…At the same moment, I experienced exactly the opposite emotion. The tears were at the same time tears of an immense sadness—a sadness at what we’re doing to the earth, sadness about the people whom I had hurt in my life, and sadness too at my own mixed motives and selfishness. I hadn’t known that two such contrary feelings (joy and sadness) could coexist. I was truly experiencing the nondual mind of contemplation.
Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, Tears of Joy and Sadness, 2025
A “better late than never” post, I knew when I’d read Rohr’s meditation yesterday that it would be good grist for my writing mill, but I’ve been struggling to find the words.
Yesterday, when I’d read another email with the invitation to share a favourite dog poem, I suddenly realized it had been two years to the day (not date) when we’d said our final “good-byes” to Annie. Reading and recalling, at the same time I was hearing Walker the Joy Boy, bounding up the stairs to watch squirrels with a second floor advantage. “His version of screen time“, says Sig, as he can spend hours glued to those floor to ceiling windows.
Bittersweet.
There’s the world close up, across the border, and oceans away…the new e-bike I bought last week…the need to find the perfect buyer for its predecessor, my Danish cruiser…the hail that for two nights shattered blossoms and shredded leaves giving a poor prognosis for some harvests…the rain that finally fell for hours and hours soaking the parched earth…a lingering sadness from my birthday…the delight with my new decade new haircut.
Bittersweet. The co-existence of two contrary feelings.
Still at a loss for this blog, I turned to editing some poems. Trying to track down a reference to one, I opened Breathe, a collection from Lynn Ungar. I know it’s not Friday when I typically post a poem, a photo, and a reflection, but this is it. With better words that I can muster at the moment to acknowledge life’s bitter and its sweet, and unabashed joy that comes from living with dogs – Beckey, Sassy, Torch, Peggy, Lady, Annie, and Walker.
Annie sitting with AnnieWalker ready to playWalker – where are you going?
JOY
I don’t need to tell you this world is hard, and getting harder. We thought it would be better than this- more sensible, more neatly worked out, more righteous, according to our impeccable analysis of what righteousness should look like. And yet, here we are. No good pretending it isn’t both a slog and a crisis, which is to say, wearing on every last nerve. And still, when you least expect it, you find yourself ambushed by Joy, who, tail whipping and ears slicked back to her head, launches herself into your lap, leaving you breathless and covered in kisses.
THESE DAYS Anyone who tells you not to be afraid should have their head examined. Cities are burning, hillsides are ablaze. and the dumpster fire of our common life is out of control. I wish I could tell you when it was going to get better. I wish I could promise that better was anywhere down this road. I miss dancing, bodies in something between conversation and flight. I miss singing, the way we trusted the air that moved between us. I miss the casual assumption that everything would be alright in the morning. These days I am trying to be buoyed by the smallest things – a ripe tomato, a smattering of rain. These days I am trying to remember that songs of lamentation are still songs.
Lynn Ungar, These Days: Poetry of the Pandemic Age, 2020
There is so much about this poem – found searching my bookshelf for one to frame my day, this week, my life, LIFE – that is in perfect alignment, despite it being written four years ago with its context the pandemic.
Today, I did a Medicine Walk along my favourite river valley route. Despite training for my long walk in September, this walk was not about distance, elevation, or pace. In honor of the feast day of Saint James – Sant Iago, as in Santiago, as in the Camino – it would be a walking prayer for the health and well-being, for a miracle, for a friend… for several friends… each besieged by life-threatening illness. Itbecame, too, a prayer for all beings displaced,distraught, and destroyed by the wildfires.
Despite an almost twenty-degree drop in temperature, with the morning overcast, thick with smoke from wildfires that last night ravaged one of Alberta’s beloved treasures, Jasper National Park, and its century old townsite, and heavy with rain that eventually, blessedly fell, I dressed for weather and set out. I chose as my audio companion the exquisitely composed “Camino” by the late Canadian violinist, Oliver Schroer. The first notes of the first track, “Field of Stars,” are a haunting homage to Santiago de Compostela (field of stars). The ambient tracks blended with birdsong on my path such that I felt surrounded and held by the morning’s poignant beauty. A perfect reflection of my interior landscape and the devastated one to the west.
Where a few weeks ago pink wild roses bloomed thick and heady with perfume, today’s bushes were laden with ripe purple saskatoon berries and blood-red wild raspberries.Golden yarrow and wild sage filled river banks. To my way of thinking, tasting those berries was my holy communion, the real “body of Christ.”
As steam rose from the placid river, a lone pelican glided above on its huge, outstretched wings. I lost sight of it, and then looking up, there he was again, effortless in his flight. I wondered about the significance of his appearance as I’d never seen one before on this stretch. Once home, I consulted Ted Andrews’ classic Animal Speak to learn they represent renewed buoyancy, unselfishness, and the need to not be weighed down by emotion. Wise medicine for these days.
