Breath of Life

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community, daily round, death, Family, gifts, Grief, healing, Love, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Slow Life, spirit, Transformation

Phillip, my cousin, Don, and my Aunt Mary

My beloved Aunt Mary died several weeks ago, early one Sunday morning in February. She was my mother’s younger sister, but not by much, and their close bond throughout their lives always made me long for a sister, too.  It often surprised the three of us how much more I resembled my aunt in attitudes and preferences than I did my mother. And in the years since my mother died, Mary and I had become even closer, sharing e-mails and phone visits regularly.

My aunt was a remarkable person, utterly funny, charming, intelligent, and alive to the society, interests, and amusements that paraded through her days, the kind of person who had many lifelong friends, enamored children, nieces and nephews, and beholden strangers who benefited from her kindness and acts of charity. She was someone whose wit, wisdom, ready listening and encouragement were vital to making others see that a better world, or just a better day, is always possible. She had a vital spark most lack. She breathed greater life into those around her than they sustained alone.

I write this not as a eulogy, for I cannot do her gifts or influence on my life justice in such a brief forum, but by way of sharing that my grief in losing her has been gentle and so coupled with relief at her peace that it’s traveled with me these past weeks more like a soft grey cloud than a terrible storm, as my parents’ deaths engendered. I am grateful for her gifts and presence in my life and I am grateful that she is no longer yearning to be with her husband or suffering from ill health.

But I sure miss our e-mails, visits, and shared laughter.

I was thinking of her one morning when spring beckoned more than chores and I’d wandered outside to see what the world could tell me. I saw this daffodil, so earnest in its reaching for light that the dead leaf circumscribing its leaves couldn’t restrain its rising momentum.

That is how the dead can be with us, how grief can restrain joy…The next day, the leaf had fallen away, joining others that surrounded the plant, becoming food for its continued growth. In death, still the breath of life.

Grief takes its own time—and must—but what a gentle reminder that winter leads to spring, and death to life. Just the kind of message my Aunt Mary would send me.

Another gift of spring has been these darling fox kits, just emerging from their den to smell the world and take a few tentative steps into its songs and mysteries. They make every pore of my being tingle with maternal instinct, but, like everything wild, including my own nature, they also teach me over and over again to respect their boundaries and not interfere with instinctive patterns followed for centuries. So I observe from a distance and leave them to their necessary dance. I hope they will know peace, and comfort, and joy, in whatever form these may be known by foxes. I breathe a prayer and send it to their den at night.

I read about a wealthy inventor, futurist and engineer who believes people will, eventually, live forever, and who has hopes that his dietary, vitamin, and exercise regimen will allow him to remain healthy until this is possible.

I have no desire to live forever; I just want to be alive for all of the life granted me, and, if I’ve done it well, maybe I can feed the growth of others in their reaching for the light after I’ve gone, breathing still through their lives and the ways they love the world.

Like my Aunt Mary.

 

Happy March

Tags

4-Legged Companions, daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Music, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Slow Life, wisdom

Peace to your day, and to the wisdom of wild things…May you feel blessed and accompanied by all companions on your journey.

No Place Like Home

Tags

4-Legged Companions, daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Home, Love, Photography, Remodeling, Slow Life

When Phillip and I bought Full Moon Cottage in 1997, most of our friends thought we’d been bespelled. The 4 acres were promising, but the house was hideous. It had been built in 1969 and had passed through two families without any modifications to its design or decoration, and came to us with a complete lack of landscaping. The couple who sold it to us admitted they “had no idea” where exactly to place a garden, and had avoided any remodeling because, to them, the property was just an investment.

What we bought in 1997.

But we had a dream about the home it could be.

Our first night in the home was spent ripping up carpeting in the living room and then setting down one of our own rugs and then our mattress, because the bedrooms were even creepier. The second day, we began taking down walls, pulling up more carpeting, and ripping off wallpaper. Within the first year, Phillip had painted the house, laid wood floors, rebuilt the kitchen, added wainscoting, and begun to replace windows, doors, ceilings, and cabinetry, opening the east side of the home to the river as much as possible.

Day 1: Tearing down a wall.

Removing hideous flaming red carpeting before removing hideous wallpaper, windows and doors.

Hideous kitchen entirely blocking view of river.

Over the next few years, we’d tackle each room as we were able, discussing how we wanted to modify it. Phillip was able to manage the carpentry, electrical and plumbing work, and I was the delegated painter and designer, although we tend to team well on problem-solving and innovation. I designed stained glass windows and Phillip created them. We’d get ideas from magazines, movies, memories and old photographs, and then incorporate these into our plans and dreams.

Dining Room

In 2005, we hired builders to “rough-in” an addition to the house for my mother, but her death and waning finances prevented us from finishing it for a few years, so we used the addition as our “summer escape,” until we’d saved enough money to convert to geo-thermal heating and cooling for the house, and Phillip tackled the huge job of finishing the addition.

By 2010, we had our home the way we’d imagined it, with just a few touch-up’s and minor remodeling jobs left. The gardens were looking good and Full Moon Cottage began to match the dreams we’d imagined all those years ago.

I was thinking about all these adventures over the weekend, when subzero temperatures set in and we gathered in the living room to read and sit by the fire. I looked around the sweet room and lingered on all the work Phillip has done to make it beautiful.

Of course, now I vacuum and cover all the furniture with clean blankets every morning, then wash and dry the blankets at night, so the 4-leggeds can relax and, at the same time, the furniture can be protected and perhaps last a few years longer. Some doors are closed to the 4-leggeds, so dander and fur are prevented from spreading, and a section of the kitchen floor is clearly a feeding zone.

So yes, the house is finished, more or less. And it’s probably loveliest to see when it’s company-ready. But it creates the loveliest memories when we’re gathered together on weekends, sitting on fleece blankets, cuddling with cats and dogs and enjoying the love that makes Full Moon Cottage a better home than we ever dreamed it would be.

Love in the Time of Climate Change

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4-Legged Companions, Aging, authenticity, Balance, blessing, co-creation, daily round, Family, Home, Noticing, Relationship, Slow Life, Transformation

Today I’m making a hearty soup and enjoying fresh breezes kissing our rooms through open windows, a sweet delight for the cats. This is the new and unpredictable norm for December, for nothing about our climate this past year has hinted at what’s coming next.

This past weekend we found ourselves alone and together, with nothing scheduled and surprisingly caught up with other life-maintenance tasks…so we relaxed.

Honoring days of rest, like tending to self-care, were themes often discussed and put forth as goals, but rarely practiced authentically in our busy lives, up until a year and a half ago; I’m happy to say that since dedicating ourselves to our version of a “slow life,” we’ve gotten better at this.

This weekend, we watched holiday movies, went for long walks, took Riley and Clancy to their favorite dog park, grilled a wicked good meal out on the deck, enjoyed our unusually warm weather, and listened to Christmas music while we read, nestling with various four-leggeds.

My spirit felt bathed in light and peace, utterly relaxed, and utterly grateful.

At many points in my past life, this would have been a weekend neither noted nor savored as remarkable, other than for its record-setting high temperatures. Now, I treasure moments of happiness, ordinary time made extraordinary by the attention and appreciation due and accorded it. I notice all the ways Phillip deepens and refines the energies of my life, and I isolate blessings as they drift through moments and settle in my heart.

This photograph of my parents, taken the April before their wedding (Ah, April in Minnesota!) sits beside my bed. I love the sweet joy they seem to feel in each other’s company, the hope that exudes from their spirits, still.

Years later, when he was 65, my father suffered a massive stroke that caused his next 15 years to be lived confined to their home, my mother choosing to serve as his caregiver. I spent as many vacations visiting them as I could, and often lamented the sadness and “littleness” they now had to endure, rather than all the joyful adventures they’d planned following my father’s retirement. This hadn’t been foreseen and wasn’t fair. And I thought I should be closer, geographically, to help more.

I vividly recall the time my mother said, “Oh, it isn’t all bad. We have good conversations and we laugh a lot. Your father’s been able to know his grandchildren, and we’ve enjoyed working on his writing together. Good friends have blessed this time for us…and here’s the thing, Kitty: your job is to tend your own life. We never know what sadness may be in store for us, what challenges lie ahead. Enjoy each other and the blessings that come your way as deeply as you can while you’re able, and take nothing for granted.”

Phillip and I with my parents many years ago.

“Time held me green and dying,” wrote Dylan Thomas in the haunting poem, Fern Hill. I know my sweet dog companions will be 12 this year, and Finny the cat will be 11. Phillip and I are in our mid-50’s…not old, but no longer green, and, like all of life, gradually living towards our dying. These facts are not all-consuming, nor entirely depressing to one who gardens and honors life’s circles and spirals, but they certainly contribute to the poignant attentiveness brought to bear on moments when we can be here, now, all together in peace, joy, and relative health.

