CHURCH OF THE HIGH MEADOW

  M-22 is a scenic stretch of blacktop that runs up Michigan’s west coast from Manistee all the way up around Northport and down to its other end in Traverse City. Without a litany of awe inspired endearment, that ‘hundred mile shoreline is what every sandy little berm on every coast wants to be. There is a spot near Glen Arbor where the woods give way to hayfields, to century-old barns and long abandoned orchards. Beyond them a high meadow and steep glacial moraines left there from the last ice age are overgrown with beech and maple forest. The first time I saw it I knew; This is the place. To my surprise it was part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore. As a taxpayer I am an owner and I can be there, hike there, climb in the woods and sit in the tall grass whenever I please. 
Four hundred years ago Shakespeare penned the lines “all the world’s a stage. . .” and we (all of us) are actors playing out our roles. What a wonderful metaphor. But there is no script, we have to improvise and ad lib as we go; and it’s all one act, no intermission, no prompters, no do-overs. Each of us has to find our way and deliver our lines over and under, in between and around every other actor on that stage. That part is often taken for granted as if we (the protagonists) are upstage with everybody waiting anxiously for us to speak. When I first drove by the hayfields and the high meadow I knew it would be my center stage and my story should unfold from there. 
Whatever I might have been before, I am by now an old heretic. It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine primitive people and their helpless fear with every thunder clap and lightning bolt. Creating a mythical god was their only-best course of action. It must have eased their anxiety in the moment and it still underlies western religion but I don’t believe any of it. I didn’t chose to be that way but too much to believe is just that. I fit in very neatly with Secular Humanists. In lieu of a long, wordy manifesto our commandments tell us to Cooperate, Be nice and Play fair. All we need to maximize and fulfill our righteous potential is programmed in our brain at birth. An all knowing, all powerful god isn't necessary. Some seeds never germinate, some sprout, some go back into the food web, some feed on the same food web and make more seed, lay more eggs, birth more babies, enough to replace themselves and sustain their species. I’m lucky to be here, a minuscule but relevant link in the web. 
The human brain is a marvelous instrument but needs a skilled artist to make music. It works like a high centered, short wheelbase little jeep with big tires and a 600 horse power motor. It can take you places nobody dreamed we could go. But if you drive with imaginary insurance and reckless abandon it will, without a second thought, leave you upside down in the ditch. 
I don’t really know why I fleshed out this idea today; maybe just the Muse and me, doing what we do. That would be me going along with whatever it tells me. I have to believe in something that resonates to a high moral principle, something Right (Righteous). It’s part of the human paradigm. In my case, I find that at the Church Of The High Meadow. I go there when I can and it looks like that will be this summer. Rain or shine, I will take comfort in the natural order of gravity and photosynthesis, sit in the shelter of pine trees and marvel at their seed cones in the grass beside me. I’ll walk, checking under gnarled, old apple trees for deer beds in the tall grass and a few green apples too high up for them to reach. 
I have taken a page from Christian tradition in my own self interest. Communion for a pagan would be to ritualize the sacred interdependence of all things. It has nothing to do with (God so loved the world . . .) and everything to do with wildflowers, bees, honey, me and the flowers I plant around my patio. I do communion anytime I feel like it, alone at the kitchen table or with loved ones at the Church of The High Meadow. It takes a little brandy in a paper cup, raise it in thanksgiving to honor the Cardinal Points of the compass, our Mother Earth and Father Sky. Sip the brandy slow, wash it over your tongue, breathe in through your nose and swallow. When your head is clear, raise up a piece of chocolate, repeat the ritual and crush the chocolate against the roof of your mouth. Savor that blessing for as long as it takes and wash it down with the last bit of brandy. I finish with a benediction borrowed from the Lakota Sioux. Hard to pronounce but profound none the less; (Mitakuye Oyasin) which means, (We are all related) or if you prefer, (All My Relations). I take the Liberty of borrowing from another language and another culture after all; we are all related. 
I have done enough here for today. Cooperate, be nice, play fair, take care of our Mother and take care of each other.

EVEN BABY BIRDS

Being compulsively curious with a short attention span I spend more time ‘down the rabbit hole’ than most. It would seem maybe I should be more focused on my achievements and credit rating but I missed that train. When Alice followed the White Rabbit down into its burrow she discovered a strange and surreal, even nonsensical world. I don’t know if it was by choice or by chance that I stumbled down that same rabbit hole but the situation there hasn’t changed. Like Alice, I feel like an alien in my own culture. 

E.O. Wilson (Sociobiology) was one of the first to notice: Not until hunter/gatherer society gave way to cities, agriculture and living together in large numbers, about (7,000 yrs ago) that civilized priorities turned away from Mother Earth’s nurturing influence. It marked the beginning of civilized wealth & power with no inkling for the planet’s greater good. From down here in the rabbit hole, I can see how civilization is digging itself into another hole. In the 1986 movie Top Gun, the Air Boss was chewing hero, Tom Cruise, a new asshole. He growled, “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.” Collectively I think we are writing checks our society cannot cash. Too bad for my descendants. 

