Beauty Fading --and Reclaimed

I look at fall beauty, and remember Mother's depression setting in before the colors faded. Everything is dying--so sad--she would say. The golden leaves pictured here were likely stepped on and crumbled a few hours or minutes after I photographed them. But they easily stand in for my life-long fear, a result of childhood terror. Avoid being smashed, wiped out. I pushed away, tried to be the best, think faster than the next person--all ways to feel some control, to avoid being crushed into oblivion.

As I look at leaves falling and flowers wilting, I realize that most will return to life again in the spring. My question becomes "Is there spring again for those of us who are in our senior years?"

I recently attended a memorial service where the deceased man's daughter spoke of the love her Pops had found in his last years, acknowledging that he and her step-mother had shown her how to have a wonderful loving relationship. It made me wonder in a way I hadn't in years.

In my search for Divine love, for healing so Divine love could flow through me to others, had I unconsciously shut the door to human love?

The answer, as far as having a partner, was easily "yes." It wasn't that I was so happy being single that I didn't want a man in my life--although I could say that I was often glad not to need to consult another before planning my activities. I didn't expect or even hope to come across a man with whom to share my fleeting years. I had given up.

So last night I did something that is a bit embarrassing to admit. I listened to a seminar on finding "the One." Yes, it does sound silly. But Claire and Kathryn are dynamic women in their 40s who have put together an empowering women series that I have found inspiring. And their stories of looking for the men they have now found had some resonance with me.

They took their listeners--and me--back to what they called unfinished relationships. They suggested that we feel in our bodies the emotions that kept us from opening ourselves to love. And they suggested that we go back as far as we could in our childhood to find the source of those negative emotions. For me, that was back to Daddy--not the one I adored, but to the one who asked of me things that should never be demanded of a child.

The message I took from my childhood was that gaining love was hard, that I had to give and give and give to get love. Claire called it bankrupting ourselves for another--with the result, often, that the partner for whom we gave up ourselves looked and didn't see anything he (or she) wanted. Kathryn talked about wanting a man so badly that we might give up ourselves for men we really didn't want in our lives (were we able to step outside ourselves and watch). I had done both of these things.

It was back to the ages-old advice--we have to change the messages. They went farther, into creating and becoming a magnet for the man with whom we wanted to share our lives--and they have a course for it--naturally. I'm not going to take the course.

I realized that the "it's hard and I have to work and work for it" is a message I have taken into my journey of healing and connecting with God's love. I have to be strong. That's a childhood message I have carried with me. A minister I'm helping take care of an old parishioner told me recently that I shouldn't have to worry about using too many of my cell phone minutes on this man's care. He'd take care of my phone bill. I was touched and surprised. I wonder what things I'm worrying about that I need to leave to the Spirit's care. I know Divine love is with me, available anytime. It's free for the taking. How about human love? Where am I shutting love out--Divine and Human?

My prayer for today-"Help me to be wiling and open to love--Yours and those of other fellow travellers on the journey. Amen."

Brightening My Day

When rain patters on the windows, the skies are gray, and writing doesn't flow as I think it should, the call from my daughter to pick up six-year-old Sam from school and play with him for a couple of hours is a welcome call.

At the school yard, Sam, all but his face hidden in his red rain gear, pretended not to see me trotting into the school yard near his room. I had a moment of panic before I realized that the red-hooded child ignoring me was Sam. He'd found a crawdad in the water at the edge of the school yard. Another boy had plucked it from the water. That was the highlight he wanted to share.

Once home, his newly acquired public library card got the spotlight. (I'd been taking him and using my card to get his books since only a parent or guardian can get a library card for a child.)

He had chosen four books, and asked me which two I would like to read to him. Naturally, the two I chose were not the two he preferred. We compromised. I read one of his choices, one of mine.

He wanted the new gold draperies in the dining area closed and the lighting that made the room turn to gold turned on. Sam ate his after-school snack bathed in the glow of the room. He said he liked the drapes best when they were pulled. In his admiration of beauty, he's his Mother's child.

