Sillage, pronounced “see-yahzh”, is the French word for “wake”, like the wake of a ship in the water. In the perfume world, it refers to the scent trail that a perfume leaves behind as it evaporates. SALLE PRIVÉE.COM

In Joni Mitchell’s song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” she croons the famous line, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Too often, it does seem to go this way. A few days ago, I was hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, the fog squatting solidly on the mountain tops for hours until, at last, the sun sliced through, and the entire day broke open, the mountain peaks now sharply silhouetted against a true blue sky. And though I stood amazed–for a moment–I continued my hike, my pack weighing more heavily on my back as I completed my final mile. But this moment is rarely enough, for even as I marked the experience with a photograph and a sigh, I knew that I wouldn’t know what I’d gotten here until I’d left the park and drove across the plains towards home.

As I drove, I breathed in deeply and found the aromatic trail of pine filling me. It had been a day since I left the Rocky Mountains, but the sillage of pine hung on, refusing to evaporate. And it wasn’t just this scent trail. It was the visual trail of aspens that jewel the mountain sides, blindingly golden, almost fluorescent. And it wasn’t just this visual trail. It was the auditory trail of bugling elk and the bass notes of water coursing over rocks in the Big Thompson River. And it was the spiritual trail of women who came to this retreat to share their hearts and hopes and pain. It was all this–and more. This is the sanctuary of sillage, the place that follows you, an evanescent reminder of all that’s gone before.

In the world of perfumery, sillage is considered as one of the most distinctive, the most powerful characteristics of a fragrance. It’s measured as a person moves and dispenses a trail of scent. A perfume with great sillage refuses to stay close to the skin but rather takes to the air. And if you’re in the vicinity of one wearing this perfume, you’re the unbidden recipient of this scent trail. It may delight or repulse you, but it enters your nostrils and lives there for quite some time.

I remember tutoring a freshman in college who, in an apparent attempt to impress me, wore what had to have been an entire bottle of Brute cologne. My eyes watered furiously as we hunched over his essay draft and made our way through one tortured paragraph after another. When I left and entered the autumn air outside the campus library, I breathed deeply. The sillage of the last 45 minutes lived in every pore of me, and at the time, I was desperate to purge it, to live once again in a Faberge-free land. I confess, however, that for years the smell of Brute brought me right back to that cubicle in Calvin T. Ryan library and that boy who wrote of his first search and recovery dive for the city of Omaha. In that cloud of Brute, he shared the trauma of finding a body, long submerged in the Missouri River, and his ongoing attempts to process this. To this day, the sillage of his raw confession is a scent stronger than Faberge could ever concoct.

Even the worst scents, the very scents that bring us wretching to our knees, may leave a bittersweet and necessary trail. The day that my third grade class took a field trip to the city meat-packing plant, I huddled in my bus seat, utterly and naively unprepared for the day. For months, I’d ridden over the viaduct where the meat-packing plant lived below, the foreign smells seeping through the bus. But when they ushered us onto the cut-and-kill floor, when the sickly scent of blood overpowered us, when even the sights before us cowered to the smell of death, that’s when I vowed not to eat meat again. It wasn’t so much a conscious decision as a foregone conclusion: I would live on peanut butter. Which I did for months to come, my mother lovingly placing the jar of Jiff on the table each meal. As an eight-year-old, the sillage of this field trip became a constant companion for months. I smelled death. I saw death when I closed my eyes each night. I walked with death as I spent time with my family and friends. In years to come, however, I grew to see this experience as my first coming-of-age rite. And as with all such initiations, this began a necessary–albeit painful–transition from childhood to adulthood, the recognition of mortality a trailing and persistent scent.

My father, Nebraska poet Don Welch, wrote: “We come to love by love, leaving less of who we are behind.” This is the sweetest sillage, a faint trail of our very essence: the top, middle, and bass notes mingling and lingering. At its best, this is a trail that leaves one wanting more, a trail that leads one to the possible chemical combustion of love, all the best notes of self brought forward to happily mix –undiluted–with another’s.

As I sit on my porch this afternoon, I breathe deeply and find the sillage of pine sliding into the scent of newly mown grass. I find the sillage of rich conversation with a host of incredible women sliding into the solitude which marks many of my Iowa days. The Colorado retreat now over, the scent that trails behind is a heady one that will catch the updraft of my remaining years.

photo by Collyn Ware

There is no place more intimate than the spirit alone. –May Sarton, The House by the Sea

In her last years, author May Sarton lived alone on the coast of Maine. In her journal, The House by the Sea, she explores solitude, the intimacy of being alone in your own body and spirit. In her reflections, she writes, [s]olitude, like a long love, deepens with time. She recounts a letter she received from a young woman who was living alone, a filmmaker who desired to make a film about those who live solitary lives. Sarton writes:

I told her that I feel it is not for the young (she is only thirty-three). I did not begin to live alone till I was forty-five, and had “lived” in the sense of passionate friendships and love affairs very richly for twenty-five years. I had a huge amount of life to think about and to digest, and, above all, I was a person by then and knew what I wanted of my life. The people we love are built into us. Every day I am suddenly aware of something someone taught me long ago–or just yesterday–of some certainty and self-awareness that grew out of conflict with someone I loved enough to try to encompass, however painful that effort may have been.