“Morning!” we call out in passing – the dog walkers, the bicyclists, the ambitious lady with her water bottles and her sports bra, all out unfortunately early to avoid the heat. “Morning!” Not even “Good morning,” which could be an overstatement, given the hour and the fact that the world is on fire. It’s what we have to offer. We have the gift of a couple fresh hours, the fact that we are out moving through it, a whiff of possibility, the reality that our lives keep on touching one another’s in the tiniest of ways. Morning is as good as word for it as any.
Lynn Ungar, July 8, 2024
…Morgen…Dia…Giornata… On a German markplatz filling with farmers’ stalls for market day…mumbled by an elderly man in the small coastal fishing village on the Portuguese Camino…nodding to locals and those few fellow tourists at dawn on Florentine cobblestone streets.
This week a heat dome descended on my province. Sig was up early training Walker to become his name through neighborhood streets, quiet yet surprisingly busy with others intent to spare their dogs from the rising heat. I’d set out early one morning to climb stairs and hills in preparation for September’s long walk (sports bra left at home, water bladder instead of bottles in my pack). Cyclists early for the workouts or commutes. Our lives touching each other with a nod, a smile, a mumbled “morning,” and then each of us on our respective ways into days that held possibility and for some, or many, grief.
Give up on your agenda – this is exploration, not exercise. She can’t hear you calling her on, but then, you can’t smell whatever is so intriguing about that clump of grass, so maybe just relax. Stop counting steps. Don’t even count birds, or minutes or the things you have left to do on your pressing and eternal list. Move gently into the immeasurable. Stop to greet children. Consider that the most fascinating thing in the world could be your neighbor’s garbage can. Observe without judgement what is near to hand – even if what you see is the halt in her step, the way her spine has begun to show. Walk just long enough to remember that love is not an antidote to death, but loss is not the opposite of life.
– Lynn Ungar, May 2, 2023 –
Over the past year at least, I’ve been saying that walking Annie is no longer exercise. It’s fresh air, the gift of being outside noticing life around us. That I may walk 10,000 steps, but certainly not aerobically. And I’ve long known for a dog, walking is “scent shopping,” so I best be prepared for meandering. But in the last two weeks, the gift of this oh-so-perfectly-timed poem, could not be truer. Some of you might know that two weeks ago yesterday – after our morning walk, treats in the kitchen, sleeping…errrr…supervising our work in the office, and then going outside to her kennel when the house cleaners arrived – Annie suddenly was not ok. Disoriented, barely able to walk let alone stand upright, shallow breathing, drooling, incontinent – the ER vet clinic gave us a diagnosis of THC poisoning, an increasingly common incident given our carelessness with roaches and edibles. We were given a prognosis, took her in to see our vet the following morning, who confirmed the diagnosis, but by Sunday her condition was not improving. No appetite nor eating, so we bought electrolytes for her water (on the suggestion from a Facebook friend who saw my posting). Her walk had not improved, in fact we were seeing more weakening. But of most concern was seeing her paw at her right eye, and when I did the reflex test I’d seen the vets do, she didn’t blink, leading us to believe she’d suffered vision loss. A return visit to the vet on Monday morning confirmed my first, and our worst suspicions: she’d most likely had a stroke. “She’ll not live to 17,” the vet said, referring to Annie’s predecessor, Peggy, who died late into her 17th year. And with further examination, and seeing Annie’s lethargy, I wondered if she’d last the week.
After deliberation, we decided to pass on the neuro consult, not wanting to add further distress to Annie with the battery of tests required pre-exam. We know she is happiest with us, and so we’d keep her home, tend to her best we could, hope for the best, and pray for a miracle.
This is my “Lazarus” story, because with every passing day, Annie has returned to herself, engaging in all the patterns and endearing ways she is who she is, with us. Looking eagerly for me to get her leash to walk, barking at the neighbors (fulfilling her job as guard dog), finally eating regularly with creative concoctions of smelly canned fish to pique her interest, remembering to remind us to fetch her favourite dessert of dentistix, and following me down into the office where she takes her place on her supervisor’s cushion. The big right front paw she would persistently, heavily place on my keyboard at noon to signal lunch and a walk…the one I would curse for interrupting my work…that has been slow to return being the side that became weakened. But tonight, she placed it on me as I napped, reminding me of dinner time. It comes. I pray it comes in the office, on my keyboard, and I will kiss and welcome it back.
