Let Your Breath Fill the Space

Out of frost-white meadows
of Scotch broom
tall firs rise ghost-like
over the interstate
gray aside naked poplars
their tops disappearing
like breath into
foggy mystery
white on white on white.

Gulls fly out
from the mystery
beyond the yoga window
for once hushed
and silently glide
over mist that floats
like breath
above the still lake
breath on breath on breath.

Fog. I love it. It creates space within me by shutting out all the distractions that are “out there.” It is foggy often here in my new old home. Many days I awaken just to the space extending to the first line of trees. No valley floor, no hills, no mountain, no town lights, no sky. Just me, my breath, and the ghostly trees.

The times in my living when I have felt my most authentic self, are the times I am in the spaces. Sitting high in the big leaf maple tree of my childhood, walking alone in the woods and to and from the school bus stop; sitting at a campsite by a river in the Appalachians, hiking around Mt. Rainier with only the birds and animals for company, driving across the expanses of this land. It is then that I am most awake, most aware, most connected. Yoga teachers remind us often to stay connected to our breath. The breathing that makes space in our chest and between our vital organs. Perhaps it is that reminder that makes me aware of the space as I drove to the coast last Sunday. 

The sky dawns blue, but a mist lingers above the frosty ground and cold lake and escapes from my mouth, reminding me again of the life-giving breath. Hoarfrost clings to all that is cold, tiny ice crystals expanding the chain link fences, vegetation, even spider webs into the space surrounding them. I am as aware of that space as I am of the objects. I look at the webs and see the spaces between the thickened strands. The ducks float in and out of the mist, taking up tiny silent space in the expanse of water. I drive out of town past the poplar plantation. The frosted trees glistening against the azure sky are beautiful, but it is the perfect empty spaces extending in straight rows in all directions that keeps me riveted as cover the mile of road between them and me, until I am beneath them and see only the unoccupied space. The swans standing in the marsh, perhaps sensing my presence watching them from the side of the road, slip soundless into the water, gliding into space among reflections. Even the frozen trickles of water dripping from the rocks are motionless, waiting, patient in the drop zone between their origin and their destination, taking time to breath before the warmth of another day sends them on their continuing tumble.

Perhaps it is the connection to space that often keeps me tuned into themes. Like this week, beginning with my road trip and continuing through the many foggy days. On Wednesday, as I drive to yoga through thick fog, the trees keep a sentinel watch over the mystery hiding in the unseen space.

In yoga, amazingly, the theme for the week is “letting your breath fill the space.” Inhale into your abdomen, bring your inhale up to your chest, expanding as you go to make space...drop your thoughts to your heart...use the strength behind your heart....

On Thursday evening, at the drawing class I made space in my life for, the lesson is on negative space. We practice drawing the space around the subject, rather than the subject itself. When the spaces are all drawn, the rocking chair and the big-horned sheep and Frida Kahlo magically appear out of the emptiness of the paper.

My sister sends me a blog post this week: “Breathe deeply. Our breath is our most immediate and vital connection to the life force that sustains us moment by moment. Let yourself be filled with awe and wonder at the marvels of this intimate gift.” Breathing, filling the space with nothing but our breath. As I write this post, my phone signals an incoming message from my other sister. She is struggling with her ongoing love/hate relationship with technology. She can’t send email from her new computer and she would like to not care. She is wistful for the lost days of simplicity (except it wasn’t really, of course) when everything was done with pen and paper and the phone was not so damned smart and stayed connected to the wall and didn’t even have an answering machine to tell you what you missed. There was more space, more time to breathe when we weren’t connected every moment of the day and night.

I catch up on my daily email from Writers’ Almanac and find this poem from one of my favorites, May Sarton, excerpted from “New Year Resolve”:

The time has come

To stop allowing the clutter

To clutter my mind

Like dirty snow,

Shove it off and find

Clear time, clear water
.
...
 
For it is now or not

As old age silts the stream,

To shove away the clutter,

To untie every knot,

To take the time to dream,


To come back to still water.

The time is now to embrace the space, to concentrate only on the breath, to find the strength in the space behind your heart. The time is now to discover what makes your heart leap up.  The time is now to create space for possibility; to make space for mystery.

There is a Portuguese saying that I used many years ago as a salutation on letters (both the pen and paper type and the electronic): Tomando canta. It non-literally means to take care; to drink care, perhaps to breath care; to fill oneself up with special and gentle attention. Drop your thoughts and your breath to the space around your heart. Spend time there.

Tomando canta, my friends.

Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

-Mary Oliver

I rise early this morning of mornings, in the dark, and hurry to the cemetery; following, not the star in the east, but the rising sun. Which, now that I think about it, is a star in the east. I want to be there, under the big sky, before it begins its ascent. As I walk, then wait and watch, I find myself wondering about those for whom the Christian story of Christmas is not part of their story and whose family--if they have one--is scattered on this morning. No loved ones to share the morning. No wide-eyed children to watch. No dinner to collaborate over, or people with whom to eat, drink, and be merry. I wonder what this day is about for them. Mostly memories reaching back to their own children's childhood; or perhaps farther, to their own.

That describes my day this year. But I am not sad. The Christmas story is a part of my present every year. Granted, the story is a fantastical one, and many scoff at it, or just don't think about it. But I am glad that I love it. The baby comes every year, an annual big reminder of the presence in my life of the One Who is More. I am sad for, and a little mystified by those who don't believe in a power larger than themselves, whatever they might call it. Call it The Big Fat Far-Fetched Mystery, whatever. It doesn't matter. But believe in something. “It’s not hard to find your way to God. God is pretty easy to get to from just about any hike up a mountain or walk along some creek. There is nothing more to say, only that to do” (Pie Town, Lynne Hinton).


I  found this poem by Mary Oliver recently and have been watching for the things that nearly kill me with delight and leave me in the light, not just at Christmas, but every single day. I leave work early one day and enjoy a Peppermint Mocha Latte and watch children playing on the too-warm-for-December afternoon. The little girl in the Christmas tights nearly kills me with delight. A chance meeting with a fox in the cemetery thrills me. And the flower deliveries tug my heartstrings early one morning before work. Friends gather in my hearth room to celebrate the darkness of the winter solstice and I feel the warmth. I walk to Food Lion on Christmas Eve for evaporated milk for pumpkin pudding for Christmas feasting and encounter a cacophony of crows on the shortcut through the pine grove. Their own family gathering, perhaps. I return from the less familiar east of my house to the cheeriness of my Global Purple front door and notice it again for the first time. I am delighted with it. The Lenten rose is opening. In December. After candlelight at church last night, I drive by the bedecked Governor's Mansion, admiring the beauty of opulent light. I walk through Historic Oakwood and two young girls, perhaps home from college, call from the porch swing across the street to come in "It's a party! And," they say, "you are dressed so cute!" I am filled with the light! I pull into the drive of my very own mansion with its simple light; I am Home. I go inside and build a fire. Peace. Goodwill to all. I rise early to follow the star. I am overcome with the magnificence of the return of the light.

May Sarton said, “Solitude is the richness of self; loneliness is the poverty of self.” I am feeling rich this morning. To my dear friends who are alone, I hope you are feeling rich, too.

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.