Thought of a Pensive Leaf Raker

Suburbia has its own rules: well manicured lawns, Christmas lights and all the hedges two inches under the window and neatly cut with square corners.  To not have a tidy yard, a house sticks out and so today I tried to give my own yard some semblance of order.  Though it is weird because nature isn't tidy.  I've never seen virgin forest where the leaves are in neat manageable piles that are eventually carted away.  For that matter, what virgin forest is cut down to make places for piles of suburban leaves that suburbanites have carted away?

It seems a pointless exercise when looked at from nature's viewpoint.  If we were all killed tomorrow, if a huge asteroid hit the earth, nature would once again take over the well manicured plots of land.  The acorns and the spontaneous saplings abhorred by every suburbanite would grow unencumbered.  Our well tended roses would grow in a jumble of vines like in Sleeping Beauty.  Before you know it the shells of our homes would be lands of lichen, trees and small animals, assuming some of them survived.  We are but one disaster away from a virgin forest.  All we work for in this life is truly for not because when we are no longer here asphalt gives way to roots and branches.

Okay, maybe that is depressing but the only reason we rake and tend to our yard is because of neatness and more so for prestige.  If every leaf is gone, if no weeds grow here and if the gravel is cleaned of all rubbish like dirt, leaves and sticks, then one will look better and richer.  Then there is my particular little suburban oasis. It doesn't look perfect, the ground isn't manicured to a fault.  There are leaves and our oaks are in dire need of trimming.  Our gutters are full of leaves and we have more then the odd leaf blowing across our yard.  Though I have in recent years tried to have some semblance of order in my yard due to angry letters from the Home Owner's Association when the neighbors can't abide my untidiness.

It just seems to me that time could be better spent doing anything but raking leaves and mowing. Personally, I love to sit in the cast iron chairs on the porch with a cup of tea and watch the many birds that flit from tree to lilacs, to ground and back to trees.  Their colors and markings are so varied and beautiful.  When it rains the little sparrows puffs out their mighty little chests fluffing their feathers I guess to dry themselves.  I would have never witnessed this display if I always looked to clean the untidy.  I also wouldn't know the ginger cat that creeps over the fence, jumping from the wood pile to our ground.  He walks across our  yard planting his very large behind on our porch where he suns himself before moving on.  And when all the animals have done their walking and flitting, I sit with my face against the breeze and hear the wind blowing against the many trees almost roaring as the tree limbs thrash and shudder from being blown.  Why would I want to tidy the leaves?  How perfect the flower, the weed and the wind in this oasis.   Humans worry too much about things that really don't matter.  I may rake a few leaves this day but in the end I know it is a pointless practice because nature in its wildness is perfect already.

How Deep the Pain

From whence does my pain come and how deep is the well? Why am I so troubled by such sadness? Perhaps, it comes from the playground where when mixing with my own peers, I found out I was something different, something to abhor.  Don't we always abhor what is different?  For what makes us different?

I don't seem different, I have two arms and legs, two eyes, one mouth, two ears and a nose.   No it is deeper then that.  It comes from a place from within.  When others see blue I see purple and an array of other colors some never seen before.   It is the little girl who sees people floating on just love up into the heavens or that ordinary things are space ships.  It is a rich inner life not partial to media or entertainment.  I can see worlds where others see just land. In some other world, I might have been cherished for my genius. I might have had Medici patron of my work.  I might have been great but no I live in the flat lands of Kansas and Missouri. People don't expect much of life here, They grow up, grow fat and have babies and their babies have babies.  No one sees beyond the muddy river or the brown and grays of winter. Cancun may be a vacation destination at some point in their existence but nothing more, no dreams or imagination. Perhaps once they had dreams but so many voices told them they are unpractical.  I know those voices too, the tell me the same things. I could give up and live their ordinary Midwestern life and stifle like so many leaves on a rotting vine. Then, I will never have lived.  

In my darker moments I grieve for what might have been, for greatness underachieved.   I have not given up upon it yet.  I have not given up on what is possible and what is real to me.  Would we blot out the beautiful thing, the thing that flies high in the sky in multicolored splendor?  I know I wouldn't.  When I was a teacher,  I always saw what was so richly full of potential. I tried to tease it out. I told them to write what they know.  Is it basketball? Well tell me about basketball: its colors, its history, how do you play, who is the best.  Don't stop there find out more and let that lead you to another subject and on and on. Please don't tell me my students are complacent now, that so many dreams were unrealistic. Don't you fall for it my children!  I haven't yet.  

