Category Archives: Awareness

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Beyond

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Do you have a photo which invites the viewer to look beyond? Are there hidden depths in the background? Is the focal point just a framing for the rest of the picture? If it’s not clear why we should look beyond, tell us! Lead us through the story in your photo.

December 22, 2012,  just at dusk.  I am upstairs, in bed, cold, alone.  The world did not end, even though the sun is far away.  I feel disconnected from warmth.  I look out my window.  The neighbors advertise their jolly associations, but I do not belong to that club.  I look beyond…the sky is aflame, fire licks around the turquoise expanse of our atmosphere, the sun invites me to the outer edges of my vision.  There is the belonging, there the community, there the warmth.  Beyond.  The Universe is bigger than we imagine, and so are we.

Beyond

Beyond

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Reckoning Love

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“What’s in a love letter, anyway?” he asked. 

I was in a mood.  A little pouty and weepy, my inner 4-year-old whining, “I just don’t feel special!”  God, why does this keep happening every month?  It’s so ridiculous.   Okay, rather than stuff it and wait for it to go away, I will wrap that little girl in my own arms and listen to her.  She wants to feel loved.  She doubts her self-worth every once in  awhile and wants someone to show a preference for her and please her.  “Little One, you are precious,” I tell her.  I am taking responsibility for caring for this vulnerable one.  Me.  Passing that burden on to anyone else is manipulative and fosters a kind of co-dependency.  I don’t want that any more.  Oh, but I used to rely on it pretty routinely.  I had a husband who, for 24 years, lavished me with gifts and compliments and love letters.   I have been with Steve now for 4 years.  He has never even bought me a greeting card.  I do not want him to be other than he is, and I believe he loves me profoundly.  So, what is the love letter game about?  “What’s in a love letter, anyway?” Steve asked.

Six parts flattery to one part youth…or is that a martini?  So I began to make a list of the elements of a love letter,  Cat Stevens’ song “Two Fine People” running through my brain.  In one column, I put the parts that I know Steve would never embrace.  In the other column, I put the bits that I think he does communicate, albeit in person and not in writing.  The list began to resemble another amusing song: “Title of the Song” (by DaVinci’s Notebook), which you really must click on and listen to if you never have before.      …Now, wasn’t that fun?

So I showed Steve the little orange Post-It note that carried this weighty list.  On the left, I’d written “flattery; promises: to rescue, for future, to provide; declaration of desire”.  On the right I’d written “honesty, appreciation, gratitude, description of how I love”.  I told him that his description of how he loves is unique and authentic to him and doesn’t resemble Cat Stevens’ (“…though Time may fade and mountains turn to sand…’til the very same come back to the land”).  He walked to one of his bookshelves and took down his “Bible”, a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.  “How’s this for a love letter?”  he asked and read from “Song of Myself”:

The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns left;)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.

The little girl opens her wet eyes and looks wide.  Wondering, feeling alive, an equal to the sun and the trees and the birds in the sky and every playmate in the Universe.  Is this not Love, this embrace?  I reckon that it is. 

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Mensch sighting!

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In my post a few days ago, (Oh!  The Humanity!) I sent out a plea for examples of admirable human beings as an antidote to the kind of internet sensations who fail to inspire and instead make me nauseated.   You know what I’m talking about, right?  The rampant  dumbing-down of our species, “urgent” stories of greed and fear and violence and stupidity and pettiness and the like are probably a dangerous toxin to our culture.  Where are the role models who will help us do better and why aren’t we using our advanced media to promote them more often?  For every “Who Wore It Better?”, we could be viewing 5 “Who Lived It Better?” stories.  Why not?

I have enjoyed a morning at work in the kitchen and with the book business while listening to the music of my Mensch of the Day.  This is an artist who has inspired me since my pre-adolescent days, and I’ve only just discovered this live recording from 2 years before his death.  He is the recipient of the 1993 Albert Schweitzer Music Award and the only non-classical musician to be so distinguished.  His humanitarian efforts supported the National Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, The Cousteau Society, and the Windstar Foundation.  The CD I have was a concert for The Wildlife Conservation Society’s 100th anniversary.  Ladies and gentleman…….John Denver: a singer and songwriter whose lyrics ring with authenticity and passion, whose music spans genres from country to pop to blues to rock, and whose commitment to peace and preservation permeated his career.  As a cultural ambassador for the U. S., he visited China, Viet Nam and the Soviet Union and recorded a duet with a Soviet artist, becoming the first American to do so.  In my mind, he follows in the footsteps of another hero of mine, Pete Seeger, who, at 93, is still active in the same kind of musical ambassadorship that promotes cultural tolerance and environmental responsibility.  I did have the privilege of hearing him give a concert for children when I was in my single digits. 

