Dona Nobis Pacem

Tags

Balance, Creativity, daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Garden, healing, Home, Listening, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Rest, Slow Life, spirit, Transformation, wholeness

May my silences become more accurate. ~ Theodore Roethke

When I was younger and my body, or mind, or spirit shared its weariness, my response was usually to resist such silliness and work harder. I suspect this was the equivalent of “leaning in.”

Now I listen attentively and grant myself Sabbath minutes, or hours, or days, or weeks—whatever is possible in proportion to the emptiness I detect—if these will restore my creativity and re-balance my energy.

I have spent years offering my creative energy to Full Moon and her gardens; it’s nice when I allow these places and spaces to gift me in return with their beauty and energy, allowing love to flow both ways and deep re-creation to restore me with peace and new insights.

So, weary to the bone, I’m taking a week off to be still and to listen; to plant and ponder, weed and wonder…to allow my silences to become more accurate.

I began the day with a breakfast of asparagus freshly harvested, in gratitude: barely cooked, lightly buttered and generously peppered…my Sabbath has begun.

Joy and gentle peace to you from Full Moon.

A Change in the Weather

Tags

Balance, co-creation, healing, Home, Nature, Noticing, Philip Shepherd, Relationship, wholeness

Our annual guests, the ducks, have returned this past week on daily reconnaissance missions to site their new nest. Spring, finally, is in the air.

Lovely rains are falling today and more are promised this week. The dogs and I have been sitting peacefully for a time, just watching the rain wash the world green. The music and rhythms have lulled us all into a sleepy peacefulness, but I know it’s time to set down the book I’ve been reading and pick up my paint brush. Again.

I had the bright idea that freshening up the painted cabinets in the dining room and kitchen would be a wonderful project to replace the gardening I couldn’t yet begin because of snow cover and cold.

Of course, painting cabinets requires taking everything out of them, and—in my case—facing the haphazard organization resulting from the accrued 17 years of living and working in this kitchen. Bakeware, appliances, tools, pots and pans…all of these things just kind of “settled,” like homesteaders who staked a claim, plopped down to clear land, and built a life, regardless of how logically situated they were towards light, water, necessities, and the rest of civilization.

Shouldn’t the bakeware and pots, etc., be closer to the oven, and shouldn’t the less-used cookie tins be on the pantry’s highest shelf, allowing the grains to be placed more accessibly? Amazing what we can discover about ourselves and our world when we pull everything out and look anew at how we’ve arranged and accepted it “must” be.

So, the kitchen and dining room are now beautifully and logically reorganized…and I can’t find a damn thing. My mind has not yet adjusted to this new, improved way of functioning, but it will, as I reorient.

It reminds me of the interview I read in The Sun last week (http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/448/out_of_our_heads). Philip Shepherd discusses his perceptions about the ways we accept culturally-designated realities and then all the institutions and behaviors that ensure these, without questioning whether these are the best we can do regarding the health of the earth, humanity, and the interconnections between our own and all other species.

In his book, New Self, New World: Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-First Century, he speaks of the brain in our heads as more aligned with masculine energy, and the brain in our “gut” as having greater alignment with feminine energy. These are not men vs. women designations, but rather ways of describing every human’s potential for wholeness and balance, and it’s no surprise, I suppose, that Shepherd believes that, as a species, we’re dangerously imbalanced in our dependency upon the “head brain” to the exclusion of incorporating the wisdom of our heart, or gut brain. And therefore, the imbalance is reflected in the realities we create and maintain, which Shepherd feels have set our world on a clear path of unnecessary destruction.

Too much reliance on our masculine energy creates the illusion we’re separate, independent, and entirely self-reliant. Shepherd thinks a greater integration of our feminine energy and wisdom would help us see, value, and tend the interconnections that exist “outside of” the reality we accept.

I’m simplifying, of course, but if we can get beyond the “way it’s always been,” perhaps we’ll be open to discovering a better way it can be…

So, I’ll deal with the inconvenience I experience when my old patterns of habitual steps around the kitchen frustrate my ingrained expectations. In time, I hope I’ll enjoy the reorganization and the “flow” the new plan offers my cooking and baking. 

A change in the weather is a gift, allowing us to view our “old” landscapes from new perspectives. Perhaps I can set down some of my deep-rooted expectations and behaviors regarding what I accept as “reality” as well, nurturing my own and others’ balance by widening the possibilities I consider, and choosing new responses and ways of engaging.

Maybe just one more mug of tea before I pick up the paintbrush…time to sit and breathe into greater balance before starting my work.

Now, where’s the tea strainer?

A Child Shall Lead…

Tags

children, evolving, Hope, New Year, special needs, St. Coletta, Transformation

In 1900, children born with mental and physical disabilities were often delivered to mental hospitals and institutions that were devoid of the gentle care and treatment suited to their ages, abilities and growth. A few decades earlier, state and private schools that were dedicated to the teaching and care of children termed “idiotic,” “backward,” and “feeble-minded” had just begun to be formed throughout the United States.

One of these schools, St. Coletta, was founded in 1904, and staffed by Franciscan nuns in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where the nuns had formed their convent in 1864. The original campus, comprised of dormitories, classrooms, kitchens, a chapel, and several outbuildings, covered 174 acres, although this grew to 650 acres throughout the Jefferson area. Children from all over the country came to St. Coletta’s, originally called The St. Coletta Institute for Backward Youth.

In 1931, they incorporated under the name St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children, out of respect for the residents and their families. Their website mentions that one of their students had said, “We don’t walk backward!”

Over the years, hundreds of residents passed through St. Coletta, which became nationally known for its dedication to advocating for the rights of people with disabilities to be included in all aspects of life and treated with the dignity they deserved. For some residents, this was the only home and family they would know, but as society’s understanding of these disabilities evolved, many residents were able to receive the training to live, eventually, in group homes or with family members, and some in their own apartments, holding jobs that honored their gifts and differing aptitudes for independence.

Decades ago, St. Coletta began to adapt to the changing needs of its students, who no longer required on-site dormitories, since children with special needs were acclimated into school systems that allowed them to live with their families, and St. Coletta’s adult residents transitioned to supervised group homes. Acreage was sold off and then buildings were emptied and possessions sold, although St. Coletta’s remains active in training and assisting people with special needs.

A few years ago, there was a weekend-long sale of furniture and household items and we went to explore the grounds and honor the history of St. Coletta’s exceptional children. I discovered two old wooden sleds leaning against a wall, covered with dust and neglect. One of the people assisting with the sale said we could take them for $10.00, more as a donation to St. Coletta’s operating costs than because they were of any value.

During Phillip’s Christmas break, we decided to restore the oak sleds as best as we could. I’d washed them over and over at the end of the summer, and cut away the disintegrated, filthy ropes. Phillip sanded (and sanded), then primed and painted the steel runners. I refreshed the logo on one of the sleds, and then we used coats of tongue oil to seal the wood. Phillip still wants to add a layer or two of spar varnish to them, and we’ll lace new rope through the holes.

They’re still not worth anything, monetarily, but I can see the worn places where little hands and feet gripped the sleds, and I can imagine the laughter and joy of children who had found a place they could call home, where they were loved and schooled, and encouraged to play…and it touches my heart. The sleds are worth nothing, yet they are treasures.

They remind me that we can evolve in our understanding of each other; we can change and grow meaningfully towards greater love and make deeper invitations to each other’s highest self. We can stop defining each other with labels that denigrate and cease judging each other’s worth. There is such great need and such discouraging behavior on the part of those we look to for leadership presented to us every day…As the New Year offers fresh pages to fill and wide-open paths towards better dreams, it is good for me to look upon these humble sleds and allow the sweet, brave spirits of exceptional children to restore my hope. We can change. We can grow. We can listen and learn. We can evolve, together.

A former resident of St. Coletta’s created this lovely tribute to his childhood home. (I had to use the enlarged version to read his words.)

One of St. Coletta’s more famous residents was Rosemary Kennedy, whose sad story is retold here.

A Story for the Season

Tags

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

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

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

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

Murphy and Mulligan napping beneath the tree.

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

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

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

Murphy smelling Fergus’ food bowl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sacred Stories and Holy Sparks

There is something magical in the angles of autumn light and the way it illuminates objects that recede throughout the year’s other seasons. Leaves, trees, birds, grasses—all the world seems infused with light and embraced by light. Lit from within and without… I’ve always felt light is another language, a way Love communicates with our spirits. I think that’s why I’m so connected to the visual, to colors and patterns, and why I’ve always tried to photograph the messages I sense are all around me. Sometimes, I breathe in the message; I understand what the light is saying. Other times, it eludes me before I capture the meaning.

Autumn is the season that feels especially illuminating. Perhaps this is why, for me, it’s always felt intuitively “right” that this is the time of year the Catholic Church celebrates angels, a word that means “messenger.” Today is the feast, or festival, of three archangels: angels that bring news of utmost importance. And on October 2, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of Guardian Angels, honoring the ancient belief that we each have a personal angel guiding us through life and back home to Love, our Source. When I was young, we said a nightly prayer to our Guardian Angels. At some point, I named mine Mary Louise. I have no idea why I chose this name, but the idea that Mary Louise was present when I was frightened or sad certainly gave me comfort.