Sarton understood that solitude grows and ripens like a long love affair, that it matures over time into spiritual intimacy. Her claim that solitude is not for the young rings particulalry true for me. In the weeks I spent cleaning motel rooms during the summer of my freshman year of college, I was utterly alone. For days, I marveled in my newfound solitude, content to be alone with my own thoughts and a bottle of disinfectant. Soon, however, I longed for any interruption, any distraction that might take me out of myself and into something, anything else. I’d come quickly to the end of myself as I became painfully aware that, in solitude, I worried and fretted. I came face to face with my own limitations and, more often than not, moved through my work hours with shame as my constant companion. In truth, I was not a person by then, as Sarton wrote. I’d only begun to know what I wanted of life and was ill-prepared to digest the life I’d already lived. My solitude became a sad prison.

I understand, too, that although some may choose solitude, others may feel as though solitude has been inflicted upon them. Circumstances like illness, physical and/or emotional separation, retirement, and old age–just to name a few–may feel more like punishments than blessings. In these circumstances, solitude may be a crucible against which we test our mettle. We may literally count the hours until we’re rescued by human company. We may look for any distraction to fill the painful space that solitude brings. In solitude, we may see our cups as half-empty and rue the vacuum that it creates.

We may also lament we’ve become invisible in solitude. In our aloneness, we may feel ourselves slipping away. We may find ourselves believing that we’re simply out of sight, out of mind. Alone with our own spirits, we may find this intimacy anything but virtuous; we may find it soul-crushing. In solitude, we may languish and long to be seen. In the Atlantic article, “The Invisibility of Older Women” (Feb. 27, 2019), Akiko Busch considers the paradoxical virtues of invisibility:

A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform–rather than limit–our lives. Going unrecognized can, paradoxically, help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.

At its best, solitude offers us opportunities to explore a more humanitarian view of the larger world, to recognize our place in the larger scheme of things. In solitude, we can turn our attention outward, instead of solely inward. That is, we can benefit from embracing the larger world and the larger scheme of things. In humility and gratitude, we can discover that we have lived, that we are living still, and that we continue to be blessed and challenged by a broken and beautiful world. Alone in our spirits and separated from our duties and distractions, we can draw closer to God. This is solitude at its best, at its most generous.

In Letters to a Young Poet, Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast…. be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust…. and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

I’m encouraged by Rilke’s charge to love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you, to embrace the growth that comes with it, to accept the love that is being stored up like an inheritance, and the faith that in this love there is a strength and blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it. If there is inevitable pain that comes from solitude, it may be the preface to peace, love, and joy. Rilke acknowledges that there will be those who stay behind, who cannot or will not enter into solitude. And so it is that although the invitation to solitude is offered to all, not everyone will accept. Still, Rilke cautions that those who’ve grown and benefited from solitude should be gentle with those who haven’t, for they haven’t understood or experienced the call to solitary living.

American Transcendentalist writer, Henry David Thoreau, went to live alone in the woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts to live deep and suck the marrow out of life, to live deliberately. Of his experience there, he wrote, I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. When I first moved to Iowa, I didn’t know a soul in my new community and actually didn’t speak to anyone for three, long weeks (except for two phones calls to my parents–I was poor and couldn’t afford the long-distance rates). Let it be said that at 26, I did not find solitude to be companionable. As I walked through town near the end of this three-week period, I’m sure I looked like a starved, crazed woman as I desperately tried to make meaningful eye contact with everyone I passed, hoping that someone would show pity and speak to me. Had I met Thoreau on the streets, I would’ve given him an earful about solitude.

Up to this point in my life, I’d never been alone for this long. Looking back, I’ve come to see that this period was the beginning of my own journey with solitude. A painful beginning, yes. A necessary beginning, absolutely. Through the decades, I’ve learned to live in companionable joy with solitude. I’ve learned that solitude, like a long love, deepens with time. Like Sarton, I’ve learned that the people we love are built into us, that even though we’re separated from them–by distance or by death–they live happily with us in solitude. And as I’ve aged, I’ve learned to enter solitude with great peace and expectation.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Matthew 6: 28-29

