Canada Saga 2009 September 15

"To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness". (Eckhart Tolle)

" For, truly, in the remembrance of God, hearts find rest." (Surah-ar-Ra'd 13:28)

 

We had anticipated staying in Canada until October 1st. We had anticipated attending our nephew's wedding in Columbus, Ohio last weekend, and then enjoying our last two weeks in Qualicum Beach before packing up, saying good-bye to friends, and flying home.  Then life happened, unanticipated events arose, and here we are in Covington, having missed the wedding and rushed the good-byes.  Michael was already back in Louisiana, so I had the bitter-sweet job of closing up our home and making last minute visits. Although my mother assures me that 'everything is grace,' I did not feel 'ease and lightness,' and was certainly resistant to this change in the plan. 

 

Everywhere I went, I heard the same thing: "Where did the summer go?"  There were so many plans at the beginning of the season, so many expectations of hikes, trips, dinners and connections.  Time seemed to stretch out from June all the way until October, and all things were possible. Suddenly, it was over, and I was getting on the little 6-passenger airplane to fly to Vancouver for the flights home.

 

It unnerves me to fly like this, and at the same time fills me with awe and joy. As the tiny plane flew East, a shroud of dark clouds chased us, slowly swallowing the Island, and the bright summer days.  Now there was only water below, and towards the mainland, pools of sunlight reflected on the ocean beneath the breaking grey strata above us.  We were flying between airy wisps of clouds, and I watched the freighters and ferries working the shipping lanes below.  I couldn't resist this looking out and down, which both terrifies and opens me to total wonder at the pure unadulterated magnificence of life. The horizon was filled with snow-capped peaks, the ocean was sprinkled with dark green forested islands, my eyes were filled with tears and the engines hummed along.  "For happiness one needs security," Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote,  "but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair."  

 

Periodically over the summer, as Michael and I would sit by the water in the evenings, he would comment on how blessed we were to live in this beautiful place. Life in all its beauty and joy becomes more precious, I think, as we get older.  We have a friend who, last year anticipated his future, and saw its limits, that he would only have x-number of years to return to the Island, x-number of years to own a boat, etc.  He was matter-of-fact about this and, of course, it was great speculation.  We have neighbors, though, who are well-passed his 'limits' and going strong.  Two of our most elderly neighbors still walk hand-in-hand each morning, slowly, hesitatingly, with enormous smiles on faces that are an open-invitation to share their joy in just being,  I think they realize the gift of not so much seeing how little time they have, as in the preciousness of this day, this morning, this greeting.  Or perhaps they appreciate it all because they do see how little time we have for kindness and loving and joy.

 

"And joy is everywhere;" the poet Ragindranath Tagore reminds us, "It's in the Earth's green covering of grass; In the blue serenity of the Sky."  It was in the deer who seemed to be saying their farewells in Rathtrevor that last rainy morning  when the ocean, as one full body, breathed in rolling swells beneath a grey/green sky.  It was in the busy-ness of the starlings and herons, fussing on the shoreline in the tidal pools under a relentless drizzle.  It was in the hugs and well-wishes from friends, and in the memories of such a lovely summer.  And it was in the view from the jet as we gained altitude out of Vancouver, the mainland mountains receding, the beauty of the Columbia River and other smaller rivers cutting their way to the Pacific through gorges of steep dark green.

 

Such is the beauty, the generosity, the giftedness of life that, regardless of what unfolds around us, we have the option of remembering Where the heart finds rest.  Once again, it's been a joy to share the summer in these Sagas.  I pray for each of you that state of grace, of ease, of lightness that comes in knowing that the Divine is unfolding, that 'everything is grace,' and that All Is Well.

YAY GOD

 

Canada Saga 2009 September 7

"Let us practice courage this day, stepping into the vast Mystery of what we do not know and cannot control." (Anonymous)

"Remember, a leap of faith is not jumping from Point A to Point B; it's jumping from Point A." (Meredith Gould, Deliberate Acts of Kindness)

 

Last fall, I took  Grace Alivia for a walk to the lakefront in Mandeville.  It's a joy to be in nature with a 4 year old; actually, it's a joy for me to be with her in Barnes and Nobles or in her room playing dress-up or riding in the car singing or talking.  But this particular morning we were going to visit my favorite tree, a giant oak with enormous elegant branches that flow to the ground, weighted with the hundred or so years of growth through summer storms, hurricanes, winter winds and drought.  It stands in a corridor of four or five such trees, but this one is my particular favorite, with a space in her roots where I've made an altar of sorts in the crevices, where I hide the treasures I bring from my walks. There are tentacles of gnarly roots around her girth, which I knew would provide little play 'houses' for our adventure.

