Beryl's Spring 2020 Newsletter

Dear Reader,

I hope you have been adapting to the world-wide Covid-19 monastic lifestyle. If it were not for the fear and suffering so many are experiencing, I would totally love being back in the cloister. The ceasing of the constant noise in which we live, a quieting of my spirit. Mother Nature might be enjoying a bit of a break as well. Perhaps a bit less pollution relieving the pressure we place on survival. How much longer it will last is the great unknown. Bill’s severely compromised heath might necessitate continual distancing for the unforeseen future.

I've been reading, thinking, journaling, and praying my way through this new world, trying to understand the forces unleashed by the Covid-19 virus. Empty streets, shopping centers, sidewalks, restaurants, and other gathering places testify to the power of this viral force to change lives and lifestyles. While disheartened by the forces of selfishness, anger, and hatred that threaten the world’s healing, I am moved by the huge wellspring of compassion and generosity this pandemic unleashed in the world. Nevertheless, it is difficult to maintain confidence and equanimity when observing the ineptitude and power mongering of those entrusted with our care.

Wall in Moulin sur Ouveze  Provence Italy

As is often the case when confront by paradox, I found light while arranging the books on my “constant-read” shelf. In a small gem titled Calm Surrender by favorite nonfiction author, Kent Nerburn, I resonated with his words.

 “When we reaffirm the goodness that sprouts from the soil underneath walls of hated or indifference, we are practicing a kind of forgiveness. We are saying that hatred and indifference are not worthy of our anger. We are turning away from the great force of animosity, and underscoring, instead, the goodness struggling to find voice in its shadow.”

I trust that you, my dear friends, embrace “the goodness that sprouts beneath the walls of hatred,” and, by doing so, nurture the hope and acts that will heal the world. Many of us might question God’s presence in events like this pandemic, but I choose to believe that God is with us. That God understands our pain. That God suffers with us and, as Julian of Norwich proclaimed during the besieged fourteenth century, that ultimately “all will be good.”

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2020

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The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as a "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors." Her book The Scent of God  was a “Notable” Book Sense selection for April 2006. Her second book, A View of the Lake was named a best regional book by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2011

Sightings and Cycles

Spare on warmth, our summer has nevertheless been rich in sightings. The other day Bill and I happened upon a “kill” in action – a sharp-shinned hawk diving a song bird. We watched in awe as the bird lifted off with its prey and disappeared into the woods. While heading up our driveway to get the mail, I’ve encountered on several occasions a roly-poly groundhog, though I haven’t seen him lately. While larger than this small hawk, the groundhog might have succumbed to a hawk attack, especially as there are three of them making continual appearances here, spiraling above land and lake, their rapid, staccato, high pitched cries steaming after them. I’ve lived here for 11 years without seeing one of those birds. Now I seem to have acquired a family of them.

Daily, I spot eagles flying over the lake. Today I saw two of those mighty birds, flying together, their immense wings undulating and graceful. The hawks, on the other hand, fly very fast with a rapid beating of wings, so fast that from a distance they resemble swallows or larks. Save for their markings, and the fact that one hung around me for close to half an hour, filling the air with its cries while perched above me on a tree, I’d not have known that those spiraling birds were hawks.

Then there’s the copious scat marking the nocturnal passage, across our driveway, of one or several lumbering bears. To date they seem to prefer the upper section of our long driveway, but I well remember the star -filled night that I stood on my deck and felt the hair rise on my neck, warning me of a “presence.” The next morning my bird feeders had disappeared, replaced instead by the muddy swipe of a massive clawed foot on the window in my office.And what of the racket of 10 or more crows, dive-bombing a raven, hopping across fallen trees as if unable to fly. That raven was around for several days. I know because I’d follow the crows cries into the woods and see them still threatening that raven. Once he hopped next to the car as I headed down our driveway.

There are times when I can almost feel the momentum of this spinning cycle of life and death – a harsh reality save that this cycle is also the source of ongoing renewal. We live, we die, we return to the earth, and the earth in turn gives birth to new life. The scriptures feeding my spiritual life are filled with such references. Isaiah 38 never fails to amaze me with the poetry of its images. "Like a shepherd's tent my house has been pulled down and taken from me. Like a weaver I have rolled up my life, and he has cut me off from the loom; day and night you made an end of me."

Signs of God surround our lives. The Biblical writers knew this. They attributed everything that happened to God, but we've lost sight of that worldview. It is difficult to miss signs of God’s presence in the environment where I now live, but when living and working in the Twin Cities, I had to keep reminding myself to stay open, to find in even the most shattering experience the presence of God, to encounter God in the most gentle and insignificant of happenings. King Hezekiah was spared but eventually he had to die, as must we, but meanwhile we move within the grace of a life where God is present everywhere if we but open our eyes.

Photo: The hawk was so high in the tree and my camera had limited zoom but this is the hawk that serenaded me.