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The Hard Way

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It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.  –Lucius Annaeus Seneca

After our easy way of exploring the Saint Croix River on a paddlewheel boat, we picnicked beside the River to renew our energy for the afternoon.  The paddleboat company, the town of Taylors Falls, and Interstate State Park seem to be intertwined.  In fact, we started our hike by walking up one of the hilly side streets after crossing the one, busy main street through town.  We passed an old railroad depot that I thought had been moved up there, but then I realized that we were hiking along the abandoned railroad way.

It soon became evident what a marvelous engineering feat it was to build a railroad through these bluffs!

We came to a place in the woods where the old railway had continued over a steep ravine on a bridge long gone except for some concrete pillars that now had colonies of wild ginger strewn at their feet.

We descended the wooded ravine, and at the bottom, the trail diverged—and we chose the hard way, the scenic way according to our guide Aaron Brake who had hiked here before.  And so we followed another ravine and began the winding ascent to the very top of the bluff.

In the creek bed at the bottom of the ravine were shiny, glistening rocks of basalt.

Fallen trees created bridges of varying size and structure.

We climbed and climbed and though we were in the shady woods, the warm, humid day and exertion caused me to sweat like crazy.  “I never sweat this much,” I exclaimed a number of times, and the only response I got from Emily was, “You need to up your workouts, Mom.”  Finally we got to the top of the bluff and saw the River way down below.

On the trail down we explored more of the sandstone bluffs.  One place was called Curtain Falls that now only flows after heavy rains and snow-melt.

Living on a steep, rocky bluff is a hard way for a tree to survive.  I was amazed at the survival strategies we saw from some of the plant life, like this tree root scaling the rocky cliff, clinging to any soil it could find.

The way down was ‘easier’ than climbing to the top but was in no way easy.  There were many places where wooden stairs helped us get down the steep rock faces.

We arrived at the campground of Interstate State Park—the parking lot and camping spots were full on this Labor Day weekend.  But our hike wasn’t over yet—the trail continued along the River, through trees and over rocks, back to the entrance of the park where we had boarded the boat earlier in the day.  Now we could see the River from the top of the rock cliffs adjacent to the water.

Rock climbers are welcome at the park, and we saw many ropes and climbers.  That’s a hard way of getting up and down the cliffs!

It was beautiful hiking along the rocky cliffs among stately pines, wild blueberries, and various types of ferns.  What a different perspective of the Saint Croix River we had from the edges of the huge rocks compared to floating down the middle of the River. 

 

By the time we returned to the entrance of the park, my feet hurt, my legs were sore, and I wanted to sit down for a while.  When I polled the young twenty and thirty-year-olds about the difficulty of the hike, they proclaimed it ‘moderate.’  I had the word ‘challenging’ in my mind, but chalked that up to our 30-year age difference and my need to ‘up my workouts.’  I’m glad we took the hard way, the rough road, the scenic way.  It really was so beautiful, and it impelled me to exert and sweat and do ‘the work.’  It led us to the heights of that scenic River and the greatness of Nature.  There are times in our lives when the hard way is presented to us, when we don’t have a choice, no matter how badly we want an easy option.  Marie Curie said, “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”  So what do we do?  We anchor our support ropes, take it slow and easy, use the steps and bridges to get us down the steep parts and over the ravines, and we do the work.  We make progress, we do what is right, and in our own way, we are led to greatness.

After the easy way and the hard way, we ended our day with the ancient way…to be continued…

The Bringer of Hope and Light

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“We live in a world of constant juxtaposition between joy that’s possible and pain that’s all too common.”   —Marianne Williamson

I have been burdened by pain lately.  Pain is a funny thing—it can be the physiological reaction to a purely physiological phenomenon—you burn your finger, and pain is the messenger that automatically pulls your finger from the heat source.  You don’t have to think about it.  Pain is your friend in this instance.  Emotional pain can also be ’embodied’—emotional anguish, especially prolonged, can sink into your tissues and find a vulnerable spot.  From there it calls out for attention with inflammation and pain.  Eventually it can wreak so much physical havoc that disease occurs.

