Light and Dark -- In Nature and Our Lives

I chose this "midnight sun" from my Norwegian Sea collection (more of them later) taken on this summer's birthday gift cruise as it shows the sun's light through clouds that are darkening the sky. It is fitting for my thoughts about being the light in the darkness, a call that our Rector eloquently made in a recent pastoral letter to the congregation.

Because I identify as a writer and my memoir is my completed book, I find myself in conversations about the darkness in this country through the lens of Satanic ritual groups. They operate underground and aren't likely to show up in marches or protests, at least not in that guise. However, a younger acquaintance once said that in her small town in a Midwestern state, all but a few of the families were either in the Klan or the Cult. While one, in my experience, teaches us to hate ourselves and the other teaches hate of the other, I wonder if those who express the hate of the other don't have, underneath that noisy exterior, self hatred that gets projected on those they identify as "the other."

So what we do when confronted with those who stand for and with the racial and ethnic slurs? Do we remember that they, too, have a piece of the Divine in them, buried though it might be?
Do we send God's love, Divine light, to them in our thoughts and prayers? Or do we project hate back to them, as "the other" though we say we are against hate?

Does our light of love reside behind a cloud when confronted with folks who fear those who are different? Are we afraid of being contaminated by their views or lumped with them if we are seen having a conversation?

While standing for our beliefs of inclusion, non-violence, against hate and injustice, where are we conversing with those with fears and opinions differ from ours? Are we lumping all from the opposite political party into one group of those who are against our values?

These are tough questions, and I don't begin to have all the answers. I have a list of my "others"--sexist men for one, our Middle Tennessee Bishop who forbids the use of the same-sex marriage liturgy in our churches for another--that I'm working on sending light and love to in my prayer time, and have just begun to add those who are filled with hate. I remember the Christian exhortation to pray for our enemies as I write this.

We can each speak up against hate and violence wherever we see it, but try to remember that those who promote and participate in hate speech, rallies and violence are also God's people. They are acting out of our worst human impulses. We are called to be the light, to let Divine love flow through us. I find myself praying for the space for that love more frequently than ever in these difficult days.

On the political and social issues front, I recommend reading "Partisan writing you shouldn't miss," articles by writers from across the political spectrum chosen by the New York Times as worth reading on the subject of the day. Some are from Internet news sources that don't appear in print, others are from recognized sources, and occasionally, after articles from the right and from the left, there are a couple from the middle (hardest to find they say). Though I sometimes hold my nose, I find this exercise worth doing two or three times a week.

We hear and know that the divide in our country can't be breached by each of our going to our own corners and hurling charges against the other group. Perhaps these recent drastic expressions of hate will allow more of us to stand together, no matter our differing labels of conservative and liberal. That could begin the healing process, a little at a time. It could make good come from the awful.

Let's fine ways to be the light!

White Washing Those We Love

After days of agonizing, deciding what to write and what to leave our, yesterday I sent my manuscript to the literary agent who has an interest in representing it. He made no promises, but gave perimeters that I, for the most, part followed.

I was brutally honest about my participation in the cult of my childhood and growing up years. I was honest about my weakness as I know, and said a bit about my strengths, and how they too have grown from my childhood experiences. I have had to be honest about the damage Dad did, likely because Fr. William Meninger convinced me that to truly forgive, we need to understand the damage that was done. All well and good, I think.

It was my ex-husband, called Don in the memoir, about whom I had the most difficulty writing the truth. Perhaps it was because he became a better man in his later years and a good husband to his wife of thirty years. But then I thought about the years in which we were married, and a comment that his wife, whom I thought of as a friend, made. She said something like "Don's a bigot, sexist and selfish.  Didn't you know that?" A similar thought was expressed by his brother's wife shortly after her husband's death. "He was a curmudgeon Margaret. He was sexist. I knew that, but he was my curmudgeon!" They both knew the basic character of the men to whom they were married. I, on the other hand, wanted to believe Don was the man I imagined him to be when we fell in love.

