With Words

Retrospect 5: Asking Questions

2011-11-29T21:38:00.000-08:00

A significant part of my recent trip was spending time in the mountains writing with a new friend. She is a good writer..and even better, a mentor. She helped me deepen into the art of asking questions. This inquiry process, based on the Diamond Approach by Almaas was a rich part of our week together. Some quotes I will remember..

"You love yourself when you are willing to ask the questions of yourself and care and believe in the answers." Sherry Anderson.

Not a definition of self-love I have entertained before.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn't go away." Phillip K. Dick

"There is a stepping back from a belief before there is a stepping into a belief."

John Prendergast.

And finally a poem by Rumi:

Zero Circle

Be helpless, dumbfounded

Unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come

from grace and gather us up

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.

If we say Yes we can, we're lying.

If we say No, we don't see it

that No will behead us

and shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything

beside ourselves and only that, so

miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute

we shall be saying, finally

with tremendous eloquence, Lead us.

When we have surrendered totally to that

beauty,

we shall become a mighty kindness.

I am surrendering to the beauty of questions...or at least I am now aware how beautiful they are.

In Retropspect 4: Hot springs

2011-11-29T10:47:00.000-08:00

Isn't the Internet wonderful at times? As we headed along the Eastern Sierras, I looked up 'hot springs' on my iPhone, only to be rewarded with detailed instructions to little, out-of-the-way, non-commercial hot springs sites. It was just the kind of exploring we like--"take the road by the green church, then the first right by a rock. Go down a bumpy road and turn after the second cattle guard."

The first hot spring, Hot Creek, was SO hot, they had fenced it off after several incidents when the surging geothermal waters had scalded people. But the other two were heavenly. It was sunny but the wind was cold, making the hot springs even more appealing.

Retrospect 3: A Love of Labyrinths

2011-11-25T09:06:00.000-08:00

I attended my first labyrinth gathering in Taos, New Mexico in late October. I have long been intrigued by this meditative way of walking an ancient pattern, a pilgrim's way. I have built 4 permanent labyrinths and innumberable temporary ones--in sand on beaches, with chalk on floors, in freshly fallen snow. So it seemed time to join with others who are attracted to this way of making prayer and making peace.

There is much to say about the gathering, connecting both the universe around us and the universe within. I will remember the many ways I was shown to use the labyrinth for healing, for peace, and for enlightenment. Its circular patterns were a constant reminder of the fact that we are all in a human circle around this dear Earth. and never to be fooled by the illusion that somehow we are separate or opposite.

I will particularly remember the opening ceremony with one of the 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Flora DeMayo, who led us in a labyrinth made of corn while we sang a Navajo lullaby.

In Retrospect 2

2011-11-22T14:27:00.000-08:00

It seems like the gems of a road trip should be shared..those unexpected places of beauty and connection. On our way down to New Mexico, it was the surprise of the Snake River canyon in Twin Falls, Idaho, the snug campground in Snow Canyon near St. George, Utah, the sun-drenched red sandstone of the Escalante area, Capitol Reefs and the general stunning beauty of Hwy. 12. These places have edged out the Grand Canyon in my heart for favorite sites in the Southwest. The rocks and stone on this trip kept talking to us, all in competition for best of show. We could never wrap our heads around the numbers..the millions of years old, the volcanic eruptions, the plate upheavals that pushed the floor of the oceans into mountains. It is a great lesson to humility, to note their long endurance and our few short years here to witness them. We will return to this area and spend more time.

In Retrospect

2011-11-22T13:33:00.000-08:00

Here I am, unable to know where to start, wishing I had persevered and blogged along the way on the road trip from Alaska to New Mexico from Oct. 1 to Nov.5. Do I go back and start posting pictures of all we saw? Do I tell you all the places of wonder and again, awe? I only know I kept wanting to break into "America the Beautiful." I want to write about are the moments of insight, the things that are still rumbling around in my brain, still mumbling to be said. But okay, I have to share a few photos of the wildlife right alongside the road as we drove through Canada on the Alcan. It was like being in a wildlife park. How fortunate we are to still be able to see bears and bison, elk and sheep, caribou and moose. They are so completely themselves without pretense. I often watch them and watch them and watch them just to learn how to become like them...at home in the wild world, sure of daily purpose, moving with fluid beauty and present to the moment--always aware of danger but not daunted in living out their lives.

I once watched a mother moose with a calf at the edge of a lake, drinking. What remained with me is how unhurried and intentionally she moved, how she considered the next step, how she waited until all seemed right before moving back into the brush. The image comes back to me when I notice I'm rushing about, tense inside, my mind cluttered. Before leaving, she turned and looked straight at me for a while, considering me as I considered her. I imagined she sighed, hoping as all mothers do, that we learn our lessons but not with too much pain.

The Awe of it All

2011-09-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

I've slowly become a contemplative in these past years--a leaning into silence, an acceptance of God as Mystery, a slowing down to look more carefully, an awareness of staying in the present. Recently, a presenter defined contemplation as "Wow." He went on to explain that a contemplative person is gifted with a capacity for wonder and awe--whether with another person or alone, whether at work or play, whether at a computer screen or out in nature.

To me, being out in nature, especially this time of year, is like being given the 'Go' card to practice contemplation. I feel as if I'm walking around saying, "Wow." "Wow." "Wow." Words cannot hold it all. The white trunks of birches against the golden leaves. The red red cranberries on the shiny ovate leaves. The glint of Eagle River as it slows down again. The surprise of snow on the peaks again. Rustling leaves on the path. The distant call of geese migrating south.

Contemplation is a 'lifting of the heart to God in a stirring of love," says Wm. Menniger, Trappist monk. The tree outside my window blazes in the morning light. Yes, this kind of love.

Repetition Is Not Failure

2011-09-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

This title comes from a meditation by Mark Nepo in his daily meditation, The Book of Awakening:

" there is no expected pace for inner learning. What we need to learn comes when we need it, no matter how old or young, no matter how many times we have to start over, no matter how many times we have to learn the same lesson.We fall down as many times as we need to, to learn how to fall and get up. We fall in love as many times as we need to, to learn how to hold and be held. We misunderstand the many voices of truth as many times as need to, to truly hear the choir of diversity that surrounds us. We suffer our pain as often as is necessary for us to learn how to break and how to heal. No one really likes this, of course, but we deal with our dislike in the same way, again and again, until we learn what we need to know about the humility of acceptance." (p. 312)

These words come as balm for someone who 'falls again and again'. Having suffered for some years now with back pain, I take heart in his words as well. It is only very recently that instead of trying to get control of my back pain through posture, exercise, yoga, meditation, ergonomics, breathing, 'chi' walking, body work, healing prayer and proper rest, that I had the thought, "It is what it is. Instead of resisting, accept it as a teacher in your life." It has taught that lesson that I continue to learn very repetitively, "I don't have control over this."

It is not that I think all I have done was for naught or ill-advised. Those practices were all preparing me for this acceptance. Yet, as he said, 'not that I like this." So that is my next step!

The Real Work

2011-09-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

The Real Work
It may be when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we not longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
-Wendell Berry, Collected Poems.

My Real Work
To live within paradox,
Trust mystery
Apprehend beauty, mine included.
Walk upstream, seeing.

The Great One

2011-09-06T11:29:00.000-07:00

Mt. McKinley. Denali. The Great One. All names for the highest peak in North America. It rises above the tundra and foothills at 20,320 feet. I've been watching for her since first coming to Alaska in 1975, always hoping for a glimpse of the elusive 'Lady', as I think of her. She only shows her full face on rare occasions. But when she's in the mood and the weather clears, seeing her is always like it was the first time. A little gasp, suffusing awe, deep humility. The beauty for me has been too much to apprehend and I used to feel I could not take it all in. It was too vast.

I saw her most recently just a little over a week ago. The same awe and gratitude filled me, but this time when I stood full facing her, arms stretched out wide, something bounced back and forth between us. A recognition and a respect. As I've grown older, I see less and less division between myself and all that is created. I think she's always known it, but I've been slower in coming to it.

She receives what I send her. She sends it back.

We've become friends.

Sweet Synchronicity

2011-08-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

In a box of old books, a friend of mine found a slim volume called Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert A. Johnson. Since both of us have been intrigued and challenged by working with our shadow over the years, she picked up this slim volume and suggested we study it together. The book arrived from Amazon in time for me to pack along on a recent journaling retreat I was co-leading. (Despite experience, I'm always hopeful I'll have some spare time in the evenings for reading.) During a break in the retreat, one of the participants came up to ask, "Have you ever read any work by Robert A. Johnson?" I looked at him, a little amazed, and pulled the book out of my journal bag, "You mean this Robert A. Johnson?" And within the week, another friend returned from a retreat in Montana where she had been encouraged to work on her shadow. She said, "They told me I should read a book by Robert A. Johnson." I reached under the seat where I was sitting and said, "You mean this book by Robert A. Johnson?"

Whenever anything is presented to me three times, I take notice. (I guess it's the Trinitarian ingrained in me.) Synchronicity is a Jungian term I learned years ago, but to watch it occur with increasing frequency in my life, I now take as guidance from the Spirit. I've read this first book by Robert A. Johnson and am meeting with friends to discuss it more deeply. I think you need courage and a group to support you with shadow work. Why? As a little boy said when someone stepped on his shadow--"Ouch!" It can be painful.

The shadow is a collection of those parts of our God-given selves that we 'put away' because we deem them not culturally, socially or perhaps religiously acceptable. Necessary for good ego development, but around mid-life it seems to me, they are tired of being ignored and start to erupt in unseemly ways to get attention. The surprise of the shadow is that it contains exactly what we need to bring to consciousness in order to reach wholeness and full integrity--that is, accepting ourselves just as we are, rather than as we thought we 'ought' to be. So it is acknowledging we are not perfect, and yet also in the shadow are parts of ourselves that got pushed aside because they were too brilliant for the general norm. Often there are parts of ourselves that are pure 'gold.' So the shadow also presents a challenge to accept the responsibility for this God-given brilliance. As Johnson says, "Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides. To draw the skeletons out of the closet is relatively easy, but to own the gold in the shadow is terrifying. It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character that to find out you are a bum." (p.8)

This reminds me of Marianne Williamson's quote (made famous by Nelson Mandela)--"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who are we to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?"

As a Lutheran, public confession of my shortcomings is part of the liturgy of my life--a confession I know I've needed in community. Yet this confession has also rankled me. As a Lutheran pastor, there has also been a part of me, hearing the stories of people's lives, that wishes there was also a 'confession of goodness' to balance the extreme guilt and shame that some people feel, unable to accept forgiveness no matter what I say to them. It seems that culture, society, religion reinforces an awareness of what we do wrong (yes, necessary), Yet we need to fully confess both our darkness and our light to be fully human--and to live our lives in full freedom.

More on Robert A. Johnson and this 'shady' work later. For now, I'm pondering what 'gold' I have been terrified to claim in my shadow. What may be yours?

Who Knew the Listening Post Was Even More

2011-08-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

We are approaching the third anniversary of the non-profit entity I co-founded in 2008 called the Listening Post--a space in the downtown Transit Center where we provide a quiet space and listening without judgment or giving advice. After all this time, it only occurred to me now to 'google' Listening Post and see if there were others in the country. The results have made me laugh! Who knew?
A LIstening Post can be:
* an art installation in a London museum of bits of Internet chatter
*a music share site
*a Homeland Security channel
*a programme on Aljazeera
*an initiative to hear from intelligent life in the universe
*a John Hopkins program to help non-profits succeed
*a publication from the Benedictine sisters of New Jersey
*a customer service hotline

In World War II, a listening post, also called a 'sap-head', meant a shallow, narrow, disguised position ahead of the front trench line, or in "No Man's Land" in an attempt for intelligence gathering.

The site most like ours was a program with the same intent of listening without judgment, but their niche was to listen in schools.
I now feel part of something much bigger!

When You Begin Again

2011-08-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

I have been writing for years..maybe encouraged by a little rhyming poem that my third grade teacher had me read in front of the whole class. And I was published at 18 in a small magazine with a story about my brother's amputation and how it affected faith. I've a mountain of journals, published two children's books, wrote about Alaska in the Sunday paper of the Alaska Daily News, been in a writers' group for nearly 20 years and have 3 long manuscripts on my computer. Yet at a retreat I led this past weekend on Writing Your Way Home, I had to face the exiled part of my writer self that has yet to write the thing that I hope and believe would fill the deep longing in my soul. There seems to be yet a part of my voice not yet explored..out of fear or discounting or the wildness of what it may be-- any of the other myriad reasons we do not trust what comes from that we do not yet know.
Two things will hold and support this new intention:
The first is the story from one of the participants at the retreat who had a mentor named John Bennett. This mentor (who was in turn influenced by Gurdjieff) told him that with new ventures into soul work, start with a 'passive do'--that is, 'do' as in 'do, re mi.." of the musical scale. The wisdom was that one must start quietly and slowly and move gently into the calling. The soul is shy and must be treated so. If approached with too much zeal and enthusiasm the intention can fade and we become disillusioned, when instead it needed more time. And I interpret the 'passive' nature of it to mean that we let it grab us, rather we grasp for it.

The other is a poem by Ranier Maria Rilke, a German poet that seems to have the words I need whenever I reach an impasse.
From his book, Love Poems to God, he writes,

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, O God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels
into the open seas.

The phrase 'May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children', gives me an image of the 'passive do'--and remembering of what that way was like as a child.
I hope these words feed you as you read them, and if in you, like me, you've always known there is something in you waiting to be freed, that you will begin to sing the first note of the musical scale, in a whisper, inviting more.

Here in Hebron

2011-05-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

We are finally here in Hebron--no not the famous Judean city 20 miles south of Jerusalem, but a small town in rurual Indiana about an hour south of Chicago. Previously unknown to us, it turns out that ironically it suffered flooding from the aftermath of Hurrican Ike. Ironic in that this disaster relief team I'm on, worked the past few years in Port Arthur,Texas--cleaning up houses after the very same hurricane. I had no idea its effects could reach so far north.
Here in the heartland of America, the Calumet River flooded on this flat plain, and just like the situation in Pt. Arthur, two and a half years later, there are still 300 houses that are waiting for remodeling so that families can move back in. We are working on one of them.
The organization here is called LARRI, Lakeshore Area Regional Recovery of Indiana and is well-organized. On this first morning on the job, one half of the roof has been scraped of shingles, the floor mucked out for carpet and painting done in the first bedroom. W!e have tools and a foreman as well! That isn't always a given on these mission trips.
The sun is shining, trees blooming and we are getting used to letting our eyes follow to the horizon in all directions. More to follow...

Spring Break at Loon Lake 2011

2011-04-11T15:40:00.001-07:00

Click here to view this photo book larger

A Good Deathing

2011-03-30T09:54:00.000-07:00

I have spoken a lot about silence in my last blogs. But now I know a new silence..the silence that comes after a good deathing. This was a new term for me when Carrie, the hospice nurse spoke to us in the final hours of my mother-in-law's life. "It's so much like birthing," she said. "And now she is in transition..where she is totally within her body, doesn't want to be touched and is using all her energy in breath." But instead of creating life, she was creating a good deathing.

We began the vigil on Monday night, March 21--the day she was moved from the hospital to the hospice house after the heart attack. It was also beautifully the day that marked the equinox--the turning to spring. That night we had her birthday party with ice cream and flowers and singing as her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered around. The next day was her real birthday and she kept reminding us of that fact. She always loved her birthday. 86 years of life from a girl of prairie in Kansas, to a teacher with credentials from Oberlin, to a 'mail order' bride of sorts who went to live with her college roommate's brother in the wilds of Alaska in 1949.

She wasn't perfect in her life, but she was real. And she made decisions based on relationship. She was the kind of grandma who played with the kids down on the floor and when I came to pick them up after work, they took one look at me and said "Go home, Mom." She was silly at times, leaping and twisting in ballet moves in the kitchen while she cooked. She was sentimental, keeping corsages even back from high school in her scrapbooks. She was faithful, never forgetting a birthday or saying a prayer for family or friends in need. And she was strong in her own way, defying the odds by beating addiction in her later years when they said it couldn't be done. She did it for love.
She was a lover of life; on my first canoe trip with she and her husband, Bill, they came to camp after a hot day of paddling, ran to the edge of the lake, stripped off their clothes to their skivvies and jumped in the lily pads.
She died an hour after we left her on Saturday night. The night nurse found her after midnight on March 27, the anniversary of the Alaska Earthquake of '64--an unforgettable day. But on this night, the Alaska pioneer who spent her life camping and hiking and exploring breathed her last.

The two days prior had been hours of labored breathing. As we sat by her bedside it came down to just this...listening to her breath. Becoming slowly aware of its effort and spacing and hesitations. Wanting to help her make her chest go up and down and yet wanting her labor to end. So when her daughter, Cindi and her granddaughter, Laura and I got the call in the middle of the night that she had passed, we were struck by how quiet it was when we entered the room at 3;00 a.m.; a silence of relief and grief, of solemnity and celebration, of completion and yet beginning. It was a silence that welcomed us and assured us, as we blessed and dressed her body, feeling like Mary, Mary Magdalene and Salome going to the tomb on Easter morning...only the body was still there.

A day or two before she died, my husband Steve asked how she was doing. She roused herself from that place where she stared beyond us and said, "I think I'm going to be changing cabins soon." A good woman. A good deathing.

Revelation

2010-12-15T16:52:00.000-08:00

I was asked in a recent retreat to journal on the question, "When has silence fueled a desire, a knowing of who you may yet be?" I wrote,

Silence, creating space. I feel now it is the saving grace of my life. Silence. And also explains my attraction to wilderness; I always felt it was the beauty of what I was seeing, but now I sense the deeper attraction is the inherent silence. I think of a river valley deep in the mountains in the dead of winter. That terribly silent silence. Not terrorizing, but terrible in the magnitude of its beauty, a beauty I can never fully take in, Knowing I cannot apprehend it, glorify it or find words for it is....I see now...the best experience of true humility.
Whenever I am in this terrible silence and beauty I notice I never want to be anyplace else at that moment--and then in this same moment, I want to back away from that which is incomprehensible. the old tension. The two parts of me...the false self wanting to be in control; the true self leaning into Mystery.
Silence fuels the self I call True, the yearning of self into the wholeness of God.

The Earth Waits

2010-12-15T16:42:00.000-08:00

I have delayed in getting to the discussion of the third element in our series of Learning to Listen at the Listening Post in which we focused on the element of earth. The following are from some of my notes. We grounded ourselves in a long journaling practice for this retreat after holding a stone in our hand and reflecting on the questions:
"How have I been formed by choices I did not make?"
"How have been formed by choices I did make?"
"What is waiting to be formed in me now?"
This was followed by time in triads listening to each other regarding the idea of waiting and formation.

The element of Earth: soil, clay, sand, dust, mud, minerals, and the form we are going to use today in our listening practice: stone. The element of Earth is associated with the direction of north, the color white and the images of sleep, renewal, reflection, turning inward and waiting. Here in Alaska, as the snow comes, the soil freezes and the plants and trees pull inward to wait for spring, we too feel the change in the earth and the season of waiting.
But in the form of stone, the essence of waiting is much longer than a season. The oldest rocks on Earth are 3.5 billion years old. Once when hiking down into the Grand Canyon I had nearly reached the river and looked up to see a small sign on the rock layer by me saying “This Vishnu rock layer is 1.7 billion years old.” It stopped me in my tracks. There by the Colorado River, I looked up at the layers and layers of rock that rose a mile above me and felt the weight of time. It pressed down on me like the compressed layers of stone encircling me. And just for a moment there in a great silence, I felt the waiting of these rocks. And I began to understand those that say the stones speak. They hold the history, stories, storms, sun and energies of centuries..and yet I can hold them now in my hand. This rock is from the isle of Iona, Scotland where they most beautiful rocks I have ever seen pile up on Columba Bay, smooth and polished, in a rainbow of colors, deemed to be at least 1500 million years old.
Waiting..
A few days ago, on NPR, there was a small segment called My Grandson The Rock that reported on the work of Professor Robert Hazen who proposes after a long series of arguments about the evolution of minerals that “This is it. It’s the coevolution of life and rocks. Rocks make life. Life makes rocks.” To quote the article. “we are a delicate package of of water, organic chemistry, and minerals held together perhaps by something like will. Then when we die, we go ashes to ashes back into the ground and become minerals again until those same minerals get reorganized into plants, which get eaten by a cow that gets made into a hamburger that gets eaten by a child who goes out and throws a Frisbee. I guess it’s no surprise the two sides dance with each other.”
The more life there is, the more rocks there are. Who knew? When you think about it, it seems so beautiful.”
Maybe that explains why I and so many others I know, can’t help picking up rocks wherever they go. Maybe a distant relation?
As we enter into our listening practice, I sense these rocks so wise in waiting, can help us learn also about listening…to our inner selves, to others and to the Holy..

