Welcome to The Polly Papers, my reflections and meditations on the surprising, puzzling and unusual glimpses of the Spirit of God in the world. This audacious attempt to capture, in words, a glimpse of an elusive yet accessible being is expressed by a phrase from a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke:
I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song. (link to full poem)In a way, it similar to decoding our spiritual DNA. Just as the body has its basic building blocks in the genes strung along a double helix, so I believe do we have a spiritual spiral linking all the material available for growing into God-essence. I hope that some of the pieces you will find in these pages will help you unlock your own spiritual DNA. (more)
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January 8, 2025A cold coming we had of it
Just the worst time of year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
So wrote T.S. Eliot about three visitors from the East who traveled to see a newborn child. It was a long and harsh trip, with only a star to follow. To find…What? What did they expect to find?
Theirs had been years of study, watching the stars, looking for a celestial sign. Then, one dark night, those wise men, now with aged and wrinkled faces, saw a bright star blazing overhead. They believed the star would lead them to find what they sought. A king?; or maybe one greater than a king? Perhaps a savior, though not entirely sure what that might be.
And they found, in an ordinary shelter, a baby, a tiny, squalling infant. Was he what they expected? Perhaps not. Yet somehow, they knew that they had come to the right place. And dropped to their knees; in wonder and in thanks.
Theirs is the story of Epiphany. There, next to a cradle, all the knowledge from their years of study was transformed into wisdom of the heart. They knew, they recognized, they worshipped. Then returned home by a route different from the road that had led them there, choosing to evade Herod’s command to bring him the news of the birth. That’s how their story ends.
But what if their return by another way was not only about escaping Herod’s ugly plan, but about a change of heart, a new way of perceiving? They had experienced what is known as an epiphany; that is, an appearance of holy presence. It led them to walk a new path, previously untrod, on their life’s journey. We don’t know because the story doesn’t tell us, just how their lives changed, but I suspect that no longer did they rely on signs like a star to guide their lives. They began to follow their heart’s leading. In the presence of holiness, something shifted. An awareness, an assurance of a light within, a beacon as trustworthy as a blazing star. Perhaps that was the “other way” which they had found by the cradle.
Epiphany asks all of us: In this new year, what will you be searching for? Where will your journey take you ?
And Epiphany asks us: Is it time for us to try another way? Is there an “Aha” out there already waiting for you? And will you know it when you find it? Will it cause you to turn to the business of living by another way? […]
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December 27, 2024Seven years ago I posted my first winter reflection, acknowledging the longest night of our northern winter solstice. This year the solstice fell at 4:21 AM on December 21, Eastern Standard time. In ancient and still current traditions, it is a time we light fires to dispel the darkness and to celebrate the re-turn of the northern hemisphere toward the sun. In my Christian tradition, though Christmas Day is past, we are still in the season of Christmastide, waiting for the days to lengthen a few seconds more each day, waiting for Epiphany, commemorating the visit of three wise elders who came from far away to see the child and recognized him as the promised One to Israel and beyond. And since it is also the season for telling this and other old stories; at the solstice fire, by the tree, or by the light of the menorah candles; as I did seven years ago, once again I invite you to reflect on this beloved folk tale.
THE RABBI WHO WALKED IN THE WOODS
A long time ago, far from here, a monastery stood on the edge of a forest. In its day, it had been grand and glorious, with brothers who offered hospitality to strangers and filled the abbey with song. But it had fallen on hard times. People no longer came to its door and only a a handful of monks shuffled through its corridors, praising God with heavy hearts.
On the edge of the woods, an old rabbi had built a hut, where he would come from time to time to fast and pray. No one ever spoke with him but whenever he appeared, one monk would say to another, “The rabbi walks in the woods.”
After morning mass one day, the abbot of the monastery decided to visit the rabbi and tell him of his troubles. Approaching the hut, he saw the rabbi standing in the doorway, his arms outstretched in welcome, as if he had been waiting there for him. The two embraced, then stood apart, looking at each other, their faces wreathed in smiles. After a while, they entered the hut, where a rough table stood with the Scriptures open on it. The two old men sat together awhile in silence in the presence of the book. Soon, the rabbi began to cry. Then the abbot, too, covered his face with his hands and began to weep. For the first time in his life, he cried his heart out. They sat there like lost children.
Later, when all was quiet, the rabbi spoke. “You and your brothers are serving God with heavy hearts. You have come to seek a teaching of me. I will give you one, but you can only repeat it once. After that, you may never say it aloud again.”
The rabbi gave him his teaching: “The Messiah is among you.”
The abbot left, without another word.