Even almost forty years after our marriage ended, I'm remembering the cute, funny, romantic man I so loved and finding it difficult to write about who he was for most of the seventeen years (with a short break) that we were together. The man who looked up the hermit recipe, the Christmas cookies I made, remembered the fruit and nuts I used, and "supervised" their making, presenting me with a sack of a dozen as I came in the door for his last Christmas is the one I prefer to remember. Just as the Dad I preferred to remember was the white-washed one, until that cardboard cut out no longer served me.

I made myself write about the worst of the time with Don. Though I didn't say it clearly, I provided the reader with the information to know that he was randomly unfaithful. What it is about me that I don't want to see? Is it the woman who made an unspoken deal. As long as I don't have to see it, you can continue your philandering. Embarrass me in front of the community in which I live, that's a deal breaker.

I pretended that Don wanted me to be professionally successful, but after our divorce, he told me that I made more money that he did two of the last years we were married. I filled out our income taxes and didn't notice because the difference was minimal. Since he was adamant about my working, I wouldn't have thought he cared how much I made.

It is interesting to remember and realize that I have a habit of not seeing who the men I love really are. Perhaps my son can be the beneficiary of clear-sightedness. I have some distance from my grandsons, see them for who they are, though want the oldest to be the best young man I know he can be. My son, a very good man, gets his share of whitewashing too. I can look more honestly. I believe that would be a service to him.

Wild Things -- Finding Peace in Chaos

                          "I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with
                          forethought of grief. . . For a time I rest in the grace of the world and
                          am free." Wendell Berry

Those lines from Wendell Berry's poem, The Peace of Wild Things, resonates for me, even as a city dweller, or I should say, even more as a city dweller. While there is a French coffee and sandwich shop nearby that sustains a poet friend and is occasionally a writing spot for me, it is the woods with wild flowers blooming and birds chirping, paths beckoning, that brings that peace. More than peace, those walks, alone more often than not, bring joy, the simple joy of observing and being with the wild things.

                                                     Spring Beauty in Warner Park

Before the bushes leaf out, i observe the the steep drop of a hill or the way one undulates as if it was a baby ski slope, though no skis rode these hills,  and wonder at the way they are. I am grateful for the acres of woods and trails preserved in Nashville/Davidson County--more than 1200 acres at Radnor Lake Natural Area where the trails are free of pets and runners and is my regular haunt, and over 3,000 acres at the combined Percy and Edwin Warner parks at the western edges of the county where in Edwin, over seven miles of paved road trails have recently been made car free, with the best trails for getting in shape at Percy.

                      Tennessee larkspur, a carpet of purple blue, shorter than those in the high Rockies.
                                         
On a day when the city closes in, the news too troubling to hear or read, what I am doing seems pointless, I get in my car (alas, that's necessary) and drive the eight miles to those seldom busy hillside trails in Radnor, the park where I am most at home. The larkspur are profuse this spring, clearing of noxious plants allowing for spread of this lovely purple flower. Its show will soon be over, and the woods will have only spare flowers throughout as spring greens turn darker and bushes green the hills.

The lake, water fowl, birds, deer and other wildlife will take center stage until falls' foliage make the hills a joyous pallet of color.  The only human in sight on the South Cove trail many days, I visit with my deer friends who mostly ignore me and continue foraging for food. The wild turkeys, too, are oblivious to the walkers who stop to stare--or those too intent on their exercise to notice. They gather on the main lake trail, one I use on days when my energy lags and the hills of South Cove seem too much or when I need to get back to my car quickly as the predicted showers materialize, heavier than expected. Thundershower predicted days are some of the best to be on sparsely peopled trails.

I'll leave with photos of spring flowers, mostly shot on the trails of another of our parks, Beaman, in northwest Davidson County, more remote, rugged and less crowded, even on the lovely Sunday afternoon when I scoured the trails for trillium, eastern red columbine (so different from my favorite Colorado mountain columbine), Dutchman's breeches, scarlet catchfly, and the one that brought me greatest joy, the Appalachian trout lily.

