Category: Friendship

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.

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.

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

– Mary Oliver –

This poem arrived shortly after I had posted Monday’s blog, Love Letters to Life. Its imagery brings to life what I could only hope to have conveyed. That by walking alone along the same river routes for weeks, I began to know and feel my relationship with earth, with life, and its relationship with me. That as I re-remembered this, so, too, was I being remembered, taken in, and held by earth.

A few minutes ago, I wished my friend “buona notte” as we concluded our monthly Zoom call. Held within our mutual love and respect for each other, our conversations always bring gifts – an insight, deeper clarity, more to ponder. Knowing that in a week’s time I’ll be in Italy, feeling its imminent “realness” and growing excitement and curiosity, with her invitation I was able to speak my intention for walking, alone-together with women, currently strangers, but soon to be walking mates.

May we feel remembered by the earth.
May we “sleep as never before,” rising each morning rested, refreshed, and ready for the day’s stage.
May our thoughts “float as light as moths among the branches of perfect trees,” and not weigh heavy as stones in our packs.
May we feel the presence, support, and joy of being with each other, inviting each other and ourselves into “something better.”

This will be my last Friday photo and poem feature until my return in mid-October. I expect to post “love letters” on Facebook if you’d like to follow along. Until then, much love and kindest regards, dear friends.


How is Your Haal (Heart)?

“In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal?

What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, ‘How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?’ When I ask, ‘How are you?’ that is really what I want to know.

I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul.

Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.

Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I, too, am a full and complete human being, a human being who also craves a human touch.”

— Omid Safi, from The Disease of Being Busy

heartful distractions on my writing desk

My friend Sally, who I met last year walking the Via di Francesco, shared this post from our mutual friend, Omid Safi. I first “met” Omid when he was one of a cadre of regular bloggers/columnists posting in an early iteration of On Being. It was in the aftermath of 9-11 when tensions, animosities, and cultural misunderstandings were high, particularly in the US. What always touched me was how Omid, who is a professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University, always wrote with an open-hearted clarity, generously giving space for multiple perspectives and opinions, all the while sharing his culture by way of story. In my experience of Omid, his writing and online presence are an embodiment of his love and reverence for his teacher, Rumi, founder of the Sufi order of whirling dervishes.

On a day when I read that over 40,000 lives have been lost to the conflict in Gaza, with thousands more unaccounted for, Omid’s message of heartful connection and healing conversation lands deep within my heart and soul.

Ours has been a virtual friendship. One day I hope to meet Omid in person, perhaps on one of his Illuminated Tours to Turkey or Morocco. One day I hope to put my hand on his arm, look him in the eye, tell him something about the state of my heart, and listen to him tell me about his. And together remember we are each and all human beings, craving human touch, connection, and peace.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Returning

“Returning is a wonderful thing when great
friends are involved. Years dissolve and time is
irrelevant in the light of true reunion. It means to
become one again. It means to be joined. It means
to be one in spirit, one energy, one song. It means
to be returned to the balance you find when
friendships are struck – and the entryway is a hug.”

Richard Wagamese, Embers, 2016

This quote, neatly printed, matted, and framed, hung in the guest room where I stayed last week, visiting my friends. A recent addition, it struck me as both new and the perfect description of the way my friends host theirs. Now my second summer in their beautiful home, with an outdoor living space only possible in their temperate island climes, I experienced the reunion, the song, the return to balance with both our entryway and departure marked by big, warm, heart to heart hugs…and donuts!

Yesterday, I wrote the quote in a card I’d created in celebration of another dear friend’s 60th birthday. It had been a couple of years since we had last connected, and our friendship, like the planets that had for a time, swung out of alignment. I was touched to have received an invitation to her party, and felt the years’ gap dissolve and time irrelevant as we embraced, said how much we had missed each other, and I stepped in comfortably to help her with food prep. This returning was an answered prayer, I’d said, as I hugged her goodbye with the promise to see each other soon.

“We approach our lives on different
trajectories, each of us spinning in our own
separate, shining orbits. What gives this life its
resonance is when those trajectories cross and we
become engaged with each other, for as long or as
fleetingly as we do. There’s a shared energy then,
and it can feel as though the whole universe is in
the process of coming together. I live for those
times. No one is truly ever ‘just passing through.’
Every encounter has within it the power of
enchantment, if we’re willing to look for it.”

