SPRING SPIRIT

"Sparrow and Hydrangeas"
watercolor,
by Kay Smith

     There’s enthusiasm in the air around our riverside house these days since spring at long last has been let loose among us. My wife and I watched the birds last weekend winging their way across our yard from tree to tree, and it seemed to get us going with greater eagerness on our seasonal chores. While she worked with attentiveness among her steadily blossoming flowers, I swept and dusted in the house with unusual zeal. I seemed to truly care about keeping the house as clean as she always does, and I did my jobs as though they were entertaining tasks I couldn’t help but take pleasure in. While she sat on her beloved soil and set in bulbs and shoots, I shined up bookshelves and washed the shower walls. While she wheeled a wheelbarrow full of flowers around the yard, I found a strange satisfaction in seeing the carpets get even cleaner than they always are. I stopped occasionally to watch the birds going at great speed from tree to tree, and once I saw what seemed to be dozens of small birds dancing beside a bush. Nearby, Delycia was working with passion to prepare some soil, and several steps away some squirrels were springing with good spirit along the stones in a garden wall.               

A MINUET OF THOUGHTS

English Country Dancing

“… a state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other states of mind,and to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite facility.”

-- George Eliot, in Middlemarch

These words of George Eliot exactly describe the dance my own ideas seem to do. My mind is like an old English ballroom where ideas warmly move among each other in a strange kind of sociability and easiness. Thoughts of delight glide beside thoughts of fear, and beliefs that bad times are looming hold hands with beliefs that a bright sky is always overhead if I would only look up.   What’s especially interesting about this is that my thoughts can be so cordial to each other, like English lords and ladies letting their friendliness guide the flow of the dance. Perhaps if I would simply stand back and watch them, the thoughts that move through my mind might seem as graceful as the movements of eminent manor house guests. If I stopped trying to always rule and regulate them, and gave up getting in fights with them, I might be able to enjoy the pleasant movements of my thoughts, their stylish steps and swings.    

ARROW AND BOW

Years ago, a wise book I was reading suggested that I need both an arrow and a bow in my life: I need to be sharp and piercing like the arrow, but I also need the smoothness and suppleness of the bow. I need to be strong but also sympathetic, incisive but also easygoing. The arrows of my thoughts and actions can pierce to the heart of things only if launched by the flexible bow of tenderness and leniency. True, I want to be a warrior in these senior-citizen days of mine, a strong old soldier who’s not afraid to fling arrows at strong old foes like fear and listlessness, not afraid to pierce when things need piercing. However, the arrows will float feebly to the ground unless launched by the powerful forces of kindness and consideration. This 71-year-old knight in somewhat shabby armor knows that nimbleness is as essential as sharpness. 

 

A SINGLE IMPRESSIVE ENTERPRISE

I’ve been looser and less tense these last few years, partly because I’ve finally begun to outgrow a life-long belief about the nature of life. From my earliest memory, it was impressed upon me (by family, friends, the media, and the overall culture) that life consists of multitudinous numbers of essentially separate entities, situations, and events, all of which are competing with each other. Life, as I learned it growing up, was a continuous conflict among countless hostile elements. My main responsibility, I believed, was to save myself from harm and try to triumph in as many of the daily contests as possible. Now, however, after 71 years  of sorting things out, I’ve slowly come to understand that this view of reality is simply wrong. I see now that, instead of being “many”, the universe is just one. It’s not a confused collection of disparate material entities, but rather a single, cohesive, and harmonious expression of itself. The entire universe, I see now, is as unified as a single cell, and, as in a cell, everything that happens in the universe happens for the good of itself. What this means for me is that I should cease from my nonstop stressing and struggling, because there’s no other “thing” that’s out to hurt “me”. In fact, there’s no “other”, period, and no separate “me”. There’s just the one shared and always successful universe, of which I and everyone and all of our so-called problems are a part. We’re all essential components of a single impressive enterprise called Life (of which death is another essential part), as closely interlaced with each other as the workings of a cell. 
For me, this realization has called for much more loosening up in my life than struggling.

