Hawthorn Hill Journal by Richard deRosa
On Hope and the ‘Perennial Mind’
I cannot be sure of how others find reason for hope these days. I am on the lookout each and every day. Emily Dickinson wrote, “Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/ And sings the tune without words,/And never stops at all.” I have been trying much more of late to listen to my soul and, while it is not in my nature to despair, listening to my soul’s songs of hope has been tough. I need to believe that the often faint tunes I hear send this message: Hold on old boy, things will get better. I look for omens everywhere, within and without.
Several mornings ago, while on my morning perusal about the place, I chanced on seeing a tree swallow slip out of the nest box on the far side of the upper hill. Talk about being excited! I hurried back to the house to share the news with Sandy. Why such ado about a tree swallow? Well, it has been several years since any tree swallows have summered with us. That had not been the case for most of our previous summers up here on the hill. We could always count on at least one pair returning and usually there were two or three. When we spotted the first pair our first summer here, we named them Don and Dora. Every succeeding spring when the first pair arrived we would celebrate Don and Dora’s return. It really did not matter if they were not the original pair. We were just so happy to have them back.
There were several reasons. Their very return signified that all was well with the world, at least in the avian sector. It confirmed what writer Hal Borland described as nature’s eternal pattern. We humans rely on recurring patterns as well. And while they are here they dazzle us with their intricate aerial displays. And, from time to time, dive bomb us just to remind us that this is shared territory and getting too close to their nest is intolerable. There have been many times when they have perched atop the garden fence watching us work, as if they were curious about what these odd looking two-legged creatures might be up to. I know from watching them from the deck that their primary interest in the garden is selecting stray wisps of hay for their nest.
I rely as much as anyone else on a certain amount of predictability in my life. Just the right amount. Too little would be a bit destabilizing; too much would be stultifying. Balance and moderation are comforting, not only in the conduct of one’s daily life, but generally. Unfortunately, way too much is out of whack these days. Norms are shattered and not replaced by equally stabilizing alternate modes of being. There must be enough societal cohesion to keep things in balance. That is if, as Yeats put it in his great poem, “The Second Coming,” the center is to hold. Right now, the center is under as much pressure as it has ever been. Holding it together is each individual’s obligation to self, family, country and planet. It takes imagination to see beyond the self. Far too many unimaginative, selfish individuals now hold the center at bay.
Shortly after espying the tree swallows I sat down, grabbed my copy of Thoreau’s journal and randomly picked out a few entries for early April. I do this from time to time in the early morning. He describes how Hosmer, an acquaintance, is turning his manure pile to the sun so as to melt the ice crystals that have formed over winter. He wonders aloud what life is for, suggesting that he “…does not expect to stay here long.” Thoreau has been reading Columella, a Roman writer on farming and agriculture, who suggests that it is important to see spring as an augury of hope and that it is essential to “…be brave and hopeful with nature. Human life may be transitory and full of trouble, but the perennial mind, whose survey extends from that spring to this…is superior to change.” A lot of time had passed between one Roman’s jottings about life and a Concord farmer’s wondering about the worth of it all given the reality of one’s mortality.
It is this faith in “the perennial mind” and the enduring patterns of nature, despite a glitch here and there, that give me hope. It is hard though, especially when we live in a world embroiled in senseless wars, where far too many of us are inured to the needs and deeply human feelings of others, and where those who rule the roost are guilty of some of the most egregiously heinous and immoral behavior that we as a nation have ever experienced. The good news is that there are a lot of good, selfless, devoted, tenacious people out there fighting the good fight. So, there is reason to hope and have faith in humanity’s “perennial mind.”
Dick deRosa’s Hawthorn Hill essays have appeared in “The Freeman’s Journal” since 1998. A collection, “Hawthorn Hill Journal: Selected Essays,” was published in 2012. He is a retired English teacher.
