Where will you be when the lights go out?

Before I begin today, I want to remind you that tonight at 8:30 is Earth Hour, so remember to turn out your lights for an hour. My husband and I are already discussing what might be the best way to spend that time (I said going out to a movie was not an option!) so I look forward to hearing about the creative ways you find to spend an hour with the lights out. (Plus, given what I know about blackouts, I do have to wonder how many babies will be born 9 months from now!) For more about Earth Hour visit www.EarthHourUS.org -- and while you're surfing for green ideas, check out my cousin Debbie's blog.

Second of all (also old business) -- for those of you who responded so kindly to my Thursday whine about the Unexpected Dog exhibit -- you'll be amused to hear that I chose option 2 (God is everywhere, just follow the path) and spent the rest of Thursday playing with dog images. The results are pretty funny: I've posted them on my Picasa site for your amusement. But what is even funnier is that I met with my friend the curator for coffee yesterday and showed him my images, fully expecting him to agree that I didn't need to be in this show, and he actually LIKED them! And how bizarre is that? He did not, however, like the image I used for that post, which my friend Robin has so cleverly titled "Downward Facing Dog." Too cute!

Third of all -- also old business -- in Wednesday's post I included a link to my friend Karen's website so you could hear Eva Cassidy's incredible rendition of Over the Rainbow. If you read my comment on her post you will know after my father's death I listened repeatedly to Cassidy's recording of Fields of Gold; for over a year, every time I heard it I was moved to tears. So I went looking for a youtube video of that song, but there wasn't one of Cassidy singing it, and the others, well, the combination of those videos and that new Microsoft commercial where the little boy creates his own movie inspired me to create the video you see posted above. Because I associate the song with my father, and because my cat Pippa's recent death created an opportunity to forgive him, I have dedicated the video to her. So, YAY! I have created my first movie!

And because you have been so patient with all the business, I offer you this gift: I was reading John O'Donohue's words about calling this morning, and they were so wonderful I want to share them with you:

"The shape of each soul is different. No one else feels your life the way you do. No one else sees or hears the world as you do. The creation of the individual is a divine masterpiece. We were dreamed for a long time before we were born, our souls, minds and hearts fashioned in the divine imagination...Given the uniqueness of each of us, it should not be surprising that one of the greatest challenges is to inhabit our own individuality and to discover which life-form best expresses it.

The great law of life is: Be yourself - often a difficult task. To be yourself, you have to learn how to become who you were dreamed to be. Each person has a unique destiny. To be born is to be chosen. There is something special that each of us has to do in the world... What is it you were called to do?

...The nature of your calling can change over time, taking a person down pathways never anticipated. The calling opens new territories within the heart; this in turn deepens the calling itself. The faces of the calling change; what at the beginning seemed simple and clear can become ambivalent and complex as it unfolds. To develop a heart that is generous and equal to this complexity is the continual challenge of growth. This is the creative tension that dwells at the heart of vocation. One is urged and coaxed beyond the pale regions into rich territories of risk and promise.

...It is such a relief and joy to find the calling that expresses and incarnates your spirit. When you find that you are doing what you love, what you were brought here to do, it makes for a rich and contented life. You have come into rhthm with your longing. Your work and action emerge naturally; you don't have to force yourself. Your energy is immediate. Your passion is clear and creative. A new calling can open the door into the house of vision and belonging. You feel at home in your life, heart and hearth at one."

Interestingly enough, he begins this meditation on calling by saying "As we get older, time seems to speed up. The sense of transience haunts nearly every heart. You feel that you could suddenly arrive at your last day incredulous that that was it; it was all over."

So in effect, he was asking the same question they're asking at EarthHour.org, and so, I ask it again of you:

Where will you be when the lights go out?

NOTE: All John O'Donohue quotations are from his wonderful book of blessings, To Bless the Space Between Us (© John O’Donohue. All rights reserved). To learn more about John O'Donohue, be sure to visit his website: www.johnodonohue.com

Glimmers of springtime

I was out on the beach yesterday, talking with my dear friend and neighbor Joanna. She's been back from her latest visit with her grandchildren for a week now, but she's been down with a cold so this was the first I'd seen her in almost a month.

So we were discussing the transition places in our lives, those shifts that begin inevitably to occur - like spring colds - as we move into this new season. There's something about the challenges of winter that has made both of us appreciate our mates more than usual -- always a good thing -- and at the same time we each feel something in the wings, waiting to bloom.

