Canada Saga 2011 - September 18

"All beauty of this world is wet with the dew of tears."(Theodor Haecker)

 "How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."
    (Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie)

We've been saying for the last few weeks that there is a definite difference in the air and the temperatures, but this afternoon, the winds are downright blustery, the skies are overcast, and dampness has set in. It was the perfect time to take down the hanging  baskets, unpot the potted plants, and carry them all to the compost pile while Michael put away the patio furniture. The rituals that bring so much joy to us in June now reverse themselves and bring the bittersweet awareness that the summer's memories are now stored as well.

Originally we were planning on staying until the first week of October, to witness first hand the changing of the colors, the shortening days and the harvest farmers' markets. We had postponed gatherings with friends, some of our usual hiking adventures and the side trips that just didn't happen during those busier summer months. Now we are closing up our home early, and planning on returning to Louisiana for the funeral of our brother-in-law, Jake, husband of Michael's sister, Tippy. 

The story is one we hear so often: we thought we would have more time with him. In July, he was admitted to Hospice care, after a two year struggle with cancer. But he had rallied in the last few weeks, with medicines that finally gave him some quality of life. Michael visited with him just before our return to Canada, and felt that he had at least another Thanksgiving and Christmas to be with his family. Tippy tells us that in the end, he was surrounded by those who love him, and that his passing was very peaceful. "He showed us how to do it."

As I walked in a cool drizzle this morning along the waterfront, praying my gratitude and good-byes for the summer, for the beauty, for the new friends and renewed relationships with old ones, I noticed that the tops of the mountains were hidden beneath heavy grey clouds. If I were walking with someone new to the area, I could describe to them the beauty of Mount Arrowsmith behind us, and the details and intricacies of the coastal mountains far to our East, framed as they are by the islands in between. None of this was visible now, and it would be a leap of faith for someone who has never seen and experienced the sense of beauty all around us to trust and believe that it exists.

A beautiful card I found recently said that sometimes our only available transportation is a leap of faith. But there are days when leaps are not available. We are left with just taking the next step. Our way isn't blazing with the brilliance of enlightenment, but with a simple candle at our feet, promising only that the next step along the way would be lit.

My sister-and-brother-in-law have walked that walk for almost 2 years now. They have continued stepping into the next circle of light through the medical diagnoses, tests, treatments, prayer, with family and friends beside them, with tears, sharing as the two of them have for over half a century, a life that never promised ease or  certitude, only that they would be together "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health." No wonder there are fewer and fewer couples today ready to make that commitment to vows that convey a lifetime of faith, in each other and in the greatness of that Which holds us all.

My only argument with those vows is the finality of "til death do us part." When we've lived and loved deeply through the joys and traumas, the shocks and peaks, the tears and laughter of such a union, death cannot part us. This is not a sentimental, squishy take to ease the very real pain of grieving. It's an acknowledgment that grief is authentic. We are suddenly looking "through a glass darkly," as St. Paul said, missing our face to face seeing. But death does not 'part' us, because nothing can part or segment Love.  James Dillet Freeman, in his beautiful poem, The Travellor, says that "...love knows it cannot lose its own; The love that, looking through the shadows sees, That You and he and I are ever One!"  It is all inclusive, and we see its beauty, 'wet with the dew of tears.'

We are so blessed to have a place up here, with such good friends that make it so hard to say goodbye. Goodbyes are blessings in themselves.  They prepare us for the eventuality that life is impermanent, and they make us ever more present to this moment, to the joys and miracles that exist side-by-side in our fragile and beautiful world. We take so much of the beauty and the wonder for granted; we take so many of our loved ones, and the moments we have to spend on them, for granted.

When we received word of Jake's imminent passing, we were with our beautiful friends in Victoria who have known deep grief firsthand, with the passing of their lovely 16 year old daughter years ago. This friend is now a nurse to new mothers, encouraging them in loving and nurturing their own daughters and sons. She gives effortlessly. Her husband is a retired doctor, but more importantly, a compassionate and gracious presence, who bowed his head and said a beautiful  prayer for Michael, for Tippy, for the family and the times they faced ahead, with the love of their faith and their God. Tonight, as I'm writing this, I see that they've sent a prayer by Cardinal Newman who says that shadows lengthen, the evening comes, the busy world is hushed and our work is done. "Then in God's mercy, may we have safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last."

It is a joy to have so much love to say goodbye to. It is an extravagant grace to take for granted the many blessings we have been given, and to know we fly home to embrace and give thanks for the ones we have at  hand.

YAY GOD 

Canada Saga 2011 - September 12

"I have a friend who speaks of knowledge as an island in a sea of mystery...the larger we make that island, the longer becomes the shore where knowledge is lapped by mystery. (Chet Raymo)

 

"We are here and now. Further than that, all knowledge is moonshine." (H.L. Mencken)

 

When our friends who introduced us to this area come up for their annual visit, Keith and Michael always spend time on a fishing trip. This involves getting up (usually earlier than Michael wants to, and since Keith expects it, Michael obliges by grumbling and sleeping in the car), driving an hour up island, chartering a fishing guide/boat, and spending a few hours on the water near the magnificent Seymour Narrows. I have speculated that the cost of the salmon may be in the $100/lb. range, but the guys say that isn't the point.

 

This summer, on a very chilly morning, there were few bites and little action. Michael resisted the call of nature for hours, before finally giving in and excusing himself to use the "facilities": a milk jug in the cold temps on the other end of the small boat. And, as you can probably guess, in that moment he heard Keith say, "Hey, Mikie. Do you want me to reel in your fish?" He was in no position to argue, so Keith "caught" the only fish of the trip:  the 'p-fish.'

 

True to his Cajun-nature, Michael tells this story much better than I do, of course, complete with descriptions of the early hour, peeling off the outer-wear, the chill in the air, the shivering body gestures. We did enjoy fresh-grilled salmon that evening, and the story will enter our Island adventure lore, as will the teasing that naturally goes along with long-friendships forged of such experiences. I look forward to the embellishments (the temps become colder, the hour earlier, the fish larger) that always grow from such legends, and already have.

 

Since we've been back, we have had an unusual warm spell for this time of year, allowing us comfortable walks on the beach at low tide, and quiet moments of reading in our chairs near the water. We sit and listen to the giggling waves that share laughs with the tickled shoreline. Gulls and oystercatchers, with their comical flaming orange bills, wander a riffle of land being held captive by the encroaching tide. On this lazy afternoon, the bees seem as lulled as we are, half-heartedly buzzing and bumping into chair legs and books, flying slowly away in their search for nectar. Over our shoulders, the moon slowly takes shape in late afternoon, an emerging fullness appearing out of the nothingness of a pale sky.

 

In the later light of morning these days, walking early becomes a bit of an eerie outing. It's still a murky dawn when I get to the boardwalk, which may explain why I missed seeing the cougar last week. He walked the fence-line of the nearby campground, I was told, and it was about the same time that I was also walking, on the other side of the fence. But I was watching the tide taking its gentle leave, and the distant mountains, layered with a cloud-creme filling in a strawberry-meringue sky. I was singing softly, "Surely the Presence of the Lord is in this place; I can feel God's mighty power and God's grace." Perhaps it was the singing; perhaps it was the Presence and the constant prayers of my Mom. I am ever so grateful that he was either full, or, as my friend told me, "uninterested in you because you're so thin; you're not worth the fight."

