a blessing on the meals you cook as democracy collapses
a blessing on your healing hands that mend what empire breaks
a blessing on your quiet mornings when you choose to rise again
a blessing on the stories you preserve when others would erase them
a blessing on your vigilant heart beating steady through the storm of cruelty
a blessing on the seeds you scatter in neglected spaces
a blessing on your fierce protection of all things small and wild
a blessing on the wisdom you gather from elders and from earth
a blessing on your careful documentation of what must not be lost
a blessing on your mutual aid networks flowering in capitalism’s dank shadow
a blessing on your kitchen table strategies where sly revolution simmers
a blessing on the wild songs you sing when courage starts to falter
a blessing on your strategic joy deployed against despair
a blessing on the future being born in what you do
a blessing on the bridges you build between wounded communities
a blessing on your sacred rage that fuels the work of redemptive justice
a blessing on the hope you sustain when vulgar bullies assault hope
a blessing on your children’s children who will know what you defended
a blessing on the future you dare to imagine now
– Rob Brezsny , Facebook, February 12, 2025
How much worse will it get? I hardly have words for the rage. The fear. The bitter sadness. The grief of it all.
A book I read decades ago, When Corporations Rule the World (1995). A book written by David C. Korten, in which he shed light on the infracture and policies leading to now. Only now, it’s beyond corporations. We are witnessing the dismantling of the world with a penstroke, at the whim of a few inordinately wealthy, self-serving men.
And so when I don’t have words for the foreboding in my belly, a foreboding shared by many, I am grateful to those who do. I take solace in others’ words that have echoed mine, blessing the future being born in what we each do, dare to imagine, and stand up for now.
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.May it be a blessed Valentine’s Day.
“What can I say that I have not said before? So I’ll say it again. The leaf has a song in it. Stone is the face of patience. Inside the river there is an unfinished story and you are somewhere in it and it will never end until it all ends.”
– Mary Oliver, “What Can I Say”
Finally, feeling 90% better after a wicked chest cold that made for sleepless nights, where once home, I was grateful for the guest room in which to retreat, and the prescribed puffer to lessen the coughing. Almost three weeks’ duration, the symptoms so much like the time I came home with Covid after walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino in 2022, I wondered.
Finally, through the first month of a new year, that has felt particularly dark and heavy with foreboding. While the days are lengthening, noticeable in the late afternoon, the heaviness, experienced by many in my country and beyond, persists. I don’t have to name its source. Suffice to say, I feel a gut deep fear that we are witnessing the intentional takedown of the world as we have known it.
Finally, back here writing. A friend nudged me with an email last week, wondering if I was still sharing my thoughts here, that she missed them. I have been doing the work of writing: revising, editing, and collating poetry for submissions to several chapbook contests and literary journals. I read my poem, “Epiphany,” (my last post) on that day’s Open Mic. But here, in this space, it’s been a long, fallow month.
Since returning home in mid-October from my last long-distance walk, with the most recent variant of Covid as a souvenir, my experience has been one of wandering in the liminal. Vague and restless, moody and melancholic. Missing the rhythm of daily long walks in nature. Sensing inexplicable shifts within me and the world. Seeing more apparent the contours of my “eldering landscape” with the passing of friends, and again the worry as my mother suffered another health crisis just as we headed off to celebrate Sig’s birthday on a hot and sunny Pacific coast beach. (I suspect the aforementioned chest cold a consequence, compounded by the resort’s air conditioning.) Not one typically to write it out here, instead I need to mull, ponder, and give time for subtle impressions to emerge with words.
Re-reading this post, I think I’ve simply been embodying the transition of seasons. I need to say it again to remind myself: hibernating, wintering, keeping low, deep, and quiet. And now, finally, feeling the rising energy and clarity of this new month. Despite human machinations to the contrary, February’s stirrings are an ancient signal to the promise of spring’s rebirth. Its hope echoed by my thanks to the editors who have already this year accepted and published my work… to my friend’s nudge to get back to writing here… to finding my way to my rhythms.
