Tucked- in Bulbs and Rustling Chipmunks

When my children were young, we enjoyed an educational program called Learning Language Arts through Literature. We each copied portions of our favorite author's writing into composition books then studied the writing style, grammar, and story content. I challenged myself, along with them, to write imitating the author.   

                            I still love this exercise; still adore Mary Oliver's poetry. So today, for fun on this chilly, rainy day, I imitate the great poet...

My Version:

Ordinarily, I go down to the creek alone, with not a single companion, for they are often extrovert talkers, or sniffing, pawing, straining canine hunters and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be interrupted or seen laughing with flickers, kneeling on moss, dancing below giant sycamores, gathering stones for yet another cairn. I have my way of praying, as you have yours.

Besides, when I am alone, my thoughts quiet. My soul hears the running of sap, flow of water, wing-beat of doves.  I can sit on a rock, as motionless as the fragrant cedars nearby, until the deer enter the grove unconcerned.

My soul hears the sleepy song of tucked- in bulbs and rustling chipmunks, all softly alive, gently thriving, waiting for bursts of ardent spring!

 If you have ever gone down to the creek with me, I must love you very much.                                        

The Exquisite Oliver Version: 

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.  ― Mary Oliver

"Autumn Fern" debsgarden.squarespace.com

Of Birds and Politics

Little birds bob and hop

rounded heads tilt this

way and that.

Dark, intense eyes peer, 

hidden ears listen,

always listen

to the sounds of life -

seeds falling, hawks winging,

winds blowing gusts of change.

Oh to be a bird, to flit

and fly! Leaving fear

behind, a feathered rush for

cover of bush or nest. Cozy

retreat lined with down

plucked or fallen from breast,

warm, sustaining. Shelter

from all that is loathsome.

Wings folded, head tucked,

see and hear no evil. Yet

occasionally, 

shockingly, a woodpecker finds 

a fledgling, nested, vulnerable,

and drills through tender skull for 

sweetmeat. Ah, nature,you awful,

lovely beast!  Doesn’t everyone

want to live, to thrive, be safe,

comfortable and audacious, plucky

 too? And what of politics?  Both

sides are part of the same coin, shiny,

valuable, worthy of nesting in

pockets.  Rims, edges are

circles leading us back to life,

to each other.

 Perhaps you’ve had a strong visceral response to this poem, as I had, when reading facts about birds, and then writing in response. Don’t we all have the capacity for ugliness? So much in this world I simply can’t change, understand, or control. And, though I’m a person of deep faith, I can’t always succinctly describe faith, or God, just as scientists can't always do the same for nature. I am best as observer and participant, continually becoming a more compassionate and grateful observer and participant.

Now, here

           in this predawn darkness, 

                       sitting by my dancing fire, 

     the soapstone wood stove 

                           warms my body. 

Candle light softly

          

           illuminates the room. 

                   

              

                 All things inner and 

                       

                                   outer contain light and shadow. 

All bodies of consciousness contain the seen and unseen, awareness and unconsciousness. Some beliefs in us are beautifully whole, some are fragmented, even shocking. It is challenging to grow up, to become aware, to separate out the strands and discern what is hovering near our dark edges, wanting to be known and brought into the light. Hard for ourselves, this mandatory job of maturing in wisdom, impossible to discern for others with perfect precision. All we can do is look within ourselves, discern there first, and thus better understand how we might be a part of the human condition.

In this literal and symbolic darkness, I bring my short comings, my fragmented parts, my fears into prayerful, compassionate light. Christ followers would call my candle the Christ candle. For peoples of other faiths, the Light represents many truths: Awareness. Wholeness.  Illumination. Wisdom. Love.

Saint Paul teaches in Ephesians 5:13 - But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that is illuminated becomes a light itself.

 Another version, from The Voice paraphrase - When the light shines, it exposes even the dark and shadowy things and turns them into pure reflections of light. 

Those words are my prayer for myself; I want to become increasingly and more compassionately aware of my own shadows. The keyword is compassion, for as we are compassionate with ourselves, we are to others. To bring my shadows into the light so they become Light. I pray and open my soul for illumination, then extend the same to all the souls of the world. This is my prayer for all people, for Trump, for Obama, for all leaders, politicians, political parties, organizations, businesses, communities, faiths and churches.  

Whatever we become aware of, our body of pain, our cultural conditionings, our knee jerk reactions, whatever we compassionately observe or watch, usually dissipates until it is absorbed and transformed by Light, simply becoming light. Thus we are free. Our actions become less tainted with unconscious needs and reactions. We become wisely self-aware, more like Christ, aligned with the wisdom of the ages, like beautiful shining people of Light in an often dark world.

