It’s All Grace
If I could live my life again awake
Think of all the chances I could take
I’d love with all abandon just the same
‘Cause that’s the game . . . .
The seconds whisper circles off the clock
The ships go sailing past and never dock
The sea rears up, collapses and withdraws
The constellations wheel and never pause
The wind winds through the small bones in my ear
I start to hear
The trees look just as pretty when they’re bare
Black branches hieroglyphic in the air
The leaves they left are rotted into lace
It’s all grace.
Long Time Girl Gone By on KIN
Rodney Crowell & Mary Karr
Truly, it’s all grace.
Change: Although I’d been surreptitiously slicing hours away from my official work schedule for a while, last January I made retirement from Rocky Mountain Development Council something close to official. I still work on specific projects when the agency has time and money—a press release one week, some columns the next. But a year ago, the organization needed money far more than it needed public relations. And I was ready to try waking up on the far side of 45 years of work for others, words for others, missions and schedules not always of my crafting. Still, that half-century of employment was pretty sweet. I got to work at what I loved and could live. So this year I’ve been figuring out, in fact on many days fighting through, what the graces and investments of this stage of my life will be. Being not doing? Being engaged not just distracted? Always words!
Creating and letting go: Every day, Andy Goldworthy the Scottish “land artist” arranges leaves, grass, twigs, icicles, stones, feathers, mud into creations meant to see the light of day or the gleam of moon for just a little while—and then stands back to watch them fade, topple, swirl, and melt away. Friends Jeff and Sue introduced me to Goldsworthy’s art and to their own stunningly comparable virtuosities: bread, gardening, ikebana, dry stone sculptures. Perhaps the footings for this next chapter: crafting beauty from life’s ordinary materials and gently relinquishing it to the universe.
Unexpected gifts: in July, I ventured back up the North Fork to the Forest Service rental cabin on Ford Creek, 20 minutes south of The Land. As if the silence, sky, fellowship, river, memories and mountains weren’t sufficient, the universe slid open long enough for me to stare down a wolf and watch a grizzly tease a gopher.
In beauty new to me and old to the world: In February, I got to walk into the Pantheon at dusk; follow Michelangelo’s footsteps in Florence; weave along Venice’s Grand Canal on a vaporetto with old women on their way to the ospedale; watch the sun hit St. Marks and clouds lift from the South Downs; stand in the Lansing College Chapel nave just as the organist pulled out all the stops—literally—and began “Amazing Grace.”
You: This icy cold December night I remember you: being met at Gatwick in an enveloping hug; British high tea and Indian curry; dim sum and salmon in Seattle; a heartbreakingly gorgeous drive across Going-to- the-Sun; beignets on summer Saturdays; the first gin and tonics of summer—complete with blankets and a bonfire; a Nine Mile prime rib birthday feast; Central Montana sunsets; lighted stages; laughing dogs; long ago remembered connections; newly knitted ones. At your table, on my porch, by email, across town or Montana or the Atlantic, in the earthy early-morning No Sweat scene, at happy hour, I treasure the honesty and play and challenge and reassurance of your friendship.
Everyday graces: Fistfuls of tomatoes and basil from the porch; texts sent with laughing baby faces and growing-kid accomplishments; Mr. Noodle’s steady snore; Doc Martin reruns; Grand Mariner French toast; homemade chicken pot pie; Bill Slider, Duncan Kincaid, Gemma James, Barbara Havers and Thomas Lynley –all still cracking complex crimes; everything Bill Bryson, Diane Ackerman’s Dawn Light, Beth Hoffman’s Looking for Me, Alan Kesselheim’s Let Them Paddle, Stephen Greenblatt’s Swerve; Elle Newmark’s The Chef’s Apprentice; still more Corb Lund, Ian Tyson, Emmy Lou, Rodney Crowell and new this year, The Trishas—best of show for me at the third annual Red Ants Pants Music Festival; rich loops of landscape from Bozeman to Norris, down Rock Creek, up to Comet, across the Big Hole; enough iridescent light from Puget Sound and Dale Chilhuly’s art to see me through this winter.
I cannot account for the rich grace that surrounds my life. Too many souls live in pain and loneliness beyond my imagining. I hope to remember that more.
At this season of returning light, may your life—may all lives–be rich in the graces and benedictions of intricate sunsets, health, purpose, friendship, art, play, warmth, the sweet landscapes of home.
