Peonies in the Kitchen During Finals Week

Three weeks ago, as I was entering finals week at Parkland College, where I teach English and Humanities, I turned to flowers to ground me. Marilyn, my spouse, had planted a new peony bush in front of our two older ones. The new bush had two deep crimson blooms, and they were already opening when the old plants’ pink buds were still tightly closed. I cut those two flowers and placed them in a vase on the kitchen counter, where I saw them every time I looked up from grading papers. 

That week, in addition to the usual grading marathon, I was also saying goodbye to students to whom I had grown attached. My classes had become genuine communities; students chatted with each other instead of staring at their devices before, during, and after class, and we often laughed together. I had grown to love them and often been inspired by them, these students who came from so many different places: a night-shift at the hospital, thirteen years in the army, successful treatment for depression, a mental-health break from the U of I, a job lifting boxes for UPS. The semester was ending, and they were moving on: one transferring to Columbia College in Chicago, another to the University of Missouri, most returning in the fall for more classes—but not to our class. Our communities were temporary by definition. 

I was exhausted, ready for summer, and I was also sad to be saying goodbye. 

That week, I found myself checking in with the peonies each day, burying my nose in the petals, inhaling their fragrance, and taking photos. As the week went on, the peonies opened fully, then started to lose their petals. Eventually, the fallen petals dried up in a small pile around the base of the vase. But I wasn’t ready to let the flowers go. Finally, a couple of days after I had submitted grades and the semester was officially over, when Marilyn asked me yet again whether I was done with those peonies, I said yes. I photographed the dried petals; even at that stage, the peonies were beautiful, and then I said goodbye. 

 

Two of my South Asian Cultures (HUM 109) students working on a rangoli together in class. Rain kept us indoors, but a sense of discovery and play filled the room. These two students had not worked together before. Their creative collaboration was typical of that class.

[I read this reflection during the annual Flower Communion service at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana-Champaign on Sunday, June 2, 2019.]

Reflections after the polar vortex

Last weekend, after the polar vortex had left and the thaw came to our flatland, Marilyn and I went for a walk in Meadowbrook Park. For weeks, the snow and ice had kept us away. But on Sunday afternoon, with the sun out and temperatures in the fifties, the walking paths were busy with runners, strollers, children exploring—“Come down here, Mom!” one boy called from the edge of the brook. “It’s wonderful!”—all of us glad to be moving, to be outside, to be breathing without seeing our breaths.

Almost all the snow had melted, leaving puddles across the paths where the water had nowhere to drain.

I found myself looking down instead of up, seeing the landscape reflected, inverted, in the water. Bare trees and white clouds below me instead of above—a kind of magic. The landscape new again.

A Gentle Reminder

Recently, at the start of a busy day, I went out to the back garden. Marilyn had asked me to take a photo of the zinnias she had planted from seed. 

"They are taller than I am!" she had said. 

I wandered in the backyard, watching butterflies among the zinnias, then strolling to the cannas by the peace pole. These tall, red, blooms came from our friend Jen's garden. In the same bed is a sedum from a neighbor and a hydrangea that was a gift in memory of Marilyn's brother Mo. 

After a few minutes, I went back in the house and began an eleven-hour day of helping students with papers, attending meetings, preparing a workshop, and planning classes for the next day. 

All through the day, though, my mind would rest now and then on a monarch butterfly alighting on a zinnia, the sun on the flowers, the green of the grass. 

These images were gifts, arriving unexpectedly now and then and refreshing me--making me think of a poem I memorized in the sixth grade, back in India: William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," his meditation on daffodils. The poem ends, 

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The stroll in the garden reminded me that being outside and being really present for even a few minutes in the morning could provide a respite from busyness later in the day, the memory of those moments quietly and unexpectedly bringing beauty. 

One Year Later

I wrote this reflection, "An Ordinary Friday," for the Nov. 12, 2017, service titled One Year Later at the Unitarian Universalist Church ofUrbana-Champaign. (Audio at the link above)

A year ago, in the days after the election, I was in the throes of grief, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through it. I wore black for a week. I love color, but I couldn’t face it.

In the year since, I have felt the need to turn inward, to find ways to nurture my compassion and my gratitude—to balance out my anger and fear. And to turn outward as well, to engage in ways I can sustain and which sustain me.

Over these months, I have found that the world has come to feel more fragile and more precious. I have come to realize even more deeply how much I love it, this world of ours.

I was reminded of the preciousness and beauty of our world on a Friday about three weeks ago. I was sitting in Westside Park in downtown Champaign, eating an early lunch and choosing the poetry I wanted to read for our UU coffeehouse, when I heard children’s voices behind me.

“It’s the Music Man!” a little boy exclaimed. After a brief pause, he added, “He’s going to make music!” The certainty in his voice moved me, and I turned around to look.

About eight children—they were about four years old—were walking one behind the other, holding onto a rope. They were heading towards the nearby preschool. A little distance from them, on a low stool, sat a middle-aged man, a bag beside him. He reached in, took out what looked like a small horn, and began to play music. Excited sounds came from the children.

I smiled and returned to my lunch and reading. A minute later, I heard more young voices.

“It’s the Music Man!  Hi, Jay!”