The idea that a Creative Energy loves our particulate matter so uniquely and personally that we’re each accorded our own spiritual guide speaks of an Original Spirit, God, or Transcendence that is both compassionate and intimately involved with our journey, our discernments, and the paths we choose. It taught me to perceive my God as benevolent rather than forbidding, angry, and frightening.

Perhaps I no longer need a literal angel (though I still “talk” with Mary Louise when I’m under stress), but I do need the reminder that my life is sacred to its core, that my choices require contemplation, and that my spirit is connected to its Source.

“God comes to us disguised as our lives,” wrote Paula D’Arcy; the idea being that if there is anything sacred and holy for us to apprehend in the world, it’s all right here, now, in the movement of energy we call “my life.” Whether we name the messengers reminding us of this angels, intuition, mystery, or grace, I think in some way, we apprehend these messages as light, real and metaphorically, as in-sight, those profoundly illuminated moments when we perceive the interconnection of everything.

Once, after a series of losses had visited my life, I went on an 8-day silent retreat to give myself over to needed healing and peace. I settled comfortably into the routine of the silence and its flow. I met with my retreat director after breakfast each morning, and spent the rest of the day walking, resting, reading and writing…mostly listening. The combination of silence and listening seemed to invite deep sleep, so I enjoyed daily naps and usually went to bed shortly after sunset. I could almost feel deep healing knitting my spirit back together.

One day I finished breakfast and took my coffee to the wonderful lounge overlooking the grounds and the lake surrounding the retreat house. I had some time to relax before I met with my retreat guide. I remember a caretaker was riding a lawn mower back and forth and the day promised peace and sunshine. I sipped my coffee, and as I set the mug down on the broad window ledge and looked up, everything changed.

Every single particle of matter in front of me separated from the next and became drenched in light; the energy of tree leaves and grass blades and the room around me, and all the other retreatants, a sailboat on the lake, the lake itself, a butterfly, and the sky around it vibrated, each minute part of everything pulsing within its own halo of light, but in unison with every other particle. I remember staring, looking around the room, seeing it all dancing in its dazzling light, and knowing it wasn’t logical. It didn’t frighten me as much as amaze me. What was happening? What did it mean? I knew I wasn’t in danger physically or otherwise, but I felt the need to get back to my room, which required that I navigate hallways and steps…and all the way, the light explosions continued. Everything was illuminated, gilded with a holy golden light…I knew this was extraordinary and a gift. Once in my room, I went down to my knees; I couldn’t stand anymore. I wasn’t sure I was still breathing. But, eventually, the pulsing subsided and the world shuddered back into the 3-dimensional shapes and forms I knew. I closed my eyes and counted my breaths.

Gradually, an awareness shook through to my “thinking” mind. It was as though a heart beat at the center of the universe and, fueled by Love, pulsed its light through everything. I knew it. I owned the understanding at that moment and have never doubted it, in all the days since.

Years later, I’m still unpacking the experience, one of the most profound of my life. I hesitate to share it because I think it risks diluting the gift, but also because I’ve never found the words to truly recreate what I saw, felt, and knew in the midst of it all.

But I learned from my dying patients, who often seek to share their lives’ profound moments before they die, that many of us have had such encounters with mystery, and sharing them can be affirming and offer comfort to others as well. People are both eager and apprehensive about sharing such experiences and others that have happened to them (like visits from loved ones who have died) because they yearn to share, but fear sounding foolish and being negatively judged.

Elderly patients often told me they were afraid their grown children would recoil and reject them if they shared these experiences, and might use such “stories” as evidence that their parents were no longer mentally reliable and needed nursing home placement and care.

How sad to lose our sacred stories, to scorn these holy gifts. Because when we share and affirm that we are connected to each other and our Source, that each of us is truly a shard of Holy Light, we know we have to make choices and act in accordance with these connections, to honor and preserve them.

May the light of autumn and its messengers, the winged and all others, remind you that you are lit by sparks of the Divine, that there is always more than you can see, and that Love pulses at the core of everything.

Powering Down in Nature

On Thursdays, the daily round brings “fresh bed day” for the Full Moon Cottage 2-leggeds. (4-leggeds’ beds are cleaned on Fridays. I’m not sure they appreciate this, but my allergies do.)

This morning, I caught myself folding sheets and pillowcases as an Olympic contender, going for the gold, timing myself and offering color commentary regarding the elegance, choreography and precision of the folds. It amused me, but also told me it was time to turn off the Olympics and go for my walk.

A few nights ago we watched the movie Greenfingers, a wonderful testament to the ways gardening can be transformative and healing. The story is based on the true experiences of prisoners in HMP (Her Majesty’s Prison) Leyhill, a minimum-security prison in the Cotswold’s, England. At first indifferent to the suggestion they participate in gardening, a group of prisoners eventually creates a garden, and then competes in a prestigious garden design competition.

As their connection with the earth evolves, each man gains a wider view regarding his gifts and opportunities for naming his presence in the world. They learn that they can choose new ways to show up for their lives. Capacities for surprise, for delight, for love and relationship have been nurtured by engagement with the earth.

Earlier in the week, we’d watched part of Ken Burns’ excellent program for PBS, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The title is taken from a quote by Wallace Stegner, and the program reinforces the wisdom of those who fought long and hard to establish the national park system, arguing for the deep healing that gently entering and embracing wilderness offers humanity. Not unexpectedly, lobbyists, corporate interests, and politicians wanted to commercialize, mine, and deforest every square inch of the acreage that became our national parks, and it often seemed they would. Thankfully, in the end, the National Parks were established, but the threats from those who would exploit them continue to merit vigilance.

These programs reinforced something I’ve always known, and I expect it’s true for most people: solitude in natural settings is deeply healing and over time, transformative. Our own wild hearts find solace in the garden, the forest, along the seashore, and river. A few hours spent tending plants and weeding a garden can offer deep peace to the spirit. We reconnect with those dreams and truths we bury so quickly when faced with the outer entanglements and accelerated speed of life; in nature, we slow down enough to finally hear our song and bring it back into tune.

I don’t “power walk.” I stroll with my camera, treating the walk as a long, silent meditation. I stop at trail benches to sit and breathe in the smells and sounds. While I believe physical exertion and aerobic exercise are rewarding and certainly contribute to my health, I don’t think every activity that invites my physical engagement has to be dominated by an aggressive need to exaggerate effort, compete, speed, and hurl myself through the experience. In fact, I suspect the need to “power-up” is sometimes related to an inability to slow down, to be still, to breathe mindfully and to listen deeply. And our old friend, fear, can sabotage our need to be still: What if we don’t like what we, finally, hear? What if, when we arrive at our center, there’s no there there? Or even more disturbing, what if the voice at our center tells us we must change to save our life and fulfill its purpose?

Of course, when we let go and journey to the center, the likely result is the gift of gentle messages from Love, but we may certainly encounter truths along the way that are painful.  I’ve found that “staying with” the journey transmutes the pain. Exposing it to the light and restorative power of nature dissolves the accrual of spiritual disturbance that builds up between walks. The more personal power I surrender, the more deeply nature’s power washes my spirit clean.

Today, I let go of all those ever-present inner voices and listened to the songs of the wind, rain, trees, birds, and turtles, and my own song and energy were guided back into clarity. I doubt gardening or walking into the woods and meeting stillness, silence, and listening will ever be Olympic events, but in the end, they offer the spirit treasures more precious than gold.

Here are some lovely links:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/16/garden/free-to-grow-bluebells-in-england.html

http://walking.about.com/cs/mindandspirit/a/mindspirit.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9344129/Jogging-in-forest-twice-as-good-as-trip-to-gym-for-mental-health.html

http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/

http://www.amazon.com/The-Nature-Principle-Restoration-Nature-Deficit/dp/1565125819/ref=pd_sim_b_5

Desert Encounters

Tags

authenticity, Balance, healing, Listening, Noticing, Photography, Transformation, wholeness

We are concluding our 5^th week of drought and looking at yet another week with no rain appearing in the forecast. I feel somewhat trapped indoors, yet there’s no reason to go outside; I can’t water the gardens as I’d like to, due to the risk of drying the well, and it’s too oppressive to weed. I have no reason to use the car and expend its energy to convey me somewhere I don’t need to be, and I face only discomfort if I venture out for a long walk or bike ride…so I photograph through windows or briefly from the bridge, observe the 4-leggeds as they observe the outside world, read, write, and divert myself from anxieties and questions that have been nagging my spirit for some time now.

Yesterday the heat index was 106; I went outside only to hang the laundry and then retrieve it; both times, I moved as though walking through walls of heat. It felt claustrophobic, like living in a terrarium. Suffocation might feel like this, right at the beginning…that sense that breathing has become a struggle, the next breath is less generous than the last and the throat closes in self-protection, fearing the heat of the breath to follow.

I prayed for the people living and moving and having their being, by necessity, in this oppressive atmosphere. “Fire purifies or fire destroys,” a literature professor used to remind us. “Water drowns or baptizes…” And “Deserts are places of death, which is to say, places of transformation.” How to choose one’s perspective in the midst of life’s circumstances?

