesterday. It was a Bat Mitzvah celebration, and the girl who was taking her place as a young woman in the congregation on this occasion designed and led the service, choosing which prayers we would all pray from the many possibilities offered in the Reform Siddur (prayerbook) her community uses.

Two of her choices stood out to me, so I thought I would share them here.

The first is a traditional Sabbath prayer, the Modim Anachnu Lach ("We are grateful"), but given a modern twist in this version. Think of a young girl, taking her place as a young woman, choosing this:


For the expanding grandeur of Creation,
worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies,
filling us with awe and challenging our imagination,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For this fragile planet earth, its times and tides, 
its sunsets and seasons,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For the joy of human life, its wonders and surprises,
its hopes and achievements,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For human community, our common past and future hope,
our oneness transcending all separation, our capacity to work
for peace and justice in the midst of hostility and oppression,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For high hopes and noble causes, for faith without fanaticism,
for understanding of views not shared,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For all who have labored and suffered for a fairer world,
who have lived so that others might live in dignity and freedom,
    Modim anachnu lach.

For human liberties and sacred rites:
for opportunities to change and grow, to affirm and choose,
    Modim anachnu lach.

We pray that we may live not by our fears but by our hopes,
not by our words but by our deeds.

Blessed are You, Adonai, Your Name is Goodness, and You are worthy of gratitude.


The second prayer is shorter, but it really made me sit up and take notice:


We oughtn't pray for what we've never known,
and humanity has never known:
unbroken peace,
unmixed blessing.
No.
Better to pray for pity,
for indignation,
discontent,
the will to see and touch,
the power to do good and make new.


Way to go, Emma! Thank you for your inspiring leadership!

 
 

"Prudence and Patience, Hope and Despair...

...and little Hog Island,
Way over there."

So goes a little ditty a friend taught me many years ago. He said it was a device for remembering the names of the islands in Narragansett Bay (or at least some of them; there are lots).

Sure enough, Google yields several sites which identify the jingle as a colonial-era children's rhyme. And there really are islands in Narragansett Bay with those names.

Prudence is the biggish island right under "NARR." 

Patience is the one under the B of Bay.

Hope is the bigger of the two above Patience.

Despair is the one in between Patience and Hope.

Hog Island is off to the left, just off the tip of the mainland,

almost obscured by the smoke from the ship depicted to its right.

It's a very "sticky" rhyme, as the memory experts would say, because of the rhythm, I suppose, and the humorous juxtaposition of the last line with the stolid New England sound of the first bit. It has certainly stuck with me for nearly fifty years now, with no external reinforcement, and it popped into my head as I sat down to write this post. You'll see why in a bit.

As I have on an almost daily basis for the last few weeks, when I was outside yesterday morning I peered intently at the bases of my crape myrtle bushes. I wasn't expecting much. In fact, a couple of days ago I officially gave up on them as victims of the brutal winter we had this year, and made arrangements for them to be cut down, dug out, and replaced.

This, I am sure you recall, was the winter we all learned the phrase "polar vortex." Climate change, we were told, was affecting ocean temperatures and thus weather patterns in a way that caused a looping of the jet stream that was unusually deep and, alas, unusually stable. This downward loop of the jet stream permitted the polar vortex, ordinarily held stable near the North Pole, to slip down and park itself more or less right where I live.

It was pretty horrible. It involved temperatures dipping at least 30 degrees lower than usual, and then just staying there for days and weeks at a time.

I was expecting to lose a lot of plants as a result. All the above-ground parts of my roses (all but one!) were clearly dead, and even when I eventually began to see some sprouts, I was afraid the sprouts wouldn't grow true to type, a not-uncommon problem with winter-damaged roses.

The only rose whose superstructure survived the Polar Vortex.

But one by one, the roses did sprout, and slowly it began to look like the leaves were indeed the right shape and color--and now, I'm even getting blooms that give clear proof that my roses survived.

The drama of rose survival played out slowly over the course of two months or so.  But through all that time, the crape myrtle bushes, my dearly beloved crape myrtles, which bloom like crazy in the stifling heat of midsummer, astonishing my Midwestern neighbors and connecting me deliciously to my Southern roots--these precious crape myrtles only looked deader and deader, as both stout stems and twigs dried out more and more.

Until yesterday morning.

I swear I checked them Wednesday, and they were still thoroughly dead. In fact, Wednesday night I was exchanging emails about where to locate replacement plants. But Thursday morning when I went out to fetch my vacationing neighbor's newspaper I checked one more time...and there it was. New growth. Not on all of them, but on two out of three, which gives me hope that #3 will follow in a day or two.