But the waiting isn't always easy: as John O'Donohue says in his blessing "For Loneliness":

"The light lessens,
Causing colors to lose their courage,
And your eyes fix on the empty distance
That can open on either side
Of the surest line
To make all that is
Familiar and near
Seem suddenly foreign."

As the poem went on, it seemed clear that it was speaking to some of the anxiety and confusion of yesterday's post:

"When the old ghosts come back
To feed on everywhere you felt sure,
Do not strengthen their hunger
By choosing to fear;
Rather, decide to call on your heart
That it may grow clear and free
To welcome home your emptiness
That it may cleanse you
Like the clearest air
You could ever breathe."

And then, as the poem ends, I can hear Kim's voice from her comment on yesterday's post:

"Cradle yourself like a child
Learning to trust what emerges,
So that gradually
You may come to know
That deep in that black hole
You will find the blue flower
That holds the mystical light
Which will illuminate in you
The glimmer of springtime."

So here, for you -- if you, too, are finding this waiting for resurrection tiresome, or fearful, or just plain lonely -- here, for you, is the blue flower: may its mystical light illuminate the glimmer of springtime in your soul.

And thanks for listening!

NOTE: All John O'Donohue quotations are from his wonderful book of blessings, To Bless the Space Between Us (© John O’Donohue. All rights reserved). To learn more about John O'Donohue, be sure to visit his website: www.johnodonohue.com

What would the Dalai Lama do?

A couple of months ago my gallery invited me to be part of an exhibit called "The Unexpected Dog." I'm not quite sure why they invited me -- though I suppose it could be because my dog is really very cute; maybe they had even seen the youtube video I made of him drinking coffee.

At any rate, I said yes, because I'm always up for a challenge, and so for the last few months it's been lurking in the back of my mind (the exhibit will be held in June, so they've given me plenty of notice). But I'm running into all kinds of roadblocks, and I realized last week in talking with a friend that I really can't seem to get psyched for this one, and, in fact, that when I talked about it I was starting to sound a little snippy about the gallery.

My personal rule about such things is that if I have a beef it's always better to talk to the person I have the beef with than to run around sniping behind their backs. So I've made an appointment to talk with David, the gallery's curator (whom I adore).

My initial intent was just to back out of the exhibit, but my husband is encouraging me to stick with it and push my limits, play with it a bit. Two friends have said the only image they can imagine working with that title is a shoe, slightly tilted, with dog poop on it. And my friend Mary, the art teacher, said I sounded just like all her students who whine about their assignments, and I should just do what I'm passionate about and somehow include a dog in it.

What is particularly LENTEN about this challenge is that it bumps right up against my "stuff." So here's the deal: I have all these conflicting voices clamoring in me, and I can't figure out what path would be the most respectful to take. Here's all the thoughts that are bumping around in my head.

1. The truth is, I am NOT a student; I am a grownup, a professional, and for several years now I have been shooting in response to what feels like a call. And, quite frankly, the unexpected dog just doesn't call to me. So there's a part of me that thinks this is a waste of time and I would rather spend my time working on what calls to me.

2. But another part of me says that God is in everything, even dogs (sometimes especially dogs) and I should honor that by following this path wherever it leads me.

3. Another part of me says I am behaving like a spoiled brat: "what are you, too good, too important, for this simple task? Put your big girl pants on and deal with it."

4. Another part of me resents -- and feels a little hurt by -- the fact that the gallery doesn't "get" me, doesn't offer me a chance to be in shows that are more in keeping with my body of work.

5. Another related part of me wants to speak for all the artists who feel this way about their system; to use this as a teaching moment and ask if they might give us a list of upcoming shows and either allow us to choose between 3 topics or let us pick 3 possible topics and they could choose which of the three to put us in.

6. As a photographer I know the likelihood of anyone buying a photograph of someone else's dog is fairly slim.

7. I suspect that no matter what I do it's unlikely to sell, and even if it did I would make no profit from it, so I'm not sure it's worth the time it will take to figure out something worthy of hanging on the gallery walls, or the money it costs to print and frame it.

8. I have a sense of failure around the fact that I can't seem to come up with anything reasonable. I mean, yes, I can do dog shots. But are they unexpected? And if they are unexpected, are they art? And what is the point?

