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).