A Taproot Circle

Dear friends,

I return to you after such a long season of quiet you no doubt wondered if you would hear from me again.

There were many times when I wondered this too, so deep and holy a place I arrived at that words seemed a distraction, doomed to glance off the mere surface of a peace that had long eluded me amid all “the things” we each know too well – the doing, and planning and talking and strategizing and fiddling with technology and fussing about “how much,” “what next,” and all of the “how-tos” of a life not only constructed around, but dependent upon, our accomplishments.

I have learned a secret that I want to share with you over the coming days and months.  One that it is far too easy in our culture to forget.

We are so much more than what we DO.  More than what we make, write, compose, teach, produce to deadline.  Our deepest selves may actually be best found sitting by the fading geraniums on our back porch, listening to an unknown bird paint the sunset with unearthly song.

But “finding our deepest selves” is a misnomer, coaxed along by the Enlightenment illusion that we are capable of doing things on our own.  We can’t.  The truth is that we search and search (and read, and discuss, and go on retreat, and meet with spiritual directors and therapists and friends)– and then, one day, we just might be visited by a new sense of reality.

It changes everything.

Those desert mothers and fathers, mystics and marginals, who wandered far beyond their city walls in search of authentic being, have long intrigued me.  I certainly don’t claim an identity with them, even now.  But I do own a new and powerful kinship.

Last February, my life took an unexpected turn when I had to become very focused on a family illness and the long-distance care-taking for an ailing brother and sister-in-law.  I know that some of you are familiar with the intensity of concentration such a life event demands.  I pulled back from routine commitments.  The days simplified.

Here are a few things that changed radically.

First, I no longer scrolled the news on my phone while waiting to speak to doctors.  I had to learn the many vocabularies of distant bureaucracies, to focus, and to tread lightly and carefully as I walked alongside two adults who found themselves in states of dependency they’d never imagined, and didn’t want.

Second, My husband and I decided to shift our life to a family place in New Hampshire where we could grow a good deal of our food and manage the rest at farmer’s markets.

Third, I began to rise even earlier than I do in the city.  In those hours of darkness I learned that silence can’t be a piecemeal effort, relegated to my morning prayer time.  It is a quality that I needed to cultivate more mindfully throughout the days, whatever they brought – even resistance, conflict, silence.  Several new-to-me writers helped me to see beyond the gateposts of “practice,” or “technique” to the far broader — really, the infinite — reaches of peace, and a life of faith that goes hand in hand with peace.

Fourth, My mind no longer abuzz with a multitude of obligations, roles, and projects, I began to read again — long, delicious hours after dinner immersed in a novel, or gardening books.

Fifth: In June, I’d planted a climbing rose, and for a season it became my teacher – all of the fertilizing and “integrated pest management” (a term I’d never heard before then), the bio-dynamics of a compost bin.  One of the high points of the week was when the kitchen compost container was full enough to walk its contents out to the bin, where I would check the temperature, toss in a bit of alfalfa, a bit of water, and reset the cover on a mound of corn husks and tomato stems and cut grass.

I also pulled out a long-deferred needlepoint project, inspired years ago by an unexpected visit to a chapel in the Cotswolds that, though I wouldn’t realize it until this past summer, has planted the seeds of the life I have found myself turning towards now.  My handwork, at the close of each day – no matter how hectic, frustrating, or inconclusive my efforts — steadied and balanced me.

I share these not as data points to be popped into a new self-improvement plan, but as points of departure for future conversations here.

THE TAPROOT CIRCLE

Now nearing the end of the growing season, the only things left in the beds are the taproot vegetables: carrots, beets, a few lingering radishes and garlics.

Over many months, the image of the taproot has returned to me over and over again, as I have reflected on this new place I have arrived at.  A taproot is that source of nutrition that is completely invisible until it is ready to harvest.  It comes full circle organically, with each expansion of its cell-life, drawing from the rich loam around it.  It develops in secret the source of life that it will one day share.

Lately I have wondered whether the taproot might serve as a guiding image for a new kind of conversation with all of you.

Over the next few months, I want to explore this idea.  What would it look like to use a monthly reflection (supplemented with a few gatherings for the soul) as a basis for an online gathering for conversation, a bit of prompted journalling, sharing, and prayer?

The soil around us is thin, and the need for genuine community is deep.

I invite you to hold this idea, and share any reactions in the comment section below.

For now, some questions on my heart are these:

— How does the hidden life in each of us remain a vital and growing thing, when the soil become exhausted, depleted, lacking in nutrients or even, as is happening on so many levels today, toxic?

— How do we keep the wisdom of the mystics alive – with their insistence on the primary value of contemplation, reflection, consciousness — in a world addicted to Products and Projects and Prestige?

— How do we use language – how do we talk to one another and to ourselves and to God – in ways that don’t bog down in obsessive self-obsession, a faulty concept of “healing,” an over-reliance on the “useful” and the operational, at the expense of the deeper language of the soul?

— How do we create and maintain peace?

I offer these questions, and a bit of my story, for now.  I have so much more to share, and to ask for your thoughts about, in the months ahead.

For the immediate future, my hope is to offer a monthly gathering of reading suggestions, notes, images and poems that, like the very healthy loam in our New Hampshire beds, will nourish a way for us to be together in this space.

I leave you with this gorgeous poem by David Wagoner.

Blessings on your Septembers!

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Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

David Wagoner