Breath of Life

Tags

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.

 

Riversong

Tags

Balance, co-creation, daily round, Listening, Nature, Noticing, Photography, River, Slow Life, spirit, spring, Transformation

Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. ~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

The spirit of spring, for me, certainly includes the divine discontent Grahame mentions, but perhaps it feels more like a sacred and welcome effervescing than a discontent. It is a readiness to emerge…I wonder if it’s felt by butterflies as they pierce the sheltering confines of their cocoons?

I yearn to muck about in the gardens and to co-create with the earth, to honor my winter’s rest by cleaning the house from top to bottom. This is the time I listen for the river’s spring song, familiar yet always new, as though my Creator is calling me forth into the new season’s green dance.

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. ~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Phillip was home from work last week, and we decided to tackle some home improvement projects, but also planned daily adventures that took us out and away from home. Last year, temperatures in the 80’s allowed us to get all the gardens cleaned, weeded and mulched. This year, they’re still sleeping beneath the snow.

The river was barely open at the beginning of the week, then gradually the ice retreated and at dawn, returning ducks and geese floated dreamily down the river. By Friday, most of the ice had melted, so off we went on the year’s first canoe trip.

The pictures, I think, make it look like we had a chilly ride, but it was really quite pleasant, though utterly absent of green. Still, the spring smells of thawing earth and the glorious birdsong bathed us in promises the next few weeks will keep.

We met some men fishing for walleyes and another pair using a seine, probably for carp.

Sandhill cranes and Canada geese called and flew overhead, red-wing blackbirds chimed along the bank, and we met the pair of ducks that nested in our garden last spring. This year, our fox has a new hole very near the “duck garden,” so I hope they’ll nest elsewhere.

The rest of our week together was happy: we took a day to go antiquing, and spent our Easter Sunday with family, but it’s the lovely time in our canoe that consecrated the week most profoundly for me, leisurely paddling and listening to the waking earth and river sing our spirits back to life.

By the river and with it and on it and in it…It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing…  ~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Phillip returned to school today and I started the housecleaning after he left this morning. A crew has come to the bridge to pull up and replace the old planks and side rails. The incessant beeping of their front-end loader as it backed up, over and over, initially made the pups bark protectively until they were sufficiently reassured and accustomed to it, a good thing, since the bridge repair is scheduled to last the month.

The temperature is near freezing, but I stepped outside to shake some rugs and watch the light dance over the river. A few last pieces of ice floated by and I watched two male cardinals battle for a nesting site. I noticed a female waiting and watching. I wonder if she favors one or the other? I wanted to stay outside, but the air was cold and my indoor chores called me back.

I hope I’ll have time again this afternoon to walk down near the riverbank and listen to the river’s music, singing over and over, “Come; join the spring’s green dance!” Winter muscles need practice to get back in shape and I want to be ready to dance up a storm when spring comes to stay.

…when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.  ~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

 

 

To Market, To Market

Tags

daily round, Farmers' Market, Garden, Home, Milwaukee Public Market, Organic foods, spring, Whole foods, Winter, Wisconsin

I can tell it’s almost spring, though continuing snowfalls are no indication that this is so. But these days, the birdsong is all about spring, the sandhill cranes and red-tailed hawks are returning, and the inner time-keeper that heralds earth’s green abundance is causing me to shift from soup-making to craving salads and fruits and icy teas.

This is the time of year I countdown the days to the opening of farmers’ markets, in our local communities and in Madison, where the largest outdoor producer-only farmers’ market in the U.S. will open on April 20th. My own garden’s vegetables and fruits, local CSA’s’ offerings, and all these glorious farmers’ markets…such lovely, healthy bounty, and it’s almost here, near enough to smell!

The first 20 years of my adulthood were spent in Milwaukee, which is not a huge city, but at a population of 600,000 or so, the largest in the state. And since it’s the home to several universities and colleges as well as (still) many ethnic communities, shopping for produce, spices, and groceries was always a possible adventure.  In the early 70’s, the first “health food” stores brought the additional availability of whole wheat and other grains still absent from grocery store shelves. We could prepare and eat healthy meals, and fairly cheaply.

Then I married Phillip and moved to the “country.” I couldn’t adjust to the scarcity of fresh produce and lack of ethnic foods and spices. I drove 40 minutes to Madison to find healthy ingredients. I remember an older teacher sitting beside me in the staff lunchroom and commenting on the “funny-food” I brought for my lunches (probably something with garlic and spinach). It all brought home to me that a move of 50 miles had brought me back to the wretched dietary habits of the 1950’s and 60’s: better eating through chemicals, processing, excessive sugars and fats, and meat, meat and more meat. It really made the newness of the community and our marriage all the more challenging not to be able to cook, bake, and eat foods that fed our spirits as well as our bodies.

The Farmers’ Market in Madison, and growing and preserving as much food as we could, helped a lot every summer. And, as the years have passed, an increasing awareness of the health benefits derived from fresh, organic foods and ingredients, as well as a shift towards greater variety and sophistication in tastes, has altered the local food landscape for the better. Several community farmers’ markets are close and affordable, and also provide wonderful opportunities to connect with friends and hear updates on everyone’s stories.

And when the cold winds do blow and shut down access to fresh garden produce, local groceries now stock organic choices. A few years ago, a woman opened a wonderful bulk goods store in our area, working with local and Midwest Amish and Mennonite suppliers. A short, beautiful ride in the country and I can stock up on inexpensive organic grains and spices that keep our meals varied and healthy all winter. I’d never tried some of these before (spelt; kamut; rye berries) and have enjoyed experimenting with new recipes.

This week I met with a friend at the indoor Milwaukee Public Market, a place I’ve enjoyed visiting since it opened in 2005. While not the most affordable place to shop, it’s a wonderful resource for specialty “treats,” people-watching, and to pay homage to the history of Milwaukee’s Third Ward. Years ago, when I worked downtown, I’d walk to the Third Ward over lunch break just to watch men unload crates and crates of fresh produce and fruits. It’s always good for my spirit to be back in Milwaukee and to share a meal with a friend, but now it’s also good to come back and cook up a healthy meal from ingredients I can buy here, at home.

My friend Bob, and I, at The Milwaukee Public Market

Time to bake some whole-grain organic soda bread for our St. Patrick’s celebrations…Joy to your first day of spring! May it bring a season of fresh and blessed health to your mind, body, and spirit, and may there be enough green in your pocket, on your plate and outside your window to make your life rich and your spirit merry!

 

The Quickening Time

Tags

Aging, authenticity, Creativity, daily round, gifts, Listening, Meditation, Noticing, Photography, Slow Life, spirit, Transformation, wholeness, Winter

Winter continues to linger at Full Moon Cottage. Today, another storm has brought 4 new inches of heavy, wet snow. The quality of the snow, however, indicates that spring is near, since the air temperature is too warm to sustain a snow that is dry and fluffy. Winter isn’t over, but it’s moving along, as the greater hours of daylight confirm. 

Our energy shifts away from the need to incubate seeds of ideas into acting upon them, from the stillness of winter’s tomb towards rolling away the rock and stepping into the light of another spring and the green life we’re called to create and recreate.

In my free time, I’ve been playing with paint samples and garden catalogues, two sure signs my spirit is quickening. (No surprise that the medical definition of “quickening” refers to the first detected movements of the life within a mother’s womb.)

The temptation to rush into projects has always been a weakness of mine; thankfully, I’ve finally learned to notice and honor the impulse but invite it to wait and trust that my creativity, if properly fed and rested, will birth what it must when gestation is complete.

“Take more time; cover less ground,” wrote Merton, and it’s become my later life’s mantra.

In the meantime, I meditate. I pay attention to dreams. I listen. Winter is still with me and her lesson books are still open. There are truths to retrieve, like threads that have unraveled and must be gently pulled forward and woven again into the tapestry of my life to make it healed and whole. Hold up one experience at a time to the light; enter it and know its meaning for my life now, and then weave this into the next experience. Spring will call forth the proper action.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been re-reading my childhood diaries. I began keeping a diary when I was eight and continued for the next 30 years. (Since, then, I’ve kept e-mails and journals on hard drive and now, in a “cloud.”) I’ve been focusing on my diaries from 4^th grade through 7^th grade, the years when individuation and finding one’s voice seem to begin blooming in earnest, since those years are integral to understanding my current book’s characters.