 

As Grace and I were approaching this beautiful oak, we found a small acorn half-buried under leaves and grass.  We carried it to the tree, and I held it next to the massive trunk and told her how that tiny acorn was planted by God many years ago, and through a mystery we will never quite understand - although I didn't use those words with her - has now grown into this great big tree which shelters us on hot days, gives us a place to play and provides food and nesting for birds and squirrels.  She listened as I spoke, and after we had played a bit, picked up the acorn, carried it to the little altar which she had made and laid it quietly under some leaves.

 

One of my rituals with this lovely oak is to walk around it in the pre-dawn quiet, slowly, meditatively, three times counter-clockwise, before standing in prayer.  I watched this particular morning in what Sam Keen calls "wonderosity," a word he coined for that magical mixture of curiosity and wonder, as Grace stood up from our play and, knowing nothing of my own personal ritual, slowly turned three times counter-clockwise before smiling at me, and prancing off in a dance around the tree. The mystery of her sweet beauty in that moment, as I wondered how much she understood or how much she would remember,  was every bit as filled with awe for me as the mystery of the acorn and the oak tree.  I prayed that she would be one of those people that Abraham Maslow wrote about, who "have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy."

 

The cycles of Nature provide us with a sense of security: acorns become oaks; day follows night; trees lose their leaves; the sun rises and sets earlier now; tides ever-shift; rains drench the earth, and flowers follow. The sun moves in a different arc now than it did in early summer, the result of the ever-changing earth rotation.  A waxing moon  is a teasing preview of the full moon that follows, being followed itself by the waning moon, all of which effect the tides, and the fishing.

 

Michael and I sat out near the water before he left to return to Louisiana for business last week. We were reading, observing, just being on a lovely day with a touch of fall in the air. Suddenly, a flock of shorebirds lifted off of a sandbar that was slowly disappearing with the incoming tide. The flock, in complete harmony and unison, banked left, swooped down over the shore,  banked right, their underbellies gleaming white in the bright daylight, made a complete circle, then landed as one in what would be given a perfect 10 if it were an Olympic event.  There was no leader, no sound, just flight and motion and symmetry and mystery.  Although scientists are still trying to explain such phenomenon, we are beginning to develop language for it: there are morphogenic fields and zero energy fields and quantum-physics'-phrasing for what we are only beginning to explore in depth.

 

I experience that 'wonderosity' again as I watch the eaglet feathers on the dining room window sill, the fluff gently undulating in a room that is otherwise perfectly still, the only possible motion the stroking beams of the bright sunlight. The creation of these mystical rhythms that swirl around us tease us into thought and prayer, and awe.   

 

It is the same current of grace that flows through the mantra of the Holy Names, the zikr of the Sufis, the rosary with its mystical mysteries, the litanies with their lovely repetitions, a rhythm all their own.   From my high school days, I  hear the sonorous "Ora Pro Nobis," as chanted in response to the Latin invocations in the dark quiet chapel of the Convent.

 

"As we acquire more knowledge," Albert Schweitzer once wrote, "things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious." We are at the mercy, and in the mystery, of the eternal infinite Compassionate Dancer Who leads us on as we leap from Point A into the music of life's dance.

YAY GOD

 

Canada Saga 2009 August 24

"As for me, I know nothing else but miracles." (Walt Whitman) 

"Life will reveal answers at the pace it wishes to do so.  You feel like running, but life is on a stroll." (Donald Miller)

 

The temperature in the house, after a night of windows open and fresh air, reads a comfortably chilly 64 this morning.  Outside, the sun shines brightly in a crisp blue sky, and a preview of fall weather reminds me that the summer, with all of its plans and promise, is passing quickly.  The produce at the Farmers' Markets has changed from the tender young lettuce and peppers of June to the tender sweet corn and melons of an early autumn.  The September blueberries are already luscious in August, with their misty blue of perfect sweetness, tasting like mountain air and sea breezes with a hint of cedar.  Nights are shorter as sunrises linger over the Eastern horizon, shallow yellow tendrils creeping over the mountains to wrap light around the wonders of the morning.