Look closely through the grass stalks, just to the right of the base.

The new leaves are reddish on top, with greener ones below.

 This is the right hand bush.

This one is easier to see, in among the dead stems. 

Newest leaves on top are still red, others are green.

This is the left hand bush.

No sprouts yet on the center bush.

 

I'll still need to get that dead superstructure chainsawed out of there, but I will have beautiful crape myrtle blossoms gracing the heat of summer this year. If anything, those robust, mature root systems, with less superstructure to support, will be able to really pour energy into the new growth (the fundamental principle of pruning, whether done by gardener or by nature).

 

I quickly called to cancel the order for removal and replacement, while reaffirming the need for radical cutting back.

 

And then my thoughts began to expand from the meteorological and horticultural into other areas.

 It isn't only in terms of weather that we are living in an era of climate change. Technologically, socio-culturally, religiously, politically, and maybe in other ways as well, we seem to be experiencing not just shifting weather fronts (metaphorically speaking), but real climate change.

 

And a lot of superstructure, in all those various areas of life, looks disquietingly like my "dead" crape myrtle bushes.

 

Before we go digging things out by the roots and casting about for replacements, methinks, maybe we should see what a radical pruning might accomplish. Maybe, as with my crape myrtles and roses, the deep, well-established roots would pour robust energy into growth that is both new  and true to type.

But the pruning may have to be truly radical--equivalent to chainsawing the thick crape myrtle trunks.

Prudence and Patience,

Hope and Despair,

And little Hog Island,

Way over there.

 

My friend told me the story--possibly apocryphal--that he had learned about that rhyme. It seems an early resident had named the islands after his own offspring.

To his first child, a daughter, he gave the solid Puritan name of Prudence, and named an island for her.

His second child was also a daughter, and got another solid New England name, Patience--perhaps containing a hint of what the patriarch wanted.

When his third daughter was born, Hope became explicit in the name of both child and island.

But when the fourth child was also a daughter, Despair overcame his spirit.

And then there's little Hog Island, way over there--a break in the pattern, but still an island in Narragansett Bay. Discontinuity and continuity both, all at once.

Certainly in this time of climate change, both actual and metaphorical, we need prudence and patience and hope. Maybe we also need the right amount of despair as well, understood as a kind of creative letting go or giving up that allows room for something new to sprout. Little Hog Island, way over there.

I wonder what that will look like, in politics? in social structures and ways of relating? in church? in economic patterns?

Will it be, like my rose sprouts at first, like the risen Jesus, hard to recognize yet somehow familiar at the same time?

Let's keep peering intently at the base of the dead superstructures and see what we see.

 

 

The Power of Place

The good folks at the Dayton Metro Library had been gently pestering me for a while for a brief bio to go with the headshot taken a month or two ago. All this is because I'm a trustee, and the library is engaged in a massive rebuilding and reimagining process, which includes updating the website and all other communications. It's all very exciting and, for me at least, very hopeful.

So. Brief bio. Please include things like occupation, credentials, interests, personal experiences with libraries.

I finally sat down to write the thing last week, and somewhat to my surprise the question about personal experiences with libraries brought to mind a series of books I read as a girl. I had to poke around on Google a bit to identify the author and the titles--all I remembered was the name of the protagonist (Henry) and the impression they made on me.

Turns out the author was Joseph Altsheler, and the series was called The Young Trailers (also the title of the first book in the series). They were set in Revolutionary War era Kentucky, when Kentucky was still Indian country and the far limit of the frontier.  What I remembered so vividly about the books was the sense of place they evoked: the virgin woods that used to cover half our continent.

I'm sure I was hooked not so much by the protagonist or even the plot, but by that evocation of life in those vast, wild woods.

I grew up by a woods--not Kentucky, but a Maryland woods just outside of Washington DC. From age six through fourteen, I walked to and from school through those woods, crossing a creek on stepping stones, occasionally finding an arrowhead, always enjoying the bits of quartz and water-smoothed granite found underfoot.

That's how I got to the library, too, to get my Young Trailers books--through those woods, crossing that creek. For me, those woods are a primordial landscape of my soul. They are constitutive of my being.

Not my woods, but a woods & stream in the same watershed.

I remember, when I rode my bike from Pittsburgh to DC a few years ago, how something in me leaped with joy when, after days in the saddle I suddenly noticed that the pebbles along the trail were like the pebbles in my childhood woods and creek.

My childhood creek is now a concrete culvert, and the woods long ago gave way to a major parkway, but inside me that place still lives, and gives me life.

