So, after a challenging week, Sunday was a happy place kind of day. Todd and I got up at dawn and headed out to Hendry’s Beach for breakfast at the Boathouse. We got there just after it opened and were treated to a table with the perfect view. And what a view it was! Pelicans skimming low over the water. A family -toddler, child, mom and pop- all in matching tuxedo t-shirts, dogs digging, the sand flying up behind them, a toddler clapping and reeling like a drunken sailor in and out of the water, a baby, face-planting but popping up smiling and covered in sand, surfers catching the waves but more often not.

And then this guy.

Meticulously he collected long sticks and built them into a structure like a circus balancing act. On each point, he set another stick to balance, lilting gently in the wind. Everyone in the restaurant watched transfixed, groaning if one fell. Amazing. A master class in physics.

After we ate, I went down to chat with Raymond who taught me how to find the center and get the stick to balance. We talked about the impermanence of his art and how remarkable it was. After Raymond left, kids came to follow his example, big kids right down to toddlers.

Todd and I thought of other examples of impermanent art: sand castles, ice sculptures, butter carvings at the Minnesota state fair. And that’s really life in a nutshell. Isn’t it? We build and craft something of our lives. If we’re lucky we’ll leave behind something that inspires others who come after us. Everything a balancing act like Raymond’s sticks.

And it all reminded me of a favorite poet we lost this week, Wendell Berry and his Peace of Wild Things which has comforted me countless times, a legacy he has left behind for each of us. Offering comfort and balance even when he is gone.

On the way home, the predicted rain started, and we realized we had caught a perfect moment in the storm.

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.

I was in a library once looking through a coffee table book about Los Angeles and stumbled on a picture of myself as a young teen painting a fire hydrant. I had no idea the picture had been taken and would show up years later in a book. It happened again when I was looking through a current catalog for my law school. There I was in a picture chatting with some friends in the dining area back when I had been a student. And again, in online materials for my MFA program, this time listening reasonably attentively to a lecture. Each time, I had no idea the pictures had been taken and would someday be out in the world, linking me to that place and time. What a strange feeling.

These days, though, that could happen to any of us at pretty much any time. Cameras are everywhere. It’s possible a picture of you could be captured doing who knows what. Thankfully, the pictures of me were innocuous, but imagine being in a picture like this

Or this

Or this

Your pain or hatred or suffering there preserved and public, forever. Bryan Stephenson, an advocate for those on death row cautions us to remember that we are each more than the worst thing we ever did. We are each complex:

Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. Finally, I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. . . we all need mercy, we all need justice, and – perhaps – we all need some measure of unmerited grace.”

― Bryan Stevenson

In this world of prolific photos and snap judgments, we need to keep reminding ourselves that life is complex, and we each ‘need some measure of unmerited grace’.

As we age, there is loss. That loss is like a presence that follows us relentlessly like a shadow. No avoiding it. No pretending. We are mortal. The people we love are mortal, perhaps imminently so. This is part of the rules of engagement. And while most of us avoid thinking too much about it, poets like Mary Oliver offer life instructions:

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things:

To love what is mortal

To hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it;

And, when the time comes, to let it go, to let it go.

I honestly don’t know which of these three rules is the hardest. Right now, they each seem nearly impossible. But having the courage to follow these instructions feels like the answer. 

Her full poem is below. 

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.“In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver, from American Primitive. © Back Bay Books, 1983.