I miss my first spring flowers in the Rockies, especially the glacier lilies that carpeted the hillside above Lake Isabelle in Indian Peaks Wilderness above Boulder. For years I trekked through snow, waded water and skated on ice--whatever necessary--to catch these little yellow lilies at their prime. I made that annual visit with new friends and went back alone that Colorado spring before I moved back to Tennessee, knowing it would likely be my last sighting of those lilies other than in my memory and many photos. Imagine my delight, when near to a running creek in Beaman Park I sighted little yellow lilies, first one, then two or three, and then a colony. They were yellow trout lilies and looked so much like the Glacier lilies that tears welled as I squatted to take a photo.

Others were lovely too.   The scarlet catchfly, Dutchman's breeches and trillium below.

And I end with the lovely Virginia bluebells, taken at Edwin Warner park where they are a loved sight for many.

Whether or not these or other flowers are in bloom, I find that peace, as Wendell Berry so eloquently stated it, as I harken back to that little Margaret who skipped across the fields picking daisies, in my journey with the wild things.

A Look at Life -- and Death

As I watched my friend, Sue's last breaths, a newsreel of memories flashed through my head. Her outstretched hand to me, an interloper in the organization where she was director of research, a young, beautiful woman who offered me her guest bedroom until I found a new home, making me laugh when I wanted to scream, noting the good points of a colleague whose pettiness annoyed, and more recently, her courage, strength and positive outlook as she battled the acute myeloid leukemia that was ebbing the life from her still lovely body.

I recalled the irony of times, much earlier, when some part of Sue craved oblivion strongly enough to make her tussle with death a close one, and matched that with the determination she showed in her battle with this, the fourth cancer, intending to beat it until it seemed pointless to try another treatment.

How often is there, for even a split second, a dashing thought of what am I doing here? What's the use? Or what do I have to contribute?

As I ponder my impatience with not knowing what opportunities to share, inspire, or lead might be around the next curve, I wonder about that sense of "being" that's prevalent in meditation circles, that higher state of consciousness that one or another practice can evoke. Am I to sit on my cushion and watch my breath morning, noon and night?

I'm inclined to find a need and fill it, but am aware that at this stage of life, discernment is important.  "There is something you can contribute that no one else can. Find that and you will, as Joseph Campbell famously said, "find your bliss," a spiritual director told her audience. I have a glimpse of what that might be, but the bend in the road is obscuring it. As I get closer, the road seems longer, the curve farther ahead.

Tears come unbidden as I ask, "is healing my contribution?" and "how does that look?" The opening lies hidden around the curve, through the trees. "Can't Even Let Yourself Know," my childhood memoir being perused by that illusive agent, could be the platform. But will publication happen while I can still toddle to the front of a room, I wonder. How many more curves in the winding road before the field opens in the light.

My prayers for others end with "Okay, God, Holy Spirit, Divine Mother, what, pray tell, am I doing here? Pull the curtain so I can see around the next curve--please."

I'll also pray for some of Sue's courage to do whatever's next.

What the Camera Couldn't Capture

     This post is the essay I wrote for my adult learning writing class at Vanderbilt University. Our instructor is thoughtful and creative in the ways he gives assignments that make us think and dig deep. The title of my essay is the same as our assignment. Study, he said, a favorite photograph and write about what the camera cannot see--feelings, what was happening nearby, the photographer, anything we might include. Some in the class write long essays. Since I am working on a novel, and putting together query material for the long-worked-on memoir, mine are short. Here is yesterday's assignment.

     A favorite photograph showed Cousin Gertrude reading a picture book the school teacher cousins brought little Margaret. The adoring looks between adult and child was what captured the viewer and made it special.

     A spot in the sun on the edge of the farm house's front porch allowed for escape from the plaintiff cries of Margaret's baby brother, Billy, and her mother's frantic attempts to quiet him, especially when her cousins visited. The camera captured the ragged front porch steps, but not her mother's pleas to her daddy to repair them, a request that loomed large when Cousins Gertrude, Edna, and nurse Clara came to visit.

