Watching for Openings

The full moon kept me awake Wednesday night. Well, probably too much caffeine kept me awake, but the moon entertained me. It was a mostly cloudy night after a partly sunny day. There wasn’t much open space for the moon, but it was trying. I first noticed it about ten o’clock, after I turned out my light. The moonrise was stage left, behind the house and the trees; but its spotlight cut a swath over the valley, as brightly as its sister sunrise greets the day. And then it was gone. Too much cloud cover.

At eleven o’clock, tossing and turning, I turned toward the window again. The moon had found an opening and the pale orb slid silently into it, peering out at the earth below. “Oh. Wow.” I said. Yes, out loud. I left my bed and slipped barefoot out into the warm somewhat humid night to be in the presence of the mystery. Back in bed, I watched as the moon passed by the cloud hole, or the cloud hole passed by the moon, and was gone again. It found one more opening, caught behind the fir tree, then that was it. I kept opening my eyes to look for it – that’s the part where the moon kept me awake – but the rain started soon after that and it did not reappear. I finally drifted to sleep and dreamed of openings.

The sun has been shining all week. Except Wednesday – yoga day, drive to Olympia day – it was supposed to rain. It rained Tuesday night and again Wednesday night, so I guess that fulfilled the forecast. I don’t quite have the terminology here down yet: when a day qualifies as partly cloudy, mostly sunny, mostly cloudy, partly sunny. But Wednesday was all the above. The sky (unlike today, which is all blue, and I am writing outside) was constantly changing. It is one of the things I love about this place. Anyway, it did not rain during daylight hours on Wednesday as the clouds shape-shifted in and out; an opening I needed.

My day in Olympia always opens me up, especially when it is not overcast and foggy (though I love that too): the drive through the prairie where the sky is big, the tall straight firs point all eyes upward, and there are glimpses of Mt. Rainier on a clear day. Puget Sound’s Budd Inlet pushes its finger into the city and beckons me out into the open water and on to the vast open ocean. Another day I will follow that call. And yoga always opens my breath and my body that somehow get closed off and tight the rest of the week.

I like to read other people’s blogs, to see what is on their minds and where I might find inspiration (another word for opening). I discovered some new ones this week. One told a story about children’s soccer games, and how children huddle around the ball as it moves up and down the field. Bumblebee Ball we called it when my children were new players and the team swarmed around the queen – mostly watching the best player kick the ball around. It is not a winning form of play. The team the blogger talked about, though, was the best kindergarten team in the league. What was the secret? Why was there no swarming? The coach told them to look for open space; the coach said that was where they would find the opportunity. “Oh. Wow.” I said. Yes, out loud. I’m contemplating on that one.

One of my favorite bloggers, Amelia, has been following a challenge to post something on her blog, Wake Up and Write, everyday during March. Speaking of looking for the opening. When you blog regularly, or write a morning sentence, carry a camera everywhere you go, or do anything creative with discipline, you really have to watch for openings. It takes a certain awareness of life that otherwise might go unnoticed. Amelia has been writing around the theme, “One Pilgrim’s Progress.” This poem, Being a Pilgrim by Mark Nepo, has been her opening into the practice this month:

To journey without being changed


is to be a nomad.


To change without journeying


is to be a chameleon.


To journey and to be transformed


by the journey

is to be a pilgrim.

 
We are all on a journey, there is no getting around that. The challenge, I think, is to recognize it as opportunity. To be transformed is to allow ourselves to watch for the openings and have the courage to move into them.

It is Easter. Easter is a time for transformation, for openings, for new life. It is not just a day. In the liturgical calendar it is a whole season. Lent is past (though personal Lent may go on for a while longer), and it is time to watch for Easter openings. Maybe it is time to ramp up the journey, to check the map, to exchange the old map for a new one. Another blog I found this week, thanks to another blogging friend, Joanna, introduced me to some opening up questions. I’m going to be studying on them in the next weeks.

What is my unique purpose?

How am I releasing the magic of the moment?

How am I venturing into uncertainty?

How am I focusing the power of my intent?

How am I supporting growth?

How am I learning to see the invisible?

How am I returning my gift?

How am I keeping my energy clear and bright?

Happy Easter openings, whenever and wherever you discover them.

I am leaving this week to embrace spring in North Carolina (though I’m no longer sure it has anything on spring in the PNW), to visit friends and old haunts, and to squeeze my grandsons. I will take a two week break from My View from the Garden to give my spirit an opportunity to watch for new openings.

