In Medias Res

Tags

authenticity, Balance, Discernment, Forgiveness, healing, Life Lessons, Listening, Relationship

Four weeks ago, a man I didn’t know well but had reason to trust based on our past relationship (he was a department head in the Servant Leadership Program where I earned my Master Degree), called and asked to borrow money he would repay a week later, when his bank loan came through… He would drive three hours early the next morning and retrieve the loan, if I could provide it.

Several years ago, it seems, he’d left the university and started up a coffee-roasting business that was initially successful but now, apparently, not so much. The need was urgent, he said, to pay for a piece of German equipment being delivered the next day or risk losing another several months of business…

The story was convoluted and poorly-crafted.

To say the call caught me off guard is an understatement. Why would he call me, a former student living three hours away and a person he barely knew? Why wouldn’t his bank, or family, or friends, or former co-workers help him? All the intuitive bells, whistles, and alarms went off, but in direct conflict to the understanding I’d had of this person as an honorable man devoted to his family, his Catholic faith, and the teachings of servant leadership. How could it not be true?

I said I needed to talk with my husband and I’d let him know the answer that evening.

I shared the story with Phillip that night, fully reviewing my doubts and my perception that this man was in very deep trouble. I knew vital parts of the story had been withheld and I hadn’t probed deeply enough, possibly out of the sense this would embarrass the man, but more honestly because it would have embarrassed me. I knew it was risky, and the sum a large one, for us. I shared my intuition that we shouldn’t lend the money, but then discounted it based on my past experience with the man. How could he possibly lie, steal, or cheat? That wasn’t who I knew him to be. Things like that don’t really happen, not to me. Too Arthur Miller; too over-the-top dramatic. Too preposterous.

Phillip said, “It sounds like he needs help. I don’t believe the ‘German equipment’ story, but maybe it’s for a house payment, something he needs to stay afloat. We have to be willing to lose this money.” We hoped that the man would use it wisely and repay it, as he promised.

A month later, as expected, the man’s check has bounced a few times. He indeed lied (lied in deed?), and willingly took our money with no chance of repayment. Money we’d earned through hard work and saved through small sacrifices, one after the next.

I know this man has a wife with compromised health, a daughter in middle school whom he adores, and a business that must be horribly broken. I know he is desperate. I also know that when he taught the principles of servant leadership, he believed in them, and I cannot fathom what dis-ease has created the discrepancy.

I do not understand why he chose an unethical solution to his problems, or what fears and miseries have caused him to fall so far and turn his life into a Greek tragedy.

The experience has angered and saddened me, of course; it has made me twist and turn with the struggle to forgive someone who entered our lives and betrayed us, and, of course, it has brought forward the many-headed monster of money and its meaning.

Phillip has moved on more positively than I, stuck as I am with the pain I’ve caused by dishonoring my intuition, by allowing the past to dictate my choices in the present. Knowing who someone was doesn’t really help me know who they are today. Why didn’t I work harder to protect our money and to learn more about this man’s troubles? He didn’t want to share and I was too shocked and embarrassed to invite the truth…

And I agonize over the idea that by saying “yes” to this man, I’ve encouraged him to fall even further; I granted a reprieve from the crash to the bottom he needs to hit at some point. I allowed him to dig more deeply into the self-loathing and denial that accompanies betrayal.

I pray for his spirit’s healing. I curse his weaknesses. I regret my generosity and question my motives.

So the journey circles round and I am invited to examine my experience. I have to ask questions about my motives and needs, about why this event has created such turmoil and sadness, and to discover ways to regain my peace and balance.

I have to ask myself why I allowed this person’s story and needs to unseat my balance to begin with, and to take precedence over the peace and welfare of my family. Who did I need to be to him?

It’s too soon to know. I’d love to be able to sum it all up and say something wise. (“Be careful what you believe to be too preposterous to happen to you: it will.”) I’d love to pack it up and store it in the attic of life lessons learned, once and for all time.