 

 

I've been mostly housebound in those pre-dawn hours that I love so much.  A respiratory condition has kept me quiet, missing my wonderful doctor from summers past, who died suddenly last March.  But I remember his most important prescription: rest.  So I've made myself content with simply walking to the water of our little community, sitting on the steps, listening to the world breathe itself awake. Each breath at ocean's edge is an exercise in infinity, into the Divine breathing time itself, breathing the rhythm of the wind and the waves that gently cradle goslings, and float gulls on soft breezes as sea lions play offshore. 

 

The gentle pulsing tide reminds me of the moments I've spent with those at the edge of life itself, as they inhaled and exhaled into this very energy that breathes with me now. It's a wonder to me that the end of what we call life isn't an end at all.  "The opposite of life is not death," Eckhart Tolle tells us.  "Life has no opposite."  The wave breaks on the shore; the ocean goes on. 

 

And in the midst of it all, miracles and wonders spark all around us.  That we could be in New Orleans in the morning, and across the continent in Vancouver hours later; that we could see a snippet of a bright rainbow in billowing clouds from the window of the plane; that we could look down on the Straits of Georgia from our little puddle-jumper and watch patterns of ocean water looking like rows of a well-tended garden; that we could sail over the tops of cedar and pine trees at the edge of the Qualicum airport and feel we were home; that we could be welcomed by our good friends and share a warm and wonderful meal at the Final Approach airport restaurant where they knew what we wanted to eat and drink:  any one of these events, or any of the moments inbetween, for that matter, are worthy of a treatment on wonder and miracle.

 

As we left New Orleans, I prayed that I would have a quiet seat-mate, and ended up with a chatty over-sized young woman from Alabama who punctuated her honey-drawled comments with a periodic nudge on my thigh for emphasis. I tried to bury myself in my book, hoping she would take the hint.  I tried to inconspicuously shift, to move farther away. This elicited a concerned, "Oh, Sugah, do you have enough room?  Ah know Ah'm big."  The thoughts that arose were not pleasant or kind.  But slowly, as the hours went on, I heard her.  I heard her fatigue, her concerns about her 9 year old son whom she was home-schooling in rural Montana; I heard the depth of her caring for her father, sitting beside her next to the window, who had just lost his sister; I heard her pain and her guilt that she wasn't at the bedside of her favorite aunt when she died.  When I glanced at her sideways, I saw the tears softly falling down her cheeks.  And in one of those bolts of synchronicity that splits open the state of wonder and reveals the grace in the Universe when we pay attention, I heard her say that she had been a nurse before she decided to be a full-time mom, and eventually wanted to return to nursing and go into Hospice care. 

 

Hafiz must have had such moments in mind when he wrote, "O wondrous creatures, by what strange miracle do you so often not smile?"  Every encounter reveals itself in its own time as one with the Divine; we are either aware and present, or not.  Sometimes we are simply left wondering, with a vague sense of awe, and a smile.

Since we've returned from Louisiana, we have spent time with our friends from Colorado, who introduced us to this area.  We are all less likely now to run off upIsland, or hurry-up hiking old trails and looking for new adventures. We have a relaxed sense of being here now, enjoying each other's company and listening to stories of our children and the past year since we've seen each other.  Michael and Keith have had their annual fishing odyssey, and brought back more pink salmon than we'll be able to eat this summer, lucky for the neighbors.  They fish out of a lodge upIsland that was the childhood home of one of our favorite neighbors, and it was a delight to introduce our friends to each other over wine and 'appies.'  Tomorrow we'll drive to Chemainus, a small colorful port town with a wonderful summer theater, for a matinee and lunch. 

 

"I wish I could show you," Hafiz continues, "when you are lonely or in darkness, the Astonishing Light of your own Being!"  If she could have seen her own loveliness in her pain, if I could have seen her loveliness even before she spoke, we would both have experienced the astonishing light of Being.  But this is how it happens: we are otherwise engaged, in a hurry, and all the while, the Divine "is on a stroll" through our lives.

 

When we slow down, when we keep pace with the unhurried breathing of a Universe always in amazement, we, too, 'know nothing else but miracles."