     The camera didn't capture Shep, the family's German Sheppard, asleep at the foot of the steps, ready to protect Margaret at the whisper of danger. The Cousins were among the few admitted through the yard's gate without Shep chained or held by a family member.

     While turmoil reigned inside, the view from the porch was that of large maple trees, one little Margaret's favorite to hide behind, wild roses draping the top boards of the yard's fence, peonies and iris off to the side. Two tall mulberry trees flanked the yard's gate, housing birds who threatened to drop purple juice on the part of Cousin Edna's white hair as she got out of their Dodge and walked to the gate.

     The camera couldn't take a panorama of the farm's front fields, Jersey and Guernsey milk cows dotting the green field that little Margaret would skip across when going to the store for her mother's brown box and striped candy sticks. In the other field, her daddy sat under his straw hat driving their red Ford tractor, cutting alfalfa for winter's cattle feed.

     The quarter-mile lane the Cousins drove up to reach the circular drive in front of the yard had ruts and rocks dating from the days that Margaret's mother's dad and granddad drove their buggies up that same lane. No matter what fill Margaret's daddy put in, those ruts returned. Little Margaret would look at that lane, listen to folks talk about what a pretty place their farm was and wonder why anyone driving up that lane would think they were driving into a quiet peaceful home.

     The camera caught the loving looks between Cousin Gertrude and little Margaret, the importance of which the camera couldn't know.

Note: I promise to be back on this blog more regularly in the near future.  I continue to feel that I have something to say that's worth writing about the turmoil in our country, but as that's a changing target, I'll have to catch the right moment.

Blessings and peace

The Time We Have

                   School children and a parent admiring the poinsettia tree in the Cheekwood mansion.

When the life of a friend sixteen years younger is shortened, depending on whether or not the friend tries another treatment, it forces me to think of my time on this planet. My friend is sixty-two. I am seventy-eight. She has two kinds of cancer. I am, as far as I know, in excellent health. I realize that I don't have as much energy as I once did when the simple tasks of waiting on her and driving to see doctors on streets, some of which I once knew, but which after almost twenty years, seemed barely familiar, made me feel like a nap would be a good idea. Then I realized that the fatigue might be accentuated by my avoidance of what my friend is facing. There is much unknown. I intended to wait to write until after tomorrow's two doctors appointments. However, writing about the unknown feels fitting. The doctors will only have projections and maybe only vague ones. After two stints in the hospital in a month, many treatments and transfusions, my friend is considering a decision not to undergo more treatment.

Last December 21st, another friend walked out of her bathroom about 10:30 pm and fell to the floor, suffering what a week later would be a fatal stroke. She had no stroke risks, no family history. She ate healthy foods and exercised regularly. Her weight was perfect for her tall frame, her blood pressure normal, and so forth. She did not regain consciousness, left without a chance for us to say goodbye.

Wednesday, before I leave Chattanooga to drive back to Nashville, I intend to have coffee with another friend from my years in this community. She is eighty-six, in reasonable health and will drive about thirty minutes from a congested suburban area to meet me in the heart of the city.  She is eleven years older than my friend who had the stroke and twenty four years older than my friend with whom I am visiting. She is eight years older than me.

There is no guarantee that I will live to be eighty six, no guarantee that I will live longer than the moments I am experiencing now. Do I think of life that way? No. I plan to drive two other women to a weekend retreat at the Sisters of Loretto Motherhouse three hours northeast of Nashville on Friday. I expect to make my volunteer shift at Holiday Lights at Cheekwood Wednesday evening and lead a tour of blind middle schoolers at Cheekwood's Japanese Gardens on Thursday. If I thought this was the last week I had on this planet, are those the things I would do? Are there other friends in this city that I'd make sure I would see? Likely not.

Would I want to interrupt my son and daughter-in-law's lives and insist on time with them. I might. I would want to see my grandsons again, but with them in four different states, I would need to know I was dying and yet be alert. Even then not all would come. I would want to see my two long-time hiking friends, those who accompanied me on my spiritual journey, and my daughter. None live near my current home.  And if I were able, I would still want to lead the tour for the blind students.