I like the word ‘juxtaposition’—an act or instance of placing close together or side by side for comparison and contrast.  Artists consciously do it or use it all the time in their act of creating.  Nature and Nature with the influence of humans, create scenarios where side by side comparisons and contrasts are sometimes subtle, sometimes glaring, sometimes puzzling.  Human nature, as Marianne Williamson alludes to, is no less likely to contain a myriad of juxtapositions where we stand between two ideas or possibilities and have the power to choose.   

One of the most striking juxtapositions we encountered on our hike at Warner Lake County Park was the sandy swimming beach and the ice-covered lake water.  The sand extended up from the water into trees that would provide shade on a hot, summer day.  Benches were tucked under the trees for moms and dads to sit on while the kids built castles in the sand and splashed in the water.  But at this time of the year, the ice crawled up the beach, and instead of kids and castles in the sand, there were sticks and leaves.

Ripples in the sand, sculpted by wind and waves, are now preserved and displayed under a layer of clear ice.  From movement to stillness.

Most of the time we think of ice as relatively smooth, but the sheltered north side of Warner Lake had an intricate design etched into the ice.

The white brightness of a piece of birch bark lay among the brown, fallen leaves in the woods.  The postcard size and shape made me imagine that it was a harbinger of season’s greetings, a bringer of hope and light in the dark and ‘dead’ time of year.

One more puzzling juxtaposition we found at Warner Lake Park was a stairway in the middle of the woods.  Stairway to where?  The lure of the answer compelled me to climb the leaf-covered stairs.  At the top was….a parking lot!  From the top, it made perfect sense to have a stairway from the parking lot to the fishing pier, but from the bottom, it looked like a stairway to nowhere.

 

I took a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class.  The program began at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center almost forty years ago as a way to empower patients with chronic pain and disease.  Six weeks into the program we had a retreat day with six hours of meditation, movement, and silence.  As I lay on my back on a mat during a body scan meditation, all I could think about was the pain in my back and how uncomfortable I was—silence and pain, breathing and pain, relaxation and pain.  MBSR teaches awareness and acceptance—including of pain, but I just wasn’t having it.  The pain was too big.  But as I stayed with it and gave it the attention of my breath, something shifted.  All of a sudden I felt deep gratitude for my body and for all it had been through over the decades.  The feeling of deep gratitude reached over to Chris for his love and loyalty to me through all those years.  The deep gratitude grew and enveloped our children and the rest of our families.  It spread over our teacher and the other people in the class who were challenged by this MBSR process in a myriad of ways.  And then….I felt joy!  The juxtaposition between pain and joy.  There I was—right in the middle of the two, right in the midst of them both.  And the pain lessened as the gratitude grew. 

We are each an intricate design of creation—our physical bodies are the most amazing living mechanisms, yet paired with our mind, emotions, and spirit, we transcend even our most abundant, far-reaching definition of ourselves.  If we become curious about the juxtapositions in our lives, curious about the pain, aware of our breathing, aware of connections, and accepting of where we are right this moment, we have a better chance to see our lives from the top of the stairs where things make perfect sense.  The Bringer of Hope and Light can suddenly appear and chase away our pain and darkness. 

Where is Your Winter Dwelling Place?

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“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.”

This prayer of thanks is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson whose family celebrated an extended Thanksgiving with family, friends, feasting, and fun.  Shelter and sustenance.  Protection and nourishment.  Dwelling place and daily bread.

When Winter comes, the importance of shelter and sustenance is magnified, not only for humans but for all creatures.  Where are their dwelling places, and how do they get enough food to sustain them during the sometimes harsh conditions of snow-covered land and frigid temperatures?  On our Thanksgiving trek to Warner Lake County Park, we passed a corn field with a flock of Trumpeter Swans grazing on left-over corn kernels.  Their aquatic home is the Mississippi River, just miles north, where the warmth of a power plant keeps the River free from ice.  Some swans and geese stay here for the winter, while most migrate to warmer places in the south.  Do you migrate to a warm winter climate or hunker down in the frosty North in your toasty house?  Do you have a preferred ‘winter’ food?

Animal homes come in all forms.  We wondered what lived in these holes on the bank of a creek near Warner Lake.  The burrowed home among cedar tree roots gave the resident critter quick access to the water.  Where is your refuge from the elements?  What environment gives you security and happiness?

