Finding comfort where beauty still remains

Willie Nelson once said something about traveling the world and learning that people are just the same. It's true. We have our hopes and dreams, loves and losses, joys and anxieties.

Personalities may jump all over the board, but basic human feelings unite us. So, it's no wonder this past week there has been much to digest. I am not sure I like that it is September. It seems summer literally went up in smoke. I wanted more time to ease into autumn, with its changes.

There was the death of Dolly Parton. Listening to her past interviews has been like getting to know someone I should have met sooner. I laughed in one question-and-answer article where she described her husband of nearly 60 years asleep in his recliner. I can picture it: snoring, mouth agape. She'd written a song, “Jolene” — warning off a woman from her man, writing in the song, "Please don't take him just because you can.” In the interview she said she looked over at Carl Dean and thought, “Where's Jolene when I need her.”

Then the monstrous river swallowed Nepal. Those images are not ones I can forget, but they are not easy ones to remember. And it is just a month since the Spokane area fires with their devastating scenes.

In the commonality of global humanity, I am not the only one trying to keep myself in good spirits. What I did this morning was get outside for 20 minutes and see what I could see.

I heard the rooster crow. He saw no reason not to welcome a new day. I saw a pink-and-purple-streaked dawn. I saw the waning moon still bright, reminding me of the stunning supermoon eclipse the other night. I smelled the shrub roses and, although I didn't plant them, I knew it was okay to pluck a magenta cluster and bring them home.

Later from the deck, my osprey friend swooped in. He's sporadic now on his nightly roosting branch but not completely gone like I thought. It was unusual to see him in the morning. Since I happened to have my Bible opened, I thought I'd read to him.

“Anxiety in a man's heart weighs it down, But a good word makes it glad.” I think he liked what he heard, because he distinctly made some small cooing responses. I thought if I could sing him a lullaby as I had those warm summer evenings, I could sing my traditional good morning song for the grands — so I did. I was feeling my spirit lift by the minute.

Lest this seem completely nonsensical, I know that birds share some of the human experience, too. I know this because in the August my mother died, when her absence felt like a weight sinking my heart, I passed beneath an osprey on a phone pole. A severe storm had thrown its platform nest to the ground. The fledglings were not quite ready to fly, and they did not make it. The osprey keened its loss atop that pole, unashamed. It was my voice I heard.

My foray outdoors and in God's Word did wonders for me. The world is still the same. It is September. The things that have happened, have happened. But I saw beauty, on the page, feathered, flowered and in the dawn air. I connected with it.

I found my place with God in it. And the comfort and joy I sought came to me.

Carol Shirk Knapp is the author of "The Preacher's Kid" column.