to live everything.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign tongue. Don't search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

--R.M. Rilke

what is it you plan to do...?

The Summer Day
by Mary Oliver (from New and Selected Poems, 1992)

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

alive.

The summer thus far has been full, to say the least. A lovely start to these weeks of warmth, of sidewalks and parks filled once again with people, of farmers markets and sundresses, of friends in town to visit and trips to get away, of daylight that lingers until late in the evening and new beauty that overwhelms.

In my little pocket of the world, these early summer days also brought a rather heightened dose of life in all its fullness. I have experienced loss and the resulting heartache, and I have felt some incredible joy and delight and newness.

And of course, such is life.

My grandfather passed away on June 21, peacefully slipping out of a painful last few months and into something much more beautiful. I went back out to South Dakota for the funeral, my second visit of the summer, and it was a hard but good time of coming together with family to remember well, to cry together, to love one another.

This time also provoked a lot of reflection. Death reminds me of the importance of living well, and my grandfather did just that. He was fully present. He worked hard. He loved faithfully. He sacrificed for others. He was steady.

And as my mother said eloquently of her father-in-law, he didn't have a lot of words. I, on the other hand, do have a lot of words. Clearly. I have a blog, for crying out loud, and my friends and family can attest to the fact that sometimes I talk far too much. But I can learn something very significant, I think, from that difference between my grandpa and me. Because even with few words, his life held so much meaning, and it meant something very good indeed.

And so. May all of the words tumbling out of my mouth and off the tips of my fingers be measured and meaningful and intention-filled, and yet may they never distract me from the meaning of my actions. May my life speak, and may it speak of beauty and hope and truth and love.

Oh, living well is no small thing, my friends.

And so the month of June ended, taking with it the life of one I loved. But just as endings come, so come beginnings, and on July 1, my dear friend Nicole and her husband Dickie welcomed a little one into the world. He is beautiful and perfect, tiny and fragile and full of potential. Holding his tiny, swaddled, two-day-old form last weekend reminded me of hope, of possibility and life and mystery.

All of this life is a good thing, and the intensity of what I've felt this early summer simply serves as a reminder that I am alive, just as heat and glistening skin remind us of the nearness of the sun. As a dear friend and I sipped homemade iced chai and nibbled on scones this afternoon at a favorite spot of mine, we talked about the mystery of life, the confusion that threatens to cloud its beauty, the grace that blessedly slips through anyway.

I hope that grace is slipping through into your life. I hope you're feeling alive in each and every moment you're living.

where the pines are so high

Good heavens, it has been more than a month since last I posted! Summer is (unofficially) here, and life continues moving rapidly along. My apologies for my brief hiatus from this space. One reason for my absence was a recent trip out to the beautiful west, first to a wedding in Minnesota and then to see family in South Dakota. And yes, recap follows.

So first things first: the wedding was wonderful. I loved seeing Rita and G at the start of their adventure together. There were many dear folks to catch up with at the wedding, a couple of charming little farm towns to explore, reception tables to decorate and, of course, joy-filled tears to be shed. I love these two so much, and I'm confident that they will make it and, together, offer the world so much wisdom and hospitality and strength and goodness and beauty.

From this weekend of celebration, I journeyed on to South Dakota...

Although I am from Michigan, through and through, I've always felt that some small part of me is from the Black Hills. My parents both grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota, and most of my dad's family still lives there, along with my mother's tall and lovely aunts (seen in one of the pictures below). Every summer of my childhood, my parents, sister and I would vacation out that way, and my memories of growing up are peppered with the moments of those trips. When I walk through the door of my beloved grandparents' house, that peace of home settles into my bones, and I am flooded with the memories of family gathered together and rhubarb pie and card games at the kitchen table, reading books in the living room and falling asleep in the big bed I shared with my sister as the cool summer breeze drifted through the screen of the open door. Life was safe, simple and ever-so-good.

This summer's trip brought meals and ice cream and coffee enjoyed over meaningful conversation with loved ones, long morning runs with my dad, a cousin's graduation party, a bike ride on the Mickelson Trail, a morning of baking with my grandmother, hours spent poring over old photographs while drawing out stories from the past and the simple joy found in the togetherness of family.

And without fail, when I am up in the Hills, surrounded by the deepest browns and greens that nature has to offer, with a herd of buffalo around each corner and elk hiding somewhere in the woods, the sense of home returns. Maybe it's that song my mother used to sing to me, a song, she told me during this trip, that her mother once sang to her: "take me back to the Black Hills, the Black Hills of South Dakota, where the pines are so high that they kiss the sky above." When we were riding our bikes on the Mickelson trail, my dad breathed in deeply and told me that that smell, the smell of the Ponderosa Pines, smelled like the Hills to him. Like home.

And the tiny green leaves of the aspens turn and blink in the light, flickering like candles, clapping like the smallest of hands, welcoming my soul home, urging us to live on in gladness.