Believing Mirrors

I would rather talk to D at the cafe than write this morning. In part because I don't know what I am writing about; mostly because I enjoy talking to her. We have lost time to make up for after years of seeing each other here and not speaking. We're old friends now.

I am feeling a void this weekend. Dry and uninspired. It is my experience of Lent: everything clears out, and from the quiet void I can see the beginnings of new life.

I do have an inspiring moment at yoga this week. Both Monday and Friday I do chataranga without putting my knees down first. Even as Julie instructs us to go to knees then lower our bodies the rest of the way, I choose the harder route. And I discover the secret: putting my mental energy into my arms. I'm not sure where it was before; I think I was willing my core not to drop me, rather than believing my arms do have the strength to hold me up. I feel super strong.

I read about Believing Mirrors yesterday. "Believing Mirrors reflect us as large and competently creative. They mirror possibility, not improbability." I think, "I can get something out of that to write about." Why do we look in the mirror and say of our physical being, "I am." But of our creative or emotional being so often say, "I can't"? Do we wait until we are some body before we believe in our reflection? Cinderella didn't see her possibility until her reflection included a ballgown. And even then perhaps what she saw was the possibility of a handsome prince in her future, rather than the possibility in her own sparkling self. 

I didn't have much time in the garden yesterday, so I don't get far with my musing. I do see the possibility of the garden, though. I have been watching for the bleeding heart and the ostrich fern to emerge. I almost miss them yesterday. You have to look close to see new life emerging. A scan of the bed from standing height passes right over both. But I bend down to brush dead leaves aside, and there they are. I believe in the bleeding heart and the fern.

The banana tree (are you tired yet of my banana tree?) is such a wonder. It puts out a new shoot--out of last year's stalk--and then we have a freeze and it mushes. Then the sun warms it and it immediately puts out another shoot out of the second frozen one. Then it freezes again, and out of the dead comes yet another new shoot. It simply won't give up. Each foiled try becomes the basis for a new attempt, layer upon layer building promise out of failure.

As a wander in my garden I find two of my trillium up (maybe it will bloom this year), and the dogwood buds just beginning to unfold. They are one of my favorite buds. They reveal themselves so slowly, like the ceiling in a planetarium or the curtains at a peep show, slowly sliding open to divulge the characters waiting to put on the show. As I stand marveling, a male cardinal above me begins calling. An answering call from a female comes from the other side of the garden. They call back and forth, until the neighbor's dog barks at my cat and the male flies off. I hope they find one another again. Toward evening, and again this morning as I lie abed, window open, I hear the hoot of an owl close by and the answer from the distance.

I spend Friday evening with dear friends and good food; sitting on cushions around my coffee table talking about our lives, our futures. And now it comes to me: friends are mirrors of possibility to each other. The see in us what we cannot believe for ourselves. Some people mirror negativity, it is true, calling out the worst in us, or casting doubt on our desire to explore our changing size and creative shape. They want to hold us to what they have known us to be, comfortable and predictable. But these good friends and others in my life over the past few years have been the catalyst for my writing self. They encourage and challenge and love this growing me. I look in the mirror through their eyes and see my ballgown. I can imagine the handsome prince in my future, looking for all the world like a hardcover book.   

I see several hawks overhead through the day, making lazy circles. I wonder what hawks symbolize and look it up before I go to sleep. "The hawk beckons us to hone our focus on the areas that are out of balance in our lives. They move between the seen and unseen realms gracefully connecting both worlds together." There are unseen realms in my near future; the hawk calls me onward, the banana tree inspires me to keep believing when I get cold feet, the bleeding heart and ostrich fern are proof that there is always and forever new life, my friends mirror my possibility--and I hope I show them theirs.

Selah

I love words that roll deliciously around in my mouth--that I can almost taste--before they roll off my tongue, slipping breathlessly into the air, or exploding onto the sound waves. To qualify as a favorite word, it must also have exquisite meaning (that's a good one--exquisite). My oldest and still most favorite is onomatopoeia. A newer one is pentimento; I wrote a post about that one when I learned it. A brand new word, given to me by a friend this week, is paraprosdokian: a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to re-frame or re-interpret the first part. "Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?" Fun.

