Good News

The Good News

Thich Nhat Hahn

The good news

they do not print.

The good news

we do print.

We have a special edition every moment

that we need you to read.

The good news is that you are alive

and the linden tree is still there

standing firm in the harsh winter.

The good news is that you have wonderful eyes

to touch the blue sky.

The good news is that

your child is there before you,

and your arms are available.

Hugging is possible.

They print only what is wrong.

Look at each of our special editions.

We always offer the things that are not wrong.

We want you to benefit from them

and help protect them.

The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,

smiling its wondrous smile,

singing the song of eternity.

Lo! You have ears capable of hearing it.

Bow your head.

Listen to her.

Leave behind your world of sorrow

and preoccupation

and get free.

The latest good news

is that you can do it.

* * *

During the summer of 2020 I was one of many people walking laps around our city neighborhood. My husband, a city bus driver, had just gone back to work. I was frantically worried about our health, his lack of insurance, and catching COVID-19, I needed to burn off the extra anxiety.

The Good News was that I had space to do it. 

On the way back from one such walk, I noticed a dandelion growing from the brick retaining wall. I looked at it for a long time, snapped a picture, and sent it to my husband. “If this isn’t,” I said, “an admonition to thrive wherever we are planted, I do not know what is.” 

Little did I know it, but I was hearing that dandelion’s song of eternity at that moment. 

Dandelions are a remarkable plant that seems unremarkable. For example, one thing that we all know about dandelions is their ability to thrive where they are planted. We see them in pavement cracks and brick walls. We pull them from our gardens’ deep soil. They are very common and they bloom where they are planted. 

Where have we been planted? 

Beloveds, right now I feel very much like the dandelion growing out of a sidewalk or brick wall, trying to sing the song of eternity into a world filled with sirens. But while the soil here may not be deep, it is rich. The good news is that it is enriched by this spiritual community, by my friends and family, by my volunteer work and by daily my spiritual practices. 

What enriches your dirt? 

The other interesting thing about dandelions is that they are edible–flowers, greens, and roots. It’s funny to think of this ubiquitous (and for some, irritating) sign of summer, as a nutritional powerhouse, but it is high in vitamins and calcium. They’re also delicious.  

Let’s pause and consider this briefly. What we roundly consider a nuisance flower or a pest is food not only for our beloved pollinators but for us as well. 

Consider too one of the most frustrating parts of our lives today–the knowledge that we are each one person standing against a tide of special interests and a broken political system that will sell us and our children, and our children’s children down the river for a quarter of a percent increase in profits or votes. In the face of this power we, like the dandelions, are common and perhaps a little unremarkable. 

The good news is that you too can feed a community. In my Catholic childhood we called these acts of spiritual and physical feeding the corporal works of mercy. Feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick & the imprisoned, and bury the dead. We know how to do these things. We can recognize them even in their less obvious forms in our community and each of these acts is a  note in the song of eternity. 

The final thing I want to say about dandelions is that they spread prolifically. Each head contains hundreds–did you know that–hundreds of seeds. Every time we make a wish on these little weeds, we ensure that they will continue to grow into the next season. 

Here we are, rooted in this church, with the ability to feed those around us, and the good news–the best news–is that these actions plant seeds of hope, love, and grace in the community around us. They ensure that our notes in this song of eternity are heard, and lead us to the next movement. 

Beloveds, may our lives be representations of the good news. May we grow here, in this soil in which we planted, provide food to others, and let our deeds carry forth into eternity. 

May it be so, and amen. 

Soft

I lost someone close to me this week. 

Not lost in they've died but lost in the "well, that was an unforgivable betrayal of my trust" kind of way. 

I've been through so many relationship implosions over the years that it took a little while for this one to hit me. I did all the automatic stuff that I do--blocked them from my phone and social media, put away the things they've given me until I'm less emotional, activated my support group. I thought to myself "Well, that was unexpected" and went on with my day. 

We all know where this is going. 

That evening, after I held it together all day I tried to pickle myself in bourbon (it takes less now than it used to). I got into a horrible fight with David. I cried at a bus stop. I self-harmed in a more intentional way and screamed with grief and sobbed for hours. I've said it before, but going through life with big feelings is a constant fight.

Friday night I lost that fight.

* * *

My favorite Mary Oliver poem is only four lines long. 

"The Uses of Sorrow"

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift. 

* * * 

I have fallen a little in love with most of the people I have met and liked over the years. 

What can I say? I have a lot of feelings, sloppy boundaries, and a soft heart. 

Each time someone lets me down in a big way I tell myself that this is it. This is the time that I'm going to put up taller walls, keep people at an arm's length, stop calling that one friend who never wants to hang out. 

Then the next time I meet someone with the same obscure interest, the same favorite book, hell, just someone who looks cute and smiles at me I lose myself all over again. 

I am grateful to have such a loving, supportive partner in David. Every time I get excited about some new friend (or, frankly, crush) he's patient and kind. He gently reminds me that not everyone in the world is worth my time. I laugh and say "Yeah, but this person is."

He throws up metaphorical hands and I let myself be disappointed all over again. 

* * *

I am a walking trope: 

The person who walks around with ohmygodsomuchlovetogive and who gives it to all the wrong people and ohgodsomeonejustloveme. 

Kind of. 