At the end of 6^th grade, my family moved, and I was dropped into a new class where friendships had been long-formed and there were clearly-drawn lines separating the girls into groups that were accorded clear and varying levels of “worthiness.” When I later became a middle school teacher, I fought this tyranny earnestly. But, it seems, like other forms of bullying, it persists, flowing around teachers and parents like a river that must run its course, no matter what stones stand in its path. Pecking orders must be established, I guess. (Although I would never offer the persistence of cliques and bullying as an excuse to surrender the need to constantly teach kindness and compassion to middle-schoolers.)

I’d forgotten what a hard time I had with this life shift, struggling for most of the next year to find the sense of self that had begun to be confidently defined at my former school. I missed friends and teachers with whom my growth and self-knowledge had felt sewn together and merged into a quilted patchwork of community.

At my new school, I felt both isolated and exposed at a time when a girl most wants to blend in and be part of a group. And it probably wasn’t as dramatic as I felt it to be, but our feelings create our reality and mine, during this adjustment, felt unwieldy and miserable. Of course, those days flowed into a new year, a place where the clouds lifted and the sun gradually began to shine. Winter ended and green life returned. I was changed.

Reading these once-upon-a-time stories from my life has brought me many gifts: Steps of my life’s dance have again been clarified; patterns of interaction have been brought into focus and their sources better understood; methods of evasion I’ve used to conceal my feelings, even from my own heart, have emerged, and melodies my spirit knew but had forgotten have been sung back to me by the girl who wrote these diaries.

I hope she sings through my dreams and into the book I’m writing, but like the spring, her gifts to me will be born fully when they’re ready. For now, I’m content to ponder and feel a new wholeness quickening.

Everything Changes

Tags

Aging, Balance, Change, co-creation, daily round, death, Family, healing, Hospice, Nature, Photography, Relationship, spirit, Transformation, wisdom

In the past four days, we’ve had a snowstorm, a thunderstorm, temperatures in the upper 50’s and today, another snowstorm. This morning, chickadees have been flying back and forth to the feeders, singing their spring songs, but that’s changed again in the past hour. They seem to have adapted to winter’s return. I wonder if they can tell that tomorrow the temperatures will dip once more below zero, or if this will surprise them?

Everything changes: not always in a day, or even a lifetime, and rarely all at once, but as we revolve through life, it seems every cycle brings us back to a place that’s similar but never the same as it was. Companions have left our side and new ones now walk the path beside us; our physical capabilities or our views have altered; the degree of hope we perceive in our hearts and the encouragement offered by the world around us varies.

We may be surprised by loss, tragedy, or reversals, changes that cause the geographies describing our relationship to self, others, place, and spirit to evolve or regress, or dramatically alter, and we either adapt or do not, depending upon our finesse and willingness to regain our balance and accept these changes that were unsought and undesired.

But even changes we’ve planned for and worked towards demand our willingness to discard elements of our current situation, boundaries, or relationships that were once rooted in the earth of our existence.

We devise systems to manage change: education, healthcare, government. We create “news programs” to discuss the changes collectively experienced over 24 hours, and share phone calls, or posts in social media, or text messages to update each other more intimately and frequently regarding changes in our “status.”

It seems, societally, we’re addicted to insignificant change and hasten its rhythms to keep us engaged in life. Until substantial change threatens our sense of security, the way we “want” things to be, or the direction we desire to move. Then, we resist, argue, deny, or retreat, often to our detriment, though certainly stillness, discernment, and speaking our own truth are valuable companions as we navigate the flow of this ever-changing energy we call life.

I’ve been reading another book on the spirituality of change, specifically as it relates to aging. This is a topic that fascinates me and that I’ve been asked to address in presentations to those who care for geriatric patients or to those who, like me, are interested in exploring changes that are specific to aging humans and our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

Over and over, I’ve encountered the understanding that the happiest individuals are those who have used their intelligence and gifts to the best of their abilities, but who resist grasping too tightly to any outcome, and instead nurture a willingness to let go and to flow with the greater current, looking for unexpected blessing and the potential for creativity in forming one’s response.

The central change we face as we age is our death, and our health as elders may depend upon the degree to which we embrace our death as friend, foe, inevitability, or a fearful possibility we can avoid through the “magic of medicine.”

I know of a woman who is 89 and considering a heart valve replacement. All of her organs are somewhat compromised and the surgery, if successful, will require a lengthy stay in a nursing facility for her convalescence. She has said, “I’m afraid to die.” I hope she is aware that hospice is another choice, and that patients served by hospices often live longer than those who instead choose aggressive medical interventions, but her fear is driving her choice to undergo this surgery. Family members often disagree about such choices and thus another level of chaos and distraction can intrude upon our end-of-life choices and experiences. Answers are elusive and, in the end, each person has to choose and, hopefully, be at peace regarding these choices.

Over and over in my work as a chaplain I met people at these crossroads and tried to be a listening presence as they navigated their way to peace, or battled through final breaths to the change that came anyway and inevitably. Regardless of my inclinations, my job was to support them through theirs. Certainly, a patient who said, “I am afraid to die” indicated an obvious need to dialogue, and in conversations with a chaplain or other trained caregiver, the patient often reached greater peace as his fears, his beliefs, and his sources of strength were opened, explored, validated and employed creatively to face the days ahead.

Rituals sometimes helped ease deterrents to dying peacefully, but so did the hard work of asking forgiveness, or extending it to another, reviewing a life that proved more light-filled than first admitted, re-connecting the dying to loved ones who had become distant, or to a faith community that affirmed its willingness to become involved.

It taught me to pay attention to my own dying: to choose responses to possible scenarios; to designate my power of attorney, complete a will, and file the legal forms with my physicians and loved ones; to discuss with my husband, relatives, and friends, what treatments and care I would desire at the end of my life, and to clarify how I want my body to be returned to the earth. Such tasks completed, although unforeseen change may cause their revision, I’m better able to turn back towards the amazing mystery and ever-changing dance with my ever-changing life. Whatever it brings, storms or halcyon days of mellow sunshine, I hope I’ll go with the flow.

Thin Places and Sacred Ancestors

Tags

Ancestor, blessing, co-creation, community, Family, Listening, Nature, Photography, Relationship, Saints and Souls, spirit, Thin Places, wholeness, wisdom

When my Celtic ancestors felt the energy of a place was sacred, they called it a “thin place,” meaning the boundary between this world and others was easily crossed at such locations; spirits might travel freely; the ancestors—and other spirits—were close.

Halloween, in part, is derived from Samhain, which marked the New Year for the Celts, a time when the souls of the year’s recent dead traveled beyond earth, and the long-deceased came back to “visit,” their presence welcomed.

When the Catholic Church sought to convert indigenous cultures (or “pagans,” the term Romans used to designate “country people”), it took their sacred days and translated them into Christian observances, and so November 1 became All Saints Day and November 2 is called All Souls Day. (These latter souls, presumably, await heaven and sainthood in purgatory, where one’s lingering sins are “purged.”)

Regardless of one’s theological views and practices, in the Northern Hemisphere this is the season when all the world’s considered a thin place. It seems natural, as vegetation dies back, exposing nature’s stark architecture, to enter the time of darkness and long shadows and consider the spirits of the newly and long-departed.

It’s fitting and important to set aside special days to focus our attention and gratitude upon single themes, events, people and memories. The danger is that we relegate our awareness of these important bonds to one-day-a-year only, as we relegate our acknowledgement of the Sacred to barely an hour a week, or less. (And heaven help you if a church service is ending as a football game is starting! The Sacred better get out of the way quickly.)

For growing numbers of people, however, it’s important to integrate connection with the Sacred in meaningful ways every day; nothing is profane unless we see it as such, and I think that explains the increasing attraction to non-Western cultures and their spiritual practices, as well as seeking new ways to honor the earth and all those who live in communion with us.

I’ve mentioned the books of Malidoma Patrice Somé before. My favorites are Of Water and Spirit and The Healing Wisdom of Africa. In both, he illustrates repeatedly the link between the deceased ancestors and the living community of his people, the Dagara tribe of West Africa. The ancestors are sources of wisdom and counsel for tribal leadership, choices, and direction. It is a natural behavior to commune with them daily.