Richard Wagamese, Embers, 2016

Last Saturday marked my return to walking with my Camino group. Seeing the sandwich sign marking our start brought joy to be reunited with friends who love to walk. We share an enthusiasm and energy as we support those readying for their late summer and early fall Caminos. This weekend we ventured out for the first time to St. Albert, a community north of Edmonton, with its own river, park trails, botanical garden, and splendid outdoor farmers’ market. More than twenty plus folks enjoyed a summer morning engaged in convivial conversation. I was so engrossed with a dear friend that little attention was paid to the route, and both of us were bewildered on our return to see sights totally missed. Such was our deep, connected returning.

It’s a short post, dear friends, sent, as always, with much love and kindest regards.


Consider the Life of Trees

Consider the life of trees.
Aside from the axe, what trees acquire from man is inconsiderable.
From their mute forms there flows a poise, in silence;
a lovely sound and motion in response to wind.
What peace comes to those aware of the voice and bearing of
trees!
Trees do not scream for attention.
A tree, a rock, has no pretense, only a real growth out of itself
in close communion with the universal spirit.
A tree remains in deep serenity.
It establishes in the earth not only its root system but also
those roots of its beauty and its unknown consciousness.
Sometimes one may sense a glisten of that consciousness, and with
such perspective, feel that man is not necessarily the highest form of life.

Cedric Wright in Earth Prayers From Around the World, 1991

I returned home last night from four days on Vancouver Island, visiting dear friends whose home and hospitality make for a soul-restoring haven. They graciously show me their favourite sights, trusting I’ll delight in what they’ve discovered since relocating there a few years ago. This year, the weather was more in keeping with a Pacific Northwest autumn: cool, overcast, misty with showers, giving us plenty of conversation time in the warm glow of their indoor and outdoor fireplaces. Tuesday, we drove to Cathedral Grove, a popular tourist site along the Tofino highway, graced by a stand of giant, ancient Douglas Firs. It was my first time encountering these enormous stately sentinels. I was rendered awestruck and silent in their presence, taken to the place I have named “before, beneath and beyond words.” One hundred photos later, my friend’s one of me standing in that awe in front of the grove’s largest tree, one estimated to be over 800 years old, and taller than Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa, confirmed the perspective that neither man nor woman are the highest form of life.

perspective

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. And a heart full of gratitude to my friends for the unforgettable experience.

More Awake in Dreams


More Awake in Dreams
for June 20th

Many are more awake, with greater
abilities in dreams, than in daylight.

I walked through a world last night of
such exquisite intricacies…in my sleep
some might say.

But no, it was not really like that. It
was surely as real as any place you ever
visited.

Whatever the hand can shape and make
last…the advanced mind can do a
millionfold.

And love, there too while I slept so alert
with perceptions keen and powerful,

did I know you, love, and could more
bear your fire.

In dream, in spirit, are we not closer to
Her likeness?

– Daniel Ladinsky, A Year with Hafiz, 2011

It had been ages since I’d picked up this book, one sitting in my basket with others contemplative and poetic, and with my journal (ages, too, since I’d picked up a pen to write). But this morning – sitting in the solstice summer sunshine, cool and fresh breeze whispering through the open window, green grass and willow leaves glistening, after several minutes of quiet, reflecting on yesterday’s events, today’s to-dos, Walker occasionally peeking over the pet gate preventing his entry, wishing he could – I did.

Allowing the book to open in its way didn’t reveal an oracular resonance. Turning pages with intention to today, June 21, not quite. Yesterday, yes. That reading, today’s featured poem – Ladinsky’s rendering of Hafiz – its title struck the right chord. One amplified when I read a friend’s early morning post describing a vivid dream with her long-lost sister. (Beautifully written, dear one.)

Like many of you here, I pay attention to my dreams, having learned the value of doing so when I was in analytic therapy. I can recall ones from decades’ past, still pondering them, intuiting they continue to have richness and relevance for my life now. Again Hafiz, via Ladinsky:

“There are so many gifts
still unopened from your birthday,
there are so many hand-crafted
presents that have been sent to you by God.”

