Month: September 2023

It Will End, I’m Sad to Say

Roses growing and dying in my Garden

It Will End, I’m Sad to Say

By Jane Tawel

September 19, 2023

*

And then it will end.

And all will be as never before,

and never again,

and never ever more.

But whether I shall enter something new,

through a small crack in the ether,

or a wide-open door,

my current view is that all things old,

will pass away.

And that makes me sad today.

Yes, it will end, I’m sad to say.

*

Hasn’t anyone ever told you?

It’s okay to be sad.

Grief is the gift we fear most to open,

but once unwrapped,

and held tight in shaking hands,

and viewed deeply with eyes continually filling

with the tears of unshed fears or hopeless hopes;

well, then, grief can become a friend

that helps us fill the moments with music,

the music of our real lives,

that the tick-tock-tick of the clocks

try to drown out.

*

If life is a symphony,

and grief is a dirge,

then only the urge

of our deepest desires,

can transform life and love

into what may inspire

Eternal cognition of a unified whole;

but until then we just have to trust,

in what may be the Soul.

*

Oh, isn’t the world wonderful?

*

Today I saw a poor little squirrel,

whose life was ended by the rush

of someone trying to get to work on time,

someone whose mind was probably focused blindly

on things not present, as mine often is,

whose eyes weren’t seeing what was right in front of her,

and missed the opportunity to save a life.

I murmured as I swerved

around the poor little broken, bloody body.

That squirrel was someone’s child or parent,

or friend. It played once in the tree in my front yard.

It hurt me to see it now dead and alone,

as it pains me deeply to think of all that is emptied out,

all that is alone, all that dies.

*

Life is pain,

and therein is truth to The Way.

Life is precious and oh, so glorious,

and therein is hope for the day.

*

And I saw a rose in my garden,

once red, now browned and petal-less,

and it hurt me to snip it

but I did it, even though it pierced my silly soul to do so,

like a thorn piercing my heart.

I snipped off the dead rose-hip,

in order that some other small flower could have the space to grow.

Everything has to die.

But all must choose to grow.

*

And I wonder, how much of my life,

I have squashed and killed,

or just not taken the time for,

or not let grow,

in my rush to think of something

other than what I was doing?

And I wonder, what might grow from me,

when I am snipped off from Life’s vine?

*

Oh, to live eternally

seems a goal not over-reaching.

And yet, our arms are far too short,

and our faith too short-sighted

to reach the end in sight;

to reach the end in Light.

*

Like a misplaced period.

We stop before the sentence end…

We keep restarting before the story begins…

We are not meant to live desiring eternity

but to live in the passions of this present moment.

Seeking Presence, not presents,

we can gift ourselves

with the continual opening up of

Joy in the journey,

knowing this journey’s end will come,

but not what journey may lie ahead,

with each next step of unearned grace,

around the bend of surrendering to blessing.

*

I grieve for the me that one day

(perhaps even today)

will no longer be the me I think I know.

And every once in a while,

in the embrace of my grief,

I feel the freedom to rejoice,

in what none of us can ever know,

but I can dimly sense,

that someday I might be.

*

And so, in moments today,

stolen from Time’s rushing River,

I make my fears and hopes inert.

As in a dead-man’s float,

I let myself be carried.

I trust in the Unknown Unknowable,

and though I still fight against, fight within, fight on,

I try to let the River take me;

take me just as far as the next wave or eddy,

just as far as a small stone’s throw.

*

It takes a bit of practice to let things die.

*

Creator of New Things,

Please snip off the dead things in me,

so that something new may grow.

And whether I shall ever know,

what lives beyond my grave,

I hope that someday I shall feel

the motion of my small, own wave,

lapping against a bright, new shore,

Alive! as never before,

and reborn, in the Ocean of Your Love.

*

© Jane Tawel, 2023

Walk in Beauty

Just a “few” pictures from Raoul Tawel ‘s and my trip to Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park. If you have been to them — you know. If you haven’t, get there by all means, by any means. I now call Yellowstone: “Where Creator Most Enjoyed Playing with Stuff” and I call Grand Tetons: “Where Creator Rested and Still Goes Sometimes for a Break from Everything Humans Get Up To”.


Beauty and delight. Wonder and awe. Lots of climbing and hiking and gazing. A bit of a real scare with a bison. A wonderful boat trip down the Snake River. And a great companion and fellow traveler. We have wanted to do this trip for ages. Now I can’t wait to do it again.


Some of my best lessons from the trip include:
1. “Be like an otter. Enjoy life. Have fun. It’s great to be alive.” (also, probably “fish. good” haha)
2. Try harder (wherever I go) to: “Leave only footprints. Take only memories.”
3. If you wonder how God and Evolution work together, go to Yellowstone National Park.
4. It’s great to have someone to explore with. On one of our hikes when we found ourselves alone in the woods, we were told to keep together and to keep talking so the bears would hear us, so with hearts beating, we took turns talking so the bears would know we were humans (just in case they might think we were lunch). I entertained the quiet woods with the poem “Us Two” by Milne, that Raoul Tawel and I had read at our wedding, which ends: “What would I do?” I said to Pooh,
“If it wasn’t for you,” and Pooh said: “True,
It isn’t much fun for One, but Two,
Can stick together, says Pooh, says he.
“That’s how it is,” says Pooh.
5. Seek more wonder and awe. We are created for wonder and awe. We just have to open our spirits to it.
6. There have been many American saints: Teddy Roosevelt, Ansel Adams, John D. Rockefeller, just to name a few — who have protected some absolutely incredible, nowhere else in the world like them, national parks for the American people and visitors from around the world. It is good that despite the rather bad things we have done, we can be proud and happy with the good things some Americans have done and gifted future generations with. And have you noticed, that when people are in and out in Nature, they are really nice? I think all the leaders of the world should just go on lots of hikes together in beautiful places and then we could just all work together for world peace and enjoy our lives. I hope we can turn our attention to preserving the planet so we can gift future generations with opportunities to see trees, and rivers, and wild, wacky geysers, and otters and beavers, and bison, grizzlies, and eagles, and rainbows and waterfalls and….. so for now, the final lesson to try to remember is: “We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

So, dear friends: Pictures don’t do it any justice at all, but here are some (hopefully) hints to entice you to plan your next trip to somewhere beautiful and inspiring. As a final word of advice from the First Peoples who discovered and lived in and cared for and enjoyed this area: Wherever you roam today: “Walk in beauty”.

(c) Jane Tawel, 2023