."I belonged...within something greater than my own life, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way."

(Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey Into Night)

 

"On this earth the experience of great beauty always remains mysteriously linked with the experience of great loneliness. This reminds me again that there still is a beauty I have not seen yet: the beauty that does not create loneliness but unity." (Henri Nouwen)

 

Slowly, reluctantly, we're putting away the things of summer, and getting ready for another unexpected

shortening of our time on the Island. My Mom is ill, in the hospital, and all of the factors of love and separation and concern and care arise, inviting the soul to an anxious state.  My sisters and nieces are doing a remarkable job of care-taking and double-checking and correcting the doctor and her staff, while loving my Mom and teaching the next generation, in Grace and my nephew Michael, what this God-thing is really all about. For right here and now, it is about returning to just this moment, pausing with love, and in that pause, returning to a sense of peace.

 

We find ourselves saying the same thing every year as we pack to leave: time has flown by; seems we just got here; all those plans we had at the beginning are now a memory.  I wondered if my Mom was thinking the same thoughts. The events of our lives become the microcosm, a gift or hint if we are paying attention, of the larger event of living and leaving.

 

This past weekend, we took advantage of the end-of-season special at the Tsa-Kwa-Luten Lodge on Quadra Island. Our room faced Vancouver Island, with views of the mountains and boat traffic on the sparkling waters of the Strait, and the town of Campbell River a short distance across the channel.  After a visit to the First Nation Museum, and a brief walk along the water to the lighthouse, we settled in to watch the colors of day change and shift to the twinkling lights both in the night sky, and along the banks and hills on the opposite shore, homes lit up by people we would never meet or see, but who added warmth and wonder to our evening.

 

The next day, we drove to the other side of Quadra and walked a beautiful peninsula facing Cortes Island - place of the wonderful time with Brother David last year - and the multiple islands between us and the coastal mountains of the mainland. In the far-off distance, behind the layers of tree tops and island outlines, was a snow-capped peak that was likely visible only on clear days. It predominated the skyline. Mikie found a log of driftwood that had his name on it, and promptly laid down, saying the only other walking he would do was back to the car.

 

But I wanted to get to the end of the trail, to the tip of the peninsula, through the canopy of forest and along the drift-wood littered shore. It was the best of the Pacific Northwest Island experience: the quiet of the day, the peace in this outdoor shrine, the primal wilderness of uninhabited islands that dotted the waterscape, the hum of the Cortes Island ferry, the murmur of its wake; the expansiveness of the vista. I found myself repeating with each step the lesson of the morning's reading: "I belong within Something greater; I belong within Something greater."

 

And suddenly my Mom's experience, what my sisters and nieces and brother were doing for her, what all of us do for each other every day, from turning on a light at night that someone else might see to giving or receiving a simple smile, to offering a cup of coffee to a friend: everything fit into that mysterious Something greater, whether we know it or not. Brother David talks about the individual bucket being placed into the ocean in explaining our submersion from individuals into the Divine. We belong, as much to each other as to any Other.

 

When we got home, I looked at a map and discovered that the snow-capped mountain I was seeing on that walk was Mount Alice - my mother's name. Who can explain these minor miracles, except to say that All Is Well?  There are moments when it all seems so vast; there are moments when it all seems so intimate. But in these moments, we return to O'Neill's "veil of things as they seem, drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see, and seeing the secret, you ARE the secret."

 

It is in those moments we are recharged to face what comes next. Except for the Saints and mystics, most of us don't stay in that place. Perhaps we recognize it more quickly when it comes again, though, or see it in others, even when they don't.  We are called to hold that place for those most in need when they are ill or hurting. We see the Secret within them, and hold up a mirror to their own great beauty, creating unity out of loneliness.

 

Einstein asked once "If you are not a holy questioner, who are you?" These islands, these moments in space and time, don't give answers.  But they lead into the questions that create awe and wonder and ultimately, silence. We don't know what the year will bring, how much longer we'll be able to come up here, or how things will change, only that they will. We move within Something greater, in a world filled with water chickens and grace, mountains and love, and holy questions.

