Category: Community

This Matters

It’s Sunday morning. I’ve signed into a weekly Zoom hour hosted by a local writer, hoping for some inspiration for Monday’s post. At this point, I’ve spent many minutes affixing photos to notecards, and writing messages of care and connection with friends. To one, suffering the depths of grief since her husband’s passing during Covid, I included John O’Donohue’s blessing for one grieving. To the other – in response to her thoughtfully written, beautiful New Year’s letter – an acknowledgement of her word choice to describe her current lived condition, “subdued.” Such resonance.

one love letter’s photo

Despite carefully curating my social media time, I cannot escape the onslaught of memes and messages, both harrowing and hopeful. In response to my husband asking how I slept last night, I shared my deep-in-my-belly fear about my country’s safety. The world has recent history of the devastating consequences of a leader’s stated intention to annex a country. So when I hear another threaten mine, my body responds.

“darling,
you feel heavy
because you are
too full of the truth.

open your mouth more.
let the truth exist
somewhere other than
inside your body.”

Della Hicks-Wilson, Small Cures

After last week’s post, several of you commented and emailed with kind and affirming responses. I wrote a version of the following to several of you:

“So each word, each photograph, each post matters.
Each kind word, each warm embrace matters.
It’s what we have which I have to believe can turn the tide,
perhaps first within the unseen, liminal spaces.”

So these minutes devoted to card-making and note-writing matter.
Love letters amplifying beauty matter.
A manifestation of the creative spirit matters.
Letting the truth exist somewhere other than inside my body matters.
This act of hope-filled dissent matters.

As do you, dear friends.
Much love and kindest regards.

the other love letter’s photo

Gratitude

thankful for the still flowering gift from my friend

“Gratitude is so much more than a polite “thank you.” It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods. Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry

I had no idea what to write for this, my last post of the year. I’d read some favourite bloggers who, too, wondered, knowing social media would be replete with eye-catching memes, inspirational quotes, thoughtful musings, and the perfect poem. But walking with Walker yesterday, noticing how much colder the temperature after a week of balmy days, and nearer to the horizon the mid-afternoon sun, I listened to an Emergence Magazine podcast wth Robin Wall Kimmerer reading her essay, The Serviceberry (known in these parts as the saskatoon berry). The above quote stood out as I struggled to keep the earbuds snug and the leash loose, my first time time navigating both since Annie’s passing. I knew I had a way in to writing, even if it meant I’d be adding more of the same to the year-end mix.

Looking back on this year, with its highs and lows, loves and losses, misunderstandings and reparations, I knew gratitude’s strong and persistent thread had, as always, had carried me across chasms of felt separation into the folds of belonging. I knew that by writing poems, walking long distances, seeing beauty in the imperfection and photographing its shimmer, I was saying “thank you.”

As I continue to walk the uneven and unpredictable terrain of the “eldering landscape” – a phrase I coined at the beginning of this year – I know with growing certainty that I am companioned by others. Friends and family who, further along, offer guidance and point out it waymarkers, and folks yet to cross its inevitable threshold. For this I am thankful, for it can be an arduous and sometimes lonely trek.

In the coming days, duing the great pause between exhaling this year and inhaling a new one, may I remember that infinite possibilities reside in its vast unknown. May I remember my sovereign capacity to shape a kinder, more generous and grateful future. May we all.

“Openness of hand, tenderness of embrace, spaciousness of heart, graciousness of home, blessedness of earth, vastness of sky, for all the spaces that bid me welcome, I give you thanks.”

Jan Richardson

Dear friends, thank you for companioning me here on these pages. I appreciate knowing my words matter.

Much love and kindest regards…

Influencer

Isola di Farnese on la Via Francigena, October 2024

I don’t want to to sound out of touch,
but I really am exhausted by the word “influencer”

that word suggests trying to
have control over somebody else

and there is already
too much of that going
in the world already

I don’t like the term
“clout” either

that word is too fickle for me

whenever I desire power it feels like I’m trying to hold a melting ice cube in my hand

I don’t want to
sway anyone

I want to serve them

I don’t want to
blaze a path for you

~ I want to get lost with you ~

to crave authority
would require me
to surrender
my amateur status

and I quite love being
a newbie here with you here

I don’t want to guide you down
this River

I want to enjoy the ride with you
until we reach the great waterfall

don’t follow me
flow with me

and as we go

let’s not influence
each other to be like us

instead

let’s listen to
each other

until our ears become
shaped like our hearts

~ John Roedel from his upcoming poetry collection “wonderache” ~

Called the Facebook poet, John Roedel has developed a reputation for heartfelt writing, often posting photos of his rough drafts hand-scrawled on lined notebook pages. From his website: “Offering a sincere and very relatable look at his faith crisis, mental health, personal struggles, perception of our world, and even his fashion sense, John’s writing has been shared millions of times across social media and lauded by fans and readers worldwide.” 

