February 22, 2013

We've had some interesting weather lately, not dreadful as some areas of the country, just interesting.  Today has to be one of the most unusual skies I have ever seen.  It looks like someone spilled a bag of cotton balls in various shades of gray across the sky then pushed them into long narrow rows, with some openings to let a silver white light shine through.  Some rows are a little darker and some almost white, but they all look so soft and fluffy, you'd like to sleep on them.  There is a little wind and the temperatures are on the mild side, right around 60 in most of our area.  I have great sympathy for all those digging out of so much snow, and such cold weather.  Listening to NPR this morning they interviewed some people about the storms.  After several telling how terrible the storm had been, one dairy farmer had something different to say.  He said it made work more difficult but they were in drought and looking out over all that snow, all he could see was better grass than he had last year!  So silver linings for even the worst kind of weather. 

Our weather report was not much help after the temperature, he said mostly cloudy, patches of sun, possible showers, and it sounded to me as if his predictions were about evenly divided among all the possibilities.  My students chose the theme of storms for this week, and it seemed perfectly appropriate.   Next week they are going to do rainbow things, perhaps we'll get a rainbow or two. 

I found a poem about a tree, a sycamore, like the one down at the end of the street, one I can barely see, but I have see other trees in the same condition, and people too. 

The Sycamore 

In the place that is my own place, whose earth

I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,

a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.

Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,

hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.

There is no year it has flourished in

that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it

that is its death, though its living brims whitely

at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.

Over all its scars has come the seamless white

of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history

healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection

in the warp and bending of its long growth.

It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.

It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.

It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.

In all the country there is no other like it.

I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling

the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.

I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,

and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

Wendell Berry 

Sort of like the farmer . . . no year that has not harmed the farm but it continues and looks forward in the snow to the grass of spring.  All the scars we have, all the accidents, all the injuries, are gathered into some purpose we may never know or understand, but our lives are the sum total of our experiences, all of them, the easy beautiful ones, and the stark tragic ones as well.  In all the world there is not another one of us, we are all unique in our suffering and in our blessings, we are fed and fed upon, there is no other way to be, we cannot escape the native life we own, it makes us who we are.