Annie is a bird dog, smelling her particular stock in trade. We think her loss of vision and diminished sense of smell have been the most disorienting for her, with her hearing less for the past couple of years. Sleeping more than usual with the trauma of it all, and the neurological stress has been exhausting. At yesterday’s chiropractic session, we learned that dogs have the ability to reroute blood to injured areas of the brain. We’re hopeful that as we see her eating and sniffing with more precision and focus outside and during our walks, coming into the kitchen while we cook and eat dinner, her scenting is returning. We pray, too, that her eyesight might improve as pressure comes off the optic nerve, because the eye itself is in good health.
In the last week, I’ve read of several friends having to say goodbye to their beloved fur companions. Each time I feel my heart squeeze. With Annie being our sixth dog, this is a heartbreak I know too well, yet wouldn’t trade for the joy each brings, the love I feel, that grows with each one, in return. Lynn Ungar writes it one way. Mary Oliver in her volume Dog Songs, writes it another: “We would do anything to keep them with us and to keep them young”[1].
At thirteen years, walking slower, needing my help to be lifted onto the bed, and now ensuring she makes it up and down the stairs safely, with this health crisis, I know Annie isn’t young, and that I can’t keep her forever. I am simply so thankful to have her with us now, for as long as now is.
Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. And deep gratitude to you who replied to my posting on Facebook. Your love, thoughts and prayers have helped immeasurably.
I notice that when the angel spoke to Mary she got news that God was pleased with her, and that she would bear a son destined for greatness, but no mention was made of torture and early death and the way her heart would break completely and irrevocably. The angel told her not to be afraid, but didn’t mention the need to take the baby and run from Herod or even giving birth in a stable. If the heavenly being hinted at a future seated at the right hand of God, it never acknowledged how different that feels than having him seated at the family table for supper, and the ache of an empty chair. Maybe she knew, and said yes anyway. Maybe the big ask is to open the door to suffering, which is the door marked Love.
– Lynn Ungar – December 16, 2021
Since returning to Italy in October, truly my heart’s home, or at least one of them, I splurged on a subscription to the weekly ITALY Magazine and follow its daily posts on language, culture, food – with beautiful photos – on Facebook and IG. Yesterday reading the current issue, I was reminded that December 8 is “la Festa dell’Immacolata Concezione,” the Feast of the Immaculate Conception when the Angel visited Mary, the day in many parts of Italy where trees are festooned with lights marking the beginning of the Christmas season. So this poem from Lynn Ungar, stored in the dark of my virtual file since last year, fit the bill for today’s post.
Earlier this week, I read an essay by Perdita Finn, wherein she gave an alternate interpretation to the feast day: that of Mary being immaculate, born without sin, free from karma. That she symbolizes the universe’s womb, the dark matter out of which all life emerges on earth. “This is why so many of the old Madonnas were depicted as black, as black as the original mothers, as the soil, as the space between the stars.”
Aligning with the Celtic celebration of Solstice and its honouring of the wisdom of the dark, when what is planted, resting fallow hidden in the depths, can decay or gestate, renew, transform. Mary becomes the the earthly embodiment of the divine feminine and its creative-destructive cycles of life and death.
Or as Lynn offers, the suffering that is Love.
Much love and kindest regards dear friends as you enter the ever growing darkness of December.
First set the warp, the plain, stable threads that hold the pattern in place – the infrastructure of joy, the girders that hold up all we build of meaning, or justice, or peace. Use strong threads left by those who have gone before. Only then pick up the weft, the colored thread that you will use to weave accordingly to your plan. Choose carefully – this is what the world will see, each tiny act that builds the bright pattern of your life. Yes, the threads will tangle or knot or fray, and the flaws will show. Oh well. Tuck in the ends as best you can and start again. This is not the time to stop your weaving. So much is pulling at the great design.
– Lynn Ungar – Breathe, 2020
Call it synchronicity or coincidence, I quickly picked up one of two poetry chapbooks I had just received from Lynn Ungar and the page opened to this poem, the perfect companion to Monday’s blog post, Spinning the Sacred Feminine. I’d been inspired to feature a poem on weaving today, thinking back to one I had “composed” as the conversation harvest from an activity designed in collaboration with a textile artist-community developer eleven years ago for our professional community of practice. I don’t recall the specifics, but we provided strips of fabric for the group of facilitators to weave together as a way to consider our work grounded in conversation and story. This was the result:
WARP and WEFT An engaged community inspired by the virtues of beauty, hope and simplicity. Texture foretells of mystery and transformation. Beauty, the loom for creativity. Inspiration, the weft. We, the warp. Beginning.