This week, two dreamt in the same night with similar “main characters,” continue to nudge my consciousness. Last year, a recurrent dream of urgently needing to catch a flight and not having packed. And over the decades, one of houses I find myself inhabiting, unique and magnificent in potential and needing a lot of work. (Your interpretations are welcome in the comments!)

My dreams both inform and have become poems. One, “The Grandfather I Never Knew,” has been recently published, along with my photography, by the beautifully curated Synkroniciti Magazine in Volume 6, Number 1, Katherine McDaniel, editor.

And those dreams where I have greater abilities than in daylight with the associated visceral feelings of exhilaration, satisfaction, freedom?  I’ve wondered how to bring forth that dream-time mastery into my day-time life. I realize how increasingly my poetry, photography, this blog, and even my personal conversations and correspondence have become the bridge across and into my eldering landscape. Heeding my dream-time grandfather’s advice.

Closing this post – one more typical of my Monday missives – as I did my early morning text to another of my dear friends:

“I’ll sign of with love for you and this summer day, for friendships near and far, those waxing and waning…the new beings who bring joy and love, and those steadfast in theirs.”

Kindest regards, dear friends.

an open poem…

“Aries and Viriditas” original artwork by Katharine Weinmann

…to a world-weary empath

you can’t leave Earth yet

~ because I just flipped ahead about
a hundred pages in your story and I read
that someday you will be the reason someone else
doesn’t give up on their life

I’m sorry to spoil the end of your epic tale

~ but someday you will be the one who ignites
the blaze in another person’s heart that
won’t ever be put out again

don’t complicate the plot of your story

~ you are here to be lamplighter that hands out
little bits of your flame to ensure the rest
of the world doesn’t exist in darkness

I know you have been scorched so many times

~ to love the world is to sometimes be burned at
the stake by others who mistake your gift
of compassion as a personal weakness

I know it’s not easy to be a bringer of light
to those who have become addicted to shadows

~ but we need you to be a gardener of effervescent seeds
that you will perhaps never see grow into burning rosebushes
that can be seen from space

Oh, my love, don’t give into the calling despair

~ set your life on fire with kindness and watch how many
other people come out of their caves to sit by your
campfire heart to share their own stories of survival

Oh my love, you are my favorite element

~ john roedel ~

It’s Easter Sunday. Cold, with a skiff remaining of the crusty snow that blew in on Thursday, and sunny. We were treated by our friends to a quintessential Easter brunch: locally sourced smoked ham and scalloped potatoes, sauteed asparagus, hot cross buns, and bread pudding with maple syrup. While flowers remain hidden here, a solitary bird, perched high within the branches of the still-bare alder tree, serenaded both our coming and going. A “slow” meal, interspersed with watching the antics of their cats, and our always edifying conversations, with the window open feeling the gentle breeze and hearing the birdsong, I felt the day’s hopeful promise.

Now home, and after a nap (I’ve been plagued with early waking for the past few weeks – The recent full moon? An upcoming solar eclipse? Excitement with Tuesday’s trip? Editing? Anxiety anticipating the long-time-in–coming meeting with a friend on Good Friday, one that allowed us both to lay down our metaphoric load of disappointment and grief?), I turned down the furnace and opened wide the windows to invite in Spring’s energy to displace Winter’s. A bit of packing, tending to correspondence, and this blog, one held in the draft folder for a day when time is short, concentration spent.

John Roedel is a self-described “Facebook poet,” sharing his bittersweet, aimed straight-for-the-heart compositions, often in the form of a photo of a first draft scratched in pen on the lined page of his notebook. On the heels of today’s brunch conversation, one that weaved back and forth through life’s joys and despairs, this felt like the right one to post. Too, that it speaks to his “favorite element” fire, which is Aries and the astrological sign currently ruling our planet. Aries is my sign, too. Fire my element and dosha. And as a self-described “empath,” at times world-weary – the trifecta of reasons for sharing it with you, many of whom I suspect are, too, world-weary empaths.

So, take heart, dear ones. Continue to set your life on fire with kindness and know we’re all in exceptionally good company.