So I found myself thinking some more about the power of place. We are not abstractions, we are bodies in space and time. And it matters what space, what time.

Another memory. My family roots are in New Orleans, and even though I did not grow up there, my parents kept the connection alive for my sister and me.  We ate rice and okra and red beans, when most of 1950s America was eating meat and potatoes. And we visited our grandmothers and various other relatives in New Orleans as often as a limited budget allowed in an age before air travel was common.

By the time I married and started my own family, my sister had resettled in New Orleans, and my paternal grandmother and great aunts were still there, so I made a point of taking my husband and kids to visit, trying to keep the connection alive for another generation.

I remember the first time I visited New Orleans as an adult by myself, without the distraction of husband and young kids. I took a cab from the airport to my grandmother's house. When the cab pulled up at her curb, I opened the door, and the totally distinctive smell of New Orleans flooded my nostrils and my being.  Instantly, with no time for thought, words spoke in my brain: "Oh, this smells like home!"

The odd thing about that experience is that the city of New Orleans was only actually my home for the first six weeks of my life. I was born there (in August, before air conditioning, as my mother was fond of pointing out), but pretty much as soon as Mom was cleared to travel we moved away so my father could pursue a job elsewhere. So New Orleans was only ever my home for six weeks, and six weeks of which I have no conscious memory.

But those were my very first six weeks in this world. New Orleans air was the very first air I breathed, and my being remembered.

Me breathing New Orleans air at age two weeks.

When Katrina nearly destroyed New Orleans, I grieved at the core of my being. The power of place.

 

 

New Orleans about two months after Katrina struck.

I'm not sure any other places will ever lodge in the core of me the way New Orleans and my childhood woods do. Those two were so early and so formative. My first breath. The first landscape I ever explored on my own, not in a stroller or holding someone's hand.

But I have formed rich connections to some other places over the years. Cambridge MA, where I lived for six years of college and divinity school. Pittsburgh and San Francisco, where my sons and their families live. Rome. The Holy Land. Paris. And, of course, here in Dayton, where I have lived for more than forty years.

As anybody my age knows, those iconic places of my childhood no longer exist, except inside me, where they continue to resonate. And in resonating, they attune me to the importance of place--any place.

Because I have experienced and still experience their power, I pay attention to the places I find myself in. I notice the impact places have on me, how they affect me. I relish place, feeling-smelling-tasting as well as looking.

I like to take pictures of details and corners, things that capture the distinctiveness of a particular place experienced at a particular time. And then I like to spend time with those pictures, savoring again the place and my experience of it.

Detail of a gate, Vatican City.

When I have the opportunity, I try to create welcoming, peaceful places. I like to fill them with things that have specific meaning, things that resonate for me, and I hope will resonate, albeit in a different way, for others who enter there.

My two places of deep connection no longer exist, but they continue to teach me much about how to connect with place, how to be a body in space and time, and savor that experience. And I am grateful.

3 Haiku for a Cold Gray Day in May

Crabapple blossoms
giving way to foliage--
inside, furnace kicks on.














Iron tendrils
cannot hold the cat who
has business elsewhere.

Amid so much

crisp dry curling brown

soft green springs.

Chicken Love

A new book group was born on Monday. Yes, this makes the third for me and the fourth for Michael--tells you something, doesn't it?

This one is a theology book group. We're starting out by slowly reading our way through Elizabeth Johnson's Ask the Beasts, a fascinating book structured as a dialogue between Darwin's On the Origin of Species and the Nicene creed. After only the preface and the first two chapters, I love it and am very excited to keep going.

Here's the passage where Johnson reveals the inspiration for both the title and the thesis of her book:

"Job...in debate with his misguided friends...challenges them to abandon their rigid certitude about how the world works and look to another source of wisdom:

Ask the beasts and they will teach you;
    the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
ask the plants of the earth and they will teach you;
    and the fish of the seas will declare to you.
Who among these does not know
    that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In his hand is the life of every living thing,
    and the breath of every human being.    (Job 12:7-10)

If you interrogate the flora and fauna of land, air, and sea, the text suggests their response will lead your mind and heart to the living God, generous source and sustaining power of their life....Theology, which seeks to understand faith more deeply in order to live more vibrantly, has work to do here. For in truth it has seldom asked the beasts anything."

I hope this tiny sample is enough to lure at least some of you into reading this wonderful book, because that's really all I'm going to say about it now.  Instead I want to talk about an "Ask the Beasts" sort of experience I had yesterday, the day after the book group's inaugural meeting.

