Note to Self: Go outside! Feet on earth, hands in water, hands on bark. Fresh air in the lungs. Take a quick moment to notice your body. Are your shoulders up there beside your ears? Breathe in. Breathe out, and let them settle back to where they belong.
Here’s a poem from The Song of the Toad and the Mockingbird: Bridge
Walk barefoot on Earth. Walk, knowing your very being is Her being. Her rocks are your bones, Her rivers your blood, Her Living Soil your muscles and skin. Be a living bridge between Earth and Sky– Earth marries sky within you. Your spine is a conduit. Walk, open and aware. Walk, electric with knowing.
Gratitude List: 1. The dogwood tree is beginning to bloom. The two dogwoods stand on either side of the driveway. I call them my guard-dogwoods. I haven’t hung poems on the one closest to the house for years, but I still think of it as the Poet-tree. It will always be the Poet-tree. 2. Yesterday I walked back to myself. The sadness is still there, but I think now it is riding with me instead of me riding it. 3. The Helpers. You are one. And You. And You. 4. Resilience. 5. And still, that violet. That blue.
May we walk in Beauty!
“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.” —Nayyira Waheed
“To me, it’s all right if you look at a tree, as the Hindus do, and say the tree has a spirit. It’s a mystery, and mysteries don’t compromise themselves—we’re never gonna know. I think about the spiritual a great deal. I like to think of myself as a praise poet.” —Mary Oliver
“When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, if you breathe in and out three times, your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
“I stuck my head out the window this morning, and spring kissed me BANG in the face.” —Langston Hughes
“In the morning, wonder and be generous like the sun. In the evening, meditate and be kind like the moon.” —Debasish Mridha
“There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.” —Meister Eckhart
“Every spring is the only spring—a perpetual astonishment.” —Ellis Peters
It’s not like a walk in the park, this stepping through darkness from the known space of yesterday into the uncertain places of tomorrow. This moment between past and future is no open doorway with breezes flowing. This now is a tunnel, a constricting funnel, narrowing the horizon to a pinpoint, thinning the potent possibilities to this stretched limbo of waiting.
The large fat pod is Kentucky Coffee Tree. The round seeds came from that. The long twisty one came from a Catalpa, and the short one is a Black Locust pod.
I’m not good at unscheduled time. I fritter. I diddle. I poke. I dawdle. While these are great life skills when it comes to centering down and relaxing, they can lead to ennui and a sense of time wasted. I will make sure that I preserve some serious dawdle time in the coming weeks, but I do need a little structure for myself.
1. The school requirements will help. During school hours, I need to be checking my emails and learning management system every hour or so (probably more frequently), so this will keep me focused. During that time, I am going to try to get as much of my backlog of grading completed as I can during these early days. 2. I want to work on some creative project every day. I have a prayer shawl I am knitting. I will make some crocheted hearts. I have some sewing to do. I want to bake bread. I will start to paint again. 3. I will write regularly. 4. I am going to walk more every day, though I might take a bit of a break today to give my aching back a rest. More yoga, too. 5. I commit to not scarfing junk food. My response to anxiety (to basically anything, actually) is to eat more. I want to nourish my body, with healthy food. 6. I want to keep limits to social media time. I actually think I (and maybe you) need social media connections more than ever right now and I want to be deliberate about these connections, just not lazily scrolling. 7. I am going to make a point of reaching out more, making email connections I’ve let lapse, make little videos for my mother-in-law, who is in a personal care building that has people confined to their rooms. 8. Jon is still going to work for the foreseeable future, though that could change. I think he’s going to try to stop and get supplies to contribute to a brown bag lunch program that a Lancaster City church is setting up for children who are home from school. I’m trying to think about ways that we can help even while we’re in Exile for the Good of the Realm.
During the plague quarantines, Shakespeare wrote King Lear, and when Cambridge University closed because of the plague, Newton had his encounter with the apple tree. He called the quarantine hiatus his “year of wonders.” Shall we create and discover wonders of our own? What are your plans?
