Church Signs

Last week Rosean and I drove by a church sign that read:

WHY DIDN'T NOAH SWAT THE 2 MOSQUITOES?

Rosean laughed and amended it:

WHY DIDN'T NOAH SWAT THE 2 MOSQUITOES AS HE FLOATED DOWN THE WEST NILE?

What Noah didn't know (ah).

Friday and Saturday morning Rosean and I got up early and went out to Fossil Creek Reservoir with our coffees. (In case you ever need to know, Human Bean opens at 5 a.m.) With binoculars and a rather dated bird book we strolled to one of the bird blinds, sat a bit, strolled to the other blind, sat a bit more. We are not birders; we don't know anything about the culture and protocol of bird watching. We just witness all these little lives out at the Reservoir, each with its passions and trials, desires and attempts at fulfilment, births and endings. Yesterday two scarlet-eyed grebes called to each other in a way that caused my Scorpio partner to opine, "they want to get some." I was skeptical, but sure enough, soon they lifted their bodies and arched their necks in an elegant mating dance, a sort of side by side promenade across the surface of the water. We just loved this dance. We love all the dances, even the ones that make us sad.

I'm sure there are dozens of excellent sermons on the theme of Noah and the mosquitoes. After all, if we didn't have mosquitoes we wouldn't have swallows, those jewel-like darters. We wouldn't have the waterfowl who feast on larvae. In a terrible domino effect we'd lose entire ecosystems -- maybe the entire biosphere. Yet, in spite of our understanding of this fact, if it were entirely up to us we really would kill off all the mosquitoes. We'd have some rationale.

And, archetypally, the story of Noah really is wonderful. Imagine building a great hulking boat when you're living on a desert. Imagine waiting 40 years to be vindicated, 40 years before the waters rise. Imagine carrying the seeds of all future life with you on your ark, the craft shaped by your own hands and toil. And amongst the creatures is the mosquito. It works, you know?

But I think of all the little lives at the reservoir, and of the lives surrounding the reservoir in all the little (and not so little) houses, and of the lives in trees and at the edges of lawns. And I think, you know, we're Christian. We should put up one church sign and leave it until all the little plastic letters crumble and fall away, a sign like this:

CAN YOU EVEN F--ING BELIEVE THAT GOD WOULD PUT ON HUMAN FLESH AND LIVE AMONG US?

Or, as Saturday's Saint du Jour (St. Cyril of Alexandria) put it in the little daily meditation booklet Rosean and I read:

THE MOTHER OF GOD CONTAINED THE INFINITE GOD UNDER HER HEART, THE GOD WHOM NO SPACE CAN CONTAIN

Can you believe this message? It's the sort of fact that unravels your socks and sets your hair on fire so you have to get baptized just to put the flames out!

Silence and a Tiny Peace

"They are dead to me," my mind whispers as I sit in my favorite chair looking out through every window on leaves and bits of sky. I think of a time I killed a cat with a shovel -- it had been hit by a car and too many things were outside lying on the pavement that should have been safely tucked away under fur and skin. It was night. I had the shovel with me, returning from gardening with a friend. It was a quick, merciful ending. And yet I feel anguish and guilt.

When I close my eyes I can still see the car round the corner in the dark, and the impact, the tiny body arcing, the massive blind machine moving on oblivious. Against the painful lump in my throat I weigh the moment after the fall of the shovel blade when there was only silence and a tiny peace.

For a few days now there have been moments when I haven't remembered that I am now an orphan. Laughing with friends, working on projects, I live into the moment and dream into the future. At other times I look at my hands and am shocked to find them large-veined and wrinkled, the hands of an aging woman. In those moments the grieving child looks out, puzzled, into my life. My own palms hold her broken heart, my own vibrating lullaby stills her fears.

"Dead," insists my knowledgeable wisdom, and the shovel blade comes down with a clank, cleaving the central chord, the tie that binds. And even the little kid sees how my true history is emerging now that the falsehoods have been severed from it. Love drove me, my own love, invisible because not mirrored. It is a huge-hearted thing, this love. It cherishes and supports, nourishes, sustains, reaches with understanding across almost any barrier. Almost.

There are some collisions that cannot be survived. There are some endings that are written into every possible future. Alone on the pavement in the night this is what I know.

Sitting in my favorite chair looking out at green, I remember once again and weep.

To Whom Do I Belong

Grief has gotten into my joints like cold, and I am moving slowly, like a lizard before the sun has warmed the rocks. Every aching lift of arm can unleash a bout of tears. I carry myself gently, tenderly. I am a little surprised at the intensity of my feelings, a little unnerved -- yet bizarrely grateful. Most of the pain I suffered growing up was endured alone and in the dark; I'm not so used to sharing with family and friends, not so used to being cared for.

I am so thankful for Rosean, for Carrie, for my friends, for my friends' dogs, for my kids and grandkids. I belong to these people as they belong to me, and I am grateful.

Today the angel and the raven sit side by side on the window ledge of my studio. Soft, green-smelling air wafts in around them, mixes with the odor of turpentine. I finish my work, turn in that direction.

