What To Notice
Nature is something of a second home for my family. Somehow, I feel that we “fit in” there better than we do in other more civilized, cultivated spaces, and I love that our family culture is so rooted in wildness. As one who grew up in the city, it has been a novel education for me to learn the names of local plants, to recognize those that might be foraged for food or plant medicine, and to be so at ease with children who are consistently covered in layers of dirt. My east-coast relatives find it shocking that I would eat anything that comes from a forest and not a grocery store, and were horrified to discover that we savage Oregonians think nothing of peeing in the woods (thimbleberry leaves make great toilet paper, btw.)
Of course, spending time in nature also means that you are more likely to cross paths with some pretty rad animals. We’ve had amazing encounters with salmon, deer, elk, otters, owls, even a bear (from a distance, thankfully). There is something very sacred about seeing a wild creature in its natural habitat; I always feel privileged when an animal, despite having been so exploited and maltreated by my own species, considers our family trustworthy enough to make an appearance.
But I have learned that when you’re out in nature you also come across a lot of dead animals. This makes sense, of course; they live in nature, and they also die there. That’s the way of things. And at first, I was not sure how to navigate this reality with my three children. Seeing dead animals is sad, and it can be scary. Animals do not always die in pleasant or peaceful ways, and there are no funeral parlors out in the woods to make death look prettier or to hide it away in a box.
My first instinct, as a mother, was to protect my kids from the harsh truths presented by an animal’s corpse. I thought maybe it would be best to try and steer them in another direction or distract them so they wouldn’t notice the dead bird or whatever. However, my kids inevitably notice everything, and that absolutely did not work. And I remember the first time we came across this cute little dead mole, and they saw it, and they were so heartbroken, and they looked to me with these huge questioning eyes like, “what does this mean, mom? How are you going to make this ok?”
Isn’t that kind of where we are right now as a nation? Even as grown-ups, I think, so many of us feel beaten up and battered by all the sadness and ugliness of our era, and we’re sort of wandering around in a daze going, “what does this all mean? And how are we going to make it ok again?”
So I’ve been trying to work this out, as a mom, and as a human being. It is a tricky thing to pilot my children, give them direction and help guide their way, through a cultural moment that is so full of malice and despair. There are too many big, frightening, grown-up problems invading their innocent, magical little lives. And while of course, my husband and I do everything we can to protect them, to make them feel loved and safe and secure, we can’t shelter them from everything that’s happening in the world. I can’t even shield their eyes from the little mole that died on the side of the hiking path. So what can I do? How do I offer them comfort when I can’t conceal the sad and scary things that are happening right in front of them?
My best thinking on this is that my task, as a mother, is to teach them what to notice. What to look for, what to listen for, at a time when so many ugly voices will be incessantly clamoring for their attention. Evil is loud, it’s noisy; it always wants us to pay attention to it. But what we pay attention to grows. So I want my children to know how to listen underneath all of the noise, to listen for the deeper pattern of beauty and goodness, that is still alive and laboring among all the chaos. And I want them to trust that it’s always there, if only they know how to look for it.
Jesus was so good at this. Jesus knew how to look where other people weren’t looking, was always attentive to what God was up to, and tried to direct our attention there. He wants us to notice that which is worth noticing, to have the discipline of looking for what is good and true. Not by ignoring or denying the realities that frighten us (because to do so would be a failure of courage) but by looking deeper into the abyss to see where God is lighting it up from the inside. Even now, as hate and fear threaten to become our nation’s dominant language, there are still mothers rocking their children to sleep. Still there are nurses caring for their sick patients, and strangers giving thirsty people water, and people from all walks of life who are willing to stand up for the dignity and basic rights of all human beings. And I think that’s what Jesus would be noticing, if he were to come and visit us for a while; he would point us towards all the places where light still shines in the terrible darkness.
That day on the hiking path, I did not tell my children to look away, or rush them past the dead mole. I held them close, and we knelt down on the ground, and looked at him together. I talked to them about what a lovely home the mole had had, here among the trees, and how this was a beautiful place to die, among all his animal friends and his favorite plants. We dug a little hole and buried him, and we gathered pretty flowers and berries to put on his grave, along with a cross made of sticks. Finally we said a prayer, thanking God for his life, and together we imagined what kind of fun mole adventures he might be having in Heaven. Then we stood up with peaceful hearts, knowing we’d done what we could. And we kept going on with our hike, just putting one foot in front of the other.