To remembering the world needs us. To placing my faith in the unfinished story that will never end until it all ends, despite the man-made maneuvering and power-play posturing.
We are needed, dear friends. Much love and kindest regards. And to you who have recently subscribed, a warm welcome and heartfelt thanks.
Forty-four years ago, Sig and I, with Beckey, our first of seven dogs, all English Setters except for one (Sassy, an English Pointer “rescued” from a divorce wreck shortly after our arrival, and soon to become Beckey’s inseparable friend) drove into Edmonton after four days’ traversing Canada from southern Ontario. I’ve written several times here about that journey and this anniversary. Today, I’ve chosen to share the poem I wrote last year.
EPIPHANY January, the first month in a new year, its early days bringing an undercurrent of unease. For decades, I’ve managed to find a way across its threshold. But this time, I’ve felt its days darken, weigh heavy with melancholy. A bone-deep sadness, its source finally becoming clearer.
Epiphany. When centuries ago, legend spoke of three wise men following a star, carrying gifts for a newborn king. When forty-three years ago, our arrival on this prairie province we made home. And decades before, the sudden death of my young, adopted, never-known grandmother, her passing shrouded in secrecy, leaving behind her toddler child, my mother, now holding tenuously to her own life.
Epiphany. Dawning stark cold and bright, like this winter’s belated arrival, that two-thousand-year-old desert shining star, when I realize my body’s primal response to grief touching and traversing maternal bloodlines. Embodied. Wordless. Anxiety rendering them, now me – the daughter of my young, adopted mother, born to bring her happiness – highly sensitive and self-doubting.
Today, holding vigil for my mother, wondering whether the 70th wedding anniversary celebration for which we’d booked our flights would instead become her funeral, I’ve had plenty of time to think. To see my family’s patterns and dynamics, know the stories and our secrets, the roles and rules, our shames and triumphs. What made me and entrapped me. What I’ve worked long to understand, unravel, to reclaim and make my life for me. Distance too, a boon, though long double-edged, has given me space and perspective, helping me navigate life’s complex and liminal terrains.
Now nearing seventy years myself, I’ve been naming the crossing of another threshold into this hard, next life chapter an “eldering landscape.” Here, in a world on fire, in drought, and in war, death and illness, failing health and memory, dashed dreams and diminished capacity become its leitmotif.
Epiphany. When claiming myself amidst ancestral loss and unapologetic grief becomes an even deeper expression of love for my life and this world.
(Spacing and line breaks have been altered to fit the page.)
Touched by its prescience. Grateful there was no funeral. Aware I am resolutely traversing the eldering landscape.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“We were lovers who … decided to make the world a better place by slowing down long enough to pay for its improvement—by paying attention, the reverent, even holy attention of love.”
Brian McLaren, The Galápagos Islands
My understanding of “paying attention” as a form of gratitude and reciprocity for the abundance we receive from the natural world first came to my awareness when I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. A couple of years ago, I wrote here about its impact on me. Now, reading last week’s daily meditations from Father Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation, with the theme “Befriending Nature,” and listening to podcasts wherein the notion of “anima mundi” had been mentioned, I re-remembered a gift of walking alone, or with another but silently: the slowing down to notice… to really take in… to pay with my attention.
Since July, I have walked over 400 km solo, accompanied by the soft tapping of my poles on dirt and pavement paths; voices heard through my earbuds narrating novels and poetry, or in podcast conversations; urban infrastructure; people and their dogs and babies. During every outing, along routes that have become like familiar friends, I’d stop several times to simply breathe deeper and take in my surroundings: the unusual birdsong; the season’s changing colours; temperatures warmed or cooled by a sudden breeze; the river’s surface. During every outing, always an image or several made with my phone to reflect some essence of that day’s beauty. And after every walk, I’d record the steps, kilometers, and time walked and post it together with my photos and a brief description of my experience. The longer I did this, the more I realized that what I was really doing was composing love letters to life. By showing up on those paths every other day for weeks and noticing and recording, I was saying:
I am here to be with you, to walk in, and among, and on you. I am here to notice you, to be in relation withyou, to be moved, and changed by you. I am here to say thank you for always, unfailingly, uplifting me – turning my fatigue into curiosity, my sour mood into a smile or a tear.