Some background: Since February I have been serving as a mentor for a refugee high school student through the Dayton Public Schools. For the sake of his privacy, and for the safety of his extended family members, I will refer to him simply as C, and I will not mention what country he and his family came from. Suffice to say, they arrived in Dayton in December, just in time for the worst winter we have had in living memory.  And the country they left is a hot one.

I love to travel, and I've been to a lot of places. But I've always come back home at the end of my trips. In fact, as I've gotten older I find I appreciate the coming home just as keenly as I do the going someplace--different but equal delights.

As I have been meeting with C since Valentine's Day, I have found myself pondering what it must be like to travel to a completely foreign culture, a totally different climate and geography even, with no hope of ever going back home. Never. And I find that I can't really imagine it. So I just try to be as open and present to C as possible, to watch and listen for any points of connection, always bearing in mind how profoundly his experience differs from mine.

And that, of course, brings us to the subject of chickens. (The "of course" isn't really justified. I just threw it in there for effect.)

C is gentle and soft-spoken, always gracious towards me. I can't help wondering what on earth he and his family think I am there for--whether the concept of mentor conveys anything at all to them. But because he has been raised in a culture of respect for elders, he always receives me with smiling warmth and an effort to respond positively to whatever (possibly completely baffling) expectations I seem to have.

There are, however, moments when he truly comes alive with spontaneous animation. And often, those moments occur when he is telling me about his chickens.

Back home, C had pet chickens, who would run out to greet him when he came home from school.  One in particular would sit on his lap to be petted, and fend off any others trying to take her place. C is very knowledgeable about different chicken breeds and the ins and outs of raising and caring for chickens.

It is very clear that C misses his chickens acutely, and misses contact with animals in general--the fish he kept in an aquarium, the animals he would visit on an uncle's farm.  Here in Dayton, the family is living in rented quarters in an inner-city neighborhood, so there are no animals to greet C when he comes home.

The more I saw that spark of animation and energy--that love--that would light up C's face when he talked about his chickens, the more I felt that I needed to do something about it. Here was a young man whose life had been so rudely disrupted, who was trying hard to make the best of it--what better way to support him than to find him some chickens to love?

Don't know why it took me so long but finally a light went off in my brain--I know someone who has chickens! For the sake of this post, I will call her The Chicken Lady.

So yesterday, I took C to visit The Chicken Lady. The Chicken Lady lives out in the country in a kind of mini Garden of Eden that she and her husband have brought into being on land that, before them, was used to raise hogs and tobacco. Now it flourishes with fruit trees, berry brambles, flower gardens, a little woods, large vegetable gardens, three goats, four cats, and, yes, a mixed flock of chickens.  Plus, this week, a big batch of six-day-old baby chicks.

 This is not one of The Chicken Lady's chickens, but some of hers look like this.

Even the drive out to The Chicken Lady's place was a treat for C. He is quiet, not boisterous, but his eyes glowed as we got out into the farm fields, and he commented on how good it would be to live where it was open and the air was so fresh. He was hoping to see cows and horses as well as chickens, but The Chicken Lady doesn't have them.

It was a pure delight to watch C shyly playing with the cats, commenting sagely on the perfidy of coyotes, and especially, energetically chasing down escaped chickens to return them to the henhouse.

I didn't take any pictures during our visit, so I had to filch some from around the web.

Please pretend that this is a picture of C chasing a chicken. It isn't.

This isn't a picture of C chasing a chicken either, but who could resist

re-posting such a fabulous image?

 

 Even though he had told me a month or so previously that he doesn't really like goats, C seemed to welcome the chance to visit with and pet The Chicken Lady's goats. And on the way home, we did see a horse and two donkeys, though still no cows.

These are not The Chicken Lady's goats. 

These goats live in Morocco.

In trees.

 

"Ask the beasts, and they will teach you...who among them does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?" I don't know if C was conscious of God through the beasts, but I do know that a youngster who had experienced  far more violence and disruption in his life than any caring adult would wish for any child found solace and joy and a sense of being at home through The Chicken Lady's garden and its beasts.

Proto-chicken. C went home with seven of these,

freshly collected from the henhouse.

The Chicken Lady is generous as well as hospitable.

 

"Taproot" of Happy Memory

If you're as old as I am, you may remember that phrase "of happy memory" as a churchy-speak way of referring to someone who has died.

Well, my "Taproot" blog hasn't died exactly--or if it did, it seems to have recently resurrected--but the fact is that the website couldn't be accessed for at least 36 hours, with no explanation.  And that doesn't make me feel good about trying to maintain my blog there. 

But I did kinda like what I had posted in my two posts.  So I thought I would re-post them here before shutting "Taproot" down for good.  So here goes:

TAPROOT POST #1:

Welcome to Taproot, my new blog. I’ll be writing about a variety of things, and I’ll be writing in a variety of formats. 

Sometimes you’ll find commentary on events or issues, sometimes meditations or reflections, sometimes poetry, sometimes personal-life updates. 

What my posts will have in common is that they will emerge from or touch on things that go deep in me–hence the name Taproot. 

Think of all the different parts of a tree that are supported by its taproot: thick, solid trunk that only grows thicker and more solid; scraggly bark that cracks and sometimes sheds as the tree grows; leaves that last through three of the four seasons, changing from delicate lime to robust deep green to fragile but brilliant; petals that may only last a week, but a glorious week. 

My posts will be as various, and as rooted, as that. Thank you in advance for your attention.

**********

NOTE:   I will not in fact be using the "Taproot" name any more, but the comments about the nature of the blog still stand.

**********

TAPROOT POST #2: titled "Two Poems Inspired by Clay"

owl slides
on silent wings
through velvet dark

all secrets lie exposed
to wide night-piercing eyes

small life
fearing the talon’s grasp
shelters in stillness

as owl slides
swiftly
silently
through velvet dark

******************
That one was written to go on the back of a clay owl I made in a kind of semi-Cycladic style. And the process of making the owl, then writing the poem, then inscribing it on the back of the owl, in turn, inspired me to write this poem:

*****************

BEGINNING HANDBUILDING

The course fee includes twenty-five pounds of clay.
Choose white, brown, brown with speckles, or red.
This time, I choose white.

The white clay is actually gray when I get it,
and much softer than the brown I worked with last time.
Twenty-five pounds of soft, deeply still gray clay.

What does clay remember?
Does it remember being mountains,
before water and dissolved chemicals wore it down?
Does it remember pronghorns leaping on its crags,
eagles nesting and soaring,
climbers scrabbling for finger and toe holds?

Or were those memories dissolved too
by the slowly seeping water,
the slightly acid water,
that broke the mountains down
into particles far tinier than sand grains?

Does clay remember slowly drifting in the water,
slowly slowly drifting,
slowly settling down out of the water,
slowly nestling, tiny particle with tiny particle,
into a deep still bed?
Does clay remember the dreamy drifting,
the slow settling?

I sit and stare at the clay,
so still, so deeply inert.
Who am I to disturb so deep a rest?

But maybe it isn’t inertia.

Maybe it’s something else altogether
deep availability
what the venerable Basque sage would call “disponibility.”
“You called? Here I am.”

With my hands, I make a suggestion.
Clay responds,
accepting part of my suggestion,
and making some suggestions of its own.

And so the conversation begins.

************************
Wrote that one today [ed.: ie, April 25, date of the original post]. The “venerable Basque sage” reference is to Ignatius of Loyola, who had much to say about letting go of attachments so as to reach a state of “disponibility” or complete availability to God.

Here's a process picture of the owl:

Hi, I'm over here!

Well, my Taproot blog probably set some kind of record for briefness of existence.

Within hours of my creating it, I found yesterday evening that I could no longer connect to the blog.com site.  Don't know if it's a temporary problem or not, but it's still not letting me connect this morning. What good is a blog if I can't post to it or read your comments?  Not much, I'm thinking.

So here I am at blogger.com, trying again with a new name:  Weird and Wonder-ful.

About that name.  It probably describes what the posts on this blog will be like, though there's no way of knowing yet.  But it certainly describes me!

Thanks to the good folks at the National Geographic Genome 2.0 project, I now have scientific evidence of what I have long suspected:  I am definitely on the weird end of the homo sapiens bell-shaped curve.  I have about twice as much Neanderthal material AND about twice as much Denisovan material in my DNA as most folks. At least in the DNA I inherited from my mother, which is all they tested. So I am certifiably weird.  In the best possible sense of the word.

Now for wonder-ful. Note the hyphen. This trait too I inherited from my mother. She it was who taught me to wonder at the world around me.  When we would go for walks together when I was a little kid, she would be the one to stop and point out some small thing--a lichen, a tiny bug, some interesting tree bark--and invite me to really look at it, notice it, take it in, in appreciation and wonder.

She also subscribed to Arizona Highways, the New Yorker, National Geographic, and the Saturday Evening Post. Through the photos, art, fiction, and prose of those magazines, I came to know a wide, wide world of inexhaustible wonder. She instilled in me curiosity and delight. Can't ask for a better heritage than that.

So once again, thank you for your attention.  Now I have to try to figure out all the nitty-gritties of the blogger.com blogging ecosystem.