It ain’t that easy, however. “Never loan money to family or friends” isn’t always true. Very little is always true, and life doesn’t move along in neat little chapters with tidy beginnings and endings. Except for two breaths, life is always lived “in the middle of things.”

But I do know this: The answers to my questions, and who I become by waiting for them and listening deeply, may provide greater wealth than I lost.

Breath of Life

Tags

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

Phillip, my cousin, Don, and my Aunt Mary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like my Aunt Mary.

 

Earth Day, Every Day

Tags

Balance, blessing, co-creation, community, daily round, Earth Day, Full Moon Cottage, Gaylord Nelson, Home, Photography, Relationship, Slow Life, spirit, Transformation, wholeness, Wisconsin

Our goal is an environment of decency, quality, and mutual respect for all other human creatures and for all living creatures. . .The battle to restore a proper relationship between man and his environment, between man and other living creatures will require a long, sustained, political, moral, ethical, and financial commitment- -far beyond any effort made before.  ~ Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson , founder of Earth Day

Last Friday

Saturday

River at the end of July

River today

If we don’t have certain outer experiences, we don’t have certain inner experiences or at least we don’t have them in such a profound way. We need the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers and the mountains and the trees, the flowers, the birds, the song of the birds, the fish in the sea. All of this evokes something in our inner world, evokes a world of mystery. It evokes a world of the Sacred and gives us that sense of awe and mystery.   ~ Thomas Berry

Glacial drumlin

The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity… that’s all there is. That’s the whole economy. That’s where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world.  ~ Gaylord Nelson 

Fiona and Riley watching the sunrise this morning

Double-Crested Cormorant

Practices for Earth Day to feed the spirit.

Happy Earth Day, and for tomorrow: Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday!

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?

The Quickening Time

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything Changes

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Falling in Love Again

Tags

Aging, authenticity, Balance, blessing, co-creation, Listening, Love, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, spirit, Transformation

One day last week I reread Paula D’Arcy’s moving spiritual memoir, Gift of the Redbird, in which she shares her lost-and-found relationships with the Holy over the course of many years, and how her sacred encounters, whether prompted by the utter depths of grief, illness, or yearning, always led to her willingness to notice, attend, and surrender images of the Holy that no longer held meaning for her. The gifts yielded by these journeys—hard-won, as the best gifts often are—seemed to be greater expansiveness and deeper evolution regarding her capacity to love and to perceive connection with all creation.

And so I’ve been traveling with the book’s wisdom in the time since closing its covers. (All art, for me, requires this time to be with my atoms and energy, rearranging my understanding of life’s big questions before I can even begin to speak about its effects on my spirit. And, of course, these alterations change when I revisit a work of art, even a book that’s slim and a deceptively quick read.)

I’ve been thinking about all the significant relationships in my life, from the openness and intimacy shared with my own spirit and sense of the Holy, and then rippling out from there to include my connections with my husband, family, friends, 4-leggeds, and even my home. It seems all of them have followed the pattern described by D’Arcy’s relationship with her God, in that the connections are at times deeply intimate and lively, and at other times, somewhat flat and stagnant

It’s good to be reminded that ongoing discernment and faithful checking-in can help us recognize the degree of effort and attention we’re offering these relationships and how well we’re tending them. But there is also the need for the field of each relationship to have its fallow time for deepening; what may, at first, feel stagnant may more truthfully be the sacred period of stillness necessary for the rigors of  the relationship’s evolution, its next stage, requiring re-commitment and patience as this unfolds.

The dark nights our spirits experience, as do each of our relationships, may be accepted and unpacked as gifts, although at times they feel so antithetical to anything desired, supportive, or helpful. But traveling the circle as many times as I have, I’ve begun to see these places of dark blessing are like the silent depths beneath the earth where seeds are loved into growth.

And to realize that my partners in relationship, perhaps even the Holy, have their own steps to dance, their own needs to withdraw, to be renewed, and to evolve.