Taped into the back of my grandmother’s Bible was a funeral instruction sheet. On it, she’d listed her favorite hymns and scriptures for her funeral service. I confess that I was taken aback when I read the primary scripture she’d chosen from Matthew 6. My grandmother and I shared a history of migraine and neck muscles that my mother once described as “steel rods.” Suffice it to say that we were not laid-back women. We were worrrying women who often found ourselves migraine-stricken before or after big events, our bodies ravaged with stress and the debilitating effects of its let-down. When Jesus contends that we shouldn’t be anxious about tomorrow, that we shouldn’t worry about what we’ll eat or wear, that we shouldn’t fear that we’ll have no place to shelter, my grandmother and I undoubtedly offered a hearty “Amen” and then promptly returned to worrying. Consider how God has cared for the small, the lilies of the field and birds of the air? Sadly for most of my grandmother’s and my lives, not nearly enough. Still, her faith was founded in Jesus’s promise to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Even as she worried, she knew she shouldn’t. Even as she lay in darkened rooms waiting for the migraine to pass, she understood that God knew her intimately and wouldn’t forsake her.

Having recently returned from Glacier National Park, I confess that it was easy to appreciate God’s majesty and power. It was easy to let God’s bigness consume me, tamping down any worries or doubts. And it was much easier to live as though I weren’t anxious for tomorrow. Here among active glaciers were 500-feet deep lakes the color of sapphires, rugged peaks that pushed thousands of feet from the earth’s floor, and meadows of alpine wildflowers that stretched as far as the eye could see. Here, the morning air smelled like heaven, as clear and pure as it must have been on the first day. Here, the bigness of creation encouraged one to let go and let God. Each night, I slept soundly, and each day, I hiked migraine-free. Grammie, you should be here, I thought to myself. This is the kind of place where you can lay it all down.

As I’ve aged, I’ve come to see that my home in southeast Iowa is also just this kind of place. In truth, every place is this kind of place. We may not have mountain vistas or glaciers or moose in rural Iowa, but we have smaller, yet equally wonderful, reminders of God’s majesty and love. As I was walking this morning at the nearby nature preserve, I noticed Queen Anne’s Lace growing along the edge of the path. Once a yard tall, it had been mown to the ground and was beginning again. Today, six-inch stems with exquisite lacey heads lined the path. Small wonders with big beauty. Somehow, the miniature versions of these blooms were even more glorious, for here were clear reminders that God cares for the small and singular just as powerfully as he does for the big and plentiful.

In his novel, I Am the Messenger, Markus Zusak opens with Ed Kennedy, a cab driver who mourns his lack of direction and success. Ultimately, he begins receiving instructions designed to help others and finds purpose in his ability to serve. Kennedy finds the big in the small and ordinary, concluding that [b]ig things are often just small things that are noticed. I like this so much. Throughout the years, I’ve trained myself to notice the small things–in nature, in people, in art. I had great teachers in my mom and dad whose perfect Sunday afternoon was a drive through the Nebraska countryside to see what you might see. Just the other day, my grandson and I were in my office when he pulled a buckeye from a small dish on a side table. Remember this, Grandma? He returned the buckeye and held a small feather to the light. And this? I did remember. We were paying it forward with small things that had big memory value for us. We were training our eyes to see. I like to think that my parents would be cheering us on from heaven. Don’t stop, they’d tell us. Keep finding the big in the small.

Mother Teresa once said, I don’t do great things. I do small things with great love. She continued:

We must not drift away from the humble works, because these are the works nobody will do. It is never too small. We are so small we look at things in a small way. But God, being Almighty, sees everything great. Therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you just go sit and listen, or you take the mail for him, or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody-small things-or wash clothes for somebody, or clean the house. Very humble work, that is where you and I must be. For there are many people who can do big things. But there are very few people who will do the small things.

Finding the big in the small begins with humility, as Mother Teresa contends. If God cares for the lilies of the field, if his eye is on the sparrow, so must we care in singular, small ways, being keenly present as we see and serve. My most precious memories are grounded in small moments that yielded big treasure. Walking to campus with my father, watching my mom rock my babies to sleep, hearing the opening measure of the musical score from my favorite film, sharing my grandmother’s cinnamon rolls over coffee with my family–the list is endless. I live and love large today because of these small moments and things.

In his novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens writes:

He was simply and staunchly true to his duty alike in the large case and in the small. So all true souls ever are. So every true soul ever was, ever is, and ever will be. There is nothing little to the really great in spirit.

Both Charles Dickens and Mother Teresa understand that there is nothing little to the really great in spirit. A true soul is one who humbly serves the small as well as the large. Oh, to be humble in deed and great in spirit, to see the majesty and care of creation in a single blade of grass, in a single person! How I long to be this kind of soul.

As I age, I think more about how the world we navigate while we’re young (youngish!) and able to drive becomes smaller and smaller until it’s often contained in a single room–perhaps even to a single bed. And I look to those who’ve lived with big spirits in spite of their small circumstances. Housebound, my mother sent encouraging messages to hundreds of people through Facebook Messenger and her trusty iPad. As her circumstances confined her to days spent in her maroon lift-chair, she loved in such a big and generous way. She found great purpose in sending small messages of comfort and encouragement to so many across the nation. She continued to do small things with great love until the day she died. Finding the big in the small is a paradox worth living and dying for.

