Pamela Stead Jones

“The true harvest of my life is intangible — a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have  clutched.”

– Henry David Thoreau

We had just finished eating supper at the end of another 90-degree day.  As we collected the dishes, we noticed that there was no sunlight streaming through the kitchen window.  I glanced at the clock to see whether I had lost track of time, which is easy to do on a long summer day.  It was still barely seven o’clock, and the sun would not set for more than an hour.

I walked outside, and immediately felt the hair on my arms stand up straight.  The western sky was charcoal gray, and blacker clouds swirled in like smoke making it darker by the moment.  I was just thinking that there was a lot of electricity in the air, when I heard the first distant rumble of thunder. This wasn’t the first storm that had lurked in the area this week, and the others had managed to blow past us without leaving behind so much as a drop of rain.  Leaving the electrified clouds behind, we returned to our kitchen tasks.  Leaves began to blow past the window, whipped from the treetops by the gathering winds.  At ground level, though, the air stood still and silent.  I wondered how high I would have to climb before the wind would touch my face and bring welcome relief from the hot, humid evening.

Suddenly, the sky lit up from horizon to horizon and thunder exploded without delay.  Rain began to pelt the windows with such force that we looked to see whether hailstones were lying on the grass.  In a matter of seconds, our thirsty world was drenched.  Rivers of rain spewed from the downspouts and ran down the street gutters to the storm drain at the end of the block.  As the storm’s energy found its outlet, the rain became steady and less violent; and we adjusted ourselves to the change in the weather.  For thirty minutes a welcome, soaking rain replenished the grass and the garden and me.  As suddenly as it had begun, that was how gradually it tapered to a trickle and left the world clean and still.

As the storm ended, another sort of energy called me outside.  It was nothing as wild as the electricity that earlier had pulled at my skin.  This was a siren-song, irresistible and beautiful and floating on the breeze.  As I turned the corner of the wraparound porch, I saw it — a rainbow with not one arc but two — stretching from earth to the clouds and back to earth again.  I ran inside and grabbed my camera, hoping to capture the moment so that others might see it as well.  My lens was not able to take it all in at once.  The limits of a camera are far too confining for a rainbow of this magnitude.

For more than ten minutes I watched it glow, growing sharp and then dim and then vibrant again as the swirling clouds danced in the light of the setting sun and brought it to life.  The photos are pretty, but they cannot begin to capture the experience of standing underneath the magnificent arc that bridged heaven and earth and invited me into its magic as well.  The pictures may be tangible, but Thoreau was right about the experience of a rainbow — it is clutched by the heart and it feeds the spirit and draws us into the place where we know that the universe is far greater than the world we call home.  We must not miss these chances to connect with the depth of the beauty of Creation.  We must seize every moment available to us to gather some stardust or grasp a rainbow.

Last night a rainbow came close enough for me to clutch it, if only for a short time.  Today I will walk, wrapped in the promise delivered by the beauty of the remnants of a storm.

“Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty.  There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail”

— Robert Motherwell.

“Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.”

– Stephen Vincent Benet

We have spent a lot of time this summer at basketball games.  Our granddaughter loves the sport; and if I took the time to total all the games she has played since the end of the school year, I think the number would surprise me.  It’s exciting to watch the girls play, especially when the game is close and the winner isn’t decided until the final seconds of play.  It just happens that our girl is the one on her team who is most reliable at sinking long shots.  Most of her points are scored from outside the 3-point line; so when victory hinges on the final shot of the game, Ivy is the one who sends the ball flying in the direction of the basket.  If it goes in, she’s a hero; if it doesn’t, the game is lost.  It isn’t easy to carry the hopes of the entire team and be the one who is responsible for the last chance to win.  When Ivy was younger and this pressure first fell in her lap, I would remind her that the game had been forty minutes long and that her one attempt to score was not the only one that had missed the basket.  Games are won or lost in each minute of play, not in the final second.

Benet reminds us that our lives are much like that basketball game.  It’s easy to fall into a pattern of simply drifting through the days and forgetting to pay attention to truly being alive.  Then, when we reach the final buzzer, we try to fit all the living we’ve missed into the last seconds.  Just as games are lost by the small errors and lost opportunities that stretch over forty minutes of playing time, we die in the many minutes we squander over a lifetime — not when we take our final breath.