Mulligan helping Dad prepare breakfast.

Murphy enjoying spring breezes in December.

At one time, I would have considered such a weekend dull and unproductive. How lovely that the gauges by which we assess our lives change, and how grateful I am for a companion with whom I can share and value simplicity and stillness, ordinary days made precious just because we’re together, grateful and aware, no matter what’s coming down the pike. Because the climate of any relationship is always changing, forecast or not, and deep reserves of joy, daily kindnesses, and simple, commonplace moments of laughter and love help us to weather the storms and shifts, expected or surprising, whenever they arrive. 

A Story for the Season

Tags

4-Legged Companions, Cats, Christmas, co-creation, community, daily round, Family, Full Moon Cottage, Home, Love, Photography, Relationship, Slow Life, spirit, Story

On Sunday, after I’d put away Thanksgiving decorations, we decided to begin setting out a few Christmas pieces to ready our home for the holiday. Every day, I’ve pulled out a new box and selected a few decorations to place in a window or on a mantel, noticing the stories all around me: stories behind every decoration and every piece of furniture where they’re placed…I cannot separate myself from these stories; my own accrue and add new layers to the objects until finally, everything shines with story.

My great-grandfather made this little table, from scrap lumber and fruit crates, for my mother when she was a child. She collected the pewter dishes.

Due to our new cat, Fergus, and his continued period of adjustment to our home, and us, and the 4-leggeds, we’ve decided that maybe a Christmas tree encrusted with all of our glass ornaments wouldn’t be such a great idea this year. In past years, the cats have enjoyed playing and resting on the quilt beneath the tree; this year, I’m afraid that feline power struggles might bring it all crashing down. Better to lower the odds, I think. There are plenty of ways to make the home festive without a tree, but we’ll miss it.

Murphy and Mulligan napping beneath the tree.

Fergus and the dogs are doing fine with their introductions; the other four cats (oh, God, I’ve become the Crazy Cat Lady) are struggling a bit more with the refinement of pecking order and ego assuagement. We have every reason to believe all will be well, but these relationships, these stories, will need to progress according to their own timing, and I think we owe our 4-leggeds all the time they need. Fergus is as placid as Buddha sitting in his kennel, despite the sniffs, spits, and indifference form his new siblings. He forbears.

When he’s alone with me in my office, he loves to sit beneath the computer screen and watch the birds through the picture window. He runs to the door when he hears the other cats; he yearns for community, it seems. He loves fearlessly.

Today, his siblings entered his private room and began to sniff and acquaint themselves with Eau de Fergus. Murphy and Mulligan were especially intrigued, meticulously conducting their version of a CSI, and covering every square inch of the room before accepting a treat.

Murphy smelling Fergus’ food bowl.

Tonight, we’ll supervise a first face-to-face visit and see how it goes. We’re hopeful that by the time the New Year rolls around, we’ll have a larger, peaceful, and happy family. Fergus appears to be a force of love; he audaciously chose me on the trail one very cold, wet day and followed me home, and has never stopped exuding that charming trust and desire to connect. All creation, it seems, can reveal the Love of our Source. We often overlook, I think, the myriad ways those with whom we share the planet can teach us about love and loving.

I read that Pope Benedict XVI (“Buzz-Kill Ratzinger”) has written a new book in which he states there were no animals or angels present at the birth of Jesus, nor was that birth date calculated correctly. While I understand his point is to de-mythologize Jesus and place his life within a more historically exact context by removing the inaccurate embellishments that surround our handed-down version of Jesus’ birth, I also believe that for many people, the animals, shepherds, and angels are intrinsic to the story, especially for the young and young-at-heart. For Christians, this was a life like no other, a life that serves as a template, worthy of celebration, as all lives are, but one that was recognized as such from the start.

So rarely do we see the ways Love in-breaks and enters our world, causing unnoticed eruptions of hope and joy all around us.  But once, more than two thousand years ago, some of us were actually paying attention. The story that celebrates the birth of one of us who got it right needs no updating or fact-checking; it was never about the angels or animals, but they pin it down in our imaginations and allow us to vicariously enter the birth and so the life, and so the dance of pure goodness modeled for us, however clumsily we misstep.

And when I do falter in my dance, I have always found animals whose love can lead me back to the path quicker than any sermon. Humans like Jesus are rare indeed; animals who love as selflessly as Jesus are not.

I believe we should be very cautious about re-writing well-known and beloved stories, and even Pope Benedict, a Vatican correspondent said, agrees that the traditions surrounding Christmas play a role in nurturing our grasp of the deeper truths the story reveals.

Our own stories, the ones we write with our lives, reveal their deeper truths, too, if we listen. This Christmas, we won’t have a tree, lit and splendid; instead, we’ll celebrate two stories: the birth of Jesus (which is the story of Love’s possibilities being born every day, always, in our hearts), and our story, too, about a tiny abandoned cat named Fergus, who loved everyone he met, and his new family, who had to learn more about loving so fearlessly.

It’s going to be a good story, I can tell: the echoes of other stories and the spirits of those we’ve loved will shine all around it…There will be many animals as featured characters in this new story, and I’m quite certain that on Christmas Eve, when we gather together for treats where the tree would have been, we’ll hear angels singing.

Departures, Heralds, & Wonders

Tags

4-Legged Companions, blessing, daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Gardening, Home, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Slow Life, Transformation

Deep autumn has come to Full Moon Cottage and its neighbors. The fields of feed corn have been harvested and cut back to the earth. Ridges of golden stubble stand in rows that stripe the hills.

The landscape and its population are transformed. Shorn of the dense stalks, our view is lengthened and widened to coming winter’s stark openness. Whatever—and whomever—the cornstalks obscured now risks exposure. Deer wander the furrows and debris, seeking sustenance, and providing defensive exercises for Riley and Clancy as they patrol the eastern windows.

Every morning, between 7 and 9 A.M., I receive faithful, raucous, reports delivered every-5-minutes in yips and barks and meant to alert me to deer, turkey, squirrel, rabbit and low-flying hawk movements on the lawn or in the bordering woods. Or in the far distance, just in case territorial invasion might be imminent. (By 9 A.M., the daylight counsels the wild ones to conceal themselves again, and the dogs are ready for a well-earned nap. Mom is ready for a Bloody Mary, but settles for tea and quiet.)

Other surprises have come out from the cornstalks as well. This little fellow emerged from the farmer’s field beside the trail and followed me home a couple of days ago.

Apparently, his first year of hard-knock life has sharpened his abilities to identify me as an easy mark. He is now housed and fed and has received a fine once-over from our wonderful veterinarian. It will take a few weeks before “Fergus” is ready to socialize with the rest of the clan; hopefully, his integration with the other 4-leggeds will be peaceful. (Insert laughs.)

Our summer companions have begun to ready themselves for hibernation, flown to warmer habitats, or surrendered their brief lives to the circle’s rhythm. This beautiful Clouded Sulphur butterfly succumbed to the cold that blew down the trail last night. I offered it a blessing and gentle burial beneath leaves at the side of the trail.

The red-winged blackbirds are flocking up, rehearsing songs, and preparing for their migration. Huge numbers gather on the new islands the drought formed in the river. The air is warming again and expected to reach temperatures of 65°F (18°C) by the weekend before dipping back down again to a more seasonal 40°F (4°C) on Sunday. The blackbird choir will be missed, but their departure signals that the welcome and deep silence of winter is near.

Departures may also serve to herald the new.

Frost, the art designer that accompanies our colder temperatures, nightly paints the gardens and grasses with glittering beauty, creating visions of stunning glory even in death, a fine way to translate one’s energy during times of transition, I think.

Conversely, bringing the houseplants back indoors last month generated unexpected and early blooms in the cactus, violets, and even the jade plants, making the house more colorful and cheerful than the grays and browns that begin to dominate outside.

Our daily walks are a bit more brisk and bundled, and we’re happy to withdraw indoors, rest with books and tea (and 4-leggeds’ treats), and slow our rhythms down to congruence with the rest of nature, grateful for the sweet blessings of Fergus and cactus blooms, heralds of hope and affirmations that the circle’s turning continues and continues to offer surprising gifts, if we open our eyes and hearts.

The Training of Humans, by Finnegan, the Cat

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4-Legged Companions, Cat, Full Moon Cottage, Humor, Photography, Relationship

The human who passes for “my mother” in this absurd and endlessly amusing world is temporarily away from the computer (to which she seems permanently attached these days). She is probably searching the freezer for chocolate remnants; such is her crazed obsession and weakness. Formerly, her power to withhold the delicacies for which I yearned was somewhat stronger, although years of training have resulted in my ability to “guide her” into what I have determined is behavior necessary for my survival and peak mental acuity.

And it is this training of humans I propose to address today. All training, of course, is created with the deliverance of treats and comfort as its endgame and ultimate goal.

