Samson

Life has been moving too fast. Too many moving parts. Slowing body. Maybe a slowing mind.

I have been remiss in writing about a very quiet, soulful companion in my midst. And, I am feeling badly that I am just doing this.

Samson

You see, Samson became a part of my family and work on December 26, 2016. Another rescue collie with low vision and entering his mid-life, at 6 yrs of age. A sweet, anxious but quiet guy. Big guy for a collie at 78 lbs when I first got him. Down from 100 lbs when the rescue folks took him in and fostered him for 8 months. He's weighing in at 68 and with muscle loss this summer/fall. Slowing down. Hearing worse, vision about gone. He's only 8 yrs old now.

His story was that a family got him and put him in a small backyard pen. They fed and watered him. He's never really responded to his name. They never realized that he had low vision. A neighbor encouraged them to surrender him to Collie Rescue Inc. where they worked to socialize, groom and provide physical care for him.

It had been almost one year since Finn had passed when I was ready to have another dog. That time coincided with his availability.

Other than his anxiety with being left alone and thunderstorms, he is a very gentle, quiet soul. I learned early on that he could be trusted to be in the counseling session with me, seeking a pet on the head, and then lying down. He also let children play with him, brush his hair and read to him in sessions.

He's been such a sweet guy.

And now he's entering some pretty serious health issues. No clear diagnosis since this summer. But it's now clear that his life is winding down. This week it came to a head. Vets. Urgent care vet centers. Mixed diagnosis. Xrays showing big changes. Meds won't fix. Surgeries dangerous. Maybe cancer. Maybe something else that isn't good, either. Not good.

And my mind is saying: too soon, too soon.

All of this is taking place during the week of Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. This is the week where some traditions end the year or begin to enter the time of endings.

This autumn is still warm. Trees are 2-3 weeks late in turning. There is a feeling that maybe we can fool winter. Maybe we can fool Death. Life goes on forever. Doesn't it?

Alas, our forms are always changing. Eventually, we  - every living thing - has a date with ending, ends, the end.

Samson. Beautiful Samson. You are still here for now. I am still here for now. Such gratitude for your gift of living with us. Such gratitude for your enormous, gentle soul.

Deep Fried Love and a Condiment birthday

Another birthday arrived. Heinz 57. Ketchup. Catsup. Goes with everything. Well almost. Always catching up. The condiment, never the main dish. Grilled. Baked. Crispy and fried is better.

In my family, people take sides over condiments. One side uses ketchup on everything except ice cream. Another side used a dislike for condiments as a requirement on their internet dating profile and got a condiment-hating partner to marry. I'm somewhere in the middle of the condiment preferences.

Expectations. Hopes and dreams. 57 years of breathing air on this earth. Grains of sand draining away. What to make of this?

I had planned a trip during my birthday for a 2-day workshop in MN, a state I had never visited. I justified this trip as "self-care," but was finding it increasingly too much work to pull off feeling like this was self-care.

Then I think of climate change and how it is to be on a jet with those contrails across the sky. This can't be good for the environment. I just read a report that we have been given until 2030 to figure out how to turn around our bad habits before it becomes too late. I have kids and grandkids and love lots of other people who are likely to have to deal with this mess, even if I don't. And, 2030 isn't that far away!

So, I did a retreat from home. Sylvia Boorstein has a nice little book on doing just that. I thought that I would use metta practice (a form of prayer) throughout the sitting, walking, eating, sitting, walking working, sitting times. At the end of the day, I'd practice the transforming suffering method of tonglen to work with a challenging situation. Instead, I found in my mailbox a poem from Brother Steindl-Rast's Gratitude newsletter. The poem is about the grace of forgetting all the things that have built walls in our lives and finding the freedom to live and love without those burdens. One Morning by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer  I dropped my plans of metta and tonglen practice.

As I sat and walked, I read the poem before each sitting practice. And let the words seep into unseen places, long loosened up by years of such a longing. I found a volunteer purple basil plant blooming in from a crack where the garage and driveway come together during my walking meditation. How had I missed her? I carefully tugged her free and replanted her before autumn's frost claimed her.

