Sally Gerard

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The moon shone on the dirt road, illuminating the larger rocks and holes normally hidden in the dark. Running with the moon when it is fairly high as it makes its journey west to set, gives me company in the solitude of my run. My own shadow comes along, usually too lazy to head out the garage door with me.

The various weeds, stubble, and rabbits turn up as well to rise up to the light overhead. It isn’t the bright of warm sun in a blue sky, but rather more mellow and pale like those glow sticks you snap in half to light up.

Without snow to reflect its glory, moon light brings out lesser things in fields and pastures. It pauses to make the gravestones taller, reminding me to think of those long buried and gone, but who once lived and walked here too.

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Sometimes my eyes wander while my brain is busy making lists for the day ahead or trying not to forget something just thought of—all of that jostles around until suddenly, I come back to gaze out of those blue eyes and wonder where I am. Did I already pass the cemetery? Did I cross road 22? Have I turned back toward home?

The light of the moon taps my shoulder, pointing to the glow of that half-mile post. Oh, that’s where I am. Centered again, my brain heads off again and that rabbit romps along the road beside me like a little moon-post guiding me back.

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I’ve been reading a lot of poetry lately and listening to novels when I walk or drive. The combination of reading, along with my classes has been good for my writing. One of my classes this quarter is all about using writing to heal in different ways. I’m in the midst of a research project right now about using writing to get to action in various parts of our lives.

All of this is running alongside my study for Lent and the daily devotion and scripture reading which always ends up leading me to poetry. Mary Oliver is one of my go-to poets, and her poem, “The Summer Day” really gets you to thinking about how you are using your life. Today, I wrote about a virtue I want to work on and I wrote about “…what [it is I] plan to do with [my] one wild and precious life” (Oliver).

We waste so much time waiting for the right time to do this or do that, to go here or go there, to meet this person or that person, to try this or try that, to be this or be that, to do

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this or do that, to experience this or experience that. Why? Are we that afraid to live our lives? To live the best life we can imagine? There really isn’t time for all of this waiting.

We have one “wild and precious” life to live. We should get after it, now, just do that next small thing to keep heading down that path to where we want to be. When we can do this with joy and humility, in love and with grace, those who are dragging their feet will be able to, eventually, catch on and catch up and figure out that this new place we’re going is full and rich and holds blessing for them too.

Part of my reading today included Matthew. What hit me was verse 34 in Chapter six:”So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

All the verses before that one speak of how much we fret over things that we need not worry over, for God does provide. And maybe it isn’t what we’re used to or what we expect or what we want, but it is enough. As a wise man said, we can choose to be happy or we can choose misery. And I know that there are those of us who live in very dark places and it sounds simplistic to say that we can simply choose to be happy. We do have choices, and if we strive to do the next right thing, maybe we can shed a bit of light in someone else’s dark space.

Maybe we can invite them to come in out of the cold (minus seven here yesterday morning) and sit with us before our fire and share our stories.

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If I want to show love beyond those who are easy for me to love, then I have to reach out. Does it help to shout out names? Like the Tweets of those we are in the same camp with? Accuse and judge those on the opposite fence? Belittle and destroy and then proudly wear that on our sleeve?

Maybe the answer is sitting down and telling our stories to each other. Maybe we need to hear about “their” growing up, “their” coming from, “their” journey, “their” sorrows and regrets and the grief “they’ve” suffered; then maybe “they” can hear “ours” and “we” can go on to build a better community, to be that best version of our selves, the one created and called into being from the dust of stars.

February is “acts of kindness” month on my work calendar and February also ushered in the season of Lent. As I’ve read my Lenten devotional each day, and had that calendar up on the wall, I’ve realized that just maybe someone is trying to send me a message. I’ve also been reading some poetry about kindness.

From the reading I’ve done, I can see there is a tie between sorrow and kindness. In order to be truly kind, we have to see our own sorrow in the sorrows of others, maybe even those we don’t know. Kindness comes in small everyday actions, but kindness is a an action we choose to take.

To have kindness as my constant companion, I have to be able to see the other side of sorrows. I’ve experienced so much kindness in my life, and as I think about those kindnesses, many of them are linked to sorrows:

Karen texted me scriptures that held me, even in my shock and grief after my sister, Cathy’s, death. Mary stayed with me overnight in the hospital after major surgery. Robert gave me that spring cactus all in bloom after my dad died. And even when I was just a scrawny little girl, Uncle Bob and Aunt Sandy opened their home and made Cathy and me part of their family when we had to go away for a summer. And Kate, always a hand-written note on some beautiful mountain card just when I need it.