There’s something touching about this poem for me because it illuminates a tender vulnerability within myself. The shift from having had a career with influence to when, after its abrupt end, I began in earnest to write. Engaging in this mostly solitary endeavour, my sense of community is fragile and self doubt can arise from “the sticky web of personal/with its hurt and its hauntings,” obscuring those occasions when I“become a pure vessel/for what wants to ascend from silence.” (John O’Donohue, “For the Artist at the Start of Day”).

To write as an act of service – not to sway, or blaze a path – is predicated on mutual reciprocity: releasing my poems into the world so that others may read them. Lately, I’ve been caught in the traditional-self publishing dilemma. After working this spring with my wise and thoughtful editor-essayist-poet Jenna Butler, my manuscript sits with three traditional presses whose protocols are precise on prior publications. Hence why I seldom post my own work here or on social media. Recently, I’ve initiated conversations with self-published writers, and with a press who assists, for a fee, writers to publish their own works.

I feel poised on the edge of a “great waterfall.” Vulnerable. Uncertain. But to imagine flowing with, and having my words be read, or heard by others, our eyes and ears becoming “shaped like our hearts,” brings me deep joy. Maybe the nudge to push me over.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

The World Has Need of Us

cliffs and gulls and boats
Port Anthony, Newfoundland, 2015

The World Has Need of You
everything here seems to need us…
– Rilke

I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple as well.

– Ellen Bass –

This notion of being reminded…remembering…knowing that we are needed by the world has been a theme in the poetry I’ve chosen for these recent Friday posts. Given that I retrieve many poems from social media, saved in a file for future sharing, apparently, I’m in good company – being reminded and inviting others to this remembering. When I read these poems, I feel soothed. My breath slows and deepens. A spaciousness from which to settle, reset, and choose emerges.

Yes, among many of us, last month’s US election and the subsequent appointments of those who will assume positions of power (over?) have evoked a collective bracing, an autonomic tightening of our bodies. This month, as we (in the Northern Hemisphere) are nudged or tossed into winter’s cold and growing darkness, and into a Holyday season where Hallmark cards and streamed movies consistently and reliably portray “the happily ever after,” and stores are filled to the rafters with Christmas tchotchkes, many of us are living a vastly different reality.

Yes, for many of us right now, it’s a hard time to be human. We know too much and too little. Suffering devastating losses, living in that tension, actually that grief, we may need to be repeatedly reminded – from whomever, wherever, whenever – that the world – animate and inanimate, human and more-than-human – has need of us. That “everything here seems to need us.”

Believe it. Then, notice the evidence.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Geese Sense

…”the greatest gift you could give a child — or the eternal child in you — is ‘a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments… the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.'”

– Maria Popova citing Rachel Carson, The Marginalian

Musing on what I’d write for today’s post, my direction shifted after reading Sunday’s issue of The Marginalian. The above quote and story that followed stirred a memory of responses I’d had during recent walks, during these past weeks fraught with global disenchantments. The unmistakeable sound of Canada geese – flying overhead, landing in the nearby pond, or in formation ready to make their annual southern migration, honking to announce their presence. Whatever I had been thinking up until that point quickly gave way to awe as I gazed up in admiration and remembered the once popular story I’d often read to groups I’d facilitated.

The Sense of a Goose described the group and leadership dynamics of a flock of geese flying south, and how their innate wisdom could be applied to us building teams and making communities. Reading aloud that story, how many times I’d almost be moved to tears. Even recalling it during my recent walks, watching those geese overhead, I had the same visceral, poignant response.

Delving into its edges and source, I realized I had been feeling the longing – that often barely acknowledged human condition – for the deeply rooted sense of wonder as an indefatiguable source of strength; for the feeling of inner safety and outer belonging; for trusting in the reliable support of others. In that story, among the people with whom I worked, and watching overhead now, I felt what the geese and their flying physics illustrated:

…”the physics of any healthy community, any healthy relationship — the physics of vulnerability and trust. Because life always exerts different pressures on each person at different times, internal or external, thriving together is not a matter of always pulling equal weight but of accommodating the ebb and flow of one another’s vulnerability, each trusting the other to shield them in times of depletion, then doing the shielding when replenished. One measure of love may be the willingness to be the lead bird shielding someone dear in their time of struggle, lifting up their wings with your stubborn presence.”