Gratitude List: 1. Nettle is coming up! I tasted some of the new baby leaves yesterday while Josiah and I were throwing a ball in the yard. 2. The bees are not in exile. They keep doing their work. 3. Red-tailed hawks flying above the holler. 4. In the past two days, I have found several beanpods from the Kentucky Coffee Tree up the hill. I love these beans. They’re satisfying to hold. I think I am going to plant a couple of them. 5. I recognize my fear and anxiety, and yours, too. I recognize that many people are in dire straits at the moment, and this is painful. We are also making the most of this time-out-of-time here in the holler. May you, too, find some rest and some time for reflection.
“The Lords of Misrule,” by Rima Staines. She publishes her art and writing with Hedgespoken Press, in England. I got her little book Nine Praise Riddles for Christmas.
The song is sort of like the Christmas version of Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall. Will it ever end? It goes on and on, repeating the lists of ducks and swans and rings and dancers and servants until you just want the song to be done already! And it’s always on, in a thousand versions, all during the holiday season. But does anyone really know much about the Twelve Days of Christmas?
Like so many of our modern syncretistic celebrations, the Twelve Days of Christmas is a mishmash that holds within it the tradition of Catholic and Orthodox days of feasting and/or fasting and pagan mysticism and revelling, in this case Yuletide and Saturnalia. Shakespeare used this period as the setting for his play Twelfth Night, in which people take on different identities, and things are never as they seem.
These are the High Holy Days, Time Between Time, another period in which to meditate on the coming of the Light. These are also the days of the Lord of Misrule, when a young person or a peasant would perform the duties of the Lord of the Castle for this season, usually ordering wild parties and feasting and dancing. The Fool is ascendant, and the King takes orders. Having just finished a study of King Lear, I am pondering the strange wisdom of the Fool these days, and the foolishness of kings. No, I’m not making a political jab here. This is more inward, more mystical. We each have our own Ego-Ruler who sits on a golden throne and arranges things as they ought to be in order to maintain meaning and order. We also have an inner Child-Fool, who wants to set things tumbling, to play, to shift the patterns of inner law and order.
Have you ever noticed how much our modern depiction of Santa’s elves and their hats resemble to old Medieval fools and their foolscape? I have a slowly-growing theory that the Fool/Clown is so crucial to our human sense of equilibrium, and that this ancient western Medieval character of the Fool so satisfyingly fulfilled that role, that we have maintained the Fool in the character of Santa’s elves.
The “elf” hat my brother gave me for Christmas twenty years ago would look perfectly reasonable on Lear’s Fool. And here’s another thing: One of our favorite family Christmas movies is Elf. What is Will Ferrell’s Buddy if not the quintessential Fool? He doesn’t fit in “polite” society. He doesn’t know how to behave. He’s embarrassing and childlike. And he’s the wisest person in the story. The father kept trying to order things in his fashion, kept trying to maintain meaning in the only way he knew how: making money and having corporate power creates a safe social order. But Buddy came into his realm and, in that utterly cringey moment, sang, “I love you, I love you, I love you!” And the world began to topple.
This is a season when we recognize that the social order is not cast in stone, that kings fall and fools rise. Buddy the Elf gets a cynical city to believe in Santa Claus. The Fool leads the mad King through the storm and the fens. And, in the story that Christians are celebrating, a tiny baby turns the world upside-down. The child of a poor and insignificant family on the far-flung edge of the empire comes to upset the social and religious order.
Jesus is the Fool. He wanders, he questions, he turns everything upside-down, he tells his listeners, over and over: “You have heard it said, but. . .” This Holy Fool disobeys the law and order that have been set up by the people in power to maintain the power structures. Perhaps some of the struggle that Christianity faces today is that we keep wanting to make him the King. We want the seeming sense of the powerful ruler, and we eschew the seeming foolishness of the Fool. But in truth, the Kings are all mad and the Fool has wisdom to offer, if only we will hear.
His mother knew, didn’t she, when she spoke her prophecy poem while he somersaulted in her womb. He fill the hungry with good things and send the rich empty away. He will cast down the rulers from their thrones and raise up the lowly. Amen, Hallelujah. Here comes the Holiest of Fools.
