Gratitude List:
1. Water. Clear water.
2. Air. Clean air.
3. Earth. Nurturing earth.
4. Fire. Enkindling fire.
5. Spirit. Vivifying spirit.
May we walk in Beauty!
Houseguest
(Free online photo, marked available for reuse. I ran it through a Dreamscope filter.)
We struggle every winter with the houseguests. Usually they take up residence in the bathroom drawers, stealing cotton balls and Q-tips, knocking over my little bottles of oil, and getting high off of loose cough drops and allergy meds. We’ve learned to keep such things in jars.
Sometimes they invade the kitchen, too, and that feels like more of a cause for concern, but it does force us to become more fastidious about keeping our countertops clean.
We’ve become familiar with several brands of no-kill traps. There was a time when I let the frustration of the constant escapes from the no-kill traps drive me to the snap traps, but that just always feels so terribly unbalanced, and then there was the incident a few years ago when I was carrying a dead mouse downstairs and one of the smallfolk saw me, burst into tears, and wailed, “You don’t have to KILL them!”
The Skunk Hollow mice are too smart for the no-kill traps, however. It’s been a long time since we’ve actually caught a mouse, although we diligently add new peanut butter every few days. It’s become less of a trapping program and more of a feeding program.
This morning as I was sitting in the dining room typing, a rustle on the kitchen counter caught my ear. I looked up in time to see a tiny four-footed person with a long tail whisking across the counter from behind the microwave and squeezing behind the cutting board propped up behind the sink. Moments later, nose and whiskers poked out the other side, and the Small One dashed toward the counter edge by the refrigerator.
Clamped tightly between her teeth, she held a red plastic bottle cap from a half-gallon of cider. At the edge of the sink, she became aware of me watching her, stopped, lifted her head, started to dash forward again, but tripped over her bottle-cap treasure and accidentally dropped it. She raced on to the counter-edge, sans prize. But seconds later, she re-appeared, ran back, picked up her bottle cap, and plunged over the edge between counter and fridge. I heard the bottle cap drop, then the scuttle of little mouse to the floor, and I was back to my quiet solitude again.
After that, how could I get out the snap traps again? She needed her bottle cap for something. Perhaps she’s completing a full set of dishes for her little mouse house. Perhaps I should start leaving bottle caps out for her on the counters. Still, I don’t really like the thought of a mouse on the counters, adorable as she is. We’ll have to upgrade our no-kill traps to something more successful, I suppose.
Gratitude List:
1. The wee four-foot folk
2. On the way to school today, a golden ray of rising sun shot out above the ridge from the direction of home. Yes.
3. How this ancient cat still plays, sometimes, like a kitten.
4. All my Beloveds. The hill, and the tree on the hill, and the wind in the tree on the hill. The mouse and the cat whose mousing days are done. The children who are preparing birthday celebrations for the man and the man whose birthday it is. And you. All my Beloveds.
5. The young woman who spoke her story today, to hundreds of her peers, who told of a good life in Syria, of the beautiful city of Aleppo that she loved, of her friends and her school, and her grandparents’ farm. Of how the bombs destroyed their home, how they fled on foot through the nights to Turkey where people were suspicious of them, assuming them to be allied with ISIS. Of coming to the US to make a new home. Of how the city and the school and some of the beloved friends are no more. May her words nurture seeds of compassion and action in the gathered community, that we may all seek to create safety for those who run from danger. May her courage inspire us to acts of courage.
May we walk in Love.
A Portal and a Blessing
I am a little obsessed at the moment with this portal, an opening in the old lime kiln on the Susquehanna River Trail. I think it will have to be the setting for a story.
Best Beloveds:
May you have the courage of the small ones who rise against giants.
May you have someone to sing you back to yourself when you lose your way.
May your wisdom find its threads, its tension, and its color–
may yours be woven with the wisdom of others into a shining bridge.
May your heart be supple and open, and safe.
May your breathing cleanse and invigorate you.
May you find your fire.
Gratitude List:
1. NURSES! My mother-in-law is getting excellent care in the hospital this evening (she’ll be fine) from a wonderful team of nurses. It’s nice to know in the moment of crisis that qualified people who know what to do are caring for your loved one. I am grateful for nurses.
2. As she was being admitted for the night, she mentioned that the last time she was admitted to a hospital was exactly 49 years ago (within a day), when she gave birth to Jon. What a gift he has been to the world.
3. Having a good book handy to read to the boys in the long waiting times in the waiting room. We finished the fourth Percy Jackson book today, and it held our worries at bay.
4. The We’re Glad You’re Our Neighbor signs–we spotted one in Hershey today on the way to the Medical Center.
5. Signs of the coming spring are everywhere. I feel it inside me, too.
May we walk in Beauty!