The elderly in the tribe, because of their advanced age and proximity to death, are viewed as living on the bridge between worlds and therefore closer to the ancestors, and the newborn are viewed similarly; they have “just arrived” from the ancestral land and the company of the Wise Ones. This forms a tribal link between the young and the elderly, whose relationships are very close, sometimes edging out deep connections with those who, by necessity, are more fully engaged with “the things of this world.” The elderly and very young are believed to have the ability to speak with the ancestors more fluently and are respected for this connection.

In our materialistic, work-focused approach to life, we cart the young ones away to day care and the elderly off to nursing homes, or we move far away from childhood communities, severing connections that follow us from birth to death, and denying ourselves the deep riches of lifelong community. Relationships and the wisdom of our ancestors don’t matter so much to us. The immaterial, the insubstantial lacks value; or rather, it can’t be accorded a price point, which is what we most value. We’re often connected to our money and our desire (or frustrated desire and anxiety) more than to relationships with family, living or dead.

The recent Presidential campaign has clearly illustrated that “what should be important” is jobs: making money and spending money. One candidate is perhaps a bit more blatant and aggressive in his disregard for the earth, the ancestor we all share, by promising mining, fracking, and the extraction of resources needed by corporations (and robbed, if necessary, from lands that are currently federally-protected). Whatever it takes to get and keep people working (when they’re not shopping), will be accommodated.

But both candidates have neglected to confront the lack of reverence we have for the earth and the resulting devastation wreaked by storms like Hurricane Sandy. No mention of conservation, our role in climate change, global warming, or the sacrifices we might make to correct these, has been made. No invitations to alter our worldviews or perspectives have been offered. People who lost their homes along the coast are being urged to “rebuild” instead of to “rethink.” And how could it be any different when the campaigns’ exorbitant costs are funded by the wealthy corporations (i.e., “persons”) and their officers, who reap the short-term benefits from these ill-gotten resources and the new slave laborers we’ve consented to become?

We carry our ancestry in our DNA. I’ve enjoyed episodes of a program that connects people with their ancestors through investigating their genetic roots. Their DNA leads to unearthed connections played out across charts, and they learn about their ancestors’ stories, sometimes going back hundreds of years. It’s profoundly moving to see the featured guests weep, share their amazement, or evidence stunned silence as these deep connections are revealed.

We yearn for sacred connection, all the more because we have forgotten who—and what—we are. Imagine the wealth afforded by conversations with our ancestors. What can we do differently? What did they learn from their trials, errors, successes? Are they proud of the people we are becoming and the world we are creating? How can we better steward our gifts and those of the earth?

Perhaps, instead of just rushing, working and shopping during these sacred days of early November, we could stand in our thin places and listen for the wisdom of our ancestors and the lessons of Mother Earth. Perhaps we could kneel in reverence and gratitude for all of these holy connections that exist to nourish our souls, offer us wisdom and energize our spirits.

Perhaps we could change ourselves and so, the world. Because we’re always standing in a thin and holy place, being held by Mother Earth, with the wisdom of our ancestors circling in our hearts.

Just listen.

A Dry Season

Tags

Balance, Centering, Dry season, Nature, Photography, Transformation

A drought has altered the course of the daily round. We’ve had no measurable rain for weeks. The grass has retreated to brown dormancy and the river is diminished to a shallow, narrow stream flowing around islands and sandbars.

The temperatures have risen to the mid-90’s during the day and linger in the upper 70’s at night.

We wake early to water the gardens, just enough to keep the vegetables and flowers alive and the birdbaths cool, clean, and full. The lawn crunches underfoot and high hot winds from the south and southwest blow the dust of the dead everywhere. Moisture’s life is short these days.

Life takes on a kind of dreaminess, all the sharp edges soften; energy is conserved and afternoon naps overtake us rather than offering us the possibility of accepting or declining their invitation. Sentences are begun and then linger in the air; pauses breathe through them and conclusions may or may not transpire.

It doesn’t seem to matter.

I walked to the bridge early this morning and observed the river life community adjusting to its receding environment. I noticed a carp roll near the shoreline, its usual bravado intact, until it ran aground upon a sandbar now risen above the waterline, and found itself high and dry, surprised by utter aridity. It flipped its way back into the river, the energy of relief propelling it safely to deeper water.

Several kinds of turtles live in the river; today, I watched a young Eastern spiny softshell male try to conceal itself among rocks. Unfortunately, the shallow water allowed the polka dots on its shell to remain fairly vivid. It dug deeper into the mud and eventually disappeared under a cloud of riverbed.

A larger turtle I couldn’t identify seemed surprised to discover itself exposed where formerly it had felt safe. It struggled to navigate over and around rock deposits it’s been accustomed to comfortably swimming above, encountered a sandbar, and finally swam towards the safe deep channel at the center of the river and submerged.

Four years ago, to the day, yellow police tape closed the bridge to bike and pedestrian traffic, due to the flood-mad local rivers overflowing all their borders and boundaries. People boated down the main streets of a neighboring town, left or lost their homes, re-routed their driving—if they could drive at all—and wondered at the power of a real and present earth they had barely noticed or counted as a living force, given the busy and important routines of their daily lives. The idea that their clothing, televisions and Lazy-Boy chairs would be carried away by the river left them speechless and confused, at least for a time.

Things change. Balance is all.

I thought about the dry seasons of my own life, when grief, loss, or a challenging transition left me unmoored and separated from the fluid source that normally waters my spirit. At such times the sacred has no meaning and rituals are empty of blessing. There’s no sense of solace, and words like “faith” and “trust” taste tinny and bloodless.

The river life reminded me again that Spirit’s channel runs deep within, true and always.

Life’s rocks and sandbars can be navigated and droughts survived; new meaning and story can emerge and transformation can be realized in its own time, if I live from the deep peace at the center of my spirit.

Out For a Spin

Tags

Biking, daily round, Photography, Slow Life, spirit

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. ~ Ernest Hemingway

I was almost always outside when I was young—like most kids—unless I had “my nose in a book.” We played games, climbed trees, built seasonally appropriate forts (tree or snow), and kept ourselves occupied from dawn till the fireflies and our mother’s gentle whistle called us home.

At some point, I stopped climbing trees, and roller skating, and playing kick-the-can. Jumping rope isn’t as fun anymore, nor is my hula hoop.

But I still love to bike. I first learned how to maneuver a two-wheeler with training wheels on a little red Schwinn. When my father took off the training wheels and gave me an encouraging push into the back yard, I surprised him by running myself into a tree. The tree, I should say; there was only one, and he hadn’t pushed me towards it.

He revised his thinking and decided perhaps a wide open space would allow room for practice, so off we went to the acres of Washington Park, where, for a time, I ran into every tree he didn’t push me towards.

When I was eight, we lived in another town, and I attended another school and wore another uniform. I came home after my third grade Confirmation, where I’d agreed to be a “soldier of Christ,” (and had dreaded for weeks the “blow to the cheek” that in reality amounted to a playful tap) and was surprised to find a shiny new blue Huffy wrapped with ribbons and bows…

The bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world. ~ Susan B. Anthony, 1896 

Eventually I mastered biking, and I continue to feel a joy that pulses through every cell whenever I head down the road or trail on my bike. I no longer agree to being anyone’s soldier, but I’ll always associate biking with sacrament. Now I ride a Trek, a brand of bike designed (and formerly manufactured) a few miles from my home. I don’t race and I’m not out to do anything but get into the zen of lovely, rolling, bi-pedal meditation. Once I start, I can go for miles.

After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow. ~ H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance

I have collected 18 years of trail passes from the Glacial Drumlin Bike Trail. It’s near our home and named after one of the land formations the glaciers formed as they rolled and crushed their way through our part of the state 25,000 to 10,000 years ago and then retreated, leaving behind lakes and land formations known as moraines, drumlins, eskers, kettles, and kames. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_landforms)

How could a land not be magical with those kinds of names given to its ridges, hills, and depressions? Biking 10 miles or so, I can see almost all of these, along with 2 rivers, a lake, and a wildlife area. (http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/wildlife/wildlife_areas/lakemills.htm)

There are many wonderful books about cycling. One of my all-time favorites is Miles From Nowhere, by Barbara Savage. (http://www.amazon.com/Miles-Nowhere-Round-Bicycle-Adventure/dp/0898861098)

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

There is a freedom and lightness of being that I feel when I bike through space and time. I never know who or what I’ll encounter, and I usually bring my camera so I can stop if the flow and scenery seem to invite it. It’s a peaceful and almost silent past time; I have biked my way through losses and healing, and joyful periods of my life, weaving—or reweaving—meaning.