Poster-sized card from Partner for last year's birthday

By the end of the day, I was surprised that a new word entered my being. Delight! Yes, delight. I had been released from the burden of words and managing relationships and work and the world during meditation. Just being was more than enough. And, delight showed up.

Funny thing is that Partner has seen this for a long time. Delightful. A theme for last year's birthday poster he made for me. He said I've always been my own worst enemy. My "word" for 2017 and until now: Devotion. Devotion to God. Devotion to Love. Devotion to Life. Dropping the unnecessary, torturous judgements, criticisms, delusions, etc., for a day anyway. How sweet this openness to delight. Wonder is right beside it. Partner has been waiting for this awareness to arise for a very long time.

Wait. Watch for it... See how rich and thick I am being poured out into this life! It's a fine way to celebrate a condiment kind of birthday over this deep fried life of mine.

Did I mention that a shared root for delight is delicious? Ohhh, yummy. So tasty. Babies, dogs, old people, young people, lovers, the seen and the unseen, cranky coots, crones, ... all part of the great universe's menu.

When my husband asked his mother how to know if he was in love when we were dating, she responded, "Could you eat her up?" I guess he decided he could, because we've been married for 37 years during the lean, tough years as well as the rich and full times.

May we walk each other home together in love and without walls. May we see the Divine in and through each other. May we see Life and Love in all beings. May it be so.

The way of peace

This was written December  17, 2017. Today is the first day of spring and we are having our biggest snow this year. I found the time to actually get this posted. Enjoy.

Sitting here in the grey cold of the 3rd Sunday in Advent, the joyful candle is lit. (I'm still cold.)

A local United Church of Christ congregation has become a favorite place to worship. I probably get there once a month. This was a good Sunday to go. A retired pastor leads the service once a month. He has an amazing gift for speaking truth in the most gentle and loving ways.

The scripture we worked with today was from Luke. Zechariah had regained his voice after losing it when he blew off the angel Gabriel (God's messenger angel) saying he and his wife were too old for this promise of a baby. He regained his voice after the surprise baby was born and he wrote the name "John," as in John the Baptist, down as informed by the angel's visit. Only then did he regained his voice.

There is so much to that about doubt, bitterness, loss of heart, and, ultimately, humility. I was thinking as the pastor retold that story, that God basically was saying to Zechariah, "You go and think about who is in charge here," when he lost his voice.

The primarily focus today was on Zechariah's praises to God once he received his voice. How amazing that his view was on tender mercy and hope in the face of life's challenges ending with this as a path of peace.

Luke 1:78-79English Standard Version

because of the tender mercy of our God,    when the sunrise shall dawn upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Last week, I was up early and got to see the dawning of the sunrise in the southeastern horizon. A bright reddish-orange ball of fire arising. Gorgeous. Optimistic. We made it through another day and night to the dawning of a new day.

Something about the words of kindness, hope, love in the midst of the cold, hard times of winter, ...life. Both Partner and I were quietly crying, tears rolling down our faces. Such medicine, these words. 

What does it mean to be faithful to the hope and love of a Power greater than me or us? Zechariah had been faithful and good and was a little bitter and disbelieving. 

In the Advent seasons, when the past has fled, unasked, away
and there is nothing left to do but wait,
God, shelter us.
Be our surrounding darkness;
be the fertile soil out of which hope springs in due time.
In the uncertain times, help us to greet the dawn and labor on, love on,
in faith awaiting your purpose hid in you
waiting to be born in due time. 

There is a special kind of silence in this prayer written above by Ruth Duck that was used in today's service. The dark shows up where there appears to be no movement, no hope, and time isn't ours. Important life is forming, maybe completely undoing and being something else entirely. We are being reformed.

My own prayer goes like this:

Lord, give me the strength to be patient with what I don't have control over
and an ability to appreciate the winter dawn as the potent day it is with its' deeper night wrapped around it. Sometimes these days are covered in ice and snow and grey skies  that fool me into thinking that each day is just like any other day - a time to keep the pace of peak sunshine and weather going as if I were immortal and the days long.

