Being There

...so, several things have been trying to get my attention lately.  The need for focus, the desire for a deeper, more authentic experience.  For being there. Showing up for my own life. Synchronicity has spoken to my soul, loud and clear.

My re-reading of my last year's rewilding posts and how they got derailed by my tendency to turn everything into work, into a "jobligation" caught my attention.  An inveterate teacher and a lifelong "fixer" (as well as spending a chunk of my life as a caregiver), it's no surprise, but not all that conductive of the end I'm aiming for.  Or mean to aim for, at any rate.

And then this post appeared in my memories, on what inspired you, from our Artist's Journal Workshop blog, and this one, from this blog three years ago today, on the addiction of social media.  (Yes, three.  I keep trying...)

And yet...there is this pull, from both directions.  If something becomes habit, becomes dry, only going through the motions instead of being engaged, fully THERE...is this productive?  On the other hand, this caught my eye in a book I'm reading--the concept that structure, discipline, repeated actions or rituals can keep us going through those dry times, until we can find our focus again.

That last was something I often heard in my church years.  I spent a time in the Third Order of St. Francis 20-some years ago, but found when I needed a more focused, personal spirituality--at least that's how I perceived it--rather than saying the hours with the church, I was no longer welcome as a member of that community.  The discipline, the praying with the church, was paramount--so said my director.

A friend just repeated the concept on a Facebook post, in different words.  Keep going, keep doing it (whatever it is), until you're inspired again.  But does that work?  For you?  Or for me?  I suspect that's a very individual answer.

I want to be present to my life.  Presence has been a goal for many years now...mindfulness.  Being there.

And yes, I have a tendency to read about it rather than DO it, sometimes...believe me it's not the same.

But I recently read a pair of books that made a very big impression on me: Gerald May's The Wisdom of Wilderness, and David Abram's Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology.  May's book was brilliantly written, personal, engaging, and deeply moving to me.  Abram's had a similar theme...being fully ALIVE, in all our senses.

I don't want the days...my journals...my reading, my creating...to be simply going through the motions.

And yet...two years ago I chose "presence" as my word of the year.  Last year at this time, I wrote of re-focusing.  Presence.  Being there.

Perhaps someday I'll actually get there...

10 days journeying...re-wilding

Wrung out from the night and day just past...tired, but "a good tired."

We gave Joseph's little handmade teardrop trailer to good friends from Chicago, and spent a few precious hours with them last night and this morning, till mid-afternoon when they had to leave...

Sleep eluded me until after 3am, and intense dreams full of portentous images filled the hours before the dawn...

...and so today's journey--this evening's, really--is simply to breathe and rest, and feel the moving air kiss my skin...

...to wander a bit with my camera and my journal, to see what catches my eye.

And my imagination.

I watch the bright jewels of hummingbirds at the feeders, their iridescent feathers catching the late afternoon sun like burnished bronze.  The female has bright obsidian eyes, seemingly too large for her diminutive size.  She has spider-silk clasped in her tiny feet; it catches the sunlight like Rapunzel's golden hair.

What will she do with these sun-struck filaments?  I imagine her weaving them into a magical lining for her nest, impossibly soft.

I love the varied rocks in my tiny Zen garden...they're a varied community that nonetheless seem to fit together.

Swirls and sinuous lines invite imagination in this huge wooden burl...what do you see there?

The cracked safety glass in my shed's door always makes me think of a mask in a web...here, it reflects the trees behind it.

And here are our young friends and the teardrop, ready to start a new life of adventure and love...a most satisfying chapter in the ongoing story.

Change is a constant...times change, seasons change, and we change with them.  Plans change, and we do our best to go with the flow.  That seems to be the message for today...

Finally, standing alone on the back deck, I muse on the fireflies and snowy tree crickets that seem the very essence of a Midwestern summer night--that at least seems unchanged and unchanging--and I feel at home...

Wandering Between the Rains...Day 2

An unexpected rain storm necessitated a change of plans...which is really what this is all about, come to think of it.  Response, not plans.  And so I took a fresh juicy peach out onto the covered back porch with my coffee, my journal, and a tiny candle and enjoyed just being.

I've always loved fire and been drawn to it...this morning's rain necessitated a much smaller one!  But the scent of woodsmoke speaks to my soul, and so I found a dry twig to be my primal incense...

The hole-stone I found yesterday became a pendant to remind me of serendipity and exploration...

The wet logs, years old, are home to many things including this slug.  He moved amazingly quickly!  I'd almost lost him by the time I found my camera...

Someone's home is spangled with crystals...Grandmother Spider hides inside, wisely keeping dry.

The oldest logs wear striated Elizabethan ruffles...they feel velvety to the touch.

Boris has been doing yeoman service, directing the torrents away from our foundation...he never fails to make me smile as I brush the leaves and cobwebs from his ears. 

I am not sure why a pool in a stone always makes me think of the Eye of God...

The striped hostas make flowers that droop...they're spangled with rain as well.  Between showers I wandered through our urban wilderness to see what I could see.

It's such a pleasure to have small bits of nature nearby.  One of my first natural history books, long out of print, was called The Local Wilderness, and I love finding it still.  In truth, more now than ever.

Trumpetvine flowers remind me of my grandmother's back garden...I used to wear them on my fingers when I was a child.  Quite festive, really...Dragon Fingers!

Bright leaf shines like a beacon against the sodden soil...

It was a most satisfying day, ending with dinner out with my husband, and, right before bed, a downpour that filled rivers and streams and overran low-lying roads.  I'm very glad we got to the cabin yesterday, because when the long muddy drive is soaked it's hard getting back out!

All is well, all is well.

Routine and Sacred Ritual...