This week, the wildflowers along the trail were lovely: the electric lavender of the wild phlox, the gentle pink of wild roses, wild onions, fading trilliums, deep rosy geraniums hiding in the shadows…there’s always something to soothe the heart and spirit.

Here are just a few photographs from a recent ride, or “a spin,” as my mother called it.

Maybe I’ll see you on the trail: I’m the one with the dreamy expression and camera, not racing and, usually, avoiding trees.

Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I have hope for the human race. ~ H.G. Wells

Only This

Tags

daily round, Photography, Poetry, spirit

There is only this:

The breath of the dog on the bed and the breath of the dog in the living room,

the settling of cats,

the scrambling of the squirrel along the deck’s railing—

he, too, forages for seed and meaning.

There is this, too: the flow of the river,

the crow on the cooked branch,

the chiming of pipes in the wind,

the waves of the wind,

the insistence of the wind that we be more than we are,

that we are more than we believe,

that now is the god we seek;

we, poised and ready to breathe in the holy, the fact there is only this,

and breathe out the yes that allows the now,

and the love of now,

to marry. 

Going Inside to Play: In Praise of Idleness

Tags

Balance, healing, Idle, Meditation, spirit

The hardest work is to go idle.  ~ Yiddish Proverb

Ages ago, when I was a very young college student studying theater arts, a few of our professors encouraged meditation in differing forms, but always with the purpose of drawing our attention inward, to a place centered and still. The creative process is such a mystery that it requires these journeys inward for excavation, image work, listening, and synthesis. But this is also as true of life itself, for everyone, and always.

I have friends who yearn to meditate and engage with it as a practice but who can “never find the time,” and this breaks my heart, because I know how hard they work –almost nonstop—day in and day out, and how rarely they play or even allow hallowed moments of “non-work” to exist and open up their lives to possibilities of stillness and the kind of renewal it alone brings us.

 Who has taught us to punish ourselves so earnestly? What is it we fear in encounters with the self? How true is it, finally, to equate our worth with our productivity and “busyness?” Why on earth, while we’re on earth, wouldn’t we deserve regular times of peace and quiet? What has made us so blind to the need for balance?

Why is our first impulse to condemn idleness? Part of it is due to our American heritage, I suppose, and the Protestant work-ethic that people pledge allegiance to without the introspection or reflection a mosquito gives its next bite; some of it results from bad religion, handed down and accepted without question; a good bit is derived from unique family dysfunctions that become the rhythms to which we dance till/unless we learn better music and tempos, but all of it is nonsense and fear-based. And the imbalance generated by “nose to the grindstone” thinking and behavior makes us ill, so very ill in body, mind, and spirit.

A perusal of quotes regarding “idleness” is illuminating. Among others, Kierkegaard, Chekhov, and Virginia Woolf agree that me that idleness is necessary to our health as humans; many others view it with fear and disdain—not surprising in the world we’ve created. (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/idleness.html) Idleness is not the same as indolence to me, though they are used as synonyms. Neither is “work,” as in engaging with our gifts and passions, synonymous with “busyness,” that cultural frenzy with lists and tasks and always ensuring one is a human doing and never a human being. Engagements with our passions brings us to the center and we lose track of time; busyness causes stress because it so effectively binds us to time and keeps us away from the voice and needs of our spirit.

It is lovely and necessary to create, to work hard, to use our innate giftedness, and to produce something that makes the world, the community, or family, or self, the better for having done it. But this activity and the energy expended require fruitful balance in peace, introspection, reflection, and stillness. The avoidance of this—working “harder” and running faster to evade the still small voice within—is diseased and, at its core, “inhumane.”

For several years, I worked as a chaplain in a heart hospital and came to know the “types” who frequently became patients there: the over-achievers, who whipped out their laptops and cellphones within hours after life-saving surgeries; the people so steeped in denial of their brokenness or grief that their hearts just gave out from being so cruelly “silenced;” those who were non-compliant with prescribed self-care regimens, who routinely “forgot” to take medications or engage in exercise that would restore health; and those who never considered they were spirit as well as body, and that life was transcendent as well as empirical.

I always recall one of my patients, a retired and eminent heart surgeon, who could perceive no connection between his own heart attack and the fact it occurred on the day of his wife’s funeral. He could not accept that grief or loss had any place in his well-being, and was most anxious to leave the hospital and get home to finish necessary tasks he had set out for himself. We cope and grieve differently, and in our own time, but this tenacious avoidance of connecting dots and feeling feelings was something I observed frequently in heart patients.

This is not to blame the patient for the illness: most of us do the best we can till we know better, and our bodies are machines that weaken for many, many reasons, but there is often a connection between illness and a lifetime of beliefs and the behavior patterns they choreograph.

And the thing is, our beliefs and patterns never change unless we name them, review them, assess and evaluate them through reflection and introspection…and change. And this requires what appears to be “idleness.” We need daily recess: playtime and dream dates with our spirits, and connections with the Sacred within and without.

Meditation isn’t tricky. You don’t need to travel anywhere, earn a degree, pay a lot of money, or understand another language to meditate. Books and classes are available: so is a floor—or chair—where you can sit, close your eyes, and breathe for five minutes twice a day, and then, maybe longer. Do it with a friend or do it alone. Be kind to yourself; accept your feelings; heal.

Over the years I’ve continued to meditate and explore what that means for me. As I’ve aged, my stillness practices have only expanded, and all of them can be meditative: Centering prayer, mindfulness practices, walking or biking the trail, dreamwork, sitting with the 4-leggeds, walking a labyrinth, mandala creation and meditations, sitting meditation with and without images, breathwork, photography and gardening, canoeing the river, yoga and yoga prayer, journaling, soup-making, and (yes) housecleaning—all can help me to still and focus, release negative energy and open my spirit to needed healing and joy.

There are days I prefer music and days I need silence; days when I must move, and days when stillness beckons. And there are days when lying on a blanket beneath lovely clouds or a field of stars is mandatory playtime. Don’t look for “rules” regarding how and where, or when you meditate; do look at your need for rules.

For almost 40 years, meditation has saved me, over and over, from tipping into the illness of imbalance or calling me back from it, and I have learned so much about myself and the need for balance.

“Namaste” is the beautiful Hindu word for encounter: used as a word to bless both our greetings and partings, it means, “the Holy/Sacred in me recognizes and is grateful for the Holy/Sacred in you.” One way to begin to slow down is to use this word purposefully, whether silently or out loud, as we move through the day. Seek balance. Let yourself become a human being as often as you are a human doing.

Idleness is the Spirit’s playground.

 

A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.
~Rumi

 I have collected dozens of meditation books, but a few I return to frequently and still, are:

 Meditation for Life, by Martine Batchelor

Meditation for the Love of It, by Sally Kempton

Meditation, by Richard W. Chilson

God Makes the Rivers to Flow, by Eknath Easwaran

 As I’ve mentioned before, Spiritual Literacy, by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, can guide you towards many ways of deepening through self-reflection. The DVD series derived from this book is a wonderful resource for “visual and aural” meditations. Or, visit their website: www.spiritualityandpractice.com

 Here’s Fr. Thomas Keating, offering an introduction to Centering Prayer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IKpFHfNdnE

And here is a wonderful resource for heart care through meditation, backed by years of scientific testing and research: www.heartmath.com

Coming Back to Earth

Tags

Ash Wednesday, Lent, Love, spirit

You shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our journeying
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
~ T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” Four Quartets (1942)

To hear the song of the reed everything you have ever known must be left behind.  ~ Rumi

I always come to a point in the winter when I feel like I’m floating. Long weeks of silence and days muffled by snowfall, or the fatigue felt from hours spent wrestling with words and staring at a landscape drained of color leave me unmoored. There’s no anchor and I’m about to let go and drift away on whatever clouds offer me a ride.

