How I Go to the Woods
by: Mary Oliver
Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.
I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.
If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.
Holy Saturday. I've always found the day before Easter quiet, like it's wrapped in cotton gauze. Perhaps that's the Catholic schoolboy part of me. It's not like Christmas Eve, which is usually filled with a flurry of last-minute preparations and cooking and wrapping, falling into bed at 2 a.m., exhausted with anticipation. No, Easter Eve is more like a held breath.
The weather was gorgeously sunny all day, full of ice and snow melt. I could almost hear the ground softening, turning muddy and fecund. The trees seem ready to firework into buds and green. If I were Mary Oliver, I would have sat zazen on top of a snowbank in my backyard and just breathed the potentiality of everything around me.
What did I do instead? I corrected student papers, made brownies, cared for my injured puppy, who seemed just as pleasantly drunk on the warm air and light as I was. As I worked, I thought about the tumult of the Easter morning narrative--a tomb opened, body missing, resurrection steaming the air like mist.
I almost like the day before Easter a little better. The anticipation of it. As the old hymn goes, I know that my Redeemer lives. I don't need all the bells and whistles and smoke of Easter to remind me of this fact. When I was a first or second grader, my teacher conducted an experiment. She took two Styrofoam cups of black potting soil and planted seeds in each. One of the cups, she put on a windowsill in direct sunlight. The other, she kept in a dark closet.
The seed in the closet germinated and grew faster and taller than its sibling on the sill.
That's the lesson of Holy Saturday for me: darkness and solitude are necessary. Yes, we will all sing songs with lots of alleluias in them tomorrow. We'll listen to the old, familiar stories of the empty tomb. He will rise again. He always does.
Saint Marty is enjoying these last few moments in the closet of the tomb. That's where all the hard work of Easter really happens.
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