I can't seem to decide between door number 1 (am I taking myself too seriously?) and door number 3 (just do it). And I can't figure out what is self-respect and what is just my ego whining - because I do have issues around people (my husband in particular) taking my work seriously. And yes, I get that this is all pretty small potatoes in the general scheme of things. But it does make me want to ask: what would the Dalai Lama do?

Somewhere out there

I posted this image on my poetry blog yesterday, and though I dashed off a poem, I remember thinking later that it ended too abruptly; that something was missing.

This morning I went back to John O'Donohue's book of blessings, and the one that seemed to call to me was one that clearly described what I think of as liminal space, that space between:

"You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
the way forward is still concealed from you.

The old is not old enough to have died away;
the new is still too young to be born...

Your eyes are blurred
and there is no mirror..."

and then he goes on to say:

"As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn."

What I read has a way of lurking in the background while I meditate -- which is why I am very careful about what I read in the morning -- and so this sat there, percolating, while I resisted and my mind continued to protest and distract me. And then I realized why this image had had such a pull for me, and what my poem missed: it's that this place (which I feel certain must be Vermont; probably along the Connecticut River, looking across at New Hampshire) is SO BEAUTIFUL and yet I don't seem to be able to step over the fence. I'm stuck in the road; I'm not even sure there's room for me to stand safely on the other side of the fence without falling in.

And then, because the last thing I did before going to bed last night was listen to this beautiful Eva Cassidy rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow that my friend Karen posted on her blog yesterday, I remembered the OTHER Somewhere song, the one from West Side Story:

There's a place for us,
Somewhere a place for us.
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us
Somewhere.

I remembered singing that with longing as a teenager, feeling that sense of somehow being in the wrong place and time. But then, when I looked up the lyrics for this post, I happened upon a third Somewhere Song, quite possibly my favorite of the three: the one Feivel Mouse sings so adorably in An American Tale when he is separated from his family:

Somewhere out there,
beneath the pale moonlight,
someone's thinking of me and loving me tonight.

Somewhere out there,
someone's saying a prayer,
that we'll find one another in that big somewhere out there.

And even though I know how very far apart we are,
it helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star.

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby,
it helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky.

Somewhere out there,
if love can see us through,
then we'll be together, somewhere out there,
out where dreams come true.

... and through the magic of music I see that this malaise I feel is just that sense of separation, of otherness, that is always so much a part of the Lenten journey; a mourning for all the distractions that keep me from really feeling connected to whatever it is we call it: God, Divine, Source, True Self, Christ...

I see that the fence separating us is very low; quite manageable really. And that the glory on the other side longs for me as intensely as I long for it. But I just can't seem to step over into the soft green grass.

NOTE: All John O'Donohue quotations are from his wonderful book of blessings, To Bless the Space Between Us (© John O’Donohue. All rights reserved). To learn more about John O'Donohue, be sure to visit his website: www.johnodonohue.com

Listen for the song

My cousin Debbie, who is also a blogger, sent me an email today about earth hour (8:30pm Mar 28) and included this lovely quote from Wallace Stegner:

"The brook would lose its song if we removed the rocks."

I don't seem to have a lot to say today, except maybe that for some reason life is looking a little gray at the moment, so I think I'll let Mr. Stegner and this photo do my speaking for me.

What I do know is that there's music in the falling, in the rushing, and the obstacles. Listen for it, and follow the song to its Source...

A call to solitude

If it weren't for the pact I made with my daughters -- to stop apologizing except in situations where it is unquestionably appropriate to do so -- I would apologize, not just for yesterday's post, but for the last few days' posts. It's not that they are bad, exactly, but they've been coming more from my head than from my heart. And when that happens, it feels a bit like this photograph -- like I'm attempting to make stuff pretty in arbitrary ways that are not consistent with nature, or grounded.

Part of the problem is that my back has been out for the last several days, which always tends to make me cranky and unfocused (pain and sickness manifest for lots of people that way, I think) but also my meditations have been less than satisfying, caught up in business and details and monkey mind stuff, so I've been feeling out of touch with what Freeman calls solitude.

"Merely withdrawing to a desolate or secluded place does not guarantee solitude. Physical or psychological isolation no more creates solitude than candles and incense make prayer. The need for solitude means more than the psychological need for space and time alone. Solitude is much more than being alone. It is the discovery, the recognition and the acceptance of one's uniqueness.