Shellfish

It might be more appropriate to title a blog post on Easter Sunday something having to do with new life, or resurrection, or something equally Eastery. And crustaceans do not apply. But shrimp are not really what's on my mind.

I have frequently referred to, and thought of, myself as selfish. I crave solitude. I love silence. I like solo activities like writing, walking, reading, gardening. I don’t volunteer. I don’t join clubs or book groups. I don’t hesitate to say “no” to invitations, even from friends, when it intrudes on my plans with myself. (I am trying to get better on that last--I need and love my friends.) I feel bad about my selfishness. Both of my sisters and my mother are generous women; what, I wonder, happened to that gene in me? My mother has always put others ahead of herself and her needs. I daresay she has never even honestly asked herself if that is what she needs.

Then, yesterday, I read Julia Cameron’s thoughts on the topic (Walking in this World). "We get our lives wrong because we get our questions wrong. We get our questions wrong because we have been raised in a culture that is punishing to the forms of freedom necessary for artists to flourish. These freedoms are the ones that allow us to be a little less nice so that we can be a little more genuine... It is my considered opinion that most creative people are actually too selfless... 'Selfish enough' gives us the self for self-expression... For an artist, being too virtuous is no virtue at all. It is destructive and counterproductive."

Wow. I have a hard time thinking of myself as an artist or a writer. I do consider myself creative, however. And I know when I don't have time to create, I am out-of-sorts. I can't squeeze it in between life and life's activities. It is life to me. (And maybe someday I can call myself an artist or writer. For now I am grateful to others who name it for me.)

I am so glad there are people in this world whose passions revolve around improving quality of life for other people. They are the heroes of the earth. Can I let it be okay that I am not that selfless? And could I start by not referring to myself with a word I consider a "bad person" word? Not selfish, in touch with my inner self. Sharing myself in a way tuned in to that inner me.

On Maundy Thursday,  at Pullen's evening service, I read the Matthew text about Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane, as I have for several years now. I know that people who have a need to categorize people have figured out what Jesus' Myers Briggs Inventory letters are. It doesn't really matter to me. If he was an introvert, he had highly evolved extrovert skills. If he was an extrovert, he was in tune with his need for solitude. I love this text, Jesus is so human in it. He is angry. He is afraid. He wants his life to go in another way, and he asks that it be so. And he accepts who he is. He asks his friends for "me time." In that moment, he is not there for them, he is taking care of his own needs. Did that make him selfish?

The MT service at Pullen includes foot-washing. Maundy meaning mandate, and Jesus mandating the importance of the symbolic act of foot-washing. I was honored to wash the feet of someone who had until this week, held back from this ritual. He told me later that he was prepared for the gift of washing my feet--the humble servant part--but he was surprised by the pleasure of receiving. I think many of us think it's selfish to enjoy receiving gifts. Begone with that idea, I say. I have suggested to my mother that if she can't bring herself to ask for what she needs, think of the people she is depriving of the opportunity to give. Better, though, to just sit back and allow oneself to be ministered to. And that includes ministering to oneself.

Lent is my season. I recognized that several years ago. I relish the quiet and introspection that the spiritual season asks of us. And I love being in the garden in the cold, when everything in the natural world is happening out of sight. And then slowly and quietly life sneaks back in. If we are dancing about the garden, we miss it. It is when we are quietly watching and waiting that we begin to notice a sprout here, a bud there. A bird song piercing the quiet, and the answering call from a distant roost.

New life happens for me at the end of Lent, again and again. It is, at first glance, coincidental and uncanny. But really it is not. It is my season. It is synchronicity. It is my self in touch with my world.

And now it is Easter. New life. Time to go back out. I wept through a singing of "In the Garden" this morning. Then went out and bought the garden a gift. A calla lily. As it turns out, a calla lily is neither a calla nor a lily. And I am not a shellfish. I am off to the garden. Alleluia!

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And he walks with me and he talks with me

And he tells me I am his own

And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Resurrection

This is undoubtedly the first Easter in my life that I will not spend in a church of walls. I thought it would feel uncomfortable, empty, unfamiliar. But I feel set free. Free to meet the One Who is More in ways more creative and meaningful to me. As my dear friend so eloquently says, "Resurrection isn't only about dead Jesus." Even though sermons may try to make us see the connection between dead Jesus and our own resurrections, I think I need to let go of the attachment to The Resurrection to see it. Of course since I work at a church, and created three bulletins for Holy Week and read about Jesus in the Garden at the Maundy Thursday service, it's been a little hard to get away from dead Jesus. But today I am letting it go and looking for a different relationship with resurrection.

