Pamela Stead Jones

“Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.”

— Ikkyu Sojun

There is a still sort of movement in the air today.  The contrasts of late November are everywhere.  Dry leaves scamper in the light wind that indecisively comes and goes.  I step tentatively, mimicking its odd rhythm, stepping over sticks and branches that clutter the Autumn earth.  The carpet of grass, still green but no longer growing, lies suspended in time beneath the debris released by the trees.  The trees.  They stand like stark skeletons, their bony arms stretched toward the sky.  They seem to reach for the cotton clouds that rush through the blue, just out of their reach.  It seems that the wind has no reservation where the clouds are concerned.  They fly with a purpose as though they are sweeping the vault clean one more time and assuring that no vestige of fall will remain in the corners of Winter’s sky.

I stroll past the creek that flows along the edge of my walking path and again look with wonder at the ancient tree whose hollow old trunk could not bear the weight of October snow.

There will be no buds on this fallen tree next Spring.  Like a coroner peeking inside of its trunk, I search for the secrets it held deep inside; but all I see is wood and bark and open channels that led to the roots that now are exposed and no longer hold fast to Earth.

Wood and bark and maybe some water.  I look again to the bare-branched skeletons that move their brittle bones in the Autumn wind.  I think of the magic that will send out blossoms from nothing but bark and wood and maybe some water; and I think that there may be more than air sending the clouds on their sweep through the sky.  There is magic in the Spirit that moves the winds and calls forth blossoms from wood and bark.  I close my eyes and let the breeze brush my face.  I think of my own body — flesh and bone and maybe some water — and I let the magic fill me with dreams of the blossoms that still long to sprout from my own being.  I let the Spirit move and swirl deep inside of me and plant the seeds that will sprout when Spring comes again, from a bit of flesh, a bit of bone, a drop or two of water, and the magic that calls them to life.

“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”

– Leo Tolstoy

Truth is Truth.  It is not something we can manufacture or concoct out of bits and pieces we gather along the way.  It simply exists.  It is our job to collect and refine experiences and accomplishments that shed light on Truth and allow it to stand in all its beauty.  From the time we are born, we begin to take on experiences, people, and things that attach themselves to us and follow us on our journey through life.  When we are very young, we have little ability to discriminate in our collection of traveling companions.  We allow just about anyone or anything into our sphere and give little thought to what sort of burdens we might end up carrying.  It is only after the years of accumulation find us struggling under the weight of all that we have collected that we begin to entertain the notion that life is not always about holding on.  Sometimes we must choose to let go.

It can be a painful process to follow through on our decision to simplify, to let go, to hold on only to the pieces that showcase Truth.  We have come to rely on our traveling companions for entertainment, for distraction, and for company.  We don’t want to be lonely as we walk our path, and it is difficult to think of leaving behind the things we have carried for so long that it seems they are a part of us.  We are afraid that when we lay our burdens down and stand unencumbered that we will see how small and insignificant and inadequate we really are.  Still, the day comes when we know that our load is too heavy.  We know that something must be left behind if we are to continue to walk, so we gather our courage, lift a burden from our shoulders, and lay it gently by the side of the road.  As part of the burden that shrouds our Truth is removed, we are given a glimpse of its beauty.  We are reminded that it shines deep beneath the unnecessary bits and pieces we have piled on for such a long time.

Soon we find that we are panning for gold.  We wash away the dust and dirt and let our Truth sparkle.  We fire the forge and burn away all that is less than golden.  Our footsteps quicken as the weight of the world is lifted; and we soon discover that Truth has the same effect as helium.  Lighter than air, we dance through life; and as our Truth, now exposed, touches the world around us, we become alchemists.  Soon each thing we take on is transformed.  We spin straw into gold.  We take common lead and turn it to something sparkling and precious.  Before long, our steps become so light that we discover we can fly.  We see that the Truth we have sought all our lives is already with us.  All we needed to do was put down the things that hid it from us.

“Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods,/And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.”

— William Allingham

My time in the woods of the Pumpkin Patch have ended; and I have begun my next seasonal job assembling Christmas wreaths in the barn at Pine Brook Hollow.  There is something about doing this work in preparation for Christmas that makes me want to skip right over Thanksgiving and rush headlong into winter; but Mother Nature asserted herself as Queen of Autumn this week and reminded me not to wish away a single moment of the season of changes.