Help me remember that people across time and cultures slowed down for storytelling, and "chillin" out, a kind of medicine in its own right. May this time of story and renewal  be deeply healing. May those with eyes to see and ears to hear absorb what is needed, what prayer God is answering. May our feet be guided into the way of Peace. May our souls be filled with love and new life. 

         Amen (may it be so).

Love reflects Love

There are so many teachings of Jesus that have impacted me  - pointing to how we care for each other - ourselves, our friends, our neighbors, strangers, and our enemies. Jesus's words are like the air I breath.

A fundamental understanding of Buddhism is that change is inevitable. It's what we do with change that matters.

Care for each other. Change. 

A driving question in my life has been: Where are my people?

On this day, it is with souls in the warmth of a living room on a foggy, rainy day.

A small group of people met for worship in the home of one of us preparing to enter a hospice facility this week. Everyone in the circle has decades of shared joys and sorrows, celebrations and troubles, and the thick soup of life.

I am reflecting on the changes and the fundamental truths that got me to this point. While I moved my Quaker membership to another meeting 8 years ago, it is this group with whom I spent 20 years of my formative adult years and with whom were called to worship during this particular day. 

Some of us had shared in a Marriage Enrichment training and kept up with potlucks and practicing "the skills" for several years beyond the initial training as we coped with raising kids, working, and trying to get along with our partners. (Okay, sometimes we wanted to kill our beloved or leave them.) Others had not participated in that group, but had served on committees together, raised our kids together (and talked about how our relationships were driving us crazy), and worshipped together. 

The key word: worship. 

We worshipped together in a pretty vulnerable way over these many years.  In an unprogrammed Quaker meeting, this is, indeed, very intimate. There are no paid ministers. There is no one elevated to guide the "service." The service is sitting in silence, waiting for a sense that the Divine or Holy One or Guidance is working through the group and sometimes someone lifts up a message needing to be expressed. Worship is the root practice of opening our hearts to the Mystery of Love.

Infused with our daily lives, we came together with the understanding that the sacred is infused in everything we do, how we live, and most importantly, how we love. And, we often fell short. Often is big ways.  Somehow, the community is still chugging along. Isn't that what Church is all about? 

What eyes am I seeing through in the midst of fog? tears? change? tenderness? fierceness?

At worship with these familiar friends, one person said that "Love reflects Love." The words are intense enough, but he kept saying it like his hair was on fire. 

In the moment right now, I am looking at the autumn trees and see how this is true. Even the woods are aglow with Love reflects Love. In the winter, it will be with the cold crispness and the breathtaking ache of life. And in the spring, it will be with the bursting color of flowers. Maybe there will be another summer for some of us and the juiciness of "Love reflects Love." How beautiful each of these faces, these seasons, in the midst of the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows.

What seems true right now is that the immediacy of Love burned away any petty crap that I had been carrying around. Somehow, we all had survived our marriages. Except, now we had to face the loss of our lovers. Each other. What we have fought so hard to build and live within. One Marriage Enrichment couple already experienced a death as the other partner was in the tunnel of dementia. Obviously, they weren't with us in worship physically. Some of us have dealt with cancer, heart disease, and more. We are really getting down to the sick, aging and dying part now.

My hair is on fire with "Love reflects Love." It is a burning truth. Except for me, it is more like the Buddhist Tonglen practice - breathing in hot, difficult suffering and breathing out cool, soothing compassion with my hair on fire.

The roots of these relations are proving to be more important than the history I attach to them. Time and space are unimportant. Simply put, they are friends. They are my people. As we all return to God, I keep learning how we all belong to each other.

When is a heavy heart lightened?

Being one-half of a pair, I am sometimes surprised by our interconnectedness. The knot was tied over 36 years ago. And, we had a few years of fun friendship before that. In many ways, I felt like I got to watch my beloved partner mature into adulthood. Now it feels like we are moving into old age.

I love hair!

Looking back to the winter of 1980, there was a moment as "friends" where we went to leave a gathering and walked out to the parking lot together. We both will never forget the moment there was an absolutely electric/magnetic charge between us. I felt it everywhere. It was one of those moments where the impulse to reach out and kiss this young man was almost unstoppable. I wanted to dive into the unknown with him. I'm pretty sure both of us had the hairs on our body standing on end.