And then Lent sails into port, calls me home, and grounds me once more.

 “Lent” is derived from the Old English word for springtime and refers to the lengthening hours of light now accorded us as our earth and spirits lean more profoundly towards the sun. It can be a lovely time of awakening and adjusting our orientation to Love, having metaphorically spent the winter in our spiritual hibernacula, gestating new meaning from the past year’s insights and experiences.

I’ve always treasured the season for its simplicity and compassionate length of almost seven weeks. “Take more time; cover less ground,” said Thomas Merton, and Lent’s gentle allotment of long weeks for re-awakening and renewing our connections to our Source, self, and others more deeply and authentically feels both kind and necessary. It’s like the soft voice of someone who loves us and treats us as the precious beings we are, allowing us to waken gradually and purposefully choose our new position in the ongoing dance with Love, the one relationship that dictates the health of all others in which we engage.

Lent is, therefore, a time for reassessment: we can acknowledge former choices that did not serve this relationship; we can sift, discard, and settle on a new version (“turning”) of this relationship, and so be reconciled and transformed; and of course, we can do anything else or nothing. We’re given time to decide, but the invitation comes with the implicit responsibility on our part to do the work, expend the energy, and evolve.

And certainly, Lent is a time for reassessing our image of the Holy. “Your image of God creates you,” writes Richard Rohr. What images of the Transcendent do we retain that no longer serve our growth, or are no longer congruent with our definition of Love? As Rumi says, we may need to subtract everything we’ve known to finally “hear the song of the reed.”

In many Christian churches, Lent is inaugurated with a ritual of ashes as a way of symbolically bringing followers “back to earth” after winter’s dreamy isolation, and reminding them that spiritual growth is best grounded in humility (“humus/earth”). The invitation is to set down our egos and proceed plainly and honestly.

Nothing magnificent is required on the Lenten journey; in fact, stripping away the grandiose elements of our spiritual wardrobe helps us reveal the elemental truth at its core: we are, already and always, essentially unique shards of Love/God, and asked only to translate this truth—uniquely—throughout our lives. Lent is an invitation to come home to this truth, this self that reflects the Sacred so singularly and well.

Humility is a vital companion and filter to help us recognize that this is also essentially true of everyone and everything; without humility, our egos reject our connection to all, deny Love as our Source, and assign relative values to the gifts others have come to share. A lack of humility leads to hierarchies, enslavement, us/them thinking, misuse of the earth’s resources, and a devaluation of life’s inherent sacredness.

Ashes are a beautiful symbol of our interconnection with the web of creation. In the end, we are of the earth as we are of Love; we are composed of its elements and minerals, as is all creation, and return to it when our lives have ended. Humility is our nature, and anytime we can remind ourselves of this, we come home again.

Phillip’s mother cared for her husband at the end of his life, and this loss seemed to accelerate her own dance with the gradual erasure and evaporation granted to those whom Alzheimer’s disease chooses as partners. When she was yet able, she stayed with us at times to give his sister a break from the emotional toll of caretaking.

I must clarify that the sadness experienced by this measured loss was ours. We who loved and witnessed Virginia’s “emptying” mourned it; however, Virginia retained her sweet smile and ability to endear herself to others to the end of her life. As her history and memories were subtracted, it seemed she heard the song of the reed with increasing clarity.

I have a photograph I treasure of Phillip’s mother standing near him in the garden during one of her visits. She did not know our home when she stayed with us, but she recognized Phillip as someone dimly recalled and safe, and seemed to find such peace when they touched the earth and plants together. It was clear she found a home within this experience that steadied her spirit. And every day, often several times, the conversation would repeat. “Where are we? This is your garden? You live here? Isn’t this nice!”

 Stripped of her sense of self and place, she knew she was home when she touched the earth and smelled the garden, and could sense the reassurance of Phillip’s presence and love. She was a perfect combination of dignity and humility, her austere and undiminished spirit shone purely from eyes that did not know us but rested on the earth and knew home.

That photograph—of Phillip, his mother, the garden, and our beloved dog, Idgi, off to the side—has become one of my most beloved images of God.

Somehow, after his parents’ respective memorial services, Phillip and I became the keepers of their ashes until all the siblings could gather to honor these two lives more intimately and create a ritual for peacefully taking leave of the ashes.

One August, we were all in one place, in a town with a beautiful river. Some of us went exploring and located a simple and abandoned property with a peaceful spot to gather and sit together along the river’s bank. A spontaneous and communal decision was made to finally hold our “farewell service” and everyone went off to create his or her contribution.

The next day we met at the secluded riverbank. One sister shared a verse from her Bible; another shared a poem, Phillip sang and then led us in songs his parents loved; his brother shared a poem about Queen Anne’s lace, a plant he connected with his mother. I shared a poem I’d written about ashes and love. Stories were shared, and laughter, and song…all in simple and genuine gratitude for parents whose lives were marked by humility and guided by Love.

We set small candles in the little cardboard boats we’d fashioned, and sprinkled some of the ashes within, lighting the candles, then sending the boats gently off into the flowing embrace of the river, and scattering the remaining ashes along the riverbank, with a blessing and farewell.

Every Lent in all the years since, I recall this “Ash Tuesday,” our meeting and parting at the river, this sweet goodbye, and the deep bond of love I felt for those gathered and for the two spirits sailing off and, at the end of all their journeying, returning home.

May your Lenten journey grace you with humility, ground your spirit, and lead you home. 

On Saying Goodbye at the River in August

The weary world turns

And burns away life

To ash.

The flame that remains

Is love.

The wild world winds

And grinds away life

To ash.

The song that goes on

Is love.

Blessed lives seed goodness.

A garden of grace, a family, a world,

Love’s unending genesis

Passed on…

Passed on

To death, to life,

To ashes, to life,

To dust returned and life renewed,

Spirits free of matter,

Sloughing off the stuff of stars,

Life revolving, love’s revolution,

Wild, turning, whirling world

By love alone survived.

And we, the fruits of your love,

Plant you as fruit for the earth,

Again and again

Resurrected

And ground to ash.

We consecrate the grinding,

Life to ashes,

Yet not wholly:

Holy lives

Make holy ground,

Life at rest,

But love unbound.

 

Coming Out

Tags

artist, authenticity, Coming Out, spirit

It is never too late to become what you might have been.                                                                            ~ George Eliot/Mary Ann Evans

People have always trusted me with their stories, whether that was wise on their part or not. I remember a grade school friend trying to tell me he was gay before I even understood what that meant. I have a memory that we were leaning against the warm brick school building during an afternoon recess one lovely spring day and he began to share his feelings about another boy in class.

Maybe we were in 6^th or 7^th grade, and far less knowing than children are today, dressed in our uniforms (“Catholic-school-camo”) and trying to be cool. I remember his words alarming me, as though he’d suddenly lapsed into gibberish or begun revealing an advanced fluency in a foreign language, leaving me far behind in my English-only comprehension. I had no idea what he was talking about, of that I’m certain, but I can still see the anguish in his eyes and recall the immediate response of fierce protectiveness flooding my body; though, again, I had no idea what was happening. I innately knew I would attack, claws extended, anyone who deepened the pain my friend was already suffering for being “different.”

Friends and relative strangers have continued to come out to me through the years. I came to accept that there was some identifiable badge I received at birth that signaled “safe harbor” to friends burdened with this form of otherness and a need to find relief and peace.

I suppose, we all have these odd “openings” in our spirit that invite surprising revelations or secrets of one kind or another. Thankfully, I realized at an early age how sacred these exchanges are, and have tried to offer the love and support such intimacies deserve, for they were given so honestly and with such purity that one definition of sin I’ve come to understand is when we reject the invitation to witness another’s vulnerability laid bare on the world’s altar.

“May I tell you and show you who I am?”

“No.”

My parents appreciated and celebrated the arts, but didn’t actually want their daughter to pursue an artistic discipline as a career. They encouraged me to supplement my theater and English degrees with another in education, or perhaps I might also consider nursing, or even law, as professions that suited my intellectual gifts and would also ensure a life above the poverty line. They loved me and I loved them, but I caught their anxiety, or it matched my own, and I doubted I could survive if I chose a life in the arts.