The world is cruel, this is true but why must I be part of it?  I wasn't born to be cruel.  I was born to shake hands with a smile and a warm face.  I was born for compassion and tenderness. Maybe this brings me hurt but I wouldn't want to be among those who choose not to feel.  A favorite minister of mine loved the song that says, "Let there be Peace on earth and let it begin with me." this has kind of always been my philosophy.  I will not beat them but I will show them a better way, a truer way, a way where we only reach down to help each other up.  Oh, may I be equal to the task of my beautiful heart and beautiful dream. 

Superiority?

In lieu of the actions taken by one individual in Charleston South Carolina this past week, I felt the need to address the idea of superiority. I can not say that a white supremacist like the one who shot nine people at the Mother Emmanuel congregation is really a superior individual. In fact, I would argue he feels quite inferior.  A truly superior person would never sully his hands with violence.  He would not look down on people not like himself, he would not have to.  A truly superior person helps people less fortunate than himself.  A truly superior person does not feel threatened by other peoples' individuality because they feel good in and of himself.

In the violence last week, the superior behavior was from the preacher and members of the mother Emmanuel congregation.  They welcomed the young murderer into their mist, sat him down by the preacher and let him be part of the Bible study for forty-five minutes.  They did not feel suspicion or hatred.  The church is a historical church and it is important to have fellowship with tourists and people of the city alike. So people of all colors are welcome there.  Sometimes people pay a huge price negatively for their hospitality and I really doubt this will stop the congregation of mother Emmanuel.  They have lost pillars of the community from the oldest person who died down to the youngest.  They will not be stopped in their worship and fellowship.  I so respect these folks.  Such strength is to be admired and yes their behavior demonstrates a exemplary behavior.  I wish circumstances were different and rather than trying to spread hatred with bullets, the gunman had done something else.  But don't get me wrong, I see such behavior to be not just an individual problem but a societal problem. Something clearly went awry with this young gunman.  We can start change by being kinder to one another, that is for certain. As exemplified by the mother Emmanuel community, we need to be kinder to ourselves and one another.

War

I am not the idealist of my youth anymore, I understand that war at times is necessary. When a person or group of people attack you, you are a fool if you do not fight back to defend yourself. That being said, I am not naive, war is horrible.

The worst part of war is that we send children. It is not the children that can not get along with world leaders, a nineteen-year-old is on the threshold of life and cares little of the quarrels of old senators who have lived their life and have nothing to lose in an armed conflict. It is old men and women who start the wars, so it seems only fair to have old men fight the wars they started. But no, they need able bodied men and women to fight the wars they create and so they look to that group of excited young people just beginning life, those are the people they send to war.  What we get back, if the young person survives is a mangled psyche and wounded warrior and that sparkle of excitement for life is lost forever from their eyes.

War is never beautiful.  It is a bloody dirty business. People lose limbs, eyes, or are burned beyond recognition. That is if they survive. Oh, of course not all soldiers fight, some soldiers will even tell you so. Though I'm not so sure they did not fight, it is just too horror filled to bring to the conscious mind all they have witnessed. It is just too hard to explain to those of us who live in blissful ignorance of the heavy toll weighing on their very soul.

Once I met a man wearing shorts with scars of extensive burns on his legs. I asked the fellow, "May I just ask you, what happened to your legs?" This young fellow maybe my age probably younger answers, "An IED blew up the vehicle I was driving and I am burned over 90% of my body." I fought back tears, and thanked him for his service, hardly adequate words for what this man had gone through. Young healthy flesh is mangled by the destructiveness of the human animal.
As humans, we are capable of such beautiful things like Michelangelo's David, The Mona Lisa, or Beethoven's Ode to Joy, It seems obscene to think that the same race of people who produce such beauty and brilliance is also capable of the carnage of war. But we are capable of war.  I remember my mother saying with great emphasis when I was still a girl, "But why did the Vietnam vets kill the children?" As an adult, I am sure it was survival, a small child may have bombs or ammunition.  You did not know who the enemy was from moment to moment. Humans were put at the basic level of survival of kill or be killed. Those of use who have never fought in warfare can not honestly understand what it is like in the circumstances of war.  Would you even know what you would do if it was you in the jungles of Vietnam during that war? I really do not know what I would have done and I do not judge the fellows who were forced to make those decisions.

Finally, at the end of the day, I can not make heads or tails of warfare. I want to salute the pretty uniforms and listen to the drum beats of a marching army.  There is a grimness to this colorful display to rally our troops. We rally our troops because we need them pumped for the occasion of the battlefield and the carnage to come.  I feel silent before the carnage.  I remember Oprah Winfrey walking through Auschwitz with Eli Wiesel and how Eli Wiesel spoke of how after visiting Auschwitz he is always silent for days.  With wars, I feel like this, silent before the war. It is as if to speak is irreverence to the ones who died. It is also the silence of knowing that those who survived, live with its memory.