 

This is the fourth recent cougar sighting; two have involved injuries to children, which is why they had to shoot this one. And while I'm usually thrilled to see an animal in the wild, that close encounter made me more aware of my surroundings as I walk and drive in those early hours.

 

There was little we could do to prepare, however, for the disorienting and unexpected shaking we felt earlier this week. Michael and I were in different rooms at our computers when we both felt a gentle rocking sensation, like we were back on the cruise ship for a moment. He says it lasted about 3 seconds, but for me the 3 seconds came after the mind/body registered that something strange was already happening - especially when the vase on the table rocked back and forth. Most of our neighbors felt nothing. One woman said she and her husband were driving, and she would've blamed anything unusual on his driving anyway.

 

Now we're told we should have an earthquake survival kit, the contents of which are remarkably similar to our hurricane survival kit, with batteries, flashlights, water, food, and cash. But I'm wondering: we're on an island, with one major access road. Where would we go?! When I ask the question, people look at me curiously, laugh nervously, and change the subject. I don't think anyone has an answer.

 

My sister says, after the cougar incident and the earthquake event, that it's time for us to come home. With the shorter days, the color changes, the last of the farmer's markets, and the rush to get all of our visiting in, we can feel the ending of the season. As much as we enjoy our lives up here, we also look forward to re-engaging with family and friends in Louisiana after the long summer.

 

On the last day of our brief visit back home in August, Grace told me with great excitement that she has learned to ride her bike without training wheels. Her Mom had tricked her, she said, telling her that she was being supported. "Then she told me that she just made that up. I had been riding by myself the whole time!" She is proud, and amazed, and I see that her reactions to her milestones have a universal quality. We surprise ourselves when, sometimes with great effort on our part and sometimes in just pure grace, life unfolds its treasures for us.

 

I told her that, just as her Mom was teaching her, my Mom had taught me things when I was little, and then I taught Brett, and now she was learning some of the same lessons I learned from my Mom. She looked at me brightly: "And then when I have my little girl, I'll teach her!" I don't know what prompted me, but I found myself saying easily: "Isn't it  wonderful? You'll be teaching these things to a little girl that I won't even meet."

 

She looked at me, puzzled. "Why won't you meet my little girl?" "Well," I told her with a smile, and as nonchalantly as I could, "by the time you're old enough to have a little girl, I probably won't be here." This time, a bit of horror crept into her eyes and her voice: "You mean you'll," and she lowered her voice to a whisper, "d...d...die?" "Oh, yes." I answered. "Everyone will sooner or later. Don't you think you'd get tired of just being here all the time, and doing the same things over and over again? I think we'd want to get ready for our next adventure." "But, you stop BREATHING! Won't that be scary?" she asked. "Yes," I say, wondering how we got into this so quickly, wondering about having this conversation with a seven year old, but feeling a perfect flow. "You breathe out. Then before you can breathe in, you're onto the next experience. It's probably like other things we do that are new to us."

 

"HEY!" She said excitedly, and I can see the ah-ha! in her face, a tiny bulb of enlightenment switching on. "It's like ME riding my bike! At first it was scary because I didn't know what I was doing and then Mom told me I was doing it and I was and it felt like I had already been doing it and now I can ride my bike!" All of her words came tumbling out in a rush of connected wisdom. She 'got' it, integrated it, turned it around to a practical experience in her life, and applied it. And I stood in awe at the process, realizing this is exactly what we are called to do from our little islands of knowledge, which are already immersed in the ocean of wisdom.

 

No wonder Jesus wanted children all around Him. Children listen; they come with what Suzuki Roshi called "beginner's mind," filled with the joy of endless possibilities, unlike the expert who is limited by the rational mind of certainty. Too often we settle for the moonshine of knowing, drunk on our own island of knowledge, unaware that at shore's edge there is a vast expanse of ocean surrounding us. But our souls are adrift on a sea of numinous possibilities, bumping occasionally into islands of knowledge.

 

"...we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which was ordained before the world unto our glory," says Scripture (1 Cor 2:6-7). In God's time, perhaps on that last exhalation when we "d...d...die," we lose our training wheels. Our islands of knowledge slowly disappear, submerged into the mystery of grace. We return. And in returning, we finally remember a truth beyond knowing, beyond wisdom, beyond mystery. We remember Who we are.

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2011 - September 8

"All of the places of our lives are sanctuaries; some of them just happen to have steeples. And all of the people in our lives are saints; it is just that some of them have day jobs and most will never have feast days named for them."
— Robert Benson in Between the Dreaming and the Coming True

  

"Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face. (Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life)

Two days before our return trip to Canada, I walked down the hallway next to the

windows which look out on our backyard in Louisiana. It was yet another hot muggy evening, and the tall trees and shrubs, usually so comfortingly green and intimate, seemed to close in with shriveling branches and dried up leaves in the summer heat and drought.  Then I heard it: the unmistakable cry of an eaglet to a parent, the sound that pierces the air on the island here for weeks in August as the young ones learn to fly and hunt. I yelled to Michael and, heat and humidity forgotten, we both ran out in time to see the parent, followed almost immediately by the fledgling, fly to a tree in our neighbor's yard.

Michael walked to the front, and stood quietly while the eaglet swooped low over his head, talons extended, just missing the rabbit who was feeding each evening outside the kitchen window. "It's a sign of something," I tell my sister later, and she responds with a laugh, "Yeah. You don't have to go to Canada! You can get it all right here."

But we did return to Vancouver Island, to find that all the eagles here have flown North for the salmon run. The days are noticeably shorter, as the earth shifts onto its autumn axis, the sun rising over different mountain peaks now. In the quiet of the morning, their silhouettes in the pre-dawn light take the shape of temples, synagogues, churches and minarets, the gentle incoming tide chanting morning praise in its own sacred rhythms. Clouds lift like incense into the softly colored coral-streaked sky.  The air has a crispness to it, and the trees are beginning to try on their fall wardrobes of pale yellows and reds.

There's a strange melancholy to this time of year. Spring holds such expectancy; summer days stretch long and seemingly endless, although the summer itself has sped by; winter seems to bring the joy of holidays with the intimacy of early darkness and drawing together. But the fall-season evokes wistful memories and emotions, a time to remember summer plans that never happened, opportunities missed, and perhaps relive summers that ended years ago with a reluctant return to school.

Sweet memories of this summer, too, spring up. Back in June, I snuck out of the house to take a marimba lesson, music that I fell in love with when we first came to the island years ago. The music is infectious with its rhythms of pure joy. The next night, I surprised Michael at the street dance in the village when the announcer asked for those who had taken a lesson to come forward and play a song for the crowd, before the real band took the stage. Our song was mercifully short (I had to play the first 16 bars alone before the rest of the band came in), but we stayed for the concert and dance that followed.