When I walked the Portuguese Coastal Camino, most of that distance solo and unplugged, I composed a chant from words I’d read by Thich Nhat Hahn and Rumi, to help maintain my rhythm and bring some ease and pleasure to the long distances:
With every step I kiss the Earth. With every step I make a prayer. The Soul comes for its own joy. Dance on, dance on, dance on.
This time, while I’d only remembered the first line, whisper-singing it in a new iteration as I walked, I was mindful of making prayers for friends unwell and suffering. This summer, and in a few weeks’ time in a country I deeply love, walking a section of the Via Francigena, I slow down long enough to pay my attention…my reverent, holy attention of love.
Much love, kindest regards, and many thanks for your support and encouragement during my preparation.
“As I grow older, I realize that my own writing is very much more than just a pleasurable form of self-expresssion – at its heart, it’s a way of trying to change the story, of weaving the possibility of a better world into being through the power of words.”
Sharon Blackie, Hagitude, 2022
space and a horizon from which to consider
I’ve been walking alot these days and keeping me company has been the wonderful voice of Sharon Blackie reading her words in Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life. She offers in the chapter “The Creatrix,” one of featured archetypes, that the creative work of elder women is about making art that matters, showing others the way, transcending, and transforming our limiting and dysfunctional cultural narratives. Quoting Betty Friedan’s The Fountain of Age (1993):
“‘late-style’ artists and scientists, creators and great thinkers seem to move beyond tumult and discord, distracting details and seemingly irreconcilable differences, to unifying principles that give new meaning to what has gone before and presage the agenda for the next generation.”
While not as articulate, I’ve held the hope that my writing, here in this blog, and in my poetry, offers a new perspective or amplifies and uplifts a current one. I wish for my writing to create and invite readers into a space of contemplation and affirmation, a heart and mind space from which to know and claim their personal power to make a difference.
Since January, I’ve continued to submit my poetry and photography to literary journals and magazines. Once again, where poems have been rejected, often a photo or several have been accepted. This year, two of my photos were first and second choice for the cover of the 2024 Edmonton Stroll of Poets Anthology. After a winter’s worth of rejections, I received word that my poem, “Contemplating the Cherry Tree,” had won first place in the 3rd annual Carmen Ziolkowski Poetry Prize, hosted by Ontario’s Lawrence House Centre for the Arts. And I’m happy to have found some global homes for my work: in Katherine McDaniel’s beautifully curated Synkroniciti, the German-English Amaranth Journal of Food Writing, Art & Design, and Greece’s Raw Lit.
the cherry tree
A month ago, I sent to a publisher twenty pages of my fifty-eight-poem collection, Skyborne Insight. My winter-spring labour of love, working with my skilful editor, essayist-poet Jenna Butler, this manuscript is distilled from noticing and naming the grief and the beauty in life’s imperfections, and the sacred in the mundane moments at home, and those extraordinary ones when travelling abroad. In the final editing, heeding Jenna’s advice, I printed and posted each poem on the wall, read aloud, changed a word, added a comma or new line break, re-ordered, and finally realized, as I read the totality, that I had created a wise and vulnerable collection, one of which I am deeply proud. Now I wait and see…and as Jenna wisely advised, celebrate this significant accomplishment: my manuscript.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote here about the memories evoked by a poem sent to me in celebration of a previous significant accomplishment: my retirement. Every summer, by habit, I compose a to-do list of activities. “Shred files” was this summer’s prompt to review, shred, and recycle the last of my professional files. Drawers and shelves emptied, bags and boxes filled, my heart heeded me to hold on to the folders on facilitation, The Circle Way, the Art of Hosting, and bits from coaching – the mainstays of the career I loved, the career that was my love made visible. I now look forward to re-configuring how to use both the physical and energetic space that’s now been opened for my writing, to more fully nurture its potential to weave into being, with words and photographs, a better world…to presage by continuing to notice and name the nuances of what is asking to be born, of what the world is asking of me.