“If we think of ourselves as coming out of the earth,
rather than having been thrown in here from
somewhere else, we see that we are earth, we are
the consciousness of earth. And this is the voice of the earth.”
Joseph Campbell

The Fueling of Fire: Spaciousness

2010-12-15T16:20:00.000-08:00

The following are my notes from my presentation on The Element of Fire: the last in the series of the four elements on Learning to Listen with co-leader, Helen Cepero.

The Element of Fire is associated with the direction of South and with the season of summer. Not surprising perhaps since summer is associated with the attributes of Fire—heat and light. Like the other elements of Water, Air and Earth, this element takes on both creative and destructive faces—heat that can warm and save, heat that can burn and destroy. Fire is associated with Earth in that the core of our planet is fire, glimpsed at times through the eruption of a volcano. Fire at the core. Fire beneath our feet now. Fire is associated with water in that water can put out fire. Yet the other element of Air is necessary for a fire to burn. Although there are so many ways we could apply the element of Fire to the art of Listening, we have chosen to explore how Fire and the Spaces Between are related to Listening. Spaciousness. Fire.
It was this poem by Judy Brown that opened up this aspect of Fire to us.

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely as a pail of water.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned to pile on logs,
then we come to see how
it is fuel, and the absence of fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

(Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner, editors, Teaching With Fire: Poetry that sustains the Courage to Teach, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003, p. 89)

We have recognized early on that here at the Listening Post it is the space itself that fuels welcome, hospitality, safety and sanity. It sets the stage for the fire of the longing and yearning and anger and passion of the stories we often hear in this space, like the spaces between logs on a fire give the air the fire needs to burn. But listening can occur wherever the space is set for it. It can be ‘knee to knee’ space, yet there is a setting aside of a space that becomes sacred ground.
Another aspect of spaciousness related to listening is the spaciousness of silence. Listening implies silence on the part of the listener. And the quality of the silence resounds. It is not a silence of resentment, of judgment of restraint, or of withdrawal. The silence needed for listening is a silence of fullness—a space that fuels the conversation from the soul. Perhaps you’ve ‘heard’ this silence. That pregnant pause after a spectacular performance. The silence of the wilderness where there is not a sound and yet the air rings with it. The silence when words cannot express the extremes of love or sorrow. Only silence, that kind of space can fill it.
Yet silence is often something we are uncomfortable with. We fill in the spaces in conversation. T.V’s leave hardly a nanosecond for it.

“A fire grows simply because the space is there, with opening in which the flame that knows just how it wants to burn can find its way.”

I began to appreciate silence from nature—the stillness of the spreading fields in Iowa, especially at sunrise and sunset, a silence that wrapped me up and held me. I learned it again in Alaska, also by the landscape and the majesty of mountains, but also from the Alaska Native peoples. They modeled listening in a way I could not at first comprehend. There was a spaciousness of time that I had not experienced. I remember that in an evening of a village gathering, where storytelling went on and on way into the middle of the night, I was restless. But one of the elders said as another person was still telling their story hour after hour, “ We listen all the way to the very end.” I have never forgotten that wisdom, and the way they knew this listening was healing, the purifying fire, the cleansing fire.

In an ensuing discussion, one of the participants remembered she'd just spent some time with her daughter cutting out snowflakes. "It was the spaces that made the snowflakes take shape, that created the snowflake." Others recognized how the poem applied to their own relationships--letting there be space, laying on a log lightly from time to time.

The Advice of Air

2010-11-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

The second in the series of Learning to Listen workshops that we have been offering as part of training at the Listening Post( see prior post The Way of Water) was grounded in the element of Air. Unlike, Earth, Water or Fire, it is invisible. Yet it is the element so closely related to life and to death--the first intake of breath as a baby is born; the vigil of waiting for a person to take their last breath. So although we acknowledged air in the wind of hurricanes or a gentle breeze, and the quality of air being cool and crisp or warm and humid, the basis of the retreat focused on air as breath.
We listened to our breath in breathing, felt it expand our abdomens, ribs and clavicles, sang it in chants and meditated on the 'color' of our breath in the moment. Air--mysterious and invisible, powerful and ever-present. We trust that air is always there is breathe--and the same air is breathed by all persons, in all places no matter of race, religion,rank or culture.
It is this element of trust that we examined in the listening exercise called the Listening Stick, by Kay Lindahl who talks about it in her book Practicing the Sacred Art of Listening.
I was apprehensive about the exercise; basically, it relied on a deep trust in inner listening. The exercise was to ask: "What is the question that wants to be asked?" Wait 20 seconds, then hand a stick (pencil or pen) to a person in the triad and ask the question that came up in that 20 seconds. In our case, we started with "What takes your breath away?"
After the person repeats the question, only personalizing it this time to, for instance, "What takes MY breath away?", the person has 20 seconds to think about the question and then speak. The other two persons in the triad only listen without comment. After five minutes, the person speaking waits to see what question wants to be asked and hands the stick to the next person and asks the question that has arisen. The question has to be open-ended, such as, "What gives you joy?" or "How do you know you are loved?" Personally, I was uncertain that I could come up with the 'question that wanted to be asked.' It seemed like an almost preposterous idea. We could come up with a 'question that wants to be asked?' 'In 20 seconds?'
And yet, I was to discover, it was quite natural.
I am still in awe of the questions that were asked and how appropriate they were to the person receiving it. In the five small groups, no one had trouble finding the question in 20 seconds. And the people receiving it, sometimes had their 'breath taken away' by the question. Questions cames up like, "How does a sense of humor save your day?" "What makes you sad?" Later when we talked about the process, all of us were stunned by how it had worked--that there was an inner voice that could sense the question the other person needed. since we repeated the exercise twice in the same small group, some noted that the second time around, the questions got even more nuanced and insightful.
I encourage you to try it with a friend. It's hard to believe how you can listen in this way by explanation only. And yet I now trust these questions, this inner knowing and listening are powerful and always present to us, like the element of Air.
by the way--what takes my breath away? Surprising and sacrificial acts of kindness. What takes yours away?

Seeing Shadows

2010-11-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

Seeing Shadows
I took a three day silent retreat at Mercy Center in Burlingame, California last month. I wrote the following after walking the labyrinth and watching my shadow move and turn, grow and disappear as I made the many turns. A labyrinth walk was once a substitute for pilgrimage to holy sites when it became dangerous to travel in the Middle Ages. So I shouldn't be surprised that labyrinth walk led me back to remembering a pilgrimage I took three years ago.

When you can see your shadow, you know the sun has come out from behind the clouds. There is no escaping that shadow and no way to step on and keep it from moving as you move. Why didn’t I remember that when I was walking the Camino de Santiago three years ago? But I rarely see things so clearly in the moment. Now as I rest here in silent retreat at Mercy Center in California, I have been given the grace to see my shadow more clearly and see the light it confirms is really there. By my ‘shadow’, I am talking about the Jungian concept of that part of ourselves that we repress and don’t want to look at. But in repressing it, it only becomes persistent and problematic. As Carl Jung said, “What you resist, persists.“ Shadow ‘work’ is doing the strange work of learning to love your shadow so that you become whole. In this instance, I want to write about my aggravation with The Germans on the pilgrimage I walked across Spain called the Camino.
At first, I didn’t notice them at all. I was too busy just trying to adjust to walking 15 miles a day and cope with the fact that there were many more pilgrims on this journey than there were beds at night at the refugios and albergues that housed us along the way.
Gradually I began to notice that there were a LOT of Germans who passed us and who were taking up bunks. One couple told me that a German comedian who is quite well known and influential in Germany ( a Jon Stewart or Jay Leno?) had walked the Camino and reported on nationwide television that it had changed his life. Evidently coming from him, it had more credibility than if someone like the Pope recommended it. It had thus caused an influx of the Deutsch, flocking to see what that meant.
The rub began when I noticed that the Germans were getting up early from the albergues and sneaking out before the quiet hours ended at 6:00 a.m. In doing so they woke us all up anyway and got to the next albergue before the rest of us. I imagined their gloating as I walked by, still without a place to sleep that night. I began to get irritated.
Slowly I saw more and more of their faults. They were dressed too neatly, as if sporting how easy it was to keep creased and clean as they walked by me, who was quite wrinkled, smelly and cold. They also appeared to stride along without all the aches and pains I was having, probably because they were getting much better sleep than I and also because they didn’t have to keep walking several more miles to find a place to sleep every night. My grudge grew.
Pretty soon, I was barely able to tolerate the sound of a German accent or their hearty voices and tan, muscled legs passing me on the way to the next village. I resented that they didn’t think more of others and deep inside I mumbled that what was I to expect of a nation that had supported Nazis and death camps? They began to look more sinister.
And then there was the bossy way they tried to tell everyone how to organize things, suggesting how to make beds or line up for the shower. Those Germans were ruining my Camino experience. If only the Germans would all pass me and go home, I’d have some peace--and a place to sleep!
I arrived on Pentecost Sunday to the sound of bagpipes and the breaking of sun into the square of the St. James Cathedral in Santiago. The 500 mile pilgrimage was over. I had made it despite the many trials and tribulations along the way. I was weary to the bone, soaked from the rain, sleep-deprived and a little delirious that we were finally at our destination after 35 days on the road.
I went into the cathedral early to find a seat for the 12 o’clock mass-- a narrow wooden pew. Luckily I had. The place filled up rapidly with no open seats anywhere. We squished together to make space. Then pushing through the crowd, a woman came up and opened up a small folding seat and sat down on it right beside me. I heard her speak to someone and thought, “O God, not another German. Not now. Of course, SHE would have a little folding seat. Of course, SHE would find a place for herself in this crowd. And of course, it would have to be by Me.” My self-pity and my judgment knew no bounds.
What was equally uncomfortable was that she actually faced me more than the front of the church. Whenever I glanced over, she was looking directly at me and smiling. It was disquieting. I closed my eyes, not so much to pray as to just rid her from my reality.
As the service progressed, we were urged to sing along on songs that were universally known in Latin, one of which I had sung all along the 500 miles of walking. “Ubi caritas, et amor, deus ibi est, deus ibi est.” Translated, it means “Where true charity and love abide, God is dwelling there, God is dwelling there.” I kept my eyes closed, out of reverence, out of fatigue, out of avoidance. I just wanted to be in my own little world. I sang from the depths of my heart, so glad to be in Santiago, so glad to have finished the journey that had taxed my soul and body.
Then I opened my eyes; it was time to pass the peace. And before me, squeezing my hand, is the German woman, beaming at me, full of light. “You sing beautifully,” she said. “Like the angels.” Again, she looked directly in my eyes, full of almost adoration. I was so surprised, I’m not sure I said anything at all. The crowd moved on to pass the peace, and when I looked again, she and the little chair were gone, and for an instant, I wondered if it had all been a hallucination stemming from my mental state. Or was she the angel? Angel means messenger in Greek. And I was shaken with the feeling that she had meant to give me a message. And to pass to me some peace truly beyond my understanding.
What was it? Of course, it was a message from God to remind not to stereotype people. All Germans were not evil Nazis or unkind. And in fact, I remembered two German couples who had been helpful and concerned for us, quite friendly and open. One who had actually arranged a place for us to sleep! I had just not let that enter into my overall assessment. Where was the true charity and love in myself that I had sung so ‘angelically’ just moments earlier? How could I call the Germans inconsiderate, driven to succeed, overbearing and militant when I myself was all those things--and worse, could not show them true charity and love? It was deeply humbling. Here at the end of this long pilgrimage, begun in a desire to seek God more deeply, I had not abided in a place in my soul where God could dwell.
But that was not the fullness of the message. Gradually, a little light dawned. Then it blazed from beneath a dark cloud, breaking through like a flash. It should have been obvious before, but it just was not. I was led to remember that the entire side of my father’s family had been German as far back as the geneology could go. I was German. I was not only not capable of loving The Germans, I was not loving myself. And the parts of the Germans that most infuriated me were the parts of myself I could not accept or love--Carl Jung’s definition of ‘the shadow’.
That German woman, real or imagined, human or angelic, had shown a bright light on me during that worship service that day. It was Pentecost Sunday, celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit blew through me light a flame of light, revealing all my goodness and all my darkness at the same moment--all of me. The most amazing thing is that I began to see in my shadow all the things that if I accepted, would make me whole again. I am at times inconsiderate, driven, controlling and militant. There it was. I could accept them or I could let them linger in the shadow, unacknowledged and simmering until they would once again, jump up, project themselves on someone else and blind me to true charity and love of others.
Here was the other humble turning point and perhaps the grace of the pilgrimage: I was to now learn to love and care for myself. ALL the parts, both beautiful and not so appealing. To claim I could sing like angels and yet be inconsiderate. This would be the way to learn to love others and not reject them either, whether too beautiful or too ugly. This shadow, like all shadows, could be seen only by the coming of light. This shadow, like all shadows, could not be separated from me or stepped on to control or stop. It had and has to be accepted for what it is. And when the sun is strongest and at its highest pointing the sky, it recedes and becomes light. My shadow is gradually becoming ‘light’ in my life.
I’ve learned how to care for myself from my shadow--the positive side of being inconsiderate of others, is that I’m getting my needs met!
The positive side of being driven is that I get things done.
The positive side of being controlling is that I could lead.
And the positive side of being militant, is that I can learn boundaries and stick to them.
I can’t say this is now easy. It’s still difficult to love what I once called ‘unlovable’ and I slip back into stereotype, prejudice and judgment every day of my life. But the light of the shadow, that stunning paradox, calls me back to awareness.
My Camino physically ended in Santiago, Spain on May 25, 2007. But the leading by the Spirit, learning to love my shadow and learning how to love others and their shadow is a pilgrimage I’m still walking day by day, taking refuge where I can and holding hope.

Hearing Distressing Voices

2010-10-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

I was walking around Sears yesterday looking for the cheapest screwdriver. I had a slip of paper in my hand with directions for me to then ask when Sears closed that day from an employee, ask what time it was then and subtract the difference to determine how many more hours the store would be open. Then return to the van that was waiting for me. Oh--and I was to do these simple tasks while listening through headphones to a barrage of voices, sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting, often berating.
It was part of a 4 hour training in a workshop called Hearing Distressing Voices, put on by UAA and funded by the Mental Health Trust Fund. The attendees all work with clients who hear voices in their heads as a way of life. And as a volunteer at the Listening Post, we have a few regular visitors who hear voices and some who talk back to them.
I was both eager to sign up for this class. What a unique opportunity. I had always wondered what it was like to hear voices, and I hoped that by knowing I would have more compassion for those who are schizophrenic. Ever since seeing the movie, A Beautiful Mind, I realized I carried a lot of stereotypes about mental illness that I did not want to hold. But I was also a little fearful; I had once 'heard a voice'; would this trigger some more voices in me? Was I a little crazy?
The class was designed by Pat Deegan, a counselor with a master's degree who also has heard voices in her head since a teenager. She explained that many people 'hear voices', maybe as many as 70% of the population at least once in their lives--sometimes in stress, in grief, just before and after sleep--and usually these voices bring comforting messages or call the person's name. And she said we all have that voice of 'conscience' that is telling us when we've done something we regret. But these are not the voices she was addressing. The subcategory was 'distressing' voices... usually, but not always negative, persistent, distracting, disturbing and yes, distressing. Sometimes not even voices per se, but sounds like grinding or static. By having the experience of wearing the headphones and listening to the CD of typical 'distressing voices' we all hoped to understand more fully what this meant for a person who suffers from this disorder and how it affects their life.
We were divided into three groups that rotated to three stations: one with activities such as putting together a puzzle with others; one roleplaying an intake interview where you had to fill out a questionnaire, talk to a receptionist and then be interviewed and 'tested' by a social worker. And the third was the trip out to the mall to try to complete simple tasks.
How was it? Awful. I felt so isolated from the world. It was like a whole drama was taking place inside me that I had no control over. It was so hard to concentrate, to answer questions, to do math, to reason and even to be coordinated in physical movements. After hearing so many negative comments about myself, I began to feel depressed and unsure of myself. I discovered I could make myself function, but it took three times the energy. I had a sense that no one would ever know who I was underneath all these voices. And certainly I wouldn't have wit or a sense of humor. When the tape stopped after 45 minutes, I was so immensely relieved. And the voices stopped. Ahhh.
As an explorer of the world of listening, I was given a chance to see what some of my companions on this earth listen to 24 hours a day for all their lives. We were given ideas of coping skills that do help people who live with distressing voices in their heads, and as Pat Deegan has proved, can go on to live productive lives. But for the visitors to the Listening Post, I learned to speak more slowly and carefully and to be patient with repeating whatever I say. And I was given more compassion for those who come through our door. When I walk around today, talking with my husband, writing checks and even typing this blog, I've added a layer of gratitude for the simple gift of being able to listen to myself without the cacophany of distressing voices.

Allure of the Lynx

2010-09-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

As the season transitions beautifully from summer to fall (in fact we are having more sun and warmth that we had most of July and August), I want to be sure I honor a most unique experience of Alaska Summer 2010. It was seeing the elusive lynx up close and personal.
Karrie, Jack, Steve and I were hiking up Ermine Hill trail for the first time. It is one of the entry points to the K'sugi Ridge trail off the Parks Highway around mile 160.
As we headed up a narrow and wet trail in single file, Steve stopped and said, "It's a lynx." I was in the back of the line and pushed forward to see, expecting that it would bound off instantly and I'd miss it. But-- it did not. It was curled up ten yards ahead of us, resting until a spruce tree, just looking at us.
We were thrilled at the sighting, and I shot off pictures thinking any moment it would be gone. Yet even then it did not move. We began to question this strange behavior. Lynx are so rarely seen and then so briefly. I've only seen them one other time in my 35 years here, down by the river in winter when our Husky treed a pair. But they were much further away.
Was the lynx was sick? Could lynx have rabies? WAs he injured in some way? But he appeared healthy and not aggressive. He, in fact, looked merely very sleepy as if we had awoken him from a pleasant nap. We stared. He stared and I began to have the feeling he was Confuscious reincarnated. Then after several minutes, he regally arose, took one last look at us, and as if annoyed, walked slowly into the nearby brush. I think he HAD been sleeping, and being the proud cat that he is, wanted to save face--acting as if we hadn't caught him in his pajamas.
Of course, I project all this. What remains now as part of me is a glimpse of the wilderness and its inherent and mysterious beauty.

The Way of Water

2010-09-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I co-led a retreat at the Eagle River Nature Center on Learning to Listen. It is the first in a series that is using the Four Elements of water, earth, air and fire as the intention around the listening. As I prepared for the event, one of my parts was to present an experience I had had with water. It was difficult to choose just one. And it led to a deeper reflection on my whole relationship with water.

It didn't start out so well. I grew up with my feet firmly planted in the deep loam of the Iowa plains. We had a lake nearby but didn't go there often and when it came time to learn to swim, my first lessons were in a nearby town as our own did not yet have a swimming pool. Through some misguided belief (I felt), my swimming instructor, Mary, felt the best way for me to get over my fear of water was to throw me in the deep end, literally sink or swim. I sunk. I must have been seven or so at the time and my only memory of sinking was first surprise, a little fear and then this peaceful surrender sinking down. I remember my eyes were open and the color blue of the pool. Moments later Mary was jumping in to save me and it took a lot of coaxing and weeks of trying before I finally did learn to let the water hold me.

It wasn't until I moved to Anchorage in 1978 that I lived near water. Now I was in a coastal town and the waters of Cook Inlet filled the western landscape. That first summer I was invited to kayak across Kachemak Bay from the town of Homer across to Halibut Cove. I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded new, adventurous and edgy--seductive to my 27 year old self. I was, however, a little leery of the trip. My kayaking partner had never done this before either. And we would be paddling a Klepper, a German-made kayak that could be taken down and stowed in the back of a VW bug. As we assembled it that early morning, I thought, "I'm crossing the ocean in a Tinker Toy boat." But my companion assured me a Klepper was very safe and stable and had even been paddled across the Atlantic.

Early morning was our best hope for calm seas and we were read to launch by 7:00 a.m. As we carried the kayak down to the water, my hands touched the cold water and I couldn't help but remember that a person had 30 minutes max in that 34 degree water before hypothermia would take you under. Yet it was a beautiful dawn. the sea was glass and I knew my desire to paddle across to Halibut Cove was greater than my desire to stay on the shore at Homer. We launched.

It was all so foreign to me--seeing seaweed instead of corn leaves, wild otters instead of domestic pigs, the feel of a paddle in my hands instead of a the wheel of a tractor. I was entering entirely new territory. As we left the harbor and paddled into the open sea, I swallowed, suddenly aware of how small the boat was on this vast sea, yet I felt safe and steady as well. As we got used to paddling along in unison, the Klepper skimmed along toward the far shore, and I noticed a rising feeling of awe, the thrill of knowing I was on the surface of something deep and abiding that I would never understand. But I loved it. Below me were whales, king crab , giant halibut and salmon--and creatures I may or may not see. How strange to feel so precarious, yet connected by the water.