The next excitement was preparing for his Moay Thai martial arts class. Sam loves the kicks he is learning in that class, and wanted me to stay and watch for the entire time. It's a kick boxing exercise, and I'm not crazy about it, but for now, Sam is. He got his red stripe signifying that he'd attended ten classes. He was very proud.

Sam was a lesson in the joys of small things--the sighting of a crawdad, his very own library card, his red stripe. I also got a thumbs up for warming his macaroni to his preferred temperature! Perfect, he said. I remembered to be grateful for my chicken, new potatoes and braised chard with dried cranberries for last night's dinner.

I'm grateful for the joys that Sam brings to my life. As I saw the telecast of children welcoming their dads up from the mines in Chile, I knew something of the joys those children would bring to the dads who had been underground for so long.

Gems: Friends, Fall Colors and a Lake

Yesterday's hike was a chance to walk through golden Aspens with two friends. The three of us don't have that opportunity as often as I would like.

We stepped through golden leaves above our heads and beneath our feet. We remembered other hikes, other times we'd walked those paths.

The path to Gem Lake is steep in places, but just under 2 miles. We felt so good when we reached the lake. The sign just beyond reminded us that the trek on to Balanced Rock was over two miles beyond--not such a short hike after all.

We have walked some of life's long roads together too. Some have been bumpy, rocky, with hills that were hard to climb. These women represent deep friendships that any would be fortunate to have. Others have walked rutted and muddy roads with me. Others have shared my spiritual journey. But these two have shared hikes that allowed me to walk through fears, climb paths I would never have thought I could, in reality and metaphorically. They have been with me through life-changing spiritual awakenings--and during the upheavals that have accompanied those awakenings. Another friend commented recently on how often sadness comes with peace--that giving up of a dream--with an end to striving for something that's time has passed. Wisdom that is hard earned.

We relished the beauty of the fall colors, the aspens that were approaching red-orange. The hike to Gem Lake seemed new and familiar at the same time. Our cameras gave us new eyes. We marveled at the small and the grand. It's not balanced rock that drew us to that spot, but the grandeur of fall's forest. And we followed each others steps as we made the walk out. Our separate paths came together for a time of joy and wonder.

I am blessed to have wise women friends.

Awe and Wonder

The ones of me was taken by my hiking partner, Judith Chandler, on her camera.
Awe and wonder -- and there's no way -- even had my camera's batteries not died as we reached the huge meadow we had aimed for above Black Lake in RMNP -- that photographs convey the vastness and the stark glory of that landscape. The golden grasses this time of year enhance the rocky surfaces. The mountains above (which are beyond our climbing abilities) stand in stark shadow over the streams, lakes, red bushes, and golden grasses.

Some might see this as too barren, too stark. Why it speaks to my soul is not something I can explain. There are four named lakes in this meadowland. On this hike, we did not visit them. Instead we simply reveled in the splendor of the area. I sat and absorbed while my friend took photographs. We marveled. It was exhilarating. God's creation is marvelous!

Then we had to hike out--down steps, passing by Black Lake, across meadows and down more steps, past Jewel and Mills Lakes, on legs that were feeling pushed. The walk out seemed longer than the six or so miles we had hiked in. That's often the case. For the splendor and awe, I was blessed by my body's ability to make the trek, blessed by the company of my dear hiking companion, and blessed by the experience of my inner child's wonder.

Some experiences in nature are beyond words. We are blessed! I am grateful!

Slogging Through

Slogging through life seems a good title for where mine has been lately. The photo, taken by my hiking companion on her camera, is of me slogging my way through the krummholz in a high meadow on last Friday's hike. A friend reading one of my last blogs dubbed me a "wrestlin' woman."

Wrestlin' and slogging both sound like challenging ways to make it through life. However, getting to the feelings of my early childhood seems to require wrestlin' and slogging.

The gold in this part of the journey has been unexpected. I did not consider that I might understand not only the decisions I made as a child, but which of my basic needs (as a child) motivated those decisions. Little Margaret, who met her Daddy's inappropriate needs as best she could, did it to gain affection--a natural and basic child's need. This realization allowed me to finally clear my guilt about heeding Daddy's requests and doing the best I could with them.

