The Singing of Angels In The December Woods - Sunday Post

“There must be always remaining in every one’s life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and, by an inherent prerogative, throws all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness, something that gathers up in itself all the freshest of experience from drab to commonplace areas of living and glows in on bright white light of penetrating beauty and meaning —then passes.” Howard Thurman

I’ve loved this quote for such a long time now, as many of Thurman’s timeless writings. This passage goes on to speak of how, because of our encounters with what is beautiful, that the daily becomes “shot through with glory” and the burdens we carry become just a bit lighter. It is also because this relationship to a mysterious goodness that it is possible for the “deep and ancient wounds to lose much of their old, old hurting.” In a time when all I have to do is open up the news to encounter what is often shot-through-with-butt-ugly, how important to know where we still experience the singing of something beautiful and seek it out.

I remember an autumn walk with my daughter when she was just shy of five years old. We were walking up a switchback trail to the top of a ridge that looked over a valley and a slowly meandering water way called The Wildcat Creek. She was talking in excited run on sentences, spooling out a non-stop commentary on everything she was seeing and thinking about— piles of acorns and leaves, fresh paw prints and her new awesomely red mittens, the shiny apples we’d put in my backpack, the nearness of her next birthday, something Mr. Rogers said about sharing, and on and on and on. Then suddenly half way up the hill, she stopped abruptly and took my hand. She held her breath for a moment, closed her beautiful enormous brown eyes, then whispered to me, “Listen Mommy, can you hear them?” I listened and I heard the creek of branches and the soft rustling of the last leaves of autumn as they were letting go of individual branches and slowly winging their way to the ground. I answered, “Tell me what you are hearing honey?” She looked at me with the earnestness of a guileless child and softly said, “Angels….there are angels here and they are all whispering.” I asked, “Can you tell what they are saying dear?” She responded, “No, they are very very quiet…but you can hear them, all around us….do you hear them too?” I stopped and listened, the two of us holding hands in the golden light, breathing together. I said, “Yes, I believe I hear them too….thank you so much for pointing it out to me.” Eventually my daughter and I returned to our climbing. We had a lovely lunch up on the ridge top and I found it interesting that she didn’t make a big deal about our experience or later tell anyone else what we’d encountered. This was just the way of her world, there was always the potential of hearing the quiet sounds of something mysterious. There was always the chance of encountering something infused with light and goodness if you were paying attention.

Its easy to miss the singing of angels when we are intent upon getting to the top of a switchback hill. Its easy to forget to listen when we are focused on arriving anywhere but right where we are. I am always grateful when someone points out beauty, mystery or what I might have missed.

Last week,/ I stood for a long time looking at the November trees in the valley around my home. They are bare now, their strong and delicate bone structure on clear display. There is something that becomes so unguarded in December. Taking photos I found myself mesmerized by the lifting and reaching fractal patterns that is the nature of the unclothed tree. I fell in love all over again with the light tan leaves that hang to the younger beeches, who missed their chance to throw off their clothes before the first frost, choosing instead to soak up the last October rays of sun and sugar after the canopy made by the much larger trees had been released. Those remaining leaves tremble in the wind all winter, they fill with snow which sometimes causes the young beeches still flexible trunks to bend, sometimes all the way to the ground. The leaves are trembling now, along the path and inner reaches of the woods. Sounding like whispering.

I love autumn. I always have. Its a moody kind of season and I think the poet in me is attracted to it’s poignancy. Maybe because I am now in the autumn of my own life, November feels more powerful than spring. Helen Waddell wrote, “There is no memory to spring, not even the memory of other springs: but a November day or a bit faint sunlight and emerald moss remembers all things.” Something glows in me, warm as the glow of those brilliant leaves. December feels like completion and there is a beauty there. I miss the leaves of autumn, and yet I sit by my kitchen window each morning to watch the way the trees across the ridge are so clearly outlined, how the upper branches bend and touch, rocking in the wind as if to reassure one another by quietly whispering, “I am here, above as below the ground” and “I am here as well” and “I am here too” and a thousand quiet murmurings of “ and I too…and I…and I…and I….”

Yesterday I walked through the evening woods again, noticing each tree’s elegant silhouette and the leaves scattering the ground beneath the trees in a million shades of brown and tan. I hiked up half way up the ridge and stopped to lay my hand on a favorite beech tree, the one that grows in a grove of five beeches, that feel to me like women standing in a circle, the one that many years ago I put a tiny bit of ash in a cavity at the roots. While standing there in the fading light, I listened to the brush of branches and soft wind rustle the young beech tree leaves. And it sounded…like the singing of angels.

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Practice - One Inch Photos I love taking photos of things close up, to walk carefully and look for the small and often unnoticed beauties. Take a close up photo of something that has an interesting pattern. This can be either indoors or outdoors - a tea cup with a crack can also be an unnoticed beauty. Really look at the item with gratitude, wonder and appreciation. See if you hear the song of something luminous.

Question - Have you recently heard the “singing of angels”? If so where….if not, have you been listening? When you took your photo what did you notice that you might have missed.

Novemeber leaves

young beech leaves