As we neared Gull Island on our way over, I felt something brush up against my leg through the skin of the boat, and then the head of a harbor seal popped up right beside me, staring at me in those liquid brown eyes, curious and unafraid. A glimpse of the deep! Birds screeched around us; the kayak rocked in small waves neaer the island as we watched and waited, looking as more seals popped up and down and puffins, cormorants and gulls did acrobatics overhead. Then we paddled on, anxious to get to the shore, now growing closer. When we landed on the beach at Peterson Cove, the shore closest to us, it felt so good to have solid ground beneath my feet. Yet as I looked back across the bay, I knew I had been changed by the crossing. I was not the same person.

A few weeks ago, I was reading (and at times, arguing) with the Gospel of Matthew, taking just a verse or two at a time to read over and over in a practice called lectio divina. It was an unremarkable verse at first glance. Matt. 9:1: "After getting into the boat, he crossed the sea to his own town." This time it caught my eye, no doubt because I had this story on my mind. (The Word meets us where we are.) As I repeated the words over and over, some fell away and some became more resonant until what I read was, "he came to his own town' and then simply, 'he came to his own."

I've come to understand that water is often a symbol for spirituality and the movement of the Spirit. So when I read those words "getting into a boat' and "crossing a sea', I wondered how my first journey of getting in a boat and crossing a sea was somehow a metaphor or even a real physical experience of the Spirit at work in me, bringing me to 'my own,' my true Self. I have 'moved' from my childhood understanding of God as Father and Judge to a more contemplative way of God as something like the sea, deep, unknown, awesome, scary at times it what it offers, yet full of life--some of which I see, some of which I cannot. It made me wonder more about my relationship with water as a way of understanding my relationship with God. In my tradition there are so many stories of the way God works through water, even at the point of birth when the waters of the womb break and when the waters of baptism, the Spirit moves and claims the baby as child of God. Even as a pastor who knows all the right words to say to parents and sponsors about what baptism is and why we do it, even then, at the point where the water is poured over the baby's head, I do not pretend to know what this mystery is. Yet it moves, it is full of life. Something changes. At my own baptism, which I do not remember, I came into my own somehow.

I wish I could tell you that after that experience of kayaking across Kachemak Bay I became 'one' with water. I did not. Perhaps the old memory of nearly drowning persists. Perhaps I'm too grounded in earth from childhood. Or is it something more? Am I still afraid to completely surrender to the Mystery, to let go of self and drown into that which I do not know or understand? What is this lingering fear, hesitation and sense of not belonging? How is the Spirit moving right now to pull me across the sea again to come into my own?

People Pleasing

2010-08-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

I was re-reading a spiritual formation book by Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon called Urgings of the Heart when I came across this humorous story about the futility and pretense of pleasing others-- at the expense of good self care and trust in one's own decisions.

A father and his son took a donkey to the market. The man sat on the beast and the boy walked. People along the way said, "What a terrible thing: a big strong fellow sitting on the donkey's back while the youngster has to walk." So, the father dismounted and the son took his place. Soon onlookers remarkd, "How terrible: the old man walking and the little boy sitting." At that, they both got on the donkey's back--only to hear others say, "How cruel: two people sitting on one little donkey." Off they got. But other bystanders commented, "How crazy: the donkey has nothing on his back and two people are walking." Finally, they both carried the donkey and they never did make it to the market."

Not only did I laugh to see myself as one of those getting off and on the donkey, but also one of those bystanders making judgments when I didn't know the whole story. What a human comedy we create.

Logs of Love

2010-08-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

Even after thirty years of marriage, it's good to stop and say, "I love my husband." On the occasion of his 57th birthday, his ideal celebration was to gather at the site of a new cabin he is building on a little lake about an hour from our house. I hadn't been up to see the progress in a few weeks, and when I drove over the little rise before coming onto the cabin, I saw that he had painstakingly added my whimsical request for a long curved roof on one side of the entrance. It's those little things that make me love him. And it's always good to watch him doing what he loves--working with wood. Later we had a big bonfire, a birthday pie, and lots of laughter. Happy Birthday, Steve.

Intrigued by Israel

2010-07-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

We met at a women's conference in Mobile, Alabama in March of this year. She was in my journaling workshop at WomenSpeak and was the first to volunteer to read her writing. She is vivacious and passionate but not shy! She mentioned she and her family were coming to Alaska and spending their first two nights at the Eagle River Campground, just five minutes from my house. It seemed we were destined to meet again--and so we did, this time each meeting each other's families. She mentioned that she had a play she often read to gatherings about her spiritual journey. Would I like to get a group together at my house? With the help of email, 15 women said 'Yes!' and without really knowing what we would hear, my new friend, Genine Bar-el sang, read and danced for us, recounting her story of a New York Jew whose parents were Holocaust survivors who returned to Israel to live, marry and have a family. She and her husband have explored meditation in India and shamanism in Peru, currently working with a teacher in Mexico, yet remaining true to their Jewish traditions as well. I learned that halibut was indeed a kosher fish!
Genine thoroughly entertained, charmed and intrigued us with her life journey. And she gushed about how warm and welcoming we were. "You are all so...so..NORMAL for living in Alaska!" What struck me was the continuing stirring of cultures, traditions, religions and spiritualities in our world. Genine is currently part of a group called Beyond Words that works for peace between Palestine and Israel. Genine meets with other Israeli and Palestinian women to really listen to each other's stories. It's not easy even when all these women want to be the ones that break through barriers of hatred and distrust. After a meeting, Genine says she often has a headache and feels sick because it is so hard to hear their side of the story without wanting to defend her own. It is hard work, but a real way of making peace, one person at a time. And now we will not think about Israel as country, but as a place where these new friends live and work and dream of a better world for their children. And we have an invitation to visit....

Encountering Eagles

2010-07-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

It had been a spontaneous idea; the day was sunny and the mountain beckoned. Within hours, four of us were hiking up South Fork of Eagle River for an overnight in the hanging valley that rests on one side. It had been a long time since I'd been there. Graceful green slopes run down to meet you with long fingers of wildflowers. Further up, where the snow had not long been gone, new heather greeted us with that intoxicating fragrance that makes you want to push you nose into it and sigh. We camped by the lake that night, clear and calm, reflecting the mountains and rocks that encircled us and grounding us in peace.

The next morning we continued on without packs up a steep slope beside a bubbling creek. I had to stop every so often, not to catch my breath, but to catch the beauty of that little creek. It was as if I couldn't quite appreciate enough its color and sound and all the white and yellow wildflowers that fed from its water. Higher up lay another hidden lake in a magnificent cirque with the moraine memory of a once huge glacier.

Instead of coming down the way we came, we took a sheep trail around the side to the end of the valley. A sheep trail means it's narrow, on a steep slope and around sometimes exposed places. I hadn't done that in a while and had to stop and tell myself and my feet that yes, they could find purchase on that 3 inch rock. We continued up and around jagged outcroppings and slides of shale. As the trail softened into a wider track, I took the lead. So it was I who rousted the young eagle from its rocky perch as we came around the corner. I who got to see best its unfolding wings, its tucking of the talons and the gold of its beak. We all saw it soar into the valley,and for a moment we all took flight, fears of falling swept away in this moment of grace.

Last summer when I was camping alone at Captain Cook State Park, I stood on the high bluff over the ocean and for a moment closed my eyes to listen. I heard a ruffling of wings close beside me and when I opened them, a bald eagle had landed ten feet away on a broken stump. I barely breathed. We stayed there is communion for some moments, then it lifted and soared before me across the ocean.

And years before, I hiked with Steve along the sheep trail on Gunsight Mountain which is just inches away from a the edge of two thousand foot dropoff to the rocky valley below. As we stood there looking off into the awe of the valley, the updraft swooped an eagle in front of us, its wings outspread and its eyes so close we saw inside each other.

I know the Natives interpret the Eagle as a totem for Spirit. My three close encounters with the Eagle now are a part of mine. I have seen many other eagles while living in Alaska, but it was seeing these three soaring and seeing them so close to me that imprints now indelibly. Their spirit brushed mine--and each time, they said, "Fear not. Soar. Now."

Eagle
by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadly growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

Adoring Doig

2010-07-10T21:01:00.000-07:00

My mother introduced me the author Ivan Doig many years ago. We both would sigh when we'd talk about his writing, wondering how the words could weave into our souls and make us feel somehow more whole.

I just finished re-reading The Whistling Season. I don't often re-read books, but Mom had gotten me a signed copy at a recent lecture she attended where she met our favorite author. I knew I would enjoy the words all over again.

Near the end, there is a scene where the one-room schoolhouse teacher is pinned against the wall by one of the mean and bullying parents. With a knife to the teacher's throat, he demands an explanation of the comet that is in the sky overhead.

"That comet do this? (the drought) The world ending in fire? Is it?" demanded
Brose Turley.
PInned there stiff as a dried pelt, how Morrie manged it I will never know. He
choked out, "Light is the desire of the universe...or as the Romans would
have said, Lux desiderium universitatis...... the implulse to illumination
somehow is written into the heavenly order of things. the sun, stars, they all
carry light, that seems to be their mission in being."

I will hold and ponder the words 'Light is the desire of the universe' as Mr. Doig's gift to me in this reading. They perhaps speak to me of my own 'mission in being' as well. As part of this universe too, how do I 'carry light?' Or am I sometimes like Brose Turley, so afraid of what I don't understand, that I pin others to the wall, demanding explanations? I'd like to think I never do that. But I think I'll scratch around at these things. Ivan has stirred me up once again.

Wondering About Weddings

2010-07-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

My job was to keep the bride calm while she waited at the door to descend the steps and meet my brother who waited there to walk her down the aisle. We could peek out the window without being seen and watch the family be seated, the bridesmaids meet the groomsmen and the pastor come out with the groom.
"Breathe," I said. "Just breathe."
She took a deep breath as instructed and then said, "I'm going to fall down the stairs."
"No, you are not going to fall down the stairs," I said. "Everything a bride thinks will go wrong rarely does."
"Really?" she said.
"Yes," I said with my most official pastor voice. "You will be fine."
The things she hadn't expected to go wrong had. Like the river flooding so she couldn't have the wedding in the lodge at the park. A last minute change of venue to my sister's backyard. The musician and one bridesmaid unable to come. The photographer's plane being cancelled. The elderly grandparents getting lost driving up from Oklahoma. And then there was the missing bridesmaid's shoe just minutes before the service and almost forgetting the bride's flowers. Every wedding has these unique stories that I like to think give it a little drama and flair. But it's hard for the bride to see that at the time.
The music changed. It was her moment.
"Walk slowly," I said as she went out the door. "You are about to be married."
She squealed. "I am, aren't I?"
She didn't trip down the stairs. She walked slowly with a little reminding from her father. She said her vows beautifully. She looked radiant. And when she faced her husband,Love poured between them. That was the best part.

Imagining In Iowa

2010-06-27T05:35:00.000-07:00

In my dream, huge dump trucks were dumping rocks over and over and over, and their bright headlights were flashing in my window. Finally irritated with who could be doing construction work in the middle of the night, I awoke, realized I was back in the Midwest--and I was in the midst of one of those rock and rollin' thunderstorms. The walls shook, lightning strobed and my cells creaked with old memories. I had grown up with storms such as these, terrified in the night by the sense that the sky was cracking open, that our house would be struck by lightning or that the anger of God would crumble down the walls. Nights like those would send me scurrying to my parents' bedroom for safety and reassurance. They would make a game of it, having me count between the lightning and the thunder, each second an indicator of the mile between the center of the storm and my house. When the lightning and the thunder were simultaneous, the storm was directly overhead--a moment also simultaneous in fear and thrill.

The night's deep rumble tossed around these old memories and made me smile. Living in Alaska now 35 years, I've lost the familiarity with thunderstorms. We occasionally have a faint rumble up Eagle River Valley, but it is such a rare event, that it becomes a topic of conversation, like seeing a bear or the northern lights. Hearing the thunderstorm was a great way to welcome me home to the Midwest where cornfields and soybeams, silos and hardwood trees remind me of when Iowa was home for 24 years. I'm seeing it through new eyes as I bring my Hmong goddaughter to visit my first home. She woke up with me this morning as the thunder roared, her eyes wide, whispering, " I hear it." And each time the lightning flashed, "I see it." She marvels at the huge fields of corn and has a desire to go walking in the rows. I could tell her that it's hot in the corn on these 85 degree days, that the edges of the leaves can make tiny cuts and that big spiders weave webs across the rows. But that is an adult remembering. A child will see what I could see at that age--a place to hide, create imaginary rooms and aimless games, a place to lie on your back and look up at the sky through green swaying leaves, feeling like you were the only person in the world.

Perhaps when we return home, we always come as both child and adult, seeing the place simultaneously full of light and thunder, fear and thrill, old memories and new awakenings. There is much to come in the days ahead--looking for a new home for my mother, celebrating a niece's wedding and a great-niece's birthday. There will be Fourth of July fireworks on the Capitol lawn that will actually be bright and glowing. (We try this in Alaska, but it loses a little when the sky never really gets dark on July 4).There will be fireflies and humidity so great that it will be like stepping into a sauna when you open the door. It will be good food and a froth of family and friends and functions. Already I have stood at the grave of my great-great-grandparents at the Lutheran church cemetery in Norway, Illinois, imagining their lives and loves, pains and passions as they turned prairie to farm, and exchanged Norwegian fjords for flatland. Ironic that I exchanged flatland for fjords!

The rain drips on the window, my daughter and her husband still sleep, my goddaughter stirs in the bed, the air-conditioning purrs, the dogs get up and shake. New day in a place of old imaginings.

Beautiful Boundaries and Lovely Limits

2010-06-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

It seemed like a simple enough request. "Could I leave my bag here for an hour while I run errands?" asked a homeless man one day as he prepared to leave the Listening Post. "It's so heavy."
And it looked like it was.
I hesitated. It would be so easy to let him. And as a compassionate listener, it seemed natural to be compassionate in this way too.
But we have a clear intention for the Listening Post--a quiet place and a place where someone will listen. Not a storage place. Leaving a bag could easily turn into a liability if we became responsible for it or even a possible hazard since we have no idea what is inside. Still it seemed mean to say no.
This is the hardest part of setting boundaries; I was used to believing that to serve others means doing all you can for that person. Not allowing something as simple as leaving a bag was unfamiliar and didn't feel like a loving limit. Luckily I had 'the policy statement" to recite. "Sorry, we aren't allowed to let our visitors leave bags here." His face sagged a little in disappointment, but then he said as he sorted through his bag, "I really don't need all this stuff I carry around." He wasn't upset with us, just asking. And when we were clear, he became more clear about how he could make his life easier.
I keep learning this lesson about boundaries; when I set limits that are reasonable and have good motivations, other people are surprisingly helped, not hindered. Perhaps they aren't helped in the way they wanted to be, yet they become more clear in their decision-making.
Believing we can be all things for all people all the time is playing at being God. Without good boundaries, we may overwhelm ourselves, may enable others to continue unhealthy behavior and in doing so, honor neither.
I am not setting limits on how much I love, for I only want to learn to love others more deeply; and I'm not setting boundaries on who I love, for I want to learn to love more widely. But I am learning how to serve with boundaries that are more honest and clarifying. It is still hard to keep the simple mission statement of the Listening Post. We are called so often to do more than provide a quiet space and listen. It still feels unfamiliar to say "No" to those who ask us to do more. But I'm learning to like what happens when it's from the heart. Like the homeless man, I am realizing that I don't have to carry unnecessary baggage either.

Burying Bill

2010-06-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

It was a simple ceremony but not simple enough for Bill. He never would tell us what he wanted for a memorial service or where he wanted to be buried. He couldn't really be bothered with it. I can almost hear him saying, "Who cares?" But we who loved him couldn't just throw his ashes back to the earth without words or ceremony. And as old friends offered help, William Mason Wakeland, my father-in-law of 30 years, was buried on a knoll at the top of an island in Halibut Cove, Alaska, overlooking Kachemak Bay and the homestead on East End Road where he first lived that winter of 1946.
He photographed this area in those early years, seeing then the value of preserving the history of Homer and Seldovia in the faces and lives of the early settlers. Those photos are now part of the permanent collection of the Pratt Museum and held in the albums and hearts of many old time Alaskans.
Those years healed a World War veteran who was part of D Day, the Battle of the Bulge and the liberation of concentration camps. Even there he took pictures and develped pictures for the Army. In Kachemak Bay, the wilderness and its ways fit this war hero in ways no other place could after all those experiences.
As we stood on the hill on the morning of June 2, we sang Amazing Grace as the sun broke through. We told our own stories of how Bill's life has weaved its way into our own. Marilyn, his wife, now 85, seemingly frail from a fall and on oxygen, pulled herself up a steep ramp from the dock to be there. It will also be her resting place. "He was a good man," she said. "I miss him and I'm glad I can be here to lay him to rest." His son and daughter, Steve and Cindi spoke of how he had instilled in them a love of wilderness and loyalty. Jan Thurston said that although she didn't know him well, the sensitivity of his photography tells the story of a deeper life.A child from the adjoining homestead, now a grown woman, Catkin Kilcher Burton, spoke of the deep impact he had on her life and how a few days before he died he had told her he'd "been exploring out in the wild blue yonder."
He did explore life to the fullest. He always saw a picture in the life that unfolded around him, seeing beauty in faces and flora and fauna. Living life to the fullest, he was ready to die and go exploring in the wild blue yonder, ready to see beauty in a new way.
As Steve and Cindi emptied the ashes in the hole in the rock, Clem Tillon, on whose land he now rests, reminded us the words of Chief Tecumseh,

"So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your
heart. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray
for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different
way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."

Grief always changes us, making us more or less depending on what we choose,but we never stay the same. Grieving Bill has been joyous. He may not have always been exactly as we would have wanted him to be, he was always exactly who he was. Realizing that now changes me. And helps me understand how I shall compose and sing my own death song.

What Happened on my 6th Grade Field Trip

2010-05-19T21:06:00.000-07:00

I am lucky enough to have a 6th grade goddaughter named Cheng who still invites me to a chaperone on school field trips. I especially like it when we get to go out in the woods in early spring. Last week it was to the Campbell Creek Science Center where our group of 30 kids went on the Eagle Loop to five stations all set up to teach the kids (and me) about things in Nature. First we had nature bingo, finding things like a bird's nest, signs of beaver and hearing a bird song. We scored our Bingo. But it was at the second station on bears that was most interesting. The guide finally got them to make some semblance of a circle. (In 6th grade they are already mostly interested in WHO they stand by, which member of the opposite sex is close by, how their clothes look and who is talking to who.) However, finally he had their attention and began to instruct them in etiquette in bear country.
"Now, kids, what do we do when the bear is over there and it hasn't seen us?"
"Play dead."
"No, not yet. We make distance between the bear and us. Now what do we do when the bear does see us?"
"Play dead."
"No, we gather together and look big and yell, Hey Bear, Hey Bear."
"Now what do we do if we see a momma bear with cubs that is really close?"
"You mean like THAT momma bear and cubs?" someone asks.
The guide rolls his eyes like 'I'm not falling for that trick.' but turns.
And yes, there coming toward us about 50 yards away is a momma black bear and three tiny cubs. The guide quickly says, "OKAY! What a good opportunity to practice our bear etiquette. (Good recovery). "What do we do, kids? Right, we get together and make ourselves very big and yell, HEY BEAR."
We get together and yell and the bear keeps coming.
The guide speaks quietly and rapidly into his phone.
"Okay. I guess she didn't hear us. Let's yell louder, kids!"
We yell louder. And this time, the bear stops, but you can tell she doesn't want to. She reluctantly looks around and finally turns, sending the cubs up a tree.
"Oh, aren't they cute!" say all the kids.
"Okay kids, what do we do when the bear turns its back," says the guide. Not waiting to answer, he says, "We increase our distance from the bear." And we quickly exit stage left!
There was also gold panning, weather jeopardy and flinging atlatls at wooly mammoth cutouts. Just another Alaska sixth grade field trip.

And so says the Prophet Isaiah

2010-02-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

In preparing for a recent retreat, the prophet Isaiah spoke to me ancient words that I heard for the first time--or at least for the first time, I heard them in a deep experience of these words.

Now I am revealing new things to you
Things hidden and unknown to you
Created just now, this very moment.
Of these things you have heard nothing until now.
So that you cannot say, Oh yes, I knew this. Isaiah 48:6-7

I've recently taken on the exercise of being aware of what I am thinking whenever I feel anxious or disturbed in some way. And then I note whether I'm thinking of things from the past or projecting into the things of the future. Because those feelings rarely have anything to do with what I am feeling in the moment. These words from Isaiah remind me the past is over. The future not yet created. But NOW, this moment is a moment of new revelation--things I could not have known until now, because I wasn't ready to hear or see them. If I stay centered in the very moment of now, fear evaporates and I feel opened to the possibility of my life.
It seems a funny exercise, but whenever I check in with myself and ask, "How am I doing right this very moment?", it's often amazingly, "I'm well." And just after that, a glimpse of gratitude, a fleeting feeling of trust, and an intriguing sense of moving into the creative energy of God.
I like all these words of Isaiah, especially the reminder of NOW and the little gentle reminder in verse 7 that I can't assume arrogance or intellectualism or cynicism in any of my knowing. For the things revealed in the new moment are all given by grace without any contribution on my part.
I do believe that once the gift, the new thing, is given, I can co-create with God in ways I barely imagine. Yet it is the Divine that reveals in the grace of the moment, unencumbered by past or future. A trusting surrender into not knowing.

