Advent Roses

I never thought I would be looking for signs of spring during Advent, but there I was wandering around the garden this week bent over in uttanasana position peering at the ground. The winter jasmine buds are bursting out all over the bush--a tad early, but not much; they bring me such good cheer. The camellia blooms on, harboring rain drops from a late night rain that I listen to rat-a-tat-tatting on the roof through my open window. What I am surprised to discover, though, is that all

three of the Lenten rose plants have multiple deep purple, not yet opened, blooms. Now that is just ridiculous. I think the early spring must be a sign of... something. I will know what later, perhaps. A lot of waiting happens this time of year. It is Advent, afterall. I also find a still-curled, tiny black-eyed Susan and a bright yellow dandelion. It is in the low 70s most of the week. The mornings are frosty, and the weekend cooler, but forecasts call for mid-60s again on the winter solstice. There will be no white for Christmas. But I will build a fire anyway.

Winter solstice. It is a date that has come to mean more to me than Christmas, or any other holiday. The longest night of the year is a silent date on the calendar. The vast majority of people pay little attention to that which is quiet; I feel like that sometimes in low moments--not paid attention to. And I love that the solstice is tied to the natural world, unlike any other holiday. There are no gifts, no special foods, no traditions associated with it, at least in the Christian world. Well, that last is not quite true. I look forward each year to a small gathering of favorite people who sit by my fire in candlelight with me and absorb, more than observe, the reason for the seasons: the tilt of the earth and its relative position to the sun. In the northern hemisphere the earth is farthest from the sun on this long night.

...There's nothing as dark as night
But nothing so strong as light
Here is the choice: to let it burn out or bright
In a world where fear and force
Have buried the silent source
Can you deny the need for a light like yours...

No dark place no debt and no abuse
Can erase all of the good you do

-Christine Kane The Good You Do

It's so easy for quiet people to not know the good we do. We even tend to overlook or dismiss it in ourselves. Those who are not quiet souls forget to tell us; or maybe they just don't notice, or see no need. I am so grateful this year to all of the dear people who silently do good in their world. And I am so lucky, in part because of this blog, to have received your supportive words. There is no greater gift to me than to know that my thoughts have touched you; and therefore to be able to trust that they spark something in people from whom I do not hear.

I stay home from work on Friday, in need of a good rest. I am on my sofa, under my afghan with tea, when I get a Facebook chat message from dear Katherine in Illinois. (Have I mentioned that I love FB chat?) She asks about my unwellness: "Tired? Fuzzy? Stuffy? Achy heart?" Except she mistypes achy and her computer changes it to "afghan heart." Or maybe she wrote it on purpose, she can't remember. In any case, I love the image. It is exactly what ails me. My soul is in great need of a day under an afghan. I am coining the word. Watch for it on Wikipedia.

Emma and Wynne are visiting my mom this weekend. They cut down, drag in, and help her decorate her Christmas tree. And they send me this picture of the scene that greets them when they get up Saturday morning. The silence of the fog filling the valley, the sun rising behind Mt. St. Helens, is one of the essences of childhood that I feel inside of me whenever I think of it; even way over here on the other side of the world. It is my spirit-definition of silence. As a child, it also defined privilege for me. I dwelt, in those early morning moments, in the sunlight above the fog, while those in town were imprisoned in the darkness. Now, I know, too, the beauty of being one with and in the fog.

I enjoy the birds yesterday, as I sit on the sofa under my afghan (again), knitting baby hats. A new art form for me; I have wearied of scarves. I don't generally keep on doing something I have grown tired of. The titmouse and the chickadee and other feathered friends tap tap tap at the suet feeder on the window, and more birds of more varieties than I have ever seen all at once dine at the feeder. They look annoyed by the paucity of seed available. They should talk to the squirrels and mourning doves about that.

I have mentioned before that one of the great rewards of writing this blog is that I made a new friend. Amelia ran across it when she Googled a reference to an author I had quoted. Amelia lives in Bellingham, Washington (how is that for coincidental karma?). Bellingham is in the far north of Washington, and Amelia is a Head Start teacher extraordinaire. I got to meet her in person last summer. Mostly, though, I know her from her two blogs. One is about her teaching--and learning--as a teacher of at-risk preschoolers (http://onesunflower.wordpress.com); and the other, a newer one, about what she sees all about her (http://wakeupandwrite.wordpress.com). She posted this original poem on Wake Up and Write this week. I think it so beautiful that I want to share it with you.

"Tawny feathered tops of poplars edge the rim of the china blue bowl that is the winter sky.

