St. Stephen’s uses poetry in our worship every week. In these posts our rector, Karl Stevens, a poet himself who publishes as KPB Stevens, will reflect on the poems we use. The poems are chosen by our Canticle Club. If you are interested in joining the Canticle Club, send an email to Stuart Hobbs.

I woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare about climate change. Yesterday a friend shared an article from Counterpunch with me. Mega-dryness areas are spreading across the Northern Hemisphere. Much of the world is turning to desert. The anxiety settled itself in my shoulders, and it was awhile before I could get back to sleep.

What can one do with such fear? Is hope the anecdote? If so, where can one find hope? Is joy the anecdote? If so, where can one find joy? Can an individual, a people, undergo the kind of renewal that effectively changes them, altering their relationship to the world? Is there still time for such renewal?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s poem doesn’t answer these questions directly, but it does raise up a means and method by which we can find hope, joy, and renewal. Here is the poem in full:

“Heliophilia”

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Desire to stay in the sun / love of sunlight

Don’t call it an affliction —
call it affection. I’d stay under
the sun all day, never hiding
under a copse of trees if I knew
I wouldn’t burn, but isn’t it
more accurate that I burn
for the sun? To be pulled to the light
is nothing to be ashamed of: look

at flowers, butterflies, seals lounging
on a rock. Rhubarb sings in dark gardens
but truth be told it sounds more like
a wet cracking and popping. I think

it secretly counts the hours till it can turn
towards the sun again. For me, the sun
has always been easy to love, as easy
as it is to love whatever small light

bees bestow on fallen leaves—easy
to love the light they give just before
they crawl into a honey-hungry sleep,
just before the first fall of snow.

Chicago-born Nezhukumatathil writes creative non-fiction as well as poetry. Her book WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS was a New York Times bestseller and widely praised, and she’s known as an amazing teacher and avid observer of nature. She has, fortunately, given a number of interviews over the years, and the first thing that becomes clear when you read them is how deeply she’s loved by other writers and poets in the literary community. She points to Rachel Carson as one of her inspirations, quotes Carson when she’s asked to speak to our present moment: “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

In an interview with the poet Ross Gay she expands on her understanding of wonder: “Wonder for me is when you get surprised by your own curiosity when confronted with something unfamiliar or unexpected and that sense of curiosity turns into a kind of joy and excitement…If you let yourself be open to wonder, I mean really open yourself to being able to receive it, it’s the closest thing to falling in love I think—I feel like you can’t help but want to protect that animal or plant or person.”

Nezhukamatathil never departs from her intimate view of the world and its wonders. When asked by Greenpeace to write an article on the climate crisis, she writes about birdwatching with her sons. In an opinion piece for the New York Times, she writes about the vanilla bean. She starts that piece with this statement: “I don’t think you can be a parent at this point, or just even someone who looks at the news and not be worried about all these kinds of scary things that are going on in our environment. But I find that when I am overwhelmed with the news, I find that I do the most action when I hear about something that I love, or when I get inspired by hearing about what somebody else loves. I find also that sharing what you love is contagious. You realize, oh, without them, that would be a sad world.”

I can’t read this quote without thinking about the bees in her poem. They bestow small light, both to the observer, and to the leaves, and to each other. A time of hibernation, of diminishment and “honey-hunger” might come into their lives, but that doesn’t keep them from being avatars of sunlight.

Hope as the accompaniment to attention. Joy as the accompaniment to attention. These provide a powerful anecdote to despair, because they are rooted in love. Attention builds love, and love’s capacity for action. Nezhukamatathil points us beyond the solace that wonder gives us to the choices that it might engender.