Resilience & the Prickly Pear Heart
Poet Mary Oliver gave us some instructions for living. She said:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
She probably did not know that she was giving me a good Rx for managing the uncertainty and upset of navigating these days. Little did she know that her words and wisdom would visit me on a simple morning walk. When I walk by myself, which seems to be most of the time, I use that time to listen and pray. I listen for the messages of nature to teach me and hold me. I lift up those who have asked me to pray for them. I surrender my own cracked and aching heart to the One who can fill me with healing love and hope.
This morning, I spent some time with a prickly pear cactus. I really don't know why I had not noticed it before. I have passed by its location countless times. But somehow, with the glean of the morning light and the cool breeze caressing my face, I stopped to pay attention and be astonished. Now, I will tell you about it.
Several of the cacti around us were damaged in the same hail storm that caused $50,000 worth of damage to our home a couple of years ago. Contractors fixed our house and nature fixed the plant life. The repairs took time and patience. Most of the plants have healed. New life has come but scars remain. Not all scars are ugly and sometimes brokenness is such an important teacher. Beauty can be born anew. Resilience comes. I am no Mary Oliver but I just thought I needed to tell you about this prickly pear cactus heart in a poem.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
She probably did not know that she was giving me a good Rx for managing the uncertainty and upset of navigating these days. Little did she know that her words and wisdom would visit me on a simple morning walk. When I walk by myself, which seems to be most of the time, I use that time to listen and pray. I listen for the messages of nature to teach me and hold me. I lift up those who have asked me to pray for them. I surrender my own cracked and aching heart to the One who can fill me with healing love and hope.
This morning, I spent some time with a prickly pear cactus. I really don't know why I had not noticed it before. I have passed by its location countless times. But somehow, with the glean of the morning light and the cool breeze caressing my face, I stopped to pay attention and be astonished. Now, I will tell you about it.
Several of the cacti around us were damaged in the same hail storm that caused $50,000 worth of damage to our home a couple of years ago. Contractors fixed our house and nature fixed the plant life. The repairs took time and patience. Most of the plants have healed. New life has come but scars remain. Not all scars are ugly and sometimes brokenness is such an important teacher. Beauty can be born anew. Resilience comes. I am no Mary Oliver but I just thought I needed to tell you about this prickly pear cactus heart in a poem.
Have a Heart
Horrific winds and hail tore away at life
But a heart shape formed from the onslaught.
Holes and separation ravaged and, yet,
New life found a way.
My heart holds scars and changes from
the weight and disappointments of living.
Even so...I hope, and I am amazed
By life's beauty, resilience, and possibilities.
Prickly pear heart, teach me to love relentlessly;
To have a tenacious love--a generous love.
I join you in holding up my heart to the sun,
To be healed and encouraged.
And, when new storms visit, help me to remember
to have a heart that holds vision and astonishment.
Give me a heart that beats with joy and faith.
Shape my heart toward outrageous love.
Nita Gilger
Horrific winds and hail tore away at life
But a heart shape formed from the onslaught.
Holes and separation ravaged and, yet,
New life found a way.
My heart holds scars and changes from
the weight and disappointments of living.
Even so...I hope, and I am amazed
By life's beauty, resilience, and possibilities.
Prickly pear heart, teach me to love relentlessly;
To have a tenacious love--a generous love.
I join you in holding up my heart to the sun,
To be healed and encouraged.
And, when new storms visit, help me to remember
to have a heart that holds vision and astonishment.
Give me a heart that beats with joy and faith.
Shape my heart toward outrageous love.
Nita Gilger
Prickly Pear Theology
In times of trial and uncertainty, we don't simply need philosophies and theologies, we need inspiration from the more than human world. We need concrete examples of forms of life that can weather storms, survive, and even flourish amid harsh conditions, nourished by resilience and inner strength. With help from Nita Gilger, let the prickly pear be our guide —a plant who thrives in arid landscapes, absorbing both the scorching sun and the cutting wind, yet still producing vibrant blooms and nourishing fruit. We need guidance from our vegetative sister. We need to find our inner prickly pear, cultivating a heart that is both tough and tender, capable of enduring hardship while still offering generosity and sweetness to the world. Nita Gilger speaks for me and for so many of us. Let her poem be our prayer.
As a process theologian I am inclined to imagine that the very lure of God within each of us is a lure to find our inner prickly pear, each in our way. God may not control the future, but God can help us manage our response to the conditions of life, personal and political. It might seem as if somewhere, sometime, someone needs to develop a theology of prickly pears - but perhaps not really, Perhaps Nita Gilger has already given us that theology in her poem. It is a theology of outrageous love, born of storms withstood and faith arising, astonished by a beauty that renews the heart again and again.
- Jay McDaniel