– Maria Popova citing Rachel Carson, The Marginalian

As the story goes, may we all learn from and practice the sense of geese. Goodness knows, we and our precious world are in its need.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Catastrophe as a Clarion Call

Never more in times of turmoil and chaos, in times of anguish and division, are we this close to the guidance of wisdom. Like standing on the precipice as one thing recedes to make room for something new to exist.

Catastrophe is a clarion call to our highest abilities, but it requires each of us to step more fully into the way of wisdom. We must reconstitute the world through our many small but brave contributions.

So keep going. We need you. You are necessary.

– Toko-pa Turner, “Remaking the World” in Dreamspeak

Not a poem, but writing with a poetic voice, Toko-pa Turner’s timely instruction fit the bill for today’s photo and poem feature.

To remember the clarity and calm found in the eye of the storm…the invitation to wisdom…to persist with our small brave contributions…to know that we are needed and necessary …felt perfectly on point and necessary to share.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

My Thanks and Tribute

I’ve long known that eldest daughters and big sisters might need big sisters in their lives. Being both, I am beyond blessed to have three – Ann, Christina and Sarah. Teachers, mentors, wise women, and friends, each in her way, over the years, has supported and encouraged me to live boldly, courageously, unequivocally committed to my knowing, my voice, and my writing.

Nine years ago, at this time of year, when darkness and cold begin to envelop us in the Northern Hemisphere, I attended my first writing retreat under Christina’s kind and wise tutelage. As the author of several books, including two on journaing (one the first to be given an ISBN by the Library of Congress); two on the practice of circle conversations (one co-authored with Ann); my favourite spiritual volume for mindful living; one on the power and practice of telling and writing our stories; and now, a novel, I was is very good hands sitting in circle among women, many much more experienced in writing.

A leap of faith…my response to the voice through the door calling me…turning toward what I deeply love…saving myself. (Rumi) An answered prayer, as during one of the Pacific Northwest’s infamous storms, waking with a bellyful of doubt before dawn, I received word I’d won a story writing contest, and later during the week, writing for thirty-six hours in silence, a series of prose-poems, tentatively titled “Love Letters to Timeless Poets,” emerged.

That time with Christina, and her subsequent inspiration and emboldening, together with that of Ann and Sarah, continue to nurture me as writer and poet. And so it is that I use this space now to thank Christina, and Ann and Sarah, and to describe Christina’s most recent literary accomplishment.

The Beekeeper’s Question, Christina’s decade long labor of love, and response to the voice through the door calling, is a work of historical fiction resonant with today’s struggles. Described as –

“Young lovers, old friends, a mountain valley and a North African battlefield: two Montana families face loss, prejudice, violence, and redemption in the uncertainty of 1940s America.”

Christina Baldwin

– it was perfect reading when I returned home from my long-distance walk. One of those “couldn’t put down,” beautifully written books that broached the hard stuff in the lives of its characters and unflinchingly illuminated the settler history of intentional devastation to the indigenous peoples. I was deeply moved by the subtle weaving in of animism and the mysteries and wisdom of the deep feminine. I felt as did one of Christina’s reviewers:

“So richly written that the characters feel like friends and it’s bittersweet when the story ends.”

Molly Guptill Manning, Author 
When Books Went to War, NYT Bestseller

As darkness and cold begin to envelop you, and looking ahead to the season of gift-giving, The Beekeeper’s Question might be one for your list, and for yourself.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

To Never Forget

standing on the shore of Whidbey Island

To love. To be loved.

To never forget your own insignificance.

To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.

To seek joy in the saddest places.

To pursue beauty to its lair.

To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.

To respect strength, never power.

Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

~Arundhati Roy from The Cost of Living ~

I’ve taken the liberty to reformat Arundhati Roy’s words, originally written in paragraph, to emphasize the power of her statement. Every line, a simple, clear instruction for living in these times. A potent, unequivocal pointing to how to be, and what action to take, or not. An echoing of the many words, paragraphs, and poems that have been newly crafted or resurrected this past week to console and inspire.

