Mountain Sweetness

April 1, 2010

Today was a day to describe just to give an idea of the preciousness of life here on the mountain. It was a blue sky, warm weather day. I have decided to put in a bigger garden this year than I have ever done – I’ve usually only had kitchen-type gardens with some herbs and tomatoes and a few scattered flowers. Every year I thought I would finally take the plunge and put in a big one like my mountain friends do, and every year some huge trip has come up in the summer or something like that prevent it. So this is my year.

Mountain friends are like no other friends I have ever known. I woke up this morning to the sound of my neighbor outside running a tiller across the area we had discussed for the garden. He just decided to do it for me. Later in the day I went down to borrow a tool to help me clear a different area that’s covered with juniper, very hard to remove. Their three-year-old wanted to show me the new kittens that were born two days ago. When I was coming back up to do my work, she wanted to come. So she did, and her Mom did and we all worked together and cleared that area for new planting. Hannah, the three-year old, has her own garden gloves and rake, which she brought and utilized. Then her Papaw came up with the tiller again and turned the soil over some more. Then we drank some beers and ate wild onions out of the yard. Then we went down to see the kittens again and one had died because it was too far under her Mama’s body and suffocated. The Mama is less than a year old, too young and inexperienced they explained. Hannah got the saddest look on her face and kept holding the dead kitty. Her Mama didn’t want to bury it because she cries too hard every time she buries an animal. Hannah then brought me some eggs that she found, since their chickens lay them here and there around their property, kind of willy-nilly. A real live Easter egg hunt.

It’s just a spring day on the mountain and I feel so blessed by it. Life is good.

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Waiting

March 31, 2010

After whooshing speedily down a waterfall, the stream right away takes up its slow meandering pace again. So goes nature and life. Something shifts, earthquakes happen, lightning strikes – and then we’re back to geologic time. The effects of a shake-up that occurs rapidly present themselves in time, with subtlety and choice of movement. Trust in nature’s way is paramount. Meanings and results and calculations cannot be made too soon. The moon still waxes and wanes, the trees pregnant with spring’s foliage still look bare, everything presents and arrives in its timing. I’ve felt pushed off a cliff recently, but now walk slowly at the level to which it relocated me; listening, waiting and following the tenderly unfolding path. Love and trust; love and trust; love and trust — these are the signposts that help me know where to place the foot next.

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Moon Magic

March 30, 2010

The Full Moon is staring right in my window, like a great eye looking at me. Strangely I feel seen by it. It’s electrifying. Driving home tonight an owl flew in front of my car and landed on a tree next to the road, stopping to stare at me. I stopped the car and stared back. What do these eyes of the night see? I want to know. There is some magic in the air and I want in on the secret.

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Terrifying Angels

March 29, 2010

In The Duino Elegies Rilke stated, “Every angel is terrifying.” I agree. When the vast realities of the other worlds break into our own, a multitude of responses arise in us. Terror is definitely one of them. Our little lives are watched over, and though we don’t always feel it we are in the hands of great powers. I know better, but recently I was feeling a bit forgotten, as if I had floated into a sidepool and the river was running over there at a distance without me. I told the gods that I need to feel them moving in my life. The next thing you know, I felt pushed off a cliff, falling through space, taken on a wild ride. I hit bottom without injury, but have been rattled to the core. Angels of grace show up when we call for them, but watch out. Every angel is terrifying.

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Change

March 28, 2010

The essence of life is change. I’m getting ready for a big one. I feel it and know it. It’s exciting and disconcerting and calls for presence to the moment. Listening. Acceptance, trust. The heart has to be wide open. More later.

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Uncivil War

March 27, 2010

I have heard from a number of friends of their disappointment in the American people for the vitriol over the Health Care Reform Bill. During the first day or two after it was passed, as I looked at the number of states that were jumping on board to sue the federal government, I actually had a little fear that we could break into civil war. At some level that is what it is, though thank god, no one has yet taken up arms. But bricks, death threats and bomb threats could be the beginning.

I was just going through a stack of ‘notes to self’ and found these words from the Inaugural Speech of Abraham Lincoln. I had written them down as I watched Ken Burns’ documentary about the Civil War. Lincoln said:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth song all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Interestingly, I had also written in my notes that in order to preserve the Constitution Lincoln had for three months gone beyond it, waging war without congressional consent, seizing northern telegraph offices, suspending habeas corpus. He said, “More rogues than honest men find shelter under habeas corpus.” Obama and his administration are accused of going beyond the Constitution. Whether or not they have will yet be established, but it might be worthwhile to put their actions in the context of our history in such matters.

I hope and pray that the better angels of our nature will take hold sooner rather than later, and that the uncivility will turn to wisdom and the desire to work together even when we are on the losing side of an issue. I hope we can make history by finding new ways to bridge our gaps and renew our bonds of affection. That kind of outcome would be a greater victory than any bill that could pass through government.