FREELY GIVEN, FREELY GIVING

I don’t do much community service work, but I do often have a feeling of “giving back”. I’m not sure where it comes from or why it keeps flowing forward to me, but I have been on the receiving end, over 71 years, of a freewheeling river of ever-new thoughts. It seems to me that I don’t actually make these thoughts, but rather they unfold of their own accord and continuously cascade toward me. Just sitting here now, holding my hands to the keyboard, countless thoughts from somewhere are showing me what words to type. Since all these mental gifts have been so freely given to me, I take pleasure, day by day, in freely re-giving them to my friends and acquaintances. Because they belong to the limitless universe of thoughts, the thoughts are not actually mine to keep and care for, and so sending them straight on to others seems like the suitable next step. I sometimes picture myself as a strange kind of Santa Claus carrying a big bag of thoughts which came my way by inexplicable good luck, and which I distribute to others with the cheerfulness of an old man making merry.

A GOOD LAUGH

“Honesty, truth-telling fairness, was Mary's reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood she had humor enough in her to laugh at herself.”

"Cloud Bank Laughter",
oil, by Thaw Malin III

     -- George Eliot, Middlemarch

       Occasionally, someone seeing me from a distance when I’m alone might be surprised by the fact that I seem to be laughing. It’s not an uncommon occurrence. I often find myself almost folded over in laughter when I’m alone, and it’s usually directed at myself. I often cannot believe some of the silly, self-promoting, and completely incomprehensible things I say and so in a day’s time, and it doesn’t deserve anything but a good laugh. Looking back on a day, it’s as if I’m sitting in the audience at a comedy show, and my strange shenanigans that day make up the show.  I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m a complete catastrophe as a human being, but I do seem silly to myself when I’m pridefully prancing around like some shrewd mastermind. I know a little about the laws of good writing and how to choose chicken thighs for grilling and when to write a note in the margins of novels, but there are hundreds of thousands of things I know nothing about.  No one is less of an “authority” than I am. I suppose I’m sort of an expert at using commas correctly, but I’m a downright dimwit when it comes to correctly carving a turkey or turning a lawn into a lavish garden or giving the right gifts to my grandchildren.  This is the reason for my occasional amusement at myself when I’m alone. I just have to laugh at this well-creased senior citizen who gives off such a sense of self-assurance and astuteness, but who is truly dancing one simple (albeit spirited) step at a time.    

IT IS GOOD FOR ME TO BE HERE

Yesterday I overheard someone say, “It is good for me to be here”, and I thought, Yes it is – always. There’s always something special, something useful and even shining, in every place and situation, if only I will let myself see it. I suppose some of the distinctiveness derives from the fact that wherever I happen to be is wherever I must be at that particular moment. I can be somewhere else one second from now, but right now – and every right now – it is absolutely necessary for me to be wherever I am. It’s as if each moment is an immaculate and private place prepared just for me – a place where wisdom waits with its gifts. If the place seems sad or scary, wisdom sometimes sets its greatest gifts at the precise center of trouble, and insight can shine brightest inside a disaster. Even if my life seems to be shaking with concerns and sorrow, it is good for me to be there, for I can always find some freedom I’ve never felt before right where I am, right where the universe has placed me at this well-timed and eminent moment.

MY BEST

"High Valley Spring", oil, by Don Gray

 Like most of us, I have been trying to “do my best” for most of my life, but lately I’ve been looking at another way of living – a different sense, you might say, of what doing my best might mean. As I was making a start on this paragraph this morning, I caught sight of some clouds that were shifting their shapes in the sky outside the window by my desk, and it occurred to me that they were the best clouds they could possibly be. They weren’t struggling or striving or working out ways to be the best; they simply were, and always would be, as good as clouds could be. Even if they slipped off into just wispy streams of whiteness, they would be the best possible wispy streams of whiteness. I thought of this as I sat at my computer in my crumpled shirt and dirt-stained pants, and it seemed like I was similar to those clouds, and maybe just as marvelous as they always are. Maybe I don’t need to struggle so sincerely to be the best I can be, because perhaps, in a sense, I always am. Maybe my saggy shirt sags in the best ways possible, and maybe the dirt on my pants is perfectly placed and displays the best possible shades of brown. If I can’t seem to think of the finest words for this paragraph, perhaps, like those always perfect clouds, I can confidently come up with words that will shine with their own simple brightness. Maybe the best I can do is simply believe in who I am at this mint-condition moment, and let each word do its own remarkable work.           

