The Wisdom of the Mountain Laurel

Why I ditched calling my spiritual director and found what I needed in a mountain laurel

Photo by Lester Hine on Unsplash

It’s complicated.   Or is it?

So much is swirling around us and in us—don’t you think?  We are living in complicated days. There’s Gaza. There’s Ukraine. There’s the United States being the divided states.  There’s high inflation and news of social security running out when I just got started on it. Good grief! There’s the news; the trials; and here comes hurricane season. On top of it all is our private lives of doing our work; finding our work and transitioning from our work. Scheduling birthdays because our calendars are so full—of what?  Our health can unravel in a micro-minute. And, as you know, there is always more. Something around the corner is going to hit  us in the face as the “locomotive of the Lord” comes racing at us through the tunnel of life.

I’ve felt the need to call my own spiritual director to process these inner rumblings. Most disturbing above Gaza and the Ukraine was a visit to my friend Tom. In 12 short months, Tom lost his wife to breast cancer; got diagnosed with cancer himself—but beat it through massive Chemo drugs which left him weak and one arm paralyzed. Now, he’s living in a very-assisted living—‘warehouse’—as he called it, because in twelve short months, his ordered world got dis-ordered.  He asked me: Why?--during my visit this week.  Tom’s been to seminary and is smarter than I. He knows the answer that the mountain laurel offers us.

Rather than call my spiritual director to talk about all of this and more, I sat with the mountain laurel this morning. She listened so well to my laments. She unfolded her long branches of buds in the mountain air as I tried to get “it” all out. 

What was offered me in my session was wisdom beyond words. It was an invitation to accept so much I simply could not really grasp about how life works

and the seeming unfairness of it all.

I chose beauty over words this morning and it helped. I chose quiet over whispers. I chose to shut my mouth and just consider the mountain laurel as she taught me.  I know I needed to take copious notes as her wisdom poured forth. But I took no notes but wrote this poem.

Here on Substack, I am writing poetry. Why? Because, somehow, I have to. I have to just write things out—and get it out—and in this way, share my crumbs with you.

The poet David Whyte writes about this need to write poems. Here’s how he puts it best:

Good poetry begins with
the lightest touch,
a breeze arriving from nowhere,
a whispered healing arrival,
a word in your ear,
a settling into things,
then, like a hand in the dark,
it arrests the whole body,
steeling you for revelation.

In the silence that follows
a great line,
you can feel Lazarus,
deep inside
even the laziest, most deathly afraid
part of you,
lift up his hands and walk toward the light.


-from Everything is Waiting for You

So, there you have it. The Lazarus moved inside me this morning and rather than wait to share it with you, I’ll go ahead and share it now with you, my subscribers—my friends who are cheering me on and forward and upward to keep writing it out.

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