The Renewal of Wonder

As a nation, we are in the midst of a difficult season-socially, politically, culturally, environmentally, physically and spiritually. In fact, at the moment, I can't think of a single component of our corporate life that isn't being challenged or threatened or compromised, somehow. No wonder I feel on edge, concerned about facets of national life that I have absolutely no ability to change. 

Even when I go walking, of late, I have difficulty letting go of the dismay, the sense of helplessness and, yes, sometimes the anger that hangs over the DC area these days. While I do not want to give in to these feelings or allow them to consume me, I find that I need tangible and effective means to deter and deflect them. I need something more powerful than my self-righteous indignation. I need wonder.

The healing of wonder lies in its surprise, moments of unexpected grace. Such was the case when, after a weary day with family reuniting after my mother-in-law's funeral, I looked up from the northern Virginia suburban back yard to see a  mass of migrating broad-winged hawks, kettling way up high, directly above my head. Or when, the day after, as I sat on my front porch, idly watching the birds and soaking in the silence, I noticed a commotion in the black locust tree across the road. It turns out that goldfinches eat black locust seeds, opening the stiff pods with their beaks and extracting the seeds one by one, something I had not seen or known before. I had happened to be in the right place at the right time to notice and all thought of commotions in the larger world vanished.

Wonder beckons when I peer into a bouquet of my own flowers, or pursue the insect making its long, high-pitched trill in the house and find a tiny, long-antennaed katydid no bigger than my fingernail. Or when I step out onto the back porch at night and narrowly miss the resident toad making his nightly hunting rounds. Or find a patch of bright pink torenia that, unbeknownst to me, self-seeded into my garden from the hanging basket where it grew last year. Or, glancing at the feeder and find that we are hosting several female rose-breasted grosbeaks on their southward migration.

Each of these gratifying, unexpected moments are gifts that keep me humble and, once again, remind me of how much more there is to this world than the concerns and fears that sometimes consume me. God speaks to me in wonder, and in this moment I can rest...for a while, anyway.

Life and Death and Orange Jewels

My husband's 94 year old mother died last week, a sad and difficult woman in life and in death. I am weary and so this morning I needed the woodland's embrace and there I found the refreshment and the solace I knew were waiting for me. I went looking for life, life in all its fullness, life of the forest floor - creatures, plants, fungi...all of it. 

On the short bank beside the woodland road, I came across a colony of tiny, bright orange mushrooms, themselves feeding on decaying matter...matter that is no longer alive, but giving life to these jewels of the forest. 

And in the distance, stood what first appeared to be a lone white mushroom... 

... standing like a single sentry guarding its place in the leaf litter. 

However, upon closer inspection, I realized that I had almost stepped on its nearly invisible companion of a different species, a couple of feet away. 

Two different species of fungi, quietly going about the work they were given to do, decomposing fallen leaves and branches, returning nutrients to the soil. Perhaps their mychorriza mysteriously co-mingle beneath the duff as they coil around tree roots, providing the giants greater access to needed water and minerals and a means of communication, tree to tree.

I have been thinking about death during these last few weeks and about its effect on those who are left behind, for death is never a solitary event. If we give ourselves to its effect, even in our agitation and deep sense of loss, over time we will be deepened and made acutely aware of and sensitive to that which is still alive...still alive in us, in those we care about, in the order of the natural world. I find the encouragement of God in the life of the fungi, strange as that might seem at first glance. They demonstrate that there is far more to each individual than what might be visibly recognized. Though their above-ground fruiting bodies wither away in due time, their life continues on in mystery, hidden away in where they can no longer be seen. And, because of fungi's role, though individual plants and creatures die, their life is never completely ended, for it is always recycled for the well being of another.  

In this season of coming face to face, again, with the reality of death I am reminded, again, of the abundance of life and my grateful participation in it.