What I remember about that night was the homeless man, drawn in by the noise and the play and the laughter. He sat on the curb at the edge of the crowd, in his unwashed clothes, his filthy dreadlocks hanging down, a slow smile spreading across his face. Before long, almost everyone was on their feet, led by toddlers without the need to contain themselves. People danced in circles, with strangers; some of the elders held on to their walkers as they moved their bodies in whatever way they could.  But what caught my eye was a well-dressed older woman, her yellow jewelry matching her crisp yellow linen outfit, who had drawn the homeless man into the circle and was dancing with him, smiling at him, speaking into his ear over the music, accepting him - just as he was, both of them nameless saints without feast days, celebrating life.

This morning, my friend Dennis and his wife Pam, were standing on the boardwalk with a stranger who was clearly confused and terrified.  They found out he had had a stroke months ago, and was now lost, couldn't remember where he lived. They comforted him, spoke softly with him until help arrived, and he had composed himself and could offer a phone number of a friend. Saints, without a feast day.

We drove around and around in the parking lot of our local food store last week, waiting for a parking place, dodging the scooters of the elders who reside here in large numbers. Finally we waited as a very elderly woman loaded her groceries in her trunk, and I jumped out to ask for her basket, and her space. But she was holding a small plastic bag with maybe 20 - 30 blueberries in it. "Oh, my," she said. "I'm going to have to go back in. They forgot to charge me for this." And despite an initial feeling of frustration that we would lose the parking spot, I admired her for her natural inclination of honesty. There was simply no question about it: she hadn't paid for it, and there was only one thing to do. Saint without a feast day.

Tina is my new hair stylist this summer. As a very young girl, her family was in the last group that entered the embassy as the gates were closed in Saigon, and they came to a new country with only the clothes on their backs. She is filled with joy and laughter and chatter, but she gets quiet as we talk.  A client has called to cancel a long-standing appointment, and Tina has found out that the woman is dying. She has called her twice to offer to come to her home to cut her hair, but the woman has not responded. Now Tina is considering contacting Hospice to offer her services to others who may need her touch. Saint without a feast day.

There are so many stories like this, for each of us, every day.

In the restroom of our public library, over the automatic hand-drier, someone has posted a small but very visible sticker in black and silver that reads simply: "You are beautiful." I laugh and think: now this a saint I would like to meet!

On the morning after we returned to the island, my friend, Aline, and I walked out over the rocks at low tide, and watched a magnificent sunrise together, arms around each other's waist. An unmistakable shadow crossed the brilliant glow to the East, and winged its way slowly towards us, flying back and forth at water's edge before soaring low over our heads.  Our spirits were raised on eagles' wings,  borne on the breath of dawn, and we felt, truly, held in the palm of His hand.

"Each moment contains  a hundred messages from God," Rumi wrote.  "To every cry of "Oh Lord," the answer comes a hundred times, 'I am here.' " Here, in the soft voices, the caring gestures, the kindnesses unmeasured, the generosity of heart that lives and dwells among us, next to us, in our neighbors, families, friends and strangers going about their daily lives. Our heads are bowed in deep gratitude, the soul on its knees, recognizing these unnamed saints, and the One Who dwells within them all.

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2011 - August 28

"As the breath of light awakens color,
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder." (John O'Donohue)

 

"The opposite of the "Real" World is not the Unreal World- it's the Kingdom of God." (Father Gregory Boyle)

 

Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to be an audience of one at Grace's music lesson for piano and voice. I had just picked her up from school, and we were seeing each other for the first time since May.  Children have that lovely whisper of spontaneous grace and presence that many of us ignore, or have hidden so deeply that we don't even realize it's there. In seeming response to one of those moments, she sat down unexpectedly and played Ode To Joy, surprising both her teacher and her Aunt, who was feeling the fullness of that emotion even before the first chords were struck.

 

On the way to her lesson, she had asked me all about Alaska, and I wondered how I could share with her the intensity of Nature's beauty, and the immensity of awe, connection and humility we experience in such Presence.  So my eyes filled with tears of surprise and joy as she sang what she has been practicing for her concert, Colors of the Wind, with the beautiful words that said it all: "I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name." My sister and her mother are doing everything in their power to 'anoint her eyes with wonder,' and to keep her connected to this special 'real' world that escapes us too quickly.

At our last supper aboard-ship, Michael asked each of us at the table how long we thought the 'glow' from Brother David's sessions and our time together would last after the cruise, when we rejoined the 'real' world. This brought immediate responses of laughing and wincing at the prospect of these special moments coming to an end. One of our companions suggested, however, that where we had been over the last seven days was indeed the 'real' world.

 

The challenge now is the same that Christ offers us: to be IN, and not OF, the world that we see unfolding through media and gossip and politics and fear, the boring business of blame, and the busy-ness of everyday trivia. Ultimately we learn that there is no separation between the 'real world,' and the Kingdom of God, if we embrace with compassion and love all that is: the suffering of watching a loved one through a final illness, the anxiety of the hurricane bearing down on my brother and son, the aging of my precious mother, the state of our fragile and beautiful world and country, the joy and tears of listening to Grace sing "You can own the Earth and still, all you'll own is Earth until, you can paint with all the colors of the wind."

Brother David was asked, both on Cortes island and on the cruise, about suffering and violence and evil in the world.  After a poignant moment of silence, he spoke, choosing his words carefully, sharing with us that his reflections on this subject have changed over the years, With a twinkle in his 85 year old eyes, he said that he hoped he would have many more years to grow in his views. He began by saying that we are a very young species, relatively speaking. We are growing and evolving all the time, finding ways to resolve conflicts and be in relationship with each other and our world. We are slowly, painfully, over the millenia, finding what doesn't work - war doesn't work, violence doesn't work, greed and selfishness, exclusivity and separateness do not work. "Evil," he concluded, "is the opportunity for that which is not yet good to emerge, like a mother who looks at her little child, full of mischief, with loving eyes for what will be."

 

"Evil is the opportunity for that which is not yet good to emerge:" said with such assurance, such hope and confidence in the goodness yet in our hearts, to be slowly revealed in the passage of time and experience.

 

I think of his gentle faith-filled words as I speak with my friend, who is loving her husband of 53 years through what may be his final illness. He has told her that God has a plan for everyone; that if this is God's plan in his life, he is ready.  She is deeply touched by the offers from so many: to help, to pray, to be with them.  That common chord that is stroked within each of us in response to the suffering and struggles of others, that place in our heart that cries and feels pain and compassion in the face of evil and violence, that warms to the smile of a child or a loving kindness offered - THAT is the flow of our evolution, and our saving grace as a species. This is our evolution towards the Kingdom of God lived here on earth, through love, the first ingredient, Padre Pio said, in the relief of suffering.

 

The natural response moving in the hearts of those who offer support and assistance to my friend and her husband, that moves in all of us touched by the struggles of others in the face of evil and disaster and pain, is the good that is emerging from our original blessing. Those who experience the suffering allow us to be conduits for the grace that dwells within, and bring us into the circle of compassion and communion. We owe them all a deep and sacred gratitude for unmasking, even for the brief moment of our offers to help, the blessing that we carry so naturally in our hearts and souls.