The next morning the abbot called the monks together. He told them that he had received a teaching from the rabbi who walks in the woods and that this teaching was never to be spoken aloud again. He looked at his brothers and told them, “The rabbi said that one of us is the Messiah.”
The monks were startled. What could it mean? Is Brother John the Messiah? Father Matthew? Could I be the Messiah? They were all deeply puzzled by the rabbi’s teaching, but no one spoke of it again.
As time went by, the monks began to treat each other with a new reverence. The lived with each other as people who had finally found something, while they prayed together as people who were still looking.
Occasional visitors found themselves deeply moved by the life of the monks. Before long, people came from far and wide to be nourished by the prayer life of the monks, while young people began asking, once again, to join the community.
In those days, the rabbi no longer walked in the woods. His hut had fallen into ruins. But the monks had taken his teaching and kept it in their hearts. And they knew too, that the ancient promise had been fulfilled, that the Messiah was born and was in their midst. […]
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October 15, 2024When they brought her to be baptized, she was given her mother’s name, Aurelia. But when her father peered into her cradle he announced, “her hair looks like thistledown”. Her infant halo of white thistledown hair was an aura that never left her, especially when that hair turned the soft white of her later years. The name defined her; her will o’ the wisp ways, her desire and her decisions to go wherever the wind blew and her spirit led; her unique, fey wonder and curiosity about the world. And thus, the beautiful child with the thistledown hair was, from that day on, known as Thistle. An accomplished and prize-winning artist, a sailor, a life-long adventurer and my father’s much younger half-sister, she was my aunt and my godmother.
Friends and acquaintances used to ask me about her name, imagining that someone called Thistle must be a prickly person, like the purple Scottish wildflower.
Sometimes that was true. She was determined to follow her inner guiding light and not always patient with those, particularly my accountant father, who could never understand yet another Thistle exploit. But I believe it was that spirit which allowed her to choose exactly how she moved through life.
Thistle showed me how to be an independent woman that followed her talent, her dreams and sense of adventure wherever it might lead.
She was the young woman who once took me, a shy, fearful ten-year-old who had hardly ever skied, to the top of Spruce Peak in Stowe, Vermont and told me, “just head downhill.”
Years later, she was the aunt who showed up at Columbia- Presbyterian hospital in Manhattan a few days after my first child was born. Since her visit happened to be on the Fourth of July, she came equipped with champagne and firecrackers, popping the cork of the former and setting off the latter. A moment later, what appeared to be the whole maternity staff rushed into the room, believing a bomb had gone off. They gave Thistle quite a dressing down while my baby girl slept right through it!
Thistle won a Fulbright to paint in India in 1960. Somehow she once managed to get herself invited to take tea with the Maharajah of Jaipur. While sitting on the terrace, she saw one of his handsome horses in the pasture and asked if she could paint it.
“Of course you may. Please come back in a day or two so he will be ready.” She returned at the appointed hour and found, to her amazement, a groom next to the horse holding a large brush and a bucket of gold paint; “to paint the horse!”
The Thistle moment that I cherish above all is the day she told me the details of the trip which she had arranged to fulfill Mum’s lifelong dream to visit Ireland. Thistle changed her own trip back home from India in order to spend time there with my mother. Two months later, my mother died, tragically and violently. Finally, all those many years later, it was during that telling that I was able to see into the troubled, dark places that my mother had long carried within. Better than all the rest of my family, Thistle understood my mother; her struggles, her hopes, her very soul. In the telling of that tale, I saw a side of my aunt I hadn’t known previously: her deep wisdom about human nature and an intuition that guided her understanding. No longer was she simply the fun-loving, unpredictable, risk-taking adventurer. That day she became a true godmother, a God-given mother to me.
Thatch-roofed Irish Cottages. Aurelia C. Brown 1961
Thistle helped me laugh and helped me weep. She showed me that I could be equally at home sleeping by a campfire in the woods or dining with the rich and the famous. She taught me to stretch myself artistically, intellectually and spiritually. She showed me that what the world thinks I should be is never as important as how my Spirit is leading me.
Thistle has been gone for many years. So why do I write this now?
