The Sound of Silence

Detail from the porch of the Saluda Clergy Cottage

Spending a quiet weekend in Saluda preparing the Clergy Cottage for the 2013 season. The key word here is “quiet.” I had forgotten how nearly silent it is here compared to the busy crossroads (which inspired last week’s blog post) we live on in Savannah.

When I awoke in the middle of the night last night, the only sound I could hear was the ringing in my ears. It felt almost preternatural. Even this morning, the birdsong seemed somewhat muted.

On the corner of Whitaker and Gaston, there is a constant deluge of sound: cars, motorcycles, the sirens of police cars, fire engines and ambulances, trolleys full of tourists and the continual patter of their guides. Because Forsyth Park is across the street, bird song is almost continual, and often loud. I even heard our downstairs neighbor once tell a particularly noisy little avian to “shut up, bird.”

In addition, there’s the sound of people laughing or talking, sometimes even yelling, as they pass by; there’s the rhythm of joggers’ feet slapping the pavement as they run around the park; the cacophony of dogs barking; drums beating, and the occasional drift of music from various instruments. It is easily the symphony of city life.

Sitting here in the quiet of the Blue Ridge Mountains reminds me what it is like to experience the natural peace of the outdoors. I have learned to tune out, when necessary, the noisy strains of city life. But there are times I find it wonderfully liberating to hear absolutely nothing.

The following poem by Wendell Berry seemed particularly apropos this weekend:

 Sabbath Poem II, 1995

The best reward in going to the woods

Is being lost to other people, and

Lost sometimes to myself. I’m at the end

Of no bespeaking wire to spoil my goods;

I send no letter back I do not bring.

Whoever wants me now must hunt me down

Like something wild, and wild is anything

Beyond the reach of purpose not its own.

Wild is anything that’s not at home

In something else’s place. This good white oak

Is not an orchard tree, is unbespoke,

And it can live here by its will alone.

Lost to all other wills but Heaven’s—wild.

So where I most am found I’m lost to you,

Presuming friend, and only can be called

Or answered by a certain one, or two.

 

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Crossroads

Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. Jeremiah 6:16

Go to the busiest crossroads you know, and try to notice everything: all the people, the cars, the buses, the colors, the noises, the clouds, the birds, the spaces. Notice the impatience.

Now picture the cross on which Jesus died as a crossroads of people, time and place; a physical crossroads through which at some time all people pass. Understand the cross as a meeting-place of all history with God, the source of all love, forgiveness and peace.

Remember in prayer all those who are at a particular crossroads in their own life, especially anyone close to you or with whom you have spoken in the last day or so. Here is another prayer which can be said over and over again–perhaps with ten repetitions–at a crossroads, at a home, or wherever you pray:

I praise You, Jesus, Son of the living God. The power of the Holy Spirit is with You to heal. Blessed are Your death and resurrection; and holy beyond all telling is the name of Jesus. Holy Jesus have mercy on us. Fill us with grace and truth. Give us power to become the children of God, and protect us always and everywhere by the loving power of the name of Jesus. AMEN.

via Aidan Clarke in The Secret Jesus

When a Tree Falls . . .

The following is an essay I wrote when we were living in Calhoun, Georgia . . .

This morning, as every morning, I looked out the kitchen window to get a feeling for the new day before I started my coffee. Living on a North Georgia pond and surrounded by water on three sides, I am often greeted by a variety of wildlife–mallards, Canada geese, blue and green heron.

But this morning, my view of the pond was blocked by a banner of leaves. My God, that’s a huge limb, I thought, assuming it had dropped from the large oak that guards the western shore of our spit of land. I leaned closer to the window in dawning horror. It wasn’t a limb at all, it was another oak, the one that shades the front of our house.

“Oh No!” I cried, giving voice to both my sorrow and shock. My mind was racing. How could it have fallen? There had been no wind last night, no storm. What had caused the death of this mighty oak and why hadn’t I heard it, felt it when it crashed to the earth?

My husband and I went outside to explore. It had fallen so very neatly–missing the birdbath by less than a foot and gently cupping a sapling maple between two of its limbs. Apparently the tree had fallen very slowly. Even the mistletoe and resurrection fern that carpeted its body lay undisturbed.

It appeared as if the tree, which had been close to 100 years old, had died in its sleep. But, an examination of the tree’s roots revealed the cause of its death. Two of the three major roots were dry and spongy. Dry rot? The oak had seemed so healthy. Our 50-year-old pines are slowly succumbing to the ravages of old age and pine beetles but they announce their death with a profusion of pinecones. What had caused the roots on our oak to rot.

Our next door neighbor wandered over to commiserate. “I tried to tell your mother not to build a fire there,” he said to my husband. Build a fire . . . that more than explained it. The only root still living was the one on the opposite side of the tree, the one away from the scorched bark. We could see it now that it was no longer camouflaged with coeleus. She had wanted to burn some brush, we discovered, and had figured that big old oak would be strong enough to take it.

How many plants die each year from our naiveté? Those we forget to water or water overmuch; those that are sensitive to heat or cold and die from exposure; and those that we allow to starve to death. The death of our oak seems a greater symbol to me. My mother-in-law felt that the tree couldn’t be hurt by a mere fire at its base. If she had carried the brush away from the tree and burned it elsewhere, the tree would be alive today. But it was more expedient to burn the brush where it lay. That shortcut cost a 100-year-old tree its life.

It is a similarly shortsighted attitude that causes companies to take shortcuts when it comes to the environment. When short-term profits are put ahead of long-term environmental effects, the outcome can be devastating. If a little fire can’t hurt a 100-year-old oak then surely a little clear-cutting won’t hurt our National Forests. And, what about a little toxic waste? Surely, the earth can take it. After all, she’s more than 4 billion years old. Our atmosphere has been around about as long, how can a little incineration of trash and a few aerosol sprays possibly hurt it that much?

It is true. The earth will recover but will she do so by shaking off the pesky human species first. The earth may well survive by rebuilding itself after we have destroyed the ecosystems that support us.

They say that when a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound. Maybe we should start listening a little harder.

We are such stuff as dreams are made of . . .

 

Mordencage Griffin by Taylor James

No amount of scepticism and criticism has yet enabled me to regard dreams as negligible occurrences. Often enough they appear senseless, but it is obviously we who lack the sense and ingenuity to read the enigmatic message from the nocturnal realm of the psyche. Seeing that at least half our psychic existence is passed in that realm, and that consciousness acts upon our nightly life just as much as the unconscious overshadows our daily life, it would seem all the more incumbent on medical psychology to sharpen its senses by a systematic study of dreams. Nobody doubts the importance of conscious experience; why then should we doubt the significance of unconscious happenings? They also are part of our life, and sometimes more truly a part of it for weal or woe than any happenings of the day.

 

Carl Jung, “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934). In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. pg. 325