Another somewhat recent favorite is selah; a word I learned at church a few years ago. Selah is a word from the Hebrew Bible meaning (loosely) to pause in the reading of the text, or the singing of the Psalms. It tells us to pause and think about what we have just heard. A rest in lines of musical text is a selah. Julia Cameron in Walking in this World says: “'Rest' is a musical term for a pause between flurries of notes. Without that tiny pause, the torrent of notes can be overwhelming. Without a rest in our lives, the torrent of our lives can be the same." Selah.

Snow is a selah, covering all the nastiness in the world with a cloak of silent beauty and goodness; forcing us to take a rest and listen to the quiet; to let loose of the torrent of our lives. (We haven't had that this year, sadly.) Rain is a selah in this part of the world. I have often said that the constant sun and blue sky pushes me into more and more activity and exhaustion. Rain gives me permission to stop and take a breath. Selah.

I find a selah at the cemetery when the sun is rising; and in the five sun salutations I do each morning in my upstairs window looking into the Rose of Sharon tree, which today has tiny green nubs of bud that I don't notice when I hurry under it to the car to go to work. When I was a student at the University of Washington I sought out times of selah, though I didn't know the word for it then. One place I found it was in the dorm basement in the "practice rooms" where I went to play the piano for myself. Others played for the world to hear on the grand piano in the lounge. Not me. (I know you are not surprised.) Another was in the study carrels on the top floor of the cathedral-like Suzzallo Library, tucked into the dormers on the edges of the dusty stacks where no one ever went. Selah.

Like snow, fog is a visual selah. We have had fog this week. It hangs around the cemetery stones, and diffuses the sun's rays. Fog softens the world as sky comes down to meet earth and we have to look harder and listen harder to find our way as the outlines that define our markers are blurred. Even the moon loses its definition as it struggles to be seen, or maybe wishes to hide within its own selah, as I did in the practice room and the library. Selah.

I think of selah this week on Leap Day. The day is exhausting and crazy--and I hear that from several people; it isn't just me. And then it comes to me: Leap Day should be a selah--a pause, a day to stop, look, and listen. Instead we make this gift of an extra day every four years just another day to get work done, as we did the day before and the day after. Such a missed opportunity. Our souls need rest, but our egos resist. "Get it done. Produce more. Don't take a break. Go. Go. Go." Selah.

If Advent is adventure, a looking forward with anticipation and excitement for the day the One Who is More will do a new thing in the world, Lent is selah. Lent is a season that begs us to pause; to look closely; to listen. As I have said in this blog throughout past Lents, it is my favorite time both in the garden and in my living. It is a quiet time for me. And because of the quiet I hear the whisperings of my heart. God may do a new thing during Advent, but Lent is when I start noticing it. Selah.

It is not that nothing is happening during Lent--a great deal is happening. It is just subtle, sneaking in on little cat paws. Silently and with great strength pushing this year's giant hosta up through the hard ground in the garden. (It's not pretty, but its time will come.) The Lenten selah is producing buds on the dead-but-not-dead hydrangea canes. The purple anemone is up; and the pansies, happy but not flamboyant like the summer zinnias, continue to bring color to the drab earth, as they have all winter. I find the first azalea buds early in the week, and yesterday some have opened. I am not a fan of azaleas, especially eleven months out of the year; but I do love the magenta ones under my dogwood tree. I hope they don't expire before the dogwood blooms this year. The newly-planted false sea foam has a first opening bloom; the Japanese painted fern and the Jacob's Ladder continue their quiet expansion into the world. Yesterday I also discover the Green and Gold ground cover I planted last year has its first blooms and the Carolina jasmine is turning the porch rail yellow. Selah.