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2012 - September 4

"The place you are right now, God circled on a map for you." (Hafiz)

"Where mystery is absent, there can be no wonder." (Neil deGrasse Tyson)

Last week, Michael and I sat outside for lunch on the deck of one of the local waterfront restaurants.

There was a bit of a chill in the air, so we chose a spot in the sun, near the railing closest to the water, now at its low ebb with noisy gulls floating in the tidal pools. A young family sat at a table near us, and the

3 year old wandered over, peering through the railing out at the world. She quickly spied the gulls, and said excitedly, "CHICKENS!" Her Mom called, "No, those are seagulls." Since she was looking at me, I added "Yes, baby, those are seagulls." She looked unsure, and said again, more quietly this time, but with determination "chickens."

Thinking it might help, I said, "Chickens live on the farm, on the ground. Seagulls love the water. Those are seagulls." She looked at her Mom, looked at me, looked down at the seagulls now strangely quiet, as if they, too, were waiting for their fate to be decided. We could almost see her little brain gears at play. She said, very softly but quite surely, "water chickens." The gulls came back to life, flapping and boisterous, sending her joyfully, the dilemma now solved, back to her mom. We marveled at her process, smiled at her cleverness, and joined that adult conspiracy that realizes the brevity and innocence of our children's true knowing.

Many of us walk through life this way, misnaming or renaming in our own limited awareness, the gifts that

flow to us, as Rilke indicated when he wrote that love and death are great gifts, mostly passed on unopened. Or we're like the early Spaniards who sailed from the ocean into the headwaters of the Amazon, thinking it, too, was salt-water and thus perished from thirst surrounded by the world's largest source of fresh water. After a long and beautiful hike on Saturday, saturated with the wonder and mystery all around us, Michael and I encountered a family near the parking lot.  The two young boys were pouting, kicking rocks and ready for their electronics. "You can only watch Nature so much," the youngest told his parents. The adults shared a smile, and a long sigh.

How do we plant in the young seeds of awe for the Love all around them, manifest in such simplicity and beauty? How do we stay grounded in our capacity for good and the truth of our original blessing in the midst of hurricane warnings, evacuations, illness, contention, aging and, in my family's case, coping with the ever-increasing neediness of our elderly mother where there are no easy answers. How do we nurture in our own souls a wonder rooted in mystery when there is so much distraction clamoring for our attention in the trivialities of news, politics, gossip and 'entertainment?'

In just such a thicket of mindlessness, I walked out towards the water one morning, facing east in a daily ritual of prayer, an acknowledgment of the Light after darkness. In an intuitive gesture, I found myself turning around just in time to catch a waterfall of rainbow dropping out of a large grey cloud, all reflected in the tidal pool below a nearby sandbar.

The mental fog slowly lifted as the gentle morning surf came into focus, along with the touch of soft cool morning air. For ten minutes I stood with nothing on my mind except the vibrancy of the colors, wondering which would linger and be the last to go. The rainbow turned into a warm peach/coral brush-stroke, and I was suddenly in my mother-in-law's room standing at the window just after she drew her last breath, stunned that a soul in grief could still be touched so deeply by the colors of dawn.

In that moment, as on this beach 3000 miles and eight years away, time became the mystery, the gift, the wonder, the portal through which the Divine beckons us, through a death, or a rainbow or a memory. Standing on a beach, sitting by the bed of a dying loved one or on a deck with a precocious three year old, wandering on a mountain trail or evacuating to a hotel in a storm: wherever we are is our circle on the map.

For my family last week in the throes of Hurricane Isaac, their circle on the map was the hotel a hundred miles away from evacuated homes, ministering to each other and to strangers through kindness. In a grey lobby, they were rainbow colors of music and song, growing in love and recognition of the gifts each had to offer.

