In the HBO limited series, “Task,” an intense tale of cops (in the form of a small special ops FBI team) and robbers (in the form of a drug trafficking motorcycle gang), Mark Ruffalo plays Tom Brandis, a last-leg federal agent who is running in place inside of himself. When we meet him, Brandis is working a recruiting desk for the FBI at a career fair while waiting for the sentencing of his adopted mentally ill son who is in prison for killing his mother, Brandis’ wife. 

The weight of love that looks and feels like anything and everything but is pulling him under. 

Some of the most necessary ingredients for a thriving society seem to be a bit scarce right now. Cantankerous human knots are everywhere we look . . .it’s hard sometimes to imagine a way to unravel it all. No matter the complexity of the problem (or the problem(s)), however, kindness never hurts. 

The following is an excerpt from my book The Compost File released earlier this year.

A biologist friend of mine says that when we ooh and ahh at the rapturous explosion of fall foliage, what we’re really doing is clamoring about watching trees pee and poop. My granddaughter would say, “That’s bathroom talk.”  And she wouldn’t be wrong, but neither would he.

Once a year—every year-- before dropping, leaves collect the garbage. All the stuff that a tree can’t use gets channeled to its appendages into a sort of trash can to be dumped when the time and temperature are right. It’s a shedding process called abscission. Leaves hoard the crap, a layer of cells seals it off at the base, and when the leaf falls, it takes the excrement with it.  Detox with a vibrant, kaleidoscope glow.

It's the natural order of things—healthy, glorious, graphic, necessary.  A ridding to make room for regeneration.

An irritant shows up that an oyster can’t get rid of.  That’s how one in every 10,000 of these sea creatures creates a pearl. 

When parasites or random types of organic matter get lodged between the mollusk’s mantle and its shell, an oyster’s defense mechanism ratchets up and surrounds the invader with layer upon layer of a substance known as nacre. Over years, these sacred layered secretions create a pearl.

But only if the water is just right.   

In 1995, a standard horse trailer pulled into Yellowstone National Park and dumped eight grey wolves out into the wild. The wolves’ job was to recalibrate the ecosystem of one of our country’s most prized parcels of real estate that had been severely damaged seventy years earlier by the purposeful eradication of this natural predator. What happened next was a bunch of very bad things.  

“GG, what does ‘galore’ mean?” my granddaughter asks as I read the rhyming stanzas of Designed by God so I must be Special, a book I bought to share with her daddy almost thirty years ago.

“It means ‘lavish,’” I tell her. 

She cuts her eyes and squishes her nose, “What’s lavish??”

“Like lots and lots and lots.”  

She nods her head as if to say, “I got you.” So I read on.  

My friend’s son played well at quarterback in his first collegiate game. The offense he led moved the ball up and down the field as he guided his team to a twenty-point victory. He barked orders. He scrambled. He threw a spiral to his wide-out on an old school post-and-go. 

When the game ended, my friend couldn’t wait to greet his boy with a celebratory hug.

“Great game, buddy! he gushed as he hugged his sweaty son with eye-black stains across his cheeks. Then with emphasis he added, “How fun was that?!” 

The youngster bowed his head avoiding eye contact, and muttered, “Thanks.  I can’t believe I fumbled in the middle of that long drive.”

“Wait, what? Son, you know there’s no such thing as a perfect game.”

“Well, that was far from perfect, dad.”

The waist-high miniature students move as a unit in a line like a snake. From the classroom to the library . . . the cafeteria to the music room . . . the playground back to the classroom, they miraculously slither in single file, mostly not disturbing the temptations they pass along the way. They have been taught how to travel. 

“Assume the position . . .” announces the teacher in a sing-songy voice that floats through the air more like a lyrical invitation than an authoritative order. And in response, fifteen tiny humans interlock their fingers behind their backs in a “buckle” and “blow a bubble” with their cheeks. 

This is the sage’s way of getting four-year-olds from A to B without creating chaos. 

Brilliant, really.