There have been years when the tug-of-war between summer and winter has seen such a chill in the air that we have huddled near a propane heater as we trimmed the evergreen boughs and worked our magic of transforming tree to wreath.  There is a drawer in my dresser that holds the long johns, the under armour, and the well-soiled fleece shirts that never quite lose the scent of pine.  There are wool socks that can be layered on top of my cotton ones to keep my feet from freezing solid as I stand for hours in an open barn.

As my first day approached, I took inventory; and on my way to bed the night before, I laid out all my layers in the order I would need them in the morning.  Imagine my surprise when the fires of Autumn burned with such efficiency that I was able to leave behind the layers and work without a jacket.  My perspective shifted as suddenly as the autumn breeze; and instead of feeling as though winter had come early, I struggled with the idea of preparing for Christmas on an Indian Summer day.  My trips outside to collect the boughs drew me into a world of the slow fire of Autumn.  It scorched the leaves that still clung tenaciously to the nearly-bare trees, and the color of flames licked at the vibrant blue sky of a November day.  As summer tugged harder, we relished the lingering warmth, knowing that soon it would be blown away by the chilly winter wind.

Today the balance has shifted.  I will pull on my many layers and add a stocking cap for good measure.  The embers are dying, and the trees are all but bare.  As I walk from my house, I hear a noisy flock of geese as they point their V toward the south and announce their departure.  Even the birds are leaving.  Soon the slow fire of autumn will consume all the color and leave us only with the memory of another year.  Soon the whole earth will sleep beneath its blanket of winter snow.  I pull on my gloves and take out my pruning shears.  This will be a very good day to assemble a bit of color before December owns the landscape.  When Christmas comes, we will savor the green and remember the summer that Autumn consumed in the midst of the silent winter.

“It is not our differences that divide us.  It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. “

— Audre Lorde

The moment a baby is born, it begins.

“I think she looks like great-grandma.”

“She definitely has her mother’s eyes!”

“And her father’s nose, poor thing.”

We learn long before we are able to speak that being like other people is important.  Our similarities make people happy and proud; and when people feel this way, we are loved.  It is nice to have the people who love us point out the ways we resemble them, and recognizing our sameness is part of what we use to define ourselves as individuals.  I am determined, just like my mother.  I am fun-loving, just like my father.

I chuckle as I pass the thought that maybe it is our siblings who are the first ones to teach us that we are not all the same.  As we strive for individuality in our family and then in the larger community, we begin to point out our differences rather than the things we have in common.  We may look alike, but we are totally different.  She has no idea who I really am.  He doesn’t understand a thing I say; I think he may be adopted.

Over-arching these two pieces of how we view ourselves in relation to others is the truth we are told — that we are created in God’s image.  As we move from Aunt Bertha’s smile and grandpa’s curly hair toward the time when we strive to find our own uniqueness, it is easy to turn that around and to assume that God looks just like me.  This is when the differences we discover between ourselves and others can become a problem.  If God looks just like me, and Aunt Bertha, and grandpa, and my mother and father; and you look nothing like us, then you must not be trusted.  We look like God, and you look like something different.

None of us would like to think that we do such things; but if I am honest with myself, I must admit that I feel a certain reservation the first time I meet someone whose differences from what I see in the mirror are undeniable.  What we learn through experiencing our differences is that before long we discover the similarities that lie beneath them.  It is through embracing and celebrating and welcoming differences that we are reminded that God’s image is far too vast to be contained in one person, in one family, or even in one community.

Let’s remember each day, as we walk out into the world beyond our own personal space, to turn suspicion to curiosity and reservation to a sense of adventure.  The more we learn about the different people we meet, the better we will come to know our Creator.  After all, we all are created in his image.

“Inside us there is something that has no name; that something is what we are.”

— Jose Saramago

We spend our lifetimes, if we choose to live with passion, peeling the onion of our own beings and making a voyage of self-discovery that shows us who we are.  It is only human to use our minds — our language — to categorize, define, and name the things we discover each day.  A rock is a rock; but on closer inspection, we see that this rock is jasper.  Looking even closer we discover that the jasper sparkles with quartz crystals; and now I pause to wonder what I might discover if I looked at those crystals through the lens of a microscope.  The more we live and the more we refine our ability to see, to wonder, to step beyond the known and expand our understanding, the more we realize that there are times when our vocabulary is too small to categorize, define, and name.

Nowhere does language fail more miserably that when we try to define who we are — not what we do, but who we are.  Far beneath the surface of woman, mother, partner, writer, and all the other roles that may define me, there pulses a spark of the divine that cries out to be revealed but still remains veiled beneath layers of language that fails in its attempts to name its beauty.  Every time I give myself a name, I find that there is another veil that offers its edge and asks me to lift it, revealing that this is not my name at all.

We are mysterious creatures; and the mystery is part of the gift we are given as our birthright.  Perhaps it is the mystery that keeps us ever striving to express who we are and reveal our own names.  It is the mystery that gives birth, again and again, to the beauty we bring to our world and to each other.  It is the mystery that is so precious and so expansive that we must celebrate the veils, celebrate the layers, that ask us to dig deeper and meet ourselves over and over again.

We are only human; and it is natural that we should want to categorize, define and name who we are.  We are also divine, created in the ever-expanding image of our Creator; and if we are wise, we will celebrate the not knowing, the not naming, the mystery of being who we are, that leads us always to discover that we are indefinably beautiful

“The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe.  One moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection of the divine image.”

— Charles W. Chesnutt

Today is a perfect day for opening your heart to all the universe has to offer.  We are only human; and that means we are made up of all the good, bad, and ugly things that define humanity.  We are human; and that means we are also made of the beautiful parts of the divine essence of all Creation.  Our hearts have seen it all and felt it all; and at different times, each of us has shared all the different facets of our humanity with the others we meet.  Today is a perfect day for opening your heart to all the universe has to offer; and what the universe has to offer is changed by what you add to the mix when you open your heart.

Yesterday I was part of a discussion about connecting with others, heart to heart.  It is not a difficult thing to do; in fact, we do it all the time, whether we recognize it or not.  Whatever it is that we carry in our hearts is broadcast from us in all directions, and we are constantly receiving similar energies from the other people we meet.  We have the ability to affect the nature of the energy we contribute in this way.  It involves spending time with our soul’s love and allowing that pure, created love to merge with our heart and drive out the lower forms of love that require something in return, that give birth to jealousy, that leave us feeling rejected when another person does not respond in kind.  We did some meditation that involved merging heart and soul and intentionally sharing that love with another person.  It was remarkable to find times when that same sort of love was reflected back, uplifting us and encouraging us to strive for that higher sort of love when sharing with others.

Today I will make it an intention to open my heart and send out the sort of love my soul has for the universe.  I will do my best to let petty jealousies bounce off the surface and be sent to the earth.  I will celebrate the pure love and compassion that is the gift of my own creation and send it out with no strings attached.  Today I will open my heart to all the universe has to offer, and I will send good things to the hearts of others.

“Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them.”

— Jean Paul Richter

When the storms gather, some people crawl under the covers, pull them over their heads, and tremble with fear until the winds subside and the air is still again.  When the storms gather, some people sway like trees in the swirling winds, dodging left and right, hoping their roots will hold fast and suffering the wrath of a broken limb or two and the scars that mark them as survivors of the fierceness of nature’s wrath.  When the storms gather, some people stand firm and solid like the eternal mountains, trusting that even the most powerful storm is short-lived.  They emerge glistening with the renewed beauty of rain-washed rock, growing more beautiful with each passing rain.

When sorrow first touched me, it carried me away like a leaf on the wind.  I buried my head beneath my pillow and trembled for fear that the storm would rage forever.  Long after the storm had subsided, I feared its return; and I lived as though the storm still raged although its fury had passed.  When the next storm arrived, I stood like a tree.  I braced myself against the wind and winced as the driving rain pelted me and tore at my bark.  With everything in me, I raged against the storm, summoning fury that equaled its wrath.  I ducked and I dodged and I writhed and I wailed, and the battle cracked my limbs and scarred me with the marks of a soldier who has fought a great war.

Now I have lived through many sorrows.  I have learned that it is the fear of the storm that has hurt me the most.  I have learned that even the most ferocious storm has a beginning and an end.  There will always be storms, and there will always be sorrows.  They will come and go, and life will go on in spite of their fury.  I have learned that they will blow my leaves away.  It will hurt for a time, but I will go on without them until the time comes to grow them again.  I will lose a branch or two, but the pruning will make my load lighter and strengthen my roots; and I will live to see another season.  As the years have passed, I no longer run and hide.  I no longer rage and fight in ways that deplete my energy to get on with the business of living.  My roots have turned to stone; and I stand like a mountain.  I know that I cannot call the sorrow, and I know that I cannot send it away.  When the wind blows, I stand still and let it carry away the things I no longer need.  When the rains shed their tears, I let them run down my rocky shoulders and leave me gleaming and restored and unchanged, but transformed.

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Once each month on a Saturday afternoon, I meet with a group of women for a Wise Women’s Drum Circle.  We laugh, we play our drums, we speak our dreams, and we share our hearts.  It is remarkable to be in the company of others and never need to backpedal from speaking our truth.  It is a place of giving and receiving acceptance, love, compassion, and open hearts.  It is a place of adding without taking away, of listening without passing judgment, of joining together in a sort of community that embraces our differences, finds our similarities, and celebrates the growth that comes from linking arms and hearts and souls in love.  As I write, I see the faces of all the women who were part of our time yesterday.  I smile, and the warmth swirls all around me; I think of them, and I hope they can feel the warmth, too.

We played a women’s rhythm, Sorsonet, one that is played when young girls are initiated into the community of adult women.  As the three parts of the rhythm wove together, I could hear the steady sound of the grandmother’s voice, the base that held it all together with purpose and serenity.  There was the voice of the mother, non-stop and strident; asserting her place as the worker, the child-bearer, the keeper of the strong and active stage of a woman’s life.  Her sharp beats lay on top of the grandmother’s wisdom and called the young girls to join in the world of adults.  There was the light-hearted rhythm of the girls who skipped between childhood and womanhood, filled with excitement and having no need to hold back their excitement at letting go of childhood and dancing into their new adventure.

We talked about holding on and about letting go, about how these two choices are always working in our lives as we have come from childhood to adulthood and soon to retirement.  In a guided meditation, we were called to visit our future selves and see how we dreamed that we would be when we truly are the grandmothers.  Perhaps we drew on our own experiences with grandmothers and wise women.  Each of us saw a version of ourselves that was physically slower and more deliberate, but still filled with vitality and spirit and creativity.  Each of us saw that our dreams still would carry us when our bodies might no longer be the vehicle that drives our achievement.  There will be a lot of letting go between now and then, and a lot of choosing what to hold onto and carry with us to the next part of our lives.

As we again played Sorsonet, I thought of all the places I have been so far — the carefree days of being a girl, the excitement and hard work of my years as a mother, and the letting go that already has begun to carry me to the ripeness of my grandmother years.  I thought of the way that I moved through a fearlessness born of naivete, to the years of challenging fear and learning to stand in the face of difficulty, and at last to the time when my fears lie beneath the surface and courage is what shows on the face that others see in me.  There is something powerful in learning to hold fear close and only let courage be seen.  This may be the heart of the wisdom we see in the elders, the steady base beat of their lives that assures us that it will be all right and that there is always a reason to dance the celebration of being a woman.  Don’t be afraid, they tell us, to hold on or to let go.  We must do both in order to fully embrace our journey through life.  I take out my drum and begin to play the steady rhythm of the grandmother.  I adjust the shawl around my tiny shoulders and play the song of wisdom and courage, the song that says, “dance!”  And don’t be afraid.

“So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.”

— Baha’u'llah

I am only one.  I am created in the image of God and carry the Light of God within me; but still, I am only one.  You are only one.  You are created in the image of God and carry the Light of God within you; but still, you are only one.  When I feel the Light burning within me, it feels powerful and large and bright; but still, I can only shine from my own small space.

We are created in the image of God; and I have to believe that this is true so that we can recognize one another as family.  We are all connected.  We are all a part of All-That-Is.  Each of us brings an integral piece to the total picture of humankind.  When we band together in Unity and recognize that we are all a part of something much greater than the sum of its pieces, we truly can hope to light the world.

Imagine a forest.  The sun is sinking below the horizon, and afternoon is being taken over by night.  A child has wandered off the trail into the woods, and his family has been searching for him in the fading light.  Suddenly darkness descends.  Each member of the search party has brought a flashlight; and one by one the lights go on to aid them in their hunt.  They point their lights here and there, hoping to see the lost child illuminated in the brush that grows at the feet of the trees all around.  It is arduous work to search by flashlight on a dark night; and as time passes, their hopes begin to fade into the cold, black night.  Then something remarkable happens.  One searcher moves to comfort another; and as they stand side by side, arms around each other, their lights join together and shine as one.  The swath they cut is now twice as wide, and the area they illuminate is doubled.  One by one the other searchers join the line.  They link arms and blend their lights until twenty times the width of one appears out of the darkness.  They walk as one, able to see much better where they are going.  Their hope burns brighter with each light that is added to their group.

Suddenly there is a rustling sound in the forest, just beyond their sight.  As they move toward the noise, the child appears.

“Where have you been?” his mother asks.

“I’ve been looking for you,” the child answers, “but darkness fell and I was all alone.  I couldn’t find you anywhere.  I would spot a light for just a  moment, and then it would disappear; but suddenly it grew so big and so bright that all I had to do was walk toward it.  And there you were.”

I am only one.  I am created in the image of God and carry the Light of God within me; but still, I am only one.  You are only one.  You are created in the image of God and carry the Light of God within you; but still, you are only one.

When we honor our roles as pieces of Light and part of All-That-Is, when we stand side by side with hope and encouragement, when we combine our Lights and shine as one, surely we can light the world.

“When once you have tasted flight you will always walk the earth with your eyes tuned skyward:  for there you have been and there you will always be.”

— Henry Van Dyke

It is truly amazing that when you are listening to your soul and walking through life with eyes wide open — heart wide open — that everywhere you turn, you hear words that uplift you, encourage you, and speak to your deepest dreams.

Henry Van Dyke was born in 1852.  He came into a world where all travel took place on the ground, and I am sure his parents never entertained the idea that flight was for anything but the birds.  It is hard to imagine how exciting it would have been for a young man in the days of his contemporaries, the Wright brothers, to hear the tales of winged objects that floated on the breeze and could carry him aloft.  Apparently, Mr. Van Dyke lived to soar among the clouds, and it changed his perspective so much that he said a part of him would always be there.  When we live tethered to the Earth, we tend to see only what lies at eye-level or below.  After all, that is the world we live in; and embracing that world wholeheartedly is what makes us feel truly alive.

It was the imagination of the Wrights, who were not satisfied with being earthbound, that lifted everyone from their time on to a new level of aspiration.  Now we could leave the ground behind us and soar with the birds.  Now we could look to the sky and experience a whole new view of our world.  Now we could be captivated by the notion that there is more to see than we can encounter by keeping our feet on the ground.

Not everyone aspires to aviation.  Although I love the convenience of flying to my destination when I travel, it is not my passion to get my pilot’s license and spend all my time in the clouds.  In spite of this, Van Dyke’s words touch a place in me and call my soul to take flight.  I live on planet Earth.  There is no escaping its gravity and its very tangible presence.  I must work and sleep and eat and play and do all the things that keep me alive and healthy; but there is more to being alive than just these things.  Our world is noisy; and the voice of our soul — the voice of our heart — often seems muffled in the midst of the loud distraction that exists in the place where we are rooted.  Our soul’s voice is quiet, but we can hear it if we choose to.  All it takes is the desire to tune out the distracting noises and listen with all our hearts.  When the voice of the soul breaks through and reaches the ears of our heart, we suddenly find that we can soar with the eagles.  We are lifted out of our purely physical existence and taken to a place where we have the perspective to sort out what is real — what is soul — and leave behind the noise and chaos.

Henry Van Dyke was right.  Once you find your wings, once you take flight, a part of you will always be in that other place.  And when that happens, the noisy, mundane world begins to shine with the true light that has always existed in the shadows of what is tangible.  Today is a perfect day for flying.  Open your ears — open your heart — and hear the voice of your soul.  I guarantee that no matter how difficult your day might be, you will find that you’re walking on air.