Walking Back to Center
Perhaps if I keep writing the same thing over and over again, I will find my way into a new story. I keep returning to what the balances are in these days. Contemplation and activism, destruction and building up, resistance and gelassenheit, staying awake and staying sane.
This morning, after I had posted yet another horrifying news blurb (this one about the WH stance on the press as the enemy) on Facebook, my friend Anna politely and respectfully asked me whether there might be a point at which the continued reposting of the outrages might actually feed the energy of the current administration. This makes a lot of sense to me. When I live in a state of high anxiety about the meanness or pettiness or rudeness of someone else, I hand that person power, I let the bully control me. When I name someone my enemy, I bind myself to that person in a powerful way, and then every move that person makes becomes something I need to react to.
So. Cut the bindings. I can’t let these news cycles control me, can’t let every new atrocity throw me out of kilter. Yet this sounds dangerously similar to dis-engagement, to willful ignorance, something my privilege might allow me to do, but something my conscience cannot allow. How can I keep from being battered about by every move of this bully giant we’ve brought into existence, but still keep close enough to lend my strength to the toppling of the giant?
This is the thing I keep re-writing, over and over and over again: How can I keep from being carried along blindly by the waves of outrage, and still stay awake to the very real dangers that this giant poses to my Beloved Community? How can we live with a sense of peace and purpose in the midst of the storm? Resist AND persist?
I think that the next four years are going to necessitate a constant reassessment of that balance, and it may not be the same for every person. Here are some things I am going to try:
1. Listen to my wise Beloveds. Like Anna. Like you.
2. Learn to ask tender gentle questions like Anna did for me. Little wake-ups that help bring people around to themselves.
3. Remember to call people by their truest name: Beloved.
4. Limit the news. I need it in order to stay awake, to know my Work, but I can’t let it control my emotional state.
5. Read the words of MLK. He found a balance.
6. Watch more videos of baby fruit bats with their expressive ears and eyes.
7. Don’t fall into the pit of thinking that action is better than prayer.
8. Don’t fall into the pit of thinking that the Work is done when the prayer is done.
9. Feed action with contemplation.
10. Go outside and look up. Feel the wind. Feel the rain. Absorb color like sunlight.
Gratitude List:
1. The voice of the travelers in the morning, high above. “You do not have to be good.” “What we need is here.” (Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry references.)
2. The way winter trees stand against the sky, letting the magenta or the Maryblue or the aquamarine slip through their branches and twigs.
3. Although it was a little scary to drive through it, the way that storm front moved through. The scary clouds are also beautiful and exhilarating. Is there a life lesson in that? Sounds a little like Little Red in “Into the woods.”
4. All my Beloveds. We can always widen our circles to contain more and more Beloveds. Our hearts have limitless capacity.
5. A small retreat I took today at Radiance, to write and meditate and make art based on the chakras.
May we walk in Beauty!
Truth-telling
Gratitude List:
1. Truth-telling
2. Rising up, standing up
3. Speaking up and speaking out
4. The scent of the changing winds
5. The determination of the people
May we walk in Beauty!
Changing the Self-Talk
I’m trying to work on the self-talk. You know, those things we tell ourselves that begin to loop around in our heads until they start to control our visions of ourselves. I’m not immune to the tendency to call myself an idiot when I do something I wish I hadn’t, or to look in the mirror and think mean thoughts about the body I see there, but these aren’t currently affecting my self awareness particularly negatively. The one that I find has become an almost verbal mantra in recent weeks (months? years?) is, “I’m so tired.” I AM tired.
How self-defeating is that, though? Isn’t that a deadly downward spiral? I’m tired, so I tell myself I’m tired, so I get more tired, and soon I am coasting into a pit. Hmm. Let’s add a touch of insomnia to that. Now anxiety feeds the spiral and I’m speeding faster down the hill. I’ll have a little sugary pick-me-up, and that helps for a moment or two, but then I crash further, faster, and it takes more to bring me up to baseline.
Perhaps I need to get more iron, more rest, more time for meditation. But none of those things will be long-term help, I think, unless I can change the way I talk to myself, unless I can start noting also the times when I feel energized and awake, noticing how it feels in my body to be alert and full of energy.
Gratitude List:
1. Venus. How she shines!
2. Broccoli and cheese.
3. Helpful self-talk.
4. Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry.
5. The hot shower I am about to take.
May we walk in Beauty!
Dreamers and Makers
Gratitude List:
1. Purr-folk
2. Wing-folk
3. Water-folk
4. Dreamers
5. Makers
My we walk in Beauty!
Leaving the Winter Malaise
Love they Nieghbor–under the Route 30 bridge, and walking the trail toward the old lime kiln.
