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