I have found, over the course of many years filled with trial and error, that despite their reputations for clumsiness, ineffectual respect for boundaries, and inability to (initially) acknowledge feline superiority, humans can, eventually and with steely perseverance, be trained to follow simple commands and even gain some reliable abilities to serve the cat who can be patient and occasionally indulge his human’s need for affection without, of course, becoming overly familiar or permissive.

Here are just a few techniques I have mastered and I share, to ease your task if faced with breaking-in or training a human. Progress to advanced techniques with great caution; my human, at any rate, forgets our lessons quickly and new tricks must be reinforced repeatedly, for days on end, before the lessons are extended.

To begin: Studied indifference, a cat’s natural inclination, cannot be overstated for its power to guide a human towards subservience. When mine calls, I do not immediately run towards her, like my “siblings” (perish the thought), those two dogs, who–from my educated perspective–are slobbering, mentally bereft beings barely able to form thoughts, let alone string a few together and design a potentially rewarding action. (I weep with mirth at the thought of them actually trying to execute an action with finesse!) But I digress from the intention of this post; to wit: training and maintenance of the human, and the uses of indifference. She calls; I remain seated with my eyes closed. She calls again; perhaps I open one eye before settling more deeply into my comfortable seat, or blanket.

I have learned that if every fifth call is responded to by slowly approaching her, my majesty and superiority clearly apparent, I will gain greater pats, kisses and treats than if I respond, like an imbalanced fool, to her every attempt to summon my presence. Try this over the course of a few weeks and soon you’ll find that your human’s rightful deference to your feline preeminence will infuse and dominate your exchanges; have no doubt.

Indifference can also be used when one is offered a gift; its purpose being to gain greater gifts and with more pleasing frequency. Thus, when a new and tempting foodstuff or toy is set before me, I sometimes sniff and then seemingly reject it, walking away, until I hear my human’s downcast sigh. I may stroll casually, in calculated and slow circles around a table or room, glancing back only occasionally, before again approaching the delicacy or delight, feigning a lack of desire. I cannot emphasize enough that if you do not practice this and instead pounce upon a proffered treat with naked, joyful hunger, you will lose the upper paw in your training regimen.

If you have younger felines in your household (I, alas, have three) they can be used for more than substitute mice, although certainly this is their chief source of amusement. I have trained the one who seems most appealing visually to beg for food with unremitting, if sickening, cuteness. I learned about this quite by accident, but in my admirable way, seized upon the opportunities it presented. Murphy (also known to our embarrassingly simple humans by the stomach-emptying nickname, “Bunny Bundles”) began to follow me into the bathroom sink during my morning frolic.

I pushed him out. He jumped in again and again, despite my efforts to curb his enthusiasm for bonding with what he called his “big brother,” having understood that our humans’ use of this term implied I was in agreement with its implications regarding our relationship. I was not. But as I pushed him out of the sink yet again, I noticed our actions in the mirror and, like lightning, formed a plan. His next imbecilic leap beside me resulted in an embrace and a lesson, using the mirror, regarding methods for appearing vulnerable and in need of caresses.

It has paid off in spades.

Now, when I desire a caloric boost, I simply poke Murphy and he dutifully jumps up to the human’s desk, or lap, gently pawing or nuzzling, sharing the well-rehearsed innocent, large-eyed expressions our bathroom sessions have helped fashion, and quickly gaining us added visits to the troughs of heaven (as my poetic nature leads me to call them). It seems to be a form of human enchantment; it works so quickly and unerringly. If you lack younger siblings and can endure behaving in a manner so demeaning, I recommend using a mirror and practicing first. The one time I tried it I scared my human, who thought I had taken ill. This was most awkward and unplanned, and the resulting probing and application of thermometers most unpleasant. Thus, and ironically, I am thankful, at least in part, for Murphy’s presence.

My sister, Fiona, has so far not responded to my enticements in regards to training our humans; I believe, as the sole and spoiled female feline, she believes it is an unnecessary bother. One day, I fear she will discover the error of her ways. She cannot hide behind her angelic persona forever.

The last technique I will share today is one I call “blocking.” I am facile with this practice, but have taught the technique to the younger Mulligan, due to his accepted proclivity for obtuseness and my clever use of this in human training strategy.

At my prodding, he will stand in front of the television screen or computer screen, staring vacantly, in that way he has, without menace or purpose. The humans will gently ask him to move. I have trained him to always look to me first. (This required endless hours and I find I am still recovering from the weakened state of total exhaustion that communicating with Mulligan requires, but it has achieved dependable results.) At any rate, I am stationed behind my humans when he does this and signal, with my commanding glare, that he remain in place, blocking their view of whatever idiocy has entranced them. Eventually, one of the humans will remove to the kitchen and fetch treats to lure Mulligan away. And, in their blessedly misguided generosity, if one receives treats, we all do.

As with all my training techniques, it works like a charm.

I have so much more to share and will gladly do so at some future time. I can hear my human approaching and must locate Murphy, to prod him into character, mastering yet again his appealing mendicant posture.

Having a well-trained human in the home makes life purrfect.

A Vote For Ewe

Tags

4-Legged Companions, art, authenticity, Herding dog, Nature, Sheep, Slow Life

After two weeks of political conventions revealing the stark divisions in our national politics to be just short of staggering, it was time to turn the television off and get outside for most of the glorious weekend. Cool breezes returned for a few days, and we met with members of our family at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival, held near our home.

Staged at the County Fairgrounds, the festival fills barn after barn with crafts, wool, natural dyes, machines for carding and spinning, cutting, and knitting, crocheting, or creating woolen “rag rugs.” There are felting goods and materials, demonstrations and lessons in every step of every craft one can imagine that could be related to sheep and wool, cheeses, soaps, and, of course, many breeds of sheep. (I still haven’t figured out why one booth was selling raw honey, but it looked delicious!)

Experts and artisans manned hundreds of booths, and those who are passionate about the ancient practices and crafts of carding, spinning, and naturally dyeing wool, as well as the husbandry of raising and shearing sheep (and other fur-bearing animals whose hair can be converted to clothing and goods), roamed the barns utterly content, it seemed, to be with their community.

Although I enjoy the visual stimulus, crafts, and learning offered indoors, my favorite event is the stock dog trials held in an outdoor field. Here, the shepherd and his/her herding dog (Border Collies in the local trials I’ve attended) work together to gather and herd a group of sheep through a competitive course involving great distances, gates, and then into a pen, among other tasks.

The shepherd remains at the starting point, near the pen, and through common herd commands (Come by; away to me; lie down; that’ll do, etc.) and unique whistles, sends the dog in a wide arc along the field’s perimeter and back in to where the waiting sheep have been placed. The dog listens for the shepherd’s commands and guides the sheep back down the field, through the gates, (in a specific order) and etc. the rules and courses become more complicated according to the division competing. (If you’ve ever seen the movie, Babe, you might be familiar with sheepdog/stock dog trials.)

It’s a lot of fun to watch, and it’s wonderful to witness the herding dogs’ speed, intelligence, and desire to please their shepherds. After a course is completed, there’s always a big pool for the dogs to jump in to cool down and rehydrate.

It was a wonderful day among a community of people who love sheep and herding dogs, and the entire world of activities and beauty these passions create. It was vastly healing and hopeful for my spirit: not once did I hear a reference to politics, the coming election, or anyone’s voting preference. We were there to honor and celebrate far more authentic connections, ancient rhythms, and joyful reasons to congregate. And it was good.

Ewe should have been there.

Dog Days

Tags

4-Legged Companions, Cicada, community, daily round, Dog Days, Nature, Photography, Slow Life, Transformation

On our morning walks, Clancy, Riley, and I have smelled a change in the air over the past week. The angle of light has shifted, falling lower across the trail. Mornings are bathed in a honeyed-glow and the geese are flocking up along the river. 

The dog days of summer have arrived.

Along the trail we travel every day, the spring’s trilliums, wild geraniums, and columbines have long faded, the wild rose petals have fallen and the rose hips are shrinking from the heat. Bellflowers, thistle, Queen Anne’s Lace, goldenrod and yellow coneflowers now decorate the edges of the path.

In the constellation Canis Major (which means Big Dog, as it represents the larger hunting dog of Orion), Sirius (“scorching”) is the brightest star, so the ancient Romans called it the Dog Star. In their day, Sirius rose and set with the sun at this time of year, and they believed its fierce light added to the season’s heat, and that the dog days brought lethargy and disease to man and madness to dogs.

But the East Indians had another “dog story” related to Sirius, which is also known in India as Svana, the dog of Prince Yudhistira. The young prince, his brothers and dog set off in search of heaven’s gates. The brothers complained, resisted, and gradually abandoned the journey, but the dog, Svana, faithfully traveled through adventures and perils with his companion, all the way to the gates of heaven. The gatekeeper said the prince could enter, but not Svana, to which the prince replied there could be no heaven for him without his dog. This pleased Lord Indra, who then welcomed them both within.

