In all natural things there is something marvelous.   – Aristotle

Beekeeping involves constant cycles of heartbreak and hope, just like all of life. This week I drove up north to pick up two buzzing mesh boxes, each with about ten thousand bees inside – all sadly needed after the harsh winter.

There is lots of conflicting advice on how to settle bees into new hives. Most suggests a violent shaking of the mesh boxes to dislodge the occupants, which does not exactly send a hospitable “welcome home” message.

This year, I thought I’d experiment a bit. After moving the queens (an adventure unto itself), I gently tipped each bee cage on its side, with the opening facing the top of the new hive-home.

Lo and behold, within minutes I saw a few workers perched on the upper edge of the hive, bee-butts in the air, wings flapping furiously. They were sending chemical signals to their sisters that shouted, follow me! The queen’s in here!

Like a murmur of starlings or a school of fish, the collective movement of the new arrivals shifted, and soon there was a stream of bees marching right into each hive, no shaking or swearing needed.

Dear ones, we are surrounded by marvels, beautiful and magnificent and different from our own. 

Let us be awed.

Friends, this morning an oblivious fellow passenger cut me off in the TSA line, and words cannot describe the intensity of my sudden inner fury. Surely this is not the sign of a spirit at peace, one with the universe. Like lots of us, I am sometimes surprised by how riled up I am, barely below the surface.

Luckily I’ve spent some time back on campus at the Harvard Divinity School this spring, which has brought echoes of my studies there bouncing through my mind. One of these voices is from Gene Sharp, noted expert in nonviolent revolution, who visited one of my classes right around the time of the Arab Spring.

Dr. Sharp highlighted the power of being FOR something, and how it differs from being AGAINST something, in subtle but dramatic ways. And he showed that social and political movements that have lasted all made this shift somewhere along the way, from fighting against to fighting for. 

AGAINST burns like gasoline – hot and strong, hard to control, fueled by fear. Everyone involved ends up singed.

FOR burns like seasoned oak – steady and warm, easy to tend, fueled by love. Like a campfire that pulls people together. 

Dear ones, as the tulips bloom and the bluebirds return and the apple trees bud, now is a great time to ask,

What are we for?

****

One of my most powerful lessons in this kind of advocacy did not come from graduate studies later in life, but from my own experience as a little kid.  What is my own mother for? Amongst other bedrock ideals, she is FOR me and my siblings, always.

Mother’s Day is complicated and painful for many, and at the same time we have all been mothered – by family and friends and teachers and communities and forests and lakes and pets and books and songs and selves. I am one of the very lucky ones who has been supported by all of the above – and most of all, luckiest of all, by my dear mom, with the most steadfast love I will ever know. If you have ever cared for a person or place or idea with even a tiny fraction of this kind of devotion, thank you. You have made our world a better place.

“Remove your shores.”

I recently heard this description of a sign at the door of a meditation space, where a fortuitous typo shifted a simple commandment (“remove your shoes”) to a more mystical invitation (“remove your shores”).

Dear ones, we operate in so many settings where the opposite occurs. Our grandest ambitions are squashed into quarterly planning frameworks. Our fondest hopes are translated into tactical to-do lists. Our biggest questions are pushed to the background, while we navigate the tiny urgent tumult of life.

So when a larger, sincere invitation arrives, whether from a generous human or a soaring hawk or a misspelled sign, let’s accept.

Before we focus, plan, act, let’s wander, imagine, consider.

Let’s remove our shores.

Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.       – Clifford Geertz

What a delight to hear Clifford Geertz referenced in an academic talk this week! His commentary on cultural analysis was one of the first reading assignments I had at divinity school, and it set a little spiral of possibility opening up in my brain.

For years I’d been trained to sprint to the answer, to be quickest and surest and sometimes the most loudly declarative. And this is a fine approach, when the questions are small. But for some topics, speedy calculation is a mean sort of shortcut. Here was someone willing to illuminate the infinite of true inquiry.

Dear ones, may we ask worthy questions.

May we dive deep.

May we revel in the vastness of the whole.

This week we also celebrate independent bookstore day!
(Though surely every day is independent bookstore day.)
Here are a few favorites:
* Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA
* Parnassus, Nashville, TN
* Tattered Cover, Denver, CO
* Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL
* Burke’s, Memphis, TN
* Powell’s, Portland, OR
These and many others can also be linked to via the IndieBound.org site.

I spent this past week surrounded by brilliant, provocative, important ideas. My notebook is stuffed full of quotes, my mind is reeling with sparkly new connections – these are my favorite kinds of overwhelm. 

From this ocean of fascinating content, a surprising thread emerged. Despite my love of brain-first adventure, despite my attending this gathering in search of exactly that sort of input, the sessions that affected me most deeply were… something else. 

I shivered with glee when the air escaped from a thousand-year-old ice shard, with a pop and crack reflecting the passing centuries.

I welled up when a chorus of teenagers performed the most stirring rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” that I will ever hear.

I was stopped in my tracks when the sun broke through an ancient forest grove after days of misty gray.

Dear ones, our world requires all of us – brains, hearts, bodies, and spirits.

Our own lives deserve nothing less.

The top photo is the fantastic Janet Echelman’s sculpture Noli Timere – shown with the little medal that I carry everywhere, both inspired by Seamus Heaney.