 |
Environmental
Stewardship Commission
(MEESC) |
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|
Environmental
Stewardship Commission
(MEESC) |
|
American Widgeons
by Rev Roger Weaver
Hanging on our living room wall is a print of one of Francis Lee Jacques' painting, "The American Widgeons". It is graceful scene of a pair of ducks making their way through the still water with only their wake showing signs of movement. Behind and towering over them are clumps of wild rice stalks. The rice heads are full and reflected fully on the water so that paddling widgeons are also centered in the vortex between the rice and the reflection. Lastly, the whole painting is cast in a golden glow with the rice and the water reflecting the yellow gold radiating evening sun. It could be a sunrise, but it would then be teasing the viewer about beginnings and endings. The golden air permeates the rice, water and air surrounding the widgeons, and seems to fade off into the light blue sky of the north. It is an autumn painting and the widgeons are making their way toward the setting sun.
It is our journey as well. We with all of creation are making our way into fall and soon we too will be bathed in the golden light of aspen, birch, black ash and tamarack. I was drawn to that painting because it is our fall season, and because I was reading a book about Haiku poetry by Clark Stand. Clark wrote that the original purpose of Haiku verse was to evoke a seasonal feeling. "...that seasonal feeling always has two aspects: the fleetingness of life and the eternal harmony of the natural world –..." It is a way of "realizing that all things come into being, have their lives, and pass away within the larger context of nature – something so vast and all inclusive we could never see it whole."
I have a hard time imagining any part of life that isn't in some way immersed in a seasonal context. I know that their are some sciences, like economics, psychology and sociology who seldom if ever have any reference to seasons. What a distorted view of life they could have. Sometimes the seasons, like the gold of Jacques, permeates every pore of my body so that I can not separate self from the season. Sometimes it is remote and some other place or even irrelevant, and I fear its total loss.
In writing about Haiku, Clark Strand tells the story of a workshop in a local prison and how an inmate complained that it was difficult to write Haiku because there was no experience of season. His workshop was held in a bare room, with a concrete floor and in stifling heat. Clark told the inmates "It's too bad you're locked up here, ...But you can't fence nature out. It's all around you, in everything you do."
Following that and after lunch one inmate gave him this Haiku:
from the jailhouse sink
the water comes out so clear
I feel cool by it
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