Frosty air shimmers,

the sun hovers just above the horizon,

gold slipping across fields stripped of harvest,

striped with vines tangled and torn.

A honk sounds,

and rippling lines of white wings like frothy waves,

flow east.

It’s December,

swans herald the coming of winter solstice."

-Amelia Bacon

Observe the solstice this year, on Wednesday night. Light candles, turn out the lights, listen to the silence of the dark.

“...with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the lives of things.” -William Wordsworth

Round and Round and Round and Round

Sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re sad,
But that doesn't matter at all
Take it from me, there's still gonna be
A summer, a winter, a spring and a fall.
The planet spins, and the world goes 'round
And 'round and 'round and 'round and 'round

(Apologies to the lyricist for scrambling the verses.)

Circles. All of life is made of circles and cycles. In this country, of course, we celebrate the beginning of a new year--a new circle--on January first. My soul year, though, begins with Lent, which coincides more closely with the garden year. Since I bought this house and its old neglected gardens, (I first saw it on Ash Wednesday and moved in on Palm Sunday), I began to pay attention to my own cycles. It is this time of year when I look inside myself and gather energy for whatever is coming; when I begin preparing with the garden for a return to life. I have tried to be a summer person; but it is spring when it is all happening; when my soul and the garden are full of excitement at what is happening now, with hope for what is coming next, and with sure knowledge that there is something to be learned. The garden is my teacher.

This year Lent is late; Ash Wednesday is still a week and a half away--later than it has been since I began learning from the garden. But the garden isn't waiting. And neither am I. Just as Lent doesn’t explode onto the scene with the razzle-dazzle of the resurrection, we have to wait for spring and summer for the garden to burst into the fullness of its bloom and potential. Lent, in the garden and in the soul, sneaks in quietly; begging to be observed and reflected upon, but with patient introspection. These are teasing weeks: cold then warm then cold again; still more darkness than light. So some days, when I feel my winter inwardness ready to bust out, and other days when I turn back, I don't despair. Easter is not here yet. But there is plenty happening.

In the garden my Lenten Rose is Crazy With Bloom. I count twenty buds and blooms this weekend, compared to four last week and two last year, and none the year before that. I love the Lenten Rose. It is a plant I was not familiar with until I began my love affair with the garden and started observant walking in my neighborhood. Its foliage remains green through all the seasons, and it blooms during Lent. The dusty deep purple then green then yellow flowers are not a showy burst of color, and they hide under the leaves; but like Lent, it is there for those who are looking for subtle change, for a slow coming out from winter, for the first small sign of resurrection.

Evidence of spring can be seen everywhere. Daffodils and camellias are blooming. Cherry trees in the Village appear this week and light up the gray skies. (Well, the skies haven't been gray much, but they need to be. Rain is in short supply.) The more reticent trees have just a hint of color. But not all the evidence can be appreciated with a drive-by. It is much too subtle. The vinca minor ground cover I planted two years ago has its first periwinkle bloom; I don't notice until I walk up close. The pink feathers of the lorapetalum have opened. The dogwood has buds, and the tight green and purple hydrangea buds of last week are opening into green. The weeping Japanese maple I planted last year has new green branches and tiny pink leaf buds. The sea oats and guara are sprouting from the ground, but I have to peer closely to see it. And, when I brush aside the leaf mulch, I discover purple sprouts of the bleeding heart. But it's not time for everything. There is no sign of the Purple Heart, the hostas, or the peony. I claw through the mulch and check the banana tree. Nothing. I cover it back up. It is still February.

I planned for a Lenten practice this year, but I haven't waited for the liturgical year Lent to begin. I am following my own cycle. I rise early and sit on the deck with my coffee. A cardinal sits in a nearby branch this week and sings for a mate. And each morning a hawk, glides from tree tops across the street into the trees at the back of my yard. I watch it sitting up there. A few minutes later it flies back to the across-the-road trees with building materials its mouth. On Friday it is accompanied by another hawk--its mate perhaps?--and they both return bearing twigs. Preparing. We are all preparing for what comes next.

I have not enjoyed so much the cycle of the box elder bug. They came inside this year, and I have read more than I ever needed to know about the bug's life. They are completely harmless: they do not bite or carry disease, they do not harm plants or eat buildings. They come inside to get out of the cold, and when it gets warm they gravitate to warm places (like my southern exposure, upstairs window) trying to get outside. Though the literature says they do not reproduce inside, and they only live for a few days, it leaves me puzzled as to why they continued to inhabit my window all winter. The literature doesn’t say this, but they are stupid--or maybe just sluggish. They can fly, but they don't; they just let me have my way with them. I probably could open the window and let them escape--since that's what they want; but instead I swat their short lives even shorter and fill the waste basket with their tiny carcasses. At least they are not the ladybugs that congregate in my mother’s sunny windows; they would be hard to kill, what with being so cute and their children burning and all. This week they are all but gone in the house, but hatching--and flying--outside. I can’t like them, but what are they hurting.