Of course it’s to be expected: the dim light and early dark and the endless days of rain. And if the week of brutal cold wasn’t what you signed up for, well, it’s what you got, so might as well make the best of it. Other people got blizzards, and friends have flooded basements or days without power or lost everything to wind-whipped wildfire. Of course, there’s nothing less comforting than the notion that others have it worse. Misery doesn’t love company, it just spreads like an oil slick across the dull land, and we have moved on from terror to a cranky ennui. But one day last week, the clouds lifted, and there was the mountain, shining in all its snow-clad glory. My breath caught to remember that what I see is not the sum of what is there.
– Lynn Ungar –
So this is January, 2022. Today, a Facebook cartoon meme showed Lucy complaining to Charlie Brown of the new year, suggesting we had, in fact, been stuck with a used one. Last year, or even the one before that. Where I live, we’ve had weeks of “brutal cold” suddenly broken overnight by above freezing temperatures and rain, making for treacherous travelling, by car or foot. House fires with fatalities. Inflation rates the highest in 30 years. Unprecedented numbers of Covid caseswith friends suddenly succumbing.
And yet the beauty of snow laden trees and brilliant blue skies. Wolf Moon an incandescent marvel illuminating the night. My parents’ 68th anniversary. The birthdays of my husband and niece. Poetry books in the today’s mail. Stories shared and books reviewed on Zoom. Tonight’s easeful meanderings in my women’s circle. An abundance of goodness and gratitude, more than named here. This is my January, 2022.
You could be right. Maybe there is a vast conspiracy, a web of lies wrapped around generations, a fraud so vast and pervasive that only the enlightened catch glimpses in shadowed alleys. Do you want to know? Do you dare to tug on the smallest of those tangled threads? Are you courageous enough to look at the edges of your vision? Begin with these questions: Whose stories have I not been allowed to hear? Who have I placed outside the circle of my concern? If I were to really listen, what might crack open and be born?
– Lynn Ungar – November 29, 2021
With the new covid variant “omicron,” gaining traction and making global headlines, countries are responding, re-heating debate and dissent, protest and polarization. Ungar’s questions are wise reminders to help us hold the centre when there’s heat on the rim, to invite us into curiosity, to remind us of all we do not know.
I wonder if some language has a word for it – the elation of a perfect fall day, crisp and gilt-edged and glowing, mixed with melancholy of wondering whether this might be the peak, the moment when the fruit is perfectly sweet before it tips to decay. I mean not just the coming winter, but the dropping shoe of it all- flood and drought and the cruelty of the terrified and in denial.
And what if another perfect day does come, and I fail to notice? What if I wake up as if from a dream in which I’ve opened a room full of opulent gifts, and then neglected to thank the giver? It happens. The ground is littered with bright leaves and sturdy acorns. I carefully select a few to bring inside, when I could lie down and roll in the brittle beauty of it all.
– Lynn Ungar – October 2, 2021
“Gosh, I could gush every day over the golden, glorious gorgeousness of these autumn days,” I wrote to a friend in response to the photos we were both posting. And then I read Lynn Ungar’s most recent poem, and knew that before these perfect fall days pass, I will lie down and roll in their brittle beauty and thank the giver.
We knew it would come crashing down, but now we are in the clatter – fire, drought, flood, smoke, heat, the million and one ways that beings cry out. We thought there would be more time. We pretended that we didn’t know. We squandered so much that we might have saved, and for what? Trinkets. Glitter. The pleasures of ignorance and a basket full of Happy Meals.
It’s time to ask the dying what they know. What will you give up to cure what is killing you? What do you pursue when your days are numbered? Gaze into the eyes of a beloved old dog. Bury your face in her neck and engrave the scent on your memory. Let your heart break open. Learn to cherish what remains.
– Lynn Ungar –
Lynn Ungar first came to my attention last year with her “viral” poem, Pandemic. Straight to the point and heart, her words pierce with truthfulness. A week ago, our beloved Annie dog went under for a brief diagnostic procedure. Thankfully an “all OK” diagnosis, she returned home that day woozy and with a package each of probiotics and antacids, hopefully to curb the somedays’ frantic rush to eat grass. But with eleven and a half years under her belt, and a decade this month with us, I know the times we walk together are ever precious. But isn’t it so for each of us – how life changes on a dime? Once again, around the world, we see how precarious, precious, and fragile our circumstances. Reading Radical Regeneration: Birthing the New Human in the Age of Extinction (2020) by Andrew Harvey and Carolyn Baker makes the unequivocal point that we are living in the end times. The posthumous One Drum (2019) by Richard Wagamese cites ancient prophesy of a time “when words would fly like lightning bolts across the sky, and ” when “the human family would move farther apart and that this separation, the break in energy, would cause great stress upon the Earth… floods, titanic storms, famine, earthquakes, the departure of animals, strange diseases, and turmoil among all peoples.” (22)
A Wabi Sabi Life 