By John Carlson—
Come every spring, the most profuse bursts of color out back erupt from our Tibetan prayer flags.
They are cheap yet beautiful pieces of eye-catching art.
Strung together in twenty-foot lengths of red, white, blue, yellow and green, they lift our spirits with every warm breeze that lifts their edges, promising us the snow is likely finished, and that throwing a pork chop on the grill will no longer require pulling on a parka.
Just like cleaning out the birdbath, hanging the flags has become a ritual for Nancy. Last year’s flags, now faded and shredded from months whipping in winter gales, are trashed. The new ones come from their packages pristinely.
Now, I should note that just because we hang Tibetan prayer flags, we don’t pray to the flags, pray for the flags, or necessarily even pray along with the flags. Nancy, after all, is a lifelong Lutheran, reads her Bible daily and is president of our church’s council. My own religious background runs from Baptist to Methodist to Lutheran. Far from the result of a fevered denominational conversion, I was initially attracted to Lutheranism at a Bible study when its host, my buddy Floyd, announced, “OK! Time to break out the tequila!”
Danged if I hadn’t found my church.
On the other hand, these flags are most likely an integral part of native Tibetans’ spiritual journeys through Buddhism. Centering as they do on harmony and serenity, the flags’ un-hemmed edges are said to tear away in the wind, thread by thread, carrying prayers aloft with them. And that’s cool! I’m a big supporter of harmony and serenity myself. Sure, critics might question the flags’ effectiveness as prayer vehicles, considering the number of sherpas who end up frozen, broken or otherwise splattered on Mt. Everest’s rocky slopes. Then again, if the God we Lutherans pray to always granted our most fervent requests, I’d be way thinner, lots taller and not suck so bad at golf.
By the way, with each pack of Tibetan prayer flags comes a little sheet explaining their meaning. If you think it has to do with The Veneration of the Eternal Yak or something, forget it. Turns out the blue flag represents the sky, the white represents the air, the green represents the water, the yellow represents the earth, and the red represents fire. Call me a kook if you want, but I have always wholeheartedly believed in the sky, air, water, earth and even fire, especially when it’s cooking my pork chop.
Besides our flags, though, other harbingers of spring’s renewal are also popping up.
There are the budding trees, and the rosish-yellow tulips that raised their pretty little heads at the foot of our flagpole out front. Beating them all was the pale pink but tough-as-nails hellebore, or Lenten Rose, that bloomed while still snowed-in out back. As for the serviceberry bush – which is more of a tree, really – it is covered with a rash of delicate white blooms.
Meanwhile, things with wings are also ushering in better days. With my man-cave window open, I’ve been treated to the return of birdsongs in all their beauty, music that can send you digging out your old Peterson’s “Field Guide to the Birds.”
Think you’ve got a robin? Its whistle is a “clear whistled caroling.” Suspect a tufted titmouse? It’s a “clear whistled chant” like “peter, peter, peter,” similar to a chickadee’s but with more of a “drawling” sound. That drawl is especially true if it just flew up from the Deep South. Heh–heh. Or maybe it’s a bald eagle, which can have more than a seven-foot wingspan and razor-sharp talons that appear to have been borrowed from murderous movie maniac Freddy Krueger. The eagle’s call? Whatever the heck it wants, as far as I’m concerned.
Less enthusiastically received than the bird calls have been the carpenter bees. Nancy represents many amazing things to me, being a woman of diverse talents. But now I’m also starting to think of her as the Carpenter Bee Whisperer. One day last week she nonchalantly mentioned, “The carpenter bees are due about now.”
Deeply impressed by her prescient display of natural prognostication, I reached deeply within myself for an appropriate response.
“Wha …?”
But sure enough, the very next day those fat little jerks were swarming all over our place. Granted, a phrase like “all over our place” may not be entirely accurate. But when you paid thousands of dollars like we did to fence in our little backyard, there were more than enough carpenter bees to get our attention. That’s because it’s emotionally draining, watching what they can make of a wooden fence. We have all sorts of holes in ours that weren’t there just a few years ago. At this rate, five years from now that whole thing is going to look like beige slabs of Baby Swiss cheese.
But guess what?
In the midst of my pain, grief and consternation over this tragedy, my eyes seemed to settle on the gentle fluttering of our Tibetan prayer flags. Just like that, a magical reminder entered my mind: This, too, shall pass.
John’s weekly columns are sponsored by Beasley & Gilkison, Muncie’s trusted attorneys for over 120 years.
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A former longtime feature writer and columnist for The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana, John Carlson is a storyteller with an unflagging appreciation for the wonderful people of East Central Indiana and the tales of their lives, be they funny, poignant, inspirational or all three. John’s columns appear on MuncieJournal.com every Friday.