 

Our trip home has been a strange mixture of illness and enforced quiet, from Michael's post-cruise virus to my Northshore 'crud,' as the triage nurse so professionally called it in the E.R. Thursday night. They were seeing many cases of high fever and sinus symptoms, and while mine lasted only 2 days, between our illnesses, we managed only a very few of the visits we thought we would make. Now the focus is on packing again for our return to Vancouver Island and the final four weeks of the summer.

 

The weather forecast on Tuesday in Qualicum Beach currently calls for a high of 63.  When we leave New Orleans, it will be in the 90's. As we fly through the extremes, we no doubt will be flying over babies being born, love being shared, laughter beginning new friendships, patients being given terminal diagnoses, faith being shattered and spirits soaring in wonder. Through it all, and unbeknownst to them, they will be held in our silent prayers, touched by an unseen grace, as we are held in lovingkindess and the prayers of those we will never meet. The 'real' world is here; the 'real' world is there. Light dawns colors in the heart everywhere. How can our eyes not be anointed with wonder?

YAY GOD

 

Canada Saga 2011 - August 21

"That which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly." (Isak Dinesen, Babette's Feast)

 

"For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day." (Evelyn Underhill)

 

Last week at this time, we were in Ketchikan, Alaska, walking in a 50 degree drizzle, huddling against each other and bundled against the chill and drizzle to view a park of restored Totem poles. The weather perfectly fit the occasion, and I can't imagine seeing their stark and somber beauty any other way than through the misty veils of cloud and rain. The original materials of these carvings, the guide tells us, were used to allow them to slowly deteriorate and return to Nature, but they were removed from the villages, each bearing a story of clan or history or burial or celebration, and brought here for preservation of a culture that is challenged and proudly surviving.

 

Fast forward through an amazing week, and we are also huddled in now, from the extreme heat and humidity of a Louisiana August day, as Michael recovers from an unfortunate bout of stomach distress, brought on by a ship-board virus, or a bad sandwich at the airport. Either way, we are both happy to just be for a couple of days, catching up on mail and some quiet reading, although missing opportunities to be with our families for the time being, on this very brief interlude before heading back to Vancouver Island.

 

In the meantime, we are allowed the slow processing of some lovely, gentle, and breath-taking experiences of the last week. Before we left the ship, Michael said, "At my age, I don't like to use the word 'never,' but if I had to, I'd say I'd never take another cruise."  And I knew what he meant. It was a sensory overload of bells, whistles, schedules, noise, racing children, food, alcohol, activities, shopping, music, relentless in nature and excess. If an activity wasn't on-going, it was being announced, or we were being left notices about it. While he went to the gym each morning,  I walked the jogging track on the 11th deck, watching black smoke pouring out of the stack, and wondering about the environmental impact and waste onboard. In those moments, I felt the smallness of spirit and heart that come with judgments and preconceptions, and that limit our compassion.

 

Then Brother David's gentle message about gratitude would saturate my awareness.  In that presence, suddenly I saw inter-generational gatherings that would surely imprint memories in families for years to come. Teens walked slowly with aged grandparents, and infants and toddlers were magnets for smiles.The food became a source of gratitude for its abundance and variety, although the diverticulitis limited my tastings - a blessing in disguise, I decided. The staff and entertainers, from 50 different countries, were all earning salaries, with many sending at least part of their wages back home to support families, or paying for tuition. Our small stateroom had a lovely balcony where we could enjoy the sounds of the sea as a lullaby at night, and watch a spectacular moonrise on our last evening. The people in Brother David's "Gratitude" group, as we were known amidst the other conventions onboard, were a diverse group from Austria to Australia, and we were blessed with all of our table companions. It is so easy, with even a minimum of awareness, to be drawn into this state of a 'thousand forms of loveliness," that otherwise elude us.

 

Brother David's talks, held ironically in the room that at night doubled as a disco, were the highlight, of course, for me. Michael came with me to the first one, I think out of curiosity from hearing of the Cortes Island experience, and because there were limited options since we were at sea. We had also been seated at dinner with 6 other people who were attending the talks, and each of us had spoken of our connection to Brother David the evening before. That first talk held Michael's interest enough that he came to all of the other sessions, as well.

 

Once again, the words and expressions and being of this lovely man floated through the ages of his wisdom-gathering effortlessly. His expansion on the theme of being relentlessly grateful for all that we are given encompassed theology, biology, poetry, suffering, evil, illness, joy, and the overall Unknown of the mystics in relation to spirituality and religion today. On the day he spoke of the self, of the mirror-like image of the Divine in each of us, I smiled at a baby slowly crawling up the steps followed by his watchful grandmother. When he came to the top, he looked up and spied his own image in the mirrors of the elevator door.  With complete and utter charming gurgles of delight, he pulled himself up and waddled to the image, hands extended, and joyfully leaned in to press his little cheek against the one smiling back at him.  This, I thought, is how we should perceive ourselves each day - through the grace of Spirit and the awareness of the mystery that lies deeply within. "The veil of things as they seem are drawn back by an Unseen Hand," O'Neill wrote. "Seeing the Secret," Brother David added, "you ARE the secret."

 

Michael said it best when he said that Brother David seemed to be limiting himself to about one percent of his mental and spiritual capacity and wisdom in attempting to share and bring us along with him. We were all hanging on to the sacred kite strings of his spiritual soaring.

 

Of course, in addition to all of this, was the immense beauty of Alaska revealing herself, with fyords, ice melt tumbling down canyons, glaciers and ice-green waters, dotted with crystal aquamarine ice floes. On the morning that we slowly motored into Tracy's Arm, the music was blissfully turned off on the loudspeakers. Waiters with trays of warm mugs of hot chocolate circled the decks, where people were wrapped in woolen blankets and every type of outer gear. Michael and I stood in wonder as the ship made a turn, and we saw in the distance the ice-blue of the glacier, looking like the sea frozen in a rush between two white mountains. There was no sun, but there was a prism through tears from a heart over-flowing, and a deep resonance with all who sing:  "Thy power throughout, the universe displayed!" The soul was already in song before the mind caught up: "How Great Thou Art."

 

On our last night, as we cruised out of Skagway, our table had the panorama window seat to a movie of island mountains, snow-capped and draped in spider web fog, the dim light of an ending day showcasing the fullness of their glory. Some of them seemed to be nothing but tall peaks plunging down into the ocean, inhospitable for living, exquisite for the soul. All eight of us watched as Alaska floated back behind her veil, the hustle and bustle of the dining room also fading in the moment. We realized with deep reverence the wisdom of a truth we had been told earlier that day:

 

"Silence beneath the words is the ultimate dialogue between souls." (Brother David Steindl-Rast)

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2011 - (sort of) - August 11

"A sense of reverence includes the recognition that one is always in the presence of the sacred...The earth is full of thresholds where beauty awaits the wonder of our gaze." (John O'Donohue)

 "After the ecstasy, the laundry." (Jack Kornfeld)

We are sitting in a non-descript little motel on the outskirts of Seattle, awaiting our Alaskan cruise adventure with Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk and mystic, tomorrow. Our being here has not been without its adventures, including sudden and intense abdominal pain with fever two days ago.  A quick trip to the emergency room confirmed what I thought, and had been treating from the outset: diverticulitis.  Having no pain or fever today, and with meds in hand - along with a great deal of faith - we set sail Friday evening.

