For there is nothing lost...

I had a fairly well established daily routine before the COVID-19 pandemic initiated the Great Regrouping throughout the world. I am not a very social person and my anxiety disorder prevents me from straying too far or too often from home, so I didn't think social distancing would change my life very much. Wowser, was I wrong.

For the first time in my 53 years of living, I have had the opportunity to allow my body to find its own rhythm. I have a once a month writing deadline, and I am currently answering only to the demands of nature for working to get my gardens established. I might sleep three hours in a night, or I might sleep ten or twelve. I might be up before dawn or not go to bed until then.

My daily spiritual practice has evolved into happening while I am working in the gardens or outside for a walk about. It happens while I am sitting under the loblolly pine, watching the baby American Robins in their nest, or sitting under the night sky. Bear Path Cottage has become a rather substantial sized altar, and my connection with the Divine is ever deepening.

Inside the house, well, some days it looks like I am losing a game of Jumanji, but the world hasn't ended because of this lapse in housekeeping. This is just another part of life that is slowly settling after being shaken up. When my kids were little I embraced a "messy doesn't mean dirty" housekeeping style, and I am once again keeping home with that liberating philosphy.

I am shaking off a lifetime of constructs created by a world external to me, and that is exhausting work. I am grateful for the time to allow my entire being - body, mind, and spirit -  to rest from this work as it needs must. I am most grateful for the journey work that has led me to a place where I can recognize what is happening and embrace it without paying harsh judgment to myself.

I am also mindful that I am not living within a destination. I haven't arrived anywhere. I am still traveling, no matter how far I go or don't go. I am living wholly in this moment. I am alive.

“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”
― Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

Finding Grace

Today I wrote to a friend that I have been trying to find some grace in every day.

I am tired. Somedays I am exhausted, even beyond the normal fatigue I deal with because of some health issues, or the physical fatigue that comes from working outside as much as I am able, and I think that this is normal during this difficult time. The pandemic and the political climate in this country, on top of everything else going wrong in this world, can be overwhelming. So I make myself slow down, I make myself see, I make myself hear, I make myself feel, and by doing that, I find grace, which in turn gives me hope and some sense of peace in this Upside Down.

Yesterday morning I was busy moving wagon loads of plant debris from the raised bed in the front yard to the compost pile out back. Its a bit of a walk and on my second trip back I sat down on Blueberry Hill to rest. The sun was warm on my face and there was a light breeze blowing. I closed my eyes for a while and did a quiet meditation, then I opened my arms and let that wind move through me, carrying away all that was negative.

When I opened my eyes again the day seemed a little brighter. I heard the low cooing of a Mourning Dove in the loblolly pine branches above me, and I turned my eyes to see if I could find the bird. A pair of them had been nesting in another tree in our front garden, but had abandoned that nest after a wind storm. I was hoping to find their new home space, but they both moved in and out of the high-up branches and then flew away.

Movement on the ground caught my eye and I saw a female American Robin doing a funny little walk/run across the driveway, moving towards where I was sitting. She would stop and look at me, then run a little more. She eventually went up the hill past me and I watched until she caught a worm then flew up into the tree over my head. And lo, there it was. This year's nest in the loblolly pine. The minute she stepped close to it two little heads on two scrawny necks popped up out of the nest, and those little mouths were wide open, ready for their elevenses.

The Sun was lined up so perfectly behind that nest, behind that branch, that in that moment the babies were completely backlit. The light actually shone through their beaks, illuminating them and making them appear transluscent. It reminded me of last Autumn when the rising Sun shone through the sunflowers blooming in our front garden; the whole scene was so magical that I held my breath, not wanting it to end.

Then their mom moved to feed them, and in the next instant she was fluffing her wings and settling down over her babies in the nest. Take whatever message you want to take from that moment, from that image, but I was just so overwhelmed by love that I cried.

I sat there under the tree for a while longer, musing about that moment of grace and about the way the Wheel turns. Moments pass, days go by, the year moves on, but I am often gifted with reminders of how everything is connected. Sunflowers and baby birds kissed by the same Sun. Friends who share music that makes them dance, or laugh, or cry, or worship. Art that makes people smile or sigh. Garden talk and critter pictures; despair and hope; loss and love.

There is grace in every bit of it, and I am blessed.

One Mississippi...Two Mississippi...

I am awake in the wee hours of the morning, summoned by the noise and power of the first real thunderstorm of the season rolling through the river valley in which I live. Without even thinking about it, I find myself counting the intervals between each flash of lightning and burst of thunder, and my mind is flooded with memories of comforting and empowering my children in the dark and stormy nights of their tender years. 

The helper is a simple meditation and sleep ritual that I never realized was either one of those things until now. The children would call to me or come to me in the dark, frightened by the storm, and we would wind up snuggled together, sometimes just one of them and me, sometimes all of us snuggled together on the couch. In the lull after a boomer I would ask "Are you ready? Let's watch now," and they would very nearly hold their breath, waiting for the night sky to light up. When it did, we would count outloud together: One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. 

BOOM! The thunder would come, and they would jump, but their eager minds were already busy watching for the next flash to cross the sky. As they grew older those lulls between flash and boom were often filled with questions about different kinds of lightning, how storms move, or what animals do during storms. They each went through a phase when they just had to spell out the word, Mississippi, in the sing-song rhyming chants so many of us know from childhood, and I remember a night one of the girls dissolved into giggles because she was missing her top front teeth and couldn't say the word. 