Who will carry the torch when he passes away?

To read more about the Schweitzer Award, see http://www.anchor-international.org/07.html.  For more about John Denver’s career, see http://learningtogive.org/papers/paper349.html.  For a good listen, go to “You Say the Battle Is Over”.

 

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Oh! The Humanity!

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Internet news gives me a stomach ache.  I just feel sick after browsing through photos and videos and stories about cruelty, stupidity, fear, and all kinds of petty, human activity.  I really appreciate bloggers and others who post genuine evidence of our more noble capabilities.  Although, sometimes this is attributed to “angels among us” or some non-human inspiration.  Is kindness not a human trait?  Justice?  Wisdom?  What do we gain by hesitating to credit people for exhibiting these admirable qualities and then splashing our media with all the “awkward” examples we can fit on a screen?  Bleh…I just feel like I’ve been gorging on rancid movie popcorn.  Humans plugged into more and more machinery, morphing into robo-sapiens, give me the same sour taste.  

Please, somebody show me a living mensch!  A human being, acting gracefully.  Are there so few left?  Browsing through my photo file, I realize that only a handful of pictures actually contain people.  Is it because I find beauty in nature and form and so rarely in mankind?  

Here’s one I did uncover.  I took this shot last March.  It shows a retired thespian giving a presentation to school kids on the process of making maple sugar one hundred years ago.  He’s describing hand made tools, telling the story as if he were remembering his boyhood.  He peppers his talk with jokes to make the kids laugh and pay attention.  He is a teacher of old ways, engaging with new minds, passing on a respect for trees.  He’s not doing it for remuneration or applause, he’s doing it because it’s important to him.  And I think he’s a good example.  Can you show me others?  My stomach will thank you!

The old man and the maples

The old man and the maples

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Resolved

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When Steve asked me on Sunday if I’d made New Year’s resolutions yet, I grumbled at him, “I don’t jump on that bandwagon.”  I had a sore throat that turned into a head cold and was definitely sending out the “leave me alone!” vibe.  I make resolutions to do better every single day of my life, and it often becomes an exercise in self-flagellation.  Someone I admire does this kind of thing much better than I do: visit her New Year’s post here. (plugging my daughter’s blog – I typed ‘blugging’ first; suppose I can coin a new word?)  

Actually, Steve and I had spent quite a bit of time last week discussing and deciding on goals for this new year.  We call it “pointing our canoe”.  One of the things I put on my list was to submit something to a publisher every month of this year.  Another thing on our mutual list was to plan a weekly field trip to learn and research and engage in our love of the land (land ethics, land management, environmental education) and to get outside every day for a walk.  I skipped the first two days of this year with a head cold, but I’ve managed in the last couple of days to walk to the car repair shop, the grocery store, the bank, and the cafe where we breakfast with his mom.  Now, this might not sound like a big accomplishment, but let me add one bit of info – I live in Milwaukee.  And this is what is forming outside my upstairs window:

tri cicle

That, my dear readers, is a tri-cicle (three-pronged icicle; just coined another word – where do I collect?) photographed through the screened window.  The center section of this bad boy is about 4 feet long now.   This is what outside is like here, and this is where I want to be every day.  I don’t want to make it more comfortable, I don’t want to avoid it.  My resolution is all about facing the world as it is and appreciating its wonder as a thing that I don’t comprehend or control.

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Happy New Year 2013

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The bottle of champagne remains unopened. 

New Year's 2013

Steve had a headache; I have a head cold.  We talked about celebration and seriousness, listened to Medieval motets and re-read John Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes.  We watched The Apartment again, and fell asleep shortly after midnight, listening to music.  Thich Nhat Hahn talks of birthdays and other milestones simply as “continuations”.  Life goes on; time is our own invention.  There will be another occasion for champagne.  Today we slept and listened to our bodies healing.

NYE table

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
   For those that here we see no more;
   Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
   And ancient forms of party strife;
   Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
   Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
   Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

from In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
blogged by thousandfold echo
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Winter Holy Days

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The world did not end yesterday. We are in a new cycle, heading closer to the Sun once more.

In years past, I would have spent this day at an Episcopal church, practicing with the choir, ushering my children through the Christmas pageant, greeting friends, and sneaking private moments in the candlelit darkness whispering devotions to Jesus and His Father. I would have sent more than a hundred letters through the mail to people far and wide with Scriptural messages and personal anecdotes illustrating the great salvific actions of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of the world. I would have asked for and promised prayers for numerous specific ailments and misfortunes. I would have spoken and written my heartfelt greetings using words like “blessings”, “gifts”, “faith”, “Emmanuel” and “Savior”.

