Gratitude

On Discovering Moments of Light in a Dark World

We have had an intense and frazzling week, with miles of travel and hours on the phone with various medical personnel; or more often, h o l d i n g. Mom is past the crisis now, but with more travel and time away from home for us and for her, as she rehabs.

I told Ann yesterday I imagine hurrying along behind myself, too busy to look back and acknowledge me, saying “WAIT! We need to talk!”

At times like this, I am grateful for the unexpected gift of unsought moments of gratitude.

This pause to be present in place and time and appreciate the wonderful ordinary is a habit I’ve nurtured and practiced intentionally through the decades. Even so, such moments of joy surprise me when they arise out of the house-on-fire days that can seem so hopeless and endless and ugly.

Unbidden, beauty happens. Or tranquility. Or what passes for fleeting clarity and hope. This moment is born for me almost always when I am alone and when I am suddenly awestruck by how very blessed I am to be exactly there, breathing perfect air, with perfect light, with the smell of the creek; the forest; the uncut pasture. I am smitten by the wonder of the now as it passes through that ineffable, more fully-conscious moment.

And so, once again, having no drafts in the works for a post this week, I reflect on moments of gratitude, summarized in two photographs from this landmark week of worry and distraction and exhaustion.

I’ll say a few words about the images, and hush.

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As you may have read here a few weeks ago, we have decided to allow the pasture to be a pasture all summer long, for at least two summers, rather than be cut for hay for somebody else’s beef cattle. And already we benefit from this natural pattern of growth and diversity not often seen in this county where cattle outnumber people and a fallow hayfield is sinful, and not how God intended land to be managed.

One bonus already, that we would never have seen had the pasture hay been cut as usual, is the legion of goldfinches who, migrating north two weeks ago, intending to reach Minnesota, maybe, have decided our field is north enough.

They swirl and dip and circle and swoop, disappearing of a sudden into the tall grass, invisible, until presto! somebody gives the signal that sends every last bird, up and out, in its very own direction.

To call this a flock is to convey far too much order on this loose gaggle of yellow-and-black swallowtails (or so they seem) as they lift and circle and move on, only to return an hour later to disappear into the very same patches of waist-high pasture grass, heavy with seed heads and flush with leafhoppers and tiny beetles. I think and hope they intend to stay. Where could they do any better than this!

In the midst of angst and worry, this simple choreography gives me such joy, and gratitude. We are blessed.

And so, looking back at the image of the pasture, if you walk down the notch where pines in shadow meet the light, you’ll be headed down the 30 foot easement of our property directly connecting us to the lightly-traveled hardtop.

Just near the road, a source branch of one of the forks of Dodd Creek forms a half-acre wetland meadow of sensitive fern and skunk cabbage and teasel. This year, it is so far, undisturbed.

In our first two summers here (2020 and 2021) the owner of the land saw fit to cut this quarter acre back to the roots. I can’t imagine why. So far, and thankfully, it remains undisturbed—like our pasture—to go where its literal historical roots and nature sends it.

Once again, I am thankful that we can easily preserve such images from our mundane, everyday lives, to record moments of epiphany, of elation, of hope.

They remind me that life and beauty go on, even when we are too caught up in human melodrama to remind ourselves how wonderful the light can be.