I suppose the difference we can make, both in sports and in living, is to pay attention to what we are doing, love every minute, and strive always to be sure we are in the game.  The world is such a miraculous place.  It unfolds each second of each day in amazing and exciting ways.  When we decide to be aware of the incredible gift of each minute we live and breathe and each chance we have to experience the wonder of being alive, then we are able to be fully present for our own existence.  Only then can we reach the predictable end of life and feel as though we have lived.  Let’s not wait for the final buzzer — the game is already in progress.

Look closely.  Focus your eyes until you see the green that isn’t part of the pepper plant.  Do you see him?  Then sit back and listen, and I’ll tell you his story.

Last year, just before Christmas, I was working at my seasonal job making wreaths at a local Christmas tree farm.  It’s wonderful work; because we take the branches pruned from the evergreens, and by cutting and trimming and assembling them, we create beautiful wreaths that light up the eyes of our customers and add a touch of natural beauty to their homes for the holiday season.  Many days, our assembly-line work is fairly unremarkable; but every now and then we find a surprise among the truckload of pruned branches — a bird’s nest, a cluster of tiny pine cones, and this year an ootheca filled with praying mantis eggs.

We set the branch aside on the workbench in the cold barn, and there it stayed until our seasonal work was done.  I’ve always wished that I had mantises in my garden to do some natural bug control for me;  so I grabbed the branch, took it home, and wove it into the fence surrounding my garden.  There it hung, all winter long, the only non-white piece of nature in a snow-covered garden patch.

Winter howled and blew and froze the earth, but finally it gave way to Spring.

Still, the egg case hung in the fence — now above the thawing ground and bathed in the sunlight of early Spring.  I waited and watched, knowing that the mantis eggs would need at least two weeks of 70-degree weather to encourage them to hatch.  It seemed as though Jack Frost had no desire to see my garden helpers emerge, and every morning we would awaken to frost-covered grass and the reminder that Spring had not yet arrived in all its glory.

What had arrived were the birds — hungry birds — and I began to see them eying the ootheca and dreaming of how wonderful it would taste.  No self-respecting mantis would ever lay her eggs exposed to predators.  This egg case had been hidden carefully, deep inside the branches of a Douglas Fir.  Now it hung, vulnerable and in full view at a time of year when food is less than abundant.  Certain that there would soon be no eggs left to hatch, I began some research on hatching them.  One commercial site where oothecas are sold recommended enclosing them in a protective covering and suspending them three feet above the ground so that they would be safe from ants as well.  It may not have been the most beautiful solution, but I took a brown paper lunch bag, made holes in it that were small enough for the newly hatched mantises to escape, and hung it from the lower branches of the pear tree that stood beside the garden.

One day, when I stopped to check on the bag, I discovered a small, brown mantis crawling on the outside of the bag.

They had hatched, and I hadn’t even noticed!  It was the first week of June, and the peas were growing tall along the back side of the garden, so I cut down the bag and laid it gently among the leaves.

A week or two later, I removed the bag and got on with my summer of gardening.  Six weeks passed, and I never saw a mantis.  I was beginning to think that the birds had eaten them after all and that my experiment in bringing praying mantises to my garden had failed.  It is hard to describe the joy I felt when I found my pepper-green friend standing guard on the spiciest plant in the garden.  And I noticed that not one leaf had been disturbed by a hungry insect.

Just had to let you see him one more time!  Thank you, Mr. Mantis, for praying in my garden.

Caught

In the still

Stark, silent dawn,

Brightorange clouds

Call me to play;

Come with us

And celebrate

Beginning

Of a brand-new Day.

♦

I hurry

With anticipation;

Down the path

I fairly fly.

In the spot

Where Earth

Meets Heaven,

I will fall

Into the Sky.

♦

Suddenly

I hear the beat

Of tympani

On distant hill,

Then the flashing

Crash of cymbals,

As the notes

Begin to spill.

♦

Caught up

In the symphony,

I turn my heel

And once again

Return to shelter

From the sudden

Outpouring

Of morning rain.

©Pamela Stead Jones 2010

“People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.”

– Claude Monet

Last summer, during a visit to Atlanta, I had the good fortune to visit the High Museum and view the art of Claude Monet.  I had seen images of his work in Art textbooks, but the small photos could not come close to portraying the impact of the massive Water Lilies triptych when it hangs right in front of you.  I understand now why we were permitted to take cellphone pictures — they do not even come close to conveying the power in the painting.