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." Joseph Campbell

Home Again, Home Again

2010-01-29T15:22:00.000-08:00

Isn't it amazing that you can be in Central America in the morning, driving down from the mountains and jungles, be having lunch in Dallas in a thunderstorm, and arriving in a winter landscape in Anchorage all in the same day? It took 22.5 hours from doorstep to doorstep and overall a very smooth trip. I mean, there were some bumps on the airplane ride, but compared to the backroads of the Nicoya Peninsula, it was nothing.
What I like about that first day back, is that gentle time I give myself. I don't expect much from me-- and am delighted if I get unpacked or go through the mail or start laundry. And if I don't, that's good too.
I woke up thinking I was still in the mounain house in Atenas, but then I noticed it was so quiet--no constant hum of cicadas, or screeching bird calls or palm branches brushing the window in the wind. And when I sat up to reach for the flashlight to be sure I wouldn't step on scorpions on the way to the bathroom, I realized it was carpet under my feet and I was really home.
I get grounded to being here by cooking and so I made a pot of chicken soup from the meager groceries still in the cupboard. No energy to go to the store yet. After while, I'll cover up my tan arms in a few layers of clothes and go for a walk. The trees are still frosted white and the snow has shaped and sagged itself over the fences. It's still dark late into the morning but we've gained a couple of hours of light since we left.
I'm eager to connect with friends and get started on projects, but right now, I think... I'll take... a nap..

Final thoughts on traveling in Costa Rica

2010-01-27T09:09:00.000-08:00

When I sum up this trip, I thought "This is country where God was amused by color and particularly liked the color green." I will remember the verdent jungles, the 1000 shades of blue of the sea, the deep reds of the bird of paradise and ginger flowers, the flashes of yellow in tiny birds and the deep black spots of the Margay. I will remember the earthy smells of the forest floor, the scent of air in the misty waterfall, that night of the pungent skunk odor outside our hotel room, the wafting of marlin on the barbecue, and the sea salt in Nosara. I'll remember the wonder of living fences where branches of acacia and pechote are stuck in the ground as fence posts and begin to grow. I'll remember potholes and eating dust,and sunsets and eating sea bass at Cafe Romantica. I'll remember the surprise of seeing a scorpion in the bedroom and an iguana at poolside. I'll remember the delight of each of the homes where we stayed--the windstorms howling arond the eaves in Nosara, the red bednet in Montezuma (which didn't keep out ALL the mosquitos) and the glass house of Atenas.
I'll remember yelling like Tarzan as I first launched on the zipline, gasping at the harrowing drivers who passed on blind corners, sighing as I settled in to a hammock looking up at palm trees and groaning to stay in a yoga pose just one more minute. I'll remember good tunes on the MP3 player wherever we traveled, laughing with our friends, Bill and Linda, celebrating Bill's birthday in the dark, eating by flashlights and then hearing him literally 'hit the wall' when we came home to a dark house. I'll remember seeing old and young surfers carrying their boards, young Tico women carrying their babies and shopping bags, old men carrying in their vegetables to sell at the market and young girls in scanty swimsuits--and on most everyone, tatoos! It will be hard to forget our Dahiatus Terios without a shred of shocks, the feeling of the pool after walking home in the sweltering heat, or the mutt that adopted us at the third house who we dubbed, "Mamasita." I'll remember getting used to a dollar=560 colones and the constant calculating in our heads as we converted the price to dollars. I'll remember the general hospitality of the people,the barred windows on homes, the trucks piled high with melons, the workers in the fields and nights under a cool fan where we all dreamed long and hilarious dreams. And I will particularly remember the fire, smoke and molten lava of Arenal, seeing its power in the explosion of rocks and as Steve said, "The pyroclastic activity." (I didn't believe it was a word but I was wrong--and will be reminded of that often.)
It will take us 23 hours to get home tomorrow if things go as planned. From 90 degrees to 15 and from green to white landscape. We leave so grateful for these three weeks and the way this travel has opened us to new things and to loving more widely. And so grateful that we have friends, family, good work and safe homes waiting for us at home in Alaska. (And it's been okay to live without reading and watching the news.)) Peace to all of you on your inner and outer travels.

Ziplining Pics

2010-01-25T08:21:00.000-08:00

Few More Pics

2010-01-24T18:19:00.000-08:00

Amazed in Arenal

2010-01-24T16:55:00.000-08:00

Just back from an amazing 'field trip' to Arenal Volcano, about two hours and half hours north of where we are staying. Of course, it would be two and half hours, if there was good signage, but since there isn't, we have been singing an adaption of an old Beach Boys song, "Turn around, Turn around, We turn around." However, it was a fabulous trip. Where to start? We stayed at the Arenal Observatory Lodge which is on a ridge below the Arenal Volcano. Evidently it is rare to see the top of the volcano this time of year, kind of like seeing Denali in the summer in Alaska. However, we lucked out and had a clear view of the mountain. Also we assumed that it would be a rare thing to actually see it erupt. Wrong too. It was almost constantly spewing up rocks and lava. And at night. you can see the fiery lava coming down the mountain and embers being shot into the air. You can hear the rocks as they are shot into the air--and it sounds just like a dump truck dumping boulders or thunder. From our bedroom window we could watch the awesome activity. A first for me to see the lava coming down the mountain. The lodge is close to the national park and has lots of wildlife and birdlife. We saw cotimundis, like a big raccoon with a tail and no ears. But the most exciting was walking a trail to the waterfall this morning and having a little spotted cat come out on the trail. At first we thought it was an ocelot, but now we think it was the smaller version, called a margay. Anyway it was beautiful and not scared of us. So we got to watch it a long time and then it followed us down the trail. So beautiful.
But the big highlight of the trip had to be ziplining above and through the canopy of the rain forest. What a rush to glide along a cable 600 feet above the forest floor with Arenal behind you and the big lake in front of you. It's the closest I have come to flying. We had 7 or 8 runs on the cables, the longest a half mile. As you come into the platform landing, they have to stop you just right so you make the platform but not so fast you shoot past. The guides have it down. As we stood at our fifth platform, they casually pointed out a viper on the tree beside us that was very poisonous, but evidently doesn't move much. It was the size of pencil and deep rust. Kind of cool and kind of creepy. But the adrenalin rush of the zipline sort of negated the fear. (Look up Sky Trek Costa Rica and watch some of the YouTube videos.) It's really not dangerous, but it feels like it. Spent a few hours at a natural hot springs before driving back. And we didn't make any wrong turns getting here. Nice to get the feel of a non-touristy town here in Atenas. Probably have a quiet day tomorrow.

Atenas Days

2010-01-23T05:57:00.000-08:00

We head off for the Arenal Volcano thin morning and hopefully to try ziplining through the forest canopy there. Ziplines seem to be everywhere we go and it looks like a lot of fun. Waterfall tours and hot springs also abound up at Arenal. We were greeted by toucans in the tree this morning, a BIG frog by the pool and a scorpion in the bedroom. But still no sloth. So we did a good job of being the sloth yesterday, save for an expedition to the Friday farmer's market in town to buy fresh fruit and veggies. We found a loaner library and some fresh carrot, zuchinni and oatmael bread baked by a German woman living here. Nights are cool and the days hot.

Montezuma Moments and onto Atenas

2010-01-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

Garrison Keillor wrote in one of his columns about the realities of vacationing in tropical places.."People are at their best when engaged in the endless heroic quest of whatever--truth, love, literary excellence, supremacy in tennis, a royal flush, the perfect salad--and relaxation makes thm dull."
I see justification in that statement.. after two weeks of travel in the tropics, we are taking on, if not dullness, a bit of slothdom. After all, there are sloths here and evidently one that could visit us at this house in the mountains near Atenas. We are perched on a ridge in a house that comes as close to a 'glass house' that I've experienced. The walls are all sliding glass screens and face a central pool. We think we've reached the apex of vacation homes (within our price range) and enjoying trying out the various comfortable chairs around the pool and rating them on the 'sloth scale.'
However, all this may be a need to just have a quiet day after a few days of lots of activity in Montezuma. I'll try to load some pics but the connection doesn't seem to want to load them so we'll see.
Montezuma is a funky town with a big influx of young adults not exactly acting like adults. We saw two men fully covered in tatoos,one carrying a staff and one carrying a volleyball. It seems their purpose in life was to be photographed with young women. There were Rastafarians with impressive dreadlocks and lots of old hippies and wannabe hippies. Since we are baby boomers and grew up in the time of the first hippies, we've been pondering if there can be a real hippie now or if it was confined to a certain time period with particular social issues (the Vietnam War) and certain music (Iron Butterfly comes to mind.) As you see, these are the kinds of discussions that come from being on a tropical vacation and becoming dull.
We bounced in our vehicle that long ago lost any capability of absorbing shocks to Cabo Balanco, a jungle reserve not far from Montezuma. It was bought about 40 years ago by a Dane and a Swede who wanted to preserve the rainforest and now is just in that transition. We saw howler monkeys and birds and soaring trees, thick vines, plants and lizards, butterflies and even a Panama tree full of sleeping bats. We walked the jungle paths for an hour or two, but even in the shade the heat was opproessive. Back to our hotel called Amor de Mar, love of the sea. We had an amazing little tree house made of marvelous tropical hardwoods that faced out onto the ocean and the rising sun. We also went out for a day of scuba and snorkeling and having lunch at a deserted beach on Tortuga Island, where we had conversation with two sisters from Dublin and a young couple traveling for four months in Central and South America after he finished law school. The boat was run by a group of Italians who assured us this was much better than living in Rome or Venice.
Linda and I went to a yoga session one evening with a man who had grown up in India and whose father was also a yoga instructor. Evidently we joined an ongoing group of people who studied with him as most of them knew what to expect. it was probably the most intense yoga I've ever done, Ashtanga, and it was in an outdoor setting. I just dripped sweat but discovered it's easier to do yoga when you are very hot. I got into some positions I once thought impossible and the next day neither Linda and I were a bit sore. Perhaps his deep emphasis on the breath. A great learning for us. However, when we did the final relaxation pose, called shivasana, he encouraged us to not move our bodies even if as the mosquitoes attacked. "Do not give it energy," he said. "Go inside yourselves. What does it matter that they suck your blood?" It was very difficult to ignore the bites and not move. A new discipline. I also learned it doesn't mean they won't itch like crazy the next day. Linda and I are into counting how many bites we have (up in the thirties and fourties) while the guys seem unscathed.
Anyway, we were lucky to catch the ferry back from Montezuma, eliminating several hours of dust-choking, bone-rattling travel. We noted with some irony that the pothole crew was fixing the road as we left. They'll always have work.
We are ready to not drive for a few days and will explore Atenas and just 'be dull.' We'll let you know how we are doing on the sloth part.

Leaving Nosara

2010-01-15T04:39:00.000-08:00

One of the beauties of travel is seeing things in a new way. Walking home in the dark with our headlamps reminds me that we don't always need streetlamps. Electricity is a comodity we take so much for granted in the U.S. and in fact, demand. There is a gentleness in not expecting it and in fact, enjoying the darkness and the way the stars are so easily visible. The roads here are bumpy and dusty, reminding me of the two mile gravel road to town I lived on growing up in Iowa, but even then it was regularly graded while I don't think these roads have seen a grader in many years, perhaps since they were built. Once in a while there is a short span of paved roads or a new bridge that has a smooth surface. We slow down and drive that section just enjoying the drive without bumps or dust.
The word 'enjoy' comes up often here. While the wind howled for four days, the waitresses or the yoga instructor or the car attendant would say, "Enjoy the wind" as we parted. No complaining of the wind, but an invitation to enjoy what is.
Another example of seeing new ways of doing things was the day we saw men dumping buckets of dark, sticky goo on the streets in order to dampen the dust. Immediately we are thinking, "Oooh, yuck. Now we'll have to walk on that new tar. But as we got closer, I started thinking that it smelled like burnt molasses cookies, rather than the way tar usually smells. And in fact, we learned later that the goo was the sugary, molasses dregs from rum-making! Candy roads! Easy to clean off your shoes and the car as well.
We say goodbye to our iguanas today and the peaceful community here. We have had some of the best food of our lives here in this unlikely place and were surprised to find yoga, yoga everywhere. We discovered that the road along the coast to our next destination is part road and part track. It requires crossing a few rivers at low tide and going out on the beach in one section. I think we could do it since it's the dry season but if we should get stuck, our car insurance doesn't cover it and basically as they say 'we buy the car.' So we are going on an adventure to try the route that goes down the middle of the Nicoya Peninsula. Evidently the roads are not well-marked to our destination of the town of Montezuma, but we were advised that if we get to an intersection, just wait until someone comes along and ask them the way. It will be mostly bumpy roads with lots of potholes, but by this afternoon we hope to be on the beach of the funky remote beach town of Montezuma. Not sure if there is Internet there so it may be the 19th or 20th before I write again. Then we will be in a house in the mountains near Arenal Volcano.
Realizing that we are relatively close to Haiti, at least closer than in Alaska, and trying to comprehend the devastation of land, body and soul that they are experiencing. Our hearts are with the people there and certainly put a few bumpy roads in perspective. So heartened by the wide humanitarian response.

2010-01-13T11:49:00.000-08:00

Coolin' it in C.R.

2010-01-13T11:34:00.000-08:00

The winds are scheduled to die down tomorrow. Although it's kept things far from ideal surfing for Bill, it's kept the temps down and the bugs away. It's warm and sunny and the 3 miles beachis beautiful. We went late last night to see if we might be able to catch a few turtles coming in to the shore at Ostinal, 11 km. north of here. It is not the season or the quarter moon when the HUGE migration happens and thousands of turtles come ashore, but we were told we might see a few. So we drove through two creek beds and a shallow river to this black sand beach. We saw lots of tracks and the holes where the turtles lay eggs--and the local dogs dig up to share with the vultures. But the only turtle we saw was a baby, just hatched, making it's slow way to the ocean. It took about 45 minutes to follow it down, and as we watched we understood why only about 3% of these babies ever make it to adulthood. Still it was exciting to see.
Steve and Bill are prefecting 'slothdom' as they call it. We hear that at our last house there is a resident sloth. But for now they are doing a good job of not moving much and leisurely eating. Speaking of which, the food here is so good!

Breezy Birthday In Costa Rica

2010-01-12T07:44:00.000-08:00

We are remembering that when you travel in Central America, don’t expect the Internet to always work and don’t expect the electricity to always be on. High winds have kept this trip interesting! We came to Costa Rica to celebrate Bill Corbett’s 60th birthday. He had told us for the past two years that he needed to be at a surfing beach for this birthday--just to say this old surfin’ dude could get up on the board one more time. He got the board, the wax and the shirt and he did it. Carved the waves at this surfing hotspot. We celebrated his birthday at a funky little restaurant on the beach nearby--La Luna. There were old chairs and couches spread out on the grass in front of the restaurant where you could relax and watch the spectacular sunset turn the sky all sorts of colors for nearly an hour. We aren’t sure why there was a big 4 poster bed also out on the lawn with gauzy mosquito netting drawn back all around it. For those who couldn’t make it home after closing? A Roman lounge position? A magic flying bed? Three Nicaraguan women fixed our fabulous meals of shrimp and curry and snapper while our waiter once guided for fish in the summer and took people on heli-ski tours in Valdez until the heliocopter crashed into the mountain and he spent three days in a snow cave injured, vowing to leave Alaska once and for all. So now he spends winters in Costa Rica as a fish guide during the day and a waiter at night. Just about the time our dinners arrived, the lights went out, the matches wouldn’t light and the waiters were scrambling for flashlights. We finally ate with a flashlight beaming up over our table and at times we took turns shining it on each other’s plates to see if we’d found all of our food. We had a lot of fun with it and just as we were finishing the lights came on and someone showed up to play music.
We’ve had a flat tire, three iguanas who share the side of our pool (Merle, Mabel and Mildred) and two scorpions who wanted to share the house, particularly the shower with me. We said yes to the iguanas and no to the scorpions.
The beach is wide and beautiful and about three miles long. Warm water but with the wind, the surfing has been marginal. Maybe tomorrow. Linda and I walked up a hill to have a yoga session in the treetops We’re finding our way around town and getting used to the ‘play money’ of Costa Rica called calones. The exchange rate is 570 to one U.S. dollar, so we have to keep telling ourselves it’s okay when the food bill is 10,000 colones. Actually, the dollar is accepted everywhere here as well, so that makes it easier too. You can drink the water out of the tap and there is all amenities… it’s just the really bad roads and the relaxed attitude to fixing utilities that makes us look at life in a new way. Despite the wind, it’s been warm and sunny and sheltered by our place, so we’re having a very relaxing time. Pura Vida!

First Day Photos in Costa Rica

2010-01-09T15:38:00.000-08:00

To Nosara via... umm, NIcaragua?

2010-01-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

Sitting here early morning in a house near the beach in the small surf town of Nosara, Costa Rica. Howler monkeys woke me up this morning with their chilling call that sounds yes,like a howl, but what a howl. Something like a psychotic lion or a Great Dane with a toothache. It's not to missed..but a quick way to wake up. It took us three days to get here. One day to fly to L.A. where we spent the night, not realizing we would be arriving at the same time as rabid Alabama and Texas fans, ready to cheer blood for their teams in the BCS bowl. I wish you could have seen their faces when we were riding along in the shuttle bus to the hotel and I asked, "Now what bowl is this?" Really, I think it rocked their sense of reality that not everyone one earth knew.
The next morning we got on our flight to San Jose, Costa Rica via Dallas, Texas. So for a few moments I was immersed in cowboy boots and hats and had a great Texas barbecue pork sandwich. Then on to San Jose just 3.5 hours away.. Um, wrong. Things don't always go as planned on travels.. As we descended into the San Jose airport and just as we were ready to touch down, the plane wobbled and suddenly the pilot pushed to full throttle and we soared back into space. The passengers all looked at each other like "What just happened?" as we banked and started flying in circles. After a few minutes the pilot informed us that the crosswinds were too strong to land in San Jose and we would be going to Managua, Nicaragua to spend the night, just 30 minutes away. I have to say, that the agents in Managua did an amazing job of accomodating 200 plus people on short notice. We just walked across the street to the Best Western, where they had a buffet ready for us (at midnight by this time), vouchers for rooms and breakfast. We only got a few hours sleep, but we did have a bed and good food and a noisy air conditioner to help the humid 85 degree night. (Like I know everyone who reads this in a really cold place is going to feel sorry for me.)
The next morning we flew back to San Jose after several body pat-downs at the airport and luggage searched twice. Got our 4x4 rental car for the rough roads of Costa Rica and headed off for Nosara, 5 hours away... um, wrong again. Major accident on the mountain highway. Then major construction. And let's just say, that driving on the Pan American highway gives your adrenal glands a workout. We were gasping often as we avoided near misses with crazy drivers. However the scenery was lush and green and spectacular. The last hour to our house was over a bumpy gravel road where we could't go faster than 20 mph. By then it was dark and the sign are all hand made, so it was a while before we found Marlin Bill's restaurant where the keys to our house were left at the bar. Stumbling around in the dark and asking a few neighbors, we finally found Casa Feliz which is mucho bella. Will post pictures later. Time to go to te the organic farmer's market and get some supplies for the house. Now we have those important vacation decisions of whether to go to the pool or the beach...finally reading Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff and a mystery by an Icelandic author whose name I can't spell without going to find the book--Andur Ingridarsun or something like that.. very different books! So many ways to use words...Pura vida! (The usual Costa Rican greeting that means anything from hello, goodbye, that's great or fills in the gap in a sentence.) Literally it means pure life. So we are here to purely enjoy life. And my son sent me an article this morning that tells me that on three different indices, Costa Ricans are the happiest people on the planet. Anything to do with not having an army and spending the funds on education??