We do our best and struggle to pass the sense of mystery on to those we love, using inadequate words and offering experiences that we hope will break open their own sense of gratitude for the gifts that surround us.  "Oh God, what have I seen?" Emily Carr cried, in the midst of Pacific Northwest beauty. "Where have I been? Something has spoken to the very soul of me - wonderful, mighty, not of this world." Perhaps that's why we struggle with words and names in these experiences of mystery and wonder. They touch those places in us that are "not of this world." Then, like the three year old on the deck with her water chickens, by any other name we recognize the grace of God that floats in the tidal pools of Presence.

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2012 - August 22

"The purpose of miracles is to teach us to see the miraculous everywhere." (St. Augustine of Hippo)

"The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." (Eden Phillpotts)

When Brett was four years old, his preschool teachers had to coax him to draw.  His mind and spirit were usually racing in other directions with endless curiosity and abundant energy. He saw no point in coloring within the lines, preferring to dabble in chaos when forced to sit with his crayons and paper. But one day he came home bubbling over with pride at his creation, waving his drawing like a flag as he ran into the house. I had spent the morning pruning begonia bushes, unaware of the red ants that had crawled up my arm until they decided, in unison it seemed, to bite. 

There I sat at the table, my arm covered with angry bumps and calamine lotion, as he joyfully thrust into my hands his landscape picture of a flower garden complete with a stick-figure gardener, and red ants climbing everywhere. It was an early experience with the miracle of synchronicity, the grace that leads us to a sense of wonder for all that is larger than life.  And to this day, he rarely calls that I don't say to him: "Funny you should call right now," having just thought of or talked about him, or read something I knew would be of interest to him. 

It was with the same sense of wonder, but not surprise, that the week after writing about the artist I had lost track of for two years, we encountered her at an obscure garden art show. More than any other person I've met, Sharon has a way of turning life's frayed threads into the proverbial coat of many colors. She had broken her back last fall, she said, and used her recovery period to break into new art, winning awards for her carvings, and accepting new invitations for shows around Canada. It had also brought about a renewed relationship with her estranged daughter, forced to help her mother at her art shows, and thus seeing her through the eyes of an admiring public instead of a critical son-in-law.

A month ago we walked along the pounding Campbell River below Elk Falls, watching through a light-filtered forest as the fly fishermen whipped their lines in arcs above the water. In the midst of all this beauty, I felt a sudden sense to turn around and go back to the parking lot. As the others walked ahead, I encountered a woman who introduced her beautiful Great Dane, Libby. We shared the coincidence that a friend in Louisiana also had a Great Dane with the same name. Inexplicably, I began telling her about a book I had just read, the story of the man who began Three Dog Bakery, how he had rescued a Great Dane pup, only to find that she had digestive issues and was literally starving. She stared in wonder and told me Libby was a rescue pup who is having severe digestive issues, and she was frantically searching for a solution, and would look up his book. We parted slowly, watching each other in wonder, as I realized that Libby had been leaning against my leg the whole time.

Philip Yancey writes about "rumors of transcendence - (finding) the footprints of God - in places I had never before thought of looking." We somehow expect to find a sense of this Presence in church gatherings, in quiet places of ritual, in prayer groups. Then we encounter them in what my friend calls 'the minor miracles' of life, that surround us everyday. It's not a great leap to see them in the eyes of a delighted child, or on the faces of those we love. We see them in the feather-like clouds resting on the wing of a timeless morning, helping the day to take flight.

As I sit on the driftwood beside the so-still water, I hear them in the hum of a local ferry through the mist, in the rough blow of a sea lion, in the whistling through the wings of the immature eagle flying straight towards the tree over my head. The gift of miracle on this morning is wrapped tenderly, like the ribbon of mist around the islands off-shore, as I'm invited to see Divine footprints through the experiences that challenge us, or that confront those we love and hold precious: a painful divorce, a heart attack, a reoccurrence of cancer, the death of a spouse, a new illness. We bow humbly in the face of the courage of those around us, and realize we are hearing the footfall of profound grace.

"In the world of faith," Yancey suggests, "some things have to be believed to be seen." When we believe that there is, in the Light of all that is around us in this ever-changing world, something larger than what we see, what we hear, even what we currently believe, then miracles occur, moment-by-moment. Life itself comes alive in the magic of 'coincidence,' and compassion becomes our compass in tracking the Divine along the Way.

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2012 - July 30

"Nothing begets a wholeness in life better than a heartfelt sigh." (Rabbi Nachman)

"God is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul." (Jean Paul)

 

Our drive into and out of the Village in Qualicum is idyllic: farms, snow-capped mountains in the distance, black and white and soft gold and grey rabbits on the side of the road, eagles circling, the occasional deer family wandering across the highway, interspersed with a backdrop of dark green forest. Last week as I was driving home, a beautiful buck crossed the street just ahead of me, and leapt effortlessly over a white split rail fence into a picturesque front yard with a pond. I realized later that his fluid graceful movement included an almost imperceptible pause as he assessed the height of the fence and the risks involved, before leaping with confidence. There is value to these slight pauses - the momentary breath, the quiet wait before speaking, the discerning hesitation - that gives the heart and soul time to catch up with the impulses of the brain that might otherwise be unfiltered.

 

A few minutes later on my return home, at a sharp descent in the road leading towards the water, an eagle was perched in the lone tall pine tree which, in a less than creative moment, we dubbed the 'eagle tree.' As I watched another glide in and join its mate, I marveled at what a joy it is to be here, and remembered Deva Premal's beautiful lyric in The Silent Garden: "It's a pleasure to be here at Your feet, it's an honor and a joy. It's no wonder that I finally meet mySelf in Your silent garden." Even now, as I write this at 4AM, the earth just beginning her awakening yawn of light, eagles talk aggressively in a dawn too dark for me to see them.

 

There is a downside to the wild side, of course, where walking so early in the morning conjures up images of bear and cougar, both of which inhabit the island and occasionally share our lives. An enormous buck eyed me with no fear as I walked down our street one day before sunrise, bringing to mind news reports and youtube videos of deer attacks last summer. I ended up taking a much longer walk than expected to circle around him as he moved along to graze on a neighbor's flowers. Two weeks later, my friend was charged by a doe in her front yard while she painted her gate. The deer definitely have an attitude this summer, making the walk in Rathtrevor Forest each morning somewhat of a cardiac test.

 

So some mornings, I retreat to the boardwalk along the water in Parksville, remembering that last summer a cougar was found and shot in the little campground next to the beach here, just minutes after I had passed. But mostly on these early boardwalk strolls there are ghosts of family outings littering the beach, including tiny yellow and pale orange sand buckets tipped-over at water's edge, spilling out yesterday's laughter and tears into the ebb of the ocean. In the distance an ever-present sand-bar defies the highest tides with the remnants of a long-ago fallen tree, a perch to two bald eagles most days, who sit and face East to welcome whatever light the day brings.

 

Usually, however, we encounter nature with a heightened sense of our surroundings that invites us to silence and appreciation. Our first hike this summer was to Elk Falls on Campbell River, especially powerful this year after heavy spring rains. After nine years on the island, it's still a source of ever-increasing gratitude that we can walk along the beach in a Provincial old growth forest in the morning, and two hours later be standing silent, all words consumed by the roar of a natural wonder. The sheer power and volume of water create a gentle mist that floats through the canyon in the air, lifting thoughts and plunging emotions into the place of soul that responds with angst and silence and the exquisite loneliness born of such loveliness.

 

It was with great joy that we were able to bring Brett and Stephanie to the Falls to share the experience. Inveterate New Yorkers though they are, they are appreciative of the poetry of Nature, the solitude and majesty of the old growth forest and the unleashed cascade of foaming sound and fury. They are as comfortable walking in silence, pausing in time to experience the eternal unfolding before and within them, as they are with the joys of their own fast-paced lives in the city.

 

I've read that the discovery of an idyllic place finds us "filled with a yearning to linger where time

stands still and beauty overwhelms." The pounding, the roar, the release of the falls into the canyon below wash away the weight of a collective pause - as if our whole being has been holding its breath. We walk away renewed somehow, lighter in step for the experience of this "unutterable sigh."

 

I used to think I left behind tiny parts of my soul in these beautiful places. Now I realize that I've actually found them. Or perhaps more accurately, recognize them. That deep poignancy that sometimes feels like the grief of a homesickness of the soul is sometimes its equally powerful cousin, gratitude.

 

After a quick visit to Victoria and Seattle, Brett and Stephanie have made their way back to New York. In my mind's eye, though, and in the photo I took that day, I see them walking quietly hand-in-hand in the beauty that Life lays at our feet. 

YAY GOD

 

 

 

Canada Saga 2012 - July 8

"You get older and realize there are no answers, just our stories. And how we love them." (Garrison Keillor)

"Lead us to places of knowing within. Open. Let your stories be heard." (Elizabeth MacLeod)

Michael tells me he was awakened this morning by booming thunderstorms, as he packs in preparation for his return to the Pacific Northwest this week. On his way up, he'll stop to pick up our 'new' used Audi A4 Wagon in Seattle, and drive the rest of the way into Canada.  When our 16 year old nephew heard that Uncle Mike was getting a wagon, he told his Mom with a tinge of disappointment that he was surprised. He never pictured his Corvette/convertible driving fun Uncle as the wagon-type.  He has created a story about "Uncle Mike" in his mind as a fast-driving, cool car character, only one of the many facets of an Uncle who loves him dearly.

The last time his Uncle Mike had a wagon, he also had a newborn son, which exploded the man that he was into a richer, deeper, far more interesting person for the lessons he learned.  Now, in anticipation of the next phase of life, which may include a move from the Pacific Northwest summers to upstate New York grand-parenting at some point in the future, he has already chosen a car to accommodate that shift.

Outside of our patio home here, I have a small wood carving done by a woman I met a few summers ago,

who moved out of the story of her life as a Mennonite farming wife to one of an accomplished artist/phtographer/carver. Her life changed with her severe brain injury and ultimate abandonment by her husband and community. We no longer see Sharon at the markets or bump into her in the Village.  She has disappeared, as have so many others whose lives touched ours over the last nine years. Their cameos in our summers were brief chapters for them, but I see how we have created whole stories with our assumptions and expectations about who they are. Just like the deer who vanish ghost-like into the forest, they disappear into the mist of our minds, back into the details of their own daily lives, the gentle imprint on our hearts the only evidence that they were there at all. 

Knowing our stories, sharing our stories, sometimes we get stuck in our stories, believing them to be true, to be whole in and of themselves. In the kindest interpretation, sometimes we are called to be a bookmark in the story of those close to us, to hold the space until they turn the page once again, or for the first time, to their own beauty. We talk to ourselves in our stories, with admonishments and judgments about the past, and warnings and never-ending ramblings about who we could or should be, and what might happen in the future. But Rumi warns us that the concepts of past and future "veil God from our sight."  

At a lovely beach wedding on Saturday, two young people exchanged their promises within the context of the stories they believe to be true about each other.  We all witnessed their commitments to a lifetime of unconditional love. We blessed them, wished them well, and remembered the vows of our own relationships, made with equal sincerity for a future filled with stories we couldn't then imagine. Perhaps that's why tears are shed on such occasions, for the poignancy and tenderness of a love that we now know will be tempered by the realities of life itself.

But if we are especially fortunate, or especially blessed, we realize that though they seem real to us, and seem to define who we are, we are not our stories at all. "The veil of things as they seem," O'Neill writes, "is drawn back by an Unseen Hand." Then we see that we are like the waves, rushing to shore to recite their own chapters, not realizing that beyond the ultimately disappearing faintness of their individual ripple, there is only the voice of the Sea, to which they will all return.

The story of Creation unfolds in grace in the sacrament of the present moment, the Now of which Brother David says, holds both the past with all its memories, and the future with all its worries. What we do with this moment is our gift to the full story of life itself. Yes, let your stories be heard. But don't take them too seriously.

 YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2012 - June 30

"There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful." (Howard Thurman)

"Aloneness and connections are like tides in the sea of your heart,
separate tides, flowing in and out. (M. C. Richards)

When Michael leaves, an aloneness sets in that is both gift and challenge. As I watched his plane taxi down the runway, tears welled-up along with anticipation of quiet time. The fruits of the spirit are set in solitude, their ripeness in connection. As we walked in the cool dampness of Helliwell Provincial Park before he left, surrounded by the magnificent quiet of an old growth forest with its mulched trails swallowing every footstep, I appreciated the luxury of walking in silence and companionship on the journey, alone yet connected, ebbing and flowing in the sea of relationship.

Now, in a comfortable aloneness on this rainy morning, I sit and listen to the wind chime singing in rich deep chords to the strong gusts outside the back door, not in melodic protest, but in gratitude for being given voice on this cool grey damp day. The eagles were huddled on the beach this morning, one off by itself, bracing and camouflaged next to a tree trunk, betrayed by the white head even on this cloudy day.  I feel sometimes that I'm inside one of those 'Find the Hidden Object" pictures that Grace is so fond of, where a screwdriver or a flashlight is disguised somewhere in the wood stacks of a barn, or a needle is in 'plain sight' in a haystack.  Only here, it's a rabbit barely distinguishable at the base of thick low-growing shrubs, or an eye that gives away the head of a deer in the grey of an early morning wild-flower meadow.

Or a hidden grace that reveals itself in an unexpected encounter at the coffee shop.

There is a law here, that smoking is not allowed within close proximity of outdoor dining. I don't know the exact wording, but I appreciate the smoke-free area outside of Bradley's where I sit most mornings. A gravelly-cough made me look up from my book last week, as cigarette smoke wafted over from the farthest table. An unkempt, unshaven face stared back at me from beneath a filthy hat. I was annoyed, and grateful that I was ready to leave.

As I packed up my things, however, I heard a fairly sheepish voice say, "I'm sorry. Am I running you off?

I've already put it out, see? I'm trying to quit, but it's really hard." I stopped then to really look; instead of a cursory and dismissive glance, I met a gaze filled with frustration and pain.  "I stopped for 3 weeks," he said, "but then I had stress in my life, and I thought I'd just have one more and you can't do that, you know. You can't have just one more." He then rambled on incoherently about his life, becoming vague with his words, his eyes vacuous.

The morning's lesson from my online course briefly skittered through my awareness: "Know that God is in every encounter. Each moment is sacred." I found myself taking a slow breath, and telling him about my niece, who is also struggling with quitting, and how difficult it is for her. "I wish you only good things," I told him.

His eyes focused sharply as he said with great clarity: "Who knows? This may be the moment I needed to finally quit." And though I knew and he knew it probably wasn't, maybe it was one of many that would eventually lead him to freedom. Each moment has the potential to be what Jean Pierre de Causade calls the sacrament of the moment: "When God manifests in this way nothing seems extraordinary, because everything is made to seem remarkable." 

In the end, we don't know which of our words, gestures, smiles, looks might be a significant sacred moment in the life of another. A flower shines to us; a butterfly grazes our shoulder; a breeze touches us just so; we overhear a comment in a checkout line or someone hums a tune and changes the grace of our day, and we in turn change another's.

Being here for these few short months is like a microcosm of a life span. Time is limited; there are longings that will never be met and so few, really, whom we touch or talk to in a lifetime. But each encounter comes with an opportunity to practice the sacrament of the moment. How can we squander our words and actions with divisiveness and judgments and ridicule when they can so easily be used for elevating, and we are given such a short time to speak them? "Suddenly," Rabbi Heschel writes,  "we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in face of the tacit glory in nature...Only one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned right to serve..."

When we returned to the car from that walk through Helliwell, we realized we had left the camera in the trunk. We're taking less and less pictures each summer.  There is something about 'capturing the moment' that seems out of touch with the freedom of being in it. I think again about deCaussade: "It is the way itself that is amazing, and there is no need to adorn it with any other miracles...It is a miraculous everlasting revelation and rejoicing." We are left with the sacramental moment in all its breathless beauty, taking our cue from the singing of angels in wind chimes, and through all of our aloneness.

YAY GOD

Canada Saga 2012 - June 14

"I, God, am your playmate! I will lead you in wonderful ways, for I have chosen you."

(Mechthild of Magdeburg)

"It is a happy talent to know how to play." (Emerson)

The garden, usually colorful and joyful by now, sits unplanted, with empty hooks where hanging baskets should be. Our little patio home, generally all spiffed-up from its winter dormancy in just a few days, remains in need of a good surface cleaning. Our return was delayed by some late weddings in Louisiana, and the usual effort of settling in has been further delayed by some lingering back and neck pains accrued in those final weeks of preparing for our summer in Paradise, making even sitting at the computer today uncomfortable.

 But we are here, having landed Tuesday on a cool misty afternoon, greeted by four circling eagles over the tiny Qualicum airfield. Besides an inoperative computer and an ever-increasing sputtering from Michael's little run-around car, our arrival was marked by an almost eerie normalcy, as if we were just returning from a quick trip for a gallon of milk instead of a winter-long absence. Michael, of course, now has two manly projects: dutifully researching used car options, and finding a solution to my recalcitrant computer, while I attempt to rest my neck and pretend the garden doesn't matter.

 The realities of other changes are more reflective of the cycles of life and play. A good friend has slipped more deeply into dementia, and instead of visiting with her at the coffee shop or in her apartment, I'll be seeing her in the nursing home. Sweet and funny Mickey, our precious neighbor and friend died with Alzheimer's over the winter, not without leaving more stories about her numerous attempts at escape from the home.  Another neighbor, a golfing friend of Michael's, died quite suddenly last fall, and we'll miss seeing him for the occasional chat out by the water. I think of my Uncle, who, just weeks before his passing in April, was toasting and hosting all of us late into the night in celebration of his 90th birthday. Another friend is preparing for the joy of her second daughter's wedding, while I look forward to meeting the newest addition to her family, her grandson from her first daughter.

 This shift in season and setting each year offers almost a time-travel perspective, a reflection of the ever changing and impermanent aspect of life. Ultimately it is only Love that remains: families tearfully saying good-bye, friends hugging warm welcomes, the heart and soul stirring with the rhythms of the ocean and the flights of eagles, a deer's eye watching through the fragrance of the wild roses, the Divine ruah in the breath of the forest wind, the HU of a breeze rushing down from the mountains.

 It gets harder and harder to leave each year, whether from Louisiana to the Island or the other way around. Before we left to come up here, I visited an elderly friend who had broken her ankle and is now bed-ridden in a skilled-nursing unit. "My ankle got stuck in one place as I fell away from it," was her explanation of her accident. Yesterday a young friend here described her broken leg in much the same way: "My foot slipped off a curb and got stuck while my body fell in another direction," setting up a spiraling action that shattered her tibia. Over and over again, we make the same mistake along our own journeys. When we resist, when we are rigid, when our spirit is called to move, to listen, to shift and we aren't paying attention, something in us breaks.

 The good news - the GREAT news - is that we are never forever broken, only comforted, set aright, and pushed gently forward into our calling, much as a mother might encourage her child to return to the swings after a fall. Sometimes we are called to work. Sometime we are called to play. Sometimes, hard as it might be, we are called to rest as we heal. "The true object of human life is play," wrote Chesterton. "Earth is a task garden. Heaven is a playground."

 We have been blessed and fortunate enough to find this little piece of heaven on earth, and the task of the garden will be play soon enough.

YAY GOD.