spent oak leaves
spiral to the ground
dancing a sad song
Today was dismal and gray. Rain coming tonight, followed by a fierce cold front moving in later this week.
It took a while for this haiku to take shape. The sight of brown oak leaves spiraling down from their high branches did it. If an elegy were a dance, that’s what I saw as they spun slowly to the ground now littered with them.
I felt torn. The ache of falling leaves is inevitable. Yet it’s also beautiful and, in this case, graceful.
I want to be a graceful oak leaf, pirouetting to the ground—having spent all I have to become and live faithfully as the child of God I am. Not without defects, but content. Using the voice my Creator placed in me not to be silenced or hoarded, but to be heard.
This time of my life is filled with aching beauty everywhere—including yours and my own. Thanks for stopping by.
Chrysanthemums have never been my favorite flower. When I was a starry-eyed teenager, getting a chrysanthemum corsage from an admirer was distinctly less impressive than an orchid corsage. Not that I had many opportunities to receive such favors, thanks to the strict No Dancing Rule in my family. Still, I got the occasional corsage for banquets, and orchids were the best!
Orchids are still magical–witness the orchid photo below, taken in Longwood’s ever-blooming orchid house.
Yet my appreciation for chrysanthemums is growing.
Longwood’s annual Chrysanthemum Festival is about more than flowers. It pays homage to Japanese Americans, their homeland, and the way they’ve enrich our lives daily with beauty and grace. The numbers of ‘pilgrims’ to this Festival is substantial, including homegrown and overseas families. I find this humbling, given our history with Japanese Americans during World War II, including the bombing of their country.
Here’s a quick tour, including a very short video about growing and shaping those huge Longwood Chrysanthemum ‘mushrooms.’ Did you know each of them is only one chrysanthemum plant, patiently trained, shaped and transported into the Conservatory?
First, some favorite photos from the main Conservatory. The huge Japanese lanterns rolling on the grass have tiny lights inside, not visible during the daytime–I’m sad to say!
As promised above, here’s what it takes to create just one of those stunning Thousand Bloom Chrysanthemum plants. Longwood Gardens made the video in 2009. It’s only 3 and a half minutes long.
Finally, here are a few more Japanese lantern photos. First, from the silver, gray and blue cactus garden. These lanterns also have tiny lights inside. You might be able to spot a few if you look carefully at shaded lanterns in the second photo.
And finally, a few spectacular shots of the passageway that runs beside this garden.
The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.
John 3:8 (New American Standard Bible)
I want to receive and be part of the wind blown by God’s Spirit. Margie, my friend who died recently, was part of that wind. Quietly and without fanfare, she lived a frugal, disciplined life dedicated to one thing only. Helping others become the persons they were created to be. Not by working magic on them, or offering wise advice and counsel. It was much simpler and far more difficult than that.
Margie’s life was about praying. Finding out where the hurts in this world are landing, and praying for persons in pain or trying to find their way home. Praying not just once but daily, using notebooks to record her life of prayer. Following up and asking how things are going. And sometimes asking for prayer for herself.
I still say prayer changes me. I say that because often it’s the only evidence I have that anything is happening. The rest is up to the Spirit of God our Creator who has a Great Heart with unlimited space to enfold all of us together.
I’ve been restless lately about the meaning of my life now that I’m retired. This morning I’m thinking that maybe this season of life is about letting the wind of God blow through and on me, one day at a time. Beautifully and gracefully on some days; brutally bitter and cold on others. The way it did for Margie.
Though I’m not Margie, I want my writing to be a form of prayer for us–all of us. That we’ll be open to change that softens and toughens at the same time. Allowing the Spirit of our Creator to do through each of us what we cannot do on our own. I know it’s possible, because I’ve seen it already in many of you and in myself, as I did in Margie.
I just found this nimble, lively, graceful, agile and elegantly athletic interpretation of Emily’s well-known poem. Emily wrote the poem in about 1862. The young woman who produced the video prepared it for one of her school classes. Don’t miss her creative credits at the end, or her short interpretive written summary.
The video is short–less than 2 minutes. I’ll have my say about the poem later this week. Here’s the written version, in case it’s difficult to catch all the words in the video:
A Bird came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw —
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,
And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass —
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass —
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around —
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought —
He stirred his Velvet Head
Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home —
Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam —
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.
I love the calm cadence of your voice
and the way you make rare
the everyday
waves rolling in on the beach wind whispering in the willows my husband reading to me aloud Mendelssohn’s E major Song Without Words J. S. Bach’s C major Prelude #1 doves cooing in the morning robins singing in dusky evening the overwhelming calm of Psalm 23
***
I wrote the first three lines in response to Frank Prem’s beautiful poem, “Ten Signs of Life.” The rest of the poem is my short list of voices that make rare my everyday. The image at the top was icing on the cake.
What voices bring you joy and help keep you grounded?
Telling the Truth 