“…the role of the elder woman as visionary isn’t always an active, ‘out there’ role; sometimes it’s associated with a quieter, more inward-looking aspect of elderhood – perhaps a later life stage, in which she has withdrawn to the solitude and darkness of her symbolic cave…
These old women have left their strivings behind, and in the clarity of all that not-doing, they’ve made room for the space in which to cultivate deep vision, insight, and wisdom.”
Sharon Blackie, Hagitude, 2022
Exploring further and deeper the terrain that is my eldering landscape.
This is where you life has arrived, After all the years of effort and toil; Look back with graciousness and thanks On all your great and quiet accomplishments.
You stand on the shore of a new invitation To open your life to what is left undone; Let your heart enjoy a different rhythm When drawn to the wonder of other horizons.
Have the courage for a new approach to time; Allow it to slow until you find freedom To draw alongside the mystery you hold And befriend your own beauty of soul.
Now is the time to enjoy your heart’s desire, To live the dreams you’ve been waiting for, To awaken the depths beyond your work And enter into your infinite source.
John O’Donohue, “For Retirement,” To Bless the Space Between Us, 2008
I have tried umpteen times to format a post using parts of this poem, one gifted to me by a dear friend and colleague twelve years ago on my “retirement.” It appeared as a Facebook memory last week, June 30, as had photo memories from my retirement party that last week in June. I concluded I was pushing the river and so have included the entire piece, in a manner more typical of my Friday blog, together with my posted response:
“Twelve years ago, I had a remarkable career with Edmonton Public Schools. I made wonderful friends. It was my “love made visible.” Hopefully, this current chapter writing poetry will bear similar fruits. Thank you for the memories.”
floral tributesmy “swan song““they knew I loved orange”
Within weeks of saying goodbye, I’d launched a new website, and – parlaying my talents, honed skills, and cherished relationships – a private consulting practice. For another seven years I made visible my love supporting leaders, hosting group conversations that mattered, and teaching The Circle Way. Then, government budget cuts and Covid-19 and “poof,” my career ended. Then, I truly stood “on the shore of a new invitation to open my life to what is left undone.”
These have been a few weeks’ worth of memories…professional…personal with the anniversary of Annie’s passing and the joyful arrival of Walker and last week’s simple celebration of our 44th wedding anniversary at a favourite cafe…last year’s preparation for my first long walk in Italy, now to be followed by another this September. Memories that invite reflection and confirmation that I make it a practice to be regularly “drawn to the wonder of other horizons.”
Writing poetry, my consciously chosen next chapter, invites me to “befriend my own beauty of soul.” And because how I’d been able to shape my career allowed for the same, I still miss it. I always said I had the remarkable good fortune to work with people who I loved and cherished and knew they’d felt the similarly about me.
I’ve certainly cultivated a new approach to time. Alongside a slower pace – one enhanced by walking – we live a quiet life and marvel at Walker’s ability to accommodate.
Lately I’ve noticed how my once attraction to life’s “hoopla” has given way to noticing, marking, and often passing over the myriad opportunities for engagement “out there.” Quoting Leonard Cohen, “I ache in the places I used to play.” And while this can be literally – like the ache after a night of dancing a few weeks ago – what I really mean is the tender bit of heart ache, grief even, in finding myself drawn to the still and quiet, letting go, or might it be entering into my infinite source?
A Wabi Sabi Life 