Words heavy with shadows

Because I am away from home, I only have my laptop with me, and it only holds a subset of my collection of photos. I was looking for a particular image to share here this morning, but alas it wasn't available on this computer, so clearly I'm meant to address something else.

This one caught my eye as I was browsing through, looking for the other image; I suspect it's that wonderful shadow slicing through the picture that makes it pop. Which makes me think of some John O'Donohue lines I read last night:

"Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life...

[Pray] that our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth."

We who are lost in the shadows, crying out in the darkness, may be -- if only slightly -- comforted by this: we'll be so much wiser at the end of this journey...

On the altar of dawn

This morning I got to sleep in an extra two hours -- thanks to my husband, who stayed home and is taking over the responsibility of rising early to inoculate our diabetic dog. It was lovely to awaken slowly, to lie there and listen to the waves lapping at the pilings below my bed; like God lapping at the edges of my soul.

I drove out to my favorite coffee shop, a little country store always full of old men arguing, its shelves teeming with exotic foreign and local specialties, but the store is closed now, the windows boarded up, a for sale sign posted prominently in front. So I went back to my little cottage, found the coffee and made myself a pot, then settled down for my morning read.

Before I left for the weekend, I'd had coffee with a friend who suggested I bring my driftwood goddess with me for the weekend (I'll have to give you a picture of her later; I don't have one on my laptop). She also thought the goddess might want to get wet again, so I took this little round piece of driftwood with its pendulous breasts and open womb for a walk on the beach yesterday afternoon and set her in a little stream so the salt waves could wash over her. And while she rested there, lapping up the water, I found a sort of throne for her, made up of oyster shells all stuck together.

Returning from the walk, I brought the goddess and her throne into the house and set them up on a placemat in the middle of my table, so this morning when I sat down to drink my coffee she was there, watching me. I had brought a number of books with me, not sure which I would be reading while I was here, and they were scattered about on the table. But the one that lay between me and the driftwood goddess was John O'Donohue's To Bless the Space Between Us, which seemed very appropriate. So I blessed that space, between me and the goddess, and opened the book to this prayer, which I decided to read aloud.

Wow.

A Morning Offering
by John O'Donohue

I bless the night that nourished my heart
to set the ghosts of longing free
into the flow and figure of dream
that went to harvest from the dark
bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me
welcomes the wonder of this day,
the field of brightness it creates
offering time for each thing
to arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:
the quiet loyalty of breath,
the tent of thought where I shelter,
waves of desire I am shore to
and all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
to the invisible geography
that invites me to new frontiers,
to break the dead shell of yesterdays,
to risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
to live the life that I would love,
to postpone my dream no longer
but do at last what I came here for
and waste my heart on fear no more.

And I say, Amen to that!

Remembering a walk on the beach

This morning I was awakened by the sound of a vase rattling on my dresser, a picture shifting on the wall, and my first thought, which I spoke aloud, was "Earthquake?"

A second later, when the movement stopped, I realized, no, it was just the dog scratching as he often does when he thinks it's time for us to wake up and feed him; he just happened to be leaning against the dresser. Phew!

So many things are in flux right now, it's probably not surprising that I assumed the worst. But as my brain did its womanly trick of running through all the possible disasters that might face us, I found myself thinking, well, if we lose everything we could always go back to Shaw. It was a very comforting thought, but when I realized it was just the dog my heart and brain slowed to their normal pace and I set that thought aside and returned to my normal morning routine.

But then, when I came to my computer after meditation, it was open to a folder full of photographs of Shaw, and I found myself reminiscing about my time on that little island. It was in the early 90's; I had been working for the church and had grown thoroughly disillusioned, and, encouraged (thankfully) by my husband, I had quit my job, bundled up our daughters, then 7 and 9, and moved us up to a little cabin on the waterfront.

My husband became a weekend dad, the girls got to go to Shaw's two-room schoolhouse with 10 kids, 2 teachers, and a computer for every child, and I spent my days reading, writing, walking the beaches, and trying to make sense of what had happened to my job and my church.

It was a challenging time: in the space of a year I had lost three friends and a mother-in-law to cancer, had stepped away from a lifetime of employment (and what I had thought would be the job of a lifetime), and, to add to the mix, my own mother died unexpectedly of a heart attack shortly after we moved to the island. I, who rarely cooked, struggled with the task of providing three meals a day for myself and two picky eaters, and I, who had entrusted the care of my children to others for most of their lives, was responsible for keeping two bright little girls busy and occupied, entertained and educated in a rental home with a bare minimum of toys, no computer, and no television. And all this on an island with only one part-time little grocery store, a part-time library, a part-time museum, 150 residents and no gas station or other stores.

