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