His memory of that moment was just as electric with an added thought: Really, God?! Her? She's the answer to my prayers for a partner?!

At the time, Partner had been running around with a few other women, but he was looking for something more. For those of you who know me, boy if he didn't get something more!

The next week, we made the dive. We went out almost every night until we got married 16 months later.

So much has happened between here and there. So many joys, sorrows, challenges, and juiciness.

One of our saving graces has been that we have a shared desire for God/the Divine/Love. It is not abstract. We see it in everything and through the eyes of each other. We just have to remember to lift our heads from the daily grind.

So when this year's challenges between the sad state of the world, big changes at Partner's work, and minor health things arose, well, it seemed right that his heart felt heavy. My heart felt heavy.

We both had minor skins removals, polyps removed in our insides, tests run. But there was a moment when someone caught his heart doing weird things. This lead to a cardiologist which led to more tests and finally a specialist within cardiology.

This past week he had an ablation procedure done. No big deal to those who do them. Not so minor to those having it done to them.

No need to go into the details. It was a long day for everyone. We left home at 8:15 a.m. and got back home at 11 p.m. (A special thanks to our daughter for covering dogcare, a cousin who lived near the hospital who offered hospitality, and a meditation friend and his wife who lent us their EZPass. Big thanks to those who reached out with cards and prayers.)

As Partner was coming out of the anesthesia, he told me that his heart felt lighter. A week later, it is still so. The added benefit is that he has much more energy. The kind of disease process at work was subtle. He was missing about 1:4 beats, which lead to him feeling his heart wobble in his chest, and extremities becoming more and more numb. The next thing would be to pass out. He drives heavy equipment. Not a good thing.

So, these procedures sometimes take, and sometimes, the heart goes back to its old ways. In which case, a pacemaker is in his future. This summer his cardiologist had pronounced his heart was about 15 years older than his chronological age. Maybe this resets the clock.

Recovery

It has taken me more time to feel "lighter." I was around to provide gentle, supportive care those first days. No deep bending, lifting or much of anything those first few days for him. I was glad to be around to help or just be present to what arose. I ran the risk of being a nag because he would forget and do something he wasn't supposed to do or vice versa.

It was a time of reflection, laughter, and tears - for both of us. What do we want to do now? How do we want to be in this next phase of life? Can we remember to connect more deeply? It is true that we do Marriage Enrichment skills weekly, which is a spiritual practice for us. But how to freshen up our relationship? We have been holding a Quaker-style meeting for worship most Sunday mornings at our home. We pray at mealtimes.

It got me to thinking how the happiest couple I knew was my mother's parents. They did not argue. Their childhoods had been so difficult that they seemed to have made a pact about how they wanted to be. They had a family business together. And, they were very physical with each other.

They were sexy, really. Even after they aged and had their own health challenges, their touch was physical, even if it was a smile across the room.

I'm not saying sex fixes everything. But for me, it helps me stay connected to myself and not disassociate or go into my thinking mind. And it reminds me how wonderful touch can be when it is hooked with a loving heart.

Can I remember that there is this powerful thing called Love operating in the heart of our relationship? How much have I missed of the Divine by not seeing the gift of Partner as an invitation to more? Can I stand the risk of experiencing such goodness, knowing that this,
too, will end?

May we have more of this

On his first day back to work this week, he became overwhelmed with emotion at an event we shared in the evening. He felt so much better! He had a new lease on life.

I relaxed. Yes. My heart is lighter.

Such gifts

This morning's gift was... muscle spasms in my back. Monday morning getting out of bed. What felt like a "cold" in my back, soon because spasms that depending on my move, would gently clamp to wringing the breath from me.

Today was a retry at a vacation that was supposed to start this past Friday. Friday was basically a work day, but mostly at home.

So Saturday was better. Naps after lunch.

The news of the Charlottesville, VA protests was personal. Friends live there and clergy I know responded to the National Council of Churches request for religious leaders to protest hate and assist those in need. Was is true that Japan launched a missile over North Korea?

