"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

 

Glinda coaxed the Munchkins out from their hiding places, after the Wicked Witch was dead. Small people had good reason to fear, what with a tornado, and a pitching house, and a dastardly enemy. But Glinda's lilting voice and sparkling gown lured them into the gardens and paths of Munchkinland, to welcome Dorothy. 

 

I feel like that. In the past couple of weeks I have stepped over the threshold of friends' homes, and sat in their chairs. I have eaten their food, and seen their smiles.  We have tentatively put our arms around each other, testing to see if we both feel safe doing so. 

 

It has been a long year. Most of us have been sequestered away behind closed doors, while the tumultuous damage of the pandemic tore through the hospitals. But things are calmer.

 

The informal church service I have attended every week for twenty years resumed in person worship. We met outside surrounded by verdant trees and a choir of birds. The minister spoke about Noah, who also spent a year cloistered away. I had always kind of skipped over that part in my haste to get to the rainbow. 

 

The birds have probably been singing all along, but I attended to their music with closer attention. What did they have to tell me? Clearly their joy never wavered in the months I was out of earshot. Then again maybe even sparrows respond to an audience. A red tailed hawk circled overhead, swooping in wide arcs. Rather like a dove looking for an olive branch, I suppose. 

 

Elbow to elbow with the taller trees there was a trunk lacking signs of green life. I am no arborist but it looked as if the sap had stopped running. Yet I saw no evidence of rejection, or being considered less than. Somehow she was part of the story too. I watched a documentary about the forest, which described tree stumps as being valued parts of the ecology. Somehow they share their experience and nutrients with younger trees. The narrator called it a kind of nursing home. 

 

It suggested to me that this past year is a piece of the legacy. Not a mistake to be edited out, but integral to a larger whole. Even though it was broken, and I have no wish to minimize the losses, perhaps there is a gift too.