Come walk with me in the peak Autumn beauty of the Northwoods. To say that I love this time of year is an understatement. Most everyone can appreciate the colorful falling leaves---it reveals the 'true self' of a tree when its leaves are no longer producing chlorophyll. Their true colors are revealed, and there is something simple … [Read More...]
Archives for January 2021
The Heavens Were Weeping
As we entered the first full week of the New Year, a fog had fallen on us. It is usually the coldest period of Winter, but normal was nowhere in sight. We were under the influence of an inversion, when cool air is trapped under a layer of warm air. Fog is often present, and with freezing temperatures and no wind, soft rime ice formed on most everything.
It continued for days, through the week of the horrific Capitol riots. It is an uneasy time during an inversion, defined as ‘a reversal of order and function.’ It is a time when air quality plummets, pollution increases, and health problems can be exacerbated. The fog was so pervasive that the frost stayed on the trees all day long, another unusual occurrence. Three days after the riot, we walked at Bend in the River park through a world of ice. It was as if the heavens were weeping—so many saints and souls shedding tears on us Earthly humans. It was a convergence of physical science and soul-stirring spirituality, which is to say, like most every single day of our existence. Most days we are oblivious to that physical–spiritual convergence, but this display of fog and ice in the wake of the week’s tragedies tied the two together with a binding twine and a flourished bow.
And so I accepted the incredibly beautiful ice as the weeping of those souls, those angels of heaven who have overcome evil and division, lies and distortion, hatred and violence. I embraced that beautiful ice as a balm of prayer and blessing from the souls who see all and know Truth.
It is a prayer for those who blend in with those around them…
and for those who stand out in a crowd.
For those in the foreground, seen and awed, for those in the background, tall and unwavering, and for those in the unremarkable middle who go unnoticed.
There is a blessing for busyness that can obscure the simplicity and satisfaction of ‘doing nothing.’
A prayer for our leaders in positions of power and stature that aged wisdom and ethics guide their decisions.
An abundance of blessings for those who work tirelessly to uphold our laws, keep us healthy and safe, teach and take care of our children.
A prayer for equality, equanimity, and acceptance for all who seem different from us.
Blessings for those who walk the line and uphold the guardrails of our society…
and for those whose voices bravely speak out in righteousness against power and partisan pressure.
A prayer for those who stand tall in the principles of goodness and in the mysteries of spiritual life…
and for those who fall from those principles.
Blessings for those who forge their own trails—may they be protected.
Special prayers for our representatives whose ideologies differ that they will remember their oaths, their altruistic purpose, and the concepts of community and compromise.
Blessings on the ecosystems of our natural world—may they be restored and protected, and may each of us be blessed stewards of God’s creation.
And finally, a prayer for clear-sightedness for what’s ahead.
Despite the fog, the differences, and the destruction, may these blessings and bridges of ice bring us to a place of respect, responsibility, accountability, and decency. Lord, hear our prayers.
Like a Lightning Bolt
Like a lightning bolt piercing a tree, there are times in our lives when something happens that cuts right through us. It’s a shock. It’s unbelievable, even when we see it with our own eyes or hear it with our own ears. Our brains cannot catch up to what our senses are telling us and will not comprehend the unfathomable. Wednesday was one of those times.
The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion was one of those times. The Oklahoma City bombing was one of those times. 9-11 was one of those times. Those moments in history that shock our very systems. Disbelief. Horror. Sadness. Anger. Questions of how could this happen? What went wrong? How could a person do this? Who is accountable for such atrocities?
When lightning strikes, the tremendous electrical energy seeks the path of least resistance. Since trees are tall and contain sap and moisture, they are better conductors than the surrounding air. Water in the cells boil and produce steam. The steam causes the cells to explode, which can crack the bark, strip the bark off the tree, or even blow the tree apart. As the energy goes into the roots and dissipates into the ground, it may injure the roots, even if the trunk of the tree looks undamaged. Some trees survive; others die. It depends on how extensive the damage is to the whole tree.
Energy. Unfathomably hot, boiling energy. Damage. Injuries. Death. We had a lightning strike on our Capitol, on our Congress men and women, and on the very workings of our democracy. How could this happen? What went wrong? Who is accountable?
Unresolved trauma has the boiling energy of lightning. It wants to strike something; it wants to dissipate the horrible energy and feelings that build up in a person who has had to live with the aftermath of trauma or the ongoing realities of it. Unresolved trauma is destructive—it runs the show, particularly when a person is in a high-stress situation. It torches the reasoning part of our brains. I have compassion for those who have been traumatized. I mourn the fact that our system does not prioritize medical and psychological care for those who need it. Our citizens are hurting, and their very real grievances are being exploited by one who has a huge hole in his heart and whose personal trauma is being played out on a nation.