I had felt responsible for Mother's emotions and wanted to make her feel better. As a child, I believed I had that power--if only I did the right thing. I found myself acting that out in a friendship--surprised that this part of me hadn't healed. And naturally I had engendered hurt and resentment in myself and my friend. With Mother if I made her happy, if I helped her be well, surely I'd get the love and affection I desired and needed.

I had experienced Mother's jealousy during childhood. That jealousy erupted with venom over the years at me, then at my daughter, and even a friend's daughter as each entered puberty. I never believed I would understand what triggered those emotions. A recent experience reminded me that sisters (I don't have one) are sometimes jealous of each other. Then a light bulb went on. Mother was jealousy of her sister--four years older. We saw that jealousy, not that she could admit it, but this must have been especially strong when her sister entered puberty. We must have triggered those emotions as we reached that period of our lives. When it happened to me, I thought it was about me, but by the time it happened to my friend's daughter, it was clear that it wasn't about any of us. I'm aware that when I feel stronger emotions than make sense, it's about something old. I realized that was true with Mother, but only now can I see the probable cause.

Helping that little girl part of me deeply know that she couldn't heal Mother is a huge relief. I can finally forgive myself for not making Mother well.

All this slogging and wrestlin' counts. Hopefully, I'll put these and other insights together in a way that will help others. If I do, it will be their understandings of their feelings, with the Spirit's help, that will heal. My work could only jog those realizations.

In peace.

What we see -- and clarity

We see through the lenses of our experience. Had you been with me when I took these photographs, you might have aimed your camera at a different scene. You might not have noticed the moss that was growing on the top of a boulder beside the Black Lake trail (in RMNP). You might have had your eyes on the trail--or on the stream on the other side of the path, or on the mountains ahead. The moss might have seemed unworthy of a photograph. (Moss housed the little people I pretended understood my life as a little girl, but that's for another writing.).

I've brought out colors and closed in on details by enhancing these photographs. It was fun. The water's edges turned blue violet as I brought out the green grasses growing around the boulder. The day I took the picture, I barely noticed the green and the water looked white as it rushed over the rocks.

How and what we see makes such difference in our attitude about each day. I'm skilled at finding the beauty, the good, and letting that be my focus. That has often meant ignoring peril, and not planning for illness or old age. A friend once said that I saw clearly the danger ahead. Then, he said, I walked right into the fire, as if I didn't know the house was burning. My spiritual journey has forced me to see evil as well as good with clarity. I didn't find a photograph to represent evil, but the rocks and pebbles in the bottom of the stream are brought into a much clearer focus (see the same picture in earlier blogs) by cropping and enlarging their images. The fall image, which I couldn't resist putting in, shows the rocks with clarity without enhancement!

Notice that in the photos with bright light, there is also darkness. The darkness looks like a void so the light will stand out. Are there days when the darkness obscures the light? When darkness would color the bright--take away from it? And what about color? Can we enjoy the gold leaves without remembering the cold, dark days that will follow?

Last Saturday, when the fall photograph was taken, we started up Boulder Canyon in light fog and mist. We didn't know what the weather would be when we got to the Hessie Trailhead. We had been told that the aspen leaves had turned beautiful yellows and golds. My positive thoughts were that they always looked brighter against gray clouds. That way of thinking reflects the way I coped in childhood--look for the pink skies that transformed the gray farm buildings, suck on the sweetness from clover "straws." My friend didn't want to back out of her commitment to our hike (as I had expected her to).

As we drove past about 6500 ft. elevation (Boulder is 5430 ft.), the sun blazed down on us. When we got to Nederland, we stopped for my friend to buy sunglasses. She hadn't expected to need hers. The aspens were glorious, the sun warm and the fall light's slant was magical. What a reward for going through the fog and mist--for persevering on the path!

Fr. Thomas Keating says, and I'm paraphrasing, that without evil we could not begin to understand the depths of Divine love. We might also say that darkness enhances the light.

On my journey of spiritual and emotional healing, I have days like this one, when fatigue and dis-ease signal emotional memories. Those new on the path at our meditation group last evening sought to console and make things easier for me. But I've been on this journey long enough to know that for whatever it is that's pushing hard (for more time than it usually takes) to come to the light, that after the encounter with new clarity, I will experience light in a new way. The fall light, yes it's that, for I'm at least in the fall of my life. It can come sooner, but for me it didn't.