 This year is different.

 I have no tree; I have no gifts wrapped and waiting; I have not sung a hymn or carol; I have no creche with empty manger awaiting the figure of a baby. I am the same person, though, with the same heart and breath and life blood. I use a different language now to try to express my deepest hope for peace and love to rule my life and the lives of those with whom I share this planet. I no longer profess to know a single Truth; I no longer presume to belong to a select portion of humanity; I no longer pretend that the concepts in my brain adequately reflect very much at all of reality.

 The posture I hope to adopt is openness. To face the world, the people in it, the marvel of change and mystery beyond my control, without hiding behind a mask or label or system, is a severe challenge. Had I not already buried a husband, fledged a flock of four, sold a home I had for 20 years, and left employment, I might not believe that I could live without clinging to conventional structure. I test my ability to be flexible, graceful, alive and aware every day. I hope to learn. I hope to grow. I hope to love the world (and myself) more genuinely as I do. This is my holy quest, and every day is a holiday. I celebrate the mingling of material and spirit, the incarnation of life in the substances of Earth. I will eat and drink and hug the bodies of people I love with festive joy as before – but differently.

 I include the entire Universe in this celebration. Yes, this means you! Peace to you all. Love, joy, humility and grace be with us all together….scillagrace.

front porch view

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Surprise!

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Life continues; a new cycle begins.  It’s the shortest day of the year.  Imagine our ancestors noting the the diminishing of  light and wondering anxiously if the sun would return…and it does!  We are so used to “knowing” all this that we can grow so jaded and incapable of surprise and awe.  But why not retain the ability to be surprised, delighted, bowled over by the wonder of Life?!  And also to include Death in that cycle.  One of my favorite passages from Walt Whitman (from Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself”):

“What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

Looking through my files of photos, I found two that I remember as being surprising moments of serendipity, both of which are of birds.  Birds are surprising.  They alight and fly off at their own whim, so catching one on camera is a gift.  The first shot is one I took with the little Lumix when a hawk landed in the maple tree right outside my bedroom window.  To have this elegant wild predator just a few feet from my hidden wide-eyed face was a real treat.  I had to take the shot through a dirty window, but still…

hawk surprise

This second shot is one I took the first time I went to a State Park with my brand new Canon Rebel T3i in hand.  Sandhill cranes were flying overhead, and I took a chance that perhaps with this new camera, I would actually get a clear image.

cranes

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Peace on Earth

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Yesterday was a very sad day for me.  I was following up on a news article I read a few weeks ago about indigenous Americans purchasing sacred land in the Black Hills.  I was happy that they had raised the $9 million they needed, but I was led deeper into the story and watched a TED talk and slide show that made me very emotional.  Then the breaking news stories started flooding the internet.  Gun violence, death, fear, suffering, blame.  A hurting world in sudden outbursts of information and misinformation.  Another seemingly random mass shooting. 

Do no harm.

I suppose that is an impossible task.  Everywhere we tread, we harm something.  It’s our responsibility to be aware of that.  What is the positive alternative?  Make peace.  What if there were mass ‘peace’-ings instead?  What if the media covered screens with healing stories of kindness, of love, of compassion, of good will?  What if our every breath was tuned toward acceptance and wholeness?  What would that look like?

Imagine.  A group of people, young and old, of all colors, surrounds a school where young minds are developing ideas of the world.  The students are beginning to formulate their own opinions about the world and whether it is a place of fear or not.  These opinions will shape their interactions and responses for years to come.  And the students hear from their open windows a sound that begins to grow…it starts with a single voice.  It is singing a clear melody in an ancient language…”Dona…nobis…pacem…”.  Another voice joins in.  The tune is spread, broader, higher, deeper, from voice to voice.  A child inside the school picks up the cue and begins.  And another…and another.  The music blankets the classrooms, the cafeteria, the hallways, the offices.   “Dona nobis pacem”…”Give us peace”.  Peace is given, shared, lived, spread.  This is how the world changes from a place of fear begetting fear to a place of safety and love. 

What world do you want to live in?  Click here to listen to the melody.  Join in, with your voice, with your breath, with your life.  Imagine that spreading like news to a hurting world. 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

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I do a lot of reflecting in my mind.  Every so often, I also do it with my camera.  This week’s photo challenge prompts me to share a few shots.  It’s not coincidental, probably, that my reflections show the natural world off some man-made surface.  A window.  A puddle in the pavement.  How often do you feel that you’re looking at real life through the rear-view mirror?  What is it that keeps you from turning fully around and facing it head on? 

reflections

reflections 2