I'm also the person who left her divorce with the determination to keep a soft heart and I've worked really fucking hard to keep it that way. I'm also a person who believes that the more love you let into your life, the more your love grows and reflects in the world. More than that, I believe--no, I know that loving people, even the ones who do not deserve it, has made me a better person.  

So what the fuck am I supposed to do? 

* * *

It isn't until Monday morning that I can really even begin to contemplate my most recent box full of darkness. 

I spend much of the weekend in an emotional and actual hangover, tinged with just a delightful soupçon of self-recrimination and disgust. I manage to pull myself out of it long enough to spend some time with friends on Saturday and go to church on Sunday, but I make sure to make myself feel worse at every opportunity (saddest shoutout to people who use food as punishment, too).

There isn't anything special about Monday. I went outside and felt the ground under my feet and the sun on my face. I went to the park and walked the gravel paths. I observed the mallards, finally home for summer, as they fed and played. I saw a cardinal--a bird that always reminds me of David--and took a short video of its song with him later. 

The whole time I carried that box of darkness with me and thought about how fucking fragile we all are. How stupid and frustrating and maddening we can be when we're hurt and want to hurt someone else. And then I did what I always do, what I hope I will always continue to do. 

I reminded my heart to stay soft and went home.

Beauty #9

My last couple posts about beauty have been esoteric (pits, PRs, Doctor Who). Here's one that's a little more concrete.

My family owns a bit of land on a lake in Northern Wisconsin.

It's the most beautiful place in the world.

I spent summers up there as a kid. Once I turned 18, I got my own key to the place and free license to head up there whenever I wished. Over the years I've had a number of bluegrass sing-alongs on the front porch, cooked and consumed fantastic meals in the kitchen. I learned to take a fish off a line, the rudiments of butchering a deer, how to count while playing cribbage. I've cried over broken hearts and written long essays about my father and smoked endless cigarettes at the end of the pier. I've seen the Perseid meteor shower and gone skinny dipping and swamped canoes.

In the spring I go on walks through the woods and see the Trillium blooming. Summers I try to spend at least one weekend fishing with Daddy. Fall I cook Thanksgiving dinner. Winters I head over and read curled up next to the fire. The natural beauty is one part of why I love it so much. The other is that it's a place of deep memory. My grandfather became enamored with this part of the state when he worked in the CCC. He and my grandmother finished the place in 1959 and every summer since then my family and extended family has spent time on the lake. My great-aunt had the place next door and when we were children we would run back and forth between cabins, swimming all day and playing cards with Dorothy when we got cold. My grandmother's best friend, an elderly Czech woman used to let me eat raspberries out of her back raspberry patch and always made me these special Czech cookies that were my favorite.

It's the place that I think about when I think about my gram (still fishing at nearly 90!). When I remember the happiest moments of my childhood and my adult life they were here, in some capacity. I have, on more than one occasion, tied an inner tube to the end of that pier and floated off of it reading a book for hours. My favorite bike rides have taken place on long, hilly roads surrounding the place.

There are a few things for which my dorky enthusiasm knows no bounds. History is one. Doctor Who is another. Also on the list is: urban bee-keeping, running, baking, and French cooking. Building things with other people. Learning what "home" means.

As I've gotten older, the sort of rural area where I grew up has turned increasingly into the kind of suburban nightmare I can't stand. Mom and Dad's house feels a little less like home with each passing year. It's inevitable, of course, but it's still a little sad. Minnesota has become home in a way that Wisconsin can't be. I have not just friends here, but an honest-to-the-gods community. It sounds not only dorky but sentimental to say that we're building something together, but it's true. Each random Monday night dinner at someone's house, each bonfire, each mile we run together is building a home that doesn't exist for me anywhere else.

Except on this tiny bit of land in Northern Wisconsin. Out in the middle of nowhere, on this wooded lot there's a sense of place and belonging that my family has built together. From digging the foundation back in in the 50s to putting on new siding sometime in my early adulthood to a Jarts tournament on the place's 50th birthday to pitchers of sangria on the porch with my brothers this summer, we've built this little place that will always carry the feeling of home for me.

Beauty #4

This is one of the few pictures taken of me that I, without any reservations, love.

It's me, crossing the Headwaters of the Mississippi up at Itasca for the first time. 

I was an invited third wheel into a nascent relationship. Things were a little awkward (I was along for a weekend trip I didn't know was a weekend trip until much later) until I mentioned that I had never seen the Headwaters of the Mississippi River. The couple took me to the Headwaters and I nearly lost my mind for joy.

I've had a lifelong love affair with the Mississippi River. Whether it was because I read Mark Twain early on or the fact that it links my early years in Wisconsin and my later years in Minnesota. That river has wound its way throughout my entire life and crossing its Headwaters for the first time was one of the most profoundly spiritual moments of my life.

When I wrote in the first post that I fear a sort of Loss of the Creature moments with these entries, this was the one I was thinking about. Unless you've stood at the Headwaters or seen the Mississippi where it empties into the Gulf, it's difficult to describe the beauty and fragility of the river. It's a force onto itself. 

I return the Headwaters once every few years and take off my shoes (always in the fall. I've got to go sometime when the weather is warm) and wade around. I like knowing that however polluted and full of Asian Carp the river is even a hundred miles downstream that this place exists. That there is this one moment in space and time where the Mighty Mississippi is just a stream that you can walk across.