Hope

In the morning, as soon as I wake, I roll to the wide east window, grasp the sheer navy curtain, and open it a crack. I hope for sun. Or, at least, patches of blue among the clouds! This morning I lie back with a smile. 

There is an Emily Dickinson poem that I know about hope, and it has stayed with me because she chose to use a bird as metaphor.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale –

is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the

little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I've heard it in the chillest

land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me. *

I attribute this singular memory to the year my dad affixed a birdfeeder to the north window of my bedroom. I was in the seventh grade. Through high school, I sat beside the window, at the old-fashioned desk, doing homework for hours—and birdwatching.

A re-reading of the full poem has given me a new way to think about hope, though. Dickinson sees the source of hope as a part of our individual soul that leaves the Oversoul and enters a womb at the time of our physical birth.  

Lastly, this quote by Meher Baba* that, since learned, has guided me through every change of my life—always with hope!

                        It is infinitely better to hope for the best than to fear the worst.*                  

My realization is, "There is the learning in life that comes explicitly. Then, there is the learning that comes from a leap—that stops at different times of our lives—to bring seemingly disparate moments together in new understanding."

* The poem may be found at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314.

* Meher Baba is referred to as the God-Man whose soul had come in previous incarnations and eras as Zoroaster, Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammed, and this time as Meher Baba.

* https://www.avatarmeherbaba.org/erics/literacy.html. para 6.

Bright and Cheerful!

Memories of Christmas in New England are from my childhood, when my younger sister and I went with our dad to choose a tree. We'd walk along a row of pine, fir, and spruce trees leaning against a pole until he saw one where its size matched the height of the living room ceiling, plus his pocketbook. Pulling it upright, he'd check the length of the branches and if they made graduated end tips down to the base. By the time my fingers were cold and curled inside my mittens, our dad had handed over the five dollars and was tying the family's fir tree to the roof of the car.

Twenty-six years later, on Christmas morning, our twelve-year-old daughter was excited by her first pair of skis, as our curious five-year-old daughter explored the rooms in the large doll house, with its hand-carved wooden floor boards, that her dad had built. There were the years of roast turkey on a platter at Christmas, shared on our dining room table—then the years of change crept forward, until our family was separated. Our daughters took in these years... and in time put their own imprint on lasting marriages that have given me three grandsons and a granddaughter. As I learn of what their generation is doing, I am inspired... I share in their Christmases as my daughters' photos of their families—and their trees—arrive in WhatsApp.

I now live in an apartment complex for seniors that faces a boulevard where traffic is moderate. Across is the three-story former school building under redesign. On my first Christmas here, I set off with a small knife to clip two branches of bunched red berries on a bush I had noticed in front of the now-vacant building. Returning on the bush-lined walk to my apartment steps, I cut three stems of slender, pointed green leaves from a tall bush growing nearby and climbed up the eight steps. Finding a single unneeded white shoelace, I wrapped and tied the bright and cheerful berried branches and strung them on the bare screen door.

My realization is, "Choosing certain moments to remember at Christmas time can bypass a second or two of wistfulness that may appear, bringing instead the quiet and simple contentment that can be found in aging when doing what is possible."

Shariat Farm: Serendipitous Love Part Three

Whenever I returned to Shariat Farm, I moved to simple-minded time, watching the sun rise and set and the stars wink out, following the herds and flocks crossing from Jesse's woods to the neighbor's, looking at the variation of petal, leaf, bark, and branch of dogwood, redbud, cedar, hickory, Southern pine, one magnolia, and whatever flowers and grasses wove the texture of the field.

Shariat Farm was sold in December 2015, following my last two weeks there that summer. Yet I knew in my heart that my love of these times and this place would live on.

 RED BIRD SONG

 Red bird singing in a black fig tree,

Looking out my window what do I see?

Morning sun in a tangerine sky,

Red bird to a hickory tree will fly.

My home, my home,

Here for awhile 'til I leave to roam.

My home, in the greening green—

Grazing at sundown, deer come here.

Red bird singing in a loquat tree,

I'm just sitting in the quiet air.

Chair a'tilt and my feet up high,

Star-gazer looking at the moon so near.

My home, my home,

Here for awhile 'til I leave to roam.

My home, in the greening green

Red bird sighing in the trembling sky.

Red bird singing my song unseen.

My sweetheart's letter in my hand today.

Words I read made my heart change tune;

Two months more and we're together in June.

My home, my home,

Here for a rest from a working world.

My home, in the greening green

Red bird above me in a twilight sky.

                                    PJC 2003

My realization is, "When the heart feels clearly but the mind questions, allowing the feeling may bring a previously unimagined depth of love felt within and expressed without."

* All quotes in this post can be found in Prema Jasmine Camp's A Flower for God: A Memoir (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021).         

* Author's note: Several years after the sale of Shariat Farm, I was in the town and went to the farm property to look from the gate. The owners had a different vision for the land, but I knew that Shariat Farm, in its gentle harmony with nature, would live in my writing for years.