Fridays with Starry Meadows May 22, 2020

Poppy by Brock's Creek at Starry Meadows

 It may be that when we no longer know what to do,

we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

                 ~Wendell Berry in Standing By Words

~~

Because this bird is singing to me,
I belong to the wide wind,
The people far away who share
The air and the clouds.
Together we are looking up
Into all we do not own
And we are listening.
~Naomi Shihab Nye from "Messages from Everywhere"

How do you experience this poem? It makes me feel open, free, and grateful. After reading, I want to look up, see birds, and notice the breeze, while also feeling connected to you. Pretty cool for a simple poem.

Photo: Pileated Woodpecker

~~~

Have you somehow marked this extraordinary year so far, this COVID19 experience? Have you built a cairn, planted a tree, journaled, or dedicated a word to mark this season of your life, however it unfolded within you? So many words on my Facebook news feed these days: fear, doubt, anxiety, skepticism, angst, panic, depression, anger, deepening, peace, joy, gratitude, awakening, pausing. They all belong. Honor your own extraordinary experiences.

2020 has been extraordinary, even if not in ways we usually define that word.

At the dawn of this year, back in January which now seems like a whole year ago, I couldn't choose a word. For the first time since I've been choosing a word to carry and grow into each new year, I just couldn't choose a word. I waffled between 'sabbatical' and 'balance,' but got bored with thinking about it so I just let it drop. Perhaps the pandemic choose the word for me as I feel like I'm on some kind of sabbatical. Isn't it fascinating though, that some intuition or sense of the Spirit came up with those words. Balance is an interesting word - especially when life became upended.

I shall continue to hold both words and let them stir and grow me in 2020.

Dyad's Saddle mushroom 

~~~

I like the following piece by John Roedel. I've been in an interior place where things I believed were falling away. It feels disorienting. Perhaps this pandemic has brought on an unfamiliar deepening within you, or is exposing you to unsettling truths about yourself or the world. Be gentle with yourself as you sift and explore, and allow things to drop away.

Me: Hey God.
God: Hello.....
Me: I'm falling apart. Can you put me back together?
God: I would rather not.
Me: Why?
God: Because you aren't a puzzle.
Me: What about all of the pieces of my life that are falling down onto the ground?
God: Let them stay there for a while. They fell off for a reason. Take some time and decide if you need any of those pieces back.
Me: You don't understand! I'm breaking down!
God: No - you don't understand. You are breaking through. What you are feeling are just growing pains. You are shedding the things and the people in your life that are holding you back. You aren't falling apart. You are falling into place. Relax. Take some deep breaths and allow those things you don't need anymore to fall off of you. Quit holding onto the pieces that don't fit you anymore. Let them fall off. Let them go.
Me: Once I start doing that, what will be left of me?
God: Only the very best pieces of you.
Me: I'm scared of changing.
God: I keep telling you - YOU AREN'T CHANGING!! YOU ARE BECOMING!
Me: Becoming who?
God: Becoming who I created you to be! A person of light and love and charity and hope and courage and joy and mercy and grace and compassion. I made you for more than the shallow pieces you have decided to adorn yourself with that you cling to with such greed and fear. Let those things fall off of you. I love you! Don't change! ... Become! Become! Become who I made you to be. I'm going to keep telling you this until you remember it.
Me: There goes another piece.
God: Yep. Let it be.
Me: So ... I'm not broken?
God: Of course Not! - but you are breaking like the dawn. It's a new day. Become!!!
~Author John Roedel

And that is all for this week. Blessings my friends and readers.    ~  Sharon

Observing Nature Helps Us Hold Things Gently

Do you ever notice how some flowers close tight on rainy or cold days, then open again as the sun shines? 

I've enjoyed watching our Star of Bethlehem flowers as they are bold and beautiful one day, closed up tight the next. The second photo is not the bud stage. It's actually the same plant, just with closed petals on a chilly, cloudy day.

Naturalists don't exactly why flowers close at night or during cloudy days. It might be because insects that spread their pollen aren't active then. Closing at night may also protect the pollen from unwanted pests.

This opening and closing is a great metaphor for our own processes of becoming more whole. Some days we remain open-hearted and flexible, and some days we need to close up, guard our growing, and not share our truth or our tentative understandings. Such musing reminds me of one of my favorite poems during spiritual direction training. Whether or not you are religious, and even though de Chardin wrote some 95 years ago, this poem contains much wisdom appropriate for today. 