 While Michael went golfing and on fishing trips with his friends, for the better part of the last week, I have already had the extreme grace to be in Brother David's presence on the tiny island of Cortes, a one hour drive and two ferry rides from Vancouver Island.  Along with Rupert Sheldrake, a brilliant, cutting edge - and therefore controversial - biologist/scientist/cosmologist, David gave a series of talks that captivated our small group, and held us in an ethereal state of wonder and presence.  I've tried for four days now to share stories with Michael, and capture a small sense of the experience, with little success.

So, as part of the process, and for those who have asked,  I'm copying from the short journal entries I made while in the numinous presence of those days, with the hopes that we can cross somewhat the threshold of that beauty, and gaze in wonder together.

 --"What could I journal that would speak as eloquently as the sky this morning? The panorama from the window of water and islands and layers of clouds shifting and moving creating a gentle overcast light, trees tickled by breezes and heart open in the love that flows from this gentle 85 year old monk, and the magic of Hollyhock on Cortes? So much of this is internal, an eternal response to a Master's touch, through David's presence and words. He is older and frail, with so many around draining him with questions and unspoken yearnings.  He gives so freely, so effortlessly. He tells us to bless with our eyes, and without anyone's noticing, he does this around our circle before each gathering, as he leads us in simple musical rounds. I feel a special grace with his hug at the end of the first session.

 --"Another morning, and the sun rises over the east coast of Cortes and Twin Island - my head, my soul, my heart spins in gratitude, awe, wonder, mystery...Here I sit on an isolated island deep in the mystery of the Pacific Northwest with one of the preeminent cutting edge spiritual biologists, and a mystical sacred carrier of a lineage of holy wisdom. Two of the most intelligent souls and brains on the planet discussing planet-shifting ideas and theologies, but mostly beyond both - Consciousness and the Sacred - eavesdropping on their talks, presented in an intimate workshop setting with 20 of us, sitting in a yurt under Douglas firs and hemlocks, steps away from the straits and channels of water that lead into Desolation Sound, and the ocean. Such an amazing invitation, such hope for the future.

 --"Gifts everywhere. The sailboat ride into Desolation Sound, sitting alone on the bow, my head spinning from the scintillation of the morning session, needing no words for now, just listening to the water stroking the hull, feeling the gentle rise and fall of the boat, watching the panorama of exquisite beauty - 3 dimensional layering of forested islands, peaked hills bathed in bubble mists, and glaciered peaks showered with fragmented sunlight, ribbons of snow crevices streaming down the rocky faces, the sun warm on my face, the temps cool enough to be welcoming. Gift. Gift. Present of the Divine. Presence.

 --"All is suffering," Joseph Campbell says. "And all is bliss."  A baby seal pup cries pitifully, wedged between 2 barnacled rocks on a miniscule island, the destination of an impromptu rowing trip  (impromptu for me. As I'm writing, Rupert walked up and asked if I'd accompany 7 others on a rowing adventure. "Well," I tell him, "I'm really not dressed, don't have the right shoes, don't have the right jacket." For each of my lacks, he counters: "You're dressed fine; Take your shoes off, rowing will warm you," until I have no excuses. "If your biology career doesn't work out for you," I say, "you could be a salesman." I am cold, and wondering why I came. Then it occurs to me that one day I'll be able to say I went rowing with Rupert Sheldrake.) The mother seal swam close by - all of us helpless. If we touched it, the naturalist told us, the parents would abandon it. We had to leave, trusting that Nature would take its course, that it wasn't so tightly wedged, and that the now rising tide would lift, not drown, it. We could only do as Brother David had suggested yesterday, give a blessing with our eyes. Two seals swam with our boat as we left, and we wondered if they were making sure we were gone, or in that anthropomorphic arrogance that is human nature, if they were signaling for help.  The fleeting tho't occurred that we may have even startled it off the rocks by our arrival.

"But we did row away, leaving behind and around it prayers for protection, the graces of the Beneficence that had created it, and carrying with us the image of its beautiful soft grey-spotted head and fear-filled eyes.

 "When the naturalist said the next morning that a kayaker reported mom and pup swimming together later in the day, we all expressed relief. How often the high tide of grace through the prayers and compassion of others lifts us from the tight places of our suffering - and IN our suffering - to a freedom of the soul.

 --"So many gifts. So MANY gifts. The air, the wind, the water,the sounds, the silence - chanting together, singing in rounds, listening to Rupert's English accented recitations of the mysteries of the Cosmos, and Brother David's gentle Austrian recitations of the Cosmic mystery of Divine life.  The eccentric characters for this eclectic retreat were right out of central casting: from the long-haired smoke-throated maintenance man to the Midwest couple from Ohio; from the tiny well-tanned black bear researcher straight from her 600 sq. foot log cabin in western Maine to the couple who had flown from Argentina just to be with Brother David, all in presence, some through experiences of extreme suffering, trusting in the rising tide of wonder that lifted us through our days in the bubble together."

This is such a small part of what the week was about. While listening to Rupert, I was too mesmerized to jot much of anything, trying desperately to hang-on by my mental, emotional and spiritual fingertips as he took us on a dizzying ride through cosmology, philosophy, the fields of morphic resonance, and the humor of God.  From a sense of atheism, his own journey has taken him to the Indian ashram of Father Bede Griffith, also a Benedictine mystic, and back to his own devout practice as an Anglican. The deep respect and curiosity that Rupert and David shared was intimate and precious. On one especially profound afternoon, the light from the openings in the ceiling of the yurt played a halo and an aura around Brother David as he spoke. My friend, Janet, witnessed this from her position across the room, and watched amazed. She shared her observation with him after the session, and his comment was a playful smile and a simple "It's all part of the P. R."

When I tell my 7 year old niece Grace that I love her to the moon and back, she responds: "I love you to infinity!"  Janet says that when she was small, she used to look up at the stars, and wonder what was beyond. She felt that she had gone beyond the stars during our week.  I feel equally that I've danced beyond infinity.With a sense of reverence, we were in the presence of the truly sacred.  I'm overjoyed that Michael will have a small chance to share this humble, grace-filled, joyful Presence now on the cruise.

 I'll leave the final words to Brother David:

 "Everything is FILLED with Divine reality! Everything is Divine, but the Divine goes infinitely beyond everything!"

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2011 - July 27

"Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, and what is soiled is made clean." (Dag Hammarskjold)
"By your capacity for forgiveness shall I recognize your God." (Marius Grout, French Quaker)

As the story goes, a frail elderly man went to live with his son, daughter-in-law, and four-year old grandson. The old man's hands trembled, his eyesight was blurred, making eating difficult. Peas rolled off his spoon, his milk spilled on the tablecloth, he broke a dish or two, and his place at the table was always a mess, irritating his son and wife. So they set a small table in the corner where Grandfather ate alone from a wooden bowl while the rest of the family enjoyed dinner. 