And how lovely when we waltz together once more, embrace, and fall in love again, not only with our past adventures and the relationship we have shared, but with the shining place we now find ourselves in and all the steps we have yet to dance together.

The Space Between the Notes

Tags

authenticity, co-creation, community, daily round, eagles, Full Moon Cottage, Home, Listening, Meditation, Music, Nature, New Year, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Slow Life, spirit, Transformation, Winter, Wisconsin

“Music is the space between the notes.”  ~ Claude Debussy

The long inhalation of excitement and joy that begins in September and lasts through the Christmas holidays has been exhaled over the past week or so. The decorations are almost all put away—a few are “wintry” enough to last through February, along with a few that foretell Valentine’s Day—and my energy has settled deep within.

We attended a post-holiday-holiday-party and several guests mentioned their dislike for the months of January and February.

I nodded sympathetically but remained unengaged with the conversation, because I tend to love the months for their stillness and gifts of time for sifting through recent experiences, re-gathering my spirit, noticing little regressions and evolutions, and seeing clearly where I am on my journey, before heading into the new year with renewed energy. Each new year is like a musical composition my little spirit co-creates with Spirit. Twelve measures of music, or possibly 52, or 365; each a movement of its own. I’m grateful it begins–somewhat non-traditionally, I suppose–with a long rest, so I can hear the music shape itself and its themes for the coming year.

Many of the other guests at the party were teachers, however, and I could empathize with their post-holiday weariness and return to classroom routines.

January and February can be cold and the days are still brief. Their passage can be slow and uneventful and they’re rather anticlimactic, following the long season of holidays and traditional gatherings with friends and family. The crescendo diminishes to silence.

But what an invitation to be creative and start some new traditions!

Phillip and I tend to use these slower winter months to get out of the weekend routine and go on day trips. Last weekend, we traveled to the Wisconsin River area and combined an eagle-sighting adventure with a visit to a well-established and award-winning winery.

We have a few more adventures planned between now and spring break, and I’m looking forward to them. Sometimes we’re surprised by the fun a new place or experience offers and even if it’s less than stellar, we’re together and, usually, laughing.

This week, I was surprised with a visit from my nephew and his family, a true boost to the spirit. One of the gifts of working at home is being able to say yes (or, as we say in Wisconsin, “You betcha!”) to spontaneous visits.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to schedule gatherings with close women friends during these months, to share spiritual stories, practices, books, and films, and to reinforce each other’s spirits and affirm our journeys. We become so busy when the days grow longer. It might be helpful to get together once or twice a month in January and February to transfuse each other’s spirits with renewed energy and share a very-mini-retreat, helping each other get our spirits in tune for the months ahead.

Traveling through the year’s music, its rhythms and beats, its familiar melodies and new improvisations, invites greater intentionality and sensitivity from me than I was prepared or wise enough to offer when I was younger. Letting Spirit be the conductor is easier, however, and I welcome her gift of an initial multi-measure rest, because it allows me to hear her deeper song, the one she sings in my heart and bids me to dance when the music of the year continues.

(Murphy says, “I crawl under my blanket, watch Downton Abbey, and take a two-month retreat.”)

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.

Still, Still, Still

Tags

authenticity, Balance, co-creation, Listening, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Slow Life, Snow, spirit, Transformation, wholeness, Winter

Our first annual snowfall graced our Sunday (Bon Iver!), and we relaxed into being with the wonder of it. Huge flakes covered the trees and earth; the river, surrounded by white hills and flowing beneath the smoky gray sky, took on a brilliant silver sparkle, like a glittering ribbon threading through the landscape.

Winter is the season that calls me within, to slowly and gently review the journey of the dimming year and gestate the light with which my spirit will co-create the year to come. What gifts have served me well? Which have I neglected? How will I dance out my life in the new year? What are the triggers that hook me to harmful ways of being and what are the deep desires I ask of Spirit to further challenge and delight my heart? Am I tending my time, health, and relationships, respecting the treasures they are? Am I putting anything off because I’m afraid of failing? Or succeeding? Can I begin, alter, or renew a spiritual practice? Is my energy aligned and in communion with my beliefs, and do these translate clearly through my speech and actions?

