Over the past few weeks, I have been reading a new book by Terry Tempest Williams. I find her a compelling author, so when I heard about her new book, I snatched it up quickly. Williams grounds her writing in the Utah desert where she lives. She expresses her passion for the world’s environment, through the close-up lens of this fragile, compromised balance of life.

Williams begins the book by describing a dream in which she had vowed to “create the Epic Documentation of the Glorians.” When she awoke, she was curious about this strange word. It didn’t show up in any standard dictionary, but she eventually discovered it as a name for either male or female, meaning “Bringing praises or worth.” She also found it in the Urban Dictionary as a word meaning “Excess user of toilet paper in times of crisis.” (I won’t follow her digression there.)

This new word hovered in the back of her mind as she spent half an hour watching an ant carry a flower petal much larger than itself. Every time it encountered an obstacle, several ants would appear to help and then disappear as the ant continued its journey. When the ant reached its colony, many ants appeared and quickly broke down the petal into small pieces, carrying them into their home. She felt awe and fascination at the organization and determination she observed. “This is a Glorian,” she thought and then gave the word her definition:

(The term élan vital refers to a vital force or impulse of life. Introduced by French philosopher Henri Bergson, it was conceptualized as a creative principle inherent in all organisms . . . Élan vital | philosophy | Britannica)

I started this book in California where we were visiting our son Jeremy and his family, and I began to discover Glorians all around me, not just in seeing something beautiful, but in pausing in its presence to observe its unique being, its vitality, and its grace.

On a slow, meditative, solitary walk along the streets near our VRBO place, observing the shapes, textures, patterns, color—some of my very favorite streets to walk:

Growing grandchild:

A Sunday afternoon walk in near-perfect weather:

On the way home, looking down from above the clouds—cloud pillars or sculptures in a world I rarely see:

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I’ve been feeling heavy today, perhaps it is the gray underside of the clouds hanging over us that are slow to release the rain we need.* Maybe it is the daily news cycle that I’d like to ignore. But real people are struggling and suffering. Real people are dying or will die. I can’t just cocoon myself and wait for hard times to be over. Hard times have always been and will always be in human history. The earth may heal itself, but not in my lifetime.

However, all is not lost, and I need to hold to the Glorians that grace my days. I though grace but heard grease. That may not be far off—grace/grease lubricates my days, moving me along with more ease, less screeching or grinding than I could generate on my own.

The other day I went to the garden center I visit multiple times a season. I was on a mission—to find tansy—”no not pansies,” I explained to the clerk who had never heard of tansy. This was my last, best hope, and I was disappointed, but she pointed out the woman in charge who might know. I waited with little hope. I hadn’t seen tansy there, but maybe there was a corner I had missed.

“No,” the owner said, “we don’t have tansy, “but look down there (across the lawn) at my garden bed. Is that what you are looking for?” It was, I could tell, even at a distance.

“You are welcome to take some of mine. I can dig it for you, or you can dig it yourself if you like. I need to cut it back. I won’t charge you for it—you can just have it.”  

“Yes, I’d like some—I can dig it out myself if that’s okay with you,” I said, not wanting to take her time and marveling that she trusted me, a stranger, in her flower bed.

“I can give you a shovel if you’d like to dig some out.” She called to her husband, who was coming out the door. “Would you please bring a shovel.”

All the rest of that day, and every day since then when I think of that spontaneous offering, I feel lighter, happier. I had the means to pay for a plant, but that isn’t the point. This young woman offered spontaneously, as she would have to a friend. She trusted me with a shovel in her personal flower bed, not even going along to oversee. This plain Mennonite women probably didn’t know that I was also a Mennonite and that we had more commonalities than appeared on the surface, but she must have sensed our commonalities as gardeners—that I knew tansy and its growing habits hinted at that. The particulars are not the issue. She met me as another human being, invited me into her life, offered freely, spontaneously. She was a Glorian. Her gift was a Glorian.

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*

Since I wrote the above text, we’ve had more than five inches of rain over several days. I didn’t have my gage out for the first evening of rain so the 12 cm. measurement which is hard to see in this picture is not the full amount we had. Another Glorian—several days of rain.