This uniqueness should not be confused with what the ego thingks of as its specialness at the centre of the universe. All the ego's claims for special treatment are only a pale reflection of the radiant uniqueness inherent in the Self...it can only be experienced when the separateness of the individual has been dissolved and given way to indivisibility, in the non-duality of the Spirit. The true nature of solitude, according to Ramana Maharshi, is not determined by where you live or what you do, but by the absence of thought. Solitude is realised by stilling the surface levels of consciousness."

It's that stillness I've been missing -- for whatever reason -- both from my meditations and from my photos, and if that's what you come here to touch into, then I thank you for your patience with its absence. Life works that way sometimes, as if we've just drunk too many cups of coffee or had too much sugar: everything seems to have this vibratory unsettled quality. Which is why true solitude and the peace that rises with it are so important.

Something tells me we'll all need to work a little harder to cultivate that for a while. It's easy to get caught up in the "stuff" of life, and to forget that a calm centeredness may be the best way we can give back to the world. But if we can do it, create these calm pools of peace around us, even if only for a few moments a day, I do believe that we are not the only ones who will benefit.

In spirit and in truth

In Spirit and In Truth.

Freeman is writing about these words quite a bit in the chapter I'm reading this week, and I like a lot of what he says. The truth, he says, is what is; everything that is is the truth. "Truth includes all falsehood and illusion; truth ultimately absorbs and makes even wasted time and absurdity meaningful."

So, for example, in this picture, it is true that there is an ugly corrugated boathouse outside Shelton. It is also true that somehow, paired with a boat and a reflection, I found it beautiful.

It is false that there are mountains behind the trees; they are actually over to the left: west, not north. But it IS true that the cloud formations behind the trees LOOKED like mountains to me, and inspired me to create this photo. It is true that this photo is an illusion, and a false image, and that I may have wasted time putting these two images together. But it is also true that, at some level, truth somehow redeems that wasted time -- perhaps by making the image serve as an illustration, or perhaps by my telling you the truth about the image.

What I loved, reading the section on truth and spirit this morning, after writing last night's post, is that what Freeman says next feels a lot like what I was trying to say in that post, about being gentler with one another during these stressful times. Because a lot of us will begin searching for answers again, after a very long time of thinking we had them all. We may be very impatient with our failures, and we may not always agree with the answers others find: their truths may not, at the time, feel like truth to us.

"Aware that this Spirit of truth is with us as a friend, we are better able to tolerate in others and in ourselves what has not yet reached fullness of being and become fully truthful. Truth is tolerant because the Spirit is forgiving love. It allows the untrue to survive for the time being as a loving parent allows a child to make mistakes. Truth embraces rather than excommunicates its enemies. It is made manifest after much distillation of experience... When there is no ego through which the truth has to pass, communication becomes communion."

I am thinking, as I read this, of the times I have sat and listened to my children and my friends, and I can see and hear things in what they say that I suspect are underlying truths, things they don't want to hear or are not yet ready to face. It used to be that I would take that as an opportunity to argue, lecture, or advise. But now, reading this, I see that there is a lot of ego in that choice -- "I know something you don't know." And though what I know may be true, it may NOT be true for them, or it may just not be true for them NOW.

Reading Freeman, I see that if I trust the spirit of truth to move in their lives as surely -- though often slowly -- as it moves in mine, then I understand that my truth may not be their truth, but that both are somehow true. It allows me to accept and forgive myself for the truths I can't yet see, or missed, and it allows me to forgive and accept them as well. It seems like this acceptance of the shifts in truth, even as they are all truth, is the compassionate stance that will allow us to embrace ubuntu, to move past the barriers that separate us into the truth that unifies us; from the frustrations of communication (and its failures) to the loving acceptance that is communion.

It is, in a way, moving out of time; moving away from the differences we sense now to the oneness that is to come, to that one day -- which is also now -- when we will all be held --or finally know ourselves to be held -- in that same loving embrace. If we trust that that will hold true, then we can let go of our egoic need to correct, or to rescue, and choose rather to say (as I am learning to say to my daughters) "and how are you planning to work with this? Please let me know if I can help" and just leave it at that.

And what about the creepily untrue people and situations that wreak havoc in our lives? Perhaps a variation of that stance, of throwing their versions of the truth back into their laps without correcting or arguing, of saying, "I see that's true for you but it's your problem to solve, not mine," will free them to disengage from our lives -- or at least free us to disengage from theirs. I'm frankly not sure that will work, but I already know correcting and arguing and fighting don't seem to solve anything, so I'm willing to try: It's always a hope...