I remember an elderly patient I visited in the hospital where I worked as a chaplain. She had been isolated for some contagion that left her magnificently alone. The room was a “negative pressure space,” the other bed, table, and chair had been removed, and the patient’s own bed was pushed in the far corner. One had to cross what felt like a vast and empty galaxy to approach her.

Emotional and spiritual excavation over the course of many visits revealed that the woman’s personal relations echoed this isolation. All connections had been broken, due to one or another quarrel, grudge, or perceived impediment to forgiveness and love.

Our dialogue eventually began to explore how the spirituality she identified and the beliefs she claimed were of value to her, were helping her cope with her circumstance, which is what chaplains seek to help a patient discern. Is your belief system helping you cope positively or contributing to negative coping? Where is your God or sense of the sacred in this experience? What are you feeling as you share this story? How would you define a “healed body?” a “healed life?”  What do you desire or need at this time?

Of course, a barrage of such questions is not one’s method; but the focus of our visits explores these types of avenues through various approaches: silence, “sideways observations,” gentle touch, when and if appropriate (even if the chaplain is gowned, masked, gloved and hidden behind protective garb), listening for metaphors and patterns as the patient is encouraged to share her story, and always, compassionate presence.

At times, a judicious question can open doors that have been bolted for years. One can almost hear the rusty hinges creak and sense the cobwebs brushed away. It takes a lot of time to sense the appropriate moment to ask such a question and when to let it pass. Speaking the (observed) truth, in love, is a way to confront fears and regrets, but timing is everything.

The underlying “foundation” to these visits is always being able to listen to one’s own denials, regrets, fears, anger, joys, etc., and acknowledge them and the ways the patient and her story triggers or elicits these responses. The chaplain hears these, gently “tucks them away,” and brings the light back to the patient. Certainly in her own heart, the chaplain acknowledges that the presence of love, or Spirit…one’s own sense of the sacred, is “embracing” the encounter, and will “manage” it for ultimate good.

My job as a chaplain was not to fix, transform, or bring about a resolution, and believe me, the temptation can be very strong to do this (which again leads to the inner work one must explore at a later time). Rather, what you’re trying to do is open the space for the patient to hear her own story, her own wisdom, her own needs and choices…clarify her own relationship with the Holy. What needs to die and what is almost-or-fully-gestated and yearning to be born?

Chaplaincy is eventually and reliably exhausting, because in every visit, the chaplain is encountering herself as well, at deep and profoundly naked levels, and must be brutally honest about this part of her profession, to be good at it. Self-care and replenishing “breaks” are absolutely necessary if a chaplain is to do work that is effective and life-giving.

I remember this specific patient because of the dramatic contrasts between her isolation and her inability to encounter a need for connection. How strikingly the stories of her personal relationships correlated with the physical space she occupied. Her God couldn’t have led her to greater isolation, couldn’t have shouted any louder that it was time to listen and to stop pushing away, time to go deep within and, finally, encounter her brokenness.

I recalled the Native American commitment to “all my relations,” which acknowledges that a balanced life requires commitment to one’s relationships with everything, and understands the sacred reciprocity of attention and the necessary choice to attend that exists between oneself and all life, every point along the web’s delicate strands. This woman had made a series of choices that severed all connections.

“How did we ever arrive at this place?” Eleanor of Aquitaine asks her husband, Henry II, in James Goldman’s brilliant The Lion in Winter. “Step by step,” he replies.

And I remember this patient today because I sense I’m in a similar space, in that I’m being called to the center of the desert, to listen for the change that wants to happen. My invitation from Holy Mystery couldn’t be more starkly and physically heard.  Here I am, for all intents and purposes “trapped” by the heat and drought into inactivity. I cannot choose an action that will alleviate the drought; it’s out of my control. My calendar is free of engagements and there is no purposeful work I “have to” accomplish.

Mystery/Spirit/Love has cornered me: Uh-oh; time to listen.

Wake up (again), my situation seems to be saying. Of course, the spiritual journey is an ongoing spiral of discovery, but we all tend to step in and out of the dance at times. And then there are moments, whether we’re so inclined or not, when we’re called to fierce engagement. I’ve been aware for a few weeks now of the need to go within and listen and I’ve avoided it, like most people. Discernment is a chancy undertaking; it often leads to change and, also like most people, I fear transitions.

But unlike most people, I’ve been given the gifts of chaplaincy training and spiritual direction training. The character Monk always says of his detective ability, “It’s a gift and it’s a curse.” The same insights I’ve brought to my patients and seekers are turned inward. I can see my denials and diversions and I’m challenged to call myself on them. I know my next move and can counter it. Or not. It’s always a choice. And I’ve been avoiding my regular deep practices of silence and meditation because I don’t want to hear the questions that have been circling, and I know the time has come to face them. The vision quest never ends.

Here I am in isolation, and I’m saying yes to the invitation to listen. I will walk across the vast galaxy and through the door. I acknowledge my fear and will go deeper within, anyway, because I believe that in the end, I’m on a journey of healing, of making myself whole, and that the way in is the only way out—and is ultimately necessary for any healing to occur. And whether I’m being invited to change dramatically or make minor adjustments, I know the invitation comes from Love.

Please keep me in your gentle energy; I’m setting off for the far country of the heart and the whispered encounter with Mystery.

May the rain come soon.

All my relations.

I’ll be away till July 8. Gentle peace to all.

Happy 4^th of July

Losing Home

Tags

daily round, Recall election, Vote, Wisconsin

The recall enables the people to dismiss from public service those representatives who dishonor their commissions by betraying the public interest.  ~ Robert La Follette

For the last year and half, my state has been flooded with negative energy and anxiety regarding our political leadership. Regardless of the leadership favored, one couldn’t escape the discord and angry rhetoric, which, of course, has become increasingly perpetuated and repeated in robo-calls and divisive television advertising as the recall election date has approached.

Tomorrow’s recall election represents a struggle some feel (and I believe) is between outside wealth and Tea Party extremists dictating what happens in our lives, and having a state government that’s localized, encouraged by our voices, focused upon our land management, workers’ rights, quality of education and other issues germane to this state, its people, and its resources, both natural and economic.

I’ve engaged in this struggle by attending rallies and informational meetings, canvassing for my candidates, posting links, and sharing with other concerned voters. I’ve donated my time and what little money I could afford to support those candidates I believe will re-establish our integrity, and I’ve spent a lot of time in silence, discharging negative energy and becoming re-centered.

It’s been emotionally challenging and, at times, greatly dispiriting. I’ve been politically active since I was in high school, but I’ve never been so attached to a political outcome as I am to this one, nor so worried about my state’s and family’s direction and choices if the present governor remains in office. Wisconsin looks no place like home anymore, and it’s breaking my heart.

You would have to know some of the history of my state to understand my responses to the relatively recent and abrupt changes the current governor has enacted. For example, I’ve always been proud that John Muir spent his formative years in Wisconsin, and that Aldo Leopold’s belief in nature conservancy and environmental protection came to fruition during his years as a professor at the University of Wisconsin and during his time at his home in Sauk County, writing A Sand County Almanac. Senator Gaylord Nelson launched the nationally-observed Earth Day while serving as our state senator.

Now, we have a state government inviting mining corporations to write their own environmental negligence into law just to “provide jobs,” while satisfying their greed and destroying our resources, as well as breaking our treaty agreements with native tribes and entirely discounting their voice at the table.

In 1911, Wisconsin was the first state to legislate a Workers’ Compensation Act. In 1932, unemployment compensation was enacted in our state, and in 1937, the Wisconsin Employment Relations Act was passed, adding critical state support to workers’ right to organize.

Now, we have a state government that has destroyed collective bargaining rights, broken union strength and protections, and is encouraging, even laying the groundwork for, the transition of Wisconsin to a right-to-work state.

For over 30 years, following the brief, dangerous misery known as Joseph McCarthy, William Proxmire served as our state senator, refusing campaign contributions for his last two terms, and earning well-deserved fame for exposing government waste, especially in regards to military spending, through his Golden Fleece Awards.

Now, we have a governor who has raised almost $31 million in campaign contributions, largely from out of state PACS funded by millionaires and billionaires like the Koch Brothers, with specific and special-interest agendas. How many hours of non-stop negative advertising and lies do you think this has spawned? His challenger has raised under $4 million, in much smaller increments, and almost all of it from in-state donors. (http://www.wisdc.org/)

Wisconsin was home to “Fighting Bob LaFollette,” who, as a U.S. senator, advocated progressive reforms like child labor laws, social security, and women’s suffrage, and lived from a moral center that led him to protect the rights of the voiceless when others preferred feeding the personal greed of a ruling elite.

Now, we have a governor with an immense legal defense fund (that grew by $100,000.00 just this past month), who advocates secrecy votes and who misrepresented his goals when he ran for the office of governor. Only later was he clearly exposed as a pawn of corporate interests and out-of-state power centers. He has repealed the state’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act.

Once, and for decades, our state ranked near the top of the country for the quality of the public education provided for its students.