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for over 150 million years, and got wiped out by an unavoidable meteor strike. Humans on the other hand have only been around for maybe 2 million years and most of that time as an insignificant species, barely able to sustain themselves. Not until roughly 500 years ago (Christopher Columbus) could we have qualified as a significant species. Only in the past 300 years (Industrial Revolution & fossil fuels) could we be considered the dominant species. I will not allude to writing checks but I will observe; even baby birds know not to sh*t in their nest. 

 

THERE BUT FOR . . .

  How do you deal with beggars at intersections with disclaimers in magic marker on scraps of cardboard; God Bless, Viet Nam Vet, Haven’t eaten, etc.? I will vent my own disclaimer here: I give up. I do not give money to desperate people who may or may not be what they appear to be. But my mother did a thorough job with me. Any time, every time we encountered someone who needed a helping hand or suffered a grim affliction she whispered in my ear; “There but for the Grace of God go I; and you too.” I got it; the only thing between ‘Lucky’ me and a wretched beggar was God’s Grace. At our house charity and forgiveness was the price of God’s Grace. The downcast suffer enough, don’t send them away hungry.
So I don’t give money to downcast people but I do feel compelled to feed them. Today my appetite called out for chicken salad. I didn’t have any celery so I drove across town to the grocery. Just down the line a young woman stepped out from between parked cars. I don’t think you can grow this old and not see a shakedown coming. She was clean and dressed to fit the weather, a little chunky. Her hair had been bleached some time ago and the dark brown had grown back in several inches. Well spoken and very proper she began a story how she and her little girl had not eaten since the day before yesterday. I watched her lips move but I was paying attention to body language and to my own dilemma, what should I do? I believed her then and I believe her now; she was hungry, what ever else she might have been I couldn’t know. I told her I don’t give money to strangers, period, then asked her, “If you had money, what would you buy?” She thought for just a moment and told me; bread, eggs, milk and some apples. I asked her if she was safe, did she have a safe place to stay and she volunteered that she was safe and that things should get better next week.
Then I asked her, “If I go in and buy your groceries for you would you wait here for me to bring them out?” She said she would; I added her items to my list and told her, “You wait here. Don’t go away. I’ll be back in 20 minutes.” As I walked away she added, “White bread.” It took all of 20 minutes but when I got to my truck she was nowhere to be found. I waited for another 20 minutes and still no-show. I felt a little foolish but why so; she may have thought I would report her to store security or she may have been with some other person who didn’t like the deal. But she was hungry and I believe she had a hungry little girl somewhere, I’d bet on it (I guess I did). 
Now I’m stuck with a large loaf of white bread and a half gallon of 2% milk: who in the world eats white bread! I volunteer with a (Hunger Outreach) group that puts sandwiches together one night a week for the homeless and food insecure. We host a big picnic feed twice a week at a downtown park and our Thursday night assembly line turns out maybe 300 (maybe more) ham & cheese sandwiches from donated supplies. Sometimes we feature lasagna or stew along with the sandwiches and we don’t hear any disclaimers, just ThankYou, up and down the line. That’s when I hear my mom’s “There but for the Grace of God.” She was a true believer. I think it a metaphor and a good one for people at their best, for the convergence of charity and forgiveness in the same space. The eggs and apples will keep several weeks and I can work them into my diet but the white bread will probably be enjoyed by the birds and squirrels. 
 

ESSENCE

I get a good feeling sometimes when a predictable but unanticipated signal flashes on my radar; not a great feeling but certainly a good one. When I stand at my front door looking out across the patio I see the little Chokecherry tree not twenty feet away. I think it too grown up to call it ‘little’ but I planted it maybe ten years or twelve ago and it was little then. Now it’s over twenty feet tall with its trunk radius of 10 or 11 inches. On April Fool’s Day this week I opened the door and that little tree was covered with buds open enough to see green unfolding. That little sign is the precursor to another Spring unfolding. The Chokecherry is the first tree within sight of my door to bloom. It won’t be long now. One evening just before sundown, while all the other trees stand there naked, totally uninspired, I will step out my front door on my way to roll up truck windows or put a shovel inside the garage and the sweet smell of cherry blossoms will make me forget everything, absolutely everything; and I’l suck in one deep breath after another, and another. That is when I usher the same metaphor that I do every year, “Maybe there is a God after all.” I don’t have to be reminded that the God thing is a metaphor, that the god of punishment & reward, of war & peace, of forgiveness and revenge has been resigned to the same status as Rudolph the Red Nose and Spyder Man. I just use it for effect, the same way I use, “The Devil made me do it.” 
Cherry blossoms will be out like clusters of little white grapes and their essence simply cannot be replicated. That essence only lasts a day or maybe two but it is a signal that Spring is an irresistible force and it will have its way. It moves me to an optimism that seemed to be terminally ill just a few months before. I set my alarm so I can repeat the ritual again the next morning. By the sunrise after that the petals will be dropping to the ground. Tiny white circles that stick to your face and in your hair and I feel blessed again. When it’s done and the essence is just a magical memory it won’t be all that long before fully open leaves turn from vibrant green to a dark reddish-purple and you know that summer is not far off. I can live with all that.