that title was days ago true, followed by O, followed by I.
we are still east of the Mississippi, a flatter version of familiar green.
the visible differences so far: live nudes, solar farms, windmills, bareheaded motorcyclists.
i am looking more for gentleness, awareness, and the flowing of both into speech and deed.
i am calling it out.
This happened.
And this.
So that this could happen.
And this.
Aloha!
We did get her name right.
Thank goodness for that match-up, because we are needing a spot of cheer these days.
Long into Epiphany, Christmas is put away.
The Winterking denies the growing of the light, wants me to think he will stay.
Soon, though, come the holy days of light, and then it will be easier to see.
So many, so much.
We lost one last week.
(At her father’s funeral, her fear came true: she told a reporter that the man who raped her when she was 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 came to her and said Sorry.
Condolences? Apology? WTF?)
Our Lady of Sorrows, indeed.
Again, I am sliced by my own words.
I have been, amidst the multitude of my blessings, in a Funk.
Are there moments of origin for such states? They seem more like phases, perhaps, although moments certainly stand out.
Like this morning's outstanding moment, lasting into always. Only, because a moment is still linked to its phase, allow me to set the stage.
It was a dark and stormy night. Or the night after, it won't matter in years to come.
At dinner, I had mentioned being angry, triggered somewhat by the recent confirmation and unnecessary presence of lymphedema in my left arm and the wonky schedule addressing it would give me for the next several weeks. Glen rightly predicted that beneath the anger lay tears, and I agreed, adding that they might not stop, and that is what kept me from them.
I went to bed when the girls did, dishes undone, even though I knew they would undo me in the morning, no matter how much I willed them not to matter.
One piece of my baggage is an extreme sensitivity to disorder. I also have matched sets of inertia and resignation, selfishness and resentment, learned helplessness and false independence. It is awkward, if not impossible, to carry everything at once, and it is a challenge to live as a solo relay runner and the mother in a family of five.
I could have stopped on page 92, after reading it over two or three times for the beauty of it, but I finished A Wrinkle in Time before I went to sleep, losing myself in the tale of darkness, angels, light, love.
So I was up too late, slept in too late through an ongoing restless nightmare about how to pack and move all my scattered and disparate Stuff, and got up to a dirty kitchen. Even with a rarely-heard intentional prayer for God and Goodness to Please go before me and shepherd me through my day, all things being infused with Your Love in its myriad of forms, and please help me to be who You created me to be, I was beyond snappish and way into my own story within minutes of waking the children. Glen emceed me for my comedy club debut, because my filters were d.o.w.n, and I was waaaaay outside the Window of Tolerance.
The usual school-morning bickering set me off, and my monologue did include the words, “I just want something, SOMETHING, to be different today!”
And with all my inside chores done and things gathered, I went to feed the animals. I took great pains to slam the metal quart measure (from the upper shelves of the basement at 44 Wellington Road Delmar NY) back into the dog food can and slam the lid on, and stomp to the cat food and repeat the process.
Except that on my way to Dog's food, I saw a fflufff of her hair in her water bowl, which I had never seen in the five years she's been with us, in all the fflufff that has been combed and pulled and wisped away on the wind. And as I went to the cat food can, I realized that Dog hadn't lifted her head when I clanged her food can, or even come to greet me as she does every morning, tail wagging, brown eyes beseeching.
Ohhh, so not good.
Ohhh, my Flora Jane.
Ohhh, not today.
Ohhh, this is not what I meant by Please please please God I just want today to be different. Though I begged it aloud above the bickering, and inwardly repeated it as a mantra, this is not what I meant.
Glen came to my quivering voice on the back porch, looked at me on his way to her and said the words. Together we walked, and he confirmed it, and we turned around to see Flora, Dog's other person than me, looking at us from up the driveway. What, Mama, what?
There was no blurring, no obfuscating, no softening. Flora Jane, Dog is dead.
And thus our morning pauses.
And thus begins our mourning.
Wails. Hugs. Tears upon tears upon tears.
For it touches Universal Loss, Universal Sacrifice.
My dreams had been unsettled, sweaty, prophetic. When I wrote them down, intent on retrieving their messages, I could see it being time to leave this earthly plane, and I recalled the words that had bubbled up without intent as I was falling into God to lull myself to sleep: Please, please, please take me.
Instead, Dog has gone.
While there is a great Welcoming on the other side of the rainbow bridge, there is a great Sadness in what is now missing from our our family, our home, our lives. A cold, wet, and loving nose, a playful bounce, an unending desire to be loved, petted, let inside.
Her last live brushing was spread as mulch for the first calendula to bloom here. Today's harvest of soft white undercoat fur will become a pillow for Church Mouse, and a last walk to the Stone Table with Dog.
She is wrapped in her blanket, a well-worn wool plaid of cream, red, green and black, with biscuits and the first purple aster of the year (star-flower, Michaelmas daisy, herald of Archangel Michael, Guardian of Our Time).
When Glen comes back from retrieving the children, we will dig a hole below the picnic table and elderberries, where the bear napped beneath the pear tree, where Dog used to lay, looking like a 1600s etching of a royal Pyrenees looking out from a rise in front of the manse.
We will say Bye, Dog! when we leave, and she will be there when we come home.
I will drop the star seeds of orange cosmos into the dirt between the rocks covering her, be delighted when they reappear as green leaves.
More than once, I will sit by her burying place and cry.
And because there is now another star, another portal to pure active love, I will close my eyes and open my heart.
Even at the grave we make our song, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
So, I baptized myself in the New River yesterday. (Is that heretical? blasphemous? who decides?)
The gate of golden light beckoned; how could I not?