Circles and cycles. They don't always follow a lateral line. Take the Crazy With Bloom Lenten Rose. It is in an upward spiral. As are several of the plants I have put in the ground that are strengthening as they become established. Older plants, though, are spiraling downward as they come to the end of their lives. Bulbs planted in the sun, become shaded as other plants grow over them, and experience a failure to bloom. (I have one of those random remembrances this morning of practicing lateral spirals in the long rectangular Palmer Method penmanship books. Do students still learn penmanship? Obviously not. Cursive writing has become a lost art.) I have experienced all the spirals. I think I am in an upward one now. It is opened-ended; I'm not sure where it is headed; or if there is even a destination in our spirals. But upward feels good.

I planted two Euphorbia in one of the first gardens I renovated. I love the name. One of the evergreen plants is doing very well and the other--only two feet away but with just a bit less sunlight--has struggled in a downward spiral. I transplant it this week to a sunnier spot. Sometimes we must transplant ourselves. What might have worked for a while, or might work for someone else, is not so much what we come to need. Lent and early spring are time to pay attention to that. We can see better when there is not so much "noise." Like in the garden, I watch and listen more intensely for what is coming for myself. What needs to be transplanted; what needs to be replaced. I begin opening up to possibility. As I wait for the warmth and the light to come to stay and for the more frantic pace of planting, weeding, and watering to begin, I prepare the garden and myself for another season of growth. We are getting ready, my bloom and I.

May Sarton said, "In the garden the door is always open in to the holy--growth, birth, death. Every flower holds the whole mystery in its short cycle..." Sometimes our soul circles are longer than the garden cycles; some are not contained in a single year, and that makes them easy to overlook. If it has worked for several years, why is it suddenly not working? The truth is, it's not sudden, it just takes time coming to light. More than at any other season, I feel most like a participant in the divine act of creation this time of year. I embrace life more fully as I tune into my cycles. I choose what I want to cut away and what I want to nurture. I dig deep into the soil, enriching it to make it fertile to sustain whatever I decide to plant. I listen, I watch, I start the work. I revel in the beauty, the mystery, and the challenge of my soul garden.

Light Dawns

Light Dawns...I am uncom- fortable with the title. This week has felt anything but light--it has been both dark and heavy; and yet those words, and the evidence of light, continue to leap out at me, if not from me. And besides, it isn't Lent yet, and the light isn't supposed to come until Easter. What will I write at Easter, if light is dawning now? Everything is out of sync. I try in vain to come up with something to write about that makes more sense to me. When I wake this morning I realize that this is what it is going to have to be. So here I go to see if I can discover what I am supposed to learn about light in the dark.

I have nearly reached the light at the end of the tunnel that is work in January. The month from hell lasts well into February. I still have six weeks of filing to do...making new folders and doing the filing are at the end of the tunnel; not to be tackled until I reach the center and head back out into the light. The folders are made and the filing might get done this week, along with other odds and ends. There is an end to both dark and heavy. Two things that redeem my January work are the moments on West Street that begin and end the hours that are sandwiched between my drive to and fro. I watch the sun rise over the city at an hour when most people are not heading to work; sometimes I pull to the curb and watch. And on the way home, after most people are already at home, I drive past the West Street power station. By day it is an ugly tangle of poles and wires and transformers; but after dark it is bathed in periwinkle light that transforms it into a work of art.

The long days are over, so I will miss the sunrise until daylight saving time begins and the morning ride is again at dawn briefly; and the purple light show is done until next winter when the daylight ends early. But something else happens on West Street this week as I drive to work on Wednesday. A slumbering revelation erupts from a place deep enough within me that I have been able to ignore it until now. Tears well up as I realize that I am on my way to a place that has defined my life for nearly ten years, and been an anchor when everything else changed--several times--and I don't want to be there anymore. It disturbs me. It feels dark and scary and very heavy. I don't know what is happening to me. One of those times that a therapy conversation would probably be helpful! And I consider it. (Therapist friend, be on alert. I am aware that people read this blog who will be concerned about my revealing of that thought; but I have vowed to myself to use this space with integrity. And that is where I am this week.)