Because on this October day, as I see thistledown departing its earthbound flowers; as wisps of white quietly leave on the breeze and knowing that soon they will all be gone, I like to imagine that Thistle too floated off on a gentle breeze at the end. How beautifully they drift into the sky! How lovely are they in their dying, leaving a blessing at the end of their life. As Thistle-down did for me. […]
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September 25, 2024On days when I feel, like the poet, “that the world is too much with us,” I often turn to one of a handful of poems that through the years have brought me a measure of solace and peace. Today is one of those days: the news of the world is all about “guns and computers.” “…getting and spending, we lay waste our powers, little we see in Nature that is ours.” Today I turned to the poet Mary Oliver, but she didn’t speak to me in a way that she usually does. Seeking another way for comfort, to escape from the barrage of bad news, I took myself to a well-trod path by a nearby pond. “I went to the woods (to) see if I could not learn what it had to teach.” Hardly ten minutes had passed when I heard the unmistakable “krunk “of the great blue heron, arriving on its pterodactylic wings. It settled onto a graying, water-bound stump, standing there, majestic; a silent statue on its wooden plinth, gracing me with its presence.
“Ahh”, I sighed, or it might have been “Amen”; and walked on. Scrubby bushes bordered the path, now and then opening up to allow a narrow window of water, where a duck was gliding along. My first thought was, ho-hum, it’s probably just another mallard or black duck, such an ordinary sight. However, I reminded myself, that while I’ve seen many thousands like it in my life, I had probably never seen this one before. So I raised my binoculars to see, instead, in full multi-colored plumage, a “wood drake (resting) on its beauty on the water.” A complete surprise: first, the “pop” of the iridescent green, russet, tan and its red eye; next, astonishment that on an early autumn morning, the drake appeared in full breeding plumage. But then, what do I know. Nature never fails to amaze me.
I am rarely disappointed by the poem that I read each morning, which is why today was an exception. Yet never did I expect that in the woods, pondside, I would find the right poem waiting for me, the very poem I needed. It was there that Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things” had taken form, become alive, manifest to me on this ordinary day, during a quiet ramble.
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests
in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still waters.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
This poem hangs, illustrated and framed, above my bed. A mantra, you could say. So how can I, how could anyone explain the synchronicity of my sightings today with the creatures of a poem that is often my lodestar? “Fools give you reasons, wise (ones) never try,” because there is no logical explanation. So, therefore…
“When turning and turning in the widening gyre …(when) things fall apart, …when the center cannot hold”: your center, my center, our nation’s center; when our planet itself is barely holding on, teetering on the edge of “mere anarchy, loosed upon the earth”, then…
Go to the woods, sit with a poem, defy rational explanations and lose yourself in wonder. For a time, “rest in the grace of the world,” and be free.
A note: I have quoted a scattering of unlikely bedfellows in this essay. In order they are: William Wordsworth, Mary Oliver, Wordsworth again, Henry David Thoreau, Wendell Berry, Oscar Hammerstein, William Butler Yeats. […]
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September 2, 2024Every day, before we began to work, Charles would gather us in a circle, invite us to join hands as he prayed, “Heavenly Father, thank you for this day that we have never seen before.”
Charles lifted up that prayer eighteen years ago, in a driveway of New Orleans, as the city was just beginning to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. I was there as part of a team from Concord and Acton, assigned to rebuild Charles and Winnie Wilmore’s house. Charles is hard to forget; a retired postal worker who was living in a toxic FEMA trailer parked in front of the house that he and Winnie had moved into just three weeks before the storm. When they looked out the window of that cramped and shabby trailer, the first thing they’d see was their ruined dream. And yet, and yet…every morning, without fail, he would bow his head and thank God for a new day, a day that had yet to unfold, when anything might happen. And, if he’s still around, I have no doubt he’s saying it now.
I want to be like Charles. I want to begin every morning, waiting for what the day would offer; to discover something I have never seen before. I want to start each day with “beginner’s mind”, as a small child who is just learning about her world.
As I did one day last week. In the blaze of the rising sun, a soft wisp of white floated in the breeze. A bit of thistledown? a small feather swept from an empty nest? The day was bright with thin silk threads of rain falling silently over the far field. Near my feeder, a hummingbird, resplendent in her glossy emerald dress, stood on the air, moving neither up, down nor sideways, wings humming, drumming, until, quick as a wink, she dipped down, sipped and took off. My door was left open; a honeybee flew in. Finding nothing sweet, it buzzed out, in search of nectar. A locust tree, standing tall near my porch, dropped its slender leaves, carpeting the grass in gold.
Drinking my mug of coffee, I sat silently, remembering the poet’s words: “Every day I see something that more or less kills me with delight…” I’m pretty sure what delighted Mary Oliver wasn’t something she’d never seen before. Like Charles, her delight was about THAT morning, a day barely begun. As for me, I have no idea how many hummingbirds I’ve seen in my long life, nor bees that I’ve let out of my house. But I have never seen THAT green bird, nor THAT bee. And while I’ve seen leaves float to the ground every fall for over 80 years, I had definitely never seen those golden leaves, for they weren’t even “a twinkle in the honey locust’s eye” last year.