Sunday, we held worship together at home. I made a pound cake, my newest comfort food to make. Later in the day, a vigil was held in my hometown in response to the Charlottesville violence, which I attended and saw several familiar brothers and sisters in peace.

Our a/c died last night. So the repairman is here today. First-world problems. More time for art, music, and domestic life while waiting... for things outside my control.

There is an added poignancy in the ordinary during these extraordinary times.

Partner offered to pick the spicy mustard greens I had planted earlier this summer. I am not sure he will eat them. Earlier in the week, he picked the beginning of a concord grape harvest. He doesn't really like them, either.

Such love.

Emerging from the Dark on the Shortest Day

Being an emerging old woman, sleep is something that happens on its own terms. Last night was one of those times when sleep was short. You'd think on the eve of the shortest day that sleep would want to cozy up in bed.

I got up at midnight and moved to the the recliner in the living room for a half-hour or so. (Samson, the collie, followed me.) But my mind kept returning to the state of the world. Oh, Lordy Lord. What a mess.

At 12:30 a.m., I got up in earnest - time to work. I wrote my work notes, filed them, and did other office-related work. That got me to 1:30 a.m. Good ole Samson nearby.

In the dark of the night with my quiet work done, I lit Our Lady of Guadalupe candles on the kitchen table window sill with Samson at my feet. Our Lady who visited the peasant Juan Diego in the mountains, not the church leadership. Our Lady who sees the Suffering in the world and in some way aids them. Our Lady who visits the least of us. Our Lady who hears the cries of the world.

It struck me that this was the perfect time to make a "healing hat."

I have several friends dealing with cancer. I made my second hat and gave it to an artist friend who said her treatment center was the most colorless place she'd ever been to. How are you supposed to heal in a place so grey.

My first hat was actually started in response to a Christmas without my grandson here. I was sad and needing cheering up. I took the mesh from the spiral ham and started tying colorful curling ribbon to sections. I wore it that Christmas Eve evening when the rest of our family showed up. Ironically, my very particularly aware artistic niece at age 5 was not impressed and thought I showed bad taste. But that did not deter me since I had raised teenagers.

I used that hat for a workshop on healing and music this past summer after making my friend her own hat for chemo baldness. Actually, the hat sits over a lamp in her living room and is a conversation piece. She now sends me red mesh from citrus to make other hats.

When I make a hat, there is a process evolving. Last night, I light a candle, play Healing Harp music from Sarajane Williams, and pick the colors for the particular person for which the hat is intended. Measure and cut each strand. Thinking of the Three Norns or Goddesses of Fate in Viking culture, as I write this: one to weave the thread, one to measure the length, one to cut the ribbon's length. One ribbon at a time. Knot by knot. It is an act of prayer.

So in the belly of darkness, I felt drawn to make another hat for another friend undergoing chemo. Instead of the intense brights of summer, these colors were frostier. White, lavendar, mint green, blue-green and purple. Winter in the midst of the fire of disease and treatment and loss.

Praying about the state of the world, my friends and family, my friend with cancer, and my desire, as I listened to Sarajane, to continue to play the harp for sacred events, healing circles, reflection, and celebrations.

I was also thinking about how I and other women have been sharing their stories as grandmothers and their roles in supporting their daughters in birth in some way. Holding the door on unnecessary interventions and c-section advocating for what is called for in the best sense of the family. The memories of my own labors in the middle of the dark and quiet night with birth before or at dawn. Such a thin veil.

The hat was done before sunrise. Partner up and ready to leave at 5:30 a.m. The braiding of his hair, the warm kisses in predawn before heading out to the frigid winter air. Waiting for the rosey dawn sky to emerge in another hour or two. The tending to the household, the meditation group, an elderly friend, a local business fundraising for mental health support in the community, and then later in the day, a nap.

Oh, Blessed Mary that never has it been known that anyone who sought your help was left unaided, with confidence, humble and repentant, full of Love and Hope, this favor I implore. Amen.

May I be an instrument of Your peace.

Healing Hats on Gloria, Samson in foreground.