Last year, I wrote about my “hibernaculum,” the meditation room where I spend my deepening time each day. It becomes more deeply sacred to me in winter. As I wrote: 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.

Nothing engenders these days of gentle and vital introspection more for me than the lovely snow that muffles the noise, busyness, and demands of a world too addicted to all three. When it’s snowing, traffic slows, heartbeats slow, breathing slows, and sometimes magically, the limiting need to avoid our inner voices and knots dissolves as well.

Sitting in my meditation space and looking out towards a full moon making the snow-covered earth sparkle and glow with mystery, or witnessing the iced river and white hills afire with the deep violet, indigo and scarlet of a winter sunrise remind me that all of life is a magical gift, and that the finest way of offering my gratitude is through the inner work and discernment accomplished in stillness, that helps me be as present to all of it as I can.

I wish you a winter of gentle peace, times for deep introspection, the stillness to bring forth your renewed light to the world, and gentle snow (real or imagined) to blanket you with the shimmering beauty and mystery of spirit-tending.

Love in the Time of Climate Change

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phillip and I with my parents many years ago.

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

Mulligan helping Dad prepare breakfast.

Murphy enjoying spring breezes in December.

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

Departures, Heralds, & Wonders

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Departures may also serve to herald the new.

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

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

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

Music and the Food of Life

Tags

co-creation, daily round, Love, Music, Nature, Photography, Relationship, Transformation

Life at Full Moon seems to be recovering well following our long weeks of drought. We mourn our losses, but tend the living, grateful for the blooms and vegetables that survived. For now.

I was weeding in the garden yesterday and enjoyed the thrumming hum a variety of bees made as they buzzed from plant to plant. A bumblebee climbed a licorice spire of hyssop with concentrated intensity.

Butterflies fluttered through, barely lighting on blossoms before sailing off; the birds seemed to be having choral practice at the feeder and consuming sunflower seeds in spectacular quantities.

It seems the music of life becomes more intense as we edge nearer to autumn’s first frost, and the Great Silence of winter hushes all for a time. (I’ve often wondered, though, if snowflakes fall to a music that flows in wavelengths beyond our auditory capacity.)

The evening symphony of crickets, cicadas, and katydids has pulsed throughout the night this week, like Poe’s tintinnabulation of bells. I love their silvery percussive music and am grateful our cooler weather allows windows to be open.

This morning I went out to water plants on the deck and discovered the milky latex from the rubber tree’s stem dripping onto some leaves below the point of injury. Looking more closely, I discovered a female katydid nestled in a leaf’s crevice, and suspected katydid it. 

I later learned there are more than 100 varieties of katydids in our country and over 4,000 throughout the world. My visitor was of the genus and species Scudderia furcata: a Fork-tailed Bush katydid, and a cousin to crickets. She’d likely deposited eggs in a stem or leaf of the rubber plant, slitting it with her ovipositor and thus releasing the latex.

If so, nymphs will emerge next spring and, after successive molts, mate and deposit their own eggs a year from now.

All of life in a year.

My katydid isn’t a musician. In her species, only the male sings by rubbing a scraper on one forewing against a toothed edge on the other (stridulation). She heard her mate’s call through tympana, hearing organs located on her forelegs. It gave me pause to imagine our world if humans spoke and heard like katydids! But maybe we’re not all that different; after all, Phillip’s music and voice served as quite an attractant when I first heard him sing.

I missed the music of the birds and insects during the drought. It seemed to wither and withdraw. Its absence didn’t offer the peaceful, centered silence of meditation; it was more like a vacuum existed where once there had been sound, an element of life that connected us and made our spirits whole had abandoned us. If there were calls and songs, they sounded brittle, thirsty and desperate.

But the great music of life that calls us to merge, to love, to eat, drink, and make merry has returned and I’m almost as thankful for this as I am for the restorative rains.