Never Laughs Mountain, Glacier National Park

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young at a place near your altar  
--Psalm 84:3

On the southern shore of Two Medicine Lake,
Never Laughs Mountain shoulders the burden of identity.
In a family of serious intent—
each brother, each sister standing taller than the next—
it is more hill than peak.

In a land of giants who shear the sky,
it is a glacial bud.

Hear the song of this mountain
who never laughs:

God of the small—
the lily and sparrow—

God of the singular—   
the blade of grass and pine needle—

God of the voiceless—
the aspen and stone—

God of all sorrows—
the flood and char—

I wear a robe of larch and laurel.

See me.

While so many others are going to the sun
with eyes fixed on a summit they’ve only imagined,
join me on this little mountain.

For blessed are we 
who sit at the throne of spruce beetles
and tell the stories of those who never laugh.

… the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said: “This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.” It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer.
― Willa Cather,  My Antonia

As I scooped up several brown leaves that had fallen into the pool, I said–aloud and with enough volume to startle the finches on the bird feeder–Oh no! It’s coming! Fall, that is. It’s coming whether I like it or not. Granted, it’s supposed to be nearly 100 today. For days, my phone has been alerting me of this heat advisory, and the heat has been brutal, even for August in Iowa. But it’s still pool weather. It’s still shorts and flip flop weather. It’s still summer with its living mask of green that trembles over everything. For me, even as I sweat through days of heat advisory, a handful of brown leaves brings on seasonal melancholy, an acute sadness for loving the loveliness of summer.

It’s not that I don’t love fall with all it’s changing colors and brisk mornings. And it’s not that I don’t understand and appreciate the seasonal cycle of death and rebirth, brown to green. But the older I get, the more I view the coming of autumn as a kind of bitter song, for as Cather writes, the passing of summer with all its light and shadow is a seasonal truth I’d rather not face until I absolutely have to.

In these particularly beautiful lines, poet Pablo Neruda expresses my own sentiments:

We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.

Throughout my life, I’ve often felt as though it’s been my destiny to love and say goodbye. If I’m being honest, it’s not just the challenge of saying goodbye to summer that plagues me, it’s saying goodbye to almost anything and everyone. When I was in elementary school, I remember helping my mom retrieve an ironing board from our basement on the day that one of her friends was leaving town. For whatever reason, my mom was gifting her this ironing board. And for whatever reason, the memory of this day hangs on. I was a child, and this wasn’t even my friend. But the solemnity of this day, the official parting with all its hugs and best wishes, the buds of tears I saw in the corners of my mom’s eyes–I felt all of this profoundly. Saying goodbye was serious stuff, and I carried the weight of these moments for quite some time. Perhaps I carry them still.

In J.D. Salinger’s coming-of-age novel, The Catcher in the Rye, the protagonist Holden Caufield feels this same solemnity. He confesses:

I was trying to feel some kind of good-bye. I mean I’ve left schools and places I didn’t even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don’t care if it’s a sad good-bye or a bad good-bye, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t you feel even worse.

Like Holden, when I leave a place–or person–I like to know I’m leaving. That is, I I like a formal leave-taking, an intentional goodbye. I can still see my mom and dad standing on the terrace of our family home, waving as I pulled away to travel the 400 miles back to Iowa, waving until they could see me no more. This is the kind of intentional goodbye that sustained me even as I often cried for the first 30 miles, missing my parents already. I admit that I watch my own children drive down our gravel drive until I can no longer see them. There’s something necessary about fixing my eyes on them for as long as possible, prolonging the passing.

As I write, I sit on my screen porch, the weather having cooled, and the breeze quite lovely. An oriole returns to finish off the last bits of grape jelly in our feeder. He’ll be gone soon, and goldenrod will vanquish the remaining Queen Anne’s lace that grows at the edge of the timber. Time will burnish the world, as it always has. As it must. But I take heart, remembering the words of A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh:

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

Men rush towards complexity, but they yearn towards simplicity. They try to be kings; but they dream of being shepherds.

–G. K. Chesterton

It’s a ridiculously glorious sight: a chevron of a couple hundred sunfish parting the water as they move towards the pond dam. They’re coming en masse because they see me. Or they see my shadow. Or they see my car making its way across the pond dam towards the highway. I’ve been their shepherd for about 20 years, throwing out handfuls of food, treating the pond for all sorts of invasive weeds, and generally caring for them. I’m a fish shepherd.