Raven's eye is lapis and deep as geyser water. She ruffles her iridescent feathers and croaks. I have an image of tree rings in a huge old stump, tiny dark green fir needles, humus, cool and deep. I am young, looking up through the cathedral of lodge pole pine at a lapis-colored sky. Puffy clouds silently glide by. For a long moment I lean in to the remembered whisper of wind in tree tops, the smell of sap, the underlying silence. Here is where my gut is grounded, where the umbilical chord of my soul is buried. Out of this place I came into the world of human relationships like a child raised by wolves.

Back in the studio, the angel's eyes are compassionate, even as fire dances around his/her head. I am comforted by the leap of flames, orange and gold and blue. Now I am a much younger child, and I look fearlessly at this heavenly messenger, asking, "whose child am I?"

Mother Earth claims me. My own particular forest and my own mountains claim me. Uri, the dark woolly god of buffalo claims me. Irene the goddess of peace and coyotes claims me. The queen of fairies claims me. Raven claims me. Jesus the Christ claims me. He is my brother. I am a child of God.

The Irreconcilable Difference

I am wearing my Leo socks today in honor of the fact that, while I am sometimes vain and self-focused, I am also deeply, incredibly loving and generous, and often open to the Spirit. My Leo socks will hold my feet dear as I seek ways to hold myself dear and allow my friends to hold me dear on this day when I feel like a layer of my heart has become powder and is blowing away.

Yesterday I was disinherited. This was as inevitable as brush fires in California. Still, I was not prepared for the severing of ties with my parents, abrupt and final as it was after a short foray into truth telling. Both my mother and my father have spoken, and so I, along with my sister, am orphaned. Thank God for my sister.

Here's the thing I will always remember: I told my father that if this was the last time we would ever speak I needed him to know I love him. I told him the truth of my forgiveness and for just a few seconds I saw deep in his eyes the longing to believe and accept it. My poor dad.

He will deny that, of course. He will say I am completely crazy, delusional, brainwashed by "the feminists". I imagine he believes he has to say these things; I know in my heart he knows otherwise.

I let go of my mom years ago. I was washing clothes one day and I imagined her standing at her washing machine and yearning for me as I was standing at mine and yearning for her. Despite everything, we were mother and daughter, loving one another deeply, and yet between us lay a truly irreconcilable difference.

The same difference reared its head yesterday. It is not going to go away. If my parents eventually try to bridge the chasm they just created, I hope I remember that truth telling doesn't just happen one time. It is ongoing, relentless -- devastating.

I am stripping the bed in the guest room, washing the sheets and the towels. The windows are open to dissipate my mother's strong perfume. The soft, rain-laced air is soothing on my swollen eyes.

Wealth Management

The poet Mary Oliver is so dang cool! Here's a poem by her that a fellow EfMer offered as a prayer at one of our sessions.

Messenger by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird--
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work.

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

Our work is loving the world. It seems to me this is primary work for all of us, not just for poets. Being absolutely gobsmacked by the beauty that surrounds us, that's the spiritual practice of gratitude -- which is relational -- which is healing.

For many of us these days there's a gnawing uncertainty at the back of our thoughts. The awareness of the precarious nature of financial well being has visited us. It has always been true that the security of the world is ephemeral. We've just, up until now, had a run of very good luck. Our country has managed to stay stable enough and peaceful enough to make us all wealthy. Lucky us.

But now the deeper reality is breaking through. As Jesus was fond of pointing out, wherever things are piled up, thieves can get in, and nature can take its course -- in spite of the very best security systems and insurance policies. "My soul," says the man with the bulging barns, "look at what we've piled up here. We're set. We can rejoice." But Death comes that very night and claims the man's soul, and what becomes of his full barns then?

Where is our true wealth? It is in the fall of water over stones, the scent of Russian olive trees in June, the flash of bird wing, the bright display of sunset in towering cumulus, the rumble of thunder heard from within a dry shelter. It is in community -- in those moments when friends delight in us, when somebody allows us to help them, when our softball team celebrates a good play. It is in the existence of our grandchildren, our children and our parents, our dogs with their soulful eyes and hopeful tails, our kitties purring in our laps, our friends. When a beautiful line of song lifts our hearts, when the momentary lapse of attention does not result in a twisted ankle, when the tense cashier offers a joke instead of a criticism, we are rich.

"Are my boots old, is my coat torn
Am I no longer young and still not half perfect. Let me"

Time to turn -- turn around -- time for metanoia. In the ancient practice of Gratitude we learn to see the world anew, alight with abundance. "Let me," really is a good prayer. Let me see what there is to celebrate. Let me remember to look. Let me "keep my mind on what matters."

The world longs to be loved. Cherishing her flamboyant displays and her secret hidden treasures is a spiritual work that has no parallel. It roots our souls to ground. We also long to be loved. When we find our place in a community that just thinks we're the cat's meow, we are free to express our deepest natures. This is also a spiritual work without equal.

So, let me. Let all of us. Let us do our work.

Inanna Dances

It has been a long day of frustrating inner silence. The I Ching points, thumbs up, to a time of power and creativity. But all I feel is the continuation of waiting.

