Grace Notes

Look up Nancy Kennedy

My friend Tara loves bees.

I remember the time she took me to her secret place, a wooded trail in a local park.

Along the trail is Tara's bee tree.

Before she moved away, she used to come to this secret place often. She said she loved to go there to talk to God.

As we started our hike down the trail, she said, “How can you help but talk to Him surrounded by all this nature?”

We walked a little way and then she stopped and pointed. “Just look up at the canopy of trees!” she said.

We both tilted our heads back.

“I love to do this when I’m outside and the sun is shining,” I said. “I spread my arms and close my eyes and try to imagine the sunlight spreading through my body.”

Being 50-somethings with creaky backs, we couldn’t stay like that long, so we started walking again.

She told me about the raccoon that startled her and that she spooked away.

“Someone said there’s a bobcat out here,” she said.

“Bobcats eat people, right?” I asked. She laughed and said yes, they do.

She said one day she saw a little old lady walking the trail all hunched over with her eyes on the ground.

“I was tempted to tell her to look up — to see all the beauty above her,” she said.

When we got to my friend’s bee tree, she practically squealed. She’d been telling me about it for months.

During a super cold spell a few weeks before, Tara worried that the bees had frozen.

“I came here yesterday to check on them,” she said. “They were OK.”

When we arrived at her bee tree, Tara pointed way up at the hole in the trunk.

“Watch,” she said.

So I did.

“The bees aren’t too active today, but at least they’re alive,” she said.

We tilted our heads back again, watching the bees for a while.

“I love bees,” Tara said.

“I love all the shades of green in the trees — green is soothing on the eyes,” I told her.

But I’ve never loved bees. Too many bee stings as a kid.

However, I have loved the lizards that race up and down the sidewalk, puffing out their necks and doing push-ups.

I’ve loved dawn and dusk and puffy clouds floating through blue skies.

Years ago, Tara talked about becoming a beekeeper. I told her I once wrote a story about local beekeepers and saw real honeycomb and its perfectly shaped hexagonal compartments.

How do bees know how to do that? I remember wondering.

I still wonder.

Truth is, I love wondering.

The other day, I had an interview for a newspaper story at that same park with Tara’s bee tree.

As I drove past the trail entrance, I stopped and got out of my car.

I considered stepping onto the trail to check on Tara's bees, but the thought of running into a raccoon or bobcat stopped me.

But I did look up into the trees as the late afternoon sunlight streamed through them.

Maybe that's why Tara came here so often.

Maybe wonder is one of the ways God gets our attention.

I tilted my head back and spread my arms.

“Hi God,” I said.

Contact Nancy Kennedy at 352-564-2927 (leave a message) or email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com .

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Former police chief files federal whistleblower lawsuit against City of Quincy

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