I admired friends who had blazing internal loci of control, who nourished and validated their gifts regardless of whether they had the support of parents, teachers, critics, and friends, or not. They knew who they were and why they were here; there was nothing that prevented them from living authentically from the heart of this self-knowing. I wasn’t that secure, certain, or courageous, and turned towards choices and behaviors that assured approval, if not from myself than from those who mattered more in my creation of self-image.

We know where that leads: a life lived falsely can never truly make anyone happy.

I would never present the ensuing years as a tragedy, although they were initially not particularly joyful and I was not particularly alive.

Laurence G. Boldt, in Zen and the Art of Making a Living, says, “In Japan, the place where ‘the art’ is practiced is called the ‘dojo’ or ‘house of enlightenment.’ There is a popular saying. ‘The Dojo is everywhere!’ Wherever work is done in a present, conscious way, there is the house of enlightenment. Transformation is the action of both spiritual liberation and art.”

Eventually, I understood that I could make art of anything, and so I approached writing ad copy as an artist, and then teaching, and then chaplaincy, but I still identified with the job title rather than the deeper truth of my identity. I guess I needed the lengthy gestation many late-bloomers have required. The risk, of course, is that time will run out before we emerge from our safe cocoons and utter our cri d’couer; ironic, given all the years I was the vessel others chose for holding their own spirit’s true song…

And then, about six years ago, I began a graduate program, and in the first class we were asked to use one word to describe ourselves. It was surprising to hear many people identify themselves with their occupation, but not nearly as surprising as when I heard myself say, “Artist.” Immediately, the feelings of unworthiness washed over me; I felt others would feel I was pretentious and excessively egotistical. What on earth had come over me and why did I say that? Out loud? A lifetime of self-doubt and voices not my own banged around in my psyche and began their practiced parade through my heart.

And then the professor smiled, hugely, and said, “I love that!” Like magic, my words, affirmed by his, banished the voices from my spirit. And though they’ve tried to sneak back within, the eviction sign posted that day has remained and ended the appeal of my spirit as their residence.

Perhaps encouraged by the wonderful storyline in the movie Beginners, I’ve been telling friends lately that I’m “coming out” as an artist. In this film, Christopher Plummer’s character, based on writer/director Mike Mills’ own father, reveals his homosexuality to his family and friends when he is 75, and despite a diagnosis of terminal cancer, he dies while blossoming, fully himself and joyfully still becoming.

I love to watch the Monarch butterflies lay their eggs in mid-summer and have allowed milkweed to take over the garden in front of my dining room window for that reason. It smells heavenly and the intricate ball of blooms, like some lovely orb of Murano millefiori, is beautiful. The caterpillars, with their yellow and black stripes, are fun to observe, though they make the once tolerable milkweed display raggedly less acceptable. But the payoff comes when the glistening iridescence of the cocoons appears, and they hang from leaves and the deck railing like fairy decorations left for our delight. Now the daily observations become more faithful until the 10^th day or so, when the fragile butterflies emerge, damp with new life and unsteady until the wings slowly uncurl, and they fly off, tender and brave.

I don’t know why, all my life, others have come to me as they’ve begun to emerge from their cocoons, or why it took me so long to spread my own wings, but I do know we’re asked to hold each other through our transformations. And we have to witness and welcome each other’s coming out, saying, “Yes, this is who you are and I love it! And I will do everything in my power to encourage you to joyfully become still and fully more of who you are.”

One fine spring morning she pierces the shroud and comes out a butterfly. That is how in us, through the darkness, deliverance is busy.  ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

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)

Anam Cara: Dance Instruction From the Spirit

Tags

co-creation, healing, spirit, Spiritual direction

Work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible. ~ Rumi

I worked as a hospice chaplain at a time when people were just starting to purchase and learn about the value of a GPS (global positioning system) in their cars. I understand the need to be guided, especially when time dictates the fulfillment of the “urgent care” service you provide, as is often the case with hospice work; however, I never needed to buy one because I generally worked in easily located nursing facilities.

And, to be honest, I inherently resisted purchasing a GPS. I suppose this was fundamentally due to my deep mistrust of authority and love for finding my own way through the maze. This is not a trait that has always served me well, but I’m at an age where I notice it, shake hands, and agree to reassess and reconsider when appropriate, finally aware that the one who offers guidance is not always intent on suppressing my rights and gifts so much as wisely assisting me in living more freely as well as more fully, and avoiding the road hazards I’ve ignorantly or unconsciously placed in my path.

I’ve always been someone who naturally spirals into the knots life presents and figures her way out; I love employing unique blends of creativity and logic within an ethical framework, and I credit my parents and years (and years) of Catholic education for inviting and encouraging my style of reflective cartwheeling through life. (I have no stories of abusive, scary nuns to share at parties. Mine were highly creative, gentle-but-spirited and well-educated women who were gifted, affirming teachers and wonderful role models. Still are.)

But for me, being a smart creative woman in the Catholic Church—one who did not view the convent as a potential path—eventually meant taking and exploring my spirituality outside the boundaries of the dogma and hierarchy the Big C seemed to perpetuate and rely upon more for its power to dominate and control than nurture. I was/am neither a virgin nor a mother, the two archetypes the males controlling the Catholic spin seem to recognize and promote as valid.

Ironically, the excellent education provided by Catholic schools led me to value my spirit enough to save it by leaving the structure and living with its better teachers, like Francis, Bernard, Teresa, Ignatius, and my lifelong mentors, Pierre Teilhard and Thomas Berry. More recently, I’ve felt embraced by the writing of people like Judy Cannato, and throughout my life, countless and treasured teachers from other paths have fed my spirit and connection with Love.

I am a spiritual pilgrim, and chose peregrinatio consciously and authentically, because it was the only path I could see and name for myself. (Peregrinatio, roughly translated, is choosing expatriation from one’s homeland—in my case, from the Catholic Church—in favor of the broader journey, pilgrimage, and encounter with Love.) I guess I’m a kind of nomad setting up her tent smack dab in the center of Mystery and attempting to let it reveal itself—or not—rather than having it solely defined for me by others.

I have not rejected my teachers or the gifts of my C/catholic (“universal”) upbringing: they are very much evident when I open my spiritual backpack and reach for my tools, filters, and methods of translating insight and experience into perception and—I hope—wisdom. Many experiences and challenging times of reflection have co-created my path and I do not offer it or recommend it for others (we all must find our own) so much as I highly encourage myself and others to be conscious in our choices and the paths we choose, for we are always on them, dancing our own steps of progress/regress with Spirit between the inspiration and expiration we call life.

Sometimes, though, life leads me to feel I’m sitting out the dance and my partner’s abandoned me. Or I feel the need to learn some new steps or try some different music.

Choosing the “little c” over the “Big C” ironically made me more aware of the need for community and spiritual pit stops than when I dutifully attended weekly church services, accepted the need for an ordained man to intercede with Love on my behalf, and limited the number of sacraments to seven. And so I began to schedule regular retreats, embarked upon a wonderful relationship with a spiritual director, and later pursued the three years of education and preparation that would enable me to offer trained spiritual companionship to others.

The practice of soul-tending is vital once we recognize that Spirit is our dance partner in life, for we then organically want to make the dance more graceful, elegant, fun, creative, intimate, honest, deepening and illuminating. I cannot locate and string together words that express the value a spiritual director has added to my life or isolate in imagery what serving as anam cara (“soul friend”) to others has afforded me. But I do highly recommend that you explore this practice with someone trained to provide it. (You can start here: www.SDIworld.org )

A spiritual director doesn’t commandeer your spiritual journey, but holds the mirror so you can see it for yourself and explore its meaning. What is your current image of the Holy and how has it evolved? How do you communicate with and experience the Sacred? Are you being pulled toward or pushed from these encounters? How do you experience the Transcendent and what are your sacred stories?

A spiritual companion asks the right questions, opens and holds the fertile silences, uses tools and shares new practices—for example: walking a labyrinth, prayer, bodywork, breathwork, meditation, creative exercises (free-writing, drawing, mandala creation)—but the point of spiritual direction is to allow you to see and name where you are with the Holy and where you desire to be…if you have a religious connection that’s meaningful to you, it is honored and can be deepened through the discernment offered by spiritual direction.