Clancy and Riley like this story very much.

One morning we stopped on the bridge for our usual break and “treat party.” A resonant clicking and thrumming sounded near us and we jumped up to discover the source. There beside us was a beautiful male Tibicen cicada. This genus is the annual variety of cicada, unlike those which appear at 13 or 17-year intervals.

But to call our friend an annual visitor belies the fact he’s already spent three years or more underground as a nymph, eating tree roots and progressing through 5 instars (developmental stages) before emerging and undergoing his final molting above ground, when he shed his last larval shell and gained wings, becoming the fine fellow we met, singing for a mate by rapidly compressing and releasing his tymbal muscles.

He’s called a “Dog-Days Cicada” because this is the time of year he joins us at the topsoil level.

Cicadas have a prominent place in human mythology. Often in these stories, because their final molting leaves behind a shell of their former shape, cicadas are associated with reincarnation, resurrection, transformation, and the shedding of self-illusions one must surrender to attain enlightenment.

In some places on our endlessly amusing globe, cicadas have been, and remain, an epicurean delight. We assured our friend he would not be eaten by us, but warned him about the birds and squirrels who would find him very tasty indeed.

He replied that one who symbolizes rebirth long ago welcomed death as a necessary and harmonious traveling companion. Riley and Clancy nodded, agreeing that life is best lived now, because now is all there is.

Our friend flew away, but we remained in silence together on the bridge for a time, Riley and Clancy content to enjoy all the delights the morning brought to their senses, while I, the weaker spirit, sought–like my ancestors–to make myth and meaning of the world around me and to understand my origins, my purpose, and what may come. Clancy laid his paw on my right hand and Riley licked the left, calling me back to the present.

I settled back to watch the geese and smell the breeze, enjoying the dog day before me. Eventually, I thought that now must be heaven, for like the Indian prince, I believe there is no heaven without my 4-legged companions.

*****

(“Every day is Cat Day,” says Murphy!)

The Love of the Old

Tags

Aging, blessing, Friendship, Love, Valentine's Day

“Nothing, so it seems to me,” said the stranger, “is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life…The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of—of things longer.” ~ Jerome K. Jerome, The Passing of the Third Floor Back

There were a series of robberies in Madison last week, targeting customers exiting an Apple Store with their new purchases. I learned about this watching the news that evening. The very young television reporter concluded his report by saying, “One victim was in his 80’s, and the other two were in their 50’s, so the thieves have—so far—targeted only elderly people, but all of the store’s customers should take precautions.”

I winced. It felt odd to be grouped so tightly and certainly with people three decades older than myself, all of us now and forever stamped and dismissed as “elderly.”

The next day, a friend sent me a link to poet Donald Hall’s recent essay, “Out the Window” in the January 23, 2012 issue of The New Yorker, where Hall, a former poet laureate and now 83, writes about his experience of aging and the sense of growing “invisibility” he feels. “However alert we are, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life…but most important they are permanently other…People’s response to our separateness can be callous, can be good-hearted, and is always condescending. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial.” (There are excerpts from the essay and a link to Hall’s audio interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross here: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/08/146348759/donald-hall-a-poets-view-out-the-window)

I’ve already begun to sense that gradual displacement from the cultural consciousness that Hall addresses: Television shows, movies, and magazines rarely reflect the lives, interests, or concerns of people my age; however, I don’t know if this is indicative of a sociological shift or not. There’s never been a time when society’s conscious and unconscious internal imagery and preferences were projected outwardly so concretely and preponderantly as our current technology allows. I’m sure my ancestors, when they were young, preferred the companionship of their peers as well, but they pursued this in relative privacy.

I suspect that the older among us have always been invisible to the young. I know I didn’t value the wisdom, beauty, experience or presence of my elders when I was younger. Although I’ve always had friends across generations, most of my companions have been contemporaries.

This aspect of aging seems to make Hall angrier and more melancholy than I feel considering it. (But, again, he has lived a few decades longer than I, and an entirely different life. I hope I’m not cross and depressed when /if I’m 83, but I might be.) I don’t agree with him, though, that the young are “always” condescending to the old. They’re just busy doing the best they can in their current stage of life, usually with the lesser requisite experience and wisdom to do better (from our aged point of view) because they haven’t circled the sun as many times. (This is not to say that older and wiser automatically occur in partnership, but it’s what I observe in my friends and hope for myself.) With any luck and awareness, they’ll have the chances we’ve had to learn and grow and age.

I think a lot of us “freeze” our self-perception at the time we feel most vibrant and energetic in life, and carry around images of ourselves that become increasingly out-of-date with the current reality others encounter, which is one reason I’m usually startled by mirrors these days. (“Yikes! What’s wrong with that mirror?” Or “Who the hell is that old bird looking at me so intently?”) We see longtime friends and older relatives intermittently, and our inner voice confidently smirks, “Wow; s/he’s really aging…” until we see a picture of ourselves sitting beside these people and they look markedly younger than we do.

The invitations, for me, are to laugh and carry on. I try to name and celebrate the gifts of age, and develop and share humor and compassion for its miseries. There are great possibilities and freedom in being perceived as invisible, after all. Losing the self-consciousness of youth is wonderful.

And aging brings much greater gifts. I’ve always treasured antiques, old pictures, and handworn objects. Now that my relationships have gained more mileage than I once thought possible, I also increasingly value the depth and richness they offer. Sharing decades of memories, journeying together through blessing and loss, and offering each other profound peace, laughter, compassion, and true familiarity (“family”) are just some of the priceless assets of lasting relationship, and only time can offer us these.

My “old friends” inspire me. One has begun a new career. Another just earned a degree and is pursuing her many artistic gifts. One is self-employed and successful beyond anything I can imagine. One is having his first play produced. No one is about to impose age-related restrictions on these people.

Old love offers sanctuary for reflection. My dogs’ sweet faces are sprinkled with white hair, and I know every bump, scar, and worn patch on their soft bodies. Holding them, I hold as well all the years of shared adventures and their precious companionship, and I’m grateful for the countless ways their unique personalities have changed and hallowed my life.

Old love reminds us of our power and bids us to use it with tender care. I look at my husband and feel both the earned and undeserved joy of the traveler who’s found the perfect companion. We know what the other’s thinking. A look or a word can trigger laughter or pierce the heart. We rest in each other’s silences and anticipate each other’s needs. We offer balance, revitalize each other’s spirit, and value each other’s need for retreat and silence. None of this can be taken for granted; the deeper we travel into relationship, the greater the potential for damage and suffering. Hearts so profoundly merged and spirits so conjoined are never separated without endangering lives, as we’ve witnessed in our own relationships and those of others who have loved and lost.

Old love is a privilege that demands our faithfulness and worthiness, but oh, the rewards long-term relationships offer us. The idea of constancy—stability, faithfulness, reliability—is finally grasped in a love that is old.

When I was in college, I was blessed to form amazing friendships with fellow artists—as we considered ourselves and as time has proven them all to be— in the theater department. We were young, vulnerable, smart, funny, reaching, and stumbling together, co-creating the people we wanted to be. We held our own and each other’s dreams, fought, forgave, transformed, celebrated, and set out on our paths knowing these connections were forever integral to our stories.

Throughout the years (and they are now decades), we’d meet again, in two’s or three’s, to honor weddings, assist in transitions, mourn losses, and lend support. In recent years, thanks to technology, these old friendships have been renewed and strengthened. One of our friends, as I mentioned, is having a play produced, and so this week I’m traveling to New York to meet with him and many others from my merry old band of brothers and sisters, and staying with a friend I love and admire beyond words.

I cannot wait.

I know there will be the initial shock: we’re all old! And I know as well that it will pass within a few heartbeats into the deep knowing and joy that fills our being when old love welcomes us and our ageless spirits recognize, reach for, and rest in each other’s arms.

Phillip has given me the gift of this lovely journey for Valentine’s Day, assuring me we’ll celebrate with a dinner and stories when I come home; only an old love like ours knows that “things longer” are just beginning.

Happy Valentine’s Day to All!

(And something for “Old Boomer Codgers” to read while I’m away this week: http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/153972/new_rules_for_radicals%3A_10_ways_to_spark_change_in_a_post-occupy_world)

Cats, Dogs, and Happily-Ever-Now

Tags

4-Legged Companions, blessing, daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Home, Love

There are four cats sharing our life at Full Moon Cottage. Finnegan is the eldest and came to me in a basket brought to school nine years ago by one of my students. He was just seven weeks old and beamed up at me from a litter of kitten siblings, clearly the most charming. By choosing him, I knew he would be spared the short precarious life of a farm cat, and I felt sad that I couldn’t bring all of them home with me, for as I later learned, the others were dead within a few months. Predators, exposure, cars and trucks: farm cats, like James Dean, live hard, die young, and usually go out in a youthful blaze of glory. But Finny has thrived and become one of the sweetest four-legged companions I’ve been blessed to know. I’m not certain if a feline philosopher (Pawcrates?) would place greater value upon the outdoor life and its free-wheeling brevity or the easy life of an indoor cat, but Finny has seemed largely content, risking only the few and expected summertime escapes through open windows and doors. He usually heads straight for the Nepeta cataria (catnip) plants, and is fairly docile about coming back inside.