The lightning energy dissipates into the ground. Earth is the healing endpoint, the ‘container’ for the colossal amount of energy discharged from a strike of lightning. There are ways to discharge lightning energy and traumatic energy without the collateral damage done to the tree or to a person, their family, or to society as a whole. Valuable or vulnerable trees can be fitted with lightning protection systems that dilute and slowly release the electrical charge into the ground. The same premise is used for traumatic energy. The excessive and destructive energy of trauma can be dissipated slowly and safely with the help of a trained professional and/or with personal practices that include deep breathing, body practices like yoga or qigong, and meditation—a slowing of the racing, reactive mind. And of course, we can practice ‘grounding’—touching or lying on the Earth, allowing our excess energy and our overwhelming feelings to dissipate into the healing container of Mother Earth.
Looking at Wednesday through a trauma-informed lens, I see many, many hurting people. Hurt people react, blame, and hurt other people. Trauma causes us to ‘lose our minds.’ It is incumbent on each person to take responsibility for their own feelings, even those buried in trauma, and for their own actions.
For more information on trauma: ACEs or Adverse Childhood Experiences are traumatizing events that can be carried into adulthood if not processed at the time they occurred. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/aces-and-toxic-stress-frequently-asked-questions/
For more information on how the body releases trauma: Dr. Peter Levine is a pioneer in the study of how our bodies hold on to trauma and how it can be released. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8582180-in-an-unspoken-voice
We and Wood
I have a tendency to hold on to things. Not so much in the sense that I will be able to use a certain item at a future time or for a future project but as a snapshot of what my life was like at a particular time. I kept a blow-up orange that my Dad brought back from Florida for each of us kids when he was driving truck cross-country. I have a piece of rock from the outcropping where Chris proposed to me. I have priceless pictures and tiny clay sculptures from when the kids were little. They are all in boxes now, tucked away from sight and mind on a daily basis. But they are there if I want to revisit those times. Holding something in my hand that represents a certain time in my life gives physical reality to the past.
At this time of year with the passing of an old year to a new one, we each get to decide what to keep from the past and what to purge. It is not a stretch to say that everyone was glad to see 2020 go. What a crazy, chaotic, Covid year. But we can’t just throw it all out and pretend it didn’t happen. There were memorable, deeply moving moments that should be remembered and cherished. There were a myriad of important lessons to be learned. But what about the garbage, the refuse, and the rubbish of the past year? What about the things that have hurt us, held us back, or no longer nourish our life? Burn them. Literally or figuratively or both, send them into the flames of a fire.
We spent a number of our New Year’s hours building and tending a fire. It was a still day, a perfect fire day when the smoke ascends straight up to the sky. There was no shifting and moving to keep the smoke out of our eyes. We were clear-sighted and clear-headed. The trees around us still held their embellishments of fluffy snow—their holiday season decorations.
Old discarded needles fell among the vibrant green ones that sustain the tree. And a seed-containing cone had started the process of drying and opening for the dispersal of the next generation. Past, present, and future.
Fire, like any element of Nature, can be life-giving or destructive. There needs to be parameters, limits, containments, and safe practices in order for it to be life-giving. Fire becomes destructive in the hands of a maniac who has no regard for rules or for others. Power of any kind, like fire, can move from helpful to harmful to catastrophic in the blink of an eye.
There cannot be fire without fuel. Chris’ summer clean-up work has given us a stack of fuel—brush for kindling and branches and logs for sustaining a warm Winter fire.
Burning wood is a multi-step chemical reaction—wood + oxygen + heat = carbon dioxide + water + ash (simplified). It is a transformative process where molecules are broken down and new molecules are formed. Heat and light are produced from the chemical reaction. But most importantly, all the atoms are conserved. Nothing disappears or is ‘wasted’—it is just rearranged. Something new is formed from the old.
(Fun fact: flames are ‘pointed’ because of gravity and subsequent pressure differences.)
Our New Year’s fire, complete with a visit from a wise, wonderful friend, was a multi-layered transformative process. Warmth and light were produced as we and wood were transforming. So while we each get to decide what to keep and what to purge at any time in our lives, we always carry our past, our present, and our future. Some of us like to hold the material, realistic, factual items of our past; others throw them away. It is understandable that we want to purge the hurts and pain, the disappointments and soul-searing experiences that burden us, and the utter garbage that lies in the wake of destructive power. But nothing is wasted. Cherish the memorable moments. Learn the lessons that need to be learned. Use the fire, use the chemical reaction, use the contained power of transformation to break it down, rearrange, and build it into something new and life-giving. Fuel your fire with love.