Elemental Gifts
seascapes and landscapes: E Pluribus Unum
Gifts come unexpectedly.
“To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh1
A seascape emerges from the landscape.
Mold creates rivers in wrinkled pages.
“Plant blindness and its relative, species loneliness, impedes the recognition of the green world as a garden of gifts. The cycle flows from attention, to gift, to gratitude, to reciprocity. It starts with seeing.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer2
Notes in the margins fade.
Torn pages and binding now a tree trunk and branches.
“Humbly, like a little worm, it is in us to work our experience - our pain and frustration and confusion and wonder - into threads of silk. And freely, it is in our realm of choice to first connect everything with our experience and then to make a cocoon of those connections. Finally, we can enter that cocoon of experiential connection…until we emerge wearing our deepest colors for everyone to see.” - Mark Nepo3
And once, these materials were trees too.
And a book, on fire.
“Amazingly, the Universe is held together by the unseeable threads of our own experience, and our reward for keeping the web of connection alive is that our spirit emerges through what is personal into the center of All Being.” - Mark Nepo4
Water soaked pages absorb the heat.
E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one.5
“This is the quiet miracle of spinning connection from our very humanness. This humble practice, that no one can stop, is the work of the worm.” -Mark Nepo6
These gifts from the land and the sea, elemental.
Was it impatience that inspired me to ‘read’ these books and share what I discovered, or was it the natural outcome of this call-and-response relationship I started two years ago? Perhaps, a little of both. So is the nature of my particular humanness.7
May you find time to connect with whatever gifts from the land or sea present themselves to you in the days and weeks to come.
As always, thank you for sharing this space and your time with me.
If you are in the Lebanon, NH area, come visit “Mold & Me,” my pop-up show in Gallery 3 at AVA Gallery & Art Center in Lebanon, NH. These images and others will be on view for all of April and I will be doing a gallery walk & talk on Saturday, April 20.
Happy Earth Month!
With gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea has been a companion for years. Although published in 1955, her essays, based on shells that wash up on the beach, offer nuggets of wisdom that transcend time.
The particular copy in my hand right now was a gift from my father-in-law to my mother-in-law on April 23, 1955. His inscription reads: “My gift from the sea is better than this. It’s been six months of marital bliss.” Very sweet. My mother-in-law was usually the one who made little rhyming notes to people. This is the only one I’ve seen by my father-in-law.
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass has become a companion more recently. There is marginalia throughout but these particular words, written in the introduction, have a large star by them.
I first read Braiding Sweetgrass in February 2020, just before lock-down, while staying with my aunt in Idaho. It was her copy, so I couldn’t make notes in it that first read, but when I came home I bought a copy and read it cover to cover early on during the pandemic. Kimmerer’s messages about kinship and reciprocity fundamentally changed my understanding of how our relationship to the earth could be so very different than it is. The creation of the garden library inspired a call-and-response that ultimately resulted in the magical images in this post.
In January 2021, I was overwhelmed with anxiety — it was a deep, visceral sensation. A friend sent me a copy of Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening, a compilation of daily reflections and meditations. It is my newest companion.
You can imagine my surprise when, on April 1 (just a few days ago), I read the meditation that contains this quotation. It’s called “Work of the Worm” and includes a retelling of the Ojibway story about how the Creator was challenged by keeping the world together and how a little worm offered assistance. “The Creator paused, and the little worm spun its imperceptible silk, connecting all of creation with an unseeable web." (Red Wheel, 2020 p. 109). The quotation in my post is from the same chapter and page.
I placed the first books in the Garden Library on March 31, 2022 and added more the next day, when I took my first documentary image of the first ‘shelf’ of books after their first night in the elements. And two years later, what wondrous gifts had been created.
From Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening, April 1: Work of the Worm (Red Wheel, 2020 p. 109).
This motto for the United States was first used to describe the young nation of 13 colonies uniting against the British Empire. Sadly, it feels as if we have lost connection to this essential vision of unity from diversity. These meditations from the Garden Library offer a deeper vision of what E Pluribus Unum means, inviting me to consider my fundamental connection with and belonging to all the creatures, great and small, who enable my existence.
From Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening, April 1: Work of the Worm (Red Wheel, 2020 p. 110).
While not all of these images were created on April 1, Plant Life, the first image in this post, was. I am in awe and humbled every time I look at it and the final jewel, E Pluribus Unum, created just a few days earlier. These creations made by humble creatures living within the soil are precious farewell gifts from our land.
I wish I could see "Rivers of Mold" in person. Beautiful photograph. Wishing you an awesome pop up experience!
E. Pluribus!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes.