In Provincetown, and Ohio, and Alabama - March 15, 2011

Death taps his black wand and something vanishes.  Summer, winter…branch of an oak tree…three just hatched geese.  Many trees and thickets…violets…

Lambs that, only recently , were gamboling in the field. And old mule, in Alabama, that could take no more of anything.  And then, what follows?  Then spring again, summer, and the season of harvest.  …..

More lambs and new green grass in the field, for their happiness until.  And some kind of yellow flower whose name I don’t know (but what does that matter?) rising around and out of the half-buried, half-vulture-eaten, harness-galled, open-mouthed (its teeth long and blackened), breathless, holy mule.

Not only in Provincetown, and Ohio, and Alabama, but I imagine ever where we looked we would see life sprouting from the ghastly evidence of death.  Why then do we accept life so well, and not so death?

Except that I doubt, given the amount of resistance to death if we are any more accepting of life.

How can we be when we spend the earth’s resources to prolong our lives 6 months more, perhaps, when children, birds, peoples, and forests are dying from our extraction economies?

How can we be for life when we seal our hearts from others, just so we can be safe, just so we can live? 

Living is all well and good, but what if to be safe we kill relationships, possibility, justice, and flourishing for all?  Is that living?

Maybe we just need to do some more timely dying – of bodies, of egos, of assumptions, of separation.

May I this day let the stubborn mule of my ways die.

What is your stubborn mule?

The Trees

Do you think of them as decoration?

Think again....

May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?

Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and advancement!

But I think it would do us good if we would think about

these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.

the trees, the trees, jut holding on

to the old, holy ways.

Today a couple of friends are coming over to home to help remove a fallen tree from our neighbor's backyard. This past Sunday, in our wooded back lot, a rotting snag fell over, luckily only hitting one wire fence.  The neighbor, whom we had not met before came knocking on our door asking me if we could clean up the mess.

The question comes up, who is responsible for the damage?  Do my spouse and I "own" the tree and it is up to us to repair damage and remove the broken log on their property?  Someone wrote us and said that if the tree had been alive and healthy, then it would be the resposibility of the neighbor to remove the downed tree, and not us.

Alas, it comes down to thinking of trees in terms of ownership, responsibility, and financial damage. 

So we walked our property line looking for any suspect trees that might cause damage, and discovered a plethora of downed trees on and near our property. While walking I noticed not just dead trees, but the skulls of several deer. What happened to them this winter?  Did coyotes take them down, the cold, or the lack of food?  What happened to the trees who will know no more green shoots, flowers, or the letting go of old leaves?

May I during the sound of chain saws today really listen to my siblings in the woods and wonder what their lives are and will be.

Who are your brothers and sisters?

.

Mink

A mink, jointless as heat, was

tip-toeing along the edge of the creek,

which was still in its coat of snow, yet singing-I could hear it!-

the old song of brightness....

the mink had a hunger in him

bigger than his shadow, which was gathered

like a sheet of darkness under his

neat feet which were busy

making dents in the snow. 

He sniffed slowly and thoroughly in all

four directions, as though

it was a payer to the whole world...

For me, it was a the gift of the winter

 to see him.  Once, like a hot, dark-brown pillar,

he stood up-and then he ran forward, and was gone. 

I stood awhile and then walked on

over the white snow:  the terrible, gleaming

loneliness.  I took me, I suppose,

something like six more weeks to reach

finally a patch of green, I paused so often

to be glad, and grateful, and even then carefully across

 the vast, deep woods I kept looking back.

In the winter of our lives, are there patches of experience for which we can be grateful? And the ultimate test, can we see beauty in the harshness and the dying back?  My sister recently was diagnosed with bone cancer, probably metastasized from a previous bout of breast cancer.  For me, this is devastating news.  There are some hard years for her coming up, and I'm guessing, not too many of them either.  Yet, in our phone calls she has times of laughing, nearly giggling.  Yesterday her retort to the mess her affairs are in, was, "At least I got to see a hawk."  She had seen a Sharp-shinned hawk foraging around in her snow covered bushes for sparrows, and fly away talons empty. 

She is like a beautiful sleek mink, and now is the time for me to look at how her life is a prayer to the whole world.

Who or what is your mink in the winter time?

In the Pasture

In the first day of snow, when the white curtain of winter began to stream down,

The house where I lived grew distant and at first it seemed imperative to hurry home.

But later, not much later, I began to see that soft snowbound house as I would always remember it,

And I would linger a long time in the pasture turning  circles, staring

At all the crisp, exciting, snow-filled roads that led away.

Memories are inconclusive. With each recall, our brains change the version of the previous until we cannot know for sure what happened.  We can only know how we interpret events of the past in the present moment.

Given this, it does seem as if we can change the past. For we have today to place a shroud of memory over our regrets, our misgivings, or our loss.  We can let go of the stories of disconnection or hyperindividualism and infuse our stories with the meaning of interdependence.

For instance, perhaps you recall a time when a friend said or did something that resulted in harm to you.  Each time you bring up that pain or discomfort from the past, you augment your judgment about the friend, yourself, or the human species as a whole.  You withdraw from that relationships or close your heart to them and to yourself.  It is like burrowing into a cold house where you wish for life to be different .  Looking out of the frosted windows of our heart, you spin fantasizes of how it should be. 

Today though let go of blame and instead see how you are the other person.  There is no wrongdoing or right doing from the perspective of the pasture, only a field where we see the beauty that is the world, is also each of us.  We each choose strategies to meet the same beautiful needs of love, connection, and community. Some of these strategies are more skillful and produce more benefits than harm. Other strategies are disasters.  Regardless, beauty dwells in each of us and motivates our actions.

With this in mind, we open up new possibilities of choices in our relationships. Perhaps you will choose to call your friend, or to be at peace with what happened.  We are neither victim nor evil perpetrator. We are each other and this beautiful world, and we can choose how to act from this day forward. We may take roads that  lead away from memories that bind us.

When have you seen a memory change over time?

Crow Says

There is corn in the field,

what should I think of else?

Anyway, my thoughts are all feathery.

I prefer simple beak talk.

Maybe it's having wings.

It does make a difference.

As for that business about brothers,

of course I'm concerned that we

share the corn, to the extent

that I get my plenty.

As for later, how can "later" exist?

When old crows die I don't cry,

I peck at their silly, staring eyes

and open my wings and fly to

wherever I want to. I've forgotten

both father and mother,

even the pile of sticks

in which I was born. Well, maybe

now and again, and mostly in winter,

I have strange, even painful ruminations.

When you're hungry and cold

it's hard to be bold, so I sulk,

and I have dreams sometimes, in which

I remember the corn will come again,

and vaguely then I feel that I am almost feeling

grateful, to something or other.

Just yesterday I read about the emotional and social lives of crows and ravens.  They are quite smart.  They express complex emotions to others through voice and feather, use tools, and recognize human faces perhaps better than we can.  In addition, writes William Hagmen, "They play, communicate, and have the capacity to deceive.  They're smarter than any cat and most children.  They have strong family values.  Johan McGowan, (author of In the Company of Crows and Ravens") equates it with our society, saying crows come closer to man than any other species studied, including primates. Crow society is family-based, he said. There's a single breeding pair that has offspring that don't leave right away and help raise the next batch of offspring, just like people. Relationships are maintained and individuals can join up with each other years later. Like us, crows have territories and they gather in communal places. When you see a number of crows gathering, he said, 'those aren't gangs of crows, they're typically family groups that are helping each other make a living.'"

So, if I am to take Mary literally here in her understanding of crows, she is off the mark.  Yet, is she really speaking of crows?  Maybe she means me, and you.  We think we are somehow different than other beings. We may not have wings, but we've got something especially primate about us that sets us apart.  We hoard the harvests from fields and forget about our brothers and sisters.  Sometimes, when hard times come our way we let go of control and give in to dreams of interdependence and even touch gratitude.

Winter is coming - our first day below 40 degrees and I'm bundled up writing this.  Outside my window a fish crow calls, telling me that there is beauty in the chaotic and bountiful field of our existence, if not in benefit directly coming my way but in loving and compassionate thoughts I share with all beings.

Why today should I think of anything else?

Why should you?

Red Bird

Red bird came all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,

Those dun-colored darlings,

So hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,

I know he has many children,

Not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason-

Perhaps because the winter is so long

And the sky so black-blue,

Or perhaps because the heart narrows

As often as it opens-

I am grateful

That red bird comes all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else can do.

Visitors to this country often remark to me, “Wow, those cardinals are such beautiful birds and they are everywhere! Do you ever get tired of them?” I suppose there are some days where their flash of red does not get much of a heart’s rise out of me. If the cardinals are so observed, what then of the sparrows and their kind? In birder circles, when faced with sparrows that at least for the likes of me are difficult to identify, we call them “little-brown-jobs (LBJs). I never really thought that it was because I didn’t care about sparrows or that I held a speciesist stance with any birds until one day out walking with my spouse. He was learning to identify birds and a large bird flew over, and he said, “What was that?” He was on the lookout for hawks or falcons (aren’t we all?). I said, “It’s just a crow.” He looked at me real hard , you know that kind of look where you suspect you are in trouble or someone is in love with you, or both. He asked what I meant by “just a crow.” There you have it. Caught out by spouse and crow. I admit that it takes work for me to see beauty and worth in every being. I appreciate the easy wonder – the clear stars this morning and the Barred –Owl hooting me to sleep last night-for the days can be hard. For the hope that the days are not hard for sparrows, spouses, and special beings (which would be them all), may I be open to beauty everywhere and in everyone. Will you join me today in looking for beauty where you usually only see dull or dispiriting aspects to life?

What do you react to like a “cardinal” and what do you react to like a “sparrow?"

Mozart for Example - September 14, 2010

All the quick notes

Mozart didn't have time to use

before he entered the cloud-boat

are falling now from the beaks

of the finches

that have gathered from the joyous summer

into the hard winter

and, like Mozart, they speak of nothing

but light and delight,

though it is true, the heavy blades of the world

are still pounding underneath.

And this is what you can do too, maybe,

if you live simply and with a lyrical heart

in the cumbered neighborhoods or even,

as Mozart sometimes managed to, in a palace,

offering tune after tune after tune,

making some hard-hearted prince

prudent and kind, just by being happy.

Time and time again I hear how music bridges hard hearts and might be considered the universal religion. Yet without cultural constraints, might the transcendent moment of listening to Mozart be the background music after a genocidal tragedy, or even bird watching a distraction for a cruel dictator? So I doubt that it is enough to offer music so others may be happy. Yet I know in my moments of unexpected joy I rush out to hold the world and give all that I can. Mary, in the midst of her poem, then offers the cultural construct for guiding our happiness over bird and Bach - live simply and with a lyrical heart - a heart that hears music in all beings.

Where do you hear music?

Great Moth Comes From His Papery Cage - September 12, 2010

Gone is the worm, that tunnel body. Gone is the mouth

That loved leaves and tomatoes.

Gone are the innumerable feet.

He is beautiful now, and shivers into the air

As if he has always know how,

Who crawled and crawled, all summer,.

He has wide wings, with a flare at the bottom.

The moon excites him. The heat of the night excites him.

But, where did the dance come from?

Surely not out of a simple winter’s sleep.

Surely it’s more than ambition, this new architecture?

What could it be, that does it?

Let me look closer, and a long time, the next time

I see green-blooded worm crawling and curling

Hot day after hot day

Among the leaves and the smooth, proud tomatoes.

We have had a long, hot summer; record breaking in fact. That relentless heat, for which there seems no purpose, has been accompanied with a profusion of garden spiders around our home. Throughout the summer they have grown enormous. I mark my days by observing their webs, each time grown slightly larger in proportion to their bodies, and wonder how it is they “know” to build their webs. Where did this knowledge come from? I also wonder where will the spiders go to when fall finally breaks the wall of heat and humidity? Maybe the from and to location is the same. Spiders and knowledge, moths and tomatoes, humans and mice – in the watching and listening the source and our future unite and we can but dance in wonder.

Where does life come from and where are we going? Our breath unites us, no matter if we know the answer of source and future.

Walking Home from Oak-Head

There is something
about the snow-laden sky
in winter
in the late afternoon

that brings to the heart elation
and the lovely meaninglessness
of time.
Whenever I get home - whenever -

somebody loves me there.
Meanwhile
I stand in the same dark peace
as any pine tree,

or wander on slowly
like the still unhurried wind,
waiting,
as for a gift,

for the snow to begin
which it does
at first casually,
then, irrepressibly.

Wherever else I live -
in music, in words,
in the fires of the heart,
I abide just as deeply

in this nameless, indivisible place,
this world,
which is falling apart now,
which is white and wild,

which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith,
our deepest prayers.
Don't worry, sooner or later I'll be home.
Red-cheeked from the roused wind,

I'll stand in the doorway
stamping my boots and slapping my hands,
my shoulders
covered with stars.

keywords: snow, sky, winter, time love, dark, peace, tree, wind, gift, music, word, fire, heart, world, star

I have been told that in this book we see a shift of Mary, perhaps towards religion or God. I'm not quite clear what discontent exactly some of my acquaintances portend when they say "Mary changes" in her later books. It's hard for me to imagine that she could be much more religious, much more of the suffering seeker, or more the one totally committed to growing her faith in the world than she has been. I certainly know that she brings out the hunger in me for faith in earth and her beings. Just beyond her words and often beyond my reach is the nameless, the indivisible, to which she temporarily gives the names of tree or bird. Maybe later she'll take the risk and call this God. It's all the same to me, for my struggle will not change. With this world falling apart now, how might I still see the light and grow a faith that is ultimately beyond me. For me, part of this answer is becoming, read a poem from Mary.

You who read Mary regularly, what is happening with your faith and in your prayers?

The Cricket and the Rose

In fall
the cricket
beneath the rose bush
watches

as the roses fall
to the very ground
that is his kingdom also.
So they're neighbors,

one full of fragrance,
the other
the harper
of a single dry song.

We call this time of the year
the beginning of the end
of another circle,
a convenience

and nothing more.
For the cricket's song
is surely a prayer,
and a prayer, when it is given,

is given forever.
This is a truth
I'm sure of,
for I'm older than I used to be,

and therefore I understand things
nobody would think of
who's young and in a hurry.
The snow is very beautiful.

Under it are the lingering
petals of fragrance,
and the timeless body
of prayer.

I just read this morning in the Gainesville Sun how 1 in 7 kitchens would not pass a restaurant grade health inspection. Hearing this I take stock of my kitchen. On the window sill, a bowl full of old rose petals beckons my attention. I periodically wonder if I should toss them, their beauty long gone. Then I hold them to my face and their fragrance persists. So they remain yet another day.

There on the floor is one of those large crickets that inhabit our outside porch and occasionally wander in. To ease the heat we open windows and doors in the morning and this cricket has seen this as invitation to cruise my kitchen floor. She is rather ugly, her head out of proportion and her purpose unknown to me.

I don't know if anyone would see old flower petals and dinosaur like crickets as appropriate for a kitchen, or even if I do. Like Mary, I too am older and do not hurry on to thoughts of what my mother might say of odd crickets and old roses in a kitchen. Instead I ponder how I shall pray this day as I let the aroma of life filter into my walled refuge through open doors and open heart.

How do you pray?

The Owl Who Comes

The owl who comes

through the dark

to sit

in the black boughs of the apple tree

and stare down

the hook of his beak,

dead silent,

and his eyes,

like two moons

in the distance,

soft and shining

under their heavy lashes-

like the most beautiful life-

is thinking

of nothing

as he watches

and waits to see

what might appear,

briskly,

out of the seamless,

deep winter-

out of the teeming

world below-

and if I wish the owl luck,

and I do,

what am I wishing for that other

soft life,

climbing through the snow?

What we must do,

I suppose

is to hope the world

keeps its balance:

what we are to do, however,

with our hearts

waiting and watching-truly

I do not know.

Indeed, what are we do with our hearts. We could close them off and not see the tragic, but then we would lose the chance to experience those grace filled days of belonging where everything is just as it should be, because that is the way it is. With such radical acceptance we would love the child molester, the dictator, and the cancer cells. We just aren't taught how to handle that pain. Though I engage in a number of spiritual practices to grow my awareness and acceptance, I find that I turn from the sorrow in all kinds of subtle ways. Sometimes though my subconscious lets me know that I have work to do. In dreams, in moments of anger, in depression or withdrawal, and in the times when despair surprises me, I get a hint of how I don't know how to witness the tragic and the beauty as an interweaving whole.

For instance, having seen so much suffering in wild birds kept inadequately in captivity, I chose to leave avian veterinary medicine for a while. It is only after much work that I can engage with people who care of pet birds so that together we can find ways to decrease the harm we do as humans to these birds. I still see the tragic consequences of the pet bird market, but at least now I can interact with people and parrots without suppressing my authenticity, love, and care. I believe I can only do this by growing my heart so that it can hold the pain as well as the love.

What do you do to hold the painful and tragic?

What the Body Says - August 30, 2010

I was born here, and

I belong here, and

I will never leave.

The blue heron's

gray smoke will flow over me

for years

and the wind will decide

all directions

until I am safely and entirely

something else.

I am thinking this

this winter morning...

of transformation

Of course

I wonder about

the mystery

that is surely up there

in starry space

and how some part of me

will go there at last.

But I am talking now

of the way the body speaks,

and the wind, that keeps saying,

firmly, lovingly:

a little while and then this body

will be stone; then

it will be water; then

it will be air.

I am thinking about yesterday morning when I was swimming in the Ichetucknee river. While in that cold water that carried me and my burdens, I transformed. For the nearly two hours of snorkeling and flowing with all we saw, I knew that I belonged as surely as did the blue heron preening amidst the storks on the river side. This was not a cognitive knowing, for there is no thinking other than marvel and wonder as we swam down river. The body, though, merges into one just as this river will merge into one via the Sante Fe, Suwanne, Gulf, and Atlantic Ocean. With turtles and Ibis at nose level only a few feet away I become bird and reptile. Floating under a cypress tree where an Osprey has just taken an unlucky perch, I become fish. Eyes nearly as wide open as the family of otters snacking on river bottom mussels, I am bivalve and mammal.

Upon exiting the river, reluctantly, I shiver for nearly an hour as my core temperature returns to normal, especially difficult as a wind has come up. This wind wings a message out from my heart of love and gratitude that at least for a short while yesterday I knew no separate self.

Where do you experience flow in your life?