Now, we have underfunded schools, overcrowded classrooms, and a state government that participates in and encourages the vilification of teachers. Many of our seasoned and most talented teachers have taken early retirements to ensure they’ll receive even part of the retirement benefits they were promised and worked for these past thirty years or more. I worked as a teacher and I was a good one, but not the first year, or the second…it takes time to manage a classroom and the flow of lessons, to enhance and enrich them and to become sensitive to the energetic currents in a classroom. We’ve lost a lot of depth in our classrooms these past two years.

These are just a few of the reasons I’ve been involved in the recall effort and care deeply about the results. Decades of environmental, employment, and educational progress, reforms and protections are disappearing, rapidly. The place we’ve called home is disappearing.

And still, after all of these lies, and power-grabs, and repeals, and reversals, there are people who refuse to participate. I met a woman yesterday who told me, “I just don’t vote, usually…I wait and see what my neighbor says and does, and then I might do what she does…” She laughed as she told me this; expecting what? That I would join in her merriment, tickled by the rampant vacuity of someone surrendering her power so blithely?

Here’s the thing: I haven’t undertaken canvassing door-to-door because it’s a keen source of enjoyment or even self-satisfying. I haven’t donated time and money because I had nothing better to do or money to burn (hardly that). I haven’t read countless articles, listened to debates, watched informational programs and asked questions because it wouldn’t have been more fun to read a book, take a nap, or watch a mindless movie…And I’ve done very little compared to countless people who have given most of their energy to the recall election for months and months and months. But this is (or used to be) a democracy: of, by, and for the people. If we’re not involved, if we’re not self-monitoring and paying attention, and participating, then we’ll lose rights, and quickly. And if we don’t question the smiling lies, and legal defense funds, and out-of-state money pouring in by the millions, then we’ll get the government we deserve. Run by special interests and serving them, not us.

Our votes absolutely have power, whether we use them or not, but perhaps not the power we would have preferred, in retrospection. Power corrupts in the hands of those more focused on personal gain than the welfare of all. And all it takes for the corrupt to rule is for good people to sit back and do nothing.

If home is where the heart is, where is home for a heart that’s broken? I want my heart healed and my home back, starting tomorrow.

 

 

Palingenesia

Tags

Balance, Change, co-creation, Equinox

Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin                                   

Tomorrow we celebrate the Spring Equinox, a day of equal light and darkness, a lovely metaphor and invitation to reflect upon the balance in our lives, and certainly, the equinox may serve as a portal leading to the new life granted us by spring.

I’ve been pondering these words “new life” a lot the past few months, in light of the physical and spiritual shifts in my own life; the choices Phillip and I have made to pursue a life marked by greater simplicity, earnest dedication to using our gifts, and tending to being present, but also in terms of the political climate of my state, and country, and energies shifting throughout the world. We’re running on fuel that’s depleted—in every way possible—and at a pace that doesn’t allow for reflection or peace. The energy seems to be shifting and our future as a species seems deservedly precarious. Quo vadimus?

New life implies more to me than “the same old thing, but one more time.” Rather, it connotes a path, or method, or being that is evolved, a genetic sport, a surprising new synthesis that is now possible and which just a year, or month, or day ago may have been perceived only through a glass, darkly, or not at all. Serendipity and synchronicity are involved in this new life’s revelation, but so are hard work, paying attention, and listening.

And it involves a great deal of dying and acceptance. Joseph Campbell, discussing Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History (1934), writes:

In his six-volume study of the laws of the rise and disintegration of civilizations, [Toynbee believes that] schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme to return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to wield together again the deteriorating elements. Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be—if we are to experience long survival—a continuous “recurrence of birth” (palingenesia) to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death. ~ The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1949)

In our current political climate, I think we see those who, possibly out of their great fear that vital patterns of human interaction are changing (and must), resist the threats these calls to new life pose and seek to return to a time they imagine actually existed and has passed–when men (i.e., Caucasian men) were men and women were invisible. When education was readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic, taught by low(er)-paid drones. When the earth was an endless resource to be infinitely plundered. When aggression and domination were impulses lauded and given free reign over the “inferior others” (those unlike us), and when all these things could be validated by and receive the imprimatur of those who form the hierarchies of belief systems we value (over yours).

That dog don’t hunt no more, folks. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that dog led to the 1960’s—Civil Rights? Vatican II? The EPA? Unions? Earth Day? We should be evolving beyond these wonderful human achievements, not regressing to a mind state prior to their birth.

Regression is natural and can be a very healthy response to change; we want to “go home,” to safety and a time when  the parental figures—mature adults—handled all the world’s problems, choices, decisions and stress. Perhaps a healthier way to allow for this is to grant ourselves peace, quiet, reflection, meditation, and engagement with creativity every day. Hang out in our center, re-charge, and then re-engage as the mature adults we are called upon to be, now.

And, as Toynbee indicates, time spent cobbling together and mending those failing patterns and institutions we currently have, is also wasted energy. Let them die. Rumi said this better:

Quietness

Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now. You’re covered with thick cloud. Slide out the side. Die, and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you’ve died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now.

(From The Essential Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks, with John Moyne, published by Harper Collins)

I like that Rumi says, “Do it now;” Toynbee also wrote that generating pie-in-the-sky visions of a perfect future is also wasting energy. It absolves us of doing too much to effect change while we can and should, and the time has run out for “dream and avoid” behavior.

Check this out: http://www.worldometers.info/ The times they are a-changin’, and what we do with our time, our money, our gifts, our relationships, and our interactions with everything on earth matters more than it ever has, and quite possibly more than it may ever have the chance to exceed.

We have witnessed many examples of humans who have called us to be the changes the earth and all creation need to “nullify the unremitting recurrences of death.” (I would use the word “balance” rather than nullify; I think a rejection and fear of death got us exactly where we are: what if we accepted it instead as life’s necessary partner?)

These human genetic sports, avatars, and prophets were often recognized as such, and disturbed their times and societies, divisively generating both revolutionary enthusiasm in those consciences with which they resonated (usually the have-nots) and fear in those who sensed a challenge to their power and control. We’ve often rejected or destroyed these teachers in their own time and later built boxes and institutions around their teachings, freezing them in perpetuity, adapting them to our egoic comfort, and persistently rejecting the real challenges these human gifts among us represented and offered.

I welcome the balance spring calls me to establish and honor in my life. I welcome the new life, both the familiar and the unknown. I fear the deaths necessary to allow this new life to emerge and grow, but I welcome them anyway, because I’m in the good company of 7 billion–and counting–other precious souls. I’m grateful for the chance to serve as midwife to new life with everyone else on the planet. Together, we can harness the energies of love and create the palingenesia our sweet world needs to renew herself.

I truly believe in what St. Therese called the “Little Way;” every day we each have so many opportunities to change the patterns of interaction we’ve accepted and followed without reflection. Here’s a video that demonstrates how such patterns can change. I especially like that this example involves young women, because of my hope that humans may soon honor and balance the way our feminine natures (and we all have them) can complement our male gifts. We can be strong in our compassion and powerful in our ability to unite.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQf9ZbSDHE&sns=fb

And here’s a link to a video I love. I think we can never take ourselves too lightly, and it also serves to remind me that the only person I can change is myself. (A mental “Stop it!” works…and makes me laugh.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYLMTvxOaeE

The Mother Earth Bistro: Open for Business

Welcome, winged ones and those with fins; welcome, too, the pawed and bi-pedal. Mother Earth’s Bistro is opening a bit early this year, due to the enthusiasm of our head chef, Monsieur Sun, our prep chef, Madame Wind, and our sous chef, Mademoiselle Water.

The heady aroma from our kitchen? A little something we call “geosmin,” or earth smell; Je vous remercie de tout cœur. (Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.) It’s our own invention, created by the very active actinomycetes—already, on this day you like to call March 13th— busily breaking down the organic compounds in the soil, so the plants may feed, and you may feed on the plants, and we may all feed on each other. Mais oui! (But of course.)

It is the smell of our life cycle heated and released. Breathe deeply and join the party, for it’s over all too soon on this little sphere spinning wildly in space. C’est la vie; c’est la mort (Such is life; such is death): we are all coming and going, feeding and being fed.

Welcome, friends all, to the time and place for noticing our rebirth, discovering our symbiosis, and celebrating our interconnectedness. Dine to the music of our birdsong chorus and join the carbon-based dance on our lovely terrace, lit by a billion stars watching from afar and yearning to create such recipes of their own.

Prix fixe: You have only tell us: for what is it you hunger?

C’est parti! Joyeux printemps! (Here we go! Happy Spring!)

Tipping Points

Tags

community, Recall election, Tipping Points, Wisconsin

A year ago this weekend, my husband and I attended a rally in Madison to protest changes made by our then-new governor and a state government whose Republican majority supported him. That Governor Walker won the election with only a 52% majority perhaps foretold the divisiveness to come, but I don’t think many of us anticipated the cataclysmic changes or acrimonious conflicts ahead.

Over the past year, the elimination of collective bargaining rights for public sector employees (with the exception of police and fire fighters), the draconian cuts to public school funding (in the neighborhood of 900 million dollars), the implementation of voter identification requirements, and dozens of other measures taken to ostensibly “manage the money” of our state, have split its people and created an atmosphere of such vitriol and mistrust that friends and families have parted company and once-strong professional alliances have broken beyond repair.