May the Words Take Flight

2009-12-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

It has been six weeks since I returned from my pilgrimage in Europe. My bags have been unpacked, gifts for friends and family given away and I wake up in my bed now knowing where I am. Yet as I expected, I am slowly umpacking the many pieces of spiritual understandings that this journey bestowed. Some came with great joy and others borne out of fatigue and vulnerability. It will take a while for this umpacking to happen for only now am I beginning to see how this trip is the third part of my 'trinity' of pilgrimages--one to northern Italy in 2006, one across Spain in 2007 and now this one to northern France, Scotland and Ireland. I am beginning to see the 'golden threads' that joins these intentional journeys to seek God in new places. I hope to write about these threads and follow them back to the source-- threads examining my place within the church as woman and pastor, the influence of landscape on the revelation of the sacred, how the holy was embodied in myself and in others, how prayer changed to silence, and how my relationship with the Word moved from a theological discussion to a felt experience.
Whew. Now that I've written that, I had to go back and read it to see if that all really happened. And it did.
It feels like I'll be writing a book to unpack it all. That's what has stopped me before. There is so much. And how can I write about it when I don't fully understand it?
A book on writing by Anne LaMott called 'Bird by Bird' comes to mind. It explains the title comes from the story of her brother who had to write a report for school on birds. He'd had three months to work on the project; he started the night before. "Immobilized by the task ahead..my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brothers's shoulder, and said, 'bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'"
This seems good counsel this morning. Just take one piece of revelation out of the suitcase at a time, give it the name of a bird...and then let it take flight. See where it soars. I write this here on my blog to give it form and intention. Perhaps the metaphor has shifted from unpacking a suitcase to opening the bird cage and releasing the songs.

Waiting

2009-11-29T09:14:00.000-08:00

The first snowfall was late this year, but it's snowy cover means we've settled into winter at last. Life slows down, moose stews bubble on the stove and skiis come out of hibernation as the bears go into it. And in my little corner of the world, it means that the wooden fence at the corner of Eagle River Loop and Driftwood Bay will get smashed once again.
It's not that I look forward to seeing the fence smashed or that I am unsympathetic to the driver who didn't slow enough on that downill to make the sharp turn. So far no one has been seriously hurt. But it's like a tradition to see that section of the board fence flattened and splintered year after year when the street gets slick.
What warms my heart is that every year, that fence gets resurrected. I don't really want to know who makes this decision to reconstruct the fence when it seems that by now a guardrail would be a more durable choice. But I like to think they feel a steel rail might hurt someone;the wooden fence cushions the blow. At any rate, each year after the winter is over, new 2x4's are laid across and six inch boards lined vertically to make the 6 foot high fence--the new wood in stark contrast to the weathered gray on either side.
I like seeing it rebuilt because the yearly reconstruction of the fence has come to mean compassion and hope and persistence to me.
On this first Sunday of Advent, as the winter morning is still black at 8:30 with no sign of dawn, I settle into this time of waiting in the dark, not resisting it anymore. Things may slip and crash in this dark time, old beliefs may get 'flattened' and challenged, weariness or doubt may splinter my resolve, yet I wait knowing there is a time coming when all will be put together again in a new way, and with a gentle compassion that exceeds my own.
Some would think it foolish to keep rebuilding a fence that will most certainly not stand the season. But I see it as hope. And it strengthens me.
Blessings of the waiting season of Advent. May the dark time inscribe new hope in your soul and a fresh endurance of compassion.

Standing at the Edge

2009-11-11T20:58:00.000-08:00

Three years ago at a conference on principles of cosmology--how the universe works-- I heard the quotation, "Pay attention to the edges, for that is where new centers are formed." I remembered that quotation when I helped to start the Listening Post, as it seemed to be a place at the edge of society and here a new center was forming.

Last night at our monthly volunteer meeting for the Listening Post, I asked people to think of where they were on an edge in their lives. The idea was to talk about a difficult time, an edgy time, so that we as volunteers could experience what it must be like for our guests to come in and talk about difficult times in their lives. Later, I was asked to define what I meant by the word, 'edge.' The words tumbled out--a risk, beyond what is known, not a safe place, a dividing line, a threshold, and an interesting place, like the edge of the ocean, where all sorts of things are thrown onto the beach and are able to be seen. I also reflected that, ironically, our Listening Post sits on the mezzanine level, and we often look over the edge to see the people in the Transit Center that we serve milling about below us.

What we learned as a group, is that we are rarely comfortable at our edge. Yet like standing at the edge of the high dive, it is thrilling as well as uncomfortable. The edges we face as we listen to stories are our prejudices, judgments, need to be effective, to gain approval, and know the outcome.

As we told each other stories of our own edges, we realized that sometimes you don't want to talk about it but you want to just be with someone. We also learned you may feel like your being given a gift when someone listens with 'fascinated attention.' Or you hear yourself understanding what you are feeling. If you wait, more of the story will come.
I am wondering tonight--if I pay attention to my present edges, since I too am part of the universe and inherent in its laws, will they lead me to my new center? And what will that be?

Alaska Air Again

2009-11-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

I know I'm home when I step outside the doors of baggage claim at Anchorage International Airpost and breathe in that cool crisp Alaska air. Even with all the car exhaust, it brings me immediately to a feeling of return, of belonging, of home. This time it was particularly welcome after six weeks away. I'm savoring those little things now.. my own bed, my own shower, getting the mail, reading the Anchorage Daily News, my favorite tea mug, my familiar chair for looking out the window at the mountains.
I've been wondering about home during my travel. How good it is to have a home to even remember when you are traveling and rarely in one place for more than a day. It is like an anchor, a refuge, a centering place in my mind.
and I've been more aware of the homeless and wondering about the homes they make of tents and cardboard which are often torn down or moved by municipal order. I saw the homeless in every city, and read also of those who try to help the homeless. A church in Houston, Texas, for instance, assists in an annual sleep out for the night in the city where different groups raise donations by sleeping out in the tent city and experience what it is like.
Of course, I've thought about the downside of making home such a safe and secure place you never venture out to risk and dare and learn and explore and change.
And there was a time in all this traveling, that I began to glimpse that 'home' can be with me wherever I am.
"God you are my refuge and strength." If God is present everywhere, can I be at home in that no matter what hotel or campsite or church I'm sleeping in?
Maybe now and then it comes to me in glimpses of this reality.
But right now, even with all the myriad of glorious and beautiful things I've seen, inspirations that have come and light-filled people I've met, I feel like Dorothy with her red shoes on, reciting, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home." It's good to be back.

CLAIM Theatrical Society Act 2

2009-11-05T13:27:00.000-08:00

Here John and Marilyn Magdalena with Kathy of Arimithea return to tell 'Jesus' about how they helped heal 'a woman' wiht a bad back. What a miracle--she got up and walked!

CLAIM Theatrical Society

2009-11-05T13:24:00.000-08:00

The disciple James and his two companions, Nathaniel and Matthew return to tell how they restored someone's memory. Although Matthew did return with a leprous hand after one healing. (See yellow glove.)

The Gospel According to Thelma

2009-11-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

The team finished painting the outside of Thelma and Mike's house yesterday while I sat and visited with Thelma in the family room. It seemed an unlikely source of good news. Thelma has a story that almost guarantees I will not whine again. A son in prison. A daughter with a brain tumor. Raising her grandchild due to abuse by the mother. A bad knee that can't be fixed because of her asthma. Her retirement savings embezzled by a pastor she trusted. And an insurance company that wouldn't pay up on the damage to her house and went bankrupt. Seems like she could whine. But she did not. I never even heard a trace of bitterness or cynicism. All she could see was how God had been with her in all this. When I asked her if I could share a bit of her story with others, she said, "Well, Lordy, all I gots is my story, my testimony, and if it will help another person, then you can have my story."
When I asked her what was it that kept her going, she said, "Well,it's those words from the Bible, Ephesians, I think but then I can't never remember where it's at--but it's about joy in the strivin'. It's about joy. I know that."
So we spent some time looking up verses about joy, until we think we found it. Or at least it says what Thelma wanted to get across. It's from James 1: 2-3. From her King James version it reads, "Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience."
"That's what I got--patience. I didn't always have it, but now my experience has brought it to me. So when my house got hit by Hurricane Ike and the insurance company wouldn't pay--after all those years I paid in to them--I wondered what would we do? My neighbors said, "You'll never get that house fixed now." But I said, "Oh, yes I will. I'm a patient woman. And sure enough, first comes one team that fixes my roof. Then comes another Christian team that gives me lights back. And now it's been over a year, but I be patient. And here y'all come and fix my house. My neighbor called me yesterday and said, 'how much you got to pay for that?' and I said it was free. She wouldn't believe me. But as I said, I count it joy in my trials and I'm a patient woman."
"I used to be a rich woman compared to some. Worked as a dietician at a nursing home for 37 years. But then I had to go on disability and then that pastor took the rest, but I tell everyone, 'I'm a rich woman. Rich in blessings. So many blessings, I can't count 'em." Then she laughed deep from her belly and I was laughing too just to share it. To share her faith, her trust,and her joy.
The team finished up the house by noon, and she had to sign a paper saying that she was satisfied with the work. "I ain't gonna sign it. I don't want y'all to leave." But she said she supposed there were others needing our help and wrote her name on the line designated.
We never know what to expect when we go into a home. Now I'm asking for that grace to count it ALL joy. Good news from Thelma Smith.

Mission Trip Week Two

2009-11-03T13:50:00.001-08:00

As the mission team left the first house last week, they bought rolls of paper, coloring books and washable markers for the children they called the 'little Rembrandts', hoping the children might limit their art to the paper rather than the walls this time. But whether they do or not, they must have felt the love that was given them in that moment; they soon appeared in their Halloween costumes as the team loaded up tools and buckets and the parents said thank you for the two hundredth time.
This weekend we reluctantly took two of the twelve members back to Houston to fly home and then traveled to Galveston to see the coast there before returning to Port Arthur. We came on the tail end of a big biker convention so people-watching was at a premium.
The town of Galveston has been well-restored from Hurricane Ike considering the devastation, but there are still boarded up hotels and restaurants and houses that bear the marks of water and mud. Huge piles of debris pushed up from the ocean stand like little pyramids on the marshes, yet the town has come back. Many places boast signs that proclaim "We Are Open" again. Disaster recovery teams still operate here and the coastal road back to Port Arthur is still closed, but the area was better than we expected.
This week the mission team is in Beaumont, about 15 miles away, working in the home of Thelma and Mike. The damage to their home was minimal compared to some, but still the sheetrock in some places needed to be replaced and they had waited over a year for help.
When Thelma heard I was a pastor, she gave me a big hug and started crying. "I knew you was sent to us for more than this. I need your prayers. My daughter has a brain tumor but can't get the surgery because we can't pay for the tests she needs before they'll do it." We met her grown daughter in the back room and started our work there in an surprising way--in a circle, praying for God's grace in this emotional 'hurricane.'
Painting and repairs continue today. A new assignment awaits, but we never know what it will be until the morning the team heads off to work. Definitely an exercise in trust and faith.
My back is much better and I'm up and around with plenty of time to create the morning and evening devotions. Wish you could have seen the skits when we all played the parts of the disciples coming to tell Jesus what they've been up to the past week. We could have the Central Lutheran Mission Team Theatrical Company. Having fun, enjoying idyllic weather, eating gumbo and taking in the Texas hospitality.

Mission Trip Musing

2009-10-28T06:53:00.000-07:00

The 2500 mile trip in the van to Port Arthur finally did me in; the last morning I bent over in the shower to pick up the soap, and my back seized up. It's all pretty funny in hindsight to remember trying to get half-dressed while still wet and crawling out to the door of the shower room to wait for Steve to finish his shower on the men's side of the camp shower. The wind was blowing so I was shivering and shaking there for five minutes. Meanwhile two pet peacocks on this campground found me very interesting and came over to investigate. I haven't been eye to eye with a peacock before.
Finally Steve came out of the shower, realized I wasn't crawling on my hands and knees for fun and got the van close enough so I could crawl in and spend the last five hundred miles of the trip flat on my back in the back of the van. As I laid there, I realized that I was grateful! Grateful this hadn't happened on the jet over to Paris, a train or a third floor hotel in Scotland that had stairs only. As it was, I am camped in the lounge of the First Methodist Church where they had a walker I could borrow to get around for two days until I could put my full weight on my back again. Having a shower yesterday was probably a suggestion of what heaven will be like. I'm steadily better, humble about what we control and what we don't, and grateful that I'm better so fast and surrounded by so much support.
My job on this mission trip is to be spiritual director and help the other 11 of the team reflect on what happens spiritually as they do the hard physical work of painting, sheet-rocking, pulling out old nails and staples, replace flooring and put in new cabinets.
It has been discouraging that the work van with all the tools, many of which we bought over the past four years, was stolen the night before we started work here. The job itself is a little frustrating in that the people are living in the house with three toddlers and the kids were coloring the walls faster than the volunteers were painting them. But after getting used to the unexpected, the team has been gratified by the little accomplishments, and the owners were thrilled yesterday that they finally have kitchen cabinets again and a working kitchen sink. Can you imagine using a tiny bathroom sink to wash dishes, clothes and kids for 18 months? They hope to finish up this house today and move on to the next project. Most of the houses from Hurricane Ike had flood damage, with water from the storm surge up 3-4 feet in the houses--unlike Hurricane Rita that took off roof tops and sent trees toppling into homes. This time, there is less funding, so the projects are truly by faith, hoping that the funds will come somehow.. and they do.
As with all mission trips, we come with expectations and then realize expectations can get you into trouble. By accepting what is and not judging whether the job is one we would choose to do and the people are 'deserving' of being helped, suddenly there is freedom to just serve..and then the contentment and peace follow.
It's a day to be grateful for a functioning kitchen sink! Peace to you.

Stateside and Stones

2009-10-24T05:13:00.000-07:00

Ireland now seems far away, although I'm still adjusting to the nine hour time zone change as Steve and I travel down the road toward Port Arthur Texas and the beginning of the hurricane relief mission there that we've been involved with for the past five years. Hurricane Ike stirred up a storm surge that flooded low-lying areas. We plan on a lot of sheetrock and painting on this one. It's been long days in the van, not realizing it's a 2500 mile trip--just the same as driving from Alaska to Seattle. Seeing some beautiful country. The highlight was rolling into Arches National Park late afternoon and lucking out with a campsite deep in the park when someone cancelled at the last minute. The trip to Europe had centered around stones--stones laid in the labyrinth in Chartre, the standing stone circles of Scotland, the stone ruins of so many cathedrals, monasteries and castles, and the beautiful and colorful stones of Iona beaches. And I thought that journey with stones was over when I flew back to the States. But this trip has been a continuation of that relationship with stone--especially when we drove into the Arches National Park. We immediately loved those tall red walls of Entrada and Navajo sandstone. Arches, fins and balancing rocks that are just stunning. We were able to get in a couple of hikes but it is an area we'd like to come back and explore. Getting used to driving on the other side of the road again, hearing an American accent and as we travel through the West, lots of country music. Enjoyed driving through the Navajo nation country yesterday and seeing the vast expanses of country.
Before closing, I realized I never had a chance to write about Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland, just north of Dublin. If you ever have the chance, please go. To grasp the ingenuity, creativity, spirituality and practicality of a Neolithic culture in this way has changed my perception of the peoples who lived in 3500 B.C. A huge football field size pile of rocks house a narrow passageway of one ton rocks (how did they move them?) that leads to a cruciform opening in the center.There three side recesses hold flat bowls where cremated remains were found. Beautiful carved markings on the stones only increase the intrigue. The passage is oriented to admit the sun on the few days surrounding the summer solstice. For ritual? For planting? It's a huge tourist attraction normally but Linda and I were able to have a private tour since it was off-season. Will add pictures later... In the meantime we need to get on the road again. May your roads rise gently today.

Destination Dublin

2009-10-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

We were up in the wee hours to catch our flight to Dublin on Thursday morning and when I rolled into the parking lot at the car rental place and turned in the keys, I was heard to say, "Thank you Jesus." Got us back in one piece and still don't fully understand roundabouts.
The Emerald Isle was indeed green as we landed and as yet hasn't lived up to its reputation of rainy and cold. More sun here and we don't even need a coat during the day. We figured out the bus and got ourselves to downtown Dublin with just enough time to find Trinity College and spend an hour or more at the Book of Kells. I had heard that it was a beautifully hand illustrated and copied Celtic Bible, but I really had no idea what to expect. I guess you often have to queue up for hours to see it and then it is crowded to actually spend time looking at it, but being the off season, we walked right in. It is an excellent exhibit and very good explanations of the hours of work and 165 calf skins it took to make the vellum on which it is printed and painted. It's hard to imagine the depth of devotion and creativity it took to produce a book like this. The colors after a 1000 years are still vibrant and the illustration that is on display of John is hauntingly iconic. I was immediately drawn into his eyes and it seemed deep into the meaning.."In the beginning was the Word.." Very moving. And interestingly enough, it is believed to have been written by the monks on Iona. So even this ties into our pilgrimage.
The Spiritual Director's conference began the next morning and we've had two days now of presentations and workshops and conversations with inspiring people that have filled my already-overloaded head with yet more new ideas, quotations and reflections. It will take a while to unpack all of this--storytellers and harpists have graced the sessions and poetry of Patrick Cavanaugh inspired the talks. I have a new understanding of the 'bogs' of Ireland and their part in culture and spirituality.
We have a great hotel room and feel pretty spoiled after our many nights in B&B's. Two double beds and a firm mattress with soft fluffy pillows. Not all our accomodations have had these amenities. The conference ends tomorrow morning and we are off to Glendalough south of Dublin which everyone insisted we had to see. And Monday we are going north to Newgrange, Monasterboice and another Abbey. Back to the States on Tuesday. And it is time. But what a grace-filled trip. As with all pilgrimages, we had times of testing and times of revelation. Times of knowing and times of confusion. Times where we could see where God was with us and times when it was not so apparent. Yet we know that it was just as it was supposed to be. And we are so grateful for the beautiful weather, our safe travels, the hospitality of the people and the beauty we have seen in nature, sculpture, architecture, labyrinths, music, paintings and the faces of the people. We are all One.
I'll end with a little quote from the story teller Megan McKenna who told us tales last night from across the traditions. She ended by saying, "May we all come true."
Peace of your own wanderings and wonderings.

Scottish Scenes

2009-10-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

We met a couple from Colorado today riding motorcycles all over Scotland. And we both agreed this is a treasure of a place to visit. And we also began to comment on the little differences that make another country interesting--and make you realize what habits you've taken for granted. Besides the obvious differences in road width and the side of the road you drive on, there's a quirky thing that the country measures most things in meters and liters, but the distances on the road signs are in miles and the car speedometer is mph. Took us a while to sort out that bit. (Now I'm beginning to sound like a Scot.) The food is served very hot. And the water in the sinks and baths comes out very hot. There are hedges of fucshias. The Scots have Scottish pounds and the British have British pounds and both are in the European Union but don't use the Euro. The rooms have huge skeleton keys instead of those cards to slide. There is potatoes with and in most everything-a lot of mashed potatoes with something in them, or chips (french fries)) or boiled. I saw rice once on a menu. Tea drinking is a lovely and ordinary ritual. Every room has a hot water pot, a brew pot, several kinds of teas, sugars and milk. Then there's your instant coffee for those from 'coffee country'--the States. There's lots of fluffy sheep who graze most everywhere and block the roads. Big red, hairy Highland cattle roam the hills and sometimes the road itself.
There's signs in Gaelic and lots of most everything in Celtic symbols. We noticed most tatoos here are Celtic knots.
And there are an abundance of Celtic blessings:
The Deer's Cry:
I arise today thruogh the strength of the heaven,
light of the sun, radiance of the moon,
splendor of fire, speed of lightning,
swiftness of teh wind, depth of the sea,
stability of earth, firmness of rock.

I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me,
God's eye to look before me, God's wisodm to guide me.
God's way before me, God's shield to protect me
from all who shall wish me ill, afar and anear...

We took two ferries to get back to the mainland, saw a castle complete with two dugeons,got a new tire put on the car for our final road trip back to Edinburgh tomorrow (it must happen so often that the car rental agency had a place in Oban that fixed it in a half hour, no problem! We are having our afternoon tea just now and will stroll down later to hear some Scottish music at a place called something like, 'Skipinish.' Our first day of misty rain all day. Felt like Alaska.

Intriguing Iona

2009-10-12T13:31:00.001-07:00

Today was the culmination of the pilgrimage for me in some ways. After hiking to Columba Bay at the south end of the island, walking the labyrinth there and spending time looking at all the beautiful and varied stones found at this end of the island, the sun shining and the day beautiful, it seemed like I had arrived. Linda loved it as well, but for her the pilgrimage continues I think.
We have also so enjoyed morning and evening worship at the Iona Abbey. We had assumed it would be a contemplative quiet worship experience here. But with the kids from Africa, Hungary, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales and England all here for the children's assembly, the worship has been like being at church camp. Excellent musicians called Fischy and lots of children-led worship. It's been lots of fun and very playful. Tonight we were serenaded with bagpipes coming and going from the Abbey.
All during this trip, I've been keeping up with the activity at the Listening Post. The article in the Anchorage Daily News on our ministry there came out just days after I left, and the response with new volunteers, donations and an interest in learning listening skills has kept my email busy. It's been exciting and although I'm glad I'm here, I also wish I could be back helping with all the details. However, while on Iona, I found two books on the Art of Listening by Kay Lindahl that will be great resources when I return. I was amused at how just what we needed for further training turns up way out here on this remote island.
We leave tomorrow morning from this island feeling as if it was everything we hoped for, even if it wasn't exactly as we expected. Lucky for us! It was better. And we know that having two sunny warm days on Iona is a rarity. We continue so grateful for all our experiences and the graciousness of the people. Back to the mainland tomorrow.

