Jules of Nature

I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do. Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun? Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street? The sunflowers? The old black oak growing older every year? I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. A condition I can’t really call being alive. Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.

While I was thinking this I happened to be standing just outside my door, with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning. Then a wren in the privet began to sing. He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, I don’t know why. And yet, why not. I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever you don’t. That’s your business. But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be if it isn’t a prayer? So I just listened, my pen in the air.

“We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.”

“This world has only two true directions, towards and away.”

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

What is hope, Mama?

Well, little one - She's a very old tree with wobbly, old knees.

She's broken some branches and lost a few leaves.

She stands through the wind and she dances in rain.

She has felt every bit of discomfort and pain.

She's not very tidy, she's messy but fierce,

She won't hide from her feelings or hold back her tears.

She's a small evergreen or a mighty oak, swaying.

But one thing is certain, she's built out of staying.

red passion flower