It’s not long before they’re joined by the big boys of the pond: five 8 lb. catfish who simply open their mouths and vacuum the surface of the water, taking in pellets by the mouthfuls. And then the koi come, flashing their colors like banners. My grandson and I have named them all: Camo, Diesel, Angel, Sparkle, Pumpkin, and (Griff’s proud contribution!) Money Maker. They’re the jewels of the pond, and we shepherd them seriously. Each night as we stand at the pond’s edge flinging handfuls of pellets across the water, we ooh and ahh at how they’ve grown and how they look pretty magnificent when the sun hits them just so. And the bass? They’re shy, and we rarely see them. But we know they’re happily trolling the deeper water of the east end. We’re our fishes’ biggest fans, and we rue the day when the pond freezes over, and we can’t see them anymore.

Shepherding is a humble role fraught with the desire to protect and preserve. We’ve had our share of fish-kills after particularly rough winters. To see a 12 lb. grass carp floating on the surface in early spring is a sorry sight, indeed. But it’s a part of shepherding. In spite of your best efforts, you lose some. You may leave the 99 to go after a stray sheep–or fish–but it may not be enough. Still, a good shepherd makes the effort, always.

Turkish playwright, Mehmet Murat Ildan, writes: Shepherds know many mysterious languages; they speak the language of sheep and dogs, language of stars and skies, flowers and herbs. It’s a unique relationship between the shepherd and whatever or whomever is being shepherded, and good shepherds learn to speak the language of their charges. Griff and I may not literally speak “fish,” but we know where and when our fish like to be fed. We know how to ensure that that big fish don’t hog all the food. We know which koi travel together as partners and which travel solo. We like to think that we speak the language of our pond’s fish.

In the whole scheme of life, a pondful of sunfish, catfish, and koi may not seem all that important, just as a pasture full of sheep or a neighborhood full of people may seem small and relatively unimportant in the whole scheme of world affairs. But shepherding is an intimate venture, particularly local and often small. It’s true that good shepherds see the bigger picture: how their flock is but one of many flocks that make up the world. Still, their eyes are fixed firmly on their flock, whose well-being is their first and foremost concern. Above all, shepherding is an act of loving the singular and the particular, for each member of the flock is infinitely valuable.

As writer and philosopher, G. K. Chesterton contends, we often rush towards complexity and try to be kings. Humans are like that. We prioritize leadership and power. We think more is more, and complexity is progress. But at some point, there are always those who turn from the world and begin to dream smaller. Overwhelmed and saddened by power and complexity, they gather their flocks and begin to tend seriously to those about whom they care most: families, friends, neighbors, colleagues. This is shepherding at its finest, the type of shepherding upon which the world depends.

We read a lot about tribalism today, a term which has come to be associated with division, an “us vs. them” mentality, a group that closes ranks and excludes those not welcomed into particular political, religious, social, educational, or cultural tribes. Shepherding must not be confused with tribalism. That is, good shepherds generally care for a motley assortment of members. There are rebel sheep among their flocks, and they love and care for them just as they care for the other sheep. Griff and I may love the pond koi best, but we care for the other fish just the same. Jesus uses the parable of the lost sheep to tell us that the Kingdom of God is accessible to all, even those who stray and become lost. In this parable, the good shepherd risks all to go after one stray sheep. At the heart of shepherding is this type of devotion and conviction that each member of the flock–however wayward and rebellious–is worthy of rescue and love.

Every organization I’ve been a part of has held leadership training of some sort. Clearly, we need good leaders, individuals of integrity and wisdom who lead with clarity and compassion. But we need more shepherds. And we need good ones, individuals with humility and perseverance, empathy and love. This may not be a flashy position, nor does it often come with bonuses and stock options. It’s a vital position, though. I am a fish shepherd, but I hope to be an even better people shepherd. I’m aware that I can please my fish easily with a handful of pellets thrown strategically by the dock. Shepherding the people in my life is a more serious venture, one that deserves the very best I have to offer.

If you journey to Fishlake National Forest in Utah, you’ll be surrounded by a high-elevation-behemoth. It’s one of the largest life forms on the planet: a quaking aspen so colossal it has a name—Pando, which is Latin for “I spread.” –Ari Danieal, NPR “Listen to one of the largest trees in the world” (May 10, 2023)

After recently returning from a family vacation to Glacier National Park in Montana, I find myself continuing to marvel at the root system of the Quaking Aspen. As we traveled up the Going to the Sun Road one morning, our tour guide and bus driver, Rick, offered a running narrative of park flora and fauna, historical facts and personal observations. It was his short lesson on the Quaking Aspen, however, that astonished me–so much so, that I’ve wondered how it is that I’ve never heard this before.

In central Utah in the Fishlake National Forest lies an aspen stand that originated from a single seed. This aspen “clone,” Pando, is considered the largest organism in the world, spreading over 106 acres of 40,000 individual trees. These aspens spread by sending up new shoots from an ever-expanding root system below. Not only is this the largest living organism, but it’s also likely the oldest. Although its exact age is difficult to determine, it’s estimated to have begun at the end of the last ice age, which makes the Quaking Aspen older than the Sequoia and the Bristlecone Pine. This is one old, tough tree, thanks to an amazing root system.