This past Monday, in both Canada and the US, was a day officially designated to remember, to never forget the sacrifices made by millions of men and women who gave (and continue to give) life and limb, heart and mind, in the fight for human rights and freedom, and a democratic way of living. A profound juxtaposition that this day occurred so soon after election results that many fear will, with clear and unequivocal intention, undo and make, at the very least, moot these sacrifices.

A couple of years ago, in another Friday photo and peom feature, I posted William Stafford’s A Ritual to Read to Each Other (1998), wherein he reminds us:

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

In this week’s writing circle, a monthly zoom space where five of us (give or take, depending on life’s other plans) support each other in living a writerly life, despite life’s other plans, I was invited to read my poem, In the Days That Follow, posted here last week. We spoke of the need to take time to fully feel our griefs; to rekindle small communities of support; to intentionally look for evidence of our being enough; to hold onto our individual visions of hope.

Each a way to help us be awake amidst the deep darkness.
Each a commitment to never forget.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Always Beauty

Yesterday morning a friend posted a poem-blessing by Kate Bowler, “Keeping a Soft Heart When Everything is Broken” in which she wrote, “Blessed are you who see the world as it truly is. Terrible. Beautiful. Fragile.”

To which I responded, “A wise man once told me our task is to learn how to keep our hearts open in hell. Welcome to class. We have a four-year curriculum.”

Again. In addition to the heavy course load of continuing, persistent tragedy and devastation that encompasses our world.

And yet there is beauty. Still and always.
Often hidden in plain sight, against all odds.

November pansies – against all odds in Alberta

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Holding Vigil Holding Each Other’s Hands

Capranica, Italy along la Via Francigena

My usual pattern is to post a poem with one of my photos on Fridays, maybe with some reflection – what evoked it being selected, or what it stirs in me. Mondays are for my own writing. Musings on my wabi sabi life. What I call “contemplative creative nonfiction.” Not sure that’s a legit genre beyond my imagination, but it is an apt description.

This morning (I’m writing on Sunday for a Monday drop), fresh with that extra “fall back” hour, this poem arrived in my inbox, the daily offering from the Daily Rattle. Written by American poet, playwright and essayist, Alison Luterman, it’s her in-the-moment response to the mounting tensions in the US. It resonates for me, for like it or not, what happens Tuesday, on their election day, reverberates around the world with vast implications. So, I’m shifting my pattern in response.

Thinking of my American friends and family members, I share Luterman’s heaviness and hold vigil with, as I wrote here on Friday, deep hope and much prayer. And as I wrote last Monday, knowing, too, the profound gift of care and safety that comes from holding each other’s hands and having each other’s backs.

May we not let go.

HOLDING VIGIL

My cousin asks if I can describe this moment,
the heaviness of it, like sitting outside
the operating room while someone you love
is in surgery and you’re on those awful plastic chair
eating flaming Doritos from the vending machine
which is the only thing that seems appealing to you, dinner-wise,
waiting for the moment when the doctor will come out
in her scrubs and face-mask, which she’ll pull down
to tell you whether your beloved will live or not. That’s how it feels
as the hours tick by, and everyone I care about
is texting me with the same cold lump of dread in their throat
asking if I’m okay, telling me how scared they are.
I suppose in that way this is a moment of unity,
the fact that we are all waiting in the same
hospital corridor, for the same patient, who is on life support,
and we’re asking each other, Will he wake up?
Will she be herself? And we’re taking turns holding vigil,
as families do, and bringing each other coffee
from the cafeteria, and some of us think she’s gonna make it
while others are already planning what they’ll wear to the funeral,
which is also what happens at times like these,
and I tell my cousin I don’t think I can describe this moment,
heavier than plutonium, but on the other hand,
in the grand scheme of things, I mean the whole sweep
of human history, a soap bubble, because empires
are always rising and falling, and whole civilizations
die, they do, they get wiped out, this happens
all the time, it’s just a shock when it happens to your civilization,
your country, when it’s someone from your family on the respirator,
and I don’t ask her how she’s sleeping, or what she thinks about
when she wakes at three in the morning,
cause she’s got two daughters, and that’s the thing,
it’s not just us older people, forget about us, we had our day
and we burned right through it, gasoline, fast food,
cheap clothing, but right now I’m talking about the babies,
and not just the human ones, but also the turtles and owls
and white tigers, the Redwoods, the ozone layer,
the icebergs for the love of God—every single
blessed being on the face of this earth
is holding its breath in this moment,
and if you’re asking, can I describe that, Cousin,
then I’ve gotta say no, no one could describe it
we all just have to live through it,
holding each other’s hands.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.