I like the music for its honesty and lack of false sentiment: it says, “Come to me and we’ll marry our energy to create more life together.” It acknowledges that sometimes this is done though mating and at other times through surrender.

Katydids prey upon plants and slower-moving insects like aphids. They have an extra pair of miniature legs dangling from their chins, like built-in silverware, to help them efficiently consume their energy, in whatever form it takes. Birds, bats, small mammals and, in some cultures, people, eat the katydid.

The clematis died in the drought and has been feeding microbes for weeks. The vegetables that didn’t die will soon be on our table and in the freezer.

All this beauty, all this lovely music, all these relationships…all seeking to mate and create, to eat, or to accept capture and so transform one’s energy into others’ food, an ending none of us escapes.

Sweet, devouring life: all of us fed and feeding. Death just means someone or something’s been granted a feast. Nature imposes her balanced justice: in the end, we all become another’s banquet.

But first, we make and merge the music of our lives, which is to say the music of loving our way through droughts and into seasons of peace and joy. Once more round the circle. All the music of creation is perhaps a way of saying, “Thank you” to Love, just for the chance to sing and hear the songs of our spinning planet.

One day something will sing for its supper and it will be me. (“I” would be the correct grammar; I don’t think that will matter then.) May they be as grateful for the meager meal I offer as I have been for the bounty offered to me. And may what remains of my energy offer sustenance in love…

If music be the food of Love, play on.

The Human Carnival: Shining Like the Sun

Tags

authenticity, Balance, blessing, community, Listening, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Transformation, wisdom

When the weather seers predicted a weekend of the glorious summer days we’ve lacked since May, we cast about for adventures that would take us outdoors.

Phillip has a friend who restored an old car and enters it in auto shows, where cars are grouped by their “class,” and receive awards according to these and other categories, including the coveted “Best in Show” award.

I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy a car show; I’d be happy in a world where transportation was limited to walking, bicycling, and mass transit. But I own a car and drive it when I want or need to go somewhere further than I can realistically walk or bike in a given time frame. And people have different interests and assign value to their collections for a multitude of reasons. Maybe I’d learn more about car collectors by attending with an open mind and listening for the stories behind the choices.

I learned, like those of us who value antique furniture, there is a nostalgic aspect to collecting and restoring old automobiles; they remind us of our childhoods, an idealized past, or are historically significant. And an old car can symbolize someone’s youth, his time of individuation and the endless dreams about the life he imagined for himself as an adolescent. Here is the very vehicle that took him beyond parental authority and into his own…

And then there’s the puzzle-solving aspect of restoring old machines: the location of parts and endless tinkering, perhaps not unlike my endless hours in my gardens. It seemed to be the kind of activity, like any passion, that takes one deep within and mends the spirit while engaging the mind.

So we went to a car show this weekend, and the next day attended an even larger event that featured autos, crafts, music, and carnival rides as well. I listened to stories and learned a bit about old cars and met the people who love them.

I observed other human animals and relaxed in the midst of those others who, like me, are constantly sifting through choices, assigning value and judgment, succeeding and failing, earning awards, connecting, withdrawing, winning and losing.

All these limits and labels we place on ourselves and others—they vanished as I sat and breathed and merged with the human energy around me. There can be a great letting go, in the unlikeliest of places, that comes with a blessed grace washing over the spirit.

I recalled Thomas Merton’s moment of enlightenment, his epiphany on the corner of Louisville’s Fourth and Walnut:

…in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.  It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race … there is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.  If only they could all see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all of the time.  There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed… (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, New York: Doubleday, 1996)

Those who forecast the two days of pleasant weather were right: It was a lovely weekend, both sunny and enlightening. I could use a few more of these…maybe I’ll start a collection.

Dog Days

Tags

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

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

The dog days of summer have arrived.