Dreamwork: If we keep up the labyrinth metaphor, these are the days of the walk out of the labyrinth–having considered what we lay down and let go on the inward journey, we now look at what we pick up for the coming year. I use Twelvenight for dreamwork. It’s more live Sixteennight for me actually, because I start really paying attention at Solstice. I mine my dreams for words and images that will accompany me into the coming year. I let the Fool of my dream-brain inform the Queen of my waking brain, offering up seemingly disjointed and disconnected ideas and words and pictures to break down the logical-intellectual meanings my day-brain has created.
This year, the valerian in the medicine I took to fend off that cold seems to have kept me sleeping well for days after. I have been sleeping deeply and satisfyingly in the last couple of days. This means I am not remembering much in the way of dreams. But this morning I woke up with this somewhat grammatically-challenged phrase in my head: “There’s more than two ways to think about it.”
My day-brain is a little offended. Duh! I’ve done that one already. I’ve meditated on both/and as a solution to either/or thinking. I’ve read everything by Richard Rohr on non-dual thinking. This is one of my core concepts. But the Fool wants me to learn it again, so who I am to fight it? More than two ways. . .
Gratitude List: 1. Fools and foolishness 2. Wisdom from unexpected places 3. b n v <–Sachs wrote that when he walked across my keyboard. Yes, Fuzzy Friend, I am grateful, so grateful, for the cats and for kitty kisses. 4. Chocolate 5. Days warm enough for me to take a walk.
I wrote this poem this afternoon before I heard the news from Gaza.
I don’t know how to seek gratitude amidst the pain of this day, knowing that my government’s bombastic embassy move to Jerusalem precipitated the violence of the day. Or coincided, anyway. The photos of the US/Israeli celebration of the new embassy location were a kick in the gut.
May each peaceful gesture we make bring more peace into the world.
The last poetry prompt of the month is to write a closing time poem.
The door stands ajar.
The curtain rises.
The window is open
and the screen is torn.
The moment has come
to escape the old ways
and enter into the new drama,
to dance down new pathways,
to fly toward a new horizon.
Escape!
Begin the Play!
Soar free!
That’s an exciting prompt for a Beltane Eve. May Day is about running through the door, barefoot and maybe naked, but completely unconcerned, willing to take the necessary risks to accomplish your dreams. What will you risk in the coming season? What “clothing” do you need to cast off in order to abandon yourself to your projects?
A Blessed Beltane season to you! May your dreams feed you.
Gratitude List:
1. Flicker on the ground at LMH this morning when we pulled in. We got to watch it for a full two minutes before it flew away into the morning sunlight.
2. On our walk this evening, swallows swooping low to get a look at us. I think there were both barn and tree swallows.
3. The smell of gill-over-the-grass after someone has walked on it. Smells like spring.
4. The smell of cow patties drying in a field. It transports me back in time, and suddenly I’m five-year-old Bethie walking home from Gwen’s house in the slanting sun of a late Shirati afternoon, the lake breeze playing in my hair.
5. Speaking of poop, I love the open-throated bark of a laugh that Joss gives when he hears a good scatological joke. Total delight, especially when his dad makes the joke.
Saturday’s Thoughts:
“Daughter, the songs of women
are the first words of children” —Abby E. Murray
***
“Our vitality is inextricably bound up with creativity. Like a tree whose expression is fruit, giving our gifts is what keeps life pushing through our veins. It’s what keeps us feeling alive. As anyone who has strayed too far from their creativity knows, without it every corner of one’s life can fall prey to a terrible greying spread. As Kahlil Gibran writes about trees in an orchard, ‘They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.” —Dreamwork with Toko-pa
***
“If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, then let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it. Perhaps this is what Thoreau had in mind when he said, “the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings.” —David Sobel
***
“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb – but the darkness of the womb?” —Valarie Kaur
I’ve always wanted to take more art classes. I love to sketch and doodle. Still, I haven’t taken many classes, and I feel like I don’t have a lot of courage about getting images on paper. I love certain comic book and animated art, and I always find myself wanting to draw “like that.”