Whatever merit existed in these changes and whatever “good” they have contributed to the state budget, they have come at too great a cost to the spirit and people of the place I have called home most of my life. I continue to protest the manner in which these changes have been enacted and I am anguished by the attitudes of disrespect and indifference with which those in the majority have flouted their power. But I am equally affronted by much of the oppositions’ language and inability to focus on policy rather than the individuals with whom they disagree.

Over a million signatures—540,208 were required–were collected to force a recall election of Governor Walker and his lieutenant governor, and other signatures have ensured the potential recall of other state legislators, including our own district’s senator, the majority leader of the state senate.

These recall elections will take place within the next few months. I’ve joined thousands of others in supporting the recall elections, but I dread the anger, distortions, and noise the campaign advertising will likely spew and the bitterness they will engender. My conscience led me to protest the choices and to participate in what I felt were just actions to stop those in power from creating further damage, but I’m so disappointed it’s come to this, and I’ve tried to proceed cautiously. I want to remain hopeful regarding the outcome.

What continue to sadden and perplex me are the perceived and dangerous changes in our degrees of dialogue, courtesy, and compromise that have shadowed this entire process, a reflection of the larger national shifts in political and social discourse, and in the sensationalized way they are presented and reported by our media.

I wonder a lot these days about lines that are drawn with humorous intent that then becomes sarcastic, then cynical, and then hate-fueled…when do these lines become too dangerous to cross? When do they become walls?

At what point do words incite action and then violent action? Are there a given number of rally cries, or decibels, that convert a crowd into a mob? When does a discussion become an argument and an argument a war? When does a perceived threat overtake reason?

What creates the necessary energy to make me forget my connection to everyone in my community and align myself with only those who think as I do?

What, finally and irreversibly, causes us to see each other as enemy? 

When did some Germans, or Poles, or Hungarians look at their Jewish neighbors and begin to see them as expendable? And how did “some” become “more” and then “enough?” What shift allowed Rwandan Hutus to pick up axes, and knives, and spears to murder their lifelong Tutsi neighbors? How could the English elite turn away from my own ancestors’ starvation? How could they ignore Irish people eating dirt and families dying in fields? How could anyone ever consider anyone else his property? How were the United States shaped by justifying the destruction of those who were already settled here? Is it possible to freeze the moment when my vision alters, my self-awareness fades, and my heart turns?

We’re always walking on see-saws and there are tipping points everywhere.

People read historical accounts of human atrocities and shake their heads. How did that happen; what were they thinking; how could they allow it? But I doubt those living into such times conceived what they would become. We must always be aware of our words and their power, our energy and what it can harness, our shadow and where its neglect may lead us.

The usual suspects: greed, power, fear and ignorance are like liquid mercury, and only mindful attention to the direction they’re flowing and ways they’re joining forces—within and without–works in our favor. So we must slow down. See the human frailty in ourselves and the other. Be brave enough and energetic enough to counter injustice before it overwhelms.

We must never be willing to sit back in silence when there are people and governments who must be held accountable for their behavior, but we have to focus on the behavior, the flawed thinking, the likely damage, not engage in hating the individuals. And we must be willing to take a long and penetrating look at our own motives and behavior. Make apologies when necessary. Proceed with care.

Begin and end with love.

 A news program I admire for its maturity and impartiality is The News Hour on PBS; an added attraction is that women guests, reporters, and newscasters are as prominent as men. I especially enjoy David Brooks and Mark Shields for their respectful way of presenting opposing views: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/politics/political_wrap/

 

 

Infinite Expectations, Surprising Blessings

Tags

blessing, daily round, expectations, Love, spirit

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.  ~ Henry David Thoreau

Just when I was ready to guide winter to the door, thank it for its company and bid it farewell till next year, we received a snowfall different from any other and enchanting in the world it offered us Saturday morning. The relative warmth kept the snow heavy and just damp enough to cling to everything at the angle from which it fell or blew, so the world at dawn appeared to be flocked with opals, and magical. I wandered for some time and out of time with my camera, grateful for the opportunity to be reintroduced to winter’s surprises and depths. Reawakened.

It was a beautiful reminder that all of creation holds surprises if we can keep our hearts and minds open to its possibilities. We can be so quick to box and label our days, our seasons, our experiences, and ourselves; how lovely to be stopped in my tracks and have my expectations upended so delightfully.

Relationships, too, can be forever evolving and surprising in their invitations. Things may shift rather dramatically, for example, when children become their parents’ caregivers. When my mother came to live with us some years ago, we all had to make adjustments in our hopes and behaviors very quickly and unexpectedly. We thought she would soon be moving into her own nearby condominium, but her health declined rapidly, and everything suddenly changed.

This was most difficult for my mother, who was an extremely independent woman. She had cared for my father for almost 20 years following his stroke, and to so quickly find herself dependent and cared for was heartbreaking.

People respond to dialysis very differently, much of it due to the status of their overall health and related co-morbidities: for some it’s not too drastic, and they manage well with dialysis for years; for others, it can be extremely draining and dispiriting. Mama came home weary and discouraged from her first session, and her exhaustion only increased as the weeks passed. We could see her health fading, and our own spirits sank as well.

Everything my mother owned was neatly boxed and stacked in a storage unit some miles from our home. We hoped to complete an addition to our home and see her settled with her own furniture and belongings soon, but construction was still underway and stalled by winter storms. For now, my mother’s privacy and few necessary possessions were confined to the guest room. One day, early in December, I went to the storage unit after helping Mama get settled at the dialysis facility. I climbed, searched, dug around, and finally located some of her treasured Christmas decorations, came home, and set them around our living room and her bedroom. Her happiness at discovering these when I brought her home that afternoon was a great boon for both of us.

We all tried so hard to lift each other’s spirits that year, despite the fact that our family, home, and relationships felt like they were constantly shifting. We knew Mama was dying, but not yet. Everything was strange and new. I recall how we stumbled and found our way again, over and over; how we juggled joy and danced sorrow and laughed and wept…how precious people are when the world feels like it’s ending and they say yes to love, anyway. Constant reawakening to need, and loss, and ways to demonstrate and experience love.

Christmas was coming soon, and Phillip and I had fun planning treats and surprises to keep gratitude and joy readily accessible. We read Christmas stories, sang carols, watched movies, and happily relaxed some of the dietary restrictions dialysis patients have to follow, so Mama could enjoy her holiday season meals and a few special desserts.

We wrapped a lot of little gifts and set them under the tree with presents that arrived from my brothers, and hoped we could make Christmas Day truly special for Mama. Naturally, we didn’t expect her to do anything but relax and enjoy herself as much as possible.

When I handed Mama the last gift, she surprised us by reaching into the pockets of her robe and presenting each of us with a small wrapped box as well. I remember looking at Phillip in shock: how on earth—and when—had she located and wrapped presents for us? She was never left alone in our home, could no longer drive, and certainly didn’t walk into town on her own. She didn’t have the strength for any of these things.

I opened my gift and discovered a sweet brooch that had been my grandmother’s. Mama knew I collected these old brooches and—somehow—had wrapped this treasure from her own jewelry box, as she’d wrapped some of my Dad’s wonderful old tie-tacks for Phillip. The pin is lovely, but I value it more because it’s come to symbolize what that year taught me about love and the infinite ways it may surprise and enliven our days, if we keep our eyes and hearts open.

Stripped of hope that her health would be restored, deprived of dreams for her future, dependent upon others for meals and much of her care, my mother still honored her need–with dignity and creativity–to gift those she loved. Living a completely circumscribed and regulated life, she was able to  delight us with surprise. Those with infinite expectations of the dawn will encounter obstacles along the way, but the point, as Thoreau says, is to stay awake and look for the surprising opportunities and blessings that always appear.

We looked forward to sharing our dinner with a good friend this past Saturday night. Due to the week’s warm weather and melting snow, I’d planned a “spring” meal of quiche, salad, fruit, and “something lemony” for dessert. When I woke up Saturday morning to see the new version of a winter wonderland, I thought maybe a hearty stew was called for…but decided to surprise our guest with the spring meal, anyway. She’s the kind of person who naturally stays awake and looks for the dawn’s surprises, and I’m learning, all the time, how to expect its  infinite wonders, too.

Slow Life and the Spirit

Tags

community, Gardening, Slow Food, Slow Life, spirit, Sustainability

When Phillip and I made a conscious decision to pursue a “slow life” together, we were led by others who have made the same decision to ground their choices and days in deliberate and focused sustainability and community connections.

 For us, a slow life is guided by a philosophical stance which believes that the spirit is deeply and truly fed only by intimate communion. To put it another way: living, relating, and buying locally allows us to be more fully present both to ourselves and to those who contribute to our well-being, as we contribute to theirs. This is not to promote an isolationist orientation or a denial of global connection and need, but to lessen the exhaustion and depletion of finite resources, to become mindful about right relationship with our neighbors, to redefine what constitutes “healthy living,” and to be earnest in clarifying the difference between desire and need.

 Far from feeling rigidly controlled, we’ve learned pursuing a slow life is exciting, creative, spacious, and fun.