I sat on a bench, fifteen feet from the canvas, and for more than twenty minutes was mesmerized by the way Monet’s use of color and shadow drew me right into his painting.  The water seemed to move and ripple, and the light seemed to glisten and change; and after a short time, I no longer needed to think about why or how — I simply needed to sit by his lily pond and enjoy its wonder.

Painting any canvas that stretches forty-five feet wide would have to be a huge undertaking.  What takes Monet’s work into the extraordinary is the fact that he began painting his beloved water lilies in 1914 and spent the rest of his life, until his death in 1926, trying to capture what he saw in them.  It is mind-boggling to realize that this great artist completed 250 versions of his lily pond — and still he remained dissatisfied with the results.

“These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession.  They are beyond the powers of an old man, and I nevertheless want to succeed in rendering what I perceive.” — Claude Monet

Monet spoke these words in 1908.  It was not until 1920 that he completed the famous painting in the photo.  Still he continued to work at trying to capture the beauty he perceived as he sat in his spot by the pond.  He always felt that he came up short, and remarked, “I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint…”  I suspect that what Monet was trying to convey to us was more than the color, the light, the shadow and the movement in the lily pond.  There was such passion in the brushstrokes of the water lilies.  There was such energy in the paintings — and I was drawn into it in an instant.  Can you imagine the kind of passion that would lead a man to spend fifteen years of his life trying to capture the essence of one piece of nature’s beauty?

What was it that an 80-year-old man with cataracts saw in that pond that his limitations of canvas and paint could not convey?  I suspect that Mr. Monet saw the things that only the heart can see.  Although he felt that he had failed in expressing the totality of the beauty he experienced in his time by the lily pond, I would have to disagree.  I will never forget my visit to the lily pond, because it not only opened my eyes, but it gave me a chance to see their beauty through the eyes of my heart.  Monet was right — we don’t need to understand, we only need to love.

“A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream.”

– Victor Hugo

I talk to plants.  There, I’ve said it right out loud.  July is one of my favorite months, because it begins the motion toward the Great Tomato Avalanche.  I’m not sure which I like better — growing tomatoes or eating them — but as the day of sun-warmed, juicy, red slabs of tomato between two slices of bread draws close, my thoughts certainly turn toward the eating part.  We have loved the peas of early summer and already are enjoying the moist, tasty cucumbers that grow up the trellis in the back corner of the garden.  Plentiful yellow squash have become a staple of our summertime diet.  But there is something succulent and memorable about that first tomato sandwich that has my mouth watering in anticipation.

I have my eye on this fellow; and since the picture was taken four days ago, the blush of white around his center has begun to take on a pink-orange  glow.  I will chat with him again today about feeling free to let his cheeks grow red — no embarrassment in being a tomato.

The tiny Sungolds have begun to offer several tastes of heaven each day, and soon they will be ripening by the hundreds.  There is nothing quite like the experience of savoring that first golden orb of delight and then thinking of the sweet days ahead.  Many people I’ve met think that gardening begins when the first tomato is picked.  Others would argue that the drudgery of gardening begins long before that day; and they prefer to acquire summer produce at the roadside stand.  For me, gardening is a spiritual journey.

I would have to think back many years to pinpoint a time when I began this journey, because it is more than just a season long.  I vaguely remember the first year we turned over the light brown clay in our backyard and removed rocks, shells from long-ago clambakes, and shards of broken pottery, as we raked and sifted and tried to make the soil a welcome place for our plants to take root.  Our garden that year was less productive, and it began a cycle of mulching and tilling and offering compost that now has loosened the clay and turned the soil a deep, dark brown.  Each Fall, we fill the fenced plot with inches of fallen leaves and let them lie as a blanket between the soil and the winter snow.  Each Spring, we till the leaves into the soil, allowing their decay to restore the earth that once was their beginning.  There is a lot to be learned about endings and beginnings when one becomes responsible for a garden.

When the frost as passed and the soil is tilled, we add the seeds and plants that will become the abundance of July, and the anticipation begins.  Each day I find my way to my little garden and step inside the fence.  I caress the delicate leaves and encourage the tiny seedlings to use the sun and water and soil to reach their full potential and fulfill their mission of producing wonderful food.  I want them to feel my love and gratitude and anticipation long before I pick that first ripe tomato.  I want to be right there with them so I will know when they need a little grass for mulch or a stake to keep their vines from trailing and rotting on the ground.  I want to watch the dance between their blossoms and the bees as the mystery of pollination causes their fruit to set.

