It had been several years since I made my way to the middle of the country in a car, more often looking down on the neatly quilted squares of farmland from 35,000 feet. From the road those squares blurred into a smooth white blanket whose edge began at the nearest rim of vision and extended to an endless horizon. Like most blankets, it was comforting while holding the potential to smother.
Utilitarian understated and underappreciated, that precious land—tilled and toiled over centuries and often enhanced by little more than a farmhouse, a barn, and sometimes a strand of bare black trees—is content to leave first prize in the beauty pageant to the mountains, canyons, ocean, rivers and lakes. But she shows herself a contender at times, unexpectedly bringing a showstopper through a meteorite shower or a stunning view of the constellations in vast, clear skies. Midway through Ohio, I saw a golden yellow sun blow up over the horizon in my rear view mirror like a child’s crayon drawing or a rendering on a cereal box. Distracting in a mesmerizing way, I watched until it became blinding. Little did I know then, it would soon become a longing.
I stayed 12 days in the small town in Illinois where I was raised. I had forgotten the punishing endless sameness of monochromatic gray white winter days. I tried to lean into it, wondering what my ancestors must have faced when they arrived in Nebraska and Kansas all those years ago. Was this land in my bones not only through the nutritional sustenance it had provided but at the deepest DNA and cellular levels?
We all taste the salt of the ocean in our tears and feel mountains well up in our bellies through the crowns of our heads when we are excited and awed just as we feel a ravine-like plummet when we are disappointed, the bottomless echo of a canyon when our hearts are broken. The plains provide a no-nonsense steady kind of love and measured discipline. They are the elusive sweet spot of a quiet mind in meditation. I was sorry to leave, more because of the people than the place. But the reality is I can’t leave either of them, no matter how many miles I drive away.
Several years ago, I told one of my cousins if I preceded him in death, he should make a beeline to my place and burn any journal he found before anyone else arrived. He said, “I’ll buy you a shredder, and you can take care of that yourself.” And so, he did. And I got busy.
Recognize the hallelujah holy you are, the glorious gift of life you embody. Praise all your perceived flaws. Your secret superpower is the blessing of saints and the protection of angels. Proceed accordingly.
Brian Doyle wrote a wonderful book called The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart. It was in this book that I learned a hummingbird, with its rapid heartbeat and two-year lifespan, has the same number of heartbeats a human has in a lifetime, and that at 5’ long, 4’ wide, 5’ high, weighing 400 pounds, the heart of the blue whale is the largest on the planet. The human heart weighs in at 10-12 ounces and is about the size of a fist.
Distracted by the dreamy placid river, broody clouds deciding whether to unleash a storm, fighting an obsession, looking for a hawk, seeing only turkey vultures swooping and gliding, widening their circles, tasked with doing what none of us will, startled by a young buck at the edge of the road in the fog. Come here.
Several two-story high trees were felled in the woods on the Palisades after Superstorm Sandy; their broad, shallow roots useless against hurricane force winds. A mile into a walk, the massive root ball of one of them faced me, a fallen warrior as majestic in death as in life, lying in state holding a shield decorated in a mesmerizing pattern of intertwined roots and dirt. As I paid my respects, like something out of a fable, the brave knight dared me to steal a heart-shaped stone the size of my fist from the center of his shield. I accepted the dare and slipped the stone into a pocket.
Wild heart, strap on your biker boots and take me places I would never dare. Reckless, guileless, bold and brave, tell the voices and distractions to get out of our way.
Take all the secrets and shame from the vault and lay them open on the altar of compassion where they will be burned with sage and sweet grass, then rinsed away with a tincture of holy water, lavender and mercy.
Divine Ready 