 Savoring, noticing, attending, reflecting, listening, and being present are all practices that feed a slow life, and all are nourished by gratitude and balance. We commit to simplify in order to go deeper, and to more authentically value the common ground and the unique distinctions that define our days, relationships, seasons, community, and spirits. We deliberately honor the gifts that all of these create and offer for our enrichment.

Pierre Teilhard famously stated we’re spiritual beings having a physical, human experience. While we’re here on earth, this means our basic necessities of food, home, and clothing must be satisfied if our spirits are to thrive and evolve. It seems, though, that we’ve lost the connection between the pursuit of our basic needs and our spiritual health, as though spirit doesn’t enter into our choices and consciousness until not just our basic needs, but all of our (manufactured) desires, are met. Focused solely on the crazed pursuit of “more,” we have become disconnected from Source and source: we do not know where we, our food, our homes, and our clothing come from, nor at what cost to the earth and our neighbors. We do not relax and breathe unless we’re “on vacation,” when a lot of us routinely become ill from the anxiety, over-work, and imbalanced living we’ve consented to endure, often unconsciously.

 Slow living recognizes that spirit is (always) our essence, that the pursuit of basic necessities can be/is naturally spirit-fueled and intentional, and that the satisfaction of these needs can be creative, communal, and enough. A slow life is a consciously inspirited life.

 Homes can be green, energy use sustainable, clothing recycled, and food joyfully grown, locally procured, and communally shared. Our gifts and art can be recognized, encouraged, and shared in the production of the goods that meet our needs. We can “make a living” that is peace-filled and care-filled, and our businesses and interactions can be collaborative circles of collegiality rather than competitive, top-down hierarchies.

Small steps, in time, create new paths.

Grow a garden; join a CSA; shop at farmers’ markets. Seek and support restaurants like this: http://www.braiselocalfood.com and programs like this: http://wisconsinfoodie.com/

Make use of resale shops. Cull outgrown, unworn, disused, and unneeded possessions; recycle, reuse, and re-purpose creatively. Know where your material possessions are made and by whom; understand the dis-eased world you’re either perpetuating or choosing to change: http://video.pbs.org/video/1488092077/.

Live green: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Homes.aspx

 Heal whenever, whatever, wherever you can, starting with yourself and your choices.

 A slow life offers continual invitations and opportunities to recall and connect with who we— truly—are: shards of a holy and ongoing Creative Impulse, interdependent and aware that our only home is Love.

Epiphanies at the Laundromat

Tags

blessing, daily round, Epiphany, spirit

 Today, for Christians, is the traditional Feast of the Epiphany, a celebration of the Christ’s manifestation to gentiles; a sign, we’re told, that this child was a realized archetype for all people to access and imitate, because they could— regardless of their color, status, location, or relatives.

When I was growing up, it was a day that held lingering sparks of Christmas magic, treats, and ritual, before the season sputtered out to the annual and predictable blur of black, white, and gray life till Valentine’s Day.

As a word, epiphany has come to signify a graced moment of insight that flashes and floods our awareness, bringing us to a deeper knowing and understanding of connections, as though we’d somehow been lifted by sentient angels and gently flown across the insuperable gap described by Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. We’re here and the next moment we’re there, the big now/here; no leaping required. Zap. Our heart, mind, and spirit possess a new piece of spiritual reality we never even knew existed till…now. We’re changed.

I like the word epiphany: the mystery it touches and honors, the noticing and openness it often rewards, and the event itself, like a great big surprise party for the spirit. It happens instantly, but sometimes only after a journey of a thousand miles, or moments, or years.

The Wise Seekers in the Epiphany story recognized that something elemental about humans and their potential to love and form community had changed. They were willing to trust their intuition and set out to discover the beckoning unknown, an invitation all of us are sent, daily, if we’re open and willing to switch perspectives, which means questioning and sometimes setting down old stories, responses, behaviors, and habits, to clear the way for epiphanies.

Our dryer has been on the blink, on the fritz, and on strike this week; like a marketing pundit, it’s been all spin and no heat.

As a teenager, my husband owned and maintained a laundromat—a way to save money for college—and this made him, in time, a skilled specialist in the surgery and healing of laundering machinery. Whether his diagnostic proficiency and surgical skill have endured all these years are questions we pondered as we awaited the delivery of machine parts his preliminary analysis led him to order from online purveyors. (Why do I picture a drooling Igor, dressed in rags–that do not conceal his prominent hump–squinting his one eye and mumbling incoherent riddles while harvesting delicious rust-encrusted bits from discarded dryer carcasses? He holds them up to the full moon and shrieks delightedly as he anticipates the gold pieces each metal organ will fetch…But I digress.)

At any rate, the quick but expensive service of an appliance repair professional was waived, as we waited to see if Phillip could mend the dryer.

As I’ve written before, I’m one who finds solace in schedules. Along with house-cleaning, there is endless laundry punctuating the daily round. Wednesday, the towels are washed; Thursday our bedding; Friday, the dog and cat bedding; almost every day, 4-legged blankets, our clothes…it’s not just the love of routine, it’s also that I have severe allergies to pet dander (go figure) and laundering keeps them under control. The dryer is my appliance deity, because it actually and forcefully removes the hair and dander the washer just good-naturedly washes and rinses. There is such great satisfaction in extracting the dryer screen and removing a small dog-sized mat of hair, knowing that the laundry has been rendered danderless once again.

Such tender moments have not been enacted this week, however. Instead, I’ve been loading wet laundry into baskets and heading to the nearest laundromat for some dryers-on-steroids assistance. (Seriously. I had to stand on a chair to reach a sock in the back of one of these behemoths.) 

This is not a hugely painful ordeal, nor does it truly tempt the engagement of my skill for dramatically over-exaggerating the insignificant, but it seemed another task that I initially labeled one more interruption to my writing—Hello? I’m trying to get a book written, here!—and therefore resented.

I packed my notebook and camera beside the laundry and off I went. I arrived, loaded the dryers, sat for a moment, and began to hear a familiar voice in my head. Friar Lawrence. Whenever I’m in “grumble mode,” he visits. Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 3: Romeo is desperate about events, having killed Juliet’s cousin and been banished by the Prince, and the older, wiser Lawrence points out all the reasons these things may be perceived as blessings.

…thy Juliet is alive, For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead; There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slew’st Tybalt; there art thou happy too: The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend And turns it to exile; there art thou happy: A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array…

My inner Friar Lawrence always forces me to revisit the colors, perceptions, labels and significance I’ve chosen and assigned events, if they haven’t left me feeling grateful.

Deep breath. Notice. The laundromat was bright and clean. The plants were plastic, but not dusty, and there were chairs, folding tables, baskets on wheels…very welcoming. (There art thou happy!) The Jolly Yellow Dryers made quick work of my laundry and I had time to write, take pictures, and chat with fellow customers. (There art thou happy!) I began to feel grateful I had laundry to clean, a car to take me to the laundromat, and the money to pay for it. (There, there, and there art thou happy!)

I observed an elderly man and gradually noticed he exuded light; his gentleness and age choreographed a peaceful flow of energy as he moved between washers and dryers, folded his clothes, shared polite conversation…I noticed his laundry included women’s clothes as well as his own, and when he sat beside me I learned his story. He softly spoke of his wife, and of her stroke. How life changed suddenly, for both of them. Now, he does the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, the shopping, the caretaking. No complaint; no resentment; just loving, peaceful adjustment and acceptance…enlightenment.

Chopping wood, carrying water, but enlightened.

Epiphany.

The quality of Phillip’s surgical expertise proved excellent; the dryer is again restored to health; and I am changed.

A good week.

Compassionate Listening

Tags

Listening, Meditation, spirit, Spiritual direction, Spiritual practice

 

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant…

 Today, I’ve been reviewing the past year and pondering the paths before me regarding the year to come. The country and, more dramatically, my state—and my friends, in their discussions of these things—have been through such turmoil and discord this past year that I find myself focusing on a desire for the blessing of true, from-the-heart dialogue. More than anything, this requires the ability to listen to oneself and the other with conscious and deep attention.

 Three years of spiritual direction training, a concurrent MA in Servant Leadership and rugged year of CPE, all emphasized my responsibility to the art of listening. For both CPE and spiritual direction, I wrote “Verbatims,” almost 75 of these over the course of those 3 years, and they have since become an illuminating spiritual practice and a way to continue deepening my listening. It turned out that at 75, I was just getting started.

 Verbatims support the reflection necessary to notice what I noticed and missed regarding the other’s responses and my own during our time together, and to hold both of us in the light while doing so. Chiefly, they are tools for self-knowledge.

 Meaning is sifted through many levels of listening: There is the literal dialogue, and then there are all the accompanying intonations, pauses, body language indications, eye movements, triggers, memories, and energetic pulls toward and away from each other. There are projections, denials, biases, transference, manipulations, desires, shadows and more shadows at play in any conversation. Remaining conscious to all of these dimensions so that a conversation can be between our hearts and unearth true feelings respectfully, while allowing Spirit to truly guide and be present within our communication, takes continual practice and tending, and yields continual gifts.

 I encourage you to use verbatim-writing, if it appeals to you, for reflection and for deepening your listening gifts. There are people who loathe writing and for whom this would not be a helpful practice; rest assured, there are a variety of ways to deepen our listening, and I’ll be happy to share others as well.