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2009 July 18

"Human nature will not flourish...if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.  My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth." (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

 

When Brett was five years old, his godmothers took him to the Barnum and Bailey Circus (which he would later join for a few intense months) in New Orleans.  They returned home, his aunts disappointed that he spent more time focusing on the children around him, with the amazing sparkle-guns from the concession stand, than on the three-ring acts with their own sparkle and glitter and clowns and show-manship. As they described what he had missed, he continually corrected them.  The clown car wasn't red, it was yellow; there were 8 lions, not 6; etc.  They were amazed, as were his teachers in years to come, that despite his seeming inattention, his attention to what was going on around him was remarkable.

 

I thought of those stories as we sat in Lefty's Restaurant on Sunday with Brett and Stephanie. In the middle of our conversation, Brett picked up the sugar jar on the table, fiddled with the lid to see if it worked, added his opinion to the topic at hand, then without saying a word, rose and carried the sugar jar to the elderly man at the table next to us.  It was only then that we realized what he had seen, processed and acted on: the gentleman was looking in vain for the waitress for assistance with the jar on his table that wasn't working.

 

It's those little moments that we miss out on when our children do not live, work and play near us, but choose 'unaccustomed earth' for their own life experience. Those moments remind us that there is a continuity in life, that childhood episodes are simply tantalizing previews to an adult life that we cannot judge or gage in such a narrow view-finder as a report card, or an A.D.D. diagnosis, or a detention notice, or a teacher's opinion, or an expulsion, or the lost details of a three-ring circus.  Bette Midler said, in reviewing her own life: "If only I'd known that one day my differentness would be an asset, my early life would have been much easier." It is more likely our difficulties, however, that shape our character and our future kindness.

 

We spent a relaxed five days with 'the kids,' who mostly slept and read, decompressing from the energy of the Big Apple.  Even the over-night stay on the wild West Coast of the island was in keeping with the overall mood of their trip: cloudy, misty, shrouded in the intimacy of a cool fog that closed the veil on our passage from the East. The whole of the coast appeared as an inviting sea-side room with grey ceilings, cedar-treed walls and rugs in coves of gentle surf.  Brett and I shared a quiet walk on the beach, while Michael read and Stephanie slept.  It was the perfect time to just be mother and child, playing on a beach, encountering puppies and dodging waves and talking about life and politics and other things that sound relevant and important, but mostly I was simply a mother marveling at this grown child.

 

But time itself, as Ben Hecht so aptly said, "is a circus, always packing up and moving away."  Usually we say our goodbyes at the top of the Malahat Mountain pass, after lunch at the Inn.  But this time we went with them the extra hour to Sydney, where the ferry would take them on to Lopez Island and Stephanie's family, before they make their way back to their life in New York. 

 

This trip seemed like more of a passage for our son into his new life than his wedding did last year.  Major life events, whether they are weddings, deaths, births, graduations, or other milestones, all seem to come with an aura of suspended reality around them.  We live through the ceremonies, through the rituals, through the shock, through the transitions, but there needs to be a passage of time for a sense of normalcy to arise out of the new circumstances.  We adjust to life without a loved one, we adjust to living with a spouse, a partner or a baby, we adjust to a new job or home.  The newness wears off and the daily-ness brings routine to the new way of being.  I listened to Brett introduce Stephanie to neighbors as his wife; I heard him tell me that his life now includes the "Stephanie-filter" through which all of his decisions must pass.  He has taken to this new role as a husband, and on this trip, our relationship deepened once again as we became mother/father-and-married son.  Stephanie's glow is working its own magic in our lives.

 

The day after they left, I sat alone on the water, watching and hearing the world shift as the tide followed some mysterious direction in its holy Divine purpose. The awareness of where I am astounds me in its beauty. A seal glides just below the sun-specked calm waters, only her head revealing her secret passage.  Dragonflies lightly touch each other mid-air, their clear wings holding the stain-glass colors of this morning Cathedral.  It is the kind of morning, even with my wistful thoughts of our now empty home, that tells me there is no name that can be given to the Creator of these wonders.  The sense of awe includes an awareness at the utter transcendence unfolding all around us.

 

Michael and I continue to realize and name our blessing at being here.  As we sat on the waterfront reading, we could hear the eaglet stretch and flap her enormous wings in preparation for her instinctive first launch.  Why is this thrilling, if not a reminder of how we, too, greet each day with the possibilities of flight beyond our own confining limits and thoughts?  I remember suddenly the small plaque that I kept in our bedroom for 23 years before passing it along to my niece after she had her son: "There are only two things we give our children. One is roots, and the other wings."