Pileated Woodpecker holes in trees provide protection and nourishment for these hard-hitting birds as they search for insects and construct (destruct) nest holes.  The holes they make in dead trees are often used for shelter by owls, bats, and pine martens.  What is the source of your livelihood?  How do you stay healthy?

As we walked through the pine forest on our trail, we saw little pathways of trampled-down pine needles diverging through the woods.  What paths do you travel in your daily life?

In the sandy mud by the creek, we spotted a Raccoon track.  Many of their meals are acquired in the water—crayfish, frogs, and insects.  Raccoons store fat through summer and fall and spend much of their winter asleep in a den made in a tree or fallen log.  How do you spend your winter?  What do you do in this season of rest?

How do animals find their winter dwelling places?  This tree probably had a small hole at its base, and some little creature has been working hard to make a home for itself.  Sawdust and wood shavings line the floor of the tiny cavern at the foot of the large, moss-covered tree.  Where is your dwelling place?

Life and nourishment are a little easier for the birds and squirrels who live close to our home.  This Black Squirrel and his friends come for a meal of black-oil sunflower seeds on a near-daily basis.  How do you ask for and receive your daily bread?

 

Our literal dwelling place may change completely in Winter, but most often the home we live in during the Summer is also our Winter home.  But there is a change—we are boarded up, bound up, and bundled up.  There is a quiet security in the dark evening with the fireplace crackling and throwing out heat, while a pot of soup on the stove sends out delicious smells of onions and herbs.  Rest and sleep seem to come easier with the longer night, and the morning light is welcomed and appreciated.  Nourishment is extended from food for our bodies to food for our souls.  Time for reading, meditation, prayers, and self-care is available if we make the decision and commitment to ourselves.  Time with friends is more about being than doing—tell me about your struggles, your joys, your sweet memories, and the dark burdens that may re-surface with the long, dark nights.  We can wrap it all up in a bundle of understanding, compassion, and forgiveness.  Our dwelling place can be Love.

Inhaling the Color

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When the kids were younger, we spent hours each day on art projects—finger paints, crayons, sidewalk chalk, markers, watercolors, acrylic paints at the Fisher-Price easel with stubby, color-coded brushes, and many more.  Emily was a visual learner and artist from a very young age.  She held a pencil correctly when she was one year old, she drew detailed pictures of our family, and she would come home from kindergarten and describe the color and style of clothes and shoes her teacher wore (fast forward to Stitch Fix!)  I can’t remember how old she was at the time, but she went through a period when she was coloring with crayons that she would put one in her mouth and pretend she was smoking.  When I gently admonished her for emulating smoking, she replied that they were special good rainbow ones with vitamins and fruit!  That memory was recently revived for her when she saw an ad for rainbow-colored personal essential oil diffusers—cylinder-shaped diffusers of essential oils that you inhale into your mouth and out your nose—just like her childhood idea!

Color is a scarce commodity in Nature as late Fall morphs into Winter.  Our Thanksgiving weekend hike at Warner Lake County Park was devoid of much color, but we were able to find some interesting hues by looking closely at the gray-brown landscape.  Red berries of a woodland perennial persisted among the pine needles.  Red-violet branches of Red-twigged Dogwood brightened the lake shore, and scarlet berries of a Viburnum looked enticing against the sleepy gray background.

Rusty orange leaves cling to the understory Ironwood trees through most of the winter, making them easy to identify.  Bittersweet vines produce vibrant red-orange berries perfect for Fall decoration.

Happy yellow-gold seedheads remain from a prolific-blooming wildflower.  Golden stands of grass lined the ice-covered Warner Lake.

Healthy green moss covered a fallen tree, outlining the upended roots and trunk.  A fallen cluster of green pine needles, thanks to a nibbling squirrel, intertwined with the brown needles that were shed earlier in the season.

The hiking day began with blue skies and active, fluffy clouds of white before a front of gray clouds and sprinkles covered the cerulean.  A few days later the day ended with a rainbow-colored sunset painted on the western easel of sky.