Mull is Not Dull

2009-10-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

We arrived on the west coast of Scotland at Oban on Friday night after a brisk day of walking in the woods and up a portion of Sheihallion Mt., Gaelic for Fairy Mountain. We asked at a visitor center about 10 miles down the road what the folklore was about Fairy Mountain and why it was called that. The two women there were a little indignant. "Well now that would be Perthshire, wouldn't it? And isn't this Stirlingshire so we wouldn't know about that, you see." We forgot that this country is very 'clannish.'
Got up early and caught the ferry over to the island of Mull on our way to Iona. We had heard there were interesting places to see on this sleepy little island and white sand beaches and standing stones. Little did we know it was also the weekend of the annual car rally of the U.K. Several people told us that it literally 'took an act of Parliament' to close the roads for five hours in the afternoon while 150 hotrods took the narrow winding roads of one side of Mull. By the end of the race, there were 100 left and the night race was still to come.
Linda and I are still in awe of the roads. They truly are one lane with little divots out to the side to pass. It's kind of fun as you slow down and wave to everyone as you inch by. But yesterday it was a zoo with the racers on there way to queue up for the race. And everyone going off the road on the narrow sides, made for sharp edges and potholes. Even trying to drive carefully, I blew a tire yesterday. Luckily the ambulance drivers came along and did rescue work for two stranded motorists. They changed the tire and got us back on the road.
We did have a beautiful time at the Calgary Beach which is said to be the spot where whole communities of Scots left for America, called 'clearances.' There is also a beautiful sculpture walk through the woods to get to the beach, which also involves the mandatory walking through the cow pasture, climbing a few fences (I feel like I'm back in Iowa) and opening and shutting gates. We had our first good hard rain but it lasted only a few minutes. Overall, we still have had beautiful weather.
We finally got to our B&B which was out in the tulies with no where in sight to eat dinner. So the kind hosts heated up soup and bread for us which was great. We sat by a roaring fire in the sitting room and took a deep breath. Driving those roads is tiring for both the driver and the navigator.
This morning we had full rainbows as we headed out to find another circle of standing stones, just down the road from where we stayed in Lochbuie. After going another two miles on a one lane road used for two-way traffic, we pulled off, went through the livestock gate and walk through mud and manure, following the white stones. Finally about a half mile out in the field we came to the stones, bigger than the other ones we've seen. It's always a thrill to find them; they look so incongruous there with the sheep grazing right beside them. They appear so stately and so well-proportioned.
We then drove on to Fionnphort where we jumped on another ferry to Iona, arriving in full sun and blue seas. It is so beautiful here. Spent some time at the Abbey this afternoon, which is an ecumenical worship community. They create a lot of beautiful liturgies as well as host retreats and community weeks where different topics are studied and discussed. There are 150 kids here on the island for a big event this weekend, so it's not a typical weekend here either!
We will attend the evening service tonight at the Abbey. This site is said to be where St. Columba brought Christianity to the Scotland from Ireland in the 500's (I've forgot the exact date.) It was Benedictine for a while, then abandoned for a few hundred years and finally resurrected and became this active ecumenical community. We hope to hike up in the hills tomorrow to the other side of the island and also rest up a bit before heading back to Edinburgh on Wednesday. Then on to the last leg of our trip to Dublin!

Poking Around Perthshire

2009-10-09T00:18:00.007-07:00

Poked around the area that inspired Beatrix Potter's paintings and books and is mentioned in Shakespeare's MacBeth. We are entering the Highlands of Scotland and the beauty intensifies as we drive these winding canopied roads and glimpse our first loch (lake). We visited a restored cranoag yeeterday which is a dwelling built out over the water on man made islands during the Iron Age. It appears they disappeared with the coming of the Romans. Funny, I didn't know the Romans came this far north. It is said that Pontius Pilate's father was stationed here and this is where the infamous man was born.
We plan to wander in Weems Woods and Sheihallion (FAiry) Mountain today and drive down Loch Tay. Having a nice breakfast. We have yet to try blood pudding and haggis for breakfast as suggested but Linda's having the smoked haddock. I have finally got the pictures loaded on my web album at http://picasaweb.google.com/mwakeland. Peace in your own wanderings today!

Still in Scotland--At One with the Sheep

2009-10-08T06:22:00.000-07:00

We traveled from Edinburgh yesterday to find a stone circle called Cairnpapple. When the GPS failed to find it, we asked in Bathgate, the closest town. The fellow there said, "That's in the middle of nowhere." But with his help at finding a little side street called Puir Wife's Brae, we headed up into the hills, finally finding a large stone circle just to the side of the road. 29 large stones on the outer circle, 21 in the inner circle and then a large flat stone set upon three stone 'legs', with two guardian stones and then a large stone set farther out pointing toward Edinburgh. In between us and those stones were a band of sheep with black faces and curling horns, very fat with fleece. They were a little disturbed with us and started coming toward us, we weren't sure if that was curiosity or challenge. But we held our ground--after all we'd come a fair distance to see these stones. They finally settled back down. The strange thing was to have this ancient circle, connected to Stonehenge in some way in the middle of a sheep pasture, no signs, no designation. About a half mile down the road we found that we'd mistaken that stone circle for the real Cairnpapple. There was actually a sign--which said closed for the season. Not to be discouraged, we climbed the hill, avoided a multitude of large cow pies and got to the enclosure surrounding this large mound encircled by stones. We have no idea how to interpret all this, only that the stones are captivating and tie us back to a time I can only imagine.
We headed through the high country, gradually getting used to the fact that there is about 4 inches of clearance from passing cars and if you get over, you run the risk of hitting the small stone fences. In addition, it appears to be okay to park your car in one lane of a small two lane road so that you are darting around into the other lane often. I turned a corner, met an oncoming truck, scooted over and heard a thump. Oh no, I thought, I've smashed the car. But it turns out, I hit the tire of the car parked on the side with the tire turned out into traffic. So no harm done except to my nerves. We found a lovely B&B in Dunkeld known for local music called the Tay Tavern. Locals came in later to play bag pipes and the piano and the fiddle. (We heard about this later as we were too tired to stay up that late.) We have booked our itinerary to Iona now and will be traveling from Dunkeld toward Weem, then Oban then Mull, ending up in Iona on Sunday and Monday. The photo is a picture of hiking near Arthur's seat in Ediburgh. Such great hiking here! Cool in the evenings now, near freezing, but continue to have beautiful sunny days but using all of our layers of clothes.
We leave Dunkeld now to explore the area around Loch Tay. The people have been over the top hospitable and we almost understand everything they are saying with their accent.

Roaming Round Roslin

2009-10-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

Just eight miles from our B&B is the town of Roslin and home of the Rosslyn Chapel, made famous in these times by the Da Vinci code. Local folks smile at the story for the assumptions it makes, but they also smile for the drastic increase in revenue it has generated for the restoration of this chapel. It has been covered with a metal awning over the roof and huge scaffolding on three sides to restore painstakingly the stone that has eroded and decayed. And it so worth restoring. Each column and corner and border has layers of meaning and each is entirely unique. It's quite small but intricate. And mystery does surround it, but perhaps not as Dan Brown wrote about it. The vaults below it are 40 feet deep and were the burial vaults for the St. Clair family that built and own it dating back to 1446. It remains sealed but lore says that parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls are there, jewels, statuary that was hidden from invaders and yes, the Holy Grail. But the St.Clair family has rejected any attempt to open the tombs as it is a family gravesite. So it remains mystery. Which is something that I am happy remains in this world.
I was also struck by the fact that there are Nordic roots to the Rosslyn chapel and in fact all of Scotland. Viking invaders made their impression (like ransacking and marauding)but the original William St. Clair was first from Norway who then lived in NOrmandy and finally in Scotland. Maybe I've been attracted to this place because of old Nordic blood?
There is also a mystery about the sculpting of sheaves of corn/maize into one of the window frames. Since this wasn't known in that age and since Wm St. Clair may have been one of the adventurous ones who sailed to Massachusetts a good 50 years before Columbus 'discovered' America. Lore says that they explorers lived among the Indians there and learned about corn, and St. Clair brought this image back for his chapel. The grounds around the chapel are beautiful, sloping down to a deep glen and small river. We found old carvings in the rocks by the river, an old yew tree by the adjoining castle that is said to be from the 1400's, and two old wells deep down a ravine near an old graveyard. Needless to say, we had a good time sleuthing about.
I only had one person honk their horn at me in the roundabout so I'm getting better. Even with a GPS, it's a little confusing getting around.
We have had great and hearty meals here. I feel like I'm back on the farm with these generous proportions of meat and potatoes. Chicken pies in flaky crusts, salmon on mashed potatoes with leeks, cauliflower soup with Stilton cheese and morning eggs with bacon, sausage, potato cake and toast--a real Scottish breakfast as our host says. Tomorrow we asked for porridge only. We are walking a lot, but maybe not THAT much!
Very friendly people and it's so easy when everyone speaks English again. It still surprises me after 5 days in France when I understand what people are saying around me.
We are driving north tomorrow with a few ideas of where we might go, but letting things unfold. So far we only had rain as we left Paris on the way to the airport. It's been in the 50's and sunny.

Scooting About in Scotland

2009-10-06T02:33:00.000-07:00

Landed in Edinburgh yesterday on a clear day and could see the green hills and valleys for miles. I made it in our little black Mercedes compact car to the Spylaw Bank B&B, learning to drive on the other side of the road. Beautiful old house from the 1700's here and the first full night's sleep I've had. Ah. We roamed the old city of Edinburgh yesterday along the Royal Mile, getting soaked with bagpipe music, old castles, the beauty of St. Giles church, another labyrinth walk near the university, and a stroll up into the hills toward a place called Arthur's seat. Had a lovely Scottish meal of meat pies and potatoes last night at a local tavern and we are off to Roslyn Chapel today which is only 6 miles away. Will write more later. Time to be off for the day--but wanted to check in now that we have a connection to Wi-Fi again!

Charmed by Chartre

2009-10-03T03:55:00.000-07:00

Back in touch! Found a wi-fi cafe here in Chartre where the sign says, "We speak English you guys!"
To catch up, we had a great day in Paris on Thursday--finding the little art shop Nanette recommended and got lost in stacks of art supplies and charmed by cute guys in white coats that got so excited helping us find just the right pen and paint brush that was 'tres magnifique!" Then on to the first sacred site of our Sacred Site pilgrimage--Notre Dame. We spent two hours here enjoying this Gothic cathedral dedicated to Mary. As most Christian sacred sites, it sits on an earlier pagan sacred site near a well. It is situated so that the east window catches the early sun. We attended the mass there and generally followed along even though it was in French of course. I wish I could speak French.. although English is spoken everywhere in the shops. English seems heavy and inarticulate in comparison to this Romance language. We went out for a real French dinner that night at Pasco's and had amazing things like a little castle of duck and potatoes, risotto with roasted artichokes and serrano ham. And for dessert, Linda had cake and ice cream--but not quite we have in the U.S.( we were celebrating her birthday) and I had baked figs with creme and prune cognac.
We were inundated with so many sights and sounds, fabulous fabrics and creative clothes in all the shops. And we enjoyed our little room at the top of Hotel Muguet up the spiral staircase.
Yesterday we took the train to Chartre, about an hour from Paris. A return trip for me as I was here 35 years ago. I was so excited to see the cathedral that I was halfway up the hill, draggiong my suitcase before Linda pointed out that I'd walked right by the hotel.
The cathedral at Chartre is the largest and most ornate of the Gothic cathedrals. And it is one of the few that has retained the central labyrinth, created in stone at the back of the sanctuary. We had read that it is only available for walking on Fridays, so we hoped that the guidebook was right. When we enered, we were delighted to see several other travelers walking the paths of this famous labyrinth, first walked over 800 years ago by pilgrims. This was also a deep connection to my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago of two years ago. This was one of the places to begin that pilgrimage back in the middle ages. And in front of the cathedral was the sign of the pilgrim with staff and the yellow scallop shell that had marked our 500 mile journey in Spain. The labyrinth is an internal pilgrimage, an 11 circuit circle with many turns that leads to the center and then back out. Labyrinths are one of my deep loves. As I was walking it, I realized how content and how spacious I felt. And I thought, "This feels familiar. When do I feel like this at other times?" And I realized that it is the same feeling for me as climbing a mountain. Both have an air of mystery, a sense of inspiration and both involve walking. Each is also a place that when I am there, I never want to be anywhere else. I am my most content.
Both Linda and I walked the labyrinth three times, also a sacred number. Since this laybrinth is a third of a mile to walk in and out, I can say we walked a mile for sure yesterday! I will have to write later about the inner experience of my walks. But in a few words, it was all I had hoped for. Since Chartre is the mecca for labyrinth lovers, I was expecting a moving experience. And it was. And as I walked, some of the same issues that came up on my Camino walk came up, only this time, I could see how I had changed.
There is so much to learn about this cathedral it would take a lifetime. Each stained glass window tells a complete story--one in particular was enlightening for me as it connected all the elements of the story of the Good Samaritan with the story of Christ's life. All in stained glass!
We also explored the crypt, which is the original Roman church underneath the present church. There is an ancient well that goes down another 34 feet--again, a sacred site built on a well. Being in the bowels of the church was thrilling--seeing the ancient frescoes and places of worship. Here too is a piece of the cloth that Mary is said to have worn at the birth. One wonders about it's authenticity of course, but it has been dated back 2000 years.
This is the oldest cathedral dedicated to Mary, even older than Notre Dame, and a sacred site of Linda and I as we continue to explore the Divine Feminine. Here there are also two black Madonnas in the crypt and in the side chapel. We took a tour with an English professor who turned out to be the very same man who was my guide 35 years ago--Malcolm Miller! Obviously this became his life's work.
We continue to explore the cathedral today, climbing up the north tower to the top, overlooking the city.And the bells rang while we were up there. Beautiful! It feels like a brisk fall day here and we are so grateful to be able to be here. We leave tomorrow to return to Paris overnight and catch our plane to Scotland on MOnday morning.

Pooped in Paris

2009-09-30T11:39:00.001-07:00

Smooth 9 hour flight from Seattle to Paris and I am newly in love with Air France. Great service and comfortable seats. However we flew into day and didn't sleep, so we valiantly stayed up all day to try and minimize this jet lag. Eiffel Tower. Wow. Walking along the Seine and looking at art exhibits. Eating those flaky pastries and good quiches. And we even did the Louve for two hours. It was magnificent and now we can say we have lived, loved and 'louved.' I guess you just have to see the Mona Lisa. And I know everyone says its smaller than they thought, but it was just what I expected. However Mona was much more beautiful in the original. I admit that when I sat down just for a minute waiting for Linda, I fell promptly asleep.
It is sunny and warm. We brought heavier clothes for fall weather, and so far it's like summer in Alaska. Off to bed. It's finally late enough to call it a day. Bon soir!

Primed for Pilgrimage

2009-09-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

"Glorious it is when wandering time is come." Eskimo song
It is a wandering time again--that time that my spirit longs for. And the time I am most likely to keep up with this blog.
The seed for it was planted when my friend Linda and I heard that Spiritual Directors International would be holding a conference in Dublin, Ireland in three years. We checked the 'yes' box on the form, saying we were interested, but I didn't really think 'interested' would become 'reality.' Yet here we are, leaving tomorrow for Paris on the first leg of travel toward that conference in Dublin Oct. 16-18. Since we were flying that far, we thought we may as well see more than just Dublin. And with Linda's creativity brimming, she came up with tickets that take us to Paris, then Edinburgh, Scotland and then to Dublin.
As we've prepared, I came to realize that this is yet another pilgrimage for me, very different from the walking of the Camino de Santiago two years ago, yet still a pilgrimage.
Louis Pasteur describes a pilgrimage as-- "the kind of journeying that marks mindless to mindful, soul-less to soulful travel so to see everywhere in the world the inevitable expression of the concept of infinity."
As we begin this travel, I remembered this old Russian advice. "Sit on your bags a half hour before leaving. You'll remember if you forgot anything, and if not, you're relaxed."
I didn't sit on my bags, but I did sit beside them for at least a half hour, shuffling things in and out, trying to take as small a bag as possible since I'll be the one schlepping it everywhere. The result is a bag that the catalogue says is a great weekend bag. I have it stuffed for three weeks-- but it's all there. No doubt I will be very tired of wearing the same three outfits, but simplicity is also part of pilgrimage. Needless to say, any gifts I bring home will very small, and will have to be the size of my bag of vitamins that will be gone by the time I come home.

Pilgrimages aren't meant to be easy, either physically or spiritually, but they bring great contentment and a feeling of depth. My deepest desires for this pilgrimage is go slowly, trust more and see joy in all things.
Huston Smith writes that there are four aspects to pilgrimage: singleness of purpose, freedom from distraction, ordeal or penance, and offerings. Our purpose is to travel to sacred sites and fully appreciate the sense of holy that is offered to us. We may get distracted a little in Paris coming and going from the Chartre Cathedral, but overall, we'll be free to pursue this quest. I know we'll have our trials in some ways that will deepen our resolve. And our offerings? Ourselves. And each of us have small stones from Alaska to place at the many places of 'stone' that we will visit.
Susan Halvor gave us a blessing as we left, a writing of John O'Donohue from his book called, 'Blessings.' Here it is in part..

A journey is a sacred thing.
Make sure before you go
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of your spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life
And the urgencies
That desire to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way
Gathered wisely into your inner ground
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you
May you travel safely, arrived refreshed,
And live your time away to the fullest,
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

With that blessing, we begin our journey.

Summer's End

2009-08-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

When the nasturtiums spill over the wall and drape themselves onto the lawn, when the carrots are ready to finally pull up from the thick dirt of my raised bed, when the woods are splashed with the reds of highbush cranberries, translucent and tart and the hillsides are streaked with yellow, I begin to let go of the marvelous summer we just received. Since May, it has been warm and for this part of Alaska, very sunny. It's a season I will cherish, with hikes and picnics and long walks in the evenings. We had no big expedition this summer. Trips to Iowa for wedding preparations for my daughter and to Oregon for my son's graduation from law school filled in those spaces. Now comes my favorite season, all the sweeter because it is so brief. Soon I'll pull up the garden and put away the pots. Store the patio furniture and roll up the hoses. Retire the camper van and go pick lowbush cranberries to make jam. Tramp out to the cabin before it snows and maybe look for a moose. I'll fall into fall gratefully.

Home Again

2009-02-19T13:54:00.000-08:00

The wind is shuffling shingles on the roof and snow is blowing horizontally in erratic swirls. My car is thick with dirt and the side windows have tracks where the slush has been blown back across them. It's winter in Alaska, not the pristine kind with the trees outlined in frost and everything a glowing mass of white. It is the other kind, when the Chinook winds blow, the trees are brown, the roads are slick and the snow is no good for skiing. Yet, it's home and my soul is glad to be back.
This is not without the tropical transition issues however: Um, let's see. I used to wear gloves. I think I have gloves. But where are they?
or the agony of having to put away those cute sandals that are so easy to slip on and still have a few grain of white sand stuck to them.
But I'm home where the work I'm called to do is waiting and wondering where we'll create next, where my friends are eager to catch up on soul travels as well as physical travels, and where my bed fits me exactly instead of me fitting a bed. I can have all my books in abundance piled up around me, and I can cook in a kitchen where I know where everything is.
I miss the ease and hospitality of the places I've been these past five weeks; and the sight of kangaroos, blue wrens, and waves crashing on the shore have reorganized my cells with new memories.
But I'm home and grateful, more than ever, to say I have a home.

Aloha Time

2009-02-06T10:42:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Oahu a week ago and it took a few days to adjust to arriving the morning of the same day we left Sydney..crossing the date line makes you realize the 'relativity' of time. I always love the aloha welcome of the islands. Although we also had that in Australia, the tropics here lend to a softer ambiance--leis, ukelele music and more humidity. We've settled into our home away from home in Kailua on the windward side of the island. The guestbook in our house reports a few 'Obama sightings' at Christmas time here in Kailua, when he and his family were in Kailua for a few days.
We're on Hawaii time now, spending most of our days at the beach, putting on sun screen, getting sand out of our toes, boogie boarding, eating papaya and pineapple, and watching the weather change. Clouds swirl in and around the steep mountains in the center of the island and we've had a beautiful mixture of sun, wind, storm and calm. It's good to rendezvous with family and play cards every night, while eating coffee-coated macadamia nuts. Ah, Hawaii--Alaska's warm and friendly sister. In the midst of this, I'm reading Hanna's Daughters, which has me reflecting yet again on my Scandanavian heritage, particularly from a woman's point of view. A little heavy for a beach read, but good!

The Kanga

2009-01-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

Finally got this picture downloaded, so wanted you to see our resident Roo and my favorite little blue wren.