Even when conditions are hostile–fire, flood, wind, drought–the aspens persevere. Their root system thrives until conditions are favorable enough to once again send new shoots into the air. So, even when it appears that the aspens have been destroyed, they lie dormant below ground, waiting. This stand of aspens is so amazing that the U. S. Postal Service honored Pando as one the “40 Wonders of America” with a commemorative stamp in 2006.

We often talk about roots metaphorically:

• Give your children roots and wings.
• When the roots are deep, there’s no reason to fear the wind.
• Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
• It is because my roots are so strong that I can fly.

We say things like Stay rooted in the truth/in family/in goodness (you can fill in your virtue of choice here). When life’s conditions are particularly challenging, we often cling to the root system that’s sustained us, counting on the fact that it–like the Quaking Aspen–is alive, thriving underground and waiting patiently to send new shoots into the world. There’s much solace and strength to be found in such a root system. Even if there’s little evidence of its fruit in the world around us, we take heart in what can’t be seen. Yet.

Undoubtedly, there are those today who find their root systems lying in wait underground. Some may lament that more people aren’t rooted in family, or that more aren’t rooted in truth. Some may look at a world in conflict and deplore that we aren’t rooted in humility and grace. Some may regard the speed at which the world is changing and bemoan that we aren’t rooted enough in tradition. The list could certainly go on and on. And though many may argue that some of these root systems need to die out, that the fruit of their systems is no longer beneficial, others stand firm on the foundations of these systems, systems they contend are always beneficial if tended well.

Roots are the key ingredients in many proverbs and aphorisms. They work themselves naturally into song lyrics and find themselves graphically presented on posters. Perhaps, this may be why we often take them for granted. Perhaps, they’ve become cliched and too saccharine for our contemporary tastes. Perhaps, we’re too busy looking at what is seen to consider the realm of the unseen. And perhaps, we’re not patient enough to embrace a root system that’s waiting for favorable enough conditions to flourish.

The most serious challenge to a root system, however, is the fact that there are competing systems that infringe upon and, in some cases, destroy it. We live in such a world, a world with competing systems and truth claims. The firm foundation of one is an anathema to another. The root system of one is an abomination to another. You won’t find any posters or greeting cards that offer this reality. Still, it rears its head into our lives in many ways. It divides families, communities, and nations. It often leaves us wringing our hands, saying: How should we live?

People much wiser than me have always explored–and continue to explore–this question. And just as there are many competing root systems, there are many answers to a question of this magnitude. I think it’s safe to say, however, that the rallying cry of unity is troublesome. Logically speaking, to unify competing systems means one system must prevail. That is, one system must become THE system, and the other systems must accommodate themselves accordingly. Historically, people unify because they subscribe to a common set of principles and practices. They may come from different walks of life, different ethnicities, different ages and genders, but they come together in principle. When principles compete, however, unity struggles. When root systems differ radically, each contends for dominance. This is the way of things–in nature and human nature.

As miraculous as the Quaking Aspen root system is, we must acknowledge that its strength and longevity have come from its dominance, its ability to hang on, flourishing under and above ground as circumstances dictate. As social, political, religious, and philosophical root systems compete today, we might do well to look to the aspens for guidance. If we’re convicted that the root system to which we subscribe is good and true, if it’s the right root system for our time and all times, then we might need to be realistically prepared for periods of dormancy. American poet Theodore Roethke writes, “Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” We may need to have faith in the light deep within our root systems.

And surely, we must be prepared for periods of conflict as other systems compete to maintain a cultural stronghold. Above all, we must be prepared to stand firmly on this foundation in love. Contrary to what many believe, this doesn’t mean abandoning or altering the root system at all. It does mean that we hold fast to what we believe as we treat others with whom we disagree with respect and grace. We bend our trunks in love but live confidently in the roots which remain fixed below.

Going to the Sun Road, Glacier National Park

Can anyone of you by worrying add a single hour to his life?
--Matthew 6:27

I turn my face to the sky
where aspens sequin the day,
and the sun—as light will—
muscles its way down through pine boughs
to lay a golden ribbon along the earth.

We climb,
the air thinning our minutes,
every second ground to glacial till
and born happily upward into the alpine blue.

We climb.
Rock faces weep away the burdens of ages
sending scree into the shadows.

I’ve forgotten why I lay awake last night,
forgotten the niggling doubts which disappear
into fields of purple aster.

And I’ve forgotten to worry my heart into knots.
See how it rises like the mountain lupine
which simply gives itself to the sun.

