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