 I’ve added a template at the end of this post, and encourage to you to try using all, some, or just one part of it, and let me know your reaction.

 It works like this: Light a candle or use meditative music: whatever signifies to your spirit that your time of meditation and sacred work is beginning. (It can help to have a great pot of tea and some wonderful form of chocolate to sustain this meditation!)

 Still yourself through meditation, centering, deep breathing—whatever method you use, and then take time to recount a recent conversation you shared. (For me, it’s best to jot down some memories and dialogue as soon as I can after a conversation has ended, and then to wait through one sleep/dreaming time before continuing.)

 Begin to write, describing the setting and energy with which you and the other seemed to enter the encounter. Then, as best as you can recall, write down the dialogue (like the script of a play). You can start with about 20 exchanges and try to build from there as you grow comfortable with the practice. It may seem daunting, initially, to recall who said what, but I assure you, if you get into the flow, the gist of your time together will also flow fairly unimpeded as you gain experience. Whenever possible, you can add, in parentheses, what body movements, pauses, tones, etc. accompanied the spoken words.

When you’ve finished transcribing the dialogue, the deep work can begin: this is the gift of creating a verbatim, for me. Over the years, the whole process has become a form of prayer and meditation that gives me great peace.

This is not about judging yourself—or the other—but about improving your ability to truly speak and hear from the heart and grant others the space and safety of speaking from theirs.

 Here is the verbatim outline I use when I’m working as a spiritual director/companion, or just praying with a recent conversation. There are many other versions available; mix and match; add and discard as it serves your spirit and deepens your listening. This is always, and only, for your eyes, and meant to enhance your self-awareness and compassionate listening. Some people save their verbatims to review their growth and celebrate lessons learned; others burn them following reflection, or annually, at a time that for them is holy, as a kind of sacred offering to Spirit or to honor their commitment to a level of listening that is awake and compassionate. Always remember: this is a way to listen more compassionately to yourself as much as to the other.

 May the New Year offer us wonderful opportunities and invitations to deepen our listening; and so may we, the other, and the world be healed.

 Verbatim Template

 Introduction (Time/Place/Person/Relationship/Context): (A good place to start.)

Record of Conversation: (Write it down as fully and faithfully as you can. Re-writing and jotting notes—all over the verbatim—is encouraged!)

 Analysis and Evaluation

Movement: (How would you describe the individual, shared, and Spirit’s flow of energy from beginning to the end of this encounter? Sometimes using colors to trace these “energy flows” is helpful.)

 My Feelings: (Note, in as much detail as possible, what you were feeling at each point of the conversation. Where did you feel any significant shifts?)

Other Person’s Needs: (What do you understand about the yearning and desires—for connection, healing, wholeness, relationship, etc.—of your dialogue companion? Or, perhaps the other person just stated goals and implied a need for support and a desire for clarity. Note wherever in the conversation s/he identified a feeling.)

Seed: (What would you isolate as the “important truth” of this encounter? Keep it simple and pure: what was this conversation “really” about? There may be one for you, and one for the other, that you sense and would like to explore.)

 What I’d Do Differently: (As you are present to this conversation, can you identify, within your own responses/movements, anything that you would change? Remember, this is about deepening your listening: Did you interrupt your companion out of anxiety, and so impede her own ability to hear herself or follow a thought along its journey? Did you veer off to another subject? Did you re-direct conversation away from the revelation of feelings and matters of the heart and head back to the good, old reliable brain? Did your attention drift, or did you become focused on your next response and so limit your listening?

 I learned two techniques in my training that I will always treasure: First, avoid asking too many, if any, “Why” questions. These can quickly turn people away from the heart and back towards the brain. Use “why” very sparingly.

 And—I cannot emphasize this enough—perhaps the most integral aspect of deep listening is to learn to be comfortable with pauses, however long. Over and over, this is what has yielded the most remarkable gifts in my listening. “Let silence do the heavy lifting.” Silent and listen contain the same letters; they are close kin and powerful allies on my listening journeys.)

What did this reveal: (About each of you, and reveal about your attitude toward the other person? Did you feel hooked at any point, or resist anything shared during this conversation? This is a very important part of the verbatim regarding your self-awareness and growth) 

Future Involvement and Learning: (What might you learn more about, or seek to master so as to improve the listening you offer this person, yourself, others, and Spirit?)

Spiritual Reflections: (How did this encounter echo, challenge, invite, etc., your spirit to grow? How did it affirm your journey? Are any patterns or practices made clear? If there is a theology that holds meaning and direction for you, how is it integrated into your listening? If you have a connection to an image of the Holy, how was that affected by this encounter? How has your spirit been moved by this, and do you have a sense of how the greater Spirit was—and is—present to you?)

Identity and Style: (What has this revealed to you about yourself and your way of listening, being present, embracing mystery…etc.?)

Take time to be with this verbatim and revisit it for deeper reflection. Honor yourself and the other with a blessing before ending the practice. Listen and heal; listen and be healed.

 

Meeting Life on the Inside: Breathe In

Tags

daily round, Meditation, spirit, Winter solstice, wisdom

The wheel of the year has turned to the position we call winter; we recognize the year’s shortest day with the solstice and the “sun’s rebirth” as days begin to lengthen again. The daily round is marked with celebrations and traditions honoring sacred understandings of light-in-darkness. Winter offers invitations to explore one’s interior yearning, healing, and relationships, so we may go forth again in spring renewed, centered, and focused upon our unique forms of service and connections to our outer relationships and communities.

The word “hibernate” is derived from the Latin word for winter (hiberno: I winter) and generates the wonderful noun “hibernaculum,” which, zoologically, is the place where an animal winters, and, botanically, is the protective bud or covering a plant uses to survive the challenges of dormancy. I love that the letters of the word “hibernate” form the anagram “breathe in,” for winter is my time for assessing, deepening, and strengthening my meditation practice and more earnestly tending my dreams.

My “hibernaculum” is a small meditation room with a futon, my piano, lovely artwork created by friends, and a beautiful cabinet made my Phillip. I use it to store books, candles, discernment cards, CD’s, and a small TV for viewing the excellent Spirituality and Practice DVD series, Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life as a prelude to meditation.(http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/spiritualliteracy/) This room is a sanctuary I value; I suppose it’s the feminine spiritual equivalent of a “man cave.” It’s where I go to consciously “breathe in.”

 Coleman Barks, the wonderful translator of the Sufi mystic Rumi’s poetry, tells of a meeting with a spiritual master who asked him, “Will you meet me on the inside or on the outside?”

 Barks recalls that he answered “with English-teacherly evasiveness,” saying, “Isn’t it always both?” Reviewing his response years later, he regrets this attempt at sophisticated cleverness and writes, “I should have bowed and said, Inside.” (From The Drowned Book: Ecstatic and Earthly Reflections of Bahauddin the Father of Rumi, by Coleman Barks and John Moyne.)

This is a time when we gather to celebrate and mark festivities of light with gift-giving. Often the gifts are mere gestures, empty of true, heartfelt meaning. How lovely if we could daily gift ourselves with times of stillness and inner peace, and encourage others to do so as well. Twenty minutes in the morning and the evening are possible; more than that, I have learned, they are necessary, wholly holy, and healing moments of the day, when I may retreat, meditate, and again meet myself “on the inside.”

 At no point in the year’s turning are we more generously invited to be with our authentic selves this way: to sift through blessings, losses, lessons, hopes, realignment, and redirection. Winter speaks to my beloved inner hermit and beckons her to explore and honor the wisdom yielded by another year on the path.

It can be helpful during the time of the solstice to create a timeline of the closing year and note the patterns danced by my spirit. When was I most strongly true to myself and where did my spirit waver? Are there any opportunities to ask for or grant forgiveness and so strengthen relationships in the life I’m creating? What learning do I most desire in the year to come? What do my senses crave; what colors, smells, imagery and totems are calling; what paths are opening? What relationships need mending, tending—or ending? What gifts have been neglected or over-extended? What parts of me need regeneration and where can greater balance be restored?

I truly and happily anticipate this retreat, this time of hibernation and restoration, this annual opportunity to deeply “breathe in,” to bow to Spirit, to greet myself and therefore others with true Namaste. (“My Source/Spirit recognizes, acknowledges, and bows to yours.”)

I sometimes wonder if those who proclaim their dislike of winter are really denying–or fearing–the naked encounter with the self that calls to and from the heart during this season, and if that is the case, I’m sad for their unconscious fear of what, for me, has always been a loving boon and gentle way to welcome a new year. As counter-cultural as stillness and darkness are, entering them openly and with a candle lit by self-compassion can steady and deepen one’s orientation towards, and connection to, the Mystery that is the stillpoint at the center of our existence. Now is always the time, but certainly the winter solstice (when the sun stands still) gentles the spirit inward to gaze on the Love at its center more sweetly than any other time of the year.

May the peace, wisdom, love, and joy of the season be yours.