An Australian Farm

2009-01-27T17:10:00.000-08:00

Its 420 acres only supports 100 head of cattle. Water comes from dams that trap the rain run-off. There's only one tractor vintage 1979. You have to watch out for tiger snakes and falling eucalyptus trees. But still it's a farm and riding around with Robbie, one of Jean's old friends, we talked cattle and cattle problems, reminding me I haven't forgotten everything from my Iowa farm girl days. Robbie's passion for the land and for the animals also reminded me of my father's deep loves. And I got to ride in real Australian 'Ute', bouncing around and through the pastures. HIs Ute was dirty and dusty like any work truck, but in his there are so many spiders and spider webs. "They're (the spiders) friendly," said Robbie.

We traveled down to the southwestern cape of Australia yesterday, where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean and had lunch at a cafe overlooking a bay full of porpoises and more kite surfers. Although it's predicted to be very hot in the east of Australia--in the 110-120 degree range, it's staying in the 70's ad 80's here with a cool breeze at night. The crowds from the long holiday weekend are gone and the beach this morning was mostly locals. I attached a good photo of the beach that is close to us--Gnaraup.(another 'up'word.) We are going to tour a bit more today and also packing up to leave tomorrow to return to Perth. We catch our flight to Sydney on Saturday so we'll have 24 hours to tour there. There is SO much more we could see, yet we have seen so much and enjoyed our time here immensely. I'd like to come back in their spring or fall and be able to go up north when it's not so hot. Almost got used to driving on the other side of the road and the Aussie accent. Jean and Gary have been great hosts and good friends on this trip. Ken is Jean's brother who lives on the adjacent property, a former surf champion and now has a little 'surf shop' for board repair. He brings us fresh mangoes and plum jam in the mornings. We will miss this hospitality!

It's Australia Day

2009-01-25T14:35:00.000-08:00

It's Monday Jan. 26 here in Margaret River, Western Australia and it's Australia Day--their equivalent of the Fourth of July from what I can tell. It hasn't always been a big holiday..Jean can't remember even celebrating it growing up, but now it is an occasion for lots of flag waving, a national holiday,and all sorts of celebrations. We went down to a town breakfast this morning--and even the guy at the gate wasn't sure what the history of Australia day was..but the woman behind me pushing a baby carriage said, "It's the day in 1788 that the British landed here. Mind the Aborigines would say 'invaded.' They don't think so much of Australia day." Despite that, there was big turnout for the outdoor breakfast, all made on the 'barbie.'
There was a naturalization ceremony, poems about Australia and some old Australian songs. One of them was called 'Home Among the Gum Trees'.(gum trees are eucalyptus trees). The first stanza goes:
I"ve been around the world a couple of times or maybe more
I"ve seen the sights, I've had delights on every foreign shore,
But when my friends all ask me the place that I adore,
I tell them right away,

Give me a home among the gum trees
With lots of plum trees, a sheep or two, a kangaroo
A clothesline out the back, verandah on the front
And an old rocking chair.

In honor of Australia day, here are some things very unique to this corner of Australia that I've noticed while here:

Shetland ponies: they're everywhere--another reminder of Scottish roots here.
Roo bars: big steel protective bars on the front of vehicles to protect cars and trucks in a collision with kangaroos.
Kangaroos: I know that I've said that there are kangaroos here. But really, after hearing about them all my life, I can't get over how abundant they are here. And how close you can get to them before they go bounding away. I must see over 50 just driving to town six miles away. There is an old gray kanga that hangs around the yard here who is doing less bounding and more slow hopping. This morning for the first time, I saw a joey(the baby) scramble back into his 'mum's' pouch as we walked by.
Cricket: I had assumed that soccer would be the prominent sport, but I rarely seen this. Instead, everywhere we go, we see cricket games--organized professional teams, amateur leagues, backyard and beach cricket. Yesterday STeve got pulled into a game he stopped to watch. In backyard rules, the fielders all have to have a beer in one hand. We will never understand all the rules, but it's fun to watch.
Baked beans for breakfast: It's not bad, but I was surprised when they loaded it up on my breakfast plate this morning.
Language: I've said it before, but the language here is so intriguing. We just went to Boranup forest, tall gum trees and by Boojidup. (Up is a frequent ending for Aboriginal words.) There's also 'dinkum' which means honest or reliable..and digereedoo for an musical instrument. Hundreds of others..
Cafes, art galleries and wineries: Tucked in amongst the rolling hills of pasture and vineyards around Margaret River, are unique and wonderful galleries, usually associated with a cafe serving organic and creative food. Often they are also associated with a beautiful winery and tasting room. I've been to Napa Valley, and much prefer this laid back atmosphere serving internationally known wines.
Utes: These are small untility vehicles with a big flatbed on the back. It's very cool and very practical to have a 'Ute' here.
Surfing, wind-surfing and kite-surfing. If you like waves and miles of white sand beach, this is the place. Every morning we see the utes and VW vans or stuffed station wagons heading down to Surfer's Point.

I'm sure there's more, but time to send this off. The pictures on the slideshow of our trip thus far (on the right of this blog) can be made bigger by clicking on them. Will add more later. Oh, and Happy Australia Day!

Listening in Australia

2009-01-24T01:47:00.000-08:00

A week ago now I was in Perth overnight, visiting a myriad of interesting and long-time friends of Jean's. On Sunday, we went to hear Rev. Don Dowling at his church in downtown Perth. Formerly a Presbyterian church, it is now part of the Uniting Church in Australia, which is a joining of the Presbyterian, Methodists and Church of Christ congregations. Although this congregation was established long ago and does have a preponderance of Scottish Presbyterians in their 80's filling the pews, it is much more than a 'graying' congregation. Under Pastor Don and the previous pastor, the congregation has made a determined effort to reach out to the people who live and work downtown. There is a significant number of mentally handicapped adults who are part of the congregation including 'Colorful Dave' who had his name legally changed to this and it implies, only wears very colorful clothes. There are a wide range of ages and races and sexual orientations who attend as well, albeit sitting further back in the pews. Amid its amazing pipe organ and stained glass windows is a screen for showing announcements, song lyrics and even You-Tube videos from a sophicated technological set-up. The congregation called Pr. Don to a call of 40% pastoral care of the congregation and 60% outreach. "I have to remind them about the 40% now and then," he said.
Here's a couple of verses from one of the hymns by Catherine Cameron that they sang that morning...

Proudly rise our modern cities,
stately buildings, row on row;
yet their windows, blank, unfeeling,
stare on canyoned streets below,
where the lonely drift unnoticed
in the city's ebb and flow,
lost to purpose and to meaning,
scarcely caring where they go.

Hoping to connect with the 'congregation' outside their front door, Pr. Don trained 8-10 volunteers from the congregation and then set them outside the doors of the church to listen and observe who was there. I can't remember exactly how many hours a week they did this, but they did it over an extended period of time. Listening in this way and paying attention has continued to change the congregation. 'Goths' (youths dressed in black) are allowed to hang around one corner of the church without being bothered by police; owners of upscale businesses next door to the church are curious and cautiously forming friendships. The members particularly wonder how to connect with the office workers who hurry by with their cell phones in their ears.

This awareness of the importance of listening is key to grass roots change and a keystone of community organizing, so I was intrigued to see the ministry that Pr. Don had started a few years earlier, called The Warehouse Cafe in another part of Perth. We went there after church with him to have lunch.

As a formerly robust congregation was slowly declining, he helped the congregation come to the decision to close the congregation, and with a shared vision, take the 1.6 million that they received from sale of their prime location property to purchase a cafe in a warehouse building(with enough left over to operate the cafe off the interest.) The front of the space is a nice cafe( great food) with a room in the back where small groups meet and where the congregation meets for Sunday worship. Don tells about having baptisms in the front of the coffee shop while it's full of people having Sunday morning lattes and omelettes. Anyway, the part of staff training that intrigued me was that if anyone the staff was serving wanted to talk, they were to simply sit down and listen, and others would cover their duties. He had lots of stories of how that listening led to relationships and to even more outreach. He immediately understood the nature of the Listening Post ministry in Anchorage and in turn was eager to hear our version of active listening as a powerful way of relationship.
I heard this week that that the Listening Post ministry in Anchorage has grown while I've been traveling, with up to 13 people coming in a day. And we have trained a member of the community that uses the transit center regularly as one of our volunteers--a goal we've had from the beginning, but didn't think would come to fruition so soon. I hope we continue to be part of this worldwide awareness of the importance of listening and hearing each others' stories as a way of peace and good news. And I was thrilled to see it in action here Down Under.

Margaret River Musing

2009-01-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

I rode my rented bike down to the coffee shop in Margaret River(the Urban Bean--funny name as Margaret River feels closer to rural than urban) the morning after the Obama's inaguration.A young mother was reading the paper and absent-mindedly feeding her 1 year old when she called over to us and asked if we were Americans (Steve and Gary were with me too). When we nodded, she hurried on to say she was sorry for interrupting, but she had to ask how we felt after the inagural address.
"Were you emotinal?" she asked. "Because I can't seem to stop crying about it." She went on to say, "At first, I thought it was just a race thing, but now I see it's much bigger than that. It's about a vision that we're all on this planet together. And it's about hope. I heard one commentator here say that it's like Obama is the president of the world. And it kind of feels true. "
She said much more about how she had been uninterested and unaffected until she watched the inaguration and heard the speech--and it had gradually dawned on her. What was interesting is that the speech made her reflect more carefully on the disenfranchised in her own country--the Aborgines. "It'll be 50 years or more before Australia could ever think about an Aborigine for president," she said. "We're far behind her." In a way I could see her link between African-Americans and Aborigines in that both have been so severely discriminated and oppressed. However, I think the closer relationship is between Aborigines and Native Americans, the indigenous peoples.
The problems of the Aborgines here seem similar to Alaska Natives--alcoholism, disillusionment, a younger generation without direction, crime, poverty. Yet there also prevails at another level, an appreciation for the Aboriginal way of life, their wisdom and their deep connection to the earth. Their children were taken away to become 'white' similar to the Alaska Native children who were taken away to white boarding schools. However, the history of intentional genocide of Aborigines, especially on the island of Tasmania is thankfully not a part of our history. Yet, when I think what the introduction of rum and disease by the early whalers and traders to Alaska, the loss of life was also terrible.
Obama's speech compelled us to look at ourselves as world citizens as well as Americans. Conversations here in this part of the world keep underlining this fact to me--we are one in both our hopes, our dreams, our creativity and also our prejudices and failings. On the inaguration day, I was wishing I was in the U.S.to hear the local take on things, rather the Aussie commentators. But now I'm glad I'm 10 time zones away, in another hemisphere and in another culture. I hear the words of the speech more deeply each time I re-read them. I wonder how I will bear forward this new challenge of responsibility and service. I can't wait to see.

Mellowing out in Margaret River

2009-01-19T22:49:00.000-08:00

As we headed out to walk to the beach for breakfast, Jean pointed out a mark in the dirt which looked like someone had drawn a line with a stick. "That's where the big kangaroo dragged his tail," she said. Grizzly tracks I can recognize but I've never seen a kangaroo tail track. We walked down to Margaret River which adjoins the property here; it is slow and deep. We took off on an old track that parallels the river, pushing through lots of brush. I found myself a little wary of snakes and spiders, but overall the bush here is fairly benign. Mostly it is dry and the forest floor is loaded with eucalyptus leaves and bark. We climbed some high boulders to overlook the valley and catch the breeze. The temps have stayed in the 70's or 80's. It was about an hour walk to the beach where we had breakfast. Lots of organic food here and a real concern about the environment. Did I say already how great the food is? We are enjoying 33% off on everything here when we use our U.S. money. So although things are generally expensive, it's affordable for us. Housing is amazingly high. We're still in shock seeing what housing costs.
Anyway all is well here. Steve went back down to the river to go skinny dipping this afternoon and was intercepted by a canoeing tour coming up the river, but of course, he just waved and smiled.. We are staying up to 1:00 a.m. to watch the inaguration tonight. It's big news here.

At last in Margaret River

2009-01-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

We are settling in at Jean's house here in Margaret River..kangaroos everywhere and all kinds of fruit trees, parrots and cockatoos. A surfer's paradise here where Jean's brothers surfed as young boys. Her mom decided if she couldn't beat 'em she'd join 'em, so she bought a place down here years ago. Jean's brother, Ken,lives next door and is a surfer dude, and sustains himself with making and repairing surfboards. Vineyards everywhere. The temps have come down and are just right--in the 70's and 80's and no humidity. Cave exploring and bush tours.. we are just going to go slow for the next few days after all our traveling about and do some beach time. Have I mentioned how good the food is here? Amazing fresh and organic food in huge portions. Haven't had a bad meal anywhere. Visting friends in a nearby town called Yallingup. Love all these names!

Smoke and Fire

2009-01-16T16:22:00.000-08:00

On our way back to Hobart, about a five hour drive from where we stayed up north,we stopped at a wildlife park--and I got to see all those strange Australian animals--koalas and wombats, kangaroos and emus, wallabys and kookaburras--parrots and cockatoos and of course, we checked out the snakes--discovered it was a tiger snake not a copperhead that Steve was trying to herd.. only a bit less venomous.
When we arrived in Hobart, we were soon reminded that it is a sailing paradise. Thousands of sailboats out for an evening regatta. Later we found the house where Jean's grandparents used to live.
Then yesterday we woke to 50 degree temps and rain in Hobart only to land in sunny and smoky Perth five hours later at 110 degrees. You forget how big Australia is! Bush fires raging here and the topic of conversation is WATER. We are surviving the heat by swimming in the pool here at the house of Jean's friends, Mike and Jane. Had TAsmanian salmon last evening! Off to have morning tea with other friends. We will head down to Margaret River in a day or two and then stay put there for the duration of our time..

Paper and Penguins

2009-01-14T12:54:00.001-08:00

Here in northern Tasmania, they felt as if summer finally arrived with temps in the upper 80's. We thought 75 felt like summer! It's school vacation here for six weeks so the beaches were full of children playing--cricket and soccer being the favorites. We took an early morning tour of the Creative Paper factory in Burnie. I absolutely loved all of it. I could have bought out the place with all its handmade papers. I even made my own. The most unusual was RooPoo paper and as the name suggests, the paper contains bits of kangaroo poop! Actually it's quite nice. They say they are working on wombat paper next. They got the idea from Thailand where they make elephant poo paper. Later we drove up the coast to a coast on a isthmus called Stanley where Jean remembered going for Christmas with her family some 40 plus years ago. It's funny because as we've traveled, there are towns we go through who have won the 'Tidiest Town' award, one year or another. Stanley was one of those--and it was quite 'tidy.' Little cottages and shops. Beautiful hardwood furniture of blackwood and burls of eucalyptus. I love the artistry of this island.
After dinner at a local pub, we met local naturalist who gave us a night tour of the beach where the little penguins or fairy penguins come in every night after feeding all day. We must have seen 80 or so come toddling up the beach quite furtively, to reach their nests. They got within a foot of us at times and we saw the parents feeding their young. We were out til 11:00 or so under a beautiful Southern sky of stars.
Two big kookaburras woke me up this morning, laughing. A good start to the day. We drive today back to Hobart through some new country--we plan to see some caves and a place called a 'Female Factory' which means where goods that women make are sold. Of course, Gary and Steve are joking that they can hardly wait to see how female are made. "At last we'll understand."
We leave for Perth on Friday and 100 degree temps there. I think we'll be doing some siestas...

A Snake, A Wallaby and a Mountain

2009-01-13T01:50:00.000-08:00

So as we are driving up to Cradle Mountain National Park, Jean suddenly slows as a long black snake slithers across the highway. Please remember that we have already been apprised of the fact that Tasmania has many kinds of snakes and all of them are very poisonous. So knowing Steve, you can guess what he did. Of course. He jumped out of the car and ran to the snake. It stopped and puffed up a bit. I ran after Steve to pull him back and got ready to take a picture of the departing snake. When Steve in all his wisdom, runs IN FRONT of the snake saying, "Here let me turn it toward you." Then I remembered that certain things cause Steve to lose any sense of caution. So I say loudly and firmly as the snake does not turn but goes toward Steve and is now about 2 feet away, "Get out of there, NOW." As we walked to the car, Steve said, "It wasn't going to hurt me." Then, no kidding, we get in the car and public radio is interviewing a snake expert who says, "Snakes in Tassie WILL get aggressive and go after you if pushed." We decided that we will have to keep Steve on a short leash. We're going to look to see what kind of snake it was later.

Most of today was spent climbing up to a lookout point in the park over lakes and mountains. About 12K or around 7 miles. It's a bit warmer today, up in the 80's but a cool breeze..and Steve went for his dip in the cold lake on the way down. As we neared the parking lot, a momma and baby wallaby hopped by.. looking to me like minature kangaroos. I'm trying to remember (or make up) all the verses to "Tie me Kangaroo Down, Sport" , but the wallaby one is, "Get your wallaby wet, Jet."

We are increasingly aware of how passionate Tassies are about the environment. There have been intense protests here about a new logging road going in near a World Heritage site and people living in trees and in underground tunnels to block it. Logging is big here so as in the States, lots of controversy.
Overall, I think I have to give the Congeniality award of all my travels around the world to the Aussies..or at least the Tassies. Really friendly and funny. It's been so welcoming.

We are keeping aware of world events and concerned about the unfolding conflict in Israel where my friends, Bishop Mike Keys and his wife, Barbara are touring and meeting with leaders. Although I feel very far away from things, even further than I did in Alaska, my heart mourns this aggression and prays for a peace fire soon. Hope you are well.

Tasmania--it's more than a Devil

2009-01-11T21:55:00.000-08:00

I had no expectations about Tasmania, coming only because our traveling companions, Jean and Gary, wanted an adventure here. It's only been a little over 30 hours since we've arrived, yet already I've learned it's much more than a place where the Tasmanian devil lives or the place where there were once penal colonies of repeat offenders from England. In a word, it's gorgeous, sunny and a pleasant 75 degrees. It worries me that already I am taking palm trees, sandy beaches and the sound of the ocean for granted after leaving minus 30 degrees F. We stayed last night three hours up the coast at a friend's home, 50 acres right overlooking the Tasmanian Sea. Within the first hour I had seen black cockatoos eating the fruit of the baeksi tree, fed small wrens with 2 inch tails, heard a kookabura (in an old gum tree), and watched a sea eagle soar overhead. AND the big surprise to me is that unlike the commonly held belief about Alaska, there are penguins here. Evidently they stay at sea all day and come in only at night to rest. But after coming through the town named Penguin this afternoon, I believe they do exist here. In fact, our host, Christ, told us the sea eagles feed on them. Her house is full of Japanese textiles, dishes and souveniers--and she fed us a gourmet meal as we watched the full moon come up over the ocean. We could have stayed there much longer. She had a garden full of fruit trees--peaches, nectarines, figs, oranges, olives, passion fruit and quince on her acreage plus a big garden. Wonderful hospitality.

It is the school holiday here and there are lots of families about but it is not crowded and the beautiful beaches are pristine with very little development. I knew I was in a formerly British owned commonwealth country when I went to put my toast in the toaster and there was a little inscription that said, "Crumpets face in." Already we have started to pick up on the 'G'day" and "no worries' and "yeah' that fills in all the spaces of the sentences. The people are great and love to tease and laugh. It's strange to travel somewhere this January where everyone speaks English.

Fresh fruit, vegetables, handmade chocolates, bakeries and cheese factories seem to pop up everywhere as we traveled today. And we helped support all of them! We left the east coast of Tasmania and headed five hours inland and then north to our home for the next three nights near Burnie. It's called the Winged House, a place I found on the Internet. So I sit here now looking out over the ocean again, only now seeing Bass Strait. We are perched in a house that does indeed look like an airplane wing. Very modern and full of art. We have several side trips planned while here on the north coast, but we could just stay at this house, drinking the local Tassie wine and be happy. And luckily we have Jean to chauffeur us around as driving on the 'wrong' side of the road is disorienting. Tassie is the size of the state of Virginia but there is so much to see and do--and a lot of wild country left. These five days here will just be a small taste of the place..but the taste of Tassie is very sweet.

Watching

2008-11-30T12:16:00.000-08:00

My Own Advent:
Sunday Nov. 30 Mark 13:37
What I say to you, I say to all: ‘Watch!’

I’ve been watching it snow for hours now. It’s a quiet snowing, not like the driving blizzards of my Iowa youth. I’m not sure how these small flakes of white keep drawing my attention, but they do. One after another, some falling straight down, some zigzagging, some clumped together, some so small I can just make them out. Slowly the deck piles up with it. The boughs of the spruce trees begin to bend under its pressure. The landscape becomes blurred and mounded and indistinct. And I wait here and just watch.

I know the story of the first coming of Christ so well it’s written on my bones. But I don’t see it in this snow. And I know the promise about the Second Coming of Christ, but honestly, I don’t watch for it as some do. It will come when it will come. I leave that up to God. It doesn’t seem to be a portent in this snow that I am watching.