It’s not mental health therapy or counseling, though a spiritual director often works in tandem with a therapist, and spiritual direction is founded on “meeting the Sacred exactly where you are,” which often includes sharing and exploring the types of issues and experiences you might share in therapy, simply because everything in our lives connects to our spiritual well-being; it’s all interrelated. But there are specific elements, motivations, areas of expertise and modalities that distinguish therapy from spiritual companionship and there are boundaries to each profession that need to be clearly communicated and honored. Therapists are licensed; spiritual directors are not, which emphasizes again that you need to question and feel resonance with someone you choose for a spiritual companion.

The difference between a good friend and a spiritual director is the training and “professional” emphasis on you and your spiritual journey. Spiritual directors ask questions and invite explorations a friend might not (and shouldn’t) to support your discernment.

Some spiritual directors charge a fee; others do not. I studied for three years and completed a recognized program to serve as a spiritual director, for which I was charged tuition. I charge a fee not just to honor my education and time/gifts, but also to encourage a seeker to recognize that his or her commitment to the spiritual journey is worth pursuing and of value. If we think nothing of paying a hair stylist regularly and well, for example, we might also consider devoting as much conscious time and value to our spiritual journey and regularly (usually once a month) meet with a trained spiritual companion.

The website mentioned above lists spiritual companions geographically and offers some background information: you can call and further clarify a person’s orientations, qualifications, etc., by phone, or schedule the initial meeting and see how it feels for you. (You should never be charged for these initial meetings.) Spiritual direction can invite growth and be challenging; an hour-long session can end with questions left unexplored and a sense that “nothing’s changed,” but you must always feel safe, loved, and accompanied. A good spiritual director will also not agree to accompany someone with whom she isn’t comfortable, and the relationship can end at any time, at either person’s wish, but oh how lovely when it continues for years of soul-affirming deepening. In my own times of grief and transition, it’s been my safe harbor.

Some workplaces, especially healthcare institutions, have hired trained spiritual directors for staff members’ support and discernment, and as a service for their patients. (http://mayoclinichealthsystem.org/locations/onalaska/medical-services/complementary-medicine/center-for-health-and-healing/spiritual-direction) I’ve always thought it should be integrated with medical school training as well.

Another approach is group spiritual direction. The group functions as a community of discernment, guided by a trained spiritual director and blessed by their own mutual deep listening, commitment, and openness to sharing. As with one-on-one spiritual direction, confidentiality is sacrosanct. The spiritual director may work with one person while the others support with listening and prayer, or one person may share while the spiritual director guides the other members in supporting the person’s discernment as this is requested.

Spiritual direction is not about “fixing,” but it may be deeply healing. In the end, the dance is Spirit-led, and I have left my own spiritual direction sessions immersed in deep peace, welcome affirmation, greater clarity, and a sense of renewal. Living the questions is never easy but, for me, it’s infused with greater gratitude and spaciousness when I journey with my spiritual companion. Whenever I feel I’m sitting out the dance, spiritual direction allows me to see my partner’s embracing me and leading me on, deeper into mystery and always in Love.

Becoming Our Nature

Tags

Aging, authenticity, co-creation, Love, Slow Life, Wabi-sabi

I was watching a program last night when a commercial interrupted the flow, my cue to press “mute” on the remote and fetch a glass of water or read another few paragraphs from a current novel. As always, I glanced up periodically to see if the ad had ended. I rarely pay attention to commercials, but this time my focus was captured by the actress in the ad, who portrayed a woman suffering from an apparent and unfortunate skin disease that kept her indoors while vacationing, until she discovered the featured product and could then join her friends outside, in a gorgeous natural setting. (Mountains, lake: fun times denied, then realized through the miracle of pharmaceuticals.)

What I noticed was that the actress was a “normal-looking” woman in her 50’s. She looked like a person who might be smart and funny and kind: someone you’d want for a friend; ironically, she looked comfortable in her own skin. In one of the closing scenes, she sat contentedly outside at the end of a dock, swinging her legs over the water, and just…well, being. She wore a nondescript sundress, exactly like I would, was average-sized (in itself a jolting visual occurrence on American television); wrinkles and un-toned muscles were evident…and she had clearly danced in gravity’s embrace for quite a few years. When the camera panned around and behind her, we saw her peacefully seated on the dock. (I think the sun was setting now, to signal the happy resolution advertising provides.) It was lovely to see “someone who looks like me” in an ad and it led me to reflect on how little our culture truly values people, objects, places, and relationships that wear a bit of patina.

I imagined how the ad fiction could continue: the woman’s husband or friends would look at her from the cabin and love this person-as-she-is, utterly. They would be happy her skin has healed, of course, but wouldn’t consider rejecting her if it hadn’t been.

I thought about the ways we grow old, with friends and longtime companions, and how we wear away over time and in each other’s eyes, to pure spirit, kind of like the Velveteen Rabbit. I guess “grow” is the operative word and it implies choice; we evolve, picking up interests, loves, beliefs and pursuits, and then we discard bits and pieces and choose others. We revert, convert, progress, fill and empty. We’re clearly not the people we once were, and we’re still becoming. But I think that there’s an essence to us that we can come to name and that those who truly love us can identify with us. Clearly, Phillip can’t look at me and see, physically, the young woman he met and married, but I think he sees, and knows, and loves her spirit, and the physical changes don’t mask that…if we’re blessed in our partnership. To me, he becomes dearer as our lives accrue shared experiences and evolutions; I see them all when I look at him, along with those dimples that were the initial attractant. We affirm each other’s singular journeys and discoveries; we serve as mirrors for the other’s self-reflection, in the truest sense, and I hope we do this for family and friends, too.

You may be familiar with the Japanese philosophical orientation and aesthetic stance called “wabi sabi,” which recognizes beauty in simplicity, honors the authenticity a given subject reveals through its age and use, and notices the interrelationship between the subject and the space it occupies, taking negative space into account. What isn’t there and what remains are both valued. The design, or artwork, or person, or relationship has been worn away to its essence; time is respected as an artistic participant in the creation of the uniqueness that is now revealed.

“Wabi” points to the flaws that make us uniquely “perfect” rather than achieving a false, manufactured perfection that conforms to some promoted or popular ideological standard, and the “sabi” portion of the aesthetic values the distinctive—and earned—patina that only comes with time’s passage.

Wabi sabi honors the beauty that can happen and be sensually perceived when years of crucial connections to honesty, integrity and humility are maintained, as in the furniture and architecture of the Shakers, the handworn elegance of our grandfathers’ tools or grandmothers’ needlework. Or our faces as they age and our relationships as they simplify, and deepen. As we become more fully our true nature, as we live more fully into and from our giftedness, we become more uniquely beautiful.

I think it takes conscious awareness of our journeys, and intentional choices that favor simplicity and honesty for the aesthetic of wabi sabi to animate our lives. How closely are we living to the heart of who we are? How true are we to the gifts we came to share? How genuine is our dance in the world? How well do we love our shadows?

When the world tells us that imitative is better than original so it can sell us a new, improved, and well-trod path and everything we need to travel it…can we still hear the song our life is singing, and set out in the direction our spirit yearns to explore?

Fundamentally, it takes relationship to initiate and sustain an aesthetic of wabi sabi; both artist and aficionado (aficionar: to inspire affection) co-create the beauty: it is a mutual undertaking in choosing to be honest and authentic and then supporting that in others and appreciating the beauty they are and are becoming. Symbiotically, we each become more fully ourselves.

And happily, it’s never too late to come home to ourselves and live from an honest, spare, and beautiful spirit of authenticity. Not perfect, just uniquely real.

We’ve almost finished watching all of the excellent Northern Exposure series, thanks to Netflix. We just enjoyed an episode that connects to these ideas. Dr. Joel’s parents travel from Queens to visit Alaska. His mother, Nadine, reveals herself as a loving, competent woman and an anxious, non-stop talker. The doctor’s secretary, a Tlingit Native named Marilyn Whirlwind, gently tells Nadine, “You have an eagle spirit,” and Nadine beams and confesses that yes; she’s always felt “connected” to eagles.