As has become my custom, I look to the garden to see what I can learn. At the beginning of the week I find four buds on the Lenten rose. Lent is late this year, but apparently the rose is not aware or does not care. Last year it bloomed for the first time, two blooms. I also find a daffodil with swollen buds. When I get home on the day that I broke open, I take my usual tour of the garden. Both the rose and daffodil buds have also burst into bloom. The winter jasmine that struggled through the snowiest winter on record--one bloom-stalk, then three, then six, then four--is in full bloom this week and bathed in light.

The weather this week is spectacular. The "o-Phil-shul" groundhog predicts winter is nearly over, but this is flip-flop-tempting ridiculous! It is February! I have slept with open windows, even turning on the fan the past two nights. It is a good thing I can't see the light from my office; it would have been hard not to be in the garden. But yesterday I was out all day. I have been noticing that my pansies are unusually pretty unusually early this year in spite of an unusually cold winter. I know why that is: for once I pulled out the summer annuals before they were spent, and got the pansies into warm ground. They have bloomed through the winter and they are already increasing in girth. I am pretty sure the garden is telling me something. Sometimes what we have loved needs to end before it becomes unbearable. Too often I have waited for change until it is forced upon me. It seems easier that way. No decisions, no ripping. Or if there is ripping, at least there is the comfort that it wasn't by choice. Not my choice, at any rate.

This weekend, speaking of ripping, I take out the last two bushes in front of my house to prepare for the roses I want to plant. Roses scare me. Some things I read say they are high maintenance. Some rose growers I know say the same. Other say rose-growing scare stories are over-rated; just enjoy them. And my neighbors, whose roses were planted by the woman who renovated the house, do absolutely nothing in their yard (which drives me and my loppers insane) and the roses look great. I thought of roses when I read this yesterday, "We must jump into the unknown to gain insight." (Nicoletta Baumeister) I know nothing about roses, but I am reading and listening to the words of people who do. Roses, life changing decisions, we have to just jump. Not off tall buildings, necessarily. Not without a parachute, necessarily. But jumping with a ball and chain attached to our ankles would not be a good idea. And the anchors that center us can become that when we resist change. Fear of change creates darkness; letting the fear come to light brings tears; and tears, one-by-one break the links of the chain that holds the anchor that tethers us to the known and comfortable before it becomes a deadweight.
 

I get up early one beautiful, warm morning late this week, and sit on the deck with my coffee while the sun comes up accompanied by a chorus of birds and the fresh, lung-clearing air that is unique to this time of day. I can't see the sunrise from my house, but I watch the pre-dawn hazy sky clear to bright blue as the sun casts its light on the tops of the trees. It is so beautiful, my eyes fill. A friend posted this on her Facebook page this week, “Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clearer view again.” (Alex Tan) What is clear in this moment is that I am so lucky to be alive and sitting on this deck in this garden on this morning of this day. Does anything else really matter? Really? What we have for sure is this one moment.

As I push a chunk of sadness aside, to make room for the beauty of the morning, I am surprised at how heavy it is. Other things are heavy: carrying a nine plus pound baby in utero (twice); and then heavier ones in my arms. Hiking mountain trails toting a backpack with supplies for a week. A wheelbarrow loaded with bricks. When we can’t carry them anymore, we set them down. And, in fact, we can’t fully enjoy the baby until we put down the weight and give birth; we can't get what we need out of the backpack until we put it down; we can't use the bricks to create beauty until we move them to the spot of the creation. I can't plant pansies until I pull impatiens and I can't plant roses until I dig out the shrubs and ready the soil. Preparation requires heavy lifting.

The tears I have shed this week over past, current, and anticipated sadness drop away that early morning on my deck; and tears are for the beauty that is in my world. How confusing that beauty (and clarity) can permeate the dark, even though it doesn't always remove it. It was a full moon week. Light and dark co-existing. There is nothing confusing about that. Why am I befuddled when I feel simultaneous joy and sadness within myself? That same friend who posted the quote about tears sent me a text some weeks ago that I wrote down: "Sometimes the sun just wants to make sure we're paying attention, so she sneaks into the day." (Vickie Leigh) The light sneaks into the dark. And without the dark, can there be light? I anticipate a life change in the not imminent, but not-too-far off future; I am preparing. This time it will not be a forced change and I don't know what that looks like. I think it looks like this. Fully enjoying all that makes me happy right here and now; and living in it. Planting roses for someone else to enjoy. At the same time link by link removing the chain that holds the once-comfortable anchor, shedding tears for sadness and for beauty--yes, at the same time--and beginning a letting go bit by bit. As the plants gain strength under ground, so do I. And Easter or not, they bloom when they are ready.