HOME

"House on the Sneem River",
pastel, by Nita Leger Casey

     My wife and I have a small home beside a river in a small town, but I wish I could more often feel like I’m home no matter where I happen to be. Home is our white stone house in Mystic, but home should also be the sidewalk I’m walking on, or the store where I’m browsing among beets and cabbages, or the hope-filled forest in which I’m walking on an unruffled April day. Home, as we say, is where the heart is, and shouldn’t my heart be wherever I happen to be, whether at the beach beneath a few first stars or at a meeting that seems boring but that brings out brightly-shining thoughts from each of the participants, if only I could see and appreciate them? Shouldn’t I feel just as “at home” holding the door for a friend miles from our house as doing the dishes in our kitchen, and shouldn’t speaking to the clerk at a store be, in a way, as pleasant as passing thoughts back and forth at home? I live in little Mystic, but I also live in the limitless universe, so perhaps my real home is among the stars and galaxies. It could be there are countless doors in my true home, all leading to moments that could be called miracles, all opening to places as comfortable and kindly as our living room on Riverbend Drive.     

BROTHERS AND SISTERS

"Beach Sunrise", oil, by Sharon Schock
     .    

     It’s easy to understand how “connected” I am when I see the sunshine spreading across my wife’s gardens on these spring mornings, for it’s the same sunshine that warms the whole world. We live in a small town, but we share the sun with limitless numbers of living things, sharing as close as brothers and sisters. The light that lands on her daffodils also fills valleys in France, and the same sunshine that sometimes brings out our sunscreen starts trees setting out new leaves in Italy. I try to think of this when the world seems like a disjointed, straggling place. When I feel like a confused sightseer on an utterly undisciplined planet, I try to see, in my mind, all the many millions of us living our lives lit up by the same sun. It’s like we’re all the offspring of sunlight. We all need the sunshine to restore us each morning, and all of us say thanks, in our own ways, when it does. It’s like we’re living in an infinitely large family that finds comfort together under a light that never leaves us for long, and that illuminates each of our lives in similar ways. Even in our most troublesome times, the sun stays with us like a father for brothers and sisters, like a mother making sure her children are sharing, as one, her unfailing light.    

WITH NO HELP FROM ME

    

"Rush Hour", oil, by Dana Cooper

 It’s reassuring to realize, each morning, that a thousand things are all set to assist me during the day, and that they were made ready with absolutely no help from me. I sometimes smugly think of myself as my own major source and supplier of the tools of success, but it’s simply not the case -- not when I consider, for instance, my car that is cared for occasionally by master mechanics, with no help from me; the streets that have been kept smooth and clean for my car, with no help from me; the stoplights that successfully send my car and others from one intersection to another, with no help from me; the sunshine that makes it easy to see the promising spring trees, with no help from me; and the trees themselves that are making major miracles on these mild April days, with no help from me. I’m set to have a fine day each morning, mostly because of the countless tasks undertaken by people and forces unfamiliar and far away, the loyal laborers who do their duties so that ease and comfort can be a much bigger part of my life than pressure and stress.               

RETIREMENT FROM THE CLASSROOM

I spoke to Goodbye, 

but it didn't speak back to me. 

It stayed silent, 

so we both stayed silent 

under the stars that say goodbye

each morning as a new day is made, 

as a new life is given 

to a grateful teacher 

at graduation. 

YIELDING

"On the Road: Trans-Canadian Highway",
oil, by Robin Weiss

       Sometimes, when I see a “YIELD” sign on an entrance to an Interstate, I sigh in reassurance, and smile, for it reminds me that I can constantly yield to the bountiful power that runs all things. I’m not talking about God, at least not the God that gave me fits all through my childhood – the God that could crush me in anger as easily as bless me. No, the power that I can continuously yield to is simply the force that flows through the vast universe, the force that both thinks all my thoughts and throws the starlight across the sky each night. It’s the force that’s forever doing all the jobs that I usually mistakenly think I’m responsible for, everything from lifting and lowering my lungs to making sure I’m safe in stressful circumstances. It’s the power that pushes spring winds through blossoming trees and places feelings of all kinds inside me. It tells me to turn left or stare at a stunning sunset. It leads me, and therefore lets me love my life rather than worry about it. I have to have the good sense, though, to yield to this power, to let it freely flow like the traffic on I-95, like the blood that streams through me on its own.     

