Reflections on a morning walk
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March 5: In the brisk wind of a March morning, two older women were carefully placing silk flowers on a grave. They were silent and graceful in their motions, not talking, as if what they were doing was the most holy act. As if the dear one whose body was lying in a box deep underground were still present, right there, watching them, gratefully receiving their kindness. When I walked past them on the cemetery lane, they were pleasant, and smiled at the small dog walking with me.
I thought it something of a coincidence that the grave they were decorating was near the very place in the road where I had lain down at 4:00 a.m. last May 18. That was the long night of sharp pain and nightmares from pain pills following extensive surgery on my dislocated shoulder. Unable to sleep, I had gotten up, gotten dressed and walked to the cemetery, about three-fourths of a mile from our home. Still hours until dawn I lay there on my back for an hour or so, gazing up into the setting spring stars. In a mysterious way, the deep sky gave me more relief than the potent medications. I recall bright gold Arcturus of the Herdsman following the Great Lion back down into the earth. That was one of the longer nights of my life. But thankfully now the shoulder has mostly repaired.
This March morning, across the distances the western mountains were turning darker blue in the cloud shadows of approaching rain. I could already smell the pungent scent of rain, blowing out of the southwest across the thawed land. I felt deeply the goodness of it and whispered thanks to the One who gives the rain. We are once again living in a drought year.
At the far corner of the graveyard, I stopped at a sprawling grey thicket of thorns. The first of thousands of Quince blossoms were just beginning to open scarlet petals. This is the same overgrown hedge where Mockingbirds hide their nests each spring, deep in the foliage and thorns. But the leaves would not appear for another month or so. Neither had the noisy Mockingbirds yet arrived.
This was the first longer walk I had taken in the last ten days, since I tore the Achilles tendon in my right ankle. The tendon was feeling tender at the back of each stride, so I sat down on a rickety bench to rest in the last cool rays of hazy sunlight, before the approaching storm. The wind was rising and falling in a grove of great old White Pines growing alongside the road. The small dog curled up below me, underneath the weathered bench.
I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the pale warmth, breathing deeply the rain scented wind, listening to its long sighing through the tall pines. I was there alone. The two women had finished placing their flowers, and had driven quietly away. But I was not alone. I was surrounded by a field of thousands whose eyes were also closed.
The paint is peeling from my weathering life, just as it is from the bench where I was sitting. High up in the pine trees, some of the larger branches have been broken off by winter storms. As I sat and listened, the wind rustled through the thousands of silk and plastic flowers. But I did not feel afraid, nor angry, or sad. Somehow I knew, as deeply as one can know this kind of thing, that although I am only passing through, I am already safe, at home.
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Ruach 333, by Quilla 