Moss Time

Tonight my 7 year old daughter fell asleep with her head on my lap…what heavy things I have carried today: two full compost buckets and a sleeping child.  What other heavy things have I carried? The weight of sorrow and helplessness- pictures of other children... children trapped by violence in Gaza....and children running from violence and met with anger at our borders…

I am also carrying some hope- some pictures of peace in the midst- the intimate hug of friendship between a Palestinian and an Israeli- in the midst of horrific fighting too large and too long to hold in my view. And at our borders- pictures of people in yellow shirts standing with other faiths to bring our attention to the plight of children.  Large crowds of supporters, part of a movement, standing for the defenseless, the small.

My eyes flash between the large and the small, the particular and the panoramic.  In my small life, I see most often the particular- the moments of intimate love and connection.  Though standing on a  mountaintop or overlooking a river, my vision is panoramic in scope.

I was moved at General Assembly this year (my first!) to see justice and love from a panoramic view….raising my hand to vote on actions of immediate social witness as a delegate, raising my voice in joyful singing at worship with 5,000 others, and raising my eyes to flames on a river and my ears to melodic music everywhere at WaterFire- a truly moving witness and gift of love to the city of Providence, Rhode Island.  I was proud to stand among all those yellow-shirted UU's in what was for me the most contemplative moment of the conference- sharing this moment first with a local stranger who told me he comes to every water-lighting for the peace and beauty… and later with a small crowd surrounding two men from Nashville, Tennessee who proclaimed their wedding vows beside the flame-lit river (a ceremony I happened upon by surprise, and by joy…). 

There is a different energy to be one among thousands.  In my quiet Hudson Valley life, I am sensitive to the particular.  I can quiet my mind by meditating on an ant meandering across a meditation hall floor, or a bee pollinating yellow wildflowers by the Hudson river. I can see the universe in a single stem.There is a way of seeing everything in the mundane; like the lead character, Alma, in Elizabeth Gilbert's latest book - The Signature of All Things- who pursues the meaning of life through science- by studying the particular, the slow evolution of moss.  She calls it "moss time", noting a slower-almost infinite- pace of time much different than our own. The lens of a microscope reveals a world no less grand than the voyages to exotic islands... and certainly more real than the fancies of some angelic realm beyond. It is in this world that we must live. In human time... but perhaps also in moss time.

Moss time. "Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that/ they have no tongues, could lecture/ all day if they wanted about/ spiritual patience?" writes Mary Oliver, in her poem Landscape.  Perhaps that is what we are caught up in this summer- as though our lives were following a different clock. 

For those of us caught up in busy lives, moss time signifies a much needed slowing down which opens our eyes to noticing the particular;  but perhaps there are others for whom this slowing of time has become a way of life- tedious, almost infinite... 

I think of prisoners. Yes, perhaps moss time is a heaviness in the life of the incarcerated…. I am writing letters to a prisoner now according to the holiday cycle of the Pagan year- an honoring of his religious rhythms, and my own need for calendared commitments.  I am aware that the distance between letters is so much greater on his end than on mine. 

It is unbearable for some. This past weekend I climbed a mountain with my children and a few friends; it was the first mountain I ever climbed 18 years ago- and it was my first time returning since.  Climbing the mountain was a ritual- a pilgrimage- in memory of another prisoner- sentenced to 37 years, who died recently after just two years into his sentence.  He was one of my original companions (there were three of us) on that climb 18 years ago.  Then, it was a relatively short two hour climb which we ran up with enthusiasm and our naive adventurous spirits… and a drawn out 5 mile return descent along a winding service road (as it was too dark to return by the trail).   Oddly enough, our conversation on that descent turned to evolution- dinosaur intelligence, mass extinction, and grace. It was an unforgettable climb and return- and one which led- for me- to a love for hiking up other mountains in places throughout the country. 

This time we climbed by day, and I returned by trail, not road.  The descent was a run down steep rocks on my own.  As I ran, I saw my younger twenty-year-old self and her two friends walking up.  I saw myself with a water bottle filled with vodka, a hurt heart, and an open spirit bent on restless disaster. I saw all that I had not yet seen.  I saw all the things I thought I knew then- and all that I did not yet know.  I saw my younger self and I loved her and I forgave her.   And all this too for the others- one now a ghost, whose last years were caught up in pain- spiraling cycles inflicted on self and others- and perhaps a coming home.  All this, I witnessed. 

I was running down the mountain on the opposite of moss time, the reeling flight backward through days and decades. At the end of the tunnel- after crossing over a dangerous highway- I found a semblance of peace. 

And perhaps peace too will come- unimaginable on that panoramic scale in human time, but maybe in moss time. But in the particular, we can see it now. This summer when the intimate loving between two strangers- the ultimate witness to love in a celebration of marriage- is human time.  As is a child falling asleep on my lap. 

And if we can in the particular bear witness in love to the breaking of these hearts and the healing of these wounds and the connections and threads that bind us together- then perhaps we will slowly mend the world in the panoramic.  Or at the very least, in our struggle- uphold the beauty and the tenderness and the wholeness of life in its terrible midst.