That fact is reassuring. As uplifting as Loretto is, I wouldn't make that trip. Others in the group are very connected to the Sister who will speak with us and with each other. I went for the first time last year after joining the centering prayer group from which this retreat emanates three months earlier. I will meet one of the women who is riding with me in our building's parking lot on Friday. I am hopeful that the weekend will be peaceful, perhaps enlightening. Other than occasional shifts at Thistle Farms, the business developed for the women in recovery at Magdalene House, leading groups of school children through Cheekwood's gardens is my volunteer mission. With winter coming, tours will be on hiatus until March.

That gives me two months to write the novel, get the story down, and time, if I'm willing, to send out dozens more query letters promoting my memoir to literary agents. Will I do that? It's a question that I can't positively answer. Is shining light on the particular evils that marred my childhood important to others? I've thought that it was, but most days now I feel that bringing joy to others is more important. At times I am haunted by a comment a women acquaintance said in passing several years ago. "I your book helps one person, it will be worth publishing it."

I spend as much time as possible in our county's wooded parks, walking and hiking the trails. Our fall has been long and the last colors just now fading. I've driven to Radnor Lake many afternoons as the light fades to find joy on those trails. The next three months will be different, but I will go when the weather permits, not only for healthy exercise, but for the peace and joy those woods bring. That, I know, is one of the blessings of my childhood--finding peace and joy in the woods.

I believe my memoir describes that peace, but perhaps not as fully as it could. That task, reading through the sections that describe my time outside, my pleasure with the flowers and fields, that I'm willing to re-read, edit and bring into sharper focus. Then perhaps I'll once again be motivated to send out those letters that feel as if they are dropping into a black internet hole.

Maybe the Loretto retreat will bring clarity. This slice of life doesn't seem as meaningful as those last years in Colorado. It's living into the unknown that is one of life's challenges. There is much to enjoy. Perhaps the joy is just in being--not as easy as in doing. Maybe there will be some of both in the days ahead. Relish each moment for each is a gift.

Just for Fun!

This morning I took my car to be serviced at a station in another part of Nashville. Recommended
by a friend who had a car exactly like mine, I liked the folks and the service. At 7:25 am I walked to the parking log, camera bag over one shoulder and a bag carrying cute thank-you notes with photos I took, needing to be written. I would go to the near-by coffee shop and breakfast place and write the notes. But the coffee shop didn't open until 8 am. While waiting I decided to walk into the old neighborhood behind the service station and see where I could use my new macro lens. And did I
find a lot of flowers! The one above was taken in front of an old library branch.

This one was in front of the old Cohn School building, with perfect light. Walking from the library back toward the school I saw a policeman stop a trio of students, apparently making certain they were headed for school where classes had already begun. The next couple of shots were beside the school as well.



These are all shots that came from the camera without editing.









The ones below have been played with, some
a great deal--such fun! I will get a real editing program as I learn more about using the camera.

A dad in a hurry to deposit his daughter at her mother's came close to knocking me down as he backed into a parking spot beside me, as I took pink flower photos,and opened the door to get his child, who didn't want to get out of her car seat.

I obviously don't have the art of taking shots
into the flower's center down yet. I also found my arm tired and my hand unsteady after taking a number of shots of flowers on this bush.






I also thought of people I saw as possible
characters for stories, houses where they might
live, a school, a library, a community for them to inhabit. One of these days I'll set a story in this city, perhaps in that neighborhood, one that has gentry mixed with junk shops and poorer housing on streets I didn't walk through.

The bee was intentional, the fly lit as I was focusing, and was too good to pass up.

I think I should be able to get much closer to these insects (Is that true?), but don't have that down yet.

I ended my walk after more than an hour and walked back to my waiting car, all ready for the trip to Myrtle Beach, which the station owner said I would love.

                      What a wonderful way to pass the time waiting for my car to be serviced!