Once every summer, we drive 4 and a half hours north to find silence. This morning, I woke up to sunshine leaking past the curtains. I walked down to the dock on Flour Lake. When I am in the city, this is the place I imagine when instructed to go to a favorite restorative spot in my mind. This dock, these gently lapping waves, the line of pines reflected in the water, the white, billowing clouds. An eagle circling over the trees to my right. Today, I settled on the dock cross-legged, drank in the beloved view, and closed my eyes.
At first, I heard nothing. My city battered ears felt dull and muffled. I breathed in, letting the taste of cool water and pine linger in the back of my throat. A spot of sun burning on my left cheek. Gradually, as my ears settled into the quiet, I began to hear. A single car passing on the access road a mile away. Birds chirping. A bluejay’s squawk. The slight movement of leaves in the breeze. And then, the mad cackling of a pair of loons, calling to each other, over and over on Hungry Jack Lake - the next lake over in the lacy pattern of scattered water that makes up the Boundary Waters.
I feel my edges dissolve. This is it. I am home on this precious planet Earth.
In my book, I wrestle with the idea of my national identity. I learned years ago that my moments when doubts drop away - the moments I feel rooted in the place where I’m standing - come when I’m participating in the American political process.
Before I go further I have to explain my decision to include my politics, both in my book and in my blog. Shortly after I first started blogging, my friend Anita Mathias, an established blogger, was caught in a web tempest. One of her tweets was retweeted by thousands and trashed violently. During the search for the younger Tsaernev she ventured to say that she was praying for him as well as the victims. I empathized with her - I had the same thought earlier that day. After all, my daily meditation practice is meant to enhance my capacity for compassion.
What lesson do I take from this? The danger is small. Unlike Anita I write in relative obscurity. Yet I wondered. How should I approach my internet life? My friend Barbara counseled me to use her grandmother’s rule of polite conversation: Never talk about politics or religion. As soon as I heard her say it, I knew that wasn’t going to work. My spiritual and political life are one and the same, and deep expressions of who I am.
So it was today, that I found myself at the Minnesota State Capitol, singing, clapping, standing for five hours, waiting for the Senate to vote to legalize gay marriage. I mention this because it was with amazement that I found myself singing “America the Beautiful” several times during those hours, meaning every word, choking up. I even managed to cobble together enough of the lyrics to the “Star-Spangled Banner” to pass. And I have never been prouder to be a Minnesotan than in that moment that we knew the measure had passed. Today, I felt at home.