Finnegan’s older sisters left us after 21 and 18 years of love, when he was still fairly young, and he drew closer to Riley and Clancy, the dogs, but seemed to miss Sally and Tess and the fun he’d had running and chasing after balls and toys with them, despite their dignified indifference. We missed them, too, and decided to visit our local Humane Society to see if a female kitten might be available for adoption and companionship. Two dogs and two cats seemed balanced and about right for our home and lifestyle.

It was a clear and bright October 4^th when we visited the shelter, which we thought auspicious, as that is the feast day (festival) of St. Francis, known as the “patron saint” of animals. Stories are told of Francis’ gentle ways with wild animals, and his understanding that all life on the planet is interrelated and interdependent, an outlook we share.

Fiona was exactly what I’d imagined: tiny, all-black (ironic, since Fiona means “fair,” but it suits her) and sweet. But who was that odd-looking little fellow sharing her big, bright cage? We learned they’d both been brought in from different places as tiny, unweaned kittens, and that a staff member had generously taken them to her home and nursed them to independence. They’d bonded and remained together…how could we separate them? We’d already managed three cats just fine; this would work. So, Murphy joined the clan as well.

As we walked up and down the aisle of cages large and small, a funny little guy kept poking his front leg out and tapping my head with his paw. He was a goofy and endearing yellow tabby and there was no way I could leave without him. Phillip rolled his eyes, then smiled, and Mulligan was ours.

We say we’re one-cat-shy of officially earning the title Crazy Cat People, but some friends and family have expressed their belief we’ve already crossed that frontier and planted our flag deep in Batty Land. Actually, a lot of visitors don’t even know the cats are here. There are plenty of places, upstairs and down, to rest and explore, and so they scatter and socialize as they like.

The family has merged; the young cats will be four this year, and we can’t remember life without them. Fiona is still very timid and smart; she is eminently lovable, but decides when and where and to what degree she’ll allow us to prove ourselves worthy of her.

Murphy has turned out to be Prince Charming to his siblings and any/all humans. He likes to climb on top of bookcases, cabinets, doors, and the refrigerator, welcome guests, and nestle with Riley, his canine “other mother.”

Mulligan is our “special” cat—neurologically, there are some wires crossed or shorted out—but he is well-loved by all. He doesn’t like to be held, but needs to be near us at all times. We’re never sure what Mully will do each day to remind us how funny and dear he is…and he still likes to poke me when I pass the chair he’s claimed as his.

Finny has thrived with all of these buddies. He plays and pals, and has served as their mentor in the finer pursuits of lying in sinks and choosing desirable nappage locations. They all groom each other, wrestle and run around, sleep together at night, and get along with the dogs. Clancy tolerates them. Finny and Murphy have both, always, loved Riley, and even slept in her kennel.

When I was little I couldn’t wait to have children. I decided 12 would be just right, and I made lists of their names (six boys, six girls) and imagined the wonderful life we’d have together. We’d live in the country, in a home quite like Full Moon Cottage. I would write and my husband would “do something” that made him happy.

When our youthful marriages ended, Phillip and I decided to try again, more consciously focused on creating a meaningful life together, and for both us, that included children. After several years, surgeries, and tests, we accepted this wasn’t possible for us, a great sadness that has uniquely colored our lives. It is a loss that’s forever mourned; yet, like all wounds, it invited us to deepen our capacity to love and extend compassion towards others’ losses. Not that this was a satisfactory recompense; but it is what happened, and together we chose where and how to pursue other ways of creating and sustaining a family.

When we found Full Moon Cottage, it immediately felt like home. Despite the mess it was in, we could see its wonderful potential, which a lot of hard work and creativity on Phillip’s part has helped us realize. Not long after moving here, our sweet dog, Idgi, was diagnosed with cancer and within a week was gone, taken from our life when she was young and thriving, and for a long time our grief made us tentative about adding any new companions to our family. We had two elderly cats and that was fine, but then we met Riley, and her brother Clancy, and Finny… and we never looked back, except to honor the sacred and unique spirits of these companions who bless our lives and move through them too quickly and leave us wide open to their love, grieving deeply when they leave, and changed forever by the gift of them.

The dream of twelve children may not have come true, but it occurs to me that I now have 24 legs prancing around my home, and loving companions whose energy and distinct personalities make every day an adventure. I have my Full Moon Cottage and my husband who does many things that make him happy and make me blessed. It’s never happily-ever-after; there’s just now and those who share it with us. Happily, if we’re lucky.

It’s funny how Love touches our hearts and creates new dreams from the ashes of those that have died and, finally, gives us exactly who and what we needed all along.

The Impulse to Celebrate

Tags

4-Legged Companions, blessing, Catherine O'Meara, Celebration, daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Imbolc, Slow Life

Celebration is when we let joy make itself out of our love. ~ Thomas Merton

It’s that time of year; it’s that lovely point in the wheel’s spin when longing and hope comingle and form the solvent that cleanses winter’s dreary weariness. Our stories begin to focus on illumination and viriditas, the sacred upsurging greenness of co-creation and new life…

The energetic excitement of the Christmas gatherings and partings seems to spin gradually away from the holiday festivities, shooting out random sparks and then quietly fizzling away into the gray days and weeks of the long and anti-climactic month of January, which is largely characterized by some form of moisture and some shade of nothing. (Though that’s really not fair, I suppose, to the many combinations of black, white and gray offered up by the January world, since they’re such lovely backdrops for cardinals, blue jays, and finches.) Still, “drab” is almost too exciting a word for January.

And, for a few weeks, I appreciate the post-holiday serenity that leads my spirit back into balance. My walking and meditation practices, my writing, my regular communications with friends and loved ones, even my Masterpiece Theater dates, are all restored to their dependable routines.

But then the month closes and it’s time to bring up another box from the basement storage shelves. [Insert close friends’ and family’s laughter.]

The boxes—organized, labeled, and ever-ready to be hauled upstairs and lovingly arranged—contain holiday and season-related decorations I’ve collected and created over the years.

This week marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and is connected to celebrations of Imbolc, Beira, Calleich/Brighde, Candlemas, and Groundhog’s Day. Roman Catholics designated this time for honoring Mary’s purification following her son’s birth and the presentation of the Christ in the temple…and, of course, St. Valentine’s Day’s festivities and gifting bless the month of February. (Any celebration that translates love through chocolate is highly regarded in my book).

It’s a joyful time of year for celebrating light, hearth/home, fertility, transition, and rebirth: our stories evolve, but our human yearnings cycle reliably and tenderly. For me (Gaelic Girl to the core), the inclination and invitation have always been to name and celebrate wherever we are on the wheel.

Academics will argue whose version of a given story is authentic, or whether it’s been appropriated from its source, or become reductive, or recombined into a completely altered format, but I don’t concern myself with dissecting and arguing such points: instead, I enjoy reflecting upon the deeper themes revealed by our stories and recognizing their universality.

Stories were first shared by word of mouth; they naturally evolved to reflect the subjectivities of storyteller and audience. I love the “braided” aspect of every story I hear, and am enchanted when I trace similar stories through different times and places, imagining the long chain of roving storytellers intertwining, carrying, and sharing their precious cargoes of metaphor, myth, symbol, and meaning. And I’m overjoyed when I discover that two tribes of people summoned similar frameworks and cause-effect relationships, but created unique characters for describing some aspect of the natural world or human condition. Whether Caillech is witnessed gathering firewood or the groundhog sees his shadow, we’ll have a longer winter… 

No visitor to Full Moon Cottage will leave without the invitation to celebrate the current season, which I extend to include monthly anniversaries of just about everything. (Why not? I have an official “June birthday anniversary,” but why not celebrate on the 17^th of every month? And, of course, it’s the same with the anniversaries of meeting and marrying Phillip, and enjoying a monthly Christmas on every 25^th…) How much fun is it to wish someone, “Happy October Birthday!” and “Merry May Christmas!” Why not? For goodness’ sake, life is brief and the point is that it’s all worth sharing and celebrating.

I inherited this orientation from my parents. My mother loved to routinely set out a few decorations, make festive meals and desserts, celebrate achievements and anniversaries, and look for the “adventure” in the commonplace. And my father made up silly songs for no reason but to delight us and recognize the blessedness of the ordinary; I do that, too.