It was, of course, totally magical, and despite the challenges and adjustments still stands as one of the key transformational periods in all three of our lives. And at times like this, when everything seems to be shifting, Shaw holds a special place in my heart as an enduring reminder of the soul's ability to survive and of the capacity of peace, nature, patience and time to heal the deepest wounds.

This afternoon I will head off to one of my other favorite places in the northwest, a little cottage that sits on stilts over the Hood Canal. I've decided to take along my journals from my time on Shaw, and perhaps some photo albums from there as well, to see if it might be time to sit down and re-examine the blessings of that period in our lives; to take another look at that walk on the beach, from the distance that time and space provide.

I'm looking forward to it!

PS: My husband just emailed me: it WAS an earthquake, after all -- in nearby Kingston, a 4.5! If you felt it, too, you can report what you experienced here:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/events/uw/01301325/us/index.html

Why women need retreats after Christmas

Yesterday a friend of mine suggested I publish this note, written recently in response to a query from one of my daughters. She had asked, not entirely in jest, why I was always retreating; shouldn't I be advancing?

If I had my druthers, like most housewives and mothers I know, I would go on two retreats a year: one in January, and one in September. There are several reasons for this:

1. I find, over the years, that though I am more outgoing and more comfortable with myself, I have also become more of an introvert and less of an extrovert. I tend to need more alone time now, something I don't get too much of at Christmas time or at the end of the summer.

2. The nature of life for a housewife and mother is that those are times of high demand -- particularly Christmas, with activities and orchestration of the shopping and the decoration and the cooking and doing dishes and whatever entertaining that happens, not to mention those seasonal emotional challenges -- and we spend so much time ministering to the needs of our families that we tend to lose track of ourselves.

3. It takes a lot of time and energy to get the house back in order after those high use periods - partly because it gets more messed up than usual, and partly because I haven't had time to tend to it regularly because I'm so busy doing all the other stuff. Though that heavy post-holiday or post-summer cleanup is not a task I particularly enjoy, I do it because I function better when things are tidy around me, the bills are paid, the tax stuff is gathered up, etc.

4. I am still, despite all my experience, a bit of a novice at faith. My faith feeds me, but I'm still not that great at sensing God while I'm doing the dishes; I kind of need to pay specific attention to God to tap into that well of divine resource. When I am meditating I can return to that rich open space inside, but short periods of meditation once a day are not as likely to enrich and deepen that connection as a whole week of meditating 8 hours a day -- or even a weekend of doing that. I count on that internal well to feed all the things that are important to me: my writing, my photography, and my ministry to household, family, friends, animals, community, etc., and if there are lots of demands on my time and energy the well can start to, if not run dry, at least plug up. It takes conscious attention to get the energy flowing again.

5. I want a break at the end of those high-demand periods, want not to have to wait on or feed anyone or walk the dog or shop or listen to anyone or take anyone anywhere. As I believe you've noticed over time, we moms don't get much in the way of Christmas presents, and sometimes birthdays (and of course mine is in the summer) can be a bit of a let-down as well. Retreats are my Christmas and birthday presents to myself: On a retreat someone else usually provides food for me at regular intervals, and I don't have to worry about shopping, or cooking, or cleaning up. If there's any talking or discussion, it's about faith, or God or callings and stirrings, not computer programming or politics or clothes or drama or who's taking out the garbage or who's walking or feeding the dog.

I love being a wife and mother, love my girls and my husband, love the cats and the dog, love my home... but all of those things and relationships take energy to maintain. I learned from the priest who counseled me during my divorce all those years ago that you can't pour out of an empty cup, so retreats are my way of refilling my internal cup so I can achieve a better balance in those external parts of my life for the rest of the year. That over-squeeziness you mentioned in your recent note may well come out of the fact that I am so un-centered right now.

Thank you for listening to this ramble; hope it all makes sense. Retreats, despite the sound of the word, are not about internalizing or running away: between the blog and my friendships and the novels and the poetry and the emails and theater experiences and photo assignments and art classes and dance classes and coffee dates etc. I get plenty of opportunities to be out there advancing and articulating. They're more about running back to the source to be fed: I lead a pretty active life, and keeping myself centered is what allows me to keep all that energized.

... and I love you! Thanks for your patience with my mothering; it's a constantly changing job and there are always new dancesteps to learn.

What bubbles up

This was a window we passed in downtown Seattle while driving through around Christmas time. I loved the inventiveness of the bubbles, though I'm not exactly clear what relationship they have to the purses. Is our economy going under? (Well, duh!) And if so, wouldn't we be keeping the old purses instead of buying new ones?

But perhaps these bubbles are not meant to imply that we're under water, money-wise, but rather that new possibilities are bubbling up which will bring new riches!