 

"If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, You are there." (Ps 139).  In this sacred space, these early morning reflections take flight revealing, if just for the moment, the Divine Circus of joy and wonder.

YAY GOD

 

Canada Saga 2009 July 9

"Rarely do we realize that we are in the midst of the extraordinary.  Miracles occur all around us. Signs from God show us the way, angels plead to be heard, but we pay little attention to them...We do not recognize that God is wherever we allow the Divine to enter." (Paulo Coello)

 

Michael just called from Denver, via the miracle of the cell phone.  This morning he was in Covington, and in a few short hours he'll be here, via the miracle of air travel.  Last night I was sitting in Western Canada watching a program from a t.v. station in Michigan that I knew my mom, in Louisiana, would enjoy. I picked up the phone, and soon we were watching it 'together,' though thousands of miles apart.  Yesterday the high here was 58; it was windy, chilly, raining.  Tomorrow it will be almost 90 and bright sunshine.  The earth shifts, the weather changes, the tides - at their highest this morning - will be at their lowest at the same time in a few days.  Sometimes I have to just stop and breathe it all in - these extraordinary reminders of the miracles all around us.  Every moment, the awareness breaks open the shell of the ordinary and lets in a little of the light of Divine magic in the world all around.

 

The dryer is spinning my clothes for me; my refrigerator hums away, keeping my food cold and fresh; the fountain outside makes a joyful noise; an eagle flies through the blue skies outside the window, crows following in close pursuit.  The car carries me to the grace of Rathtrevor every morning.  Attention invites me to watch, to see beyond simple actions into the tenderness that is the Love all around.

 

On the way home from the village yesterday, I slowed for a station wagon backing out of a driveway.  It was loaded down with signs of a family on a journey: a roof rack filled with luggage, the rear compartment piled high with jackets, little heads all in a row in the backseat.  On the driver's side, an arm appeared out of the window, waving a farewell.  Near the garage, a tall frail elderly man stood waving back.  He turned to go into the house, then did an about-face and waved, then waved again to a car that had already turned the corner and was out of sight. He continued to watch the empty street, then gave another wave of his arm, this one almost a salute - a finality - before walking slowly through his bright colorful garden into his home.  The whole thing took maybe two minutes, but an entire story of joy, family, loneliness, connection and leaving unfolded, and hung delicately in the soft drizzle. It carried me back to my father-in-law's joy with his family, and to his tears whenever one of his children drove away after a visit, the love so intense, the parting made bearable by the anticipation of a future visit. Frederick Buechner writes that we can kiss our families and friends good-bye and put miles between us, but we carry each other in our hearts and in our minds because we 'don't just live in a world, a world lives in us."

 

And there is also the challenge of holding this awareness in the strange and comic moments of life. For the last few mornings as I've walked along the edge of the water at Rathtrevor, I've felt a bit like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock's The Birds.  I have clearly gotten on the wrong side of some bad-ass crows. 

 

There is a side-path which leads to a small clearing, a wonderful place to do morning ChiQong.  But lately crows have met me at the edge of this path, flying in one by one until they are perched overhead.  One caws, the rest take up the chant, and I'm suddenly dive-bombed by two very aggressive birds.  They swoop in close enough for the sound of their wings and their raucous hollering to be quite intimidating.  I've tried reasoning with them, reassuring them, waving them off, and just running through, but they are persistent.  It's no wonder that groups of crows are called 'murders.' 

 

I'm beginning to take this personally, as others seem to walk through the area unscathed. My Animalspeak book says that crows 'are messengers calling to us about the creation and magic that is alive within our world everyday and available to us.'    While reminders are always helpful, these messengers are over-the-top.  I'm hoping that there are young fledglings nearby who are being protected and will be on their way soon. 

 

Mostly I continue to wonder at this new energy, this new 'gift' that Rathtrevor has given.  I observe and hear crows differently now, and watch them spin their magic of attack on the eagles who invade their nests and kill their young.  They are fierce protectors, family oriented, and among the smartest, if not the smartest, of birds.  They must constantly be alert and aware of changes in their surroundings, and perceived threats to their well-being.