 

One of the gifts of Winter, when the landscape is devoid of color, is the simplification of sight.  With the leaves gone, the structure and essence of a tree is obvious.  There are less things to look at—no flowers or colors to capture our attention for a second before it moves to the next thing.  Time seems to slow a bit.  The things that do capture our attention are worth noting and examining.  Late Fall and Winter open up the opportunity to look closely at ourselves—what is our structure and essence?  What is the understory of our life that has been covered up with the exuberance of Spring and Summer and that is now easier to identify?  How do we outline a healthy life?  How do we intertwine the old parts of ourselves that need to be shed with the green, growing parts that need to be expressed?  The season of my life when the kids were young was busy, fun, full of laughter, love, and creativity—an exuberant, colorful Spring!  Emily taught me that we can look at things differently, that we can re-create a negative into a positive, that we can breathe in the special healing rainbow goodness of Life. 

When I Breathe, I Thank a Tree

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“For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.”   –Martin Luther

Have you ever felt like you couldn’t breathe?  Whether from asthma, smoke, pneumonia, or fear, the strangling, helpless feeling of not being able to replenish the body with oxygen kicks us into survival mode.  The only thing that matters in that moment is to breathe.  The physiological processes of breathing, delivering oxygen to all cells of the body, and removing carbon dioxide waste are miraculous!  Just as miraculous are the processes of trees and other green plant materials taking our waste of carbon dioxide, using it to provide nutrients for themselves, and in turn, providing oxygen for us.  We and trees are partners in this thing called Life.

Our Black Friday consisted of heading to Warner Lake County Park, spending energy via leg muscles, and buying a great day at a bargain price.  It was unseasonably warm with sun and chances of passing showers, and we eagerly hit the trails.

The wooded trails were eclectic with areas of conifer and deciduous forests, which is common in this area of Minnesota.  One uncommon aspect of this park was the high population of mature Red Cedars that grew among the mighty Oaks and Pines.

A small walk-in campground area in the mixed forest seemed like an enticing place to camp.  Deciduous trees were like ghost trees among the evergreens.

The sun broke through the clouds and shone on the butterscotch bark of a Scotch Pine tree.

We walked on, and then this…

” And into the forest I go to lose my mind and find my soul.”  –John Muir

The tall Pines were mesmerizing as they swayed and whispered in the breeze.  Chris said this is the place to take a sleeping bag and spend the night!  Imagine lying on a bed of pine needles, safe in the bosom of Mother Earth.

Breathe.  One tree provides 260 pounds of oxygen a year, while absorbing more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  The burning of one gallon of non-ethanol gas produces 20 pounds of carbon dioxide.

After we left the Pine forest, we saw other interesting trees and a grove of Birches.

When we circled the lake, we looked across the ice-covered water to see the Pine forest rising above the other trees.

 

It is great fun to discover a Pine forest of such beauty and serenity.  I’m thankful someone created the park around the small lake and big trees.  The deciduous trees in our area are not contributing to the oxygen levels in the air we are breathing during their dormancy, and the evergreen trees have slowed their production of oxygen in their non-growing state.  But trees around the world are doing their part in their active, green growing state to provide us with what we need to breathe and to clean up and recycle what we do not need.  This is a world-wide endeavor.  Silver and gold, shopping and gifts, spending and gadgets are moot points if we do not have clean, oxygen-rich air to breathe.  Trees are our real treasures, if we rightly consider—their gift to us is the only thing that really matters.

 

Mystery and Gratitude

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“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature.  And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”                     –Max Planck, physicist

Mystery: anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown.  I’m not sure which is more mysterious—Nature or human nature.  I guess it’s because they are one in the same.  I drive Chris nuts sometimes with my wonderings: I wonder why they decided to put that there?  Why did you cut the vegetables that way?  Why in the world would people throw their trash out the window?  I wonder what happened to that tree?  Why do people have to be so mean?  I’m not making a judgment on his vegetable cutting—I just want to know the reasoning behind it, if there is one.  I’m curious, and I would like to understand the things I see and try to make sense of them.

My mystery thinking began this week after Chris put burlap around the Arborvitae.  It is no mystery that deer love Arborvitae and will devour a good-looking tree into a malformed eyesore in one short winter.  And thus, our very own mysterious Stonehenge, or Burlaphenge, rather.

I was also wondering why the leaves haven’t fallen off the Ninebarks, Lilacs, and Apple trees yet.  They are the later ones to drop their leaves, but after snows and hard freezes, they should be down.  But maybe that’s the exact reason they aren’t down—that it all came too early.