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

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

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

Clancy and Riley like this story very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

A Tall Tale Made Short

Tags

Full Moon Cottage, Humor, Nature, Photography, Story, Tall tale, wisdom

I belong to a family of rodents called Sciuridae. We have been dancing through trees, scurrying along the earth, and burying our treasures for millions of years, although my own story might have been all too brief had my wits not saved me. Here is how it happened:

One fine morning I woke, stretched, listened to birdsong, and pondered my possibilities, open to surprises, should they come my way. The days had been long and lovely, and I had no reason to expect this day would be any different.

How many adventures have begun with just such happy disregard for unforeseen consequences?

I looked about for friends to share my exploits. It is better to travel in the good company of one’s companions, but I was a fellow known for my daring, so not finding my friends at the ready, I set out to seek food and whatever excitement presented itself.

The morning passed merrily enough; there is a place near my summer home where a large creature sets out kernels, water, and seeds we squirrels enjoy, and there is usually enough food to fill our bellies and allow us time to chase across trees and play by the river. The nighttime monsters are fast asleep and we are free to enjoy ourselves.

This day, I was playing rather further into dusk than I should have been, I realized later. (This is what the Wise Ones Who Hoot call retrospection.) I heard my family chattering for me to return home to the summer nesting grounds, but I was observing moths and bats, the endless circle of predator and prey, and trying to recall where I’d hidden seeds and nuts for a special treat. When I recalled the place, just near the forests’ edge, I hurried and began to dig, unearthing a very large acorn as my reward.

And so, when the monster seized me by the tail, I did not have time to react. I was at once so overtaken by panic and pain that my mind could not conceive of escape. I twisted and turned and pulled, by instinct.

And then I thought to toss away my treasure, pulling away with the last bit of strength I could muster as I threw the acorn far to the left. I heard, but could no longer feel, my tail ripping away as the monster tugged. Then he stupidly—as I had suspected—fled towards the acorn. I bounded away to my home and friends, not daring to look back.

The pain—and wisdom—came later, as I healed. My elders have told me this is often the way of it.

I have lost the balance, agility, and ability to communicate that my tail afforded me, but I have become a much more eloquent and careful communicator in my chatter. And my adventures now take place in the good company of my companions, for I have learned that one who is heedless of community exposes himself to monsters who hide in the dark.

But if you still have an independent spirit of adventure, as I must admit all great Sciuridae do, take care that you are armed with treasures and prepared to throw them away.

And, for goodness sake, learn how to craft a tale, for doing so has won me many a tasty tidbit!

Such is the wisdom of hindsight.

Thus ends my “cautionary tail.”

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

A Dry Season

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

It doesn’t seem to matter.

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

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

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

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

Things change. Balance is all.

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

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

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

Transformation

Tags

Beauty, Gardening, healing, Loss, Photography, Transformation

A few years ago, a lovely willow in our back yard uprooted and crashed to the ground during a storm that swept through, riding on extremely high winds. Phillip and I happened to be in the living room facing the tall windows overlooking the yard when an earsplitting crack suddenly exploded through the wailing winds of the storm. We instinctively ducked, then turned towards the direction of the sound and saw the tree falling, crashing across two gardens. Bushes, perennials and annuals were crushed beneath the huge trunk, and the willow’s shattered branches lay in pieces, everywhere.

We spent the next week cleaning up and cutting the trunk of the tree so we could remove it from the gardens in sections. Huge “willow boulders” still form a pile of firewood near the river. We can only use such large pieces in outdoor bonfires, as they’re too hard to cut for the indoor wood-burning stove. Thankfully, all of the plants were saved, as though the willow had tried to do the least amount of damage as possible as it fell to its own death, missing far more plants than it touched, and those that were crushed now look healthy and revived.

We left the base of the willow’s trunk and a few massive pieces where it had been rooted, and formed a garden around it…at first, haphazardly, since it hadn’t been a planned garden, initially. Phillip built a trellis and set it at the back of this space, and I set a few plants around, intending to design and shape a garden when we had time. Throughout the next year, we added seeds or plants when we had leftovers from other gardens, driven by necessity and still without a design. The space gradually became attractive, but it made me sad to think about losing the willow.