The New, practically in our backyard, is one of three sister rivers that were here before the Appalachian Mountains, now worn to nubs, were taller than the Himalayas.
It was the power of that mighty river, still flowing all these millions of years later, that called me to itself. Much like God, only God is infinitely and eternally more so.
God took the form of a floating hubcap. That it could drift on by me like an industrial-growth model of Pooh's umbrella boat propelled me into my after-church river clothes. Such is one benefit of church in town: taking it to the water on the way home.
Because it is pretty fantastic to go down to the river to pray on the way home, even more so because I first sang it inside a sanctuary, one that recognizes my daughter as a saint.
Once I was in the sun-warmed water (Ford hubcap retrieved), walking on angel-winged clamshells and smooth-edged rocks, I knew I belonged. And more: I was welcome.
There is indeed more than one west-facing waterside.
I heard anew a line from the morning's psalm (read in unison as standard practice, seated, no Glory to the ... afterwards): the river of God is full of water (65:9).
The first right thing would have been to fall backwards and float face skyward, arms outstretched. I hesitated and thus was lost. The second right thing became Flora and I walking out from the bank, into waters farther, deeper, stronger. Still warm, still soft, still flowing.
I thought of John in the Jordan and wondered if I would have wandered into his waters.
I remembered photographs of Applachian baptisms, the weighted skirts of German Baptists, and Flora showed me, Like this, Mama.
And the third right thing was to go under, three times, In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I didn't even care about the outdated gender words.
Because then I could float, face skyward, arms outstretched, giving myself to the mighty current of God, watching the sycamore stay in place, hearing Flora laugh her tremendous melting laugh, You're not going anywhere, Mama!
The occasion, the journey, the revelations.
The weight I shared, unthinking of how heavy it would be all at once.
It has settled into me slowly for years now.
What would it be like to receive it in an afternoon, a moment, a sentence?
The desire for truth to not be true sometimes almost makes it so.
Maybe if I wished a little harder? Beggars and horses.
The cat is out of the bag, and neither will truth go back in, or pretend to be otherwise.
So my attention turns ... to travel! To adventure. To inviting ourselves where we want to be. To a girl party! says Flora, whose birthday gift it is.
We go, we go, to Ohio!
At the MMC practice group the last day of March, we learned and sang a beautiful song. Its maker, Rachel Kroh, is someone I admire deeply from the wee slice of time I saw her in action at the MMC workshop I attended five years ago. The words are from one of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus.
Fear not the pain
Let its weight fall back into the earth
For heavy are the mountains
Heavy are the seas
They help. Singing them helps. Singing them outside helps even more -- hanging the clothes, picking up bits of birthday balloons, searching for a scared kitten. The pain of what has been, the pain of what is, the pain that is yet to come -- there is room for it all.
I have even tried to take it literally, adding the heaviness of loss -- mutual and unrequited, experienced and anticipated -- to the weight of the mountain, by water that is flowing to the sea.
Earth answers with spring: surprise, rebirth, abundance. Newness, humor, exactitude.
Heaven sends me visions: It is Mark's tomb Jesus stands before, giving thanks and stating his intentions and calling forth the dead, we saying "But he is ashes!" and even that doesn't matter because Mark is walking out from the rocks, waving and smiling like a fern in the breeze. Resurrection is possible, and Unity calls all things, all things, all things back to its Oneness.
And Life between lost me all three of my children, one at a time, on the same full moon day. First Ursula, passing alone the right turn back to the playgroup picnic blankets and continuing a long way (2.6 miles!) through the woods by herself, me too late in missing her to catch up until I found her back at the beginning. Then Flora, who was so excited to tell me Ursula had returned that she came after me, not knowing that it was a 2.6 mile loop. In time, we were all reunited, safe, mostly sound, and beyond relieved. Later in the day, a typical antagonistic scene played itself out between the three oldests in our house, only this time Asa did not come back from his anger and took it silently to bed.
There is much to unpack. The buddy-system could have prevented all of the mornings' long walkings, and the same power of presence could have directed a different afternoon scene with a different ending. I am hit again with how much I do not know, how much I forget, how inattentive I can be to what is plainly before me. And, too, what is the gift of the day, and will I accept it? For all of the above is still here: surprise, rebirth, abundance; newness, humor, unerring accuracy.
Let me go outside, then, for there it can all be given away, reabsorbed, transformed into something else altogether.
I declare! (And I wish would the heavens.)
Long in its coming, this spring is still surprising to me.
There are signs all around, of course, and have been for days, weeks: calendar, flowers, lighter than dark.
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(Can you tell I've started taking pictures again?
Among other things, it is to travel curves, revel in precision, prove illumination.)
Winter is like a dream to me -- a collection of images, sensations, and experiences, words, places, and feelings, but not quite a coherent whole.
Was I there? Am I ever anywhere? How do I know when I am all together, if later so much of it is unavailable to me? Is it then, or now, that I am not fully present?
Then, I was cocooned, preoccupied, tunneled in on a vision of something beyond survival.
Now, I find myself stretched back to a beginning and unable to argue with an ending. What about the inbetween?
Where is God? Where has God been? What is God's fingerprint on this whole (expletive) mess?
How is God calling me to respond tonight, tomorrow, all the Sundays to come?
I can no longer close my eyes and pretend.
If my children are not safe, am I?
"Now my soul is troubled. But what would I say? 'Father, save me from this hour?' But it is for this hour that I have come."
Someday, I will bow my head in thanks for all that I have known.
All.
I know this to be true and I cannot fathom it.
May God grant me the courage, grace, and wisdom to get from here to there.
Mirror, mirror in my heart ...
(The Gospel of John 12:27)