The Lenten garden is mostly close to the ground. Perhaps so the ground can protect it against any last gasp winter cold, like we will have this week. Not until summer will the garden reach skyward and be visible to passers-by. It reminds me of another close-to-the-ground selah: shavasana (another word that I love). The last yoga position, taken lying on the mat close to the ground. The time of the practice when we lie still, listening to and slowing our breathing, and let all that the practice has been sink into our bones. The time when we thank God above for all that our bodies have been able to do, and the earth below for holding us up. Selah.

So much of the new growth in the Lenten garden is visible only to one who pauses, kneels, brushes away the dead leaves, and examines closely what is hiding beneath. The garden is a journey, ever-changing. I have learned that if I only see the razzle-dazzle of the spring and summer bloom, I have missed the journey. If I don't engage in the Lenten selah, I have gone through the cycles of my living without breathing. I am a traveler in this life. If I miss the journey, I have missed everything there is. Selah.  

A Thread Runs through It

I consider myself a flight risk. I used to think it a liability; an apology for my flitting-from-one-thing-to-another behavior. I have recently come to embrace it. My way of being in the world. My way of experimenting with things I will never have expertise in, just desire to delve into new ventures. I can't hang on to everything--there isn't enough space--so I dabble and move on. I admire people who are maestros in their field; who stick with it through thick and thin and learn their music backwards and forwards. But it's not who I am, and I am going to stop making excuses for it. Perhaps that is the gift of the sixth decade.

I have lived in four states and nine towns; all but two of the latter as an adult. I count sixteen dwelling places (not including the orange VW van I lived in for one magnificent rambling summer). As a university student, I lived in three dorms in four years. I won't even count the number of jobs I have held; but except for my current job of ten years, they lasted just four months to four years. I have flirted with playing musical  instruments. Under my parents' influence, the piano lingered--though I no longer play; the flute, organ, recorder, and violin did not. I dabble in art forms until I tire of each and jump to a new one. Currently I  am a gardener, a writer, and a photographer. (Yes, I do, therefore I am. I don't believe one has to be an expert to name oneself fully.)

Sadly, I seem to be a relationship flight risk, too. I do have regrets in that arena. Two primary relationships that lasted many years, but are no more. Many friendships that were fully with me, and now are past tense. I am sorry for their loss. And without their endings, I would not be parts of me that I most love. Some things are hard to reconcile. They just are. Motherhood and family are relationships that are with me always; but are, of course, ever-evolving.

Last Sunday's beautiful sermon, given by Mahan Siler, helped me make sense of me. He spoke of the thread that winds through our lives, that we hang on to, even as the beads change. I would carry it a step beyond, and venture that the beads are kept on the thread with a knot on either side. As the thread wears and stretches, the beads may slide off over the tightened up knots and be lost; but the knots remain, keeping the thread strong. The knots are the part of us made strong by where we have been, who we have known, the experiences we have had.

The Way It Is

There is a thread you follow. It goes among
Things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
Or die; and suffer and grow old.
Nothing you can do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
             --William Stafford

My thread is creativity, adaptability, curiosity; dare I say, courage. Maybe I have a fear of being held hostage to attachment. I think that fear has the potential to be unhealthy, but I will venture to say that I live on the light side of it, not the dark. I examine it often to keep my thread curious, not afraid.

Back in the garden: this week has seen snow, 77 degrees, thunderstorm, torrential rain, and wind. The banana tree continues to astound. This is the first year I haven't had to cut it back to the ground. Instead of new stalks shooting up from the hard ground, the leaf fronds are emerging straight out of the dead-looking canes; like the phoenix rising. The single hyacinth my friend Porter gave me, is five plants this year. The snow drop leaves have, as they do each year, threaded themselves through my garden goddess. In looking for photos that represent my One Little Word, I find a goddess on the stump of a cutoff tree limb. The limb is gone, and beauty remains. The lenten rose--in ice and sun--the rain and the dawning of the day, like the thread, are constants.