"Tell the stories," whispers the small child in my heart. What comes to mind instantly is a creation myth.

Inanna dances. God the sky woman, queen of heaven, dances. God dances in the void, the place of no thing, no sound, no being. Her hair flies out from her head. In no light, no sound, no being, Inanna dances.

God yearns. In the great dance, God yearns. From her guts a great yearning rises up. The yearning becomes a wind. The wind becomes a consort. Together they dance. Together they spin. Together they mate.

The wind becomes a serpent. Inanna bears forth an egg. The serpent wraps his body around it. In the void, the nothingness, the great dark empty, the serpent wraps himself around the egg, crooning.

When the egg hatches everything is born. Wind and rain, sky and sun, earth and waters -- all are born. Inanna separates air from water, day from night, earth from the deeps below the earth. The plants are born and cover the oceans and the earth. Trees are born. The fish and the crawling things are born. Through the waters and the land they swarm. Birds are born. The four legged creatures are born. With Inanna's help all find a place, a home. All are born. "Dance with one another," Inanna commands. "Dance life and death, day and night, struggle and respite." The great dance of creation begins. Men and women come out of a crouch and stride into the plains. Inanna gives them dances and they dance with her and one another.

Inanna dances creation into beginning. Creation dances. God dances with creation and through creation. The serpent wind of yearning dances with creation, through creation, with Inanna, with each of us. The serpent wind of yearning dances in each of our hearts.

Cosmic Pruning

Rosean and I, on vacation, have been witnessing the devastating effects of the pine bark beetle on Colorado forest land. Whole mountainsides are rust colored and dying. The trees were overcrowded and weak with drought. They were not strong enough to withstand the beetle's invasion.

The overcrowding bit is at least partially our fault. We humans hate fire, and so we have not allowed the natural scourge of wildfire to thin our forests. We have also not thinned them ourselves through healthy, farsighted forestry plans. (Clear cutting timber is emphatically not such a plan.)

I have been thinking about scriptural parables of pruning and casting into the fire. Beetles are a natural thinning agency in the ongoing process of balancing the alpine ecosystem. From God's perspective everything is going just fine. There is an abundance of life amid the rust colored trees.

The question of how and when to "allow nature to take its course" is complex and fraught with emotional land mines. The issue arises everywhere -- even in our own bodies. Think about how the idea of "cure" has morphed over the past century due to the wonders of modern medicine -- which is an expensive and invasive practice.

Praising God's pruning as well as God's planting often requires we get out of our tiny human perspectives. Here's another area in which I need some Holy help.

Vocation

Vocation at its deepest level is not, "Oh, boy, do I want to go to this strange place where I have to learn a new way to live and where no one, including me, understands what I'm doing." Vocation at its deepest level is, "This is something I can't not do, for reasons I'm unable to explain to anyone else and don't fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling."--Parker Palmer in Let Your Life Speak

The angel sits on the window sill. S/He is neither inside nor outside. S/He gives me to understand that this is the correct place for an angel -- on the threshold. Perfectly relaxed, yet burning like the Olympic torch, s/he gazes at me expectantly.

I am kneeling. My heart demands it. Weary knees and sleepy head and all, when I am kneeling my heart is open and clear. It speaks now. "I have planted what you have given me."

My brain is amazed by this statement. I never was entirely sure what the mission given me WAS, let alone if I had completed it.

"Well done," says the angel, dipping his/her fiery head.

I am not too surprised by this; I am often outside the loop a little when it comes to head understanding. In overheard conversations between friends, for instance, I might find myself delighted by the exchange created by a joke even though I don't "get" the joke, might not even have heard it. Following the flow of the relationship, delighting in the good humor, heart to heart, I am jolted when someone else equally on the periphery asks, "what did he say," and I suddenly realize I haven't a clue. I'm finding meaning in their affection for one another. Intuitive types are like that.

So I am prepared to simply bask in the angel's praise and let it go at that. I'll find out what I need to know later, if at all. I'll trust that some part of me -- my heart -- gets what it needs to get.

But s/he looks directly into my eyes and says, "It is important that you understand."

Busted. "But I don't," I admit. "I have not understood from the beginning."

The angel shows me an exchange I often have with the world. Someone -- a friend, a client, the writer of the book I'm currently reading -- gives me something. They hand me bits -- ideas, dreams, revelations, images. And I work with these bits. I find their roots, their imaginal significance, their natural connections with the larger world, their meaning, their worth, and the beginnings of how they might be developed. In other words, I plant them.

I do this all the time. I do this in all areas of my life. I see the way sunlight reflects on new green leaves; I plant that in a poem or a painting. I receive a bit of some one's life, I plant it in love, meaning and understanding. I hear a good story or bit of scripture, I plant it in an image or a sermon. For all these months I thought the angel was giving me a special Lenten task when s/he told me to plant what s/he gave me. Instead s/he was handing me on a silver platter an image of who I am.

Whatever you give me, I will plant. Of course. I am like that. That is what I do. That is what I have always done.

The angel settles back on the window ledge. "I think I'll just stay here for a few days and see what emerges," s/he says.

I nod absently, preoccupied for my search for a ceramic pot and a watering can.