 

A Winter Carol

Tags

Christmas carol, community, daily round, Holidays

One snowy day a few years ago I was walking down the trail with Riley and Clancy when a melody came into my head. Five miles later, I’d composed a winter carol that communicates what the season means to me, and after this morning’s lovely sunrise over the snow-frosted hills and ice-glazed river, it feels like a good day to share it with you…

 Peace to your day.

 WELCOMING THE STRANGER                         

 See the weary travelers,

Lonely in the night,

In a town of strangers,

Searching for a light,

Praying for a kindness,

Just an open door—

In a world of strangers,

There’s no welcome for the poor.

 

In a cave that evening,

Meant to shelter sheep,

Love was born to heal us,

Little lamb asleep.

In a world of darkness,

Tossed and blown and wild,

In a world of strangers,

Came the poor to greet the child.

Chorus:

No one is a stranger;

Nothing’s here by chance.

All of life is welcome

In the holy dance.

 

See the holy family,

Sheltered from the storm,

In a world of strangers,

Love will keep them warm,

Whirling stars are singing,

Angels greet this birth,

Wrapped in rags and mystery,

Lies the richest child on earth.

 

While the world lay sleeping,

Everything had changed,

Power, wealth, possession,

All was rearranged.

Have we learned the lesson?

Have we even heard?

How we treat the stranger

Is our answer to the Word.

 Chorus:

 

Wealth is found in giving,

Opening the door,

Offering forgiveness,

Sheltering the poor,

Cradling creation,

Saying yes to love,

Welcoming the stranger,

While the angels sing above.

Chorus:

 

Oh Earth, You Are Too Wonderful

Tags

daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Slow Life, spirit

Ah! A full moon and its total eclipse; what wonders are set before us in the daily round!

Taking the time to see them or apprehend them through whatever sense they harness and ride towards our awareness is such gift. Just to distinguish and value their unique “is-ness” and to appreciate their fleeting existence is life at its holiest.

This is a glorious time of year for seeing old friends and sharing visits that allow us to “catch up” on one another’s journeys. But it can also be a hectic time of year: the month has only four weeks, like any other, after all, and they can quickly be filled with visits and parties and baking and readying our home…this year, with Christmas on a Sunday, the time for all of these annual rituals and festivities feels even more quickened and precariously scheduled…at times, I begin to feel burdened. There are too many cards to send; too many cookies to bake; too many appointments; no time to work on my writing… Gad! The floor’s a mess and it’s time to walk with the 4-leggeds and guests are due soon …

I’ve trained myself well enough to sense the moment when my feelings tip from peaceful to anxious, and when my heart’s gratitude becomes clouded with resentment; usually, this means I’m not breathing mindfully, or I need to sit and stare out the window for a while, or it’s time to juggle and rearrange plans…or take a nap.

Just stop. Slow my spirit down.

I was pondering these things and my over-filled calendar very early this morning as I awaited the moon’s eclipse at Full Moon Cottage. We so-named our home one long-ago May, when we spent our first night in our “new” home lying on a ready-made bed in the otherwise empty living room, with its tall, bare windows filling the wall we faced. The home needed so much work. The bedrooms weren’t even habitable just yet, and we didn’t want to move furniture into rooms that needed imminent demolishing and reconstruction. So there we were: far enough away from the nearby towns to enjoy moonlight and starlight more fully than ever, and the full moon’s brilliance actually brought me out of my dreams. I remember whispering Phillip into wakefulness and asking him what on earth was happening. I could see the lawn and trees, and the trees’ shadows—everything aglow and magically lit. What fantastic enchantment was creating this? (I can’t believe I was that much of a city mouse, but there you go.)

What on earth indeed. How gifted we are to have such phenomena (“things appearing to view”) offered for our delight here on our earth every moment, every day—and night. The invitation, always, is to essentially see who and what is before us. I’m reminded of those heart-breaking, haunting lines from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, when Emily’s spirit is permitted to re-visit a day from her life and she grieves—really seeing how little we appreciate the holiness of our lives, just as they are:

Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me…just for a moment now we’re all together, Mama; just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s really look at one another! (Pause) I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye, Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover’s Corners….Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking….and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths….and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

In a few weeks, another holiday season will have passed. I don’t want it to pass in a blur; I want to see and “be with” every moment, so far as that’s possible. And with all the precious moments that follow. Anticipation of coming events is lovely, but not when it leapfrogs ahead of the here and now. Less baking, minimum cleaning, no shopping: I’m allowing the time I have to “open” and give me the room to be present to the people and 4-leggeds I cherish and our precious time together. I want to look at them all, and the dear world around us, to really see, deeply listen, and truly be with them.

In the end, we couldn’t see the eclipse; instead, we enjoyed a mug of coffee and sat on the eastern side of the house, watching a glorious sunrise over the river. A horned owl flew low over the frosted lawn, pursuing a rabbit, who scampered and just managed to squeeze safely under the deck. Phillip warmed my hands after my frigid dash down our l-o-n-g driveway—wearing my nightgown—to photograph the moon. Ah! The sky presented a dazzling interpretation of the red-orange-yellow end of the spectrum, and the mint-flavored coffee tasted like heaven. Together, we toasted the new day we knew would be full of the wonders the earth set before us.

Peace and All Good.

On the Path

Tags

daily round, Nature, Walking, wholeness, Wisconsin

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

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

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

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

June 5, 2004

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

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

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

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

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

March 11, 2005

Journeying with the loss of Mama:  (one month)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Give yourself the gift of time outside.

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

True to Our Nature

Tags

Ego, Love, spirit, wisdom

 

We are an odd couple, Phillip and I.

While “odd” is an adjective relative in its gradations, here I mean we are odd like Felix and Oscar: I, being bound by a dedicated zeal to a neat and orderly home, and Phillip better able to relax and feel grounded in an earthy “whatever/is-ness” regarding the placement and arrangement of items.

Funny how life throws us into relationships that challenge our core beliefs about the meaning of life and the methods and paths for pursuing these; “funny” being another word offering broad interpretation, and here I mean not raucously amusing or the paragon of wit, but damnably frustrating and crazy-making. I’ve often wondered if we could have made it as a tribal couple, confined to a tipi. Dances with Vacuum meets Maker of Messes.

Rings are a lovely symbol for honoring the eternal bond created by weddings and commitment ceremonies, but I’ve often thought such rituals should end with the celebrant tossing a set of juggling balls at the two parties with the invitation that they “get to it.”

The thing about these partnerships is that they are never just between the two most apparent participants, but include legions of voices, directors, and choreographers it takes years to untangle and identify. And even if the sources of our predilections, habits, and worldviews are known, change is unlikely; we are who we are. Generations and genetics have made us so. The patterns are deeply embedded and the gears finely interlocked. Right? Am I right? Yes! I’m right, and that means, I win.

The trick to master in life, it seems, is to surrender the ego’s comfort with its seat at the center of one’s universe. Throughout my educational and career journeys, I’ve repeatedly encountered the developmental frameworks designed to gauge our growth in various domains, including the cognitive, emotional, moral, and spiritual dimensions of the self. (Read Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, and Fowler for more on these ideas.)

All of these models view ego transcendence as the highest goal and “energetic wavelength” we humans may achieve, and while they each define attributes and actions that signify one may have shed her egoic perspective, no one has figured out an exact prescription that fits all of us for reaching this level of enlightenment, but this much we know: Living from the ego, we miss the message that is the essence of all the spiritually evolved: Don’t live from the ego; live from and within the Spirit of Love.

The spiritual journey brings one into the egoic struggle daily, front-and-center. The constant invitation is to notice what we notice and listen to our inner tracks and judgments, even as we focus as well on the feelings and peace of those around us. Love, our Source, it seems, both challenges and blesses us with this bidding. It does become easier, with practice, to set down one’s views and pick up another’s, but I am nowhere near as facile with this ability to humbly and respectfully try on another’s worldview as I hope to be. Luckily, more opportunities to practice are incoming, every moment.

The Judge is the archetypal voice I struggle with more than others, and I suspect others of my species do as well. We learn so early about “right” and “wrong,” and can so easily be shamed into conforming to beliefs and patterns of behavior without an opportunity to explore other ways of thinking, acting, and being, that we project our fears of being “different” onto others who deviate from our own rigid box construction. Or the boxes that were handed to us.

We “should” all over ourselves until we can slow down, listen, laugh at ourselves, generously love ourselves, and then get over (transcend) ourselves and begin to enjoy and love the wonder of others. We learn to accommodate our ego and the egos of our communities, even as we challenge each other to grow beyond our limitations and reset the boundaries of love’s definition and territory.

The spiritual journey invites us to see through and beyond the right/wrong, winning/losing dualistic view that is the stuff of life for the ego. It offers us a chance to consider who we might become, and then teaches us to co-create ourselves anew, with Love, as it manifests through and around us.

I learn from Phillip’s ability to relax and settle into his surroundings; he learns from my established housecleaning routine; we both learn that a loving partnership is an adventure in mutual evolution and acceptance. He helps me accept, protect and grow beyond my inner Adrian Monk, and I do the same for his inner Pig Pen. We befriend each other’s shadow, and thus more generously welcome our own. And so we soften and extend the boundary of Love. Human nature is more than ego-fulfillment and a need to win; it is also a willingness to step outside and grow beyond the ego that divides us and enter the spirit that unites us.