After Rain

Sometimes you just flat out blow it. After the all-day-and-night rain on Wednesday, I take my time getting up and out for work on Thursday. The pre-dawn sky appears cloud covered, meaning no sunrise will be visible. A good day to skip the dawn walk (again) and linger inside. When I step out the door heading for work I realize my mistake. The air is damp and fragrant, birds are singing, raindrops puddle in plants and drip from the trees, the sky is clearing and the fading gold clouds are skipping across it. My favorite kind of morning. Work can wait a few minutes. I tour the garden.

The bluebells are blooming! The narcissus buds are fat and the new growth on the roses is bursting with excitement. I find two close-to-the ground variety Japanese iris and tiny violets. On Saturday the snowdrops have opened and the back-garden camellia is looking like the Queen of Hearts rosebush in Wonderland. Closer examination finds the red peony and the sea oats emerging from the dirt.

Ah Saturday. A warm day that screams BE OUTSIDE BE OUTSIDE! Smudge and I hear and obey. A juvenile hawk is sitting in the tree outside the cafe. Seems like that should be some sort of omen. I buy and plant another half flat of pansies and can't resist purchasing a false something or other that calls to me. (I really don't understand why botanists feel a need to name anything "false.") I pull a boat load of the wretched carpet grass out of the flower beds. Surely it is too early for it. Oh, we didn't have 

winter. It is the after-pulling that makes it worthwhile: the open space its absence creates as I unchoke the annuals and perennials. I decide to try some early vegetables for the first time. I dig the leaf mulch into the vegetable strip, smooth out the rich soil (oops, forgot the compost) and plant snow peas and Brussels sprouts. I was too late with the sprouts last year. Trial and error and try again gardening. And I finally cut the dead leaves and upper stalks of the banana tree. It is still sturdy up over my head. I pull down an ENORMOUS vine that starts in the neighbor's tree and wends its way through my gardenia and camellia. How did that go unnoticed long enough to get so big?

Other rainy seasons have come to end, too. On Tuesday, I officially declare the annual December/January work hell

over-- 2011 done with on Valentine's Day. For ten years these have been months to just get through; but when it's over--the books closed on the old year, January caught up and closed, the new year budget adopted, and the backlog of filing done--it is the day after the rain. The day of opening up space.

Late Friday I receive a text message from a struggling friend. She thought she was out of the woods following a huge disappointment, but the pain has taken up residence again. We so want to be in the clear after the rain as soon as possible. But the forest is big, the path is long. And we are not lost. 

I don't know what is up with Julie on Friday, but yoga is so hard. I am popping ibuprofen for screaming pectoral muscles (Saturday yard work didn't help). On a bright note, after about the eighth chaturanga --the pose I decided long ago I just couldn't do and wasn't going to try--I forgot to not try. I did the last two without putting my knees down. But then I collapse on side plank and instead do gate pose with my knee down on the second side.

Pullen Church is honoring, this weekend, the 20th Anniversary of the church's decision to be a welcoming and affirming congregation and to bless the unions of gay and lesbian couples. As I listen last night to the three lay leaders who shepherded the church through the time before, during, and following the open forum and voting period; through the hate mail, the grateful mail, the picketers on the 

sidewalk, the national media, I find myself reflecting on where I was 20 years ago. I was discovering a part of myself about which I had been unaware. I was coming out in secrecy and silence, barely able to understand myself and completely unable to share it. I was an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church; a Church that, on a national level, was about to come to a completely different conclusion about homosexuality in the church. Amendment B to the Book of Church Order, passed a few years after Pullen's courageous decision, reads:

"Those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church. Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman (W-4.9001), or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of the Word and Sacrament."

Eighteen years ago, shortly before the amendment was passed, I resigned as Elder and began attending Pullen, leaving the denomination in which I was baptized, confirmed, married, and ordained--and deeply disappointed. I wept each Sunday morning for at least a year as I was told both verbally from the pulpit and emotionally by those in the pews, that I was okay. That I was still a child of God. A couple of years 

ago, Amendment B was repealed and a revision passed, eliminating the explicit language about marriage and leaving the decision to ordain to the local governing body. Six hours before I sat listening to what happened at Pullen 20 years ago, the first openly gay candidate for ordination in the New Hope Presbytery (NE North Carolina) presented herself for examination and was approved for ordination. Last night is an emotional juxtaposition of events for me. A little rain falls from my eyes; grateful that God is still doing a new thing in the world; grateful to have spent the last 18 years in a church that opened its eyes and heart long ago.

