Peace on the Porch

I am not a morning person by natural inclination. But as someone who deals with insomnia on a regular basis, I have learned the benefits of early morning rising. This summer my family moved into a new house which features a glorious wraparound porch facing east toward a driveway island planted with a pyramid of trees: a tall, graceful red cedar at the center, with various smaller pine trees, flowering dogwoods, hydrangeas, and other bushes sloping down towards either side. The land slopes downhill, away from the house, with a large park and pond just past it, which means I have a beautifully uninterrupted, silhouetted view of the sunrise through the trees on the island. Over the past few months of living here, I have discovered the joys of getting up early to sit on the porch with a cup of coffee, watching the sun rise.

When I first developed the habit, the sun was already fairly bright by 6am, and the birds were busy at the feeder by the time I brought my coffee out to join them. It was often quite warm even at that hour, and I padded out to the porch in bare feet and my nightclothes. But as the months have slipped by, my 6am rising has brought me out to a nearly-completely dark world, tinged with frostiness, and I toss on socks and a jacket before braving the dark. 

This morning, I felt my way over to a porch chair by the subtle glow of a crescent moon peering hazily through the clouds over the island. The world around was nearly silent, with only a distant, background hum from the highway far across the pond. A large, brief crashing sound from the woods nearby broke the silence: was that a neighbor, or a deer? In the darkness, I had no way of knowing. 

Half an hour and a full cup of coffee later, the skies have lightened and a bright rosy glow at the horizon shows me exactly where "east" is. The birds are still silent, except for the forlorn peep of some kind of shore bird whose call I don't recognize. A single car has driven past. No people, no dogs, no voices. Just peaceful quiet, as I watch the world coming into focus with the almost imperceptibly-brightening sky.

I listen for other sounds of the world coming to life. I hear the birds before I see them; a quiet shuffling in the branches, the click-click of tiny claws landing gracefully on the feeder or the shuffling of small feet in the mulch, a slight whoosh of wings as they dart back to their homes. As the sky continues to lighten, I see the occasional silhouette of a bird darting across the sky. 

The sounds grow more slowly than the light. The rumbling drone of a truck, the blue jays scolding each other awake, the pad-pad of a jogger's measured strides, the voice of a few birds quickly joined by many, my children's footsteps inside the house.

The world awakens slowly, and so do I. By the time the light and the sounds have reached their peak, I am ready to face them. Reluctantly, I leave the peace of the porch and go inside to face the day ahead with a smile on my face. 

Life is good. Even when it's hard, it's good. Even when my mind is tossing with worries and plans and life, I know I can find peace on the porch. 

Lent Photo a Day: Peace

My world is filled with some kind of noise nearly every moment of every waking hour. I wake up in the morning to the sound of little voices down the hall (sometimes chattering happily, sometimes screeching painfully). Through most of the day, there is a constant background noise of voices from the television or radio, of music playing, of traffic going past, of ringing telephones, of children playing in the next room, of my husband deep in conversation on the phone. It isn’t necessarily unpleasant noise, or even unwelcome. But it is nearly constant. So on the rare occasion when there is a moment or two of peace, it’s noticeable. And pleasant. And very, very welcome.

This morning, for some reason, my kids were reasonably subdued when they got up. I settled them in the downstairs playroom with their breakfast, without turning on the television. They ate quietly, without squabbling or talking or constantly calling to me as they often do. I came upstairs to make myself a cup of coffee, and didn’t turn on the radio, as I usually do in the morning. And then I noticed the local mourning doves wandering around on the porch, looking hopeful, so I went outside to give them their breakfast. I noticed that it was as unusually quiet and peaceful outside my house as it was inside. Unlike just a few days ago when the trees in my yard had been so full of noisy birds that I could hardly hear anything else, now I could only hear one single bird, perched so high in the branches that I couldn’t even pick him out, happily singing his spring song to the blue sky, whistling in short bursts with long pauses in between, as if he were waiting for his lady love to reply.

I stood there for several minutes, feeling the warm sun on my face and the cold flagstones under my bare feet, smelling the damp smells of early spring, listening to the alternating silence and song from the tree above. And I felt peace.

Peace. 