The four-year-old watched it all in silence. One evening before supper, the father noticed his son playing with wood scraps on the floor.  He asked the child sweetly, "What are you making?"  Just as sweetly, the boy responded, "Oh I am making a little bowl for you and Mama to eat your food from when I grow up."

Whether we know it or not, we are forever modeling to the children, grandchildren and the more impressionable hearts of each other how to enhance or diminish the Light in the world, by our actions and attitudes, regardless of the words we speak.  Earlier in the summer, Michael pressure-washed our patio, walkway and driveway, oblivious to the fact that he was thereby destroying and drowning the garden and plants I had laboriously spent two days putting in just after we arrived. We were both snarky with each other, each feeling under-appreciated, neither of us able or willing in the moment to acknowledge the role of ego in our stand-off.  Eknath Easwaran tells an amusing story about two people arguing, pretending to listen, when all they really needed were signs to hold up as the other spoke: "I'm right. You're wrong." The blessing of getting older is that these moments pass quickly, with grace and humor and, hopefully, lessons learned. (Note to self: do not plant garden until after the pressure-washing; also, plants are more easily replaced than husbands.)

One blessing of getting older is that we find if we wait 24 hours or so before reacting and then tell a story about what happened, the feelings are usually universally shared, and more humorous than aggravating, one story begetting another as our life dramas unfold. My niece's mother, Donna, was caring for her mother with Alzheimer's. Donna went into the garage, and her mother locked her out of the house. The mother then kept telling Donna, who was banging on the door to get back in, that she had to go find Donna to unlock the door.  After a few days, the story could be told with laughter instead of frustration, fear and irritation.

A friend, unaware that the answer machine on her neighbor's phone had not disconnected after she left her message, proceeded to complain to her husband in rather disparaging terms about the neighbor - until she heard the heart-stopping 'beep,' indicating the machine had recorded it all. When the friend called me in horror for advise, I was not much help because I couldn't stop laughing, even as we both recoiled at the thought of her innocent neighbor's eventual pain. They have since reconciled though not without difficult lessons.

The thought occurs to me now that we are sending and receiving constantly in life; with every thought and every word, we leave messages of our choosing:  joy or despair, lightness or gloom, hope or cynisicm, acceptance or rejection.  How many of these would we want to be overheard or recorded? How much forgiveness and reconciliation are we open to in the relationships offered to us as gifts in our growing?

"Engrave this upon my heart," Mary Lou Kownacki, OSB, writes: "There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you've heard their story."  I have a friend who, a few years ago, told me sometimes she just throws her hands up in exasperation and says, "This is for EVERYONE who has EVER asked me to pray for ANYTHING."  We could say the same prayer for forgiveness, in following Rumi's advise to be like the night in concealing the faults of others. For everyone who has ever harmed us, we offer forgiveness; for anyone who has suffered from our thoughts, words or actions, we ask forgiveness. We forgive ourselves and each other, because the tender grace that comes from being in such a place brings peace and well-being, until finally we remember who we are, and our place in the world.

That act of forgiving those who trespass against us doesn't come out of fear of a higher power out there, but because we are connected to that deeper place within that tells us we are not so different from those who hurt us, reminds us that we have hurt others, and accepts that forgiveness is simply another name for Love.

We return in prayers of blessing and forgiveness, not once and for all, as the saying goes, but time and again. The Sufis say that reconciliation is simply remembering how far we've strayed from our original goodness, our feelings of remorse already a return to the Divine. I like to think that the grandfather in our story waited silently, knowing that his son would realize the goodness of his own heart and return his father to a proper place of respect, not out of guilt, but out of remembrance, in answer to the call to Love.
YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2011 - July 8

"Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin."(Barbara Kingsolver)                              
"Not only is the past relevant, it's not even done!"  (William Faulkner) 

When my nephew was 3 years old, he charmingly referred to umbrellas as *rain*brellas, using words as children often do, in ways that just make sense to them. Brett at that age always referred to any sort of stomach upset as a *waist* ache. For some reason, known only to her toddler mind, Grace Alivia always said *oh* when she meant 'yes.' Finding this endearing and quite mysterious, I never corrected her, and was almost sad when I returned home from Canada after a summer away to find her saying 'yes' to everything, usually with great enthusiasm. This, of course, preceded her equally enthusiastic period of saying 'no,' also to everything.
I thought of my nephew early one morning this week, when the sky once again held the precious jewel of a small rainbow on the belly of a grey cloud over the ocean. There was no rain, no storms preceding, or predicted for, the day. Sitting gently as pure gift - although there is probably some scientific mumbo/jumbo about moisture in the air and refracting light - and bringing smiles from one other early morning walker with her head in the clouds, was the faint and beautiful glow of what I immediately thought of as a *sun*bow, a puddle of rainbow that appears in soft sunlight, usually against a washed-out sky. Like other minor miracles, it doesn't come with drama; it doesn't preen for attention like it's diva cousin. If you're not paying attention, you may miss it completely. But it can still take the breath away, especially with the backdrop of the smaller mist-covered islands, the soft velvet wind, and the hum of the Eternal, echoed in the ocean.
Because of the extended periods of chilly cool wet weather thus far this year, there has been a lack of urgency in getting out and about. Michael tells me, however, that he has that same feeling of not wanting to be 'out and about' in 100 degree Louisiana. He, along with the rest of my precious family with friends, dauntlessly showed up at my now 15 year old nephew's mid-day outdoor guitar performance during the Seafood Festival in Mandeville over the hot and sweaty July 4th weekend. I'm sure many used *sun*brellas for the occasion.
It's at moments like this that I feel the distance between the two homes of my life. Our rites of passage are hopefully accompanied by the loving presence of those who have been a part of the charms of our childhood years, who have seen our inner light early on, hold the pieces of our history and tell our stories when we forget them in darker moments. In so-doing, they keep us grounded and able to open our hearts as we grow. We see through the generations the wonder of life living itself, grace unfolding, and patterns emerging that make sense of who we are. We see ourselves in the stories of our aunts, uncles, grandparents, and our step-and surrogate parents, then see our children's children's futures, too.  "I am chastened to learn over and over again," Lawrence Heschel writes of his journeys through Scripture, "that patterns recur from one generation to the next." We are a storehouse of memories for each other, in all of our relationships.  One sister listens to another's childhood stories of our growing up, and swears she must've lived in a different house. We have very distinct memories of how God was portrayed by the stern nuns who taught us, and my mother says we're wrong; that's not what she remembers of an experience that was uniquely ours. Something that was quite remarkable to me involving my siblings in our younger years draws a blank stare from them now when I repeat it.
Michael and I often remember details in very different ways, and I was always amazed that he could be so wrong so often...until I, too, was chastened enough to realize our lives and individual perspectives brought unique filters to events, and we literally saw many things differently, and always would.  The wrong and right of issues then fade into the more freeing:  "Ah. That's how he sees it. Isn't that interesting?" My sister often says that brilliant minds consider and debate the same issue, and come down on different sides. When we step back and consider other points of view, panoramas become available, and life opens up; we realize that our vision, like our opinion, comes as "relative to truth," colored by our own history, memories and agendas.
There was a plaque hanging in Brett's room throughout his early and teen years, depicting a large oak tree, and an eagle soaring through the blue skies above it. To the side of the tree were the words: "There are two things we can give children in life: one is roots, the other wings." The plaque now hangs in my nephew's room, ready to set the next generation on a flight through this complicated and marvelous life. Even from a distance, we participate in their memories through our love and support. "These people are in your soul-care," John O'Donohue writes. "In the affection of prayer, you carry the icons of their presence on the altar of your heart."
We show up to our lives, perhaps not as fragile or vulnerable as it would first appear. We come with the strength of those who lived before us. We come with our own individual journeys to take, to learn and grow and live into the memories we are creating, not only for ourselves, but for those we will never know. We come because it is the way God manifests in our world, through our voice, our eyes, our touch, our prayers, carried through generations, an unseen gift we give in response and gratitude for all that has been given to us. We pass on the *rain*brellas and *sun*bows and *oh's* of our memories because they are our truths, they are relevant, and because we're not yet done.
YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2011 - June 28