It is no mystery that November is grey and brown and kind of bleak looking.  The summer vibrancy of Hosta leaves fold and dissolve into nothing, like the water-doused wicked witch of the west (now that’s a mystery!).

But all is not bleak on the November front with the interesting seedheads of Goldenrod, Hydrangea, and Purple Coneflowers.

I was wondering, of all the logs we have used as ‘steps’ in our hilly woods, why the pileated woodpeckers have suddenly attacked this one.

There is one mystery that I never question—I just take it in with gratitude—the amazing sunsets!

 

How do we problem solve and make our world a better place?  First we have to be aware—we need to notice things, see things that are not working or are working beautifully, and get curious about it.  We also have to step outside ourselves, put our biases and prejudices aside, and look at the situation with new eyes.  We have to be our own third party.  (What a difficult thing to do, I know.)  Then we need to gather information and communicate—who are the experts and what do they say about this, what’s the data about this subject over time and many sources, where does this truly have an effect, when does a certain thing happen or in what situation, and then, the question of the mysterious why.  Does that sound too scientific or experimental?  Or like too much work?  My hypothesis is that we all do it all the time but leave out some of the important steps.  We make the results and conclusions fit the way we already think, slap our hands together, and exclaim, “Done. Well done.”  But what is the impact to ourselves and others if our conclusion is a lie or has only a thin line of convenient truth in it?  Are we willing to engage in dialogue about our conclusions?  A mystery is anything that is kept a secret or remains unexplained or unknown.  There are many things in life that should not remain a mystery—secrets that serve one and hurt others should be brought forth into the light of inquiry, examination, and illumination; unexplained conclusions that tout magnanimity but in essence do much harm should withstand a thorough and vigorous cross examination and accountability; and unknown things that we do not want to know should courageously be brought forth through the fences of resistance so we can stare them in the face, feel the full force and cost of their hidden, yet flawed power, and find relief and peace in finally knowing our truth.  So get curious, gather information, communicate, examine, be courageous, and for those things that are truly a mystery—like sunsets and the pure wonder of Nature (and probably even cutting vegetables)—have gratitude!

Nature and Nurture—Who We Are

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She was a listener from a very young age.  Her large brown eyes and beautiful, expressive face shone with excitement, cast woeful sadness, or conveyed a myriad of other emotions, all without the use of words.  In fact, she didn’t talk much at all early in life, even when I knew she knew how to do it.  Her older sister was a words person at a young age, and with her caring, intuitive spirit, she ‘interpreted’ for Anna.  It was apparent that Anna allowed it—she would look at Emily to answer, and I could see the approval in her eyes when Emily got it right.  I was never worried; I knew she would talk when she was ready.  And she did.  It was soon evident that she was an articulate auditory learner—she would be playing on the floor with toys and suddenly sing a complete jingle that she had heard on tv.  All of our kids were exposed to music from birth—classical music, fun Raffi songs, cultural songs and lullabies, my singing songs at bedtime, interactive song/story tapes and books (remember Abiyoyo?), along with the Emmylou and CCR records in our collection.  Anna showed a special affinity for all music and instruments—she loved the toy piano passed down from the cousins, she taught Aaron how to play the toy xylophone, we bought her a beautiful wooden zither for Christmas, and she would play songs for us—and this was all before she started school.

How do we become the persons we are born to be?  How do all creations end up where they are in order to do the work they are intended to do?

Why do the gold-leaved Cottonwoods and Willows prefer to grow with their roots near water instead of on an arid hilltop?

Do muskrats choose to live near the cattails in order to use them for food and building material or is it happenstance?

Rango’s herding instincts apply to cattle, geese, or people.  He enjoys his work and takes his job seriously.

And yet, the geese have their own sentries doing their job to keep an eye on him and us.

What makes one dog a herder and another a retriever?

What happens when opportunities for doing one’s work dry up or are never available to begin with?

We live and grow in this complex, multi-layered environment with synergism and competition, support and censure, dependence, independence, and interdependence.