The poem contains the same message that was offered to me by wisdom teachers and what I offer to others: be gentle with yourself and observe nature. Observing nature helps us hold things gently. Life is beautiful and fragile. If you would never force open or punish a bud for not blooming fast enough why would you do the same to yourself? Everyone who observes nature knows prying open a bud or chrysalis brings instant death for flower and butterfly. Linger over this poem, translate it into a soul language that fits where you are, and then go out and enjoy some nature as you celebrate your becoming.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Fridays with Starry Meadows

   

For those friends who aren't on Facebook or Instagram, I've decided to include my postings there on this blog, here every Friday.  "Friday's with Starry Meadows - 

Sixty acres of meadows, stars, woods, and quiet. For contemplatives, writers, nature lovers, bird watchers, and tired folks to come rest and restore.

Starry Meadows posts typically include a little bit of wisdom for the soul, some deep thoughts or environmental prompts to tickle or challenge the mind, and many invitations to slow down, smell some flowers, take in the natural beauty around you and fall in love with the world, it's creatures, our kin, the earth, our home.  

All photos are mine unless labeled otherwise.  Enjoy! 

Starry Meadows  - May 11

“Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb.”
― Macrina Wiederkehr

The above is just beautiful. What if we all lived this simple truth on a daily basis? Can you imagine how the world would change, people be more respectful of the earth and nature around them, be more kind to each other and themselves, and more humble too?

Macrina has inspired much of my own love for ordinary beauty and holiness. Sadly, she recently died, and to honor her life and the influence she had on me, I will post a quote, saying, or poem from Macrina this week. I absolutely loved her book Seven Sacred Pauses, and the CD to go with it; her lovely poems and calls for sacred pauses put to music and sung by Velma Frye. One of my favorite authors, she was a beautiful spiritual guide, retreat leader, and wise woman.

Photo:  Chipping Sparrow nest

Starry Meadows   May 12 at 5:00 PM · 

“O God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no 

matter how beautiful it is.”

― Macrina Wiederkehr

Photo: Sunset Sky, Coral Honeysuckle 

Starry Meadows

May 13 at 6:00 AM 

“Inevitably someone will ask me about the word mindfulness with a tone of caution, suggesting that this is a Buddhist concept. It is true that Buddhists have long been faithful to the practice of mindfulness, but striving to live mindfully is a universal quest and belongs to us all. Living mindfully is the art of living awake and ready to embrace the gift of the present moment.”
― Macrina Wiederkehr, Seven Sacred Pauses: Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day

Photo: Nuthatch fledglings hovering together on the ground below their nest, found near the meditation path at Starry Meadows

Starry Meadows   May 14  at 6:00 AM · 

"What beautiful task are you being called to this day? Getting up in the morning and waking up are not necessarily the same event." ~ Macrina Wiederkehr

http://macrinawiederkehr.com/awakening-to-a-new-day/2387

Photo: Columbine

Starry Meadows   May 15  · 

"Each morning night's curtain opens to a new day." Macrina Wiederkehr

When you awake each day I invite you to meditate for five minutes on the privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think and appreciate, to wonder and love.

Photo: "Mountain Morning" by Kim Landis

The Welcoming Practice - Welcoming and Releasing Fear in a Pandemic

One of my favorite calming places - the hill beside our driveway at Starry Meadows 

One of my favorite contemplative practices is more challenging in this pandemic. It is meditating with the Welcoming Prayer by Father Thomas Keating. 

One line of the prayer catches me now - "I let go of my desire for security and survival."  I struggle to know what letting go of my desire for security and survival looks like and feels like.  Sometimes my mind wants to run wild with catastrophic thoughts or take control by deciding yet more ways to protect my family and/or build our immune systems. Other days, I easily flow with the realization of how little control I have over things and I'm content to live fully and gratefully in the moment. 

I know it's not the pandemic that I welcome, but my responses to it, including the fear of my family not being secure and surviving. First I acknowledge or welcome what arises, then I work my way through it before I can let go of it. This is a process, not something instant. I can practice at any time, but especially when my mind starts to spin, which often makes fear arise. Then, I can sink deeper, knowing my deepest, truest self is not my thoughts. I am so much more than my thoughts! There is beauty, calm, empathy, trust, stillness, compassion, truth, hope, goodness, safety, and wisdom down in my depths, where I commune with Spirit. So I just keep practicing the prayer and allowing my truest self to bubble up. That becomes the spacious place I live from rather than living from the surface, the thoughts and stories my mind circles around.

