The Power We Have
“World, world, forgive our ignorance and our foolish fears. Absolve us of our anger and our error. In your boundless gift for renewal, disregard our undeserving. For no reason but the hope that one day we will know the beauty of unloved things, accept our unuttered thanks.” ~Margaret Renkl, from The Comfort of Crows
It is far too easy to watch the news, to listen to messages of destruction, and to hear the message, “I am powerless.” Some mornings, before the light has dawned, I stare out my window and find that I’m gazing only at my own helpless face looking back at me.
Yet, when I fall to this way of thinking I realize I am missing something. Maybe the most important things. There’s more beyond me in a realm I can’t always see.
Once the light begins to lift, I do see—the place that less than two months ago was filled with thick green shade of leaves and ground sparkling with dew is now covered in a carpet of yellow and brown leaves with hints of frost edging its way forward. The wood pile is ready to become bonfires, and I can see my neighbors’ home, hidden in the summer, through the tree line.
Hiding in each season is the next. What else is hiding inside what I can see only with my eyes?
Just last week the tree that captivates me on my walks in the park was filled with orange and red and yellow leaves, their showy display hard to look away from. Now as I come upon this spot, the leaves have become a skirt circling the base, and so the tree is darker, more shadowed, and there is more sky showing its way through the branches. Somehow this time of autumn starts to feel both darker and lighter.
What I’m not powerless to do is pay attention and love the world that’s within my grasp, within my eye-line. Maybe in my attention, I can even learn to honor and offer life back in some way. This is what I heard in Margaret Renkl’s message as she spoke on Kate Bowler’s podcast:
"If you started paying attention last year, then you might notice this year that there are fewer tiger swallowtail butterflies, fewer bluebirds...when we allow ourselves to notice that, then we have taken the first step toward doing something about it. People, they don’t want to think about it because it’s overwhelming...we feel powerless. And to some extent, we are very powerless. But in another respect, we are not powerless at all. And that’s the thing about planting zinnias. You plant a little bit of zinnias or a little pot of milkweed and you see the birds come to harvest the seeds or the butterflies and the bees come to harvest the nectar and the pollen and it happens."
Something so small as noticing might feel like it’s hardly anything at all in this world today, but I think it’s the very thing. Noticing, I realize that I am living in the separation of seasons, of time. Each day a little bit unique in its ordinary movement. And because I’ve noticed, I want to do my part to be in it, to move with it and honor it. It’s all so very beautiful, and finite.
And so it is that I notice time’s hand in erasing one moment and moving it toward the next. Very little that I do has meaning beyond that erasing, yet if not for leaning in close and wondering over how I might plant my own kind of “zinnias” into this world’s hard ground, what power do I have anyway?
Today, I placed pears and apples, a little beyond their ripeness, into my yard for the deer. Then I pulled out my gardening guide to imagine what might happen to bulbs in the unfolding of winter hibernation. Then I remembered my teenagers and I thought, perhaps if nothing else, they’ll know that feeding and tending and preparing for beauty is worthwhile. A certain kind of power indeed.