 

In the mystery that is life, all of these energies work in harmony in Nature.  We label one as attractive and good, and another as 'bad ass,' and annoying.  Somehow they all have their place.  How we perceive the events of our lives brings us peace, or brings us pain.  A man waves goodbye to his family, a crow attacks, Michael arrives home, my cell phone drops in the ocean, a loved one calls, another is ill. We live with the miraculous in the trivia and details of everyday life.  "God is in the details," Barbara Kingsolver writes, "the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed-up as stars to guide us.  They are the promise of good fortune in a cloudless day, and the animals in clouds; look hard enough, and you'll see them. Don't ask if they're real." They're all gift.

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2009 June 25

"When we come to a point of rest in our own being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest, and then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud becomes a revelation, and each person we meet a cosmos whose riches we can only glimpse."
— Dag Hammarskjöld

 

Michael has already returned to Louisiana after what, for him, has been a busy three weeks on the island.  He has worked more this summer than in the previous years, only occasionally taking a break for a round of golf, a short field trip or a Farmer's Market.  His routine, however, also included sitting by the water in the afternoon with his book,  the Straits of Georgia at his feet, the lone fishing or sailboat drifting offshore, and the ever-present eagles, herons and shorebirds passing through for entertainment. 

 

The time has passed quickly and quietly, the settling in and catching-up feeling like anything but a 'point of rest.' My appointment at Rathtrevor for morning mystery, however,  invites Mary Oliver's gentle observation: "It is what I was born for - to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world." I feel like a tiny bug walking amidst the towering cedars and firs, and something is loosened inside.  The protective limbs shield me from the minutes coming fast and furious, and deflect the mind's urging me to 'get on with the day.'  I understand how people get lost in nature, lose time in a forest, or in any endeavor that evokes such a larger view of life.

 

My sacred calling, in that moment, might include watching the slugs in various sizes and colors, moving across the path so-ever-so slowly, depositing the richness that changes and nurtures the ground.  Or, around the next bend, to observe the eagle in all majesty, bombarded by the common crow, as clouds scurry overhead and change the sky to a crazy patchwork of morning hues.  Every morning, it takes my breath away in a deep release of any and all thoughts of concern, to see and know the Universe is unfolding perfectly, and always will.

 

It is with that knowing that I reflect on the people to whom I've been introduced recently, whose riches I can, indeed, 'only glimpse.'  A mutual friend introduced me to Jessica Taylor, who is being interviewed right now by Oprah's producers for a possible show in the fall. She has written a book, "From Tragedy to Triumph," about her brain injury and recovery, and her current work with the brain injured around the world. 

 

The morning after I read her book, I was admiring the work of Sharon Murphy, a wood-carver at the local Farmer's Market, when she suddenly told me the whole story about her severe brain injury from an automobile accident years ago.  Up until that time, she had been 'a simple farmer's wife,' with no artistic inclination.  Now she is an award-winning painter, photographer and carver, an activity that takes her mind off of her continuing pain.  I happened to have Jessica's card in my purse, which I passed along to Sharon in that beautiful chain of connection and synchronicity that is the grace of life.

 

My lovely 87 year old friend from last summer has passed-on over the winter-time.  He visited everyday for the last few years with his wife in the Alzheimer's unit of a local nursing home.  The day after he was buried, his wife passed away.  I like to think he picked her up on his way home.  I was reminded of the story he told me, related last year in a Saga, about life being like a funnel: as we get older, we look through the narrow end, and see a broader picture.  This summer, I have met an acquaintance of his, another lovely elderly gentleman, a widower, retired community-organizer and former University Professor. He is a story-teller, and his words come slowly, deliciously, carefully chosen, with no waste.   When I sit with him, I feel like I'm in the room with Morgan Freeman and Sidney Poitier; there is an elegance to his cadence, a loveliness to the timbre of his voice, and a reverence for his life experiences. 

 

With the same diminutive feeling I have in the forest, I observe and visit with these new friends.  The story of each one, of each of us, is rich in the splendor to which we've been born.  What is tragedy? What is triumph?  Without her horrific fall, Jessica would not be traveling the world advocating and bringing change to the brain-injured.  Absent her accident, Sharon may never have discovered her latent talent, or her subsequent and strange ability to spot and unearth species of fossils that she's been able to bring to scientific attention.  Without his work in the Civil Rights movement of Chicago in the 60's, and the twists it took, Bill would never have ended up on Vancouver Island to tell his stories and touch our lives.

