In back of our apartment complex, a huge parking lot transformed, this winter, into the trailhead for what Tyler and I have come to call the Holy Moley Mountain--a place built of snow drifts, ice, and the occasional spot of dog urine. In our first foray up the Holy Moley Mountain, which the plows had formed during the first snowstorm of the winter, Tyler and I kept slipping back into the parking lot. Each time we fell, we screamed out, "Holy Moley!" and then we let the ice take us down.
Eventually, we summited the Holy Moley Mountain, with the help of a lot of hand-holding and the forward thrust of our new puppy, Harper Blanche Reynolds. (Harper after Harper Lee, Blanche after the name they had given her at the animal shelter). Breathless and at the top, we determined to "hike" the Holy Moley Mountain every day of the Winter.
As each successive storm has arrived, the Holy Moley Mountain has grown--and its formidable icy ascent has grown slicker, too. But Tyler and I find the climb even more thrilling. (Harper Blanche, I think, does not approve of the climb, or, for that mater, anything cold.)
Over Christmas, my kind and deep-thinking brother Michael gave Jennifer and I a card with a remarkable line from Mary Oliver's book, Blue Pastures: "Who knows, maybe the root is the flower of that other life." And the line has greeted us each morning we've woken of this winter.
As we welcomed our second son, Benjamin Peter, into the family, and as we went through the sleepless nights a second time, that line greeted us. As we've contemplated the loss of one life, in England, for the commencement of another, in Boston, that line greeted us. As we've struggled with the tension between studying something--theorizing possibilities of transformation and change through our doctoral programs--and doing something that actually creates a transformation (however tiny), that line greeted us. As we reflected on dreams turned upside down and swirled around and taken for walks around blocks we never thought existed, that line greeted us.
And in every circumstance, Mary Oliver's line has created a place of peace where worry might have reigned. Our culture is so adept at regurgitating the belief that flowering is what matters--reaching the finish line and raising one's arms in victory. But what if the root here is the flower of that other life? What if the roots that we often so impatiently seek to grow up and out and away from are the flowers, the finish lines, of the kind of life that matters?
When I ask myself that question long and hard enough, I am reminded of a line from a great professor I once had named Marv Wilson. He said, "The essence of religion is relationship." And I think this is true for so many areas of our lives--the essence of education is relationship, the essence of family is relationship, the essence of success is relationship. Our goals and dreams never seem quite so beautiful without the complex and remarkable system of roots beneath them. Or, if we take Mary Oliver's words to heart, maybe above them.
And as Tyler and I make our daily ascent up the Holy Moley Mountain, Mary Oliver's words live in every icy step. Because the summit of that mountain is not nearly as fun as the precarious trek towards it.