About a dozen more kids were on the path to the preschool.

                                                  

“Hi Jay! Hi Jay!” a chorus of voices called out. The man kept playing the music; the children waved and smiled and chattered excitedly.

I was struck by the joy the Music Man and the children brought each other through the repetition of what was clearly a regular event in their lives. I had been reading poems that emphasized our interdependence—and here I was witnessing the joy it brings. Witnessing it brought me joy.

I was struck by how this still goes on, this kind of kindness and interdependence, even while  chaos and cruelty dominate the highest levels of our government. Noticing moments like this is what has allowed me to nurture gratitude and compassion in myself, to avoid being consumed by anger and despair. There are opportunities every day, and I try to remain open to them.

That is how I get through: looking at sunlight on the tall tree outside the Champaign Public Library where I wrote some of this homily, or noticing the engaged looks on my students' faces at Parkland as they listen to each other discuss meditation or feminism, or witnessing the kindness and joy of strangers. These moments of beauty and attention and kindness are as real as the injustices and violations that capture the headlines. Each morning, standing with palms pressed against each other and looking out the living room window, I greet the day and bring to mind the compassion and beauty I witnessed the day before; this practice of paying attention nourishes me and strengthens me and opens me. It reminds me why I love our world and reminds me why I must keep fighting for it.

---

Two works, introduced to me by Rev. Florence Caplow, our new settled minister at UUCUC, have helped lift me during the past year: 

the poem "Now, I Love You. Now, I Witness" by the UU minister Theresa Soto

and the song "I'm Gonna Walk it With You" by Brian Claflin and Ellie Grace.

What has helped you? 

Community has sustained me this year. These candles were lit at the beautiful Solstice service yesterday at our Unitarian Universalist Church; they represent individual goals for the solar year, goals pursued with the knowledge that we have the support of our community. 

Spectacular Prairie Skies

A recent evening storm that came literally out of the blue reminded me again why I love the prairie skies and Meadowbrook Park. As Marilyn and I began our walk around the prairie, I exclaimed at the blue-violet sky in the west. I wanted to gather the blue-violet in my arms and offer it to Amy, my beloved friend, whom I miss so much. She loved that color. On that evening, with the sky changing and the wind picking up, the thought of gathering the sky in my arms and handing it to Amy made me smile. I imagined her up in the sky like I used to imagine a white-bearded, smiling god when I was a child.

As Marilyn and I rounded the curve, stopping to photograph the western sky, a woman and two children joined us on the path. They had been heading home through the prairie to the nearby neighborhood.

"We had to turn around and come back to the park when we saw the sky," the woman said, laughing.

The sky was becoming more dramatic by the minute, and then the wind picked up in a way I had only experienced at sunset at Lake Michigan. There the waves became bigger and faster; here, the wind became louder and stronger.

I looked up.

"That's not a tornado coming, is it?" I asked Marilyn, the native Midwesterner, the one I have to urge to shelter during a tornado warning.

"No. It's not green," she said, not sounding as certain as I would have liked, as I noticed a twist of grey in the orange sky. Our car was on the other side of the park; turning back wouldn't be any faster than moving forward, so we kept going, walking, laughing at the wind and then the rain, stopping to watch a deer and her baby, and being greeted by a rainbow when we finally got to the car.

I felt like I'd been to another planet and back again.

Retreat

This drawing--a souvenir of an afternoon alone to catch up with myself, time to take a long walk, to ignore the clock, then to retreat to my study with a withered tulip in a blue, glass vase and to play with pastels, enjoying the freedom of not knowing how to use pastels well, knowing only that I want the satisfaction of making marks on paper, of messy hands, of being lost in a process, of looking up, eventually, to find the delightful illusion of three dimensions on flat paper. 

---

How do you slow down and catch up with yourself? 

A Change of Perspective

Yesterday, the wind blew at me from the south, whipping my hair straight behind me, making my walk to the car at the end of a long day feel like a resistance workout. My flapping shirt and the swaying tree branches, the muffled roar as I got into the car and shut the door, all reminded me that we are always in motion.

Sitting for hours grading papers, going through a full Monday of teaching three classes, posting midterm grades, talking with students, being in my usual routine, I felt only time pass and deadlines get closer. On days like that, I can forget—and usually do—that we are on this huge orb that is moving very quickly on its axis, that this orb is at the same time whipping through space.

The power of the wind, though, made the movement real, present. And the movement reminded me of the consistency of impermanence. Everything is changing all the time. We are literally in a different place every moment, whether or not we see it. And, yes, we are at a different moment in time, too.

While this realization of constant change often fills with me with a yearning to hold on, the recognition can also be comforting, especially in difficult times. And sometimes it enables me to be right here, right now and to really, truly inhabit this moment.

Recently, Marilyn and I flew out East for our annual trip to celebrate the twins’ birthday. On our short flight north to Chicago, I took several photos, including one of our neighborhood, a photo in which we could pinpoint our house and delight in the bird’s eye view, and another of downtown Chicago, in which we could find the location of our favorite hotel. 

A mandala created by UUs of all ages in our fellowship hall at UUCUC on Sunday, after a thought-provoking service titled "Practice Impermanence."