Yesterday I finish reading Patti Digh's Life is a Verb. This book and its companion, Creative is a Verb, have added indescribable value to my living and have frequently found their way into this blog. I have read them both twice now, and may start right in on a third reading. The last chapter of Life is a Verb is an urging to "live an irresistible obituary." What would I like people to say about me after I am gone? And what daily decisions must I make to get there? "Live an extraordinary and irresistible life to ensure that when you die, the people who are left have the feeling that with your passing the world has become a duller place." There are many in my life who will leave the world a dull place when they are gone. I am so thankful for you.

Cobblestones

My camera and I venture out on a lunchbreak walk on one of the week's warm Carolina spring-in-February days. We are looking for snapshots that speak to me of my One Little Word for the February assignment. I get sidetracked by cobblestones that pave one of the Cameron Park alleyways. I spend the rest of the week noticing what a linear world we live in.



Modern brickwork is of identically-sized bricks; and, unless the designer chooses to mix and match, they are all the same color. The patterns, though varied, are symmetrical; and they are tightly bound one to the other. It takes a jackhammer to dislodge them. Though I am sure the creators of cobblestone roads laid them out with some
kind of a plan, cobblestones are not all the same size or shape or thickness. They had to work with what they had, so the pathways are not linear. The stones are not mortared into place. Over the decades of time and weather, and the pounding of horses hooves, they have shifted; some have come out, leaving holes that no one bothers anymore to replace. Generations since they were put down, they appear haphazard in their beauty. I have to slow down when I walk on them, which is why I notice them.

My life is more cobblestone than brick. It didn't start out that way. I had a plan, one set before me by my parents' example. There is great comfort in having a plan; one that doesn't require

much thinking or decision-making, other than maybe at the beginning of the journey. Not to trivialize the traditional get married-have children-follow a career path up the symmetrical ladder that is missing no rungs-life, but the GPS is programmed and works well as long as the driver makes no off-grid mistakes (or choices) or the battery dies. There are of course, detours that the nice voice in the unit's box didn't anticipate, and she has to redirect. It takes a few moments to get back on track. Sometimes I long for a brick road life. Well, not really.

So all week I notice the straight lines: crosswalks, fences, power lines, buildings, walls, ceiling tiles. And I notice the contrasts: a cobbled together wall; a newly-blind woman learning to walk with a white cane tap-tapping back and forth and forth and back, unable to see the dangers that lie just ahead of her feet and her cane (perhaps it's better that way), but thankfully with a friend

walking with her as she learns to navigate; a vine wending its way around the linear fence in its way, and the square-cornered path of my passion flower vine. Like me, the passion flower began on a linear path, then it erupts into randomness, going this way and that and popping up in odd places, but always growing and blooming.

I pause on my early morning walk and watch the asymmetrical jet streams slow dance across the sky, glowing pink and gold in the dawning sky.

Linear, symmetrical paths are easier to race through life on; it's easier not to stumble and fall, or get lost. Cobblestone paths have bumps and can be unpredictable, often ending before reaching a destination. Connecting paths are not clearly marked, requiring some off-road walking and searching and path-cutting. Perhaps my side-tracked observations this week do tell me something about my One Little Word, after all.

"Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use." -Carlos Castanada

Happy Valentine's Day to all my dear readers. May your journey be paved with at least a few cobblestones.

