Friday, August 2, 2024: We cannot think of death all the time. More often we need to think about life.
A Spiritual Moment Among The Blackberries
A reflection by Laura Holford of Starcross
When I close my eyes at night, I often see the faces of the many patients I have accompanied to the other side as a nurse. When my eyes are open, I see the death of children, mothers, and fathers in Palestine and Israel. I sense a moral obligation to think about and hold onto these images as much as possible to honor the dead and the fight for the living. And yet, this constant vigil is exhausting. We cannot think of death all the time. More often we need to think about life.
Brother Toby tells a story about Suzuki Roshi, the master of the Zen Center in San Francisco, and his last lesson. Everyone knew he was near death. After morning meditation one day, he looked around at all the sad faces and announced, "We are going to make noodles!" The surprised monks and students followed him to the kitchen, where they made noodles all day. The pots were filled, boxes were brought in and packed, and some noodles overflowed out of a low window. Finally, after sunset, Suzuki announced, "It's time to stop!" Everyone looked around at the mess on the floor and on their clothes and the mountains of noodles in all corners of the room, and they all began to laugh. He led them out of the kitchen. A few days later, Shunryu Suzuki died.
I used to think that entering into the timelessness of a kairos moment(1) was only associated with an experience of the divine, but now I experientially understand it can also be eating a summer fruit at the peak of its glory. Or perhaps more likely, it's one and the same. I had the great serendipity to be at Starcross last week at the peak of summer blackberry season. It's a mad dash to pick ripe blackberries with an infant strapped to my chest and a four-year-old wilting in the sun while eating the blackberries faster than I can pick them.
And yet, when a blackberry is so ripe it falls apart between your fingers, and your only choice is to pop that still sun-warm black goo in your mouth, I am truly transported in an instant to all my previous summers at Starcross, all the days and dust that went into this blackberry happen at once, and as Li-Young Lee (1957- ) says in my new favorite poem From Blossoms, it's a day when "death was nowhere in the background." I travel from berry to berry, which is a journey in "joy, to joy, to joy."
It is not a service to those in despair to negate our own joy, as I sometimes fool myself into thinking. There is room for both. I distinctly remember one olive harvest at Starcross in a particularly difficult season of my life when I closed my eyes at night, and for once, it wasn't death I saw but olives upon olives upon olives. May we close our eyes once in a while and see fruit.
(1) a kairos moment refers to “a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action – like picking ripe blackberries: the opportune and decisive moment.”
Here's the poem:
From Blossoms
By Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Laura Holford
Laura is a community health nurse and mom living in Sacramento. She is the co-founder of Introspective Spaces, a social venture building reflective spaces for women in healthcare, and a member of the Starcross Publication Committee. She made her first visit to Starcross in 2015 as a nursing student and has been coming back ever since. Like the founders of Starcross and many mystics before her, she believes contemplation and action cannot be separated and finds herself naturally helping others build reflective, imaginative, and spiritual practices to ground their action and work in the world.
Reminder: We have an opportunity to watch this important documentary and join in a lively discussion on August 12th. Please put this on your calendars.
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