JUST BENEATH EVERYTHING

"Spring Blooms by the Pond", oil,
by Jamie Williams Grossman

     I'm slowly learning that if I look under old or unlucky things, I can almost always find windfalls waiting for me, though I still rarely remember to look. If I feel frayed and worn in my 71^st year, I can lift up that feeling and there’s the sparkle that’s always been there, bringing brand new life to me moment by moment. If something crashes in my life, I can look beneath the debris to discover the wisdom that waits there in its surprisingly shining wrapping. Something beneficial always reveals itself if I simply remember to lift up what looks frightful and find it there, just where it always is, where good gifts always are, just beneath everything.   

THE NEXT ENDEAVORS

     

"I'll Fly Away", oil,
by Rick Nilson

Recently, on a blossoming spring afternoon, I was sitting in my classroom just after reading some essays by 9th graders, and I was feeling both appreciative and sad. The essays, one after another, were some of the best I've ever read. The students wrote about the lyrics of a melancholy song, and their sentences were as stately as the lines of the song. Some of the essays seemed nearly flawless, so that I read them as effortlessly as I might find my way across a spring hillside. I felt appreciative, of course, to be reading such tasteful writing, but I also felt sad, for this was close to the last set of essays by my last class of writers. Next year, I won't be privileged to read spirited and sometimes startling essays each week, and I'll seriously miss that pleasure. My students often thought with youthful daring and wrote with homespun magnificence. Reading their essays over the years, there were many times when I had to admit that the sentences I just read were as fine as any I could write. That's a shock for a teacher to realize, but it's also, I guess, an endorsement, because maybe it means I did my job. Maybe I've readied these young writers, this Pine Point class of 2013,  to fly off to their next fearless endeavors, and perhaps, sad as it sometimes seems, I’m ready to do the same.

ON NOT JUDGING RIVERS

"Don't Judge Me", oil,
by Debbie Grayson Lincoln

For most of my 71 years, I have been a fairly judgmental person – but I’m trying hard to change.

I’ve spent a good part of my waking hours passing judgments on situations, events, and people. I judged every situation as either good or bad, helpful or detrimental; an event either worked to my advantage or didn’t; and a person was either right or wrong, nice or not so nice, young or old, smart or not so smart. It’s surprising that I didn’t thoroughly exhaust myself with all this passionate handing down of verdicts and pronouncements.

Truth is, some time ago, I decided to stop being a full-time judge – to retire from the judge’s “bench”, you might say. I was weary from having to constantly appraise everything that came my way, and I decided I wanted to enjoy instead of judge. I wanted to sit by – or swim in – the river of life and simply take pleasure in its surprising movements, without having to continuously give my considered opinions about how well or poorly it was flowing.

It’s an interesting metaphor, and it brings me around to my privileged role as an English teacher. Over my long and lucky years in the classroom, I took seriously my obligation to judge my students’ performances in class, but I always did it with the clear understanding that my judgments were fairly superficial, and, in the big picture, fairly insignificant. Judging whether my students could write a shipshape essay or use semicolons with precision was an essential part of my job, but those academic pronouncements of mine said almost nothing about the vast and undiscovered mystery that was each student’s life. Those lives flowed past me in the classroom like mighty and inscrutable rivers, and what I enjoyed most about teaching was trying to simply appreciate that flow, those irreplaceable adolescent human beings, those matchless creations of the universe. A river changes constantly and sometimes astonishingly, and so did all my approximately 600 Pine Point students. Every chance I got, I put down my judge’s gavel and simply appreciated the remarkable and beautiful rivers of their lives.

Now, in my upcoming retirement, I’m hoping to do the same, more and more, with my still steadily flowing and still surprising life.

RESTING

"Resting", oil, by Leslie Saeta

          I was resting my elbows on my desk just moments ago, and it made me think about how many other things are always available to help me let up and relax a little. The chairs and sofas, for instance, around the house  are simply places for pausing for rest. When I’m sitting on a sofa, it’s as if the sofa is saying, Stay with me and rest awhile. Even the carpeted floors in our house are places for easing up and slowing down -- soft supports, you might say, where 71-year-old feet can find some useful rest. I guess, honestly, resting places are presented to me almost everywhere – the sidewalks that are more restful for my feet than the often rutted roads, the cushioned seat in my car that cares for me while I drive, even, I suppose, the whole earth that holds me pleasantly up while I take it easy for hours and years at a time, for almost all my heaven-sent nights and days.       

WHITE WORK

All night, as my wife and I sleep, a humidifier beside the bed quietly creates what is called white noise, and all night and all day every day the dependable universe produces a steady stream of what I might call “white work”. It’s work that wants to stay secret and silent, softly behind the scenes, work that discreetly does what must be done to keep things always spinning and expanding and advancing. It’s the work my body, for instance, calmly carries out moment by moment – the balanced moving of blood, the perfect falling and lifting of the lungs, the constant re-creation of cells. It’s also the silent work the surrounding air always does, sending me breezes and brand-new oxygen and always a feeling of freshness. And then there’s the endless “white work” of the wide world I live in – the rolling along of rivers, the constant progress of winds that work their way without ceasing across thousands of miles, and of course the noiseless, steadfast spinning of the stars. It’s reassuring to me to stay aware of this “white work” – to realize, while I’m working my way through the minutes of a day, that so much silent, beneficial work is always being done inside and around me, that so much steady and gentle effort is being quietly made to make my life this marvelous thing that it is.   

WORDS AND WIND

"Incoming Winds", acrylic, by Tim Gagnon

     When I'm speaking casually, quickly,  and perhaps a little carelessly with friends,  it sometimes seems like I’m just wasting words , but when I recall how the wind works, I usually relax and listen with pleasure as the words work their way among us. Just as the wind blows back and forth and here and there with full freedom, all its movements making something special happen, even if I don’t notice it, perhaps all my words do some sort of important duties in their secret ways. Perhaps I should always speak with a certain enthusiasm, simply because I’m sending out the good powers of thoughts, like the wind lets loose its helpful forces across the earth. The wind never makes a mistake as it makes its way among us, and maybe our words, as long as they’re spoken sincerely and without spite, always stir up something useful for our lives. It could be that I should share my words more cheerfully and freely, sending them forth with a kind of confident enthusiasm, simply throwing my thoughts out like seeds to see what springs up. Perhaps I should speak like the wind works, with flexibility, free rein, and some type of gracefulness -- a force, one way or another, for good.    

THE TRUSTWORTHY PRESENT

"April's New Moon", oil,
by V....Vaughn

     All of us hope for a few faithful friends in our lives, and, strange as it may sound, I’ve found one in the always-steadfast present moment. I’ve discovered, as the years have passed, that no matter how unstable and inconsistent my life seems, there is one thing that is constantly beside me – the present moment. It’s like a trusted friend, always there in all its fullness and vitality, all its comprehensiveness and verve. The present moment is unfailing in its loyalty. Look where I might, I’ll never find anything more reliable. It stays alongside me at all times in all circumstances, as if to say, “No matter what, I’m here for you.” And it’s essential that I remember that the present is, indeed,  here for me. Since each moment can’t be anything other than what it is, in that sense each moment is absolutely perfect, and thus it offers me, over and over, a flawless gift. Each moment can make my life better in some beautiful way, but I must make myself see its excellence, its totally reliable ability to unfold new miracles for my life. The present – or perhaps The Present would be a more fitting way to refer to it – is as trusty and constant as a friend can be, and more commanding, more matchless, more immaculate

.

THE IRRESISTIBLE RIVER

"Mighty Mississippi", oil, by Kristin Grevich

The most important question anyone needs to answer is “What is life?” – and I am lucky enough to gradually be learning the answer. First, I’m learning what life is not. It’s not anything connected to matter -- not our bodies or big cars or vacations or varieties of things we can purchase and own. Stated differently, life is not what I always thought it was – a force that somehow arises out of material objects to overshadow everything. No, life, I’m slowly seeing, is actually the direct opposite of matter. It’s the limitless force that comes from thoughts instead of things – the mental, or spiritual, energy that’s at work in its calm and compelling way for all the 86,000 moments in every 24-hour day. Wherever I am today, whatever situation I may find myself in, my “life” will always be what is always is -- a constant current of thoughts. It will be something like a river – say the Mississippi, that wide, deep, and irresistible body of water that has ceaselessly streamed through the Midwest for centuries. At 9:31 am today, or 2:14 pm, or 9:03 pm, “life” will have nothing to do, really, with anything made of matter, but instead will simply be this ever-present river of thoughts. At any given moment, all the energy I feel will be the direct result of the irrepressible and inescapable flow of thoughts -- of the inner spirit, if you will -- a force I’ll be following and learning from forever.