It is an alarming experience to be, in your person, representing Christianity to the natives.
― Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

In the early decades of the 20th century, Karen Blixen-Finecke–who wrote under the name of Isak Dinesen–traveled to Africa with her husband, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, to operate a coffee farm near Nairobi. Because her husband was more interested in hunting than farming, Karen was generally left on her own to navigate the world of coffee farming and to learn about and tend to the native Kikuyu people who lived in the area and worked on the farm. She provided the Kikuyu with medical services and a school for their children, and she often served as the sole Christian witness in their midst. Ultimately, after struggling to keep the farm afloat, Karen decided to return to her home in Denmark after appealing to the colonial authorities on behalf of the Kikuyu who’d made their homes and livelihood on the farm.

Years ago, I traveled to Nigeria with a Christian mission team. Half of our team were medical professionals who offered eye care and performed cataract surgeries, and half of our team were educators who helped to organize two libraries, one in a secondary school and one in a seminary. We spent three weeks living and working in both rural and urban settings, sleeping under mosquito nets, and enjoying the hospitality of so many Nigerians. But unlike Blixen, we weren’t solely responsible for representing Christianity to the natives, for there were many native Christians in our midst, and their witness to us was undoubtedly more powerful and lasting than ours to them. Even to this day, their Christian witness humbles me as I recall the joy and gratitude they demonstrated in their daily activities.

Honestly, I’ve found myself in many situations throughout my life that have made me wonder if I were representing Christianity to the natives. That is, I found myself immersed in and challenged by a cultural shift towards a more progressive form of Christianity that purports to be a kinder, gentler, more inclusive faith, an improvement on the orthodox faith that many in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant churches have held for centuries. And I’ve thought hard about the position that Karen Blixen-Finecke found herself in as she lived among the Kikuyu people, about the responsibility she must’ve felt to witness well. I’ve thought about this because I, too, feel a tremendous responsibility to be a true and faithful witness for my faith. There is no greater privilege and no greater challenge than to defend orthodoxy.

People who are much smarter, much more experienced and studied than I am have written about and spoken in defense of an orthdox Christian faith since almost the beginning of the church. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul writes to many churches, warning them of the errors of their thinking and practices, and reminding them that the gospel message must not be altered. He writes to the Galations to set them straight about the Judaizers in their midst who were preaching an altered gospel that added a “works” requirement for their salvation. Even a few years after Christ had been crucified and resurrected, the orthodox Christian faith was being tested and altered. Paul and his fellow apostles were powerful witnesses intent on representing Christianity to the natives–sadly, even to the natives who’d previously received and accepted the good news of the gospel.

I’m painfully aware of a common accusation that those who hold an orthodox faith are intolerant, exclusive, and harmful individuals: Pharisees or stuffy academics who rarely leave their ivory towers. The continued challenge of my Christian witness has been to hold firm to the orthodox Christian principles and practices of my faith while acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with my God [Micah 6:8]. I know some insist that orthodox believers–those who subscribe to the essentials of Christian faith as revealed in scripture and common creeds–can’t be truly just or merciful or humble. They argue that if they were truly just and merciful, they would wouldn’t be exclusive and intolerant. If they were truly humble, they wouldn’t proclaim their faith so boldy and certainly. Still, through the trials of my own faith, I’ve only had to close my eyes for a moment. In the stillness of that moment, I can see a cloud of witnesses, some of whom died to defend orthodox Christianity. I see Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Corrie Ten Boon, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Joan of Arc, Maximilian Kolbe, Ester John, and Archbishop Oscar Romero. I see my father and mother and a whole host of friends from several communities and churches. I see the early martyrs: Stephen, the apostles Peter and Paul, and St. Ignatius of Loyola. When I open my eyes, I’m chastened by the devotion and selflessness of these witnesses. Here are frontline defenders of the faith with boots on the ground and eyes turned to Jesus.

In his book, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith, pastor and writer Timothy Keller, writes:

When a newspaper posed the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: “Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus.

The power and beauty of Christian witness is founded, first and foremost, on humility. It’s founded on the paradoxical reality that I am both the problem and the potential solution. That is, like writer and Christian apologist, G. K. Chesterton, I am truly what’s wrong with the world. I hope, however, to also become what’s right. I realize that I can never become what’s right in the world on my own. Wholly dependent upon God’s wisdom and grace, witnesses throughout the ages have demonstrated the type of humility that God uses and blesses.

After church this morning, I had the opportunity to speak to many people, expressing how grateful I was to be in the midst of such a cloud of witnesses. These are folks who witness well as they hold fast to an orthodox faith, living and loving with integrity and humility. When I close my eyes tonight, I will see their faces and give thanks.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

–Thorton Wilder

I’ve been known to overthink, overplan, overworry–generally to live outside of myself during any given moment as both spectator and critic intent on making the next best move and saying the next best thing. Oh, to be one step ahead, hoping the future will unfold more generously, more gloriously, more certainly! For too much of my life, I’ve taken for granted single moments, regarding them as necessary foreplay for something bigger and better. I’d have done well to heed the words of Rose Kennedy, who cautioned that [l]ife isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments. Moments are the hummingbirds of time, flashing quicksilver wings through the duties of the day. Too often, much too often, I’ve missed them.