Many years ago my son, a brand new father, taught me a very wise lesson. They had just brought their newborn daughter home. When I arrived a day or so afterwards, she was just waking up, ready to be fed. I was the typical grandmother, yearning to hold her as soon as I could, and so I offered to change her before handing her to her mother. As I laid her on the changing table, my son came up beside me, looking skeptical, a bit anxious. “I think I can do this,” I said. “It’s not like I’ve never changed a diaper before!”
“That’s true, Mom, but you’ve never changed MY baby’s diaper before!”
Need I say more?!
[…]
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August 13, 2024That Old Story, Limerick-style. Part 2, (in Egypt and so on)
In Egypt, Joe had great success.
But for others it was simply a mess.
Israel was oppressed,
distressed and depressed.
To be free? “Twas only a guess.Then one day a baby was born
to an Israelite woman one morn.
His sister, brave Miriam
made sure to take care o’him
by keeping close watch on the shore.
The baby was placed in a basket
since his mother did not want to risk that
he’d be killed by the Pharoah,
a guy mean and low
who was ready to blow his last gasket.
When Moses (that baby) got older
he became very strong and much bolder;
telling old Pharoah
“Let my people go!”
Man, that dude had some chip on his shoulder!
Mighty Moses, he parted the waters
for Israel’s sons and her daughters.
Miriam led them in dance,
in song and in chants
as the desert became their new quarters.
But the people they grumbled and whined.
For their life back in Egypt they pined.
Moses picked up his staff
broke a big rock in half.
Out came water, more lovely than wine!
Forty years they roamed and they wandered
while the hope they once had soon was squandered.
“Where is God now?” they asked.
“Who gave Moses this task?”
It was much worse than anyone pondered.
Moses climbed to the top of Mt. Sinai
and said, “God, I really do try.
This is tough, can’t you see?
Why pick on me?
How ‘bout you come on down from the sky?!”
Now this tale will eventually end.
But not for some time yet, my friend.
God has much more in store,
such as prophets galore.
There’ll be kings!! queens!! and oh, so much more!
[…]
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June 13, 2024That Old Story, Limerick-style. Part 1
First came Adam and Eve and the snake
who said, “from this tree you should take
the apple of life.”
But it led to great strife
And the garden they had to forsake.
Their sons were Abel and Cain.
But by Cain was poor Abel slain.
The earth he did roam
never finding a home.
Then later, it started to rain.
Old Noah, he built a big boat
to keep pairs of creatures afloat.
When the flood was all done,
Out came the sun!
Then once more was the world filled with hope.
Later on, from the country of Ur
came Abram and his lovely wife Sar-
ai. They longed for a child.
Yay! after a while
baby Isaac Sarai did bear.
But along with this tale we must tell
Of the first-born, old Abe’s Ishmael.
He was Isaac’s big brother
Hagar was his mother.
God loved both boys equally well.
By the time young Isaac was grown
He found a fine wife of his own.
Rebekah was swell.
(They met by a well.)
And twin sons were born in their home.
Esau first, then Jacob the younger
who tricked Esau because of his hunger.
Jacob gave him some soup
Poor Esau was duped
of his birthright; he had it no longer.
Away fled the sly little brother
Who was helped all along by his mother.
Jacob slept on a rock
And saw angels walk
From one rung of a ladder to ‘nother.
Well, the years they moved right along.
Jacob’s big family grew strong
With twelve sons; and his daughter
whose story we oughta
remember, since it’s been far too long.
She, Dinah, was carried away
By cruel men whom her brothers did slay.
Little Joe went south
To a place at the mouth
Of a river where crocodiles play.
Now Joseph was Pharoah’s good friend
So you’d think that this story might end
With peace between nations
And lots of vacations.
But no!! big trouble was just ‘round the next bend………
(to be continued)
[…]
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May 28, 2024I was fourteen when my handsome and adored older cousin asked me to be his baby daughter’s godmother. The tradition went back at least three generations. My mother had been his godmother and he was my godfather. All of us were teenagers or younger when presented with such an awesome responsibility. As a loyal daughter of the Episcopal church, I was well aware of the duties of a godparent; although at fourteen, and living many miles away from that baby girl, the whole “raising her in the true faith” business didn’t seem to make much sense. I don’t remember, and probably hadn’t even attended her baptism. They named her Holly, which I loved because it rhymed with my name.
There were two or three occasions when her family traveled to my hometown to visit my aunt, her grandmother. She was a little blonde pixie, a cute child. Yet she didn’t interest me very much. My world at sixteen or seventeen consisted of sports, school, boys, dances and preparing for college.