 

In our surrender to the perfection that is Divinely unfolding we come to that "point of rest in our own being."  We revel in mystery, discern revelation and walk small in the forest of our daily lives, amongst the towering stories of those around us.

YAY GOD

 

Canada Saga 2009 June 13

June 13    

 

"Let nothing disturb you; let nothing frighten you. All things are passing..."

 

Years ago, and years after my brother's death, Michael and I were strolling through the Riverwalk Shopping Mall at the edge of the French Quarter on a leisurely Sunday afternoon.  We had just gotten off the escalator upstairs when two shots rang out, and there was a flurry of panic, then a chilling silence.  Very quickly word spread that a man had killed a cashier, then himself, in a small shop across the corridor from where we stood.  I remember looking into the store, and seeing two feet under a clothes rack, as if someone were lying down to check out the merchandise.  After the initial shock had subsided, Michael was ready to move on, but I couldn't leave just yet.  It had all happened too quickly, and there was the absurd thought that if we could just slow time, if we could just stop for a second, we could hold sacred space for what we had witnessed, and somehow understand.

 

It was the same sense I had as I stared at the floor, the brown tweed hotel carpet which will always be in my memory, as I listened to my sister telling me over the phone about the death of our brother.  I had the awareness, even as I was doing it, that I was memorizing the swirls in the bedspread, the pattern of the carpet, the mind frantically searching for some grounding as life was suddenly being turned upside-down.  The pause button of life is pressed in those moments, while our minds attempt to comprehend what our hearts won't allow.  Eventually, of course, the moments quicken and life resumes, though changed forever.

 

Yesterday afternoon we sat in a picture perfect setting by the water, reading our respective books, looking up to casually comment on a particular boat or watch the small planes flying in for the air show this weekend.  The sky was its bluest and the temperature the blissful comfort of sunshine's warmth and slightly cooling sea breezes. 

 

I don't know why I stood and turned towards the eagle nest, but as I did, she shot out like an arrow towards the distant shore of low tide.  "She's after something," I told Michael, who watched with me as her mate came in from the left.  There was a flutter of wings in the flock of Canada Geese out on the water, and Michael thought she had a large fish.  I felt a withering inside as I said, "It's too large for a fish," and somehow I knew before he spoke. He grabbed the binoculars and said, "She has a baby goose."  Everything in me cringed with aversion and horror as she struggled with her heavy load.  It was finally too much for her, and she settled down on the beach directly in front of us, talons firmly grasping her prey, and waited for the writhing to stop, before carrying food up to her eaglet.

 

We have cellular memory, researchers and scientists tell us; trauma that we have experienced are deeply imbedded in the cells of our bodies.  Events will trigger those memories, and we will experience not only the particular happening of the moment, but the body of shock that has accumulated throughout our lives.  News of sudden death, shots ringing out in shopping centers, terminal diagnoses, the seeming violence of nature, the daily droning of crises and looming threats.  Darkness and light are present in all of our days, each with its purpose, and each with its effect on our minds, our bodies, our hearts. Through the darkness we grow, and we learn eventually to call on the strength of the moments we have spent in the Light.

 

"Who forms light and creates darkness, Who makes peace and Who creates evil?  I am God.  I do all these things." (Is 45:7)  In the brutal honesty of the flow in the world around us, we experience light and darkness; we see tranquility, and what we perceive as shock and horror.  Long after he has given his life so that life itself can be sustained, I still see the gosling's feathers flying, hear the weak bleating of the mother goose who could not defend her young against the onslaught of two eagles, and I relive the quick and stunning shift in our afternoon outing.  Life and nature have resumed their rhythm, while I am left reliving the moment. 

 

I want to erase this somehow, and realize that what I really want to do is erase all of those moments of shock, of grief, of brown tweed carpets in hotels where horror has announced itself and changed forever our lives.  I want life to rewind itself, to see the eagle drop the gosling back into her family  and, after all these years, to have life drop my brother back into his.

 

"It's nature," my neighbor says.  There is nothing evil about this; no premeditation, no waste of life, as if life could ever be wasted.  It is not so much the act itself, but the memories it evokes of struggle, of trauma, of the swift shift in a life that is, quite literally, a gift in every moment.  And there is balance.  The geese move on. The eaglet squeals in delight as her sustenance is delivered, and the continuum that is the perfection of nature is maintained. Death makes possible new life.  Trauma and shock release our complacency into a heightened awareness of the fragile joy offered each moment. 

