Fostering Connections
I am part
Rising with the sun
Falling with the rain
Unfolding with the crocus
Waning with the moon
Dying with the leaves.
I am whole
Spreading light and heat
Weeping tears on hardpan ground
Holding lightly to beauty and hope
Contracting into darkness
Withering in despair before
Rising in hope once again.
This morning, as every morning, I took our dog, Karma, for a walk just a few minutes before it was time to warm up the car for the drive to school. I am often tempted to abbreviate this walk, urged along by the cold air on my face and the sense of urgency that can accompany the last 15 minutes before departure. Today, however, I was glad to walk the whole loop. Something needed to be explored. Karma felt it too, pausing longer than usual to smell clumps of grass peeking out of the snowy patches. Coyotes, foxes, deer, and turkeys often come through the field, but the snow is so crusty and icy right now that they don’t leave footprints. Without the footprints, I don’t see evidence of their passing, but they leave behind a scent for Karma to discover. In one spot, she caught the scent of something buried below the icy snow. She stopped to scratch and sniff. Not finding it, she scratched and sniffed again, and again… She made it through the snow and to the dirt, but whatever she smelled remained elusive. Something enticing was there, just beyond her nose and invisible to me, but it was clearly there.
Later this morning, I gathered with a group from Renewal in the Wilderness to celebrate Imbolc, the midwinter observance between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. I thought of Karma as we acknowledged the Quickening, the returning light. The growing light awakens a subtle energy in all living beings. It had definitely stirred Karma and I sense it in myself as well. The lengthening days invite inspiration and the crisp, cold days invigorate while dark, cold nights nurture the dormancy which births creativity. I sense it in the Earth. Can we sense it in one another? Most importantly, can we give ourselves over to it and live into it even more fully?
Imbolc’s invitation to become aware of my own seasonal awakening feels like an invitation to affirm the natural rhythm of my life. I often experience my cycles of energy and fatigue as outcomes of my life and only occasionally remember that they also flow naturally with rhythms of days, seasons and years. This morning, I realized that stepping into those rhythms with greater intention honors my whole-hearted, whole bodied participation in the cycle of life. I want to dwell more fully in that participation.
I recently read that the Buddha’s life followed a very deliberate pattern of withdrawal and return.
The Buddha withdrew for six years, then returned for forty-five years. But each year was likewise divided: nine months in the world, followed by a three-month retreat with his monks during the rainy season. His daily cycle, too, was patterned to this mold. His public hours were long, but three times a day, he withdrew, to return his attention (through meditation) to its sacred source. — from The World’s Religions by Huston Smith
This apparent seesaw between withdrawal and return (rest and exertion, struggle and acceptance…) creates a delicate balance. A harmony is achieved by making intentional space for both the effort and the retreat. This feels like a true and heartening counterbalance to the cultural message to continuously achieve, produce and consume. While I would not attempt to emulate the Buddha’s life practice specifically, it offers an aspirational example. Karma was also leading by example this morning. The hearty souls who joined Renewal in The Wilderness to nourish their spirits with a celebration and a walk in the woods also show the way.
There is balance in the dance between light and shadow, giving and receiving, waking and sleeping. At this mid-winter, I will embrace the always shifting cycles within and around me with renewed gratitude and appreciation for both the waxing and the waning. And, whether the groundhog sees his shadow or not tomorrow, I will be paying attention to the stirrings of the new day.
The morning stars are burning brightly
while the surrounding sky lightens and obscures.
A waning moon is
setting while the sun rises,
the light building as the darkness gives way.
In witness to this graceful celestial shift,
My heart is expanding, warmed with fullness.
Waking to this wholeness,
Possibility is palpable,
Gratitude overwhelming.
Under a dawn sky, when I witness night and day converging, I feel hope and expanded capacity. My breath grows deeper. I suspect I am drawn to an awakening sense of wholeness and balance, the not so subtle reminder that everything ebbs and flows.
Anything I experience as a static moment is actually a constant flow of time, element, action, and imagination. I am still learning not to grasp at any one aspect. It takes practice and regular remembering to simply remain present to their unfolding. There, in the fluidity, is unlimited possibility and opportunity. There, in the spaciousness, is common ground – ample space for light and dark, right and wrong, self and other. There is no pride, no pretense of winning or losing. The balance is simply shifting. Night gives way to light and, in turn, light will fade into night. The sky at dawn shows the way. There is room for it all.
Prophets and poets show the way too. With their arms stretched wide and carefully chosen words, they point to the common ground in the world’s disparities. Today, I am especially remembering Mary Oliver and Martin Luther King Jr. With gifts of insight and generosity, they showed us how to love the earth, love ourselves and love one another, in full awareness and appreciation of both the dark and the light. It is our human birthright to each continue this work daily, striving always to love more fully.
We are on the right track when the heavy stench of decay meets the light fragrance of new buds. We are on the right track when we are rising to greet the dawn sky and the night stars are still gleaming in the morning sky. We are on the right track when our own awe and gratitude and love rise with the sun.
… And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
From To Begin With, The Sweetgrass by Mary Oliver
I will greet the new year the same way I greet a new day.
With wonder that I am here to meet the rising sun yet again.
With intention to offer my seeing, knowing, words, and actions in service to the creation of a kinder, gentler world.