It is when I stand in the early-morning silence of the garden that I best understand the immensity of the universe and the miraculous way that so many forces come together to ensure the growth of a single tomato.  When my hands are in the earth and my heart swells with gratitude, my spirit soars into the vastness and I learn that I am just like the plants I tend — a small piece of the great expanse that, like every other small piece, is worthy of all the magic Creation has to offer.

There is something much greater than vegetables at work when we plant a little garden in which to walk and discover an immensity in which to dream.

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”

– May Sarton

Last summer, I packed up my favorite-oldest-granddaughter, Ivy, and the two of us took a trip together.  First we flew to Florida to celebrate my parents’ 65th wedding anniversary.  Then we moved on to Atlanta and spent time with my eldest son and his family.  It was such a great thing to travel only with Ivy, and I got to know her in ways that escape us when we live in the midst of a big family.  This year, it will be Mark’s turn to travel with Ivy as they join our son, David, and his daughter, Lily, in a sort of father/daughter trip to the beach.  I will stay home — alone.

Alone.  I really can’t remember the last time I spent an overnight alone.  I do know that we will celebrate our 25th anniversary this year; and I also know that my oldest child will soon be forty.  With many years and many children and grandchildren whose love has enriched our lives, the one thing I can only imagine is being alone.  I know there were times during my years as a single parent when the kids would go for a weekend with their father, but I remember those weekends as the times when I would catch up on projects or sleep as need would dictate.

Everyone I’ve told about my personal vacation seems concerned.  ”What will you do for a whole week all by yourself?” they want to know.  That strikes me as a little bit funny, and I think it slants toward the idea that I will be lonely when left to my own devices.    What is funny is that I have no thoughts about doing at all.  My thoughts are all of being.  On any usual day, I have pockets of solitude that allow me to just be with myself — my early morning walks, my time spent in the garden — and this will not change.  What I hope will build on these pockets of solitude will be a week without electronic noise, without schedules, and without anything that distracts me from spending a vacation with my own bad self.

I think about the gift of traveling with only Ivy last summer — about the ways we connected that were deeper and quieter and more meaningful than our everyday relationship that takes place in the context of our busy life.  I learned things about my granddaughter that I hadn’t known before our adventure, and I know her better than I ever have before.  I look forward to my chance to fly solo for a week, and I’m thinking that I just may learn some new things about myself, too.  A whole week of solitude is something incredible to imagine.  I look forward to spending it with my own best friend.

“Every wall is a door.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

I suppose it started with yesterday’s post about trees and the ways their imperfections sometimes lead to new growth of a different sort.  The idea grew this morning during a conversation with a friend whose life is promising to change dramatically before the end of the year.  The future is uncertain, with the only certainty being that the familiar life she lives today will no longer be hers.  I thought about gnarled trees and thought about scars and thought about the wonderful things that set roots in an injury — things we could never imagine at the time of our hurt.  And then I read what Emerson had to say about walls.

“Every wall is a door.”  Now I’m smiling, as I think of a time when I was staying at a relative’s house and needed to find the bathroom in the middle of the night.  The house was dark, and I didn’t want to risk waking my hosts, so I navigated without a light.  My memory misjudged the location of a doorway, and BAM!  I walked right into the wall.  As I recall the moment of impact, all I want to say to Mr. Emerson is that I would have welcomed a door when I was met by the wall.  Fortunately, I wasn’t moving very fast when I had my close encounter, but when we hit walls that pop up in the midst of our daily life, the impact often is greater.

“Every wall is a door.”  How can this be?

I think Emerson was talking about the groove in the tree trunk or the scar on the person when he talked about walls.  Sometimes it just takes a wall to slow us down enough that we take a look at where we are headed and notice that there is more than one option available to us.  Without the wall that makes us stop and pay attention, we might not notice the open doors that offer other choices.  Maybe what we need is a change of perspective that allows us to see the wall as a challenge, not an obstacle.  When we see an obstacle, we are likely to become discouraged and either retreat or stand still and consider life hopeless.  When we see a challenge, it calls into action our experience, our creativity, and our love of new opportunities.

Here’s wishing you a day of smooth sailing; but if you should find a wall in your path, may you seize the moment and rise to the challenge.  You may find that it is a door.

“If you look closely at a tree you’ll notice its knots and dead branches, just like our bodies.  What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.”