Cynthia Bourgeault wrote about the welcoming prayer and calls it the Welcoming Practise. Her version has three steps:

1. FOCUS OR 'SINK IN' to become aware and physically present to the particular experience or upset. Bring your attention to what is happening as a sensation in your body. Without analyzing or judging yourself or your state, inwardly tune into what is happening as the physical embodiment of the experience. Don’t try to change anything at this stage – just stay present. This will help to avoid drawing mental-cognitive conclusions, and will also ground you in the body’s experience rather than repressing what’s arising. By engaging with this awareness to sensation over time it can help us become more attentive to moments of constriction and unconscious reactivity.

2. WELCOME  Welcome and lightly name the response that is being triggered by a difficult situation (such as “fear” or “anger” or “pain”). Acknowledge the response as sensation, and recognize that in this moment, if the experience is not being rejected or repressed, it can be endured.  Ever so gently, begin to say ‘welcome’ (such as “welcome fear”, etc…) Though this step is counter-intuitive and the impulse is most likely to try to push away the unpleasant emotion, Cynthia explains “…by welcoming it instead, you create an atmosphere of inner hospitality. By embracing the thing you once defended yourself against or ran from, you are actually disarming it, removing its power to hurt you or chase you back into your smaller self.”

The flow of energy shifts almost immediately, becoming more spacious, and defenses can relax sufficiently to allow new perspectives or more positive responses to emerge.

3. LET GO   Transition to a ‘letting go’, whereby the intensity of the situation can recede. This enables the natural fluidity of sensation to come and then go. In the classic welcoming practice methodology there are then four statements that you can employ and recite to yourself at this stage:

I let go of my desire for security and survival.
I let go of my desire for esteem and affection.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire to change the situation.

As Cynthia puts it, “This is not a final, forever renunciation of your anger or fear; it’s simply a way of gently waving farewell as the emotion starts to recede.”  


Resources for Bourgeault's welcoming practice - 

https://wisdomwayofknowing.org/resource-directory/the-welcoming-practice/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bClyhR2ZPc&feature=youtu.be

What is your favorite practice during difficult times? 

For Bored Hunker-Downed Kids ~ Backyard Wildflower Treasure Hunt

Wildflower Backyard Treasure Hunt!

Hey kids, see if you can find these common weeds and flowers. 

During this pandemic, go outside for some nature sleuthing. 

Keep your distance from other nature sleuths, and wear a 

mask if needed, but get outside for some fresh air and 

sunshine! Celebrate earth day tomorrow or any day! Enjoy the 

birds and plants of the earth. Send me your happy hunting 

photos or checked off ‘finds.’  

   1. Ground Ivy  

Tiny flowered ground cover. Look 

under the grasses on edges of 

flowerbeds or under bushes/trees. 

Other names: gill-over-the-ground, creeping charlie, alehoof, tunhoof, catsfoot, field balm, and run-away-robin. It is also sometimes known as creeping jenny.  Isn’t it pretty?

2.  Henbit Deadnettle  -    This is everywhere! Look in 

flowerbeds and besides sidewalks or driveways.

3. Red Deadnettle or Purple Deadnettle  

 Same as Henbit but has red leaves on top

4. Dandelion    My second favorite childhood flower. I spent hours putting the stems in ice water to watch them curl.

5. Garlic mustard  Invasive. Feel free to pull plants out when you find them. And pop off the flowers from the main stem as this crazy plant can set seeds even after being pulled out! 

6. Wild garlic   

 This is everywhere too. It will bloom if it’s not pulled out or mowed. I pull these out too and throw the bulbs in a trash bag so they don’t spread.

7. Common Blue Violet   

 My favorite flower as a child. I picked so many of these for bouquets for my mom. 

8. Wild Strawberry   

These are fun flowers and vines. If you find a patch, maybe you’ll see a box turtle too. They love to eat the strawberries that grow from the flowers. Indian Strawberry is also a wild strawberry, only with yellow flowers.

9. White clover   Bees love clover so wear shoes!

10. Oxalis or wood sorrel has heart-shaped, clover-like leaves.  May not be out until later in the season. 

        

11. Robin’s Plantain 

   White or pink daisy-like flowers that rise high from flat leaves closer to the ground.

Good luck!! Have fun and stay healthy and safe.   

~ Sharon