Lent Photo a Day: Still

As the mother of two small children, one of whom is an early riser (which, since they share a room, means that the other is – albeit involuntarily - also an early riser), it is somewhat rare that I ever have a morning that could be considered “still.” I usually hit the ground running, sometimes more literally than others, depending on whether the sounds coming from the bedroom down the hall are merely the usual sibling squabbles or whether there are clunks and thuds indicative of dangerous furniture climbing or heavy projectile throwing. But every now and then, my husband and I manage to exhaust them both enough that they sleep later than we do, and we have a morning – or at least, part of a morning – which is, in fact, still. This morning was one of those mornings.

It was an interesting morning to be still, since it’s quietly snowing, adding yet another layer of stillness to the stillness inside our house. And since it’s the first full day of spring, the stillness also includes a bit of a lull in the birdsong that has been growing in both volume and variety over the past few weeks. The snow creates its own stillness over the usual morning noises of neighbors getting up and heading out for the day, or traffic passing on the nearby road, of the routine noises of everyday life as it goes on all around us.

Even after the kids woke up and we began our morning, there was a wonderful subdued stillness around us. I often spend breakfast reminding the kids to sit back down and eat, answering their endless questions about whatever pops into their heads, catching up on urgent emails, and planning out the business of my day. But today, the kids were content to sit quietly and eat their breakfasts (and in one case, half of my breakfast as well), and I gave myself permission to delay the day’s work and sit at the kitchen table, watching the birds and enjoying the stillness.

Our usual avian visitors include large flocks of house sparrows, a pair of mourning doves, a trio of blue jays, a pair of cardinals, and a handful of junkos. The sparrows, jays, and cardinals are all quite shy and nervous, but the cheery junkos and gentle doves allow me to approach them very closely. They have a stillness of their own. The junkos and sparrows often eat at the same time, and when a movement inside the house startles the sparrows to flee in a frantic whoosh of wingbeats, the junkos merely glance around, often looking right at me and cocking their heads as if to say, “Do YOU know what their problem is?” There is a calmness and a stillness to their behavior that makes me feel calm and still as well. They are fearless and trusting, not assuming that any movement means danger, not wasting energy on fleeing unnecessarily.

I could learn a lesson from their stillness: Don’t borrow trouble. Don’t assume the worst. Deal with problems as they come but don’t waste energy on something that isn’t actually a problem. Look around and question the behavior of others before you consider imitating it. Enjoy what’s in front of you. Be still

Still. 

June 9 Photo: Your View Today

Today, we attended my brother-in-law’s graduation from Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. I had no idea what to expect. Would it be similar to a university graduation ceremony, with long boring speeches and long dull lists of names? Would it be typical military, with crisp marching, salutes, and terse practicality rather than pomp? It turns out that it was somewhere in between.

Since we had two small children with us, I admit that I missed a good deal of the keynote speech so I can’t comment on whether or not it was boring, but I can certainly attest that even if it was, there were plenty of other interesting things to look at while ignoring it. First of all, despite its name, the Army War College serves students from all branches of the U.S. Armed Services as well as foreign military officers, so the graduates’ uniforms alone were quite a fascinating study in the varying styles of military dress uniforms throughout the world: Navy officers (including my brother-in-law) in pristine, crisp whites; Army men in gold-striped pants and flared jackets; Air Force officers with double-breasted jackets; foreigners in khaki or navy jackets with unfamiliar berets or hats (sorry, Steven – “covers”); and all of the above with shiny gold buttons, spit-shined shoes, and enough ribbons and medals to sink a proverbial battleship. And the families in the crowd reflected the far-reaching homes of the graduates. I noted several women wearing saris, a burka, a kimono, and a few gorgeously ornate Middle Eastern looking dresses that I don’t know the names of. Even the American women were holding our own, fashion-wise, in elegant sundresses and many of us (yes, US – me included) sporting fancy and colorful hats.

But I think that the most colorful display of all may have been the lineup of flags representing the nationalities of all the graduates in the class.

(I apologize for the fuzziness of the photo. I was unaware at the time that some small gooey fingers had been poking at my camera lens.)

In my mind, the international flavor of the event was one of the highlights. After all, this is a celebration of people who are learning the art of war, and there’s something innately sad that this world has a need of people with such knowledge. But the fact that people from other countries come here to learn about war from us and with us, reassures me that not only are they learning about war, but they are learning how to prevent war. And a world that wants to learn more about preventing war is a world that I want to live in. A world full of many different uniforms and many different flags, but all sharing the wish to keep that world a peaceful place for all of us who live in it.