Be kind. Do kindness.

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If you rode into my heart you’d find a mess: love and friendship, grief and frustrated longings, faith and hope and half-dreamed dreams. But slow to a walk and let your horse graze there in the clover, and you can catch glimpses of blue skies through the thick stand of Aspen.

Gallop down the path on the quiet packed deadfall of so many falls and winters, and breathe in the not-unpleasant smell of decay rising. Feel your mount gathering to jump over the logs and other obstacles meant to keep you out. But keep going

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and eventually you’ll come to a dense hedge growing along a wide wall.

Let your horse guide you; trust him to find the way and we just might meet there in the center of me, that is, if I can find my way.

Indian’s coat is a map of jagged edges, brown and white and marking him as a paint. His bones are thick and he is muscled under a dense winter coat. His head is large and his mane falls over his broad neck in long brown and white waves.

His eyes are intelligent, watching everything, but wary too. He has never lost that wildness he had just being loose in a large pasture, digging in the snow to get to the grass and virtually no human contact when he was a colt. He does not easily trust, and has been caused pain, though not in abuse but in ignorance. 

Once upon his back, he is always willing, accepting praise in a pat on his neck that must come ever so slowly when you are on the ground. He is still resentful when he is caught, though he will always take a treat. He’s a good teacher to our young Bullet, and an even better companion.

He gives me warmth and confidence and I can count on him to move cattle or lead a pack-horse. I know he’ll bring me home because he wants to be there as much, or more, than I do!

You are the first sip of hot coffee in the morning. You are my colt, Bullet napping in the pasture in the winter’s strong warm afternoon sun. You are my children who’ve found joy and love in their lives and work they are passionate about. You are “This is enough; I don’t need anymore.” You are a new novel published and coming off the bookstore shelves steadily, a few at a time, as word spreads.

You are soft thick snowflakes falling outside my window and a soaking rain shower on a hot summer day. You are a rider on the back of a horse riding a wooded mountain trail with horse loving friends. You are the deep sigh when you come to the view at the edge of the world. You are an eagle in flight soaring on invisible currents high in the bright blue sky.

Contentment you are ageless, found in the new born Rose and Emmett wrapped in soft fleece in loving arms, in the toddler asleep and cuddled up with the family dog, in the young girl lost in the pages of a book, in the high school athlete who just spiked the ball over the net, in the couple on the porch of their first home together, and in the elderly man standing at the grave of his beloved, finally released from the pain of disease.

You are friend to all, yet you are fleeting in our busy lives. We have not yet learned how to just be, in the moment, with you. Teach us in the stillness of our hearts and remind us when we forget, losing our way in the torrent of must haves.

I noticed the wind right away. When I run in the extremely early hours of morning, it is before the sun has even thought about making an appearance on the eastern horizon. Noticing the wind and temperature are important for me, as I have to decide whether or not I have too many layers or not enough layers, to finish my six-mile route without my body temperature getting in the way. But this morning, the gentleness of the wind was causing my Christmas lights to pattern the Northern Lights on the siding below the roof. In that moment, staring at the red, blue and green light waves, I heard the distant squeaking of the metal wind vane.

Crunching gravel kept the rhythm of my run, changing to patches of a kind of clicking sound when I ran into places where the road grater had pulled goat heads into the road bed from the ditches. High lines hummed a low kind of whine, as if passing some communication along from pole to pole, as I passed. The black sky was overlaid with steel grey clouds obscuring most, but not all the stars; the remnants of the super moon still glowed in the small crescent. What was missing were Jupiter and Mars, having been swallowed by the hungry clouds like most of the stars.

Brought up short by the sudden cloying scent of a skunk I must have spooked, but never saw, I slowed because of the small dark shape on the side of the road, just at the corner where I’d seen skunk cross the dirt road on many runs. My brain fought to pick through the darkness to tell me what this thing was and whether or not I needed to back-off. Getting as close as I dared, the scraggly stems of a broken-down tumbleweed took shape and I felt my breath ease out and my stride lengthen.

Slowing to cool down for the last few minutes, I didn’t see them, but my ear was drawn by the sound of the stock tank float grating against the wire that holds it, and I knew the horses were in the corral. I went on past the sidewalk, just a few steps toward the barn and corral, and the sweet sound of soft wuffling pulled my feet to the fence, where my young colt stood. The little light from the waning moon reflected his buckskin coat and I could see the light outline around the dark nostrils stretched up over the top rail. I would have missed the warm exchange of breath with his soft muzzle against my sweating cheek if I hadn’t been paying attention to the space.