...where is the boundary line?  How does one become the other?  How is it that something that seems so ordinary can become sacred to us?  And why, sometimes, does ritual--even the sacred--become routine, even boring?

I suspect, in my case at any rate, that it has to do with mindfulness.  Paying attention.  And with gratitude.


Our morning Dayspring--stepping outside to greet each new day, whatever the weather--is sacred ritual.  It feels good. I pay attention. I notice more.  I am ready.

 
I enjoy the small things.  I like chopping vegetables--for a tagine, a stir-fry, soup, whatever.  I like my old oak cutting board, stained with the rich patina of a thousand meals, and the knife that Joseph fashioned from a bone-handled 19th C. table knife.  It is sharp, it is useful, and it is beautiful.  It does what it was created to do--and isn't that a wonderful thing?

I like the quiet silky zip of the knife as it cleaves a zucchini or pepper, the chunk of the blade hitting wood at the end of the stroke  I love the colors and shapes and textures and scents of the vegetables as they tumble together into the old kitchen bowl.

It's a homely, comforting ritual, for me.

I used to enjoy ironing the fair linens for church, when I was with the altar guild; the touch, the scent, the silky smoothness of linen pleased me inordinately.

I like folding clothes.  I even enjoy the quiet whish-whish of my old broom on hardwood floors--till my back begins to ache.

Entering my shed studio in the morning has elements of the sacred, as well.  I made a mezuzah-like creation that hangs by the door that I remember to touch each morning with gratitude and attention.  It's made up of things that are meaningful to me, mounted on a piece of wood found in the yard--the comforting, eternal aspect of rocks and fossils, a spiral given to me by my late mother-in-law--I do love my spirals!--a tiny sterling sun-face, a crystal...

Below it hangs a tiny glass vial with tightly rolled scriptures, particular favorites of mine.

And yes, of course, one is from the magnificent Job 38.

Tea can be a very personal ritual, as can writing in my journal, or preparing to begin my work.


And of course, drawing can become meditative, contemplative, as I did in the drawing at the top of the page, or even the slow, careful drawing of a piece of our ancient plumbing, below.  We focus on something outside of ourselves, something other.  I can lose all track of time. (So much of our lives is on fast-forward, as if multi-tasking really accomplished much besides inattention--and tension!  Slowing down to draw--or to pay full attention to anything--is antidote to that scattered, harried, White-Rabbit state.)

My brother-in-law reminds me about walking meditation--and I find that when I walk mindfully, paying attention to the feel of my feet on the earth and the air on my skin and the coming and going of my breath, my knees don't hurt as much.


My life has a great deal of sweet routine, and I love it that way.  I've worked consciously to create those routines, and they are important to me.  Comforting.  (I try not to border on OCD, but hey...I DO like my colored pencils in a certain order, points up, in their box...)

When I rush through life without paying attention, when I'm thinking of ten things at once, when I resent what I'm doing and wish, oh, I WISH I were finished--then ritual is out the window and my beloved routine becomes truly routine.  Boring.  

And I must, on occasion, remind myself that "routine" is not the same as "rigid"...I try not to trap myself, or get anxious if the routine must vary from time to time.  It just does.  It's all right.  What is happening in this moment is all right, if I truly pay attention, if I honor it as this particular moment in time.  It's my life.  It's unique.  It won't return.  You really can't step in the same river twice.


And yes, you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.

Life's Little Ironies

Isn't it ironic that in search of simplicity--my ongoing Discardia and all--I seem to "need" more books about simplicity?  (Mind you, I have books on the subject I bought in the 1960s...and 70s...and...)

I am terribly tempted by "A Handmade Life: In Search of Simplicity"...and just got Breathing Room recently.  And glad I did.


And absolutely LOVING Andy Couturier's A Different Kind of Luxury:Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance.

A lifelong interest in Japan, China, and India and other ancient cultures makes that one a natural...combined with the simplicity and creativity of the people in this book, I find myself drawn to ancient craftsmanship all over again.

Making tea on my little pottery majmar from Morocco, cooking in our tagine, binding books, culturing food, growing a garden, printing fabric, hand sewing, making my own art supplies...

And so, I am treating myself to reading breaks daily.  And find myself more and more inspired to get rid of excess Stuff.

Except books...

I am, however, going to be crowded out of house and home, and finding time to read all this is problematical.

Not to mention time to listen to my various meditation CDs...

Ironic.  Yes.

Paying Attention

...I know I've talked about mindfulness before, in a number of contexts and in a number of places, but it is an ongoing goal, an ongoing discipline for me.  It covers a lot of ground.

Being grateful for what I have.

Knowing what I need.  Really need.

Taking time for spiritual needs.

Listening.

Journaling.

Stopping to think before reacting (yes, that one's a hard one for me.)

Remembering to breathe.

Knowing what's important, and taking time for it--love, nature, creativity, reading, sharing, quiet.

Recognizing what my path is, what my work is--and isn't.

Learning to say no--and learning to say YES, to the Universe.

Realizing that just because something is a good idea doesn't mean I need to be the one to implement it.

So yes, I've kept gratitude lists like this one in my journal for many years, off and on.  Some days there are several columns, if I have time!  And interestingly, the more I am grateful for--small things, everyday things, even challenges--the more I find I HAVE to be grateful for.

I bought the Presence key necklace this winter, to remind me...but by the time summer's heat arrived and I couldn't stand anything around my neck, I was more aware.  (I hope!)

If I walk mindfully, I hurt less.  If I pay attention to what's behind my husband's words, we communicate better.  If I am present to my life, really present--not thinking of yesterday, not worrying about tomorrow--I appreciate it more. 

And life is indeed good.