Just the other day, I was telling my grandson, Griffin, about my family’s annual 4th of July picnics at Ft. Kearney Recreational Center. The day began with donuts, juice, and coffee at the picnic area and progressed to swimming and sunbathing on the beach. But the highlight of the day–the pièce de résistance–was the annual Don Welch spastic run from the bath house down the beach into the water. My dad, whose legs only saw sunlight once a year, donned his swimming trunks and waited at the top of the beach as the family–and soon other swimmers–turned their eyes to the spectacle that was about to unfold. We held our breath until he began to run down the beach, his arms and legs flailing in classic Jerry Lewis style, his face contorted and his eyes crossed. For 30 glorious seconds, we laughed until we could no longer stand and fell bent over into the water. Each year, the spastic run grew in popularity, and the Don Welch fan club burgeoned.

I like to think that I was fully present in each of those moments when my dad put aside his respectable teacher persona to become a fool for a few precious and utterly entertaining moments. I like to think that I wasn’t dreaming about the brownies I knew my mom had packed or the teenage boys playing frisbee near the water. I do know that these moments have only become clearer and dearer over the decades. And for this, I’m more grateful than I can say.

So, when Griffin donned an assortment of dollar-store 4th of July accessories and leapt from the pool deck, flashing a goofy smile and double peace signs, I was fully present. Oh, how my dad’s legacy lives on in the heart of his great grandson and his spastic leap! The fact that his photographer mother captured this moment for posterity? Even better. For during the dark days of winter, I can pull this photo out and relive this moment just when I need it. Playwright Thorton Wilder claims, we are most alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. This moment, like those lived on the beach at Ft. Kearney Recreational Area, is a treasure.

The marvelous paradox of a single moment lies in the fact that it contains all moments, according to writer and theologian C. S. Lewis. Or as American writer Henry David Thoreau maintains, you can find your eternity in a moment. A moment may be small, but it be mighty! The other day while Griffin and I were in the pool, he urged me to dive in. Generally, I just float around while he swims beneath me. So, I rolled off my floatie and swam the length of the pool underwater. This isn’t a great feat in a 15 ft. pool, but it’s enough to delight a 9-year-old. In those brief moments underwater, I was transported to all those afternoons I spent at the Harmon Park Pool in Kearney, Nebraska. I can still recall the wonder of lying on the bottom of the pool, submerged and suspended in a sea of blue chlorinated water. It was magical. It still is. There’s something about that kind of weightlessness, that feeling of otherworldliness and timelessness that comes from being under water. A single moment in my little backyard pool contains just that kind of mystery and eternity.

Martin Luther King, Jr. writes:

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

I suspect in everyone’s life, there are those moments which defy description or explanation. As an amateur birdwatcher, I often struggle to find the words to describe to others what I’ve seen and experienced. I’ve yet to find words to adequately describe the color of an indigo bunting. But when I see one in the honeysuckle bushes that ring the timber, I’m transfixed in a moment of unutterable fulfillment. Momentarily, I’m struck dumb. And this is exactly how it should be.

Each time I read the Sermon on the Mount, I’m moved by Jesus’s admonition to stop worrying about tomorrow. His words are a clear and present reminder to seek first the kingdom of God, to submit to the present moment, and above all, to trust:

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. [Matthew 6: 31-34]

I continually remind myself that the moments of my day are gifts. And I hold fast to the assurance that tomorrow will worry about itself. And so, I’d like to tell you that I no longer overthink or overplan, that I’m fully present in every moment. But I can’t. Still, I’m making progress–one marvelous moment at a time.

And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Dear Lousie Erdrich,
Motherless now,
my grief compels me to harvest the moments of my life
in bushel baskets, and to tell myself
that I’ve tasted as many as I could:

that in those last days, 
when she was already weightless—
her bones gone quicksilver—
I hung on, grounding her with my great love;

that the sweetness of her life
was not wasted on me;

that today as I walk the path around the pond,
I’m greeted by water lilies, which are magnificent
structural things—

not at all shapeless smears of pastel light
floating on a Monet canvas—

but a hundred or more white missiles on green launch pads, 
sprung and ready to release their sweet weight
into first light.

So, here is my reckoning:

that though the years unmake me,
casting long shadows of their dominion,
I can take stock of my windfall:

     of this legion of lilies rising in the morning mist,
     of this redwing blackbird whose cries split the seam of dawn,
     of this mother’s voice, like the still small hum of locust, ever in my ear.

And today I can say, without a doubt,
that my baskets are full, and I’ve not gone without.