Then Marilyn tells the eagle’s story, and events unfold that lead Nadine home, to her true self. Her husband and son are confused by the change, but clearly love her and it seems, will in time either adjust to this homecoming or not, a risk we must always take in relationship. Two other subplots featured other characters exploring their natures and true identities as well and indicated the risks involved in claiming our natures and living authentically. All of the characters had to answer their own questions, which required stillness, but each one also required relationship and support to fully bloom.

Ram Dass said, “We’re all just walking each other home,” which I initially understood as “back to pure Spirit,” but now perceive as “home to our true selves,” as well.

Use your gifts and be who you are: flawed, unique and beautiful. Recognize the other as a work of art as well.

Shine together.

UKATANGI

The eagle wasn’t always the eagle. The eagle, before he became the eagle, was Ukatangi, the talker.

Ukatangi talked and talked. He talked so much, he could only hear himself. Not the river, not the wind, not even the wolf.

The raven came and said, “The wolf is hungry. If you stop talking, you will hear him. The wind, too. And when you hear the wind, you will fly.”

So Ukatangi stopped talking, and soon he heard the wind rushing by. In the quiet, he could hear the directions of its currents, swiftly lifting and falling. The music of the wind changed Ukatangi, and he became the eagle; he became his nature.

The eagle soared, and its flight said all it needed to say.

(This is close to the version I heard in the Northern Exposure episode. I found it here: http://aaanativearts.redbubble.com)

 

 

 

Yin Yang and Spirit

Tags

Balance, Mental health, spirit

I’ve been communing with a virus this week and listening for what it’s come to tell me. Resting, reading, sleeping, watching the birds and snowfalls, lying with the 4-leggeds, going about my life s-l-o-w-l-y and quieting the voices that tell me I’m “not being productive,” because I’m doing exactly what I should be doing: tending my health and balancing my body’s and spirit’s needs.

This afternoon, I feel rested and healed, ready for a walk down our snowy trail, and I am grateful. And I am more aware than ever that many people do not feel rested, and are unable to connect their situations with gratitude.

Almost one in five Americans was diagnosed as suffering from “mental illness” in 2010; most of those were women and young adults. This sad news was published yesterday (http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/people-suffered-mental-illness-year-report-article-1.1008928), and as is so often the case, it is not really news at all, but its elevation to prominence is reason for hope that discovering and naming our illnesses may lead to their healing.

Imagine the suffering those numbers represent.

Perhaps a starting place is to consider that those so labeled are the truly healthy, responding to a society so deeply diseased that it sees the world through a funhouse mirror and justifies the revealed and rotting distortions by labeling the well sick, and medicating them until they agree. Or until they commit suicide, an alternative 8.7 million adults in this study admitted they had considered.

Let us consider, too, that a society that denies its inherent grounding in Spirit has severed connections that are life-giving, and that must be re-integrated for health to be restored. We are—each of us, in unique combinations—anima and animus/feminine and masculine, left and right-brained, artist and intellect, leader and follower, creator and participant, body and spirit, requiring motion and stillness to be balanced and whole.

Is this reflected in the society and world we have created?

Watch and read the “news” carefully, from any source: how many stories are about men and/or feature men as the “interpreters?” How often are the images, the photos and footage, of men? Scan the editorial page: who are the authors? Who are the CEO’s we read so much about these days? Who are our politicians? What percentage of our taxes are allocated to education and how much to the military? How well do our television programs and books reflect a balanced life or integrate a respect for spirit? Is more energy given to protecting the earth or exploiting her?

I’ve always thought it odd how much of the half-hour devoted to our “local” news is given to sports and to “political” reports, while no attention is routinely (i.e., daily) dedicated to community-building efforts that are surely occurring, or to the arts.

Why sports and not the arts? Why violence and divisiveness rather than cooperation and co-creation? The messages, from childhood on, seem to reinforce that power, competition, domination, and conflict (an exaggeration of our inherent masculine traits) are worthy of our attention; their opposites (our feminine qualities) are not.

Rather than a condemnation of the male sex, this is offered as an invitation to see how dramatically skewed our society is, how grotesquely crippled and half-blinded we are to the fullness of the earth and of ourselves and our potential to co-create lives that are rich and meaningfully balanced. We deny the feminine within and project this denial outward, creating institutions, careers, lifestyles, and options that are barren of creativity, nurturing, hope, justice, and balance…and then we expect sanity? Instead, such imbalance creates mental, physical, and spiritual illness. I would posit, too, that such imbalance gives rise to the “–isms” that plague us: sexism, racism, militarism…

This disparity between the feminine and masculine or the body and spirit, was evidenced at both the hospital and hospice where I worked as a chaplain and provided spiritual care for those struggling with illness and/or end-of-life. Ostensibly, they (management and the allopathically-trained staff) supported the work of spiritual caregivers. Regulatory standards call for the provision of spiritual care, at some level, and many healthcare providers rely solely upon already over-burdened local clergy, who have different training, largely confined to their religious orientation; at least these institutions where I was employed hired trained, professional chaplains to comply with regulations. But although we were clinically trained, and part of the “healthcare team,” there was deep mistrust, disregard, confusion, discomfort, and often contempt towards our contributions to holistic care from the rest of the clinical staff. That this was so often coupled with an unwillingness to learn about our training and discipline and the ways it could integrate with the care provided by medical staff, was continually discouraging, as was the reduction of our potential to “Could you come to Room 908 and say a prayer?”

To put it plainly, they were focused on “fixing” and we were focused on “being with” and “exploring,” which seemed to irritate many of the medical staff further, although both may lead to the healing and peace of the patient. Holistic, “both/and” ways of being with illness and dying are not truly embraced by our healthcare system, which is both a disservice to the patients and their families, and the denial of gift and true health to the healthcare providers as well. (It was fascinating and sad to me how many healthcare workers were overweight, as though the “heaviness” of this body-spirit imbalance became, in time, manifested physically.)

We’re all, always, on paths of healing; pretending otherwise allows the disease of a life lived ungrounded in Spirit to progress. And the cure is right here, within us, and has been, all the time. Simplistically, our healthcare model, like our culture, is ill because it’s far too inured in the masculine orientations of control/fixing/authority, and resists “incorporating” the feminine and healing gifts of listening, feeling, touching, intuiting, and co-creating. Imbalance is created by, and perpetuates, a culture of fear. When shadows are denied, light has no value.

We aren’t educated, at this time in history, to explore meaning, identify archetypes, observe dreams, live with questions, or honor mystery. Little time is allotted for stillness, reflection, or contemplation. From childhood on, we’re asked to do, solve, find answers, deduce, and reduce all of life to the concrete and factual (and, increasingly, to elevate and focus our gifts and energies upon what will financially and materially profit our existence), or dismiss it as irrelevant. Review this article and ponder the connection between the allocation of our precious time and the rise in mental illness. http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts

There is also our lack of engagement with the natural world that contributes to our disconnection from mystery/Spirit. We’re now given digitalized screens of one kind or another to occupy our time, rob us of imagination, leech our independent thought and creativity, and corral our allegiance and loyalties without question. Children are no longer urged to “go outside” and discover the world of trees, insects, rivers, and sky. They’ve never watched the interactions of predator and prey, a colony of bees or ants working together, birds building their nests, or clouds forming and moving across the sky. They are frighteningly, like many of their parents, ignorant of the connections between a food’s source and what they eat; indeed, often what is presented and ingested as edible is unrecognizable in its relationship to any naturally occurring source (i.e., a “fruit roll-up”).

This alienation from our world and its natural processes further crushes the spirit and twists our worldview. It damages our children and devalues the environment they need to know and love in order to protect it. http://www.education.com/topic/nature-deficit-disorder/

Neither are children encouraged to “go inside” and be still. Mindfulness meditation can be used effectively in classrooms and teach a life-long, simple form of self-care that can ensure mental health.

When we value only part of ourselves and deny the rest, our be-ing is out of balance; our spirits deflate; our light dims, and our relationships and health suffer.

But, dum spiro, spero: While I live, I hope. If I can link to these articles, they’ve been written, and I know others are also recognizing these deficits and imbalances and using their gifts to address them. I trust that our compassion and our intelligence will respond; our masculine gifts for organization and delegation, and our feminine gifts for empathy and creativity will be welcomed, and we’ll create a healthy family, community, country, and world that celebrates hospitality towards all of our gifts, promotes wholeness, values balance, and is grounded in Spirit.