Gratitude

For the Resilience of Desert Wildflowers

Prayer as Listening

…[H]e reveals himself as a man unusually well trained in the habit of prayer, by which I mean the habit of listening. …The serious part of prayer begins when we have got our begging over with and listen for the Voice of what I would call the Holy Spirit, though if others prefer to say the Voice of Oz or the Dreamer or Conscience, I shan't quarrel… the Voice I am talking about always says something new and unpredictable—an unexpected demand, obedience to which involves a change of self, however painful.

—WH Auden, “Introduction,”  in The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley

Prayer as listening is not a new idea, but the way Auden described it gave me an insight into my practice of walking the nearby wild at dawn each morning. I call these daily hikes my “walking meditation” because I focus my chattering mind on being where I am by greeting each plant species I recognize as I stride through the shortgrass prairie.

What I am doing is in the spirit of what Auden articulated: listening for the voice of the sacred, the holiness in all life. I am listening to this numinous Earth, listening for the voice of our planet through the wild kin who speak to me most powerfully: the plants.

Listening for understanding, for patience, for wisdom; for joy and an affirmation of faith that life will continue through this tumultuous and painful time.

For me, this listening is prayer, and what I hear requires me to step farther onto the thin and scary limb of believing in what I cannot touch or taste or prove: that love is enough to weather whatever comes.

The Resilience of Wildflowers

In this frighteningly dry spring here in the high desert, when we have received less than an inch of precipitation since late January, made worse by unusually warm temperatures and more wind to sear the landscape, it is the spring wildflowers I hear. Their improbable flowering gives me a thread of hope that somehow, life will continue to thrive despite all.

Most of these spring bloomers are annual plants, dependent for their cell-by-cell sprouting and growing and flowering and reproduction on what tiny amounts of precipitation we have received. And yet, they are beginning to bloom. Not abundantly—the flowers are few and far between—but blooming still. Surely their resilience speaks of miracles.

I want to share two of my favorites with you. These are among the first wildflower species to pop up in spring:

Golden-smoke, Corydalis aurea in the language of science, is a relative of garden Bleeding Heart and eastern Dutchman’s Breeches, only with chrome yellow flowers that stand out like beacons in the bleached-straw spring grasslands, their brilliant color summoning pollinators from long distances.

Their unusual-shaped flowers, a tube closed at the lower end with two pinched lips at the open end, are adapted to only allow entrance to certain insects—small native bees and some ants—whose size and foraging behavior can effectively pollinate the flowers.

(Turn the sound up to hear the narration. I record these in the field, so my apologies for wind noise. Also, I am trying to teach myself to not use the objectifying “it” for other lives, but as you will hear, I slip.)

And pallid evening primrose, Oenothera pallida in science-speak, a night-bloomer pollinated by hovering moths that must find the plant’s blossoms by moonlight or starlight. The flowers are shaped like dish-antennas and turn to face the moon in order to reflect the most possible light.

A pallid evening primrose blossom lasts just one night, and then turns pink and wilts with the heat of the sun the next day. That behavior signals to their night-flying partners that the flower has quit producing high-energy nectar, so the pollinator won’t waste their time trying to visit. (Plants and their pollinators have evolved their own languages to maintain their relationships.)

That these annual wildflowers are even sprouting, much less flowering, in this desperately dry year in the midst of more than two decades of dryer-than-not years feels like a miracle to me. It reminds me to have faith in the resilience of all life—human life included.

These tough and beautiful flowers remind me to listen to this numinous earth. To learn. And to live with love.

When we orient our actions with love, when we listen for the voice of the sacred and heed our own inner wisdom, we belong to the larger community. And we contribute, each of us offering our own particular gifts. Those gifts are part of healing us all and the planet we share. And that is what matters.

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What are you grateful for today? Hit the comment button below and share if you are so moved!

Podcast Correction and Upcoming Appearances

My conversation on how to love nature on the Learning How to See podcast with Brian McLaren drops tomorrow, Friday, April 25th, not the previous week as I said in my last newsletter.

If you’re in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, area, come to Books on the Bosque on Saturday, May 11th at 3:00 pm to celebrate the release of the anthology The Art of Touch, edited by Joan Schweighart and Faye Rappaport Des Pres. (Several of the contributors, including me, will read and offer back-story on what we wrote. It’ll be fun and inspiring—I promise!)

If you’re in the Boulder, Colorado, area, on Wednesday, May 29th, come hear me talk about “The Fantastical World of Nature In and Around Us,” as the opening speaker for the BeeChicas’ yearlong speaker series at the Boulder Public Library on Canyon Boulevard. Registration opens May 1st, seating limited.

Blessings to you all!