All of which goes to show -- as we discussed at length in my spirituality group yesterday -- that curious differential between suffering and pain, and its dependence on attitude. Stuff happens, and life can be a beach (as all those bumper stickers say). But what really affects us most, ties our stomachs up in knots or awakens new creativity in us, is how we choose to handle it. And I'm thinking that maybe what fuels our ability to respond with generativity rather than depression is our capacity to hope: as long as we have hope that things can change, and/or that we can make a difference, then it does seem possible to rise above our surface difficulties.

Which is why, despite all the bad news (I mean, 50,000 people were laid off yesterday? Imagine all those sinking hearts!) people still believe it will be possible to turn this around. We know it will be hard work -- there can be no denying that. But I think Obama has given us hope, a very specific kind of hope, a hope that WORKING TOGETHER (something we haven't done in a long time) we might be able to even things out, reduce the excesses and care for the needy, restore the values lost over the last 8 years of privilege and depradation.

Something's bubbling up here. And I think it's hope. But I'm not sure I'm gonna buy a new purse anytime soon.

That urge to hunker down

This morning I revisited a passage in the second chapter of Laurence Freeman's Jesus the Teacher Within. It has to do with guilt and repentance, with self-recognition, false identities, fear of emptiness -- all the things that an Enneagram 4 struggles with. And there is a line in it that reads: The desperate need for identity can be so great that mere self-expression or an egocentric search for self-fulfilment can get enshrined as the ruling value of life.

As artists, writers, musicians, prophets, what are we to do with a phrase like this? For those of us who are born to sing, called to write, blessed with vision, driven to speak or preach there will always be a tension entangled in the need to express. How can we know when we are expressing the divine and when we are expressing the false self? How can we know when the artist's desire for recognition stems from a god-driven need to be heard or from a selfish need for approval? After all, Freeman himself is a writer. How did he know when it was time to write; how did he know it was important to seek out a publisher?

As I struggled to meditate this morning -- and it was definitely a struggle: though I understand that if I am in touch with the divine center these issues should become moot, I can't seem to get there -- I realized I felt a bit like a ferry, bleating its way across the sound in fog; slowly churning my way across the water, blindly following the compass and sounding my horn in protection and warning.

But when I went to find an image of a ferry in fog, it was this one that popped out at me -- and this ferry isn't going ANYwhere. So what does this say, and where am I in this image? Am I feeling old and worn out? Is it time to pull into the dock for repair? Is this old identity reduced to a useless shell? Or is it time to jump ship: should I hop into that red inflatable and speed off through the fog to some other destination?

Or perhaps I am already home, and this sense of blindly feeling my way is just a recurring nightmare, like the old dog, sleeping on the floor by the fireplace, its legs churning in a momentary remembrance of the chase...

Hmm. I think what I want, this morning, is to tidy up the boat. Perhaps this is because my 60th birthday is looming, but I think it's okay that the boat's engine is dead. She still floats, and would make, with a little work, a wonderful houseboat. I think I'll leave it to the young'uns to flit off into the unknown; I'll just stay here and make this space habitable... or am I just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

Chasing the golden ball

This is our dog, Nemo (short for Captain Mnemonic); he's a Polish Lowland Sheepdog (also known as PON, an abbreviation of the actual Polish name). Nemo dislikes snow, cold weather, darkness, and rain, so winter is NOT his favorite season. And this couch is where he sits every morning after breakfast, waiting for me to finish meditating and blogging.

It is Nemo's fondest hope that I will then take him upstairs and encourage him to run laps up and down the hallway by throwing his favorite squeaky yellow tennis ball. He invites me to do that by following me around the house, once I emerge from my office, with said ball in his mouth, chewing it in such a way that a rhythmic squeaking emerges at regular intervals to remind me he is awaiting his morning exercise...

I caught a glimpse of spring this morning: though our temperatures are still unseasonably low, the sun is out and there is color in the air. And it occurs to me that I -- like most humans, I think -- have a lot in common with Nemo: I grow tired of the cold and dark, the forced inactivity -- both of real winter and of those internal winters that so often coincide with the seasons. And in some ways these prayers for illumination, this longing to step over the change process, to avoid mud season and skip back into the light, are not so different from Nemo with his squeaky ball. I am chasing that elusive Divine, squeaking, hoping for attention, something to exercise these stiffening spiritual muscles.

When there is a response I am just as delighted as Nemo. And yet, like Nemo, I am rarely satisfied, and long for an extended engagement in this play. It feels like a Rumi poem, you know?

God threw the ball for me today!
Inside me a hundred puppies
are leaping to their feet in pursuit of the golden prize,
their tiny lopped-off tails
wiggling so hard it throws them off the track.
What is better?
The rush of wind in my fur,
the thrill of pursuit,
the taste of yellow?

No,
it's that moment,
that split second,
when I capture the ball in my mouth and look back at you;
that smile of complicity:

We both know I will never drop it at your feet.