I would gently encourage them to hush, to watch, to listen, to quiet their breathing so they could hear. They learned that they could tell when the storm was drawing closer and when it was moving away. The lull between boom and flash would lengthen, their fear would settle, their breathing would slow, and eventually they would not so much fall back to sleep as to be carried there by the peace of the lull and the sound of the rain. 

Sometimes when it storms now, I wonder if they remember. 

The boomers have passed through now, and the sound of the rain is hypnotic and sweet. My gardens are being watered, and I am going to wrap myself in gratitude and allow the rain to lullaby me back to sleep. 

Yarrow for the Heartache

Walter has insisted that I work at my desk this morning, so here I am. I'm catching up on messages and emails, writing a review, and staring at my journals and my pile of unused journals like maybe I recognize them, but I'm just not sure. You know, like when you see that person in the store or on the train or at the show, and you are wondering if you went to school with them or maybe met them at a business meeting or they might have sat at the table next to you at that restaurant you went to two months ago when we still believed it was safe to dine out.
I have been woefully neglectful of my daily writing practice, and I realized yesterday that it is because I am avoiding writing about COVID-19 and what it is doing to the world. I don't know. Maybe it is triggering the Anne Frank nightmares of my childhood or something. Maybe it is just one too many traumas; one more level down the abyss that this country's current political environment dragged us into. One more monster in the Upside Down.
I am saturating my social media content with garden stuff because that's where the hope grows for me. That is where the distraction lies as well. I'm soaking up all the art and music and nature that other people are sharing because my spirit needs those balms. Who knew that Penguins touring zoos and aquariums could actually warm the human heart?
There are times that I am overwhelmed by everything that is happening, and it usually hits me from out of the blue. I will be sitting on the couch or out in the garden or talking with Rhodes, and all of a sudden I find myself crying. All of a sudden I am aware of the fear and concern I have for the people I love, for my friends, and for my community, both local and world-wide.
My daughter works in a health care practice that is essential. Their office cannot close, and they are affiliated with the local hospital. My mind does not allow me to acknowledge this in every minute of every day but I am all too aware of the number of health care workers who have died from COVID-19 and I am terrified for my child. I keep that fear locked away in a box inside my head because if I didn't I wouldn't be able to function.
I am worried about other people in my family, some as much for the psychological strain caused by unemployment and uncertainty as for the disease itself. My 82 year old father in law lives with us and we have just now managed to convince him to stop going to the grocery store. We have everything we need in this house right now; there is no point in risking his life or our lives for things we might want.
I worry that I can't do enough to help other people at a time when I *should* be helping as much as possible. And then I remind myself, or my husband reminds me, that we are doing the best we can to help those we can help, in all the ways that we can help, and that is all anyone can do.
So, I am silencing my muse because I am afraid of what she has to say. She rebels in my head, gets wild and loud and crazy, and sometimes bursts through the seams so that I hear little bits of what she has to say. But while I am silencing her, I am tuned in with perfection to the Divine all around me, and I have a sneaking suspicion they are passing notes.
A few weeks ago before things went completely topsy turvy, I acquired some plants for the altar we keep for our Beth. I've never grown yarrow, but I've seen it and admired it, and I saw some at the nursery and I just had a sudden knowing. "Get the yarrow," the quiet voice said. "See how beautiful it is? Beth would love this." Then an even quieter voice said "Yarrow for the Heartache. You could write about that."
I got the yarrow, and later that night when I sat down to do some research, I'm fairly certain I heard the quieter voice giggle when I found a dozen articles about the uses of yarrow to comfort the heart.
I'm still musing about how to write about the Yarrow, but here's some free verse that's flowing through my head like water over the rocks in a small creek, catching here, stopping there, turning, skipping along.
Peace out, peeps.

When this is all said and done Will you remember when a stranger bumping into you In the market was an annoyance and not a death threat?

Will you remember the privileged horror
Of the finally undeniable truth that children in your
Neighborhoods go hungry every day?

Will you remember that Margie next door
Baked homemade cornbread for the neighbor girl
Who brought buttermilk home for her?

Or that Kim shared beagle pictures to make us smile
And Star shared recipes and let her cats work the stove
And Karen's cat learned to use the Ipad to watch videos?

Edie who kept her grandbaby and crossed generations to care for those she loves.
Chris who has to love her mother from a distance, and
Others who cannot touch or hug or see their children and grandchildren or friends.

Will you remember those who shared wisdom and
Those who shared words intended to comfort and
Those who reached through the screen to send love?

Those who stood up against injustice and
Those who muddied the waters and
Those who fought for all of us and meant it?

Yo Yo Ma is giving us Songs of Comfort and
So are Garth and Tricia, Paul Simon, Jimmy Fallon,
Gail Gidot, and people who can't carry a tune in a bucket
And my ears are drinking it up.

Sidewalk chalk art is as inspiring and beautiful as the
Free tours of the Met and the Getty and the Tate and
Dear Goddess, please let me keep believing that I will
Tour them for real in the Great Regathering someday.

I am crying for strangers and grieving for families and whole nations
And thinking of the exquisite bouquets my friend Wrex creates
And the love and hope that she effortlessly and magically imbues them with

And I suddenly feel hopeful again, thinking wry thoughts
About how to show love in this Time of Chaos,
And offering Yarrow for the Heartache we are all feeling.