With awareness that, amidst the busy-ness, I may stray from my path, grow complacent, or misstep.
With appreciation that, when that happens, I can offer myself patience and forgiveness and return to my intention over and over again.
With gratitude for another day to manifest the life that I am here to create.
May this new day, and the promise of a year full of new days, bring us closer to one another and closer to peace for and upon the Earth.
I have always had a tricky relationship with this season. It’s not easy to slow down, so when the short days and long nights nudge me into bed early, I get a little resentful. I know that I will eventually love the extra time for slow reflection and gentle appreciation that winter offers, it just feels like it takes me a little longer than the rest of the natural world to make the transition from fall to winter.
This year, I have noticed that this season, as the winter solstice nears, I am grateful for the pause and intention. I feel wrapped in a remembrance and honoring that feels full, reverent and nurturing.
The weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years hold the anniversaries of the deaths of my father, grandfather, grandmother, and a family friend. These anniversaries are more than just notations on the calendar, they are memories of love and reflections of loss that come to me in waves of tender remembrance.
Last year at this time, I offered a workshop for people who, like myself, were holding new and uncomfortable feelings of grief and loss at the holidays. It is very unnerving to be surrounded by the season’s merry-making when your heart feels broken. At Inn Along the Way, I met with a small group of women to share stories, cry a few more tears, listen to holiday music and make ornaments. Honoring the lives of our loved ones with symbols of quiet beauty offered an anchor in that rocky holiday season.
This year, I feel different. I am holding my memories out in the light and really savoring them. In acceptance, the intellectual memories of those who have died have become distilled in body memories of our relationships. I hear and feel my Dad’s love, my grandmother’s delight, my grandfather’s steadiness, and our friend’s laughter. Though they are no longer living, this winter season is warmed and illuminated by their presence, woven into mine. Beyond boundaries of time and space, beyond life and death, we remain together.
I am grateful for this renewed perspective on the season of waning light.
May these long, dark pre-solstice days also offer you ample opportunity to feel the light of those who have blessed your life. In their absence, I hope you also feel their presence and, in your delight, celebrate your eternal love.
Barren branches of oak and maple
Reaching to the sky like old and crooked fingers.
Swollen with time and age, bent in angles and curves
holding memories and experiences of days passed long ago.
Youthful flexibility tempered by challenges and growth,
developing a rigidity accumulated from season to season.
Reaching upward and outward,
Beckoning to the sun and moon alike in honor to each passing day.
Reaching upward and outward,
Calling me to pay attention.
Notice the sky.
See the beauty in these twisted tendrils.
Celebrate the youth that has passed
and the age that has arrived.
Live this day.
Empty deciduous branches of winter,
Hold nothing but the weight of the sky,
the love of those crooked fingers,
remembrance of yesterday,
and joy of today.
It has been windy. Most of the leaves have now fallen from the trees and remnants of the yellow and red flames of autumn are turning brown in the hollow spaces alongside the roads and fields. Ditches and culverts have filled with their excess and the rainwater must find new paths through and around the piles of decaying vegetation. Taking a walk early one afternoon, I felt the shift in the seasons settle into my bones and suggest a pause to my busy mind. The fecundity and fullness of spring and summer have given way to the barren openness of late fall. This is the time for hibernating, resting, waiting and attending.
But there is so much to do. How can I possibly pause amidst the great need in the world, my longing for a safer, more gentle world?
The air was crisp and still. The only obvious motion, besides me, came from a half dozen juncos and a lone cardinal that darted from bush to tree and back again. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a lone oak leaf falling. I stopped to watch it spiraling slowly to the ground. The leaf had strength and integrity, but it fell with a gentle lightness. The only leaf in sight, it seemed so solitary and yet so much a part of both sky and earth.
Looking around for the host tree from which it had fallen, I saw that it had drifted quite a distance before beginning it’s downward dance. Yet there was no wind, not that I could sense anyway. A breeze more subtle than anything I could perceive had carried it aloft from the tree to the middle of the open field. Yet it had been carried, strong and sure to the place before me.
I must trust that I will be held by that which I cannot see.
Picking it up, I studied the sturdy oak leaf. It was a uniform shade of brown. Each lobe was unbroken, its edges sharp. Complete and intact, the leaf was so perfect that it could be an end to itself. Yet here it was so clearly a part in a larger cycle of life. Through the spring and summer, this leaf nourished and strengthened the tree. Now, in autumn, it has fallen to the ground where sun, rain and insects will turn it into nutrient rich soil, bedding for new roots during the next years growing cycle. Letting go of its place on the branch, it falls to the ground and finds new purpose creating space for new life.
I must release what is to allow for what is to come.
Laying the leaf back down on the field, it will become one of many when the wind picks up and gathers the stray leaves together in piles. No longer singular, each leaf becomes truly part of the chorus of living, dying and decaying material. When spring comes bursting forth, this bed of leaves will be host to the insects, seeds and roots of new life. But first, there will be snow.
I must rest now. There is a potential unfolding.
Winter’s rest is a gestation, a period of rapid development taking place out of sight and intent. As I embrace the longest nights and shortest days of the year, the darkness invites me to pay attention to a growth that is subtle, patient and attentive. I must hold my impatient, active and eager “doing” self to the side to make space for my allowing, accepting and “receiving” self.
It is time to stand in a clearing.