Phillip would maybe say I’ve taken it up a notch. Or two. Morning Parties, Breakfast Songs, 7 PM Popcorn Parties, Bedtime Songs and Parties…the 4-leggeds love these and hunt me down with barks/meows if I’m delayed in initiating our celebrations at expected times. (I am very well and happily-trained.)

And then there are the boxes.

Friends love to tease me and ask, “Have you brought up your ’2 PM Sunday Box’…or your ‘Tooth-Brushing Box?’” (Such Molierian wits!) While I don’t celebrate life’s minutiae quite that intensely, yes; I’ve brought up and distributed the “February decorations” around the house and celebrations are in full swing. If none exist, I make up rituals to mark special days. For example, this week was a great time to light candles, smudge the hearth, bake bannocks, feel and express gratitude for the warmth and sunlight, and take time to savor the gardening catalogues that have been filling up the mailbox lately.

Noticing and honoring the uniqueness of the daily round has taught me that we need to love our days—all of them and each of them—for their distinctness and blessedness, despite our cultural messages to “get through” them “endure” them till we can go shopping or overeat/drink our way through another week’s end. If we let them blur together and “can’t wait” for them to pass, we miss so many holy messages and invitations that are offered for our enrichment and that help us finally accrue days threaded with light, lives infused with acknowledged meaning, and stories that outlive us.

On Valentine’s Day in 1987 I came home from work to learn that my father had suffered the massive stroke that would alter the course of his story, the story of my parents’ marriage, and certainly our family story. 18 years later, on February 4, my mother changed worlds here at Full Moon Cottage in a small basement bedroom Phillip and my brother, Mike, had put together and painted in 2 days, like some hurried stage carpenters (wainscoting, photographs, a lamp, 2 beds, a rocker), for her final comfort and peace. She was taking her last breaths while a huge crane was placing the 30-ft. beam in the addition to Full Moon that we’d envisioned as her new home.

Such days are also marked as holy, as are all of our losses and the moments of deepening that contribute to our stories of healing and transformation.

When I worked as a hospital chaplain I elicited and recorded patients’ stories of healing. It was valuable—both for my patients and for me—to hear what healing meant to them and how they defined it, for we often cannot begin to heal without reflecting upon and sharing these stories. And we can heal all the way through our dying.

I came to know a patient who had CHF (congestive heart failure), which is a disease that progressively disables our bodies, and so she returned often to the hospital, and we discovered we were kindred spirits, delighting in each other’s company. She was a charming woman, who used her sweetness and humor to deflect introspection, but the awareness that her life was ending brought increasingly deeper excavations of her truths, and one day, when she was 92 and coming to accept her dying, she honored me by sharing this story about the greatest healing of her life:

What would healing look like for me? I suppose for me it would be a return to optimum health…and if that is a lower level of health than I had when I arrived at the hospital, then healing would mean acceptance. (Long pause.) The most illuminating healing of my life happened after my husband’s death. The hardest time of my life by far…it took years, although it was the first year that was completely black; it was the heaviest, darkest, most silent year of my life…but it wasn’t until five years after he’d died, when I was 61, and traveled to London with a friend, that the sorrow palpably lifted. I remember the very moment: we were in Piccadilly Square, shopping and having a grand time, and I pushed through the door of a shop and came out onto the street: there was bustling and life and people and color and activity everywhere…and just like that: I said, “I am happy. I want to live again.” Just like that. Healing can happen like that. Grace. 

I agree. Healing can happen just like that, or sometimes only after long years of re-planting our spirits and regaining our balance, but there’s always a time we can pause, look back, and see that healing has and is happening.

I know that is so as I set out trinkets and mementos that honor and celebrate the great loves of my life and the stories we’ve shared.

Here’s a recipe link for bannocks: change it up as you desire by adding different fruits, nuts, and chocolate.

According to Druid belief you always stir the batter from East to West, the way the sun travels, to make them as good as they should be. J

http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Irish-Bannock-Allrecipes

The Breeze at Dawn: Morning Parties and Daily Communion

Tags

4-Legged Companions, community, daily round, Dawn, Ritual

 

…The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want…

~ The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks 

I’ve always been an early bird, although as I age and sleep less, I seem to enjoy the late hours, too; both ends of the day seem to hold more silence and mystery, inviting deeper meditation time. But there’s a clarity at dawn and a kind of in-breath about the coming light and gift of the day that is absent in the hushed day’s aftermath of dusk. Dawn is anticipation; dusk is the slow out-breath of gratitude for the day. Late night has just become a kind of mysterious stillness, a via negativa emptying time, a final day’s examen that leads to a peaceful sweetness before dreaming.

My father was an early riser, too. His own eagerness and excitement about the new day is something I also seem to have genetically brought forward from some ancient Celtic ancestor.

No matter what the previous day held, the new day is a tabula rasa, full of possibility and certain to offer up its own surprises. It is good to have at least a few moments’ silence to welcome and enter the day with gratitude and clarity, and, as Rumi suggests, to ask of the day what I really want of it; which, I believe, presumes an exchange of energy: I will receive, in part, to the extent I give. I’m reminded, too, that Rumi entreats us to stay awake, less we miss the blessings that cram our days with wonder.

With six 4-leggeds, however, soon and faithfully, “love calls us to the things of the world” (a beautiful poem of Richard Wilbur’s, which you can hear him read here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22139). Subsequent morning rituals demand their enactment.

Phillip takes the dogs, Riley and Clancy, for their morning constitutional while I feed the four cats, Finnegan, Fiona, Mulligan, and Murphy. When the dogs return, they bound up the stairs, full of their joyful, expectant energy regarding a new day’s promise, and then bark at me until I fetch a container of treats and sing the melodically vaudevillian “Morning Party” song:

            It’s a party

            For the babies,

            A party for the babies who are sweet;

            It’s a party

            For the babies…

            Now it’s time to have the Morning Party treat!

What it lacks in poetic depth, it more than makes up for in its enthusiastic reception. Riley jumps (to a startling elevation) in rhythm with the song and percussion of the shaken treat container, and both dogs bark along with my apparently endurable rendition.

The cats, with perfect feline nonchalance, dependably approach the perimeter of excitement—careful to avoid positioning themselves too closely to one-Riley-leaping— and sometimes deign to contribute their voices to the song…it’s quite a production.

When the song is over and I sit on the floor, the 4-leggeds gather in and sit as well, taking their chosen places in the circle, and treats are doled out as their names are called.

I cannot remember how our Morning Party started, but it has often entertained guests who find it hard to believe the animals will daily gather, sit at their same places in the circle, and peacefully share in the “party.” I have considered that the 4-leggeds’ routine participation may just be “anything for a treat,” but I sense it’s more.

I hope it’s due to the hugely instinctual need that all of creation yearns for and satisfies with daily communion; in beginning our work, our art, our relationships, and our days with a love that is inclusive, dependable, and unconditional.

May the breeze at dawn call you into this love and communion as well, and grace your daily round with fair meetings and partings. Let the secrets of the day unfold; don’t go back to sleep.

On the Path

Tags

daily round, Nature, Walking, wholeness, Wisconsin

Phillip sent me a link to an article from The Utne Reader with a note saying,    “…but you knew this already.” The article, titled “Mother’s Care,” speaks to research and therapeutic success in using time spent outdoors to heal the mind-body-spirit, and is excerpted from a new book, The Nature Principle by Richard Louv. (You can read the article here: Mother’s Care.)

The bike trail we live beside is about 50 miles long, and over the last 15 years, it has become my church, my sanctuary, and the place where my greatest healing has taken place. I have biked through hundreds of miles of grief and joy along this path; I have photographed and walked the same ten miles through every season; I have served as sacristan and cleaned the trail’s littered desecration; I have harvested raspberries and mulberries, and saved wildflowers from reckless mowing and destructive snowmobiles.

This bike trail was once a railroad track; her old mile markers and bridges have become hugely metaphorical for me in the years I’ve walked her. I know the trees; I note the dates that species of birds and wildflowers return each spring. I witness evolution: one year the wild roses are plentiful; the next year Queen Ann’s Lace overwhelms all the other plants (though the past several years, it’s been the invasive garlic mustard). I count the blue herons and mourn their diminishing numbers. I stop to watch turkeys, deer, squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes, raccoons (and skunks!) dance their own lives along, or across, the trail. I hear the mournful cries of coyotes at dusk. And all the while, as I observe, and photograph, and walk, and walk, I have been healed and I am healing.

I call my journal “On the Path” after my heart’s home. It holds many reflections from healing lessons offered to me while walking the trail. My cat, Sally, died just as I was feeling balanced again following my father’s death. I had lived with her longer than I’d lived with another sentient being and was staggered by the weight of her loss.