One of the openings of the old lime kiln, and an Eastern Comma Butterfly on a poison ivy vine. Inside, the wings are as orange as a monarch. Outside, it looks like a leaf. February is a rather disconcerting moment of the year in which to observe a butterfly.
Lamppost by the bridge, and the source of a trailside spring.
This winter hasn’t been particularly cold or cruel. Lots of warmish days, very few nights of uncontrollable shivering, very little troublesome travel-weather. Perhaps it’s the temperament of the times as much as the season itself that has gotten me feeling like I am in an endless tunnel with no way out. I feel like we’ve cemented our routine of go to school, come home, snack, bicker, eat, sleep, and start again. I haven’t been pushing the kids outside, haven’t been pushing myself outside. I’ve been feeling trapped and claustrophobic. Like winter.
I guess I just have to feel that existential malaise every winter, no matter how mild the weather. Then there comes a day, shortly after Brigid’s Day, when a new breeze blows, the vanguard of spring flowers begin to appear, and suddenly I can breathe again. Today was that day.
Gratitude List:
1. This day. Warm sun.
2. Walking on the Susquehanna River Trail with my guys.
3. Skunk. I don’t like that smell–and this evening’s burst was an eye-watering reminder of why this hollow is called Skunk Hollow–but it’s a good reminder that the wild ones still hold sway here. And a reminder to continue to resist in skunk’s fashion. Don’t bite–just make a big stink.
4. A butterfly in February! (I don’t suppose it will make it through the next cold spell, but it was a lovely visitor to see today.
5. Public shared spaces: parks and trails and visitor centers.
May we walk in Beauty!
Vanguard of Spring
Gratitude List:
1. Kuub: My new favorite game. We played for a couple hours today. You set up blocks in your yard and then throw stuff at them to knock them down.
2. I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.
3. Beeeeeeeeees
4. Aconite, snowdrops, speedwell: the vanguard of spring
5. It really is all about love.
May we walk in Beauty!
Finding a Common Language
Little Sister harvesting sunshine from the aconite.
This is a lightly edited version of something I wrote the other day (though it’s still a little raw and choppy), modified with the thoughtful ideas of friends who offered me wise feedback:
I want to keep open the doors to healthy communication with people who have vastly different opinions about things than I do. But how can we keep the doors open when we can’t even agree on what a door is, exactly? It’s like we speak the same language, but we use utterly opposite vocabularies. Truth and fact have become shifty, like sand, like smoke. When someone says “wall” and someone else says “door,” where do we find the space in which to begin our conversation?
Sometimes it’s easier just to say we don’t belong together, the ones who say “door” and the ones who say “wall.” But we do seem to have some of the same words for love, for hope, for puppies, for belonging. Can we at least begin to open some of those windows?
I will continue to be alarmed at the actions of the current president. You will continue to wonder if the previous president was a communist. I cannot understand how you could support him and still be a good person. I want to ask you: Can’t you see the hatred and greed at the core of everything this administration is putting out? If you care about Life, if you care about children, if you care about people, if you care about the Earth–how can you support this man and his cronies? My hardest questions are for Christians: How can a follower of Jesus support the separation of families, the turning away of people fleeing for their lives? How can a follower of Jesus accept an administration that is gutting all protections for the Earth, opening pathways to destroy God’s creation? How can you support the brutality against the First Nations people in Standing Rock who are simply trying to keep their land and water safe and clean? How can a follower of Jesus support the bigotry and racism and misogyny that are unapologetically spoken from this man and his representatives? I need to hear how you reconcile this.
Still, you love your children, and I love mine. We both love fudge and knitting and really strong coffee. You tell great jokes that make me laugh. We can probably both recite the first three lines of “Hiawatha” together, if we think really hard (okay, maybe only two, but I bet you’re going to look it up now, eh?). Neither of us can resist a cute kitten video or the awe-inspiring sight of starlings flying as one creature. Neither one of us is a monster.
(The “you” in that paragraph is an aggregate person, my imagination of someone who is unlike me and yet like me, someone with whom I might probably share a specialized vocabulary for our particular interests although our political vocabularies do not intersect.)
Can we find language that we both can understand? I hope so.
Gratitude List:
1. The Little Sisters are out and about today, buzzing among the aconite, gathering pollen in their golden saddle bags. Welcome, Bright Ones! May you thrive and flourish! (You can see one on the attached image, if you search.)
2. Warm sun
3. I received my first issue of Rattle poetry journal in the mail today! This is the best submissions fee ever! I submitted a chapbook to a contest a few months ago, and the submission fee includes a subscription to the journal!
4. Nuthatches. How can you not just love people who seem to prefer to live their lives upside-down?
5. Playing Tabu with the kids this morning. I would give the clues and they would guess them, with Jon chiming in every once in a while when the answer words got too obscure for the kids.
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 