In short order, over the next ten years, my mother died, I was married, finished college and had three children. That little girl, far away in another state and often another country, was growing up, going to school and becoming a teenager. Life was full for both of us. I remember less than a handful of occasions when we saw each other, very briefly, in the succeeding thirty or forty years.
Fast forward to the spring of 2021. Seemingly out of the blue, Holly called to invite me as her guest on a yoga retreat in New Hampshire. The retreat was by a lake which we both loved; where we had each spent many summer weeks yet hardly ever at the same time. How could I say no? Yoga, at a favorite place and the opportunity to get to know my goddaughter after more than 60 years! I have no idea what prompted her to invite me, and I suspect that she felt somewhat the same. Yet, as we both realize now, it was meant to be. Something, or Someone was at work.
Holly was my summer miracle. Yes, we did some yoga. And some swimming and canoeing. Those were the underpinnings but not the blessings. We talked, and talked, and talked some more. We saw in each other another woman in our family who knew the secrets, the joys, the betrayals and the love; very little of which had been acknowledged in our family history. At the same time, my own daughter, living in Australia, was beginning to show the early symptoms of dementia while Holly’s mother was in her last months of living with Alzheimers. We were exactly what the other needed.
Holly and I see each other now frequently. Our journey together continues as our individual lives as mothers, grandmothers and wives unfold and change. Although fourteen years lie between us, at this stage of life, they are merely a wrinkle in time.
. […]
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April 27, 2024Next year, on this day, Concord will celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the battle at the Old North Bridge. I imagine it must have been a day like this one, an early spring day, a day that I “went to the woods”, following advice from Henry David Thoreau.
By a small creek, freshened by spring rain, I found these: fiddleheads, small as a baby’s fist, pushing their tender bodies up through mud and leaf litter; skunk cabbages, unfurling in the slough and ripple of the rill: green shoots slim as sharpened pencils and yellow knots of leaves-to-come hanging from birch branches.
A traveler, intent on their path to a distant destination, foot following foot, would pass by here, its small miracles of early spring unnoticed. A wanderer, instead, unhurried, will bend down to gaze upon earth’s uncorked energy spouting towards the light.
Dylan Thomas, erratic, ingenious Welsh poet wrote: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age.”
Do you feel it? Feel that force, the pull? Feel winter’s cold grip loosening in your body, softening your spirit, summoning you to uncurl and stretch your body skyward, your face uplifted to the rain?
Perhaps it’s no accident that April 19, with its fierce force of spring, was the day that women and men of Concord began to throw off the heavy cloak of England. How I wish that the fire in their bellies had led them not to violence but to seek freedom by other means. They were, however, as we are, imperfect people. Oppressed by the British, they in turn were oppressors; keeping slaves and stealing indigenous land.
What if we could distill a pure, unsullied liqueur from the blood of that battle and use it to feed seeds of promise; promise that from the smallest fern to the widest prairie and the deepest ocean, our planet will survive. The time is now. Spring is calling. […]
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February 9, 2024She was always glad to see me. The day might be sunny, stormy, dismal or freezing, it never affected her mood, as far as I could know what her mood might be. While I have too often sensed others scrutinizing my looks and criticizing my opinions: “Did she comb her hair? Where did she come up with that idea?,” she never made me feel inadequate, unloved or lacking. She took me exactly as I was. Always on her face was pure joy when she saw me. A bad day would turn on her greeting me and I felt completely loved once more.
She came to us when she was so very young and from day one brought cheer, energy and her fair share of mischief into our lives. Yes, she kept us on her toes and it was always worth it for the reward: a look of pure love and her soft presence.
She grew up with the children and when the youngest child entered the teen years, she always knew when he was troubled, felled by all the usual teenage angst. Some days I would come home from work to find my son lying with her, side by side on the floor. No words, just her gentle, comforting presence: “I’m here, everything will be okay.”
Later, when that young boy had graduated from high school and was at home over a mid-semester weekend break, we came downstairs in the morning and saw that she hadn’t got up. We weren’t too surprised as over the past few weeks, her hips had become much weaker. That day, though, we knew. No one had to tell us. She told us with her eyes. It was time, a time we knew would come but hoped it never would.
“Do you want to come with us?” I asked my son. He shook his head and with one last hug went back upstairs. Later, after, my husband went into the shed to get the shovel, we notified the older children who came back from work for the ceremony in our backyard. As we headed outside to the garden, my son, the small boy who had been her childhood companion, now a lean six-footer, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said “Well, Mom, I guess I’m not a kid anymore.”
Her name was Topaz. […]
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