"I looked a hundred times and all I saw was dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air...

"God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond...God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain."  (Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening.)

When I hear stories of the heat and drought back home, I realize that my experience of the Divine is quite conditional, more available on the mountain-top than in the basement experience.   Someone said last week that a study was done (there seems to always be some study underway) on the effects of heat on behavior - in this instance, pitchers in a baseball game were more likely to intentionally hit a batter when the temperatures were high.  Just so, when life is less than perfect, when it is hot and humid, when there is a bit of a worrisome ache or pain, when someone I love is suffering,  if I focus too much or too long on things going on around me or in the world that I have no control over, God does, indeed seem, 'under the porch,' and hidden.

Yesterday morning as I watched the sun change the greys of morning to soft pinks that filtered light through the forest, as I slowed to watch the buck cross the road and graze in a field of pale purple and gold mini-flowers, and then noticed the fragrance of the wet cedars - I suddenly realized how the sense of the Divine is more immediate and present when conditions are pleasant, and therefore how much growing I've yet to do.

In the meantime, I sit by the shore on a huge driftwood log, listening, listening, attempting to follow the music of just one wave as it dances along the shore, unable to keep it apart from the whole song of the ocean. I sit breathing, just breathing, resting in a cobra hood of scent as wild roses rise up behind me. In the distance, a small figure walks with a puppy, both reflected in the tidal pool as two islands off-shore frame the rising sun behind them. So much joy. So much love. These are the moments when we are called, I think, to hold space for those in pain, in conflict, in struggle as we pray for those who can't, all over the world. While the sense of the Divine may be conditional for the moment, it is Presence nonetheless, and we feel so blessed to be here.

For the first few years up here, we had only one car. I would leave for my morning, walk, ending up at Bradley's, our local coffee shop.  I relished the quiet time, the peace of the reflections of the morning with my books, a Morning Glory muffin, and some undisturbed time for journaling, before heading home to join Michael, who was usually just waking up. Now, we have basically a car and a half - the "half," Moms' old temperamental car, which still putters him from our home to the gym for a workout and back.

It just so happens that my coffee shop is on his route, so he stops by each morning to sip coffee and read the paper --- read it. to. me. Mostly, and at long last, he's heard my need for quiet, and we sit engaged in our own activity with a familiar contentment that long years together offers as its own reward.  But occasionally there's a story too good for him not to share, which usually happens after his second cup of caffeine.

"Listen to this," he tells me, and reads a story about a 3 year old girl in Kelowna who almost won  her hide-n-seek game.  It took two police K-9 units, a helicopter and numerous locals searching for her, before she was finally found under the blankets in her bed. We both laugh, but I'm reminded immediately of T.S. Eliot's wisdom on the ultimate outcome of our own spiritual journeys:  "With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this calling we shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time."

We play hide-and-seek with our search for meaning, for purpose, for finding the sense of the Beyond to, and in, our ordinary moments. We look everywhere for a sense of belonging, for a sense of Presence, for the power of the Love that draws us from our basement experiences and calls us to the mountain tops. Then we suddenly find the whole world revealed when we kneel to see a tiny purple flower, and instead see the world reflected in the drop of dew clinging to it. Because it is usually on our knees, in praise or pain, when we finally see that Light has been in the broken glass, when all along we've been searching for the diamond.

Michael's back in Louisiana for a few weeks.  As I watched his plane leave our tiny airport on Sunday morning, I thought of the variety of good-byes we say on our journeys, as life itself simply continues.  There was that moment watching Brett and Stephanie, standing together in the snow at the edge of the world on top of Whistler, both of them facing out to the vista beyond, arms wrapped around each other's waist, content and quiet in the familiarity of their short time together. With a stab of poignancy,  I realized he really has moved on from us into his new life as a man, and we, on the edge of our own lives, like our parents before us, fade softly into the background.  All the while,  flecks of gold are shining. We give thanks and praise from under the porch, and on the mountaintop and, through this complicated and wonderful life, as Nietzsche suggested,  we "embrace the dark night of the soul and howl the eternal Yes!" What else is there to do?

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2011, June 16

"Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar."( Pablo Picasso )

"We can see a thousand miracles around us every day. What is more supernatural than an egg yolk turning into a chicken?"( Rutherford Platt)

 

It is not quite 5:30AM, and already the sun is shining on the tall spruce and cedars outside the window. I should be out walking, getting a head start on the intensity of the blue skies and relentless sunshine that the day promises.  Instead, I sit and listen, an audience to the staging of this new day, as the fountain's waterfall provides a background for bird psalms and the eagle cries,

 

Yesterday we made our annual June trek to Hornby Island to walk the mystical magical Helliwell Park trail, through deep cool moist woods, carpeted in velvet green moss which climbed over stumps and up trees.  The filtered light of the sun plays games here with the shadows, and coaxes the timid ferns out of their hiding places to sparkle in an array of dew-drops. Whatever scents are used in lotions and air-sprays labeled 'forest'  don't come close to capturing its fresh softness, with the invitation to breathe deeply. An enormous bald eagle watched from his perch about 500 yards away as we walked along the cliff, and we both agreed the hike seemed shorter this year.  Later we drove the island to discover new trails.  While I explored the incredibly moon-scaped Sandpiper beach, with its  smooth wave-swept rocks pock-marked with nature's own petroglyphs at low tide,  Michael napped on the warm boulder put there just for him.

 

I told him that June is my favorite month here.  We still have the lingering drizzle and cool temps of a Pacific Northwest spring, transitioning into the longer days and occasional startling crisp blue skies of the approaching summer. The mountains that ring the Island still wear their snowy caps, and the emerald green of new growth is in the gently undulating meadow grasses, as well as in the leafing of the trees. Bright gold, purple, orange, yellow and white wildflowers splash through it all. Fawns walk on wobbly legs towards their moms, tiny ducklings swim like pros in our little pond (although I hate to count them, because for some strange reason, as the eaglets get bigger, the ducklings disappear), and small rabbits nibble the wet morning grass. The summer possibilities stretch out before us: new trails to hike, concerts to attend, side-trips to take, as we rediscover our old favorites and reconnect with old friends.