 

We returned to Brookings to meet our grown-up listener and to hear her musical voice being presented as a flute solo at a faculty recital.  Anna is what she has always been and more—a listener, a lover of music and instruments, a composer, and a music scholar to name a few.  She learned to play the clarinet, sang and played in church, pleaded for piano lessons, began composing, participated in band and orchestra, learned to play many more instruments, went to music camps and on to college to major in composition.  She has written a book and is now in graduate school—all the while composing new music from her creative, brilliant inner being.  Doing what she was born to do.  Being who she was born to be.

We sat in the Performing Arts Center waiting for her piece to be performed.  It was the same place we had gone to school choral concerts.  It was the same room where we had sat in awe as Itzhak Perlman played his violin.  It was the same stage with the Fazioli grand piano where Anna recorded her first cd of compositions as Chris and the sound guy watched from the control room.  I proudly present Anna Brake’s composition performed by Dr. Tammy Evans Yonce.

Program Notes
“Oh Rapturous Hour! Is this Fulfilment?” is a monologue for flute.  The poem, “Fulfilment” by Harold Monro (1879-1932), serves as the skeleton for the contour and articulation for the music.  The romantic poem has intense emotional changes and the characterizations are key to this piece.  I use word painting throughout with techniques such as breath tone, whole tone scales, flutter-tonguing, trills, multiple staccato and key clicks to represent words or themes in the poem, such as wind, nature, laughter, etc.

Nature—our genes and innate gifts, the spirit of who we are when we enter this world.  Nurture—the complex, multi-layered environment we grow and develop in.  The interaction and synergy of Nature and Nurture form who we are.  Later, there are choices that steer us in certain directions, while at the very same time, happenstance—those things we have no control over—can change the course of our lives in an instant.  It takes a hardy soul to navigate it all.  That’s how we all do this thing called Life.

Call of the Wild Geese

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We were heading home again when we traveled through the storm.  The last time we were home was two Januarys ago for my Dad’s frigid funeral.  My body and soul love the prairie, the clear blue sky, and the call of the wild geese—all of which run down my nervous system like a calm stream and fill my soul’s cup to frothy fullness.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

–Mary Oliver

The cows have left my Mom’s pasture for the season, leaving behind the geese who gladly claim this domain as their own again.

They graze and lay on the cowpie-strewn grass, decorating it with their own little fertilizer pellets and down confetti, and loudly chatter to one another as we humans approach.

What is it about the prairie?  On the surface, it’s simple—sky and grassland.  Many travelers call it boring or lonely.  I think the prairie allows a person to see one’s Self.  It takes away the distractions of busyness and gives away freedom in its openness.  We ask ourselves the questions, “Who am I in relation to the expansive blue sky?”  “What is my place in this green, good Earth?”  Many aren’t ready for the questions or the answers, but the invitation is there.

Meanwhile, the geese have made the prairie their home.  Most will be traveling on to warmer lands for the winter; some will find open water and stay despite the cold.

Unlike most animals and birds, geese are at home on land, in the water, and in the air.  Wherever they are, they claim it for their own.

Meanwhile, the sun moves over the prairie, moves over the unnamed water…

…moves over the geese swimming in sunshine.

 

The geese have staked their claim in their temporary home, and they will carry that assurance and presence with them as they travel through the air to other lands and other lakes.  If only I had their assurance.

When I first read Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese poem, not that many years ago, tears welled up in my eyes with the first line.  “You do not have to be good.”  ‘Being good’ had been my internal mantra, motivator, manager, and ball and chain for a handful of decades.  And I had walked many a mile on my knees in self punishment for not being ‘good enough.’  Oliver was gently and with assurance stating that I don’t have to do that anymore.  I could lay down my black and white thinking that if I wasn’t ‘good,’ I was ‘bad.’  ‘Being good’ in this sense is not the intrinsic, God-given goodness we are all born with—it is the man-made, mind-made perfectionist roles and rules that society or family places upon us or that we place upon ourselves in order to get the love and attention we need.  Oliver was saying to just let my mammalian body be present and love what it loves.  I could decide, from my own inner, God-given goodness.  Oliver tempers any egoistic instructions with the fact that we are always in relationship with others—there is a give and take—tell me about your despair, your loves, your struggles, your joy, and then, I will tell you mine.  Built into that exchange is a container of safety—that we will be listened to, protected, believed, and beloved.  (Therein lies the grounds for betrayal.)  Then Oliver pulls us out of our little worlds to remind us of the big world.  In our despair, the world goes on.  In the midst of our struggles, the sun moves over the land and water.  In the energy of our joy, the wild geese call.  Not only are we in relationship with one another, we are in relationship with all of Nature!  The wild geese are calling to all of us announcing our place in the world—it is our job to claim it for our own.