What the snow seems to say this morning is to watch how Christ is coming between the two big Comings. It seems important to notice how snow falls and to wonder at the beauty and miracle of it. It seems important to notice what gives me peace and what makes me angry each day and wonder where God is in that. It seems important to notice who I meet and what they say to me, wondering what the Holy is teaching me and asking me to do.

Like the small flakes of snow, these little moments in life pile up and change my inner landscape. God was Then and God Will Be. But both of those times are encompassed in this moment, this time, this watching-- in the great mystery of I AM.
Now.

The snow has slowed. I have to squint to see the tiny flakes still falling. There are three inches on the railing and some of it is slinking down, like a white drape, reminding me that snow is elastic and surprising. There are tiny bird footprints in the snow under the feeder, disappearing imperceptibly with each flake. I wait and watch. It's Advent.

For the Dawn Has Come

2008-10-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

The dawn came suffused through gauzy clouds at the end of the valley this morning, spreading golden light on the confused October landscape. Patches of green grass still showing through snow, millions of tiny warm prisms at the edges of frost and thick green spruce trees beside the naked birches. As the dawn struggled up the side of the ridge, it slowly grew in strength. As I watched, I remembered the quote from Tagore that my mother wants read at her funeral: "Death is not extinguishing the light; it is turning down the lamp because the dawn has come." To think of death as a golden spreading of light, a welcome invitation to possibility, a revelation streaming in pretending to be ordinary pleased me.

I've been flat on back for a few days, and although back pain is not a fatal diagnosis, the necessity of being still and lying flat gave me opportunity to ponder my mortality. Someday my body will want to rest like this and not move again. Will I welcome it like this dawn?

It seems a far cry from the death of Christ when he cries "Eli, eli, lama sabbachthani! My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But I read an alternate translation of this text from the Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke) which felt the better translation was "My God, My God, for this I was spared!" And another which translated it as "for this I was kept!"

I know that many have taken comfort from these words, believing that they help identify the very humanity of Christ as he hung dying. He too, this Son of God,had a moment of despair and of doubt. And I appreciate this. But it never rang completely true for me. If this was indeed Jesus' Passion, his very reason for being, the culmination of his work on earth, these alternative translations bear the spirit of that truth. Dr. Wayne Clapp goes one step further, translating 'lama sabbachthani' as " for what am I being set free?" This invokes a sense of the loving nature of the Trinity and that divine relationship that marks its beauty and its relationship with all creation. I hear in it Christ's expectation of the resurrection, of transformed life, of new purpose at the point of his death.

In my thinking, I associated light with life and death with darkness. But the dawn has come with new insight. Death and life are not real opposites. Light suffuses both life and death. Freedom lurks in both of them. God continues in each.

I reached over and turned down the lamp by my bed. Dawn had come.

There Isn't Anyone You Couldn't Love...

2008-10-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

In a poem entitled The Untouchables from the book, Between Two Souls, Mary Lou Kownacki ends by quoting a motto over the door of a shelter: "There isn't anybody you couldn't love once you've heard their story."
My response to her poem:

If 'there isn't anybody I couldn't love once I've heard their story',
then I must start grabbing for those stories
left and right,
piercing through crowds,
asking to hear,
sitting at the curb,
waiting for the 'least of these'
to trust me enough to speak.
I must grasp stories from trees
and rocks
and rivers,
even hoard them from the stars,
tales there twinkling.
Buy them, mortgage my house,
sell my finest pearl if the price is high
so that I may hear
so that at last I might learn to love like this.

A Month of Listening

2008-10-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

I was working last Thursday night with another volunteer at the Listening Post, washing up our tea cups and reflecting on our evening of listening. A mentally ill woman had come in to tell us the story of having her coat cut from behind and the many plots she believed surrounded that cutting of her coat. She re-told the story 15-20 times, each time coming up with another scenario of how it had happened. Ultimately, she struggled to know if she should report it to the police. Internally, we were full of advice. But instead, we just listened until she figured it out for herself and left.

"You know," said the other volunteer , "when I tell people at work what I'm doing, they think I'm crazy."
Then we both started laughing. "Yes," I said, "In one way, it's really stupid. AND, there are 22 other volunteers who are doing this stupid thing too!" Then we really laughed.

We have been open now one month and have seen nearly 30 people who have come to just sit and be quiet or to tell us their story. A man who wanted someone else to know he'd been sober 31 days. A woman who had just left her abusive husband and wanted to remind herself why she left. A deaf woman who was so frustrated with her life--and frustrated trying to tell us about it when it was difficult to speak. A formerly homeless man who stopped by to give us $5 for the cause and to say, "It doesn't matter how many people come here, this is an important ministry." (He was also the one who taught us that "listen" and "silent" are anagrams--words that contain the same letters.) And many who are tentative, just stopping by for a few minutes, checking us out, seeing if it's safe, telling us just a little about themselves.
One of the volunteers watched people read the signage about the Listening Post that sits on a sandwich board in the middle of traffic downstairs in the transit center. He watched people walk by three times before taking a brochure. Or just stand in front of it, reading with a puzzled face.

We are not sure about this ministry either. We are not quite sure who will come, what we'll talk about or how we will be asked to respond. We're not quite sure we're safe, we're ready, or we're faithful enough to see it all through. But it seems each volunteer who has had the opportunity for these conversations is strangely happy. We experience more gratitude, more peace, more acceptance, more confidence. This 'stupid' ministry of just listening makes us laugh, ponder and ease our prejudices, even in this first month of trusting.

Terrible Beauty

2008-09-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

It was time to flee. the political ads, the accusing speeches, the dense, shifting layer of fear overlying the news created by failing banks, unethical leaders, greedy business, defensive and aggressive candidates for elected office---ah, I'd had enough. Time to cross the back yard, open the far gate and slip down into the woods again. I followed the deep tracks of a moose, some of them slurred by slipping in the wet earth. It looked like it may have been running, perhaps like me, from threat.

Here there was only the reliable and reasonable threat of a bear, patrolling the bank of the river for salmon carcasses caught in driftwood as the river recedes. I sing old hymns to give the bears time to avoid me. I am threat to them as well. We can pass each other by with this kind of respect.

The highbush cranberry plants dress wildly here as they are dying--mostly reds and hot pinks, but occasionally a vivid white to set off the red berries that glisten like round rubies on their necks. Yellow poplar leaves fall randomly on the path; waxy green lowbush cranberry leaves hide plump berries near the ground and the dwarf dogwood almost lifts up off the ground with a green shining from an inner light.

Deeper in the woods, the gentle hand of silence pats my back reassuringly. Across a small ravine and up a small hill. And then there is the huge black boulder, slumbering with memories of lava and ice. I pause as a shaft of low sun breaks through the forest and lights it. There, piled on its face like a raucous beard are layers and layers of green moss and lichen, each shouting a different shade of green, each bragging confidently of its place and purpose in being.
I try to stay here, just looking,just being, just barely touching it with my fingertips-- but then that old feeling comes. I cannot take in all this...this terrible beauty. It is too much almost to bear. If I open to it all, what will happen? How can I possibly hold it all. I will be changed. I will be challenged or vulnerable or a part of me will most certainly have to die.
It feels like love. And I see it's true. This "perfect love casts out all fear."

The thorny branches of wild roses pull and grab at my pant legs as I turn to leave. Don't forget, they seem to say. Don't forget.

A Time for Listening

2008-08-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

In April 2006, I heard reference to a place in Vancouver, B.C. called The Listening Post. I'm not sure it even took more than the name for me to feel a sudden, strong connection to this place. When I heard more, a place only for listening--no counseling, no preaching, no fixing, no judging, no rescuing, no hand-outs--I leaned into the idea even more. A year later, at another Spiritual Directors convention, I was in Vancouver, B.C. and listening to a presentation by the two women who created the Listening Post there. When I walked out, I bumped into another Alaskan, Mary Cartwright,who had the same look on her face I did.
"Isn't that amazing?" she said.
"I wish we had this in Anchorage."
I replied. She looked at me; I at her. And almost simultaneously, we said, "Let's do it." It became our dream. We vowed to meet that summer back in Anchorage and take our first steps.

It took about a year longer than I anticipated, slowed by necessary considerations of finding an umbrella nonprofit agency (Lutheran Social Services of Alaska), finalizing liability and property insurance, recruiting volunteers and finally securing a space in downtown Anchorage we could afford. After almost giving up on our first choice, the Downtown Transit Center, the space on the second floor became available for lease. Truly another teaching to me that when you release your misguided sense that you are in control and simply trust, miracles do happen.

Now we know that the first Listening Post began in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco by a former Catholic priest. As far as we know, then, we are the third.
Our intention is to provide a meditative space in the heart of the city, where people can sit, think, pray or meditate and if desired, have a trained volunteer listen to their story one-on-one, with confidentiality and respect. That and that alone. Simply listening.

This is both the appeal and the challenge! To simply listen means to set aside our own belief that we know what is right or wrong for another person. And equally difficult, to trust that our presence is enough--without having advice, or food, or clothing or money to give. Just our presence==trusting that in hearing themeselves tell their story, that they find their own wisdom, not ours. We will be changed too, although we are unsure how that will be. "You can love anyone once you hear their whole story" says a sign in a urban shelter in New York. Maybe we will learn to love in new ways and toward persons we once thought of as 'other.'

We have 25 volunteers trained to listen; we open our doors on Sept. 16, 2008 on the mezzanine of the Transit Center at the corner of 6th and G Street in downtown Anchorage with enough money raised to pay our lease and expenses for the coming 9 months. I write this all out in wonder..as the dream, God's dream in us,unfolds into the reality of this world.

Pearls

2008-08-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

In a book called "Between Two Souls", a modern day Catholic nun, Mary Lou Kownacki, responds to poems by a 19th century Zen monk called Ryokan. (Erdmans,2004). I was challenged by a writing teacher to make may own responses. Here is one exchange between them and my response: What is yours?

Leave off your mad rush for gold and jewels--
I've got something far more precious for you:
a bright pearl that sparkles more brilliantly than the sun and moon.
Lose it and you'll wallow in a sea of pain;
find it and you'll safely reach the other shore.
I'd freely present this treasure to anyone
but hardly anyone asks for it. Ryokan

I cannot sleep
I am haunted by a
Pearl buried in a field.
I know it is there
Somewhere.
This morning, for a single acre,
I sold all I had
And dug the days away.
Nothing.
I am weary and a little frightened.
Fields are few.
And in my hair I noticed
A touch of gray. Mary Lou Kownacki

I ask
For I've seen the pearl,
luminescent, almost the
color of my soul, glimpsed once.
The Pearl dropped to the bottom of the sea
swallowed by sand or shell--
I thought lost to me for always.
and I cannot breathe the waters deep
or bear the weight, the crushing weight of salt.
So now the waves here on shore
who are not shy
and for some some reason love me
are shushing it home to lie at my feet
not asking a price
and I never knowing
until now
to ask.

Stairway to Heaven

2008-08-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Harding Icefield: August 2008
It's a trail that's been like a siren song for me; the steep path up from the base of Exit Glacier trail to see the source--the Harding Icefield. I've hiked the trails around the toe of the glacier for years, often taking visitors there to get close to that primordial blue ice. But it is rare that our visitors want or can climb 4 miles up 3000'. So it's always been in the 'maybe next year' bin of hopes.
Last week finally found my husband and I in Seward on a good weather day and the leisure of enough time to take the trail. 'Maybe next year' became now.

The two foot wide trail most often felt like climbing stairs--only these stairs were well-placed rocks and boulders past lush forests and streams of water, sometimes a trickle, sometimes a riotous torrent. At different points, there were peepshows of the glacier, growing in dimension as we climbed higher and higher. We spotted bands of goats with kids, a lone black bear on a scree slope and a hoary marmot unperturbed by us just ten feet away. About halfway up, we broke out into a mountain meadow. This high up on this cool summer, the snow had only recently receded, creating the marvel of seeing all the spring flowers all over again--the first shy yellow and blue violets, anenomes and dwarf dogwood, heather and harebells--those and hundreds more scattering the lush green slope. In the high alpine, there was a small slope red with mountain azalea, so tiny it's flower is smaller than a pea. And then the trail was in snow, marked by orange flags, slushy and icy but always traversing up and up. Two and a half hours later, we neared the top, gazing over the icefield, so white it hurt your eyes to look even with sunglasses on. It was so still and solid and vast. And yet it moves imperceptibly, grinding and changing and transforming all the time. Perhaps like our souls. I think it would be possible to fall asleep on the tundra there, wake up, not knowing where you are, and ask, "Is this...heaven?"

At Last a Labyrinth

2008-07-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

It had been a long pregnancy. There's no set gestation time for a labyrinth, but for this one at the Stillpoint Lodge of Halibut Cove it had been five years. There was always a question of which design, what material, and who would construct the labyrinth. Finally,Jan Thurston,the lodge owner, found 500 feet of old hawser line set for disposal in Anchorage and her husband bought a new wood chipper to dispose of downed wood near the lodge. It seemed the project developed itself. Now everything was prepared. The huge and heavy 5" line was on site; the ground raked and covered with ground cloth; the piles of wood chips moved down in big piles. The help had arrived. Time for the birth. And I was one of the midwives.

I had taken on the challenge to inscribe the design. Although Jan had always dreamed of having the 11 circuit Chartre Cathedral pattern, it simply didn't fit the 32 foot round area. The classical 7 circuit labyrinth, the oldest of the designs, perhaps 3500 years B.C.E.,would fit perfectly. Labor had started.

Then as I hurried to the site that morning, eager to get there first and look over the area one more time, I stumbled and fell forward, skidding to a stop on my outstretched palms. I got up slowly, checking for damage and looking vainly for the cause of my fall. Apparently nothing. Since walking the labyrinth is always a journey of metaphor, I began to wonder if my stumble was a metaphor for the upcoming constuction. Would I stumble somehow? Was I supposed to wake up and see something? Was I prepared for a fall?

Still shaken and the rain falling softly,I approached the site more carefully, noticing everything. The rest of the labyrinth creators arrived--the muscle of the team. There had been a miscommunication and the chips were already on the ground cloth--so rather than scribe the ground cloth, we had to burrow through the chips to mark the concentric circles of the labyrinth. All went well until it came time to mark the turns. We were off somehow and the lines didn't meet as they should. Soon there were a multitude of opinions on how to fix it. Was this the stumble? Had I somehow given the wrong instructions for the markings? When others suggested we start over, I stood in the center and knew that the labyrinth was right there, we just couldn't see it for the wood chips. Jan wisely said then, "Why don't we all go away for a while so you can think." And starting at the center, my husband and I soon saw where the confusion was. Within five minutes the whole labyrinth emerged.

After lunch, we came back out and the men hoisted the hawser line from the perimeter to the center, not disturbing the lines now drawn in the chips. It takes two sections of line to make this kind of labyrinth and as the hawser was laid in place, it all seemed so perfect, so right for this place by the sea.

Within minutes, the line was in place, and within another hour, a pier-like entrance had been fashioned, an overlook cleared and the chips leveled out. Then we all walked the winding path to the center and back out.

Some say the path in is the path to releasing, purging, or seeking an answer to a question. The center is the stillpoint, the enlightenment, the receiving. The path out the realization of how to go out into the world with this new understanding, the claiming of the answer, the giving back to others.

I asked why I had stumbled on the way in. Nothing clear came by the time I reached the center. Except I remembered when I had stood there in the midst of confusion, believing if I stayed there, I would see. And I had. As I walked out, I felt the stumble had prepared me to go slow and to see. And the labyrinth had taught me that when in doubt, go to my center and believe. As I reached the end of the labyrinth, which is also the start, I turned and looked at it one more time. It was a beautiful baby.

Hearing Voices

2008-07-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

They were like billboards at the writing conference. Two young Rubenesque women with brilliant smiles stretched across their teeth and T-shirts stretched even tighter across their ample bosoms. The red shirt yelled in big white letters, “I’m the Protagonist.” Her partner’shirt in green shouted in the same large white letters, “I’m the Antagonist”.
This whole small scenario is significant to me because it was, for once, an understandable representation of what goes on in my mind most of the time--I hear two voices.

I’m pretty sure these are not the voices that the insane hear, although sanity is not an either/or, I think, but rather something along a continuum. But I have sat with the insane, heard the conversation with their ‘friends’ and my voices aren’t quite as interesting.

Mine are, in contrast, a little pathetic, if not consistent. The first voice is what I can now call my Antagonist. She whines, she judges, she gets rigid, she overanalyzes, she doubts and at times, may pout.

My protagonist is so much more lovable. I always want the story to end with her living happily ever after. She is patient and wise, reflective, compassionate and understanding. She doesn’t care if it makes sense or pleases others. But let me show you rather than tell you.

The two young women with the billboard T-shirts were attractive enough, but add to that the fact that the protagonist was also holding onto the harness of a guide dog. A cloth saddle across its back announced in bright yellow and orange, “Guide Dog in Training-Do Not Pet!” But everywhere the dog went, people dropped down to stroke its ears or pat its head.
Immediately, the Antagonist went into action.
“What are they doing? Can’t they read? They are ruining the training.” First thought.
“And why isn’t that girl stopping them? Look, she’s so busy talking and laughing that she doesn’t even notice there’s five people petting the dog. She shouldn’t be entrusted with a dog like that.” Second thoughts.
“No one is following the rules.” Third thought.

The Protagonist waited and watched, appreciating how happy the young woman was and the devotion of the dog. She wondered if there was a reason the young woman was so unconcerned.

Then someone on the right whispered, “She’s not training the dog. It’s for her epilepsy. It senses when she’s going to have a seizure.”

The Antagonist was strangely silent.
The Protagonist since she was wise, didn’t rub it in. She still has great hope for her other half.

Water Words

2008-07-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

I've been writing about water--and struggling. What are the words that would really describe the sound that water makes running over rocks? Murmuring, gurgling, laughing, whispering, chattering. Interesting, but not..quite..it. In an essay I'm working on now, I'm remembering a hike up Tattler Creek in Denali National Park. When I first heard the name of that creek, I loved the idea that the sound of water on rocks could be the sound of children's voices tattling. Yet, it seemed only for that creek and that place.

My brother-in-law who is an artist contends that he can't draw water. He can only draw the effects of water. If I can't 'write' water, perhaps I can only write about its effects. My writing friend, Ann Dixon, wrote a poem once that described the sound of water running over rocks as the sound of 'mountains unraveling.' And that is the closest anyone has come to mirroring what my soul feels when I hear it.

St. Teresa of Avila described the sound of water as 'spiritual sweetness' or, grace itself. Since I've never really found the words to fully describe grace either, I think I like that connection.
Now back to writing..and finding my own words for water running over rocks, and my own experiences that grace will bring me today.

Anne Lamott Keepers

2008-07-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

I realized I haven't written in a long time. Primarily because I've been doing my other writing, all inspired by attending the Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference in Homer, Alaska a month ago. The primary presenter was Anne Lamott; I wanted to share some of her words that have stayed with me these past weeks and kept me writing.

The first are the Rules for Being Okay in America, which Anne learned from a Jesuit priest who helped her get sober years ago. Those five rules are:

1. You shouldn't be different or wrong.
2. If you are different or wrong, try to correct or fix it.
3. If you can't fix or correct it, pretend you have.
4. If you can't pretend, then don't show up because it makes others uncomfortable.
5. If you do show up, have the decency to be slightly ashamed.

She went on to say, "That's what we're up against--toxic shame. The only way to over come it is to do our work, one day at a time."

"Heaven is just a new pair of glasses."

About writing: "There are 37 voices in our heads and only 2 are positive. Our job is to ignore the other 35. It's the only way we can keep at it."
"Remember--'not awful' is a miracle."

"Publishing won't heal, fix or fill you. It won't give you a sense of value either--that's an inside job. The way you gain that is doing your work every day."

I have so enjoyed her many books of nonfiction--Bird by Bird, Traveling Mercies, Plan B and the latest entitled, "Grace Eventually." I'm not so intrigued by her fiction. She is a great presenter but is only taking on a couple of engagements this coming year, so that she can do what she tells everyone else to do--stick to your writing!

On Fire: Pentecost and Mother's Day

2008-05-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

I'm not so sure there should be a Mother's Day. As I watched fathers negotiating small children around the greenhouse this past Saturday, it was on one hand endearing to watch them pick out just the right plant for Mommy, but the choices were also so laden with obligation and expectation. Would it really show how much we love Mom? Should we love Mom more? What if I really don't like Mom right now? As I left a coffee shop later that day, two men passed carrying bundles of flowers.
"Ah Mother's Day," I said to them.
"Just want to stay out of trouble," answered one of the men.
"Has it come to this?" I thought, "staying out of trouble? Do we mothers expect these flower and candy bribes?"

You might think from the above that I have issues with my own mother. But no, I have the mother everyone wants to call their own, and one I love to honor whenever I can. And I have two great young adults now who called me on Mother's Day-- and I loved hearing from them. But I think it's the commercialization of my love and respect for my mother and the mