My amaryllis is blooming...I counted at least 16 blossoms in full splendor with others coming but still in bud. An amaryllis is a late fall tradition with me, one I shared with my mother. I always bought at least one for me and one for her. My first amaryllis came from a boyfriend who just showed up on my doorstep one day with this strange bulb in a pot. Come to think of it, he was also the first boy who took me to dinner in an expensive restaurant. He was a physicist and very smart; one of our dates was a trip to the astronomy lab where he worked and we went to see the stars. His mother was my laurel teacher and I loved her.

An amaryllis is such a statement of beauty for beauty's sake. I planted these bulbs before Christmas, and I've faithfully watered them. Here they are, piercing the air with beauty. Everyone who sees them gasps. I do every time I walk in the room. The bulbs are big and ungainly when you buy them--nothing pretty that even hints at the beauty inside. However, they have such heart. The red-flowered bulb has three bloom stems, one with six blossoms and the other two with four. The white-flowered bulb has four bloom stems, two with two blossoms and two with three. If I take care of the amaryllis, keep it outside and watered in the summer and just let the long leaves flourish, I can bring it inside in the early fall and keep it in a dark place until December when I can plant it again. It will bloom again. Sometimes, even after the first blooms have gone, another bloom spike will grow and blossom. Sometimes second blooming doesn't work and only leaves come.

The blossoms are the point of this bulb--much like a tulip. I don't know if there is a place on the earth where an amaryllis grows wild. Maybe there is. But as far as I can see, the only purpose of this plant is to produce gorgeous blossoms. These blossoms aren't like an orchid, whose blooms keep for months. These blossoms last 5-7 days and they wilt. But what a glorious show they put on for those few days. It's like the Edna ST. Vincent Millay poem

First Fig
My candle burns at both ends,
It will not last the night.
But, oh my foes and ah my friends--
It gives a lovely light.

This is a lot of talk about the properties of the amaryllis. But there is a point to it. It's okay to just be who we are. We can give all our existence to beauty if that's our purpose. The amaryllis doesn't hold back--it just gives and gives and makes a spectacular show. It doesn't matter that the show isn't a long one. It just has to be beautiful.

If our point is to be beautiful in our existence, meaning that we reach our potential, we don't have to be worried about how long the show goes on. We just have to live in the present and make the most beautiful blossom we can. Our lives are all a little like the amaryllis, full of potential that just needs some soil and water to flourish and fulfill the measure of our creation.

We all need space and feeling valued. We all want to feel we are important to someone else. We all want a beautiful blossom, a contented life. May we consider this gorgeous flower and realize the transformation that takes place under the surface of the soil. Another poet, Sara Teasdale said,

Spend all you have for loveliness
Buy it and never count the cost.
For one, white singing hour of peace,
Count many a year of strife well-lost.
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

May we spend our lives in building beauty, even if it doesn't last long, and may we have the soil and nutrients that are necessary for our life's work.

Blessings to you all...

Creatures

I've had a long love affair with Mary Oliver, the poet extraordinaire. At yoga on Monday, someone had left a copy of her book in our yoga room, and our glorious teacher read us Wild Geese at the end of class. What a message to the world that one is. Yesterday I read one of her poems that had new meaning to me because of my experiences on the beaches of Oregon last summer.

Here's the poem from her book Dream Work....
Starfish

In the sea rocks,
in the stone pockets
under the tide’s lip,
in water dense as blindness

they slid
like sponges,
like too many thumbs.
I knew this, and what I wanted

was to draw my hands back
from the water – what I wanted
was to be willing
to be afraid.

But I stayed there,
I crouched on the stone wall
while the sea poured its harsh song
through the sluices,

while I waited for the gritty lightning
of their touch, while I stared
down through the tide’s leaving
where sometimes I could see them –

their stubborn flesh
lounging on my knuckles.
What good does it do
to lie all day in the sun

loving what is easy?
It never grew easy,
but at last I grew peaceful:
all summer

my fear diminished
as they bloomed through the water
like flowers, like flecks
of an uncertain dream,

while I lay on the rocks, reaching
into the darkness, learning
little by little to love
our only world.



I spent several afternoons last July walking along the Oregon beaches where starfish flourish. The first one we found lying on the wet sand was missing two legs and Abbey assured me that if I threw it back in the sea it had a chance to grow the missing legs. I walked out into the water and threw it as far as I could. I'd never held a living starfish before. My grandchildren hadn't either, and we were in awe at the glory of such a creature.

Further up the coast we explored mussel beds where different colored starfish nestled in the tide pools and shallow water along with anemones and other exotic life. We never had the patience to sit and let them crawl on our hands, but if I had remembered my poetry, I could have made the effort, cold have found the patience. As it was, such a thing was not even a possibility.

And there's the rub--if I had remembered my poetry I would have known....how many things I've learned from that beautiful condensed language. Once a nun told me that when she taught poetry to her students, she would use the metaphor of poetry as condensed orange juice. She thought the intense flavor of frozen juice would let her students see the depth and importance of poetry, that even though it was shorter than prose it was very powerful. I've used that metaphor in my own classrooms since.

There's an irony in poetry--this thing that seems to be dependent upon beauty, whose purpose could be considered beauty is stronger that the words we use to do our daily work. Poetry does explore our feelings and emotions and what is memorable through imagery. However, underneath the imagery is the strength of the core of our lives. We are who we are, and poetry speaks to that which lies under the surface.

Mary is using starfish to tell us about patience, about taking chances, about knowing our world and valuing all creatures and the experiences we have. It's a lesson I'm learning over and over. Be patient with what is--don't try to change everything. Have patience and trust that in the end, things will work out. That's a step into living without so much fear. We are assailed by fear every day--an alert status for terrorism, a weather warning, an outbreak of a terrible disease, financial crises, bankruptcies. The list goes on and we do too. However, we aren't supposed to live in fear. Fear keeps us from trying what is difficult. "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (2Timothy 1:7)

I love Mary's line, "What good does it do to lie all day in the sun loving what is easy?" I think I've spent a large portion of my life envying those who seem to be lying in the sun and doing what is easy. My hope for myself today and for the next little while is that I not be content with what is easy, that I might try to do that which is hard. I have to realize that while hard things will never be easy, they can be easier, and that I can be peaceful with the effort. Don't we all want peace for ourselves and our souls. There's a lesson for us all in Wendell Berry's lovely poem.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry


May we love this wonderful world. May we learn lessons from the wild things who "do not tax their lives with forethought of grief." Blessings to all.

Making room

We sang "Ring Out, Wild Bells" in church on Sunday, a hymn I always love, but we only sing it once each year. The music, by Crawford Gates, is gorgeous and enriches Tennyson's lovely poetry . The poem is fairly explicit about what we're ringing out--falseness and darkness. It also is clear about what we're ringing in--truth and Christ. The next day at yoga, our instructor focused on our breathing and stretching, helping us open ourselves to new possibilities, making room in our lives for what we want to enter. I couldn't think of what focus I want to make room for in my life.

I know what I usually want--calmness, joy, warm sunshine, summer, plenty of money to spend, friends, family, health, freedom to do what I want--isn't that what almost everyone wants? I think it is. Only the catch is that we never get all of that for any length of time. I've come to the conclusion that life is really about having the right outlook and trust in the Lord to face whatever comes our way. Hard things happen--people get sick and die, children go astray, we make mistakes, the economy tumbles downhill, people lose money, they get addicted to drugs, or can't find their way for lots of reasons. Beethoven went deaf, and John Milton went blind. Bad things happen to all, and no one's life is really the way it looks on the outside.

Our internal life is what's important, the peace and joy we find within the constraints of whatever system we inhabit. I'm one of the lucky ones who generally has enough of everything. I don't have huge excesses, but I have enough. Bad things happen to me--I've been very sick and hurt and have also felt betrayed and stressed at work. However, as I look back at this year, I see that terrible things have happened, a divorce in our family, friends who have been diagnosed with terminal illnesses, but good things have happened too. I spend time with people I love every day. I am reconnected to friends and neighbors. I retired and I have time and energy to visit people who can't get out; I don't mind taking the time to go to the zillion weddings we're invited to each month. I am happier than I was last year at this time in spite of the bumps along the way.

So...the question is, exactly what do I want to make room for in my life? I want to keep making room for learning how to paint watercolors. I want to spend more time writing and reconnecting with people. I want to spend time practicing piano and organ, and I want to be a blessing to other people's lives.

For Christmas, I gave all my children a quilt block made by my grandmother. They are stunningly lovely things, hand-stitched and delicate with a crazy-quilt pattern and extraordinary fabrics. I want to write about my grandmother. She was such an influence in my life, and I want to be an influence in the lives of my grandchildren. I can help my family reconnect with our past. My mother died last Christmas day, and this year, I want to help make her story more alive and true for my children and grandchildren. I'm getting two new grand babies this spring, and I want to spend time with them and their families.

A true gift of writing is that we discover what we're thinking as we write. I know my focus for next year--reconnecting with my past to make my progenitors more alive to my posterity. However, that's a project I can take on. I also realize I need to work on a more ephemeral trait-- I want to learn to be less productive. I am a producer. I get things done. I am dependable. This year, I want to become more at east with producing less. As we walked this morning, my friends and I talked about the dilemma of gradually not being able to see our value as someone who is productive. Very old people usually aren't as productive as younger people. If we only see ourselves as producers, we're in for trouble when we're able to produce less. So to that end, I want to give myself permission to have unproductive days when I really don't do much. Maybe it will be days of reading a good book, just playing the piano, painting, sitting in the yard. It will be hard to learn to not judge my day by what I have accomplished, but it is something I want to do to have room for trust and calmness about whatever befalls me.

Blessing to all for this coming year.