Tag Archives: Beauty

Close Fast the Door

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The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

—Emily Dickinson.

It started to fade. All I had to do was enter the building. I left behind the exterior facade—the rough, irregular fieldstones, gray and ochre, mortared into massive walls beneath a steep roof of weathered wooden shingles. Oneness.

It started to fade. All I had to do was decide where to sit. Dark wooden pews, all stark straightness—high backs, hard edges, rigid parallel lines running wall to wall. Oneness.

It started to fade. All I had to do was look upward. The towering dark-wood pulpit climbed nearly to the ceiling, its massive paneled back crowned by a broad sounding board suspended overhead. Oneness.

It started to fade. All I had to do was listen. The voices—mine, Gary’s beside me, the priest’s and choir’s in front, the congregation all around—rose higher and higher, louder and louder, fell lower and lower, softer and softer, in sweet, sweet harmony. Amazing Grace. We Are Not Alone. A Mighty Fortress. Oneness.

It all started to fade. All I had to do was breathe. The present. All the artifacts of worship surrounding me. It all faded into the moment. The present became the past and the past stood still in the present and ricocheted into the fullness of forever. Oneness.

Oneness ended. Abruptly.

A low mechanical rumble sounded somewhere beyond the open doors, distant at first, then nearer, swelling until the engine suddenly revved—an explosive, throaty roar that flooded through all three doors and filled the chapel.

A motorcycle.

Oneness. Broken.

Suddenly, all the component parts returned. Voices. Pulpit. Priest. Choir. Pews. Congregation. Me. Gary. Stones—the very eighteenth-century stones the farmers dragged to build Old Chapel. Preserved. Keen awareness erased the fade. Oneness shattered into parts.

In that instant, I realized my loss. Oneness was gone through no one’s fault. The motorcyclist was on their own journey. Old Chapel—faithful to its past with no electricity—could not have closed its doors this hot and humid Sunday morn. But I also realized my gain. The insight came without sermon. Whenever we hope to step into moments of cherished Oneness, we need to close fast the doors of our attention to all that might intrude and steal away the prize.

Close fast the door of our attention so that we are completely present with someone we love. Listen to the story we’ve heard before as though it’s being told for the first time. Or better still, as if it’s being told for the last time. Notice the face across the table, as if we’ve never seen it before. Or better still, as if we’ll never see it again. Sit beside someone without needing anything else to happen. Or better still, as if nothing will ever happen again.

Close fast the door of our attention so that we become fully aware that beauty is transient and ever changing. We’ve seen autumn for years immemorial, but we’ve never seen its September glory through today’s eyes. We’ve seen hibiscus blossom, but we’ve never seen its yellow petals flaring from a crimson heart through today’s eyes. We’ve seen sunlight all our lives, but we’ve never seen this shaft of afternoon light spilling across the polished wood of a grand piano through today’s eyes.

Close fast the door of our attention so that we can know ourselves. We’ve known ourselves for a lifetime, but what do we make of the gray in the mirror, the roads already walked? We’re with ourselves today, right now, but what do we make of these hands on the wheel, this breath in this chest? We’ll be with ourselves tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, but what will we make of the road unwalked? The hands unfolded? The breath unbreathed?

Close fast the doors of our attention and let the world within and the world without fade into Oneness.

What We Tend

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Dedicated to Gary — I see without looking.

The rake lay across the heart, as if it were Cupid’s arrow. Beads of water gathered on the thermos, upright on the nearby stone bench, right beside St. Francis of Assisi. Leather gloves and pruning shears bore witness to a gardener. Gary.

I couldn’t see him, but I knew he couldn’t be far away because his seafoam, floppy hat was not on the bench with his other things.

I knew what he was up to.

The time had come for him to do what I had done down through the years since I built the garden, filling it in with tons of tan pea gravel and surrounding it with a hedge of Little Missy boxwood.

Early on, the labor of weeding was easy. The pea gravel kept unwanted growth under control and beneath the surface. But over time the Angelina Sedum, filling the two circles in the heart’s upper lobes and surrounding the Magnolia in the lower cusp’s circle, died out but not before leaping over the rings that held them. Small chartreuse-yellow clusters softened the heart but lessened its definition.

Gary, my partner—the man who now shares this mountain life me—was doing more than weeding. He had already restored the flagstone pathway leading from heart to home and back again. Now he was planting healing Ajuga that will settle in and stay within the upper rings, eventually sending up purple spikes. Now he was cleaning, making everything as pristine as the day I finished my handiwork. I sat down on the bench, surveyed the slope, and sighed,

“Well done.”

I never had any intention of building the heart garden. My late partner Allen and I had tamed our mountaintop wilderness with so many paradisiacal garden beds that we had declared a moratorium:

“No more.”

But when Allen died and I reflected on where I would scatter his ashes, as mutually agreed upon, I could not for the life of me decide upon the right spot.

We had talked about resting places on our mountaintop, usually settling on the peony garden. Once, even, Allen suggested the Koi Pond would be perfect, but amid laughter, we both exclaimed:

“Oh, no! What happens when the pond filters get cleaned.”

Then, a few months after his death, he came to me in a dream, his voice carrying into my awakening and lingering there:

“Build my heart.”

I knew where. Near the house, at road’s edge—an untamed area we thought about gardening if we ever gave our moratorium a reprieve.

I had no idea how, but I figured a little math and lots of heart would make it happen.

And it did. I marked off an area twenty feet wide and thirty feet deep, sketched a heart with a black water hose, freed the earth of weeds, and blanketed it with pea gravel running deep. For Allen’s celebration of life, I surrounded the heart with SunPatiens, alternating red and white with tears and rain. I bought a wooden Zen rake, perfect for committing Allen’s ashes to the gravel, leaving tracings that mirrored the heart’s design, growing smaller and smaller as the center neared. Later, I planted the boxwood hedge.

Thus, the heart’s beginning.

Time has been kind. But still, the heart needs Gary’s loving care and tenderness. It rests within the landscape, its presence a part of forever.

The morning after Gary finished, we decided to amble down the path, pristinely cleaned and gently curved, with the heart in clear view.

“You go ahead. I’ll be there shortly.”

“No. I’ll wait. For you.”

It was peaceful and inviting.

We talked a little less than usual, as the morning chill quickened us and a Northern Cardinal in the treetops above whistled out its own litany of little questions.

“I want your ashes to be happy here.”

They will.

And when Gary’s time comes, I’ll board the train, his weight on my lap, my hands on the box, making his final journey to Minnesota where his story began.