So for the next month, I am going to try to commit to doing one sketch page a day. I have borrowed Shaun Tan’s The Bird King from the school library, and today’s sketch is sort of a copy and sort of an extension of one of his drawings. I am going to try to be brave enough to sketch some things directly from life and from photos as well. Just today, I learned some things about line and shading. I hope I can learn to apply them.
Gratitude List: 1. Yesterday’s Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration at school. Good music, powerful quotations.
2. Geese all over the sky
3. The office staff and dentists and hygienists at the place where my children get their teeth cleaned. They’ve always been understanding and friendly and helpful.
4. Walking outside. I can’t really bear the cold, and I haven’t spent more time outside than I absolutely have to for several weeks now. It was nice to have a balmier morning for some outside play.
5. The Emergency Women’s Shelter in Lancaster. I always have to gear myself up for the long night awake, but it’s good work, and I always come away inspired by the women I meet.
6. The Women’s Marches.
Lisianthus–I think I have posted it before, but I love this flower in my parents’ garden.
Gratitude List: 1. Goldfinches (yes, they were on here recently)–Usually when I imagine that I can fly, I am a hawk or an eagle, sailing high with a long view. Or a crow, battling winds with a fierce wildness. But were I a goldfinch, I would dance down sunbeams on my imaginary roller coaster–up and up, then coast, up again, and coast–golden in the sun’s golden. And sing for joy.
2. My nieces and nephews. They just keep being wonderful people. Two of them visited yesterday, and we had a great conversation, hearing about their recent travels. I love these people.
3. Morning walk. It does make it harder to get up. I do not like to exert myself in the mornings. I like to wake up slowly. But this old dog needs to try some new tricks, and I like the walking, and the being done walking.
4. Organizing. Yesterday I went through the boxes and bags of files that I brought home to use or recycle as I get ready for fall classes. One step closer. . . I am beginning to get excited about the next season of school. (But I am still planning to thoroughly enjoy the next few weeks of waking up after 6 and not having a scheduled day.)
5. Striving. I think I am sort of good enough at many of the things that I do, and enthusiasm perhaps goes a long way toward making thing work out okay–but I have a lot of tweaks and improvements to make in many areas of my life. I am glad that I don’t have to be perfect, that I get to keep trying, to keep trying to fix things up and do better. As the journey itself is the destination, the striving–not the perfecting–is the work.
Random thoughts from a walk around the farm this afternoon:
–This Step-Counting contest at school is doing what it is supposed to, getting me out and walking. I am afraid I am letting my team down with my low, low numbers. I am more sedentary than I admitted to myself–grading and FB and granny squares and playing Legos keeps me sitting in one place. A lot.
–On one hand the pedometer feels like a ball and chain. I check it every half hour or so throughout the day, and I am feeling incredible pressure to get up and walking. On the other hand, it pushes me to get outside and walk, which I don’t usually take the time for, so it’s freeing me, too.
–I like being on a walk. I live having been walking. I like having walked. I just don’t like going walking. It’s the anticipation and the getting myself in gear part that I don’t like.
–There were tracks everywhere in the last bits of snow and slush: deer, squirrel, bird, bird, bird, and canid. Maybe that last is fox, maybe dog, maybe coyote.
–I haven’t seen a coyote in years, though Jon saw a pair of them only a couple weeks ago. I was pretty desperate to find evidence of them in the tracks today. One set of tracks had a really largish print, and the claws pushed deep into the snow.
–I found a grey-ish owl pellet and broke it apart to look for the mouse bones. But then I realized it was probably a misshapen piece of raccoon poo.
–The bees are sleeping. I wonder how they’re surviving the winter in their hive.
–I found two unopened pods in one of the milkweed patches. We brought them down to the house. Jon has been collecting milkweed seeds with the hope that he can get some to grow in the spring to give away.
–One Small Boy came up to me and said, “Best snack ever!” as he crunched a chunk of ice in his left hand and then chewed off a bite of the kale in his right hand.
–That yellow frost-nipped kale looks about as winter-bitten as I feel right now.
Gratitude List: 1. Wind that scours
2. Fire that transforms
3. Water that purifies
4. Earth that supports
5. Spirit that inspires
Mockingbird Chronicles 