THE THREAD | Come on up to the house
I turn 38 today. One of my sons shares a birthday with me, so I am sure we will scheme some ways to celebrate together. Honestly, it's been a tough week as the virus continues to spread and inches closer and arrives at the edge of each of our bubbles. It's hard. But I'm also learning to not grow so discouraged that I can no longer praise the good in my path.
This week also marks two years since my great uncle Tom Haggard passed away. He was a good man, and I'm thinking about him today as I kick off another trip around the sun.
You know how spending time with extended family gets you wondering how all of the possible combinations of various traits and flaws and idiosyncracies have tricked down through time and space to have made your own small clan nothing special exactly but still somewhat of a freak novelty in the universe? And how you hope against all odds that the best of those traits are made manifest in your own life while the worst of the flaws somehow slough off and the idiosyncracies don't get out of hand? And how in actuality no one gets so lucky, so instead you have to do the hard work of learning and growing and changing and accepting and forgiving? And how it helps to have a few wise ones out in front of you showing how to live a good life, and how such a life seems to involve good stories and hard work and generosity and fishing and wonder? Well anyway, that's my Uncle Tom Haggard. His life is worth celebrating, too.
I read this poem at his funeral. I think of him often and I am grateful for him.
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COME ON UP TO THE HOUSE
Were they tall terns? Or meant to be herons?
Lined along the sill of your big bay window
the small wooden birds your hard hands carved
as Christmas gifts for a dozen children,
birds facing iced panes as if seeing through,
down the hill and through the thin grove
to the pond where four months before
I caught my first sunfish off the dock,
my father nearby, at home in the silence
and attending to me to unhook the barb
from the translucent lip still pinched in my hand.
The sunlight glinting off the pond
made the thin veil of fish skin glow.
Returning to the house with my lonely catch
and a small tale to tell, you laughed so hard
you enlarged what I knew of the world’s embrace
and you told the one about flying your plane
all over this stretch of western Missouri.
You spoke my eyes wider.
What did the birds witness through the frosted pane?
What is this I caught from the sunfish glow?
Did you ever know that you were a land
where so much light crossed the thinnest space?
Or were you just offering whatever came
from a handful of words and a whittling blade? ~ ~ ~
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Pilgrim Labyrinth & Butterfly Garden
This is a photo of the Pilgrim Labyrinth & Butterfly Garden. When a group of neighbors first designed the labyrinth four years ago, we imagined a sacred space in the middle of a public park. We imagined butterflies fluttering over the heads of children walking the path. We imagined a space carved out for peace and stillness in the midst of so much busyness and conflict. I am so proud of this place, and I am proud that it is even better than we first imagined.
I'm currently raising money to support the ongoing maintenance of the labyrinth. In the coming year the path will need some repairs, and I want to make sure there are funds to make it happen. If you're able, please join me in supporting the Pilgrim Labyrinth & Butterfly Garden for the years ahead. You can donate here.
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What I'm reading: Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian
What I'm listening to: Come On Up To The House: Women Sing Waits, Common's A Beautiful Revolution
My current favorite internet rabbit hole: NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day
~ ~ ~
Peace,
Andrew