It is the time, as Mary Oliver writes in her beautiful poem, where

 "trees stir in their leaves and call out,

'Stay awhile...it's simple.'

and you, too, have come into this world to do this,

to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine."

When we arrive each year and greet our friends, the conversation is somewhat predictable, always beginning with welcomes followed on both sides by: "How was your winter?" Depending on the relationship, the answer is either the perfunctory "Fine. How was yours?" or the more real and encompassing, "We have to talk."  Because although the answer 'fine' is perfect, since we have clearly survived whatever the winter brought, there is always a back-story, the details that we save for our dearest friends who have not asked just an idle question, but want to share our lives.

 

One of the many blessings of having this interlude in our year is just that: we step away for a bit, we gain perspective and see beyond the mundane day-to-day minutia of our lives. We "see a thousand miracles" that surrounded us as we moved through the ordinary, and we see them through the generosity of our friends' listening.

 

So I find myself telling my friends about the deaths and near-deaths of the winter, the passing of Michael's elderly cousin - he was the love of her life - and all of the pain that went into this chapter of her living; the passing of my sweet Aunt, and her pre-death stories of visiting the other side where "our language is not like yours, and there is no pain in the body";  the great joy of our niece's wedding, with all the family dynamics that stir us and unfold our stories; the humbling and tremendous spiritual retreats and books that have opened the heart and shifted the soul; the great sharing with precious Grace and how she's growing and discovering her place in the world; the wonder of my beautiful nephew, Michael, his continuing adventures into teen-hood and his blossoming into the generous and open and kind spirit that he has always been; the joy of Brett's hard work resulting in his acceptance into the theater union in New York and our visit to their first home; and the glow of another niece as she announced her engagement.

 

In the sharing of it all, in the gracious attention given by our friends, we realize how deeply and profoundly the winter has touched us.  We process and integrate those events in our own lives and see the opportunities for soul-growth that have perhaps eluded us in the living of them.

 

So we come to the island. We come for so many reasons, even though it gets increasingly hard to leave our beautiful Louisiana with our family and friends there. We come here because, as John Muir says, we need "beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray, where nature heals and gives strength to body and soul alike."  We come because we need to know that we have experienced the miracles of winter, and 'not dissolved' at all, at least not yet, although in a perfect response one day to a Loving call, ultimately we will.  We come that we may see more of those miracles around us, and to extend the invitation to others "to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine."

YAY GOD

 

Canada Saga 2011, June 2

"The trick is to pay attention to what is going on around you long enough to behold the miracle without falling asleep. There is another world, right here within this one, whenever we pay attention." (Lawrence Kushner, "God Was In This Place, and I, i Did Not Know.")

 

When we arrived in Qualicum from the eight month dream of Louisiana, Michael and I both had the same reaction: an utter strangeness of immediate familiarity, as if we had never left at all. I was almost surprised to find the pantry and refrigerator bare, so eerie was the sense that we had been here all along.  For a few days, it felt that we were living in two quasi-realities where what seemed most real was the plane ride inbetween, with its mini-dramas and enforced solitude.  I thought of  Rabbi Nachman's description of life as a "very narrow bridge between two eternities."

 

For the last week, that bridge has been very wet. It has rained almost every day, and temps hover at 60.  The locals are over it, ready for some summer warmth, and if not warmth, at least a little sunshine.  Despite the weather, the gardens are filled with beautiful colors and hanging baskets are everywhere. Last week I ran into my soon-to-be 93 year old friend walking in the dripping forest, a living reminder of  Roger Miller's lyric, "some people walk in the rain.... others just get wet." He smiled broadly in his welcome, and told me he still walked two days, and golfed four, and other than a bit more fade to his blue eyes, he looked well.

 

After more warm greetings from friends and neighbors, we packed up again and headed to the ferry for Vancouver, then up to Whistler, site of the 2010 Olympics, to meet Brett and Stephanie. Since we had a day before they arrived, we took our time on the Sea-To-Sky highway, one of the most scenic drives we've ever made.

 

Last time we were up here, work was underway for the Olympics, the roads were torn up, and we drove straight through. Now we could poke along a bit, enjoying some local flavor at The Copper House restaurant opposite the pounding Shannon Falls, and taking the short stroll to the Brandywine Falls, closer to Whistler. The meandering stream here, flowing and bubbling happily, disappeared into the forest. When we got to the observation deck some 500 yards later, it had fallen, raging and screaming, from the edge of the woods into the giant chasm opened by its own power.

 

As we drove away, I told Michael that life seemed like that sometimes: you go along innocently enough, seemingly minding your own business, and then the earth gives way under you - a sudden family death, a cancer diagnosis, an accident, a financial set-back - and you're hurtling through a chasm in life, no grounding, and not knowing what's ahead. Who could tell this water on its terrifying way down that soon it would join a serene lake, reflecting the magnificent white-peaked mountains circling it?  How would we move through our life chasms if we knew the serenity already planned for us by the all-knowing power of a Creator's love?

 

Brett and Stephanie joined us the next day, and we spent time catching up on their lives, strolling through Whistler village, sipping mint juleps at our Lodge (after Michael re-trained the bartenders on the proper art of making them), and just enjoying each others company in the spectacular setting. Despite his abject terror of heights, Brett joined Stephanie and I on the gondola ride to the top of Whistler mountain, cursing and second-guessing himself all the way up. Steph took it in stride, even when his faux-anger was directed at her, smiling and saying, "It's alright, Babe. It's so going to be worth it when we get to the top." And he agreed that she was right. We were on top of the world, crunching through snow to get better views of the 360 degree panorama of glaciered and snow-capped mountains.  Joseph Campbell said that we participate in the Divine when we stand before the beauty of a mountain, pause and exclaim, "Ah!"  I'm not sure how anyone can stand on the top of a mountain without a sense of humility and connection to Something larger than our own little dreams and schemes.

 

Back at the lodge, my walks along the lake were cut short by way too much fresh bear scat along the trail, and my cousin's parting words lingered in my heart: "I'm worried about you and all those bears."  So on that last morning, after one more bear-scat ending excursion, I just sat on the balcony. The air was chilled, clouds obscured the tops of the mountains, and fog settled as delicate lace through the pines. The world felt like spirit, itself, suspended, floating, slowly wisping its way skyward. The granite of the mountains was solid and anchoring. Tall evergreens stood in awe, rooted and present. But the soul- fog drifts through and over it all, obscuring the mighty and the humble alike.

 

Our souls weave delicately through life, silently, touching majesty along the way.

Our mountains of ego are mercifully draped by the forgiving fog of Divine love.
This, ultimately, is the miracle, "a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” writes C.S. Lewis. Perhaps this summer, through these small letters, we can share some miracles together.

YAY GOD