– Matthew Fox

Traveling through my days with a camera as my companion has brought into focus for me the things that I consider beautiful.  Some of them are no surprises — sunrises, sunsets, flowers, mountains, streams.  Others stretch and challenge the boundaries of beautiful, at least in some people’s estimation.  Several weeks ago,  on my way to attend a class, I found myself making a mental note to bring my camera the next week.  A huge sycamore tree at the side of the street had a gnarled trunk, and I knew I needed to add it to my collection of roots and knots.

The photo only captures a small section of the enormous gnarl that sits just above the spot where the massive old tree disappears under the ground; but, having seen it once, the snapshot is enough to allow me to remember all of its twisted beauty.

I realized this morning, when I read Matthew Fox’s words, that I’ve been accumulating quite a collection of the unusual forms of trees.  Some photos are of tree trunks, like the one above.  Others capture the tangle of the exposed root systems, made visible through erosion, and giving us a glimpse into the existence of trees below the earth

Part of my attraction to them is the discovery that in nearly every case there is new life of some sort springing from the gnarled and imperfect form.

As leaves drop to the ground and meet with soil and water, they are captured by the grooves and channels of trunk and roots.  Their rich organic matter, born of death and decay, provides the perfect medium for a stray spore or seed to nestle in and spring forth with new life.

I think of my experience with planting trees; and I can visualize them standing as straight as sticks, with their unblemished bark shining in the sunlight.  I remember pounding stakes into the ground at three points around the base of the tree and adjusting ropes so that the tree would grow straight rather than leaning at an angle.  It takes time for roots to develop and mature; and until they do, trees need a little support.  There is pristine beauty in a new, young tree that makes it hard to imagine that one day they will bear the scars and gnarls of the ones that call out to me and my lens.

People are a lot like trees, I think.  I remember the days when my complexion was pure and my body was lean and my muscles responded in an instant to any movement I thought of making.  My roots were shallow in those days, and I moved from place to place without a care for needing stability or being grounded.  No life is without challenges; and as the winds began to blow and the winter snow weighs heavy on us, we pay attention to growing strong roots and learn to value more than the undisturbed beauty of our youth.  By the time we mature, we all bear scars — marks that may, on the surface, appear to make us less than beautiful; marks that provide the chink in our superficial beauty that allows something new and different to spring into being.

I love my tree trunks and my gnarled roots, because I see mirrored in them the person I would love to become — one whose roots are strong and deep, one who can face the wind and snow and even the lightning, one who can transform loss and pain into a sort of decay that becomes the place for the rebirth of beauty.

“Observe the wonders as they occur around you.  Don’t claim them.  Feel the artistry moving through and be silent”

– Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Today is a wonderful day to be awake — not merely alive, but awake.  Each morning when I open my eyes and have the first awareness that I am still breathing, I am thankful to be alive; but after discovering that I’m still here, I need to wake up and really see, really experience the world where I live.  Today is a wonderful day to be awake.  A steady rain fell last night; and although it had stopped by morning, drops of water hung on each leaf and each flower petal.  Abundant water, too abundant to soak into the earth, stood in puddles along the path where I took my morning walk.

The brown, parched grass of last week was beginning to stand tall as the addition of water set photosynthesis to work and sent new shoots of vibrant green to overshadow the colorless casualties of the dry spell.  The creek sang more loudly as its volume, increased by the restoring rain, turned up the volume of its music as it flowed over the rocks and on toward the river.  Water bugs skipped from place to place on the surface, leaving rippling rings that widened and collided with the ones from their comrades.

The luscious mud on the banks of the stream once again had its pungent aroma, a welcome change from the dust that only days ago stung our eyes and clogged our nostrils.  I walked, embraced by all the wonder of this beautiful, freshly-washed morning, leaving dry footprints as the drops of water fell to the ground under my feet.  The trees dropped their excess rain as the breeze gently blew their leaves, and I was bathed in this second-storm as the water fell around me.  It was only when I stepped out into the clearing that I realized a soft rain had begun to fall.  I stood for a moment, face turned upward, and felt the wonder of rain wash over me.  I stood tall, there amid the blades of grass, and felt a sort of oneness with them.  Of course they were reaching for the sky, I thought; the rain has brought them back to life, and now they are awake.

Alive is good, but awake is wonderful!  Today is a wonderful day to be awake!  Let us make that our statement every day that we live.