For some years, I’d collected rose hips from the wild roses along the trail, saved them in the freezer and then, at some point, opened them and scarified a few of the seeds…I couldn’t find a lot of help on the internet in those days, so I had to guess at the techniques that would work: freezing and burning some, slicing others with a razor: scarification is challenging for the seed and the gardener… I planted these seeds around the yard and forgot about them for a couple years. Surprisingly, a few wild roses started popping up here and there, and within two years of the “falling willow,” a huge white wild rose was embracing, then overtaking the trellis, and forming an elegant backdrop for willow’s garden. Poppies thrived there and so did irises, lilies, and flax.

It has become a very lovely sanctuary in that corner of the yard, a memorial to our beautiful willow and her gentle spirit. The wild rose has become a symbol of what the pain of scarification can lead to: vigorous new growth and a surprising beauty that was unforeseen.

A few nights ago, we burned pieces of the willow’s trunk in our bonfire, and the holy fragrance entered my dreams as the fire smoldered through the night. It said: See what beauty can come from loss, and how spirited is the growth born from pain!

And all my dreams were stories of hope.

All’s Right With the World

Tags

daily round, Full Moon Cottage, Garden, Motherhood, Photography, spring, Transformation

The year’s at the spring

And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hillside’s dew-pearled;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God’s in His heaven—

All’s right with the world.

~ Robert Browning, Pippa Passes

 We are being gifted with glorious weather this week and it looks like it will continue for still another week as well. The rains were too heavy last weekend, but now we’ve had just enough to keep everyone happy, and plenty of warmth to beckon buds into bloom and songbirds to sing. The rose-breasted grosbeaks have returned, the hummingbirds have completed their extraordinary journey and are replenishing their energy at the feeders. I’ve heard orioles and seen them along the trial, but they haven’t yet come to the feeding station and I’m hoping to set out a few oranges this afternoon to draw them in and make them welcome.

Morning’s begin around five for us these days; birds vie for their chance at the worms, insects, and seeds, and the night creatures withdraw to the shadows edging the woods. The sun rises between 5 and 6 A.M. and the eastern view towards the river explodes with light. The acreage at Full Moon Cottage is hemmed in by curtains of willow leaves, ash trees, and pines, and all are illuminated at dawn, back-lit by gold and it is too much; I’m called to wordless stillness, staring at the beauty.

I’ve always loved this stanza of Browning’s. Though I don’t agree with his theological pronouns or geography, we’re all entitled to our perceptions of Holy Source and to orientations regarding its presence that give us peace…and the rest of the stanza is glorious. “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language,” wrote Henry James, but a spring morning is equally captivating.

Just be, says the world; it is enough.

I sense a greater energy in myself, my partner and our 4-legged companions as the bright days lengthen; we all want to be out in it: the budding and blossoming, the light and shadow, the colors and connections.

The first poppy “popped” today as the tulips and trilliums are fading and dropping leaves. We’re well into the garden symphony’s first movement, the whirl of birth and life and death that happens and draws us in and reminds us we’re specifically flowing in the whirl ourselves: The duck eggs will hatch soon; the starling mother drowned in the rainstorm; her six eggs were therefore exposed to the cold and the life within perished…

Our mothers will be feted and honored less than they are due, but happily, this weekend; those of us who dreamed of children and were not blessed with them will mourn unrealized dreams…

It all mixes together and passes too quickly, all of it. Children grow up; gardens rise, bloom, and return to the earth; chances are taken and missed. I cannot remember all the words to the song the child within is singing, but I am certain it is a hymn to the dearness of what is–just this once, and fleeting–and a reminder that joy and pain, regret and rebirth, life and death mix and resurrect into new life. Again.

So I will sit in the garden outside my window and the garden of my life, and see the light and colors of what is here, and of what has come from what has come to pass.

And here is the oriole, orange and brilliant.