Spin Cycle

"It is not where we stand but in what direction we are moving." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I skinned my knee. Wow. I skinned my knee (the very expensive one). I haven't done that since I was 12. I am so stunned by the fact of the fall, I don't even think about it hurting. (Walking and texting. Not a good idea. As friend Charly says, Oprah never warned of the dangers of that.) I congratulate myself on keeping my head about me, and my feet in contact with the ground after I stub my toe, long enough to propel myself to the hood of a parked car where I stick out my arm and slow down the fall to hands and knees. And I didn’t drop my phone, either. Later, sitting on a bench reading a book just acquired at the library, three young mothers parade by pushing babes in strollers. Wow. Been a long time since I did that, too. I could feel old: clumsy and so way-past childbearing years. Oddly, I feel great! Young enough to be transported back to the babies-in-buggies-with-buddies years. Young enough to still skin my knee and get up and walk away from it. (Fortunately no one saw my mishap. That would have been a game-changer.)

Groundhog's Day was, of course, this week. I never paid much attention before--it's not, afterall, a day off work--until a few years ago when dear Dori revealed it as her favorite holiday and the movie her favorite flick. In the movie, Bill Murray--a news reporter covering breaking news in Punxsutawney, PA--wakes up to exactly the same day over and over and over. He cycles through all the emotions: curiosity, frustration, anger. His responding actions follow suit. He cannot make the day change no matter how negative he becomes, and how violently angry he is. Finally he figures it out. To make the day different, he has to change who he is in it--in a positive, life-giving rather than life-diminishing way.

How often I keep waiting for my environment, my circumstances to change; thinking they will all on their own. There is a woman, I will call her Oz, who has been at Cafe Carolina most Sunday mornings for the past year and a half. We have never spoken. I remain hunched over my laptop writing; she over her Kindle reading. Both of us throwing off don't-bother-me vibes. Both of us, it turns out, wanting to speak, but afraid to interrupt the other's sacred time. Last week, after arriving at the same moment at the coffee pot, she makes the break and stops by my table. She opens with a line that makes it clear she read my blog the previous week. Long story short, she got the name of this blog long ago, reading it over my shoulder from the booth behind me, and has been reading it ever since. She is in Raleigh long-term-temporarily and has spoken about me to her partner who lives in one of the northern cold states. Her partner encouraged her to just say hello. And she finally did. Thank you, Oz, for altering our little Groundhog's Day scenario. (We talk this morning for a long time. Delightful. And many discovered connections.)

The point is, we don't have to do much to change who we are in our day. And one little change has a domino effect. Yesterday I go to a Yoga for Women over 50 class at a studio other than the Y. A new class with different people, a new space, a new day for yoga, a change in Saturday routine. (Same wonderful instructor--I have my limits.) That hour changes the whole day. (It also helps that it is gray and raining.) The yoga opens me up and inspires a creative project involving magazines, scissors, and glue that makes me very happy; I bake bread and make soup, loving the mixing and kneading and chopping. And the aroma that permeates the house. The devouring is pretty darn good, too.

This morning I read last year's Groundhog's Day post. There is a photo of the emerging peony. We have all been exclaiming about the early spring this year, but I check this morning--no emerging

peony. But the banana tree has many new tightly-curled leaves this week; having never frozen back to the ground, it didn't have to start over. The tulip magnolia that bloomed too soon in Fletcher Park is gone, but I find another. And the cherry trees in the Park are blooming their outrageous-scented pinkness. A swinger of swings delights in newfound freedom, swinging so much higher than he dared a year ago. My blog of a year ago, also proclaims January warmth. Perhaps the pre-season warmth and bloom is not as unusual as we think it is. Maybe it is the same over and over. Could it be that we are different? I hope so. In spite of ourselves, we continually reinvent some small part of our Selves and then credit it to external events. I wonder if we are so afraid of change, that we deny that we have.

On Thursday afternoon, I can't figure out why my left arm and my expensive right knee are sore. By evening, the pain has spread to my shoulders. Friday morning, my lower back. Oh. Yes. The Fall. Today I am pretty much back to normal. It is a good lesson. Changing direction can be painful; but we survive, and our days look different because we are different in them. This week I am determined to rise 15 minutes earlier and get back to my dawn walk. Missing the sunrise affects me all day. I will miss the 15 minutes of mattress time for only a nano-second.

"Get yourself to your life...Rise above the aches and pains, the nausea, exhaustion, general malaise. The show won't last forever." -Patti Digh