Traveling Through the Storm

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“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through….you won’t be the same person who walked in.  That’s what this storm’s all about.”  —Haruki Murakami

We left home going home.  A tale of two homes, or three or more.  We left this home we live in right now and headed to the birthplace home of my mother, to my young adult home, to the place we called home with our three children.  And we traveled through a storm.

As stressful as the getting ready to go and out the door is for me, I love it when I’m settled in the car, and the trip has begun.  It’s a delicious feeling.  Even on the road more traveled, there are new things to see.  Even when traveling at 60 mph, I like to take pictures of things that capture my attention and say things that words cannot describe.

It was warm when we left, and as we traveled southwest, the temperature rose to 72 degrees, and the clouds gathered in an arching wall.

As we crashed through that wall of warmth and clouds and wind and pressure, the rain began to fall, streaking the windows with rivulets of water with no destination.

The temperature dropped by twenty degrees.

Like we were entering the Land of Oz.  The Land of Oz is a teaching place disguised in the outward beauty of rainbows, bright colors, good witches and bad witches, and storybook characters.  It’s a place of fun and adventure, of fear and danger, that lulls us like poppies and makes us forget the purpose of our journey.  Until we remember.  And then, everything we have planted, everything that was planted in us, is ready for harvest.

Harvest is hard work and time-consuming, but it is what we are supposed to do.  The reward is in the harvesting.  The benefit is in the gathering.  The lesson is in the reaping.  The profit is in the yielding to the infinite knowing inside ourselves.

“I’ll be here for you after the storm blows through and your skies are blue again and you’re back to you again.”   —Maddie and Tae

 

Every home has its stressful storms.  And with those storms, we can enter the Land of Oz with its fairy tale solutions, or we can pull back the curtain, uncover the fake powers that are ruling our lives, and do the hard work of our own personal harvest.  That’s what the storms are all about—to change us into new people, to say things that words have a hard time describing, to see the new things on the road more traveled, and to settle in to the delicious feeling of journeying down the yellow-brick road that leads us home.

 

More Leaves Have Fallen Than Remain

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“The leaf of every tree brings a message from the unseen world.  Look, every falling leaf is a blessing.”  –Rumi

If Fall is only known and embraced for colorful leaves, then Fall is short and soon over.  Too often a season is defined by one certain thing, and it passes quickly.  To me, Autumn began in August with little hints of color changes in out of the way places—a tinge of red on poison ivy peeking out from under the grass, and with a slight, but noticeable change in the length of daylight.  From then until winter sits firmly in our bones and on our driveways, Fall morphs in a myriad of ways, and it is long and glorious.

Here in central Minnesota, more leaves have fallen than remain on the trees.  Two weeks ago we wondered if it was ‘peak’ color yet; one week ago Chris raked what leaves had fallen; today the wind is blowing hard—raining leaves, rolling leaves, and piling leaves.

One of the large Maple trees around the house is bare.

Another has a few golden leaves still clinging to the branches.

And two are still mostly covered with their Autumn finery—for now.

But most of the leaves are spent and on the ground.

Some Oak trees have lost their leaves…

…and others glow like rubies and topaz.

Our ‘Prairie Fire’ Crabapple is lit with orange and yellow leaves that will soon fall, leaving behind the ripe red fruit.

 

For those of us who have lived for half a century or more, the words of the title can hold a different meaning from the literal.  More leaves have fallen than remain.  More years have passed than we probably have remaining.  While that may bring up feelings of sadness and grief, it could be we are defining this season far too narrowly and with only the parameter of ‘lovely leaves.’  What if, as Rumi says, every falling leaf is a blessing.  Perhaps we are getting rid of old, irrelevant burdens, ideas, heartaches, and self-imposed handicaps one by one by one.  When they have fallen away, the fruit of our lives is still visible, still relevant, still able to nurture those who need us.  We receive and embrace the messages from the unseen world, the gemstones that remain, and this season of life becomes long and glorious.