I was blessed with the opportunity in early March to take a week-long writing retreat in the Poconos mountains (Pennsylvania). There I was able to lay down foundational work on a musical project I’m very excited about and one I prayerfully anticipate will reap fruit in and through this year’s upcoming opportunities as it continues to take shape. Below is a ‘photo journal’ capturing some of the week’s stillness, process and anticipation of beauty breaking forth in this season…
It has been an unusually long and chilly winter (or at least I hope it’s unusual!) in the Northeast United States this year…
…but there were and are distinct signs of warmth and color breaking free.
“I wonder what’s going on back there?!”
“I stood and heard the steps of the city
and dreamed a lighter stepping than I heard,
the tread of my people dancing in a ring.
I knew that circle broken, the steps awry,
stone and iron humming in the air.
But I thought even there, among the straying
steps, of the dance that circles life around,
its shadows moving on the ground, in rhyme
of flesh with flesh, time with time, our bliss,
the earthly song that heavenly is.”
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Wendell Berry – ‘Song (3)’
The Restoration Project’s east coast mascot Frodo(g) keeps watch to make sure no one is lurking around to record and leak these fresh hot beats.
“I lift my face to the pale flowers
of the rain. They’re soft as linen,
clean as holy water. Meanwhile
my dog runs off, noses down packed leaves
into damp, mysterious tunnels
He says the smells are rising now
stiff and lively; he says the beasts
are waking up now full of oil,
sleep sweat, tag-ends of dreams. The rain
rubs its shining hands all over me.
My dog returns and barks fiercely, he says
each secret body is the richest advisor,
deep in the black earth such fuming
nuggets of joy!”
——————
Mary Oliver – ‘Spring’
“Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
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from ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing
in time to come. How do we know?
They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee
that singing will ever be.”
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Wendell Berry – ‘For the Future’
The past three months have been wave after wave of unexpected wonder and happenings. Now, I find myself checking a PO Box in Princeton, NJ, getting coffee at Small World on the main drag across from the University Campus and reorienting myself to new “local communities.” People have asked me if I have adjusted to living in Princeton. I don’t know. I don’t know after traveling for nine years, if my mind and body really absorbing anything as permanent. I will say it feels normal to live in Princeton. it is a beautiful little city with a downtown the same size as Old Town Louisville where I lived outside of Boulder for years. I am fully functional…I know where I want to go to get coffee, where I will walk and where I prefer to do my grocery shopping. I have a few friends in town and many in the surrounding cities of New York and Philadelphia. But it also feels a little bit like I’m traveling because in traveling, newness and adjusting to different places has become normal to me.