My childhood Easters were what all childhood Easters are: bunnies, colored eggs, and a new outfit for church. In my youngest years the new outfit may have included a straw hat and patent leather Mary Janes. Later there were corsages from my daddy to his "four fabulous females." One memorable outfit in my middle childhood years was a two-piece sailor-type affair made of bonded knit. (Whoever thought that fabric was a good idea?) And there was the pink mohair sweater. I was a goddess. I bought a new ensemble a couple weeks ago. I'm calling it my resurrection outfit; since Easter implies church. And, did I mention, I'm not going.

Today is daughter Emma's birthday. Her birth was due on Easter Sunday, but she was four days late. According to a Google search, 2011 is the first of only two times between 1875 and 2124 that her birthday will fall on Easter. (The next time she will be 101.) That was a happy Easter, anticipating her birth. Happy Birthday, Emma. Another was the Easter Sunday my family moved from Starkville, Mississippi. After church. Now that was resurrection.

Unlike birth, re-birth implies a prior death. We all experience mini-deaths on a regular basis. Hopefully we don't stay dead, but sometimes resurrection takes longer than other times. Relationship death may be the hardest to come back from. Just when we think we are there, we have to die again. But each time we work through it, we come back a little bit more alive; a little bit more ourselves. In the garden yesterday I finally cut out the garbage shrub that has been the huge gardenia's dance partner for, no doubt, decades. They were co-existing, and had even grown to look a bit alike; but the trash shrub grew faster and I had to keep trimming it back to size. The gardenia bloomed, but wasn't reaching her full potential because she gave some of her power to her partner. It was time for it to go. Its absence leaves a hole in the gardenia, but eventually she will fill it with more of herself. And I didn't get all the shrub, so as not to leave too big a hole all at once. (I am not even going to fill out that metaphor; I'm sure, anyone who has ever experienced death of a relationship knows exactly what it is.) Pruning is necessary in the garden, and in life. Emotions, expectations, disappointment, attachments to what was and what we thought would be, become overgrown to the point of blocking the way for space to grow something new.

Yesterday my too-young-to-be-a-great-grandmother neighbor complimented me on my patio. She says she thinks I can do just about anything. Then she amends it to she thinks women can do just about anything they set their sights on. I say I agree, and that too often we give our power away when there is a man about. (I don't say it, but there are women we give our power to as well.) She says "And they are happy to take it." The secret is not to avoid relationship, but to hang on to our power.

I have been attached to my garden coming into the fullness of its potential. Some sort of wildlife is attached to breakfast in my garden. I have declared war on bunnies at Easter. Now a friend suggests a deer. I am not convinced a deer is negotiating the street, but my friend is right...it's a lot of munching for rabbits, and when the peony provided the meal the other night, I admit to having to look at taller possibilities than the Easter Bunny. I am relating to my mother's ongoing war with deer. Over the years her garden has been more a shrine to deer repellent techniques than to anything else. I may have to learn to go of that attachment to what I want. But not just yet.

Just like the biblical women didn't expect an empty tomb and a re-born Jesus, there are things (besides four-legged diners) in my garden that I didn't expect. The peony I rescued from English ivy a couple years ago has many buds on it for the first time. (Though not as many as it had two days ago--see above.) I planted two alum bulbs last fall and forgot about them. When something came up with what looked more like an after-blossom seed pod than a bud, I couldn't figure out what it was and how I missed the bloom. Until it started to crack open, and then I knew. By the end of this day of resurrection I expect it will be fully open. I thought the sixth rose I planted was a dud; but it is just a bit slower than the others. All in its own time. Things that look like they won’t be coming back, have a way of showing up when you least expect it.

After months of dreading my office change, I have been occupying new space for the past week. Space with a window. Light. Returns to my basement office feel like revisiting my personal Auschwitz. How did I bear for all these years? Not very well, actually; but there was the knowledge that it was mine, and it was familiar if not beloved. New and unknown places are hard to anticipate. But change is often the opening resurrection needs. And when we jump into the crack, we open ourselves to possibilities.

"And time remembered is grief forgotten/And frosts are slain and flowers begotten/
And in green underwood and cover/
Blossom by blossom the spring begins." --Swinburne





If you're looking for me, I'm in the garden.