 

Tagore speaks of a joy that "sets the twin brothers, life and death, dancing over the wide world."  In each occurrence, we are peeling back layers of God, and revealing mystery in the soul, the mystery that will, like this shoreline now exposed, once again be hidden by a surging tide of grace.  "All things are passing. God alone is changeless."  We bow.  We give thanks.  We praise.  What else can we do?

YAY GOD

 

Canada Saga 2009 June 2

"Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring."  (Henri Frederick Amiel)

 

The gentle sounds of a dawn by the edge of the water:

- an eagle calls up the sun over the coastal snow-capped mountains;

- a flock of ducks pass overhead, beating a rhythm - the percussion

   in this sunrise symphony;

 - the beach breathes with the freedom of the receding tide,

   snapping and popping with a thousand tiny unseen crabs;

 - the Canada Geese, heard long before they are seen coming around the curve

    of the shoreline, herald their own splashdown as the sun crests the jagged

    horizon, and parts the pastel clouds;

 - an enormous sea lion, chugging and panting on the high rock where he had

    settled at high tide and lingered too long, struggles mightily now to move along on

    his journey.

 

Morning quiet and morning gifts: the buzzing of insects, the busy birdsong, the eaglets' cries to be fed - all become the chant and response of the Creator and that which is created and born anew each day.  "All around," Ezekiel says,  "in every direction: Holy of Holies."

 

After 48 hours of being back on the island , the mystery of the morning finally brought me to that 'fallow corner' in the heart where seeds of the summer may be planted, and the wonder of life allowed to show itself.  Our winter involved two moves - out of the home that held so many precious memories of our last 23 years into a temporary rental, and then back into our newly constructed home - just four weeks prior to returning to Canada.  It was a winter of packing, sorting, unpacking, purging, re-packing, sorting and unpacking again. 

 

There's a metaphor for our life experiences in there somewhere, something about the constant transitions and movements, the discernment - or lack thereof - of what to hold onto, the letting go of old perceptions, the purging of beliefs and prejudices that no longer serve us.  Too often what we thought we had "unpacked" or forgiven has only been disguised and buried deeply, waiting for a vulnerable moment to emerge.  These last four weeks have offered some of those moments for both of  us!  But it is only when we find what we have buried that we can look at it with grace, move through it, and heal.

 

Our trip back was the best kind: uneventful.  We were most happy to see that our favorite restaurant survived another year; our coffee shop brought us muffins and beverages on the house.  Our neighbors, too, with their warm welcome were touching and dear,  with news of their own changes over the winter.  One has lost her beloved mother, leaving "a hole in my heart" that I know from her own cancer challenge will be filled with love and a renewed joy with life. A grieving father tells us his 21 year old is in the end stages of her life.  His sorrow is raw, his eyes red, when he says "It shouldn't happen like this - a parent shouldn't bury a child."  Then he makes a golf date with Michael and the absurd normalcy of life itself, with all of its grace and blessings, sorrow and connection, changes and sameness, reveals itself.  There is dying and there is golf, and each unfolds a mystery of its own, and a blessing.

 

On my walk in Rathtrevor yesterday morning, I was focused on the interior of the forest, the beauty and deep darkness of the old growth, the play and filter of the early morning light through the thick undergrowth, the smell of cedar mingling with the salt-water fragrance of the ocean.  A slight movement on the other side of the trail caught my eye, and I turned to see a gorgeous two-point buck, his antlers clothed in soft velvet, so close it book my breath away.  He was watching me cautiously but curiously,  making no move to bolt.  Behind him the sun was rising, and the fronds of the fern were waving gently in the morning breeze.  We stood there for awhile, both observers and observed, before he casually returned to grazing, and I continued my walk, with the lighter step of reverence and awe. 

 

"Let mystery have its place in you."  The most joyful, the most glorious, the most sorrowful moments are those of mystery; they are the fallow places in our hearts that produce no discernible wisdom of themselves, yet are themselves the "Holy of Holies."  Looking into a baby's smile or the eyes of a morning deer or the face of someone who has just passed or a grieving father's heart, we only know that something larger than our lives is holding us in mercy and compassion - and mystery.

YAY GOD