June 5, 2004

Sally died Tuesday…it is now Saturday, a glorious June morning with all the light, sparkle and promise one would wish of the 5th day of June.  Happy brides are anticipating their weddings and gardeners are eagerly tackling their many chores in fragrant and beckoning gardens…I miss Sally every minute; I see her everywhere…or rather, look for her and sometimes find myself calling or singing one of our many songs. So many rituals—21 years’ worth come September—have been abruptly halted.

But grief so easily slips into self-indulgence, the country of sadness and inertia, an excuse for disengaging from responsibilities and the daily round of details that keep one connected to life, a moody rejection of the joys life offers by the armful every moment. It becomes a selfish feast for the ego rather than a tribute to the life of the freshly departed. “Look at me: I’m sad and bereaved and separate from all humanity and special for the pain I’m feeling. Unique in my loss.”

The night after she left, Phillip took the puppies for their walk and I chanced upon a quote I’d posted where I’d always see it and therefore am blind to it and never see it at all… St. Francis de Sales: “Make yourself familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit; for without being seen, they are present with you”…and right after I sat with those ideas for a moment, P. came in with two lovely and rarely discovered cardinal feathers he’d been gifted right in the middle of the trail—where they hadn’t been a few minutes earlier, on the way out—we both felt they were from Idgi and Sally, a message in feathers—our family code for spirit and communication from places far away and unreachable—“See ya soon! We’ll be waiting. All’s well.”

And on we go to Love, not yet, but soon, our home.

Less than a year later, I was mourning the loss of my mother. My journal and the trail again offered healing.

March 11, 2005

Journeying with the loss of Mama:  (one month)

I agree that life is strange and new and I’m making it up day by day. Some days are easier. Yesterday was gray and cold, and a 12-hour snowfall was gorgeous, but the silence and darkness yanked me down into depression after a while. The birds are singing their spring songs, which is heartening. Tomorrow is Mama’s birthday. I miss her very, very much. 

I wish I could FEEL her essence is somewhere, still, recognizable, and as happy as I want so much to believe she is…Other days, I’m more able to see that blessings accompany even one’s grief.  My capacity for joy is strangely enhanced, perhaps by my psyche’s attempts to keep me emotionally balanced so that neither the depths nor heights are tipping the scale—or perhaps because of the relief that accompanies a loved one’s death. I no longer have to fear it or dread it, and Mama’s suffering is over. Or maybe because my own mortality is finally irrefutable and so why NOT take extraordinary pleasure in a cardinal’s mating song?

For the past 10 years, our 4-legged companions Riley and Clancy have walked the trail with me. Their happy spirits and canine approach to life have blessed me with deeper healing and an ability to live utterly in the moment. We celebrate our time together on these walks.

Long walks also take me deep within my spirit, allowing my imagination to parade its gifts and magic across the stage of my mind. There are days we head out for our five-mile walk and the next thing I know, we’re home again. This means I have to bound upstairs and take notes, because I’ve been “living within” some story plot and solved a problem or two, or written a poem, or outlined a new development/character/idea that needs to be tethered before I leave the deep meditative consciousness yielded by time on the trail. As John Muir noted, “…going out, I found, is really going in.”

Other days we wander and spend time staring at the river, or, as we did this morning, observing great horned owls and hawks dueling along the river, and another immense flock of sandhill cranes bleating their way southward.

Nature is our home; she is the great Mother who welcomes, heals, nourishes, teaches, and celebrates our spirits. Her gifts are threatened when we are not regularly engaged with her, and able to feel and benefit from her touch, smell, sounds, and mysteries. “Outside” becomes foreign rather than part of us, and nature quickly devalues to another source of profit, regardless of the permanent destruction and loss this causes. This is happening right now, in Wisconsin, where mining laws may quickly be changed to allow the devastation of precious geological formations and habitats, all in the name of income fueled by its usual sources, power and greed. (http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/spencer-black/spencer-black-wisconsin-needs-strong-mining-laws/article_cde66022-301b-5ce9-85bc-df74546f0f84.html)

What we don’t value, we surrender, and so we forever lose connections vital to our well-being. If a part of creation meant to heal us has been destroyed, we’ll never be healed as we might have been, but rather, continue to accrue losses and brokenness, which will ultimately be reflected in our people and the institutions we perpetuate. What’s fed, thrives; what’s neglected, dies and disappears.

Physical healing can happen through drugs and machines; spiritual directors may help us guide our spirits to greater wholeness; skilled therapists may help us restore our emotional balance, but nothing replaces the deep mind-body-spirit mending and healing offered by nature.

Give yourself the gift of time outside.

Tell those who would destroy the earth to take a hike.

Lessons From Trees

Tags

blessing, spirit, Thanksgiving, Tree

November brings greater austerity to the trail, revealing deeper truths than October, with its showy colors and garments of leaves. Now the leaves have been shed and blown away, trampled, soaked by days and nights of rain and dried to a silky, papery brown. The trees appear stark; nature’s bones are revealed at this time of year. 

The sandhill cranes and Canada geese are leaving us in large flocks, calling to each other, gathering incoming members, gaining altitude, and heading south. This morning, we watched 4 more flocks of sandhill cranes whirlipping and flapping in long-necked V’s to their sun-warmed southern destination. I felt a pull in the heart, a sense of abandonment, that severance of presence and connection so vital to relationship, the energetic downturn felt at every parting.

Riley, Clancy, and I paused on our walk to mark this wild calling, this meeting and leave-taking that excluded us entirely. We are foreign to this migration, yet connected by our call to witness, and moved to bless the journey of tribes not our own. We silently raised our eyes to watch the crane exodus. The strenuous exertion of their 6-foot wingspans beat the air in choreographed and ancient rhythms, carrying them away from us.

I raised my arm. Be safe; be well; see you in the spring…

They reached the horizon’s vanishing point and all three of us took a collective breath.

They are gone. We remain. The grief of parting and the agony of separation are the way of the world, says a Japanese proverb.

 So we stood on the bridge, left alone to face winter’s black and white world, its and icy blue sparks and amethyst shadows …and then we headed down the trail in silence. 

Our faithful companions, the wooded community of trees, border our path and arch overhead, forming the ribbed vault of our sanctuary. They stand naked and beautiful by mid-November, exuding their grounded grace and humility, just as they wear their spring, summer, and autumn colors—their annual parade of lacy, lush, and dramatic wardrobes—with that same sense of acceptance.

Their reliable presence is comforting. I know their shapes and places, and have learned the names of many of those we pass each day. (Trees do speak if we’re still enough to listen and hear.) And so we walked along, and exchanged our breaths with the trees, and they taught me again what it means to be authentic, to flow with the changes and losses life presents rather than oppose nature or resist change.

Our world and everything in it is transitory, elusive, and impermanent. We will lose the companions, places, and things we love. We will die. Every moment, things change.

Tolstoy, troubled by suffering and loss, pondered the proper response. “What then must we do?”  I studied the trees. The one we call mother has died. She used to have three arms crooked out at right angles from her trunk and lifted up towards the sky. She has one breast, marking her as one who suffered, survived, and endured. Passing seasons have left her trunk cleaved fore and aft, right down her center, her third eye now allowing daylight to blaze through, her one remaining arm yet raised, and her ghostly presence still imposing, harboring the spirit of these woods. Even when I’m deep in thought, her voice calls to me and signals our connection. She reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s wisdom that, “There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”

The Japanese proverb doesn’t encompass the whole story. There is more to the way of the world than the grief of parting and agony of separation. There is renewal; there is constant co-creation; there is reconnection; there is the mystery and miracle of this moment. Where parting has occurred, there is hope of reunion. And always, there can be gratitude.

How we respond to life is our choice and it is powerful in the way it affects us and everyone with whom we connect. Trees always appear to be raising their limbs in praise of what is. They appear grateful; they catch and release their blessings lightly. Clothed in the promise of spring or the bareness of winter, they remain unwavering in their peaceful acceptance of now. Here is a practice I can imitate when I feel weighed by resistance to change and loss, tied to my grief rather than my healing, burdened by the invitation to grow: I can raise my spirit in gratitude for what is.

And so I will joyfully welcome home those I love this Thanksgiving, be a witness to their stories, grateful for their lives, and present to our time together, rather than grieve that it must pass. And if they glance back when they leave, they’ll see my arm raised in blessing. Like my friends, the trees, I’ll praise what is, celebrate gratitude, and catch and release my blessings lightly.

Be safe; be well. Merry meet, merry part, with an ever-grateful heart; may we merry meet again.

Joy to your Thanksgiving.

 

Rooted Being

 The tree exists in joy,

In quiet fullness, fully here.

The seed scarified, fire-born sapling

Down-bowing to the gift of now;

Refuting reason’s bright summation

Stating why it should not be.

There are storms, we know,

That sever seed from root,

And rot, disease, and pests,

That winnow life’s possibilities.

And yet this tree is.