May all our edges and rims be illuminated circles 

                                leading us back to each other, to the path of becoming 

                                               real-authentic-whole, which is Life! 

Heartbeats and Sneezes

Over the holidays, the farmer and I watched a movie called, Something the Lord Made. The film is based on a true story about white surgeon Alfred Blalock and his black assistant, Vivien Thomas who teamed in the 1940s to develop a procedure to save blue babies, children suffering from a heart defect. Since the farmer recently went through heart surgery, this movie was quite fascinating!

Frustrating too as the interplay between Blalock and Thomas due to Thomas’ status as a second class citizen and the social realities of the time complicated their friendship and their medical goals.  Blalock soaked up the heroism of being the first surgeon to do open-heart surgery; Thomas – who perfected the surgery on lab dogs and thus taught Blalock - got no credit or recognition for his brilliance. Another point of interest is the medical and theological controversy in those days of cutting into a human heart.   

Those who know me well can imagine my personal conflict with the kennel of beautiful dogs outside the surgery. I hope the movie portrayal of Thomas treating the surgical canines with kindness was accurate. The phrase man’s best friend kept ironically popping up but I’m making no political or moral statement here – just observing. Medical advances are complicated too. 

I watched all the surgical open heart scenes with awe and dread, and sometimes with partially closed eyes. Not because the beating heart inside a chest cavity made me squeamish, but because I couldn’t stop thinking of my dear farmer being on the table with heart exposed.

The scenes where the surgeons closed THEIR  eyes with their fingers lingering inside the chest cavity to listen-sense-feel when the patient’s blood was pulsing correctly through reunited vessels before closing everything up – wow - my own heart thudded! A few times I looked away completely, while my scaredy-cat inner voice yelled, “open your eyes. Look at what you’re doing! Someone could die on your watch!”  Odd response from me, a contemplative, feeling-sensory-slightly dominant right-brain kind of person, who was also absolutely fascinated, elated, to be witnessing this if only in film.  Perhaps my left brain took over briefly, or my right amygdala argued with my left. In any case, I completely felt the agony of the parents waiting outside the operating theater of the first blue baby treated with open-heart surgery. Not a ground breaking statistic, but their precious child on the table!

 In this new year, already seeped in political and racial divisiveness, with so many personal and collective questions of what shall I(we) be and do, when there is so much that could be said, and as I discern what I want to say as a writer, I’m most keenly aware of presence and gratitude. I’m grateful for my husband’s life, while sorrowing for the families of others who ceased living on this earth. The randomness of why one lives and another dies is beyond us. So we appreciate, love, mourn and simply hold the question. But, presence, real Presence is another experience altogether, eternally possible and hopeful.  

The hardest thing for Thomas to teach Blalock was pausing his left brain long enough to be able to sense with his right- the epic eye closing scene- the feeling with the fingers rather than seeing with the eyes. Despite being a superb surgeon, Blalock had much to learn from Thomas in trusting the art of surgery as well as the science. The scene caught my breath, sang my soul.

Those ‘aha,’ moments of Blalock were seconds of being, of being in Presence. Complete absorption in right now with all senses, with brain and body and soul all existing in Presence – presence to God, Insight, flowing with a Source much larger than one human, or even one united humanity – it was pure potential, raw possibility, creator and created, teacher and student, art-science-faith, flowing together in the NOW, with all the knowledge and sensing and soul work of those humans and energies that have gone before the moment. It was clarity and awareness and skill, and trust, blended.

Opening to Presence is practicable. Whether ordinary or groundbreaking, all moments of Presence are full of wonder, focus, excitement, peace, awareness, clarity…of aligning oneself with More, with All, with the Divine. You and I hold a lot in our souls, all the decisions, questions, learnings, how to live and be in the future, all the joys and sorrows of our pasts, of history. Yet as the Divine gifts us with a moment of sheer presence (yes, gifts us as all we can do is keep opening more and more), we can relax and lean in.  

After the movie, I laid my head on the farmer’s chest and heard the steady rhythm of his heartbeat. I marveled, dwelling in Presence, in this beating, beautiful moment. I thought of the surgeon with his fingers around my beloved’s heart, and I hope he closed his eyes.

Close your eyes, too, my friends, and lean into Presence.  Open, awaken, love, learn and lean in.

I’ll end with a somewhat poignant, but fun poem I wrote during the farmer’s recovery:

Sneeze!

Air forced through lung and

nostril. Fast. Powerful.

Cleansing.  Yet, it’s said one

is never closer to death while

living than during a good sneeze.
More true, perhaps, if you’ve just had
heart surgery. Cracked breast bone, and
a sneeze. Makes your head explode in

brilliant stars, your chest in glass

shards. And for a millisecond you wish

for death, for a laugh long and

loud, or both!