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Prosperity

March 26, 2010

I have just purchased seeds for my garden, and look forward to putting them in the ground and watching them grow. Tomatoes, lettuce, greens, and several others as well as a variety of flowers. These little tiny seeds will spring forth with all of this beauty and nourishment.

I’ve been hearing in several reports about the new craze for buying gold. I understand that gold can be a better place to have your money than in stocks that could fail overnight and suddenly you are left with nothing. But I also wonder – what does one do really with gold? You can’t eat it. I definitely am pitifully uneducated and naive when it comes to economics and finance, but instinctively I feel richer and safer having these little packets of seeds along with access to a little plot of earth to plant them in, than I would with a box full of gold.

Wealth is a matter of definition and perspective, and obviously varies from person to person. I do believe, however, that we are each meant to be thriving and prosperous, and that the more we understand about  the ways of Nature and how fully she wants to give to us and provide for us, the more we will actually feel and experience ourselves as wealthy. And the more we attune ourselves to Nature’s idea of abundance and what constitutes true prosperity, the more we will understand that it is every human’s birthright, and will work to make sure every child born has access to their birthright. No one should be hungry; the earth is ready and wanting to provide richly for all of us. How did we get here?

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Oona Pearl’s Safe Arrival

March 25, 2010

The world is all brand new today, with a shining new light in it. My friends RB Morris and Karly Stribling brought home their 2-day old daughter Oona Pearl, all 6.6 pounds of her. This girl is born into so much love. RB and Karly each express the rarest kind of open-heartedness toward the world, and their love for each other heals the soul just to be around it. Oona is one blessed little girl. Her father is a singer, songwriter, recording artist and poet. Her mother is an artist and the embodiment of beauty itself.  Oona is poetry itself. It’s a bright day on planet earth. I’m guessing those with eyes to see could detect a bright new star shining over a little nested third story perch/apartment in Knoxville, Tennessee. Spring is the time of birth and new life. Karly and RB nailed it!

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Time Traveling

March 24, 2010

A few nights ago I watched the movie, The Time Traveler’s Wife. I was in an exhausted zone in my head and had had a glass of wine with dinner, so was vulnerable to an altered state of consciousness already. While the movie played, in my half-dream state I kept saying to myself, “I do that. I’m a time traveler.” It kept coming into my head. My full-on waking consciousness would not say this. It’s the indigenous piece of me that was piping up.

I had promised myself that before I went to bed I would record in my dreams that I have had over the last couple of weeks in my dream journal. I had just taken notes on them but had not written out the full narrative. The first dream in the series I had actually written about in my blog of March 7, but had completely forgotten about. It was a time traveling dream. The coincidence stunned me. In the dream I was back in the period of my life during which I was experience divorce while raising a young teenage daughter. In “real” time I was a wreck, having a breakdown. In the dream I was living at that time but was healthy, happy, strong and whole. My daughter and I had found a new house; we were was fixing it up, we were optimistic and felt good about our new life.  It was as if I were given a do-over; that we could actually could go back in time and do it all again differently. I was ecstatic when I woke up from the dream and the sensation remained.

Time is not at all what we think it is in our consensual reality. I learn this in small ways living on a mountain and in a mountain culture. Time is a different element here than it is off the mountain. I am constantly aware of this and nearly everyone who comes to visit and stays for awhile experiences and mentions it.

Everyone everywhere has experiences of time out of time. But since this strange coincidence a few nights ago of seeing the movie and then revisiting the dream immediately afterward, I’m intrigued; my antenna is up. I’m going to watch for the next lesson. There is so much to learn.

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Some People Like It and Some Don’t

March 23, 2010

One of my “big” dreams, as Jung called them, a lifetime dream, occurred 20-some years ago. In it a woman came up to me with great respect and said, “Divine Mother told me you have the blue thunder in the heart.” She seemed to know what that meant and be in awe of it. I laughed, in a kind of exhausted way, and said, “Well, some people like it and some don’t.” The dream has always been there to help me realize that no matter who we are, no matter what we do or try to do, life asks us to tolerate the fact that some people like who we are and what we do and some don’t. We cannot be effective in the world in any real way unless we learn to accept that. Pleasing everyone, not upsetting anyone, isn’t possible unless you work hard to become compliant and spineless.

I watched President Obama sign the Health Care Reform Bill today. I think it moved even the stones and plants in my house to see the sense of joy and victory in the countenances of those in that room who had achieved what so many generations had tried to do and failed. I was holding my breath for them all – thinking how good it is for them to just have their moment to breathe it all in and to celebrate. The backlash is shaping furiously even as they stood there. Some people like it and some don’t. Nothing of significance can be attained without walking through that fire with patience, persistence and wisdom. All blessings to every one of us in the days ahead.

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