Needing to see clearly the evil perpetrated to and around me during childhood has meant letting go of perceptions that comforted me. My whitewashed Daddy has had to fall away. Memories I had secured in a hidden storage place have needed to come clearly into focus. During this journey of healing and spiritual growth, I've also needed clarity about my own shortcomings. I've been given the insight to understand from where my reactivity to certain people, institutions and events come.

Clarity allows for seeing the shapes of the rocks over which the water flows. It allows for understanding the water's depths, its currents, and its power. It calls for noticing where the rocks on the path are solid and sustaining and where they are wet and slippery and could easily cause a fall. Clarity calls for seeing and feeling our buried wounds, letting them rise to the surface for healing and evacuation. It calls for seeing with compassion our shortcomings, our own tendencies to cause others pain

Then, with the non-dual thinking that Franciscan monk Richard Rohr proclaims, I must hold the good rocks and the slippery ones in the same focus--understanding they have different surfaces, are planted in different ways, that neither is always good or always bad. With rocks, I find it easy to see. With people, holding their good and evil deeds as part of the whole has been more difficult.

My memory of scripture as contained in the Bible is mostly from the verses that Mother quoted (for various reasons). In the first chapter of John, there's a verse about the light shining in the darkness--and the darkness not blotting it out. That's how I see this journey of seeing clearly--being aware of evil as well as good, but not letting the evil overcome the good. We have no power to change that which we cannot or choose not to see.

(The actual verse for purists who might be reading this: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." John 1:5. NRSV) The King James version, the one with which I grew up, says "the darkness comprehended it not." That translation didn't speak to me with the same clarity.

Real Change

Awareness, dedication, perseverance--big words that my Enneagram "thought for today" used to describe what we as individuals need for real change. Those words describe for me what it takes for us to change our habits so that we can protect this amazing and wonderful earth that provides us a home too.

As I look back over this year's hiking season, I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of our mountains, lakes and streams on many amazing paths. The wildflower season was one of spectacular beauty and lasted well into August.



We are losing more of our lodgepole pines to the pine bark beet. Our forests won't be the same. I don't know if we humans created conditions that allowed those beetles to flourish. I hope not. Perhaps our forests needed change and this is nature's way.

I am grateful for all who have hiked those paths with me, especially Judith, my faithful trail companion for these past ten summers. I give thanks for my feet, legs, knees and hips, that after 72 years still take me into paths above treeline and allow me to commune with lakes and meadows such as ones I've shown on earlier blogs. I could promise not to push them hard, but that might be a promise I wouldn't keep even this week when we look forward to a hike we've missed the last couple of years.

The season is changing. The aspens in their glory predict that their leaves will soon fall. As a child I believed the trees in our woods, that like Britain's Prince Charles, I talked to on a regular basis, needed a rest. I did feel a touch of sadness when their leaves of color--more orange and red than in our mountain forests--fell to the ground. I gathered my favorites--those with gold, orange and red with even a touch of green--and pressed them into a book so I could remember their beauty during the winter when the trees lost their decorations.

On Saturday's drive to the Hessie trailhead beyond Eldora, we saw trees whose leaves had already fallen, as well as glorious hillsides dotted with splashes of bright yellow aspens tucked into the pine forests. Those bare trees reminded me that we expect our first signs of snow in the mountains before this month is past.

As I think of the seasons of the year, I also think of seasons of life. I'm certainly less decorative than I was in earlier seasons (assuming I was then!). I'm slower in speech and no longer keep the frenetic pace I kept for so many years. To many, I'm old. Interesting--I don't think of myself that way. When I smile, many of my wrinkles disappear (briefly) so my photos look younger than I look to those who see me when I'm tired or sad or stressed.

Oh yes, I titled this writing "real change." Today I'm grateful for time to let the little girl Margaret, who suffered at the hands of those who were supposed to protect, grieve. I'm grateful for time to let her know how sorry I am for what happened to her, for time to help her heal. I'll add another word to those in the Enneagram thought--surrender. I'm grateful for time to surrender to the process of Divine healing--the healing that brings real change.