It lives. It grows.

It bends, weighted by guests who have

Come, weary-winged and

Welcomed.

It is.

A harbor, humbly homeward-leaning,

Called by its life-light,

Reaching for Love’s elsewhere-music,

Dancing, improvised and graceful,

To measures not its own:

Gaining, straining, losing,

Staying.

Breathing.

Season-riding,

Branches rising, turning, reaching—

Life falls back to earth again.

Wild winds, small rain, fierce light, dry limbs,

Dying—

Yet, see! Greening, newly-dew-drenched,

Praise-sap climbs

From faithful roots,

To branches raised in Yes and

O, see, it is

Joyful.

Yielding.

Still.

For in all our winters, Love

Whispers spring.

 

Slow-Life, St. Vinnie’s, and Glorious Views

Tags

4-Legged Companions, daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Home, spirit

From the beginning of our relationship, Phillip and I agreed with Socrates’ belief that the unexamined life is not worth living. Accruing wealth has never been our goal. We chose careers that combined our perceived gifts and interests with an aim to contribute something of value to our society. We didn’t earn advanced degrees, again and again, to “make more money,” but to contribute deeply and effectively to the common good.

Teaching, and then, for me, chaplaincy, allowed us to pay bills, own a home, and manage a comfortable life, but not without foregoing material goods we’re told are “necessary” for modern life. We’ve never driven new or nearly-new cars; most of our clothes and a lot of our home decor have come from St. Vincent de Paul, rummage sales, and antique stores; we grow a lot of our food and support local farmers; we still haven’t made it to Europe; we don’t have satellite television, i-pods, smart phones, or state-of-the art anything.

I don’t put this forth as a morally superior lifestyle (although I do endorse a consciously encountered and morally-driven life); this is the life we have chosen, but also one I believe other people have chosen and may increasingly choose as well, contrary to life-as-depicted by our media. We all know people who love their careers and contentedly work away from home long hours to pursue them, but I have known more people who resent the long hours and overbooked calendars today’s employers demand.

To be fair, when Phillip and I learned we could not have the children we dearly wanted, we were also able to live without the financial worries of raising a family (although, over the years, we’ve invited many 4-legged companions into our lives, and their comfort, health and medical care can be rather pricey at times). So, we’ve always managed to “get by” financially, again, like most people in our country.

Our recent decision to halve our income so I could stay home to write, coupled with the current Depression (whatever the happy, false, “spin-name” for it might be) however, has made life a bit more dicey and precarious, especially since the remaining steady wage-earner in our family is a Wisconsin public-school teacher. Healthcare and pensions will only become increasingly conspicuous concerns as we age.

So, we sift through the repercussions and inherent sacrifices of this choice and monitor our purchasing and planning frequently. How can we cut our expenses a bit more and throw a few more dollars into savings? Will anybody appreciate my writing enough to pay for it? Should Phillip take another remodeling job this winter and how could I best help him complete it? What would indicate it’s time for me to return to working for a steady income? Should we downsize and sell Full Moon? If so, where should we move?

I have a feeling a lot of people are living with similar questions these days.

What we’ve learned, so far, is that living a “slow life” is challenging but possible for us, and deepens our experience of life and each other considerably, given our definition of “life’s meaning,” which is to consciously nurture and value our relationship with each other, family, friends, our 4-legged companions, and our land.

Certainly, the 4-leggeds have greater companionship and a better quality of life. Phillip now comes home to…well, a home, instead of another workplace where tasks have mounted during long workdays and work weeks spent earning income to pay for a lifestyle we never, really, experience. The shopping’s done, the house is clean (enough), the laundry’s finished, a welcoming meal has been prepared and the dogs are walked and sitting near me instead of in their kennels from 7 AM till one of us gets home at night. We can all relax, sit together, share our day’s stories, and enjoy our nighttime hours without tedious distractions and the interruptions of necessary chores.

The benefits for me are rich. I take daily walks on the trail, write, cook, breathe with the 4-leggeds, and do all of this in the silence my spirit needs to listen and create. I sit with the sunrise and watch the hawks hunt; life isn’t something that will happen some day; I’m “in it” now. I don’t mind housework; it facilitates my meditation and helps me work through writing blocks and tricky plots.

We’re edging along a tenuous and precarious tightrope, but the view is glorious.

Slow-living is not for everyone, but I can only emphasize that—even if available only for a time—its rewards are deeply healing and wonderful for the spirit. It makes me observe more critically our society’s mad consumerism, which creates ever-increasing demands on our time and the pace with which we move through it.

Life presents constant choices and those choices circle around and become the architecture of our life. I’m here to say it’s possible to pause, to say no, to retreat, to do with less, to cut back on hours given to accruing money and to give them back to yourself and those you love.

It’s possible to breathe with the sunrise instead of hurtling away from it, battling your way down a highway to a job that devours more of your spirit than it feeds.

See ya at St. Vinnie’s.

Love and Healing on 24 Legs

Tags

4-Legged Companions, authenticity, blessing, co-creation, community, daily round, healing, spirit

I’ve been recovering from eye surgery this past week, which–so far–seems to have replaced double vision with single vision and welcome clarity.

The physical pain has been minimal, despite my resemblance to Oedipus (after the truth is known), Mr. Rochester (after the fire), and Suzanne Pleshette (after the birds). Despite their terrifying appearance, though, my eyes really don’t hurt a lot from the surgery itself, but become sore from exposure to light and from trying to focus on anything too intently for longer than a few minutes.

The wounding-to-be-healed that is the essence of surgery requires long hours of being still, resting, and, for me, lying in a darkened room for the desired healing to actually occur. The radio has been a comforting distraction and the length and frequency of my meditation time has been invited to grow, but the hours tick by slowly and enforced disengagement from activities that offer pleasure and invite me into the daily round is difficult to sustain with equanimity.

Phillip, hesitantly gauging my relative coherence and mobility as functional, returned to school with my blessing the day after my surgery. I had a burst of “well, this isn’t so bad” energy, and, quite overjoyed with my restored sight (slightly blurred by antibiotic ointment), darted around the house cleaning, answering e-mail, starting a load of laundry, bumping into walls, and predictably falling into bed about 9:00 that morning, thoroughly exhausted.

Whatever residual general anesthetic had borne me aloft with such energy and enthusiasm had exited my bloodstream completely, and I crashed into my pillow, leaking pink tears and feeling quite defeated and pathetic.

I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, trying to center my runaway thoughts and connect with my unsettled spirit. Gradually, but perceptibly, I felt an energy shift within and around me. The 4-leggeds had slowly crept into my room, one by one, and in silent communion, began to offer their comforting presence and peace. Clancy, the sweet gentle boy who normally follows my every step around the house, positioned himself beside me and near my heart, while his sister Riley kept her vigil by the window, always watchful in her natural role as the family guardian. The cats, Finnegan, Murphy, Mulligan, and Fiona, jumped up and nestled around me, joining Clancy and Riley, and enclosing me within their circle of love.

It felt as though I surrendered my otherness and separateness; my energy merged with theirs, and we rested in stillness together for hours that day, and have shared more “circles of love” throughout the week. Their selfless, peaceful presence has allowed me to relax deeply, and has revealed connections more profound than the limiting imagery of words can corral and convey. This is a different experience from that of a “shared nap” with my animals; it has felt more like a deep knowing, alive and actively present, is passing between us. Sharing loving energy with them this way has been one of the most healing experiences of my life, both surprising and humbling in its renewal of my spirit.

Gratitude has been my dominant feeling in response to the restoration of my vision; I am thankful for the surgeon, certainly, and even more grateful for the healing presence and care provided by Phillip, who has patiently tended to my pain, clumsiness, and craving for chocolate chip cookies. Family and friends have called, and sent notes, and e-mailed love and encouragement, reminding me of their individual and collective dearness in my life.

But it is the holy tending of the 4-leggeds that has most unexpectedly gifted my heart with healing this past week. Their deep sense of authentic presence has brought me to a stillness that is new and lovely. However transitory this level of stillness and awareness may prove to be, my animal companions have contributed to my lasting healing and spiritual growth; that is certain. I have learned that there are burdens we are able to release under the influence and presence of 4-legged companions that language cannot touch and physicians cannot prescribe.

It is good to be reminded of our dependency and individual frailty, at times. It is so easy to believe we are, as we imagine, the single-minded, autonomous architects of our lives. The ego drives the engine so effortlessly, until our genuine vulnerability reveals our inherent need for connection and care. I feel blessed to once again clarify my place within creation’s web of giving and receiving, with an emphasis, for now, on receiving.

It is frightening but necessary for us humans to fall, over and over, and be caught by Love. And it is always surprising what shape Love will assume. An infant, a friend, a husband, a teacher, a garden, a work of art…or this time, for me, two dogs and four cats in a darkened room made light by our shared and holy energy.