Much love and kindest regards.

I Saw It Coming

In a week’s time my husband and I were to have been with my family celebrating my parents’ 70th anniversary. A staggering accomplishment given current divorce rates. Instead, after several back-and-forth conversations with my father and sister, wherein the “no choice” choice was made to cancel the family dinner, photographer, and flowers, we’ll stick to the flight plan and hold vigil, virtually and in person, for my mother, whose health and life have been seriously compromised by taking Ozempic. She is the second person in my close circle who has recently suffered a life-threatening bowel obstruction from this much touted, so-called weight loss miracle drug. Here as I type, she is with my sister in a hospital 30 minutes from home, the closest facility able to provide the CT scan needed to determine the impact to her bowels and life, while my father, bearing a week’s weight of worry for his wife, collapses with fatigue at home. (Another story, the sorry state of health care crippled across my country.) Thankfully, my sister is an RN, astute in her holistic perspective, clear and courageous in her advocacy, compassionate in her care.

In the last twenty-four hours I have learned of two friends losing their life partners. Before Christmas, another. And I wonder, will my father be losing his? For an hour today of personal respite, I attended a silent writing circle. After introductions, the host set a 45-minute timer wherein we muted ourselves, turned off our video cameras, and wrote. “January, the first month in a new year…its first days always bring an undercurrent of unease…for decades I’ve stepped across its threshold, yet this time feel days darker with melancholy…a bone deep sadness, its source clearer with each passing day.”

“Epiphanies,” I wrote. “Three wise men bearing gifts; the anniversary of our arrival 43 years ago to the prairie province we call home; the sudden death of my young, never-known grandmother, shrouded in secrecy, and leaving behind her toddler child, my mother, now holding tenuously to her own life. And today, dawning stark cold and bright, like winter’s belated arrival, the realization of how intergenerational trauma has shaped and coloured my stepping into most every new year of my life, tarnishing it with inchoate anxiety and grief.”

I’m as OK with all of this as I can be. Intuitively, instinctively, even presciently, I’ve been naming and writing here about crossing the threshold into this hard next life chapter – the eldering landscape where death and illness, failing health and loss become its “leitmotif;” where unapologetic grief becomes an even deeper expression of my love for my life and this world.

Sustained by those few near and dear kindred friends, my community of walkers, a monthly check-in with my therapist, my beloved and our quiet sanctuary of a home; and the ever-present beauty a step outside my door, I’m OK.

By the time this post drops, I may find we need to shuffle flights to arrive earlier, and I pray my prayers of comfort, grace and gratitude carry me and us through. Too, being held by forces seen and unseen – the angels, ancients, and ancestors.

I’ll borrow a poem from Mary Oliver to sign off:

“You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway, it is the same old story –
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.”

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends, and thank you for yours…

A Gift to Bring You

I’m at a loss as to what to write for tomorrow’s (today’s) post. I started something and put it in the draft drawer, my “kill the darlings” file. No traction…no energy. Maybe an idea whose time has not yet come, or too soon too tender to write about.

Even though it’s Monday, not my usual day for posting a poem and photo, in the spirit of the season, I’ll gift forward a quote from a friend who shares my love of Rumi. A friend who I met years ago at our first writers’ retreat. A friend who made and gifted me and others with clay rattles during our vision quest retreat. A friend who recently published her first book, Solo Passage, the seeds of which she planted in that circle. Thank you, GG.

“You have no idea how hard I’ve looked for a gift to bring you.
Nothing seemed right.
What’s the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the ocean.
Everything I came up with, was like taking spices to the Orient.
It’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.
So, I’ve brought you a mirror.” – Rumi

Look. See your reflection. Know you are loved.

And my annual Solstice blessing, originally written in 2017, timeless and ever relevant:

May this Holyday season bring time to cherish all that is good and true and beautiful.
May its dark days invite rest for reflection and renewal.
May Nature welcome you to its beauty, magic and wisdom.
May good health be your companion, relationships enliven and encourage,
work and pastimes fulfill and affirm.
May strength in body, mind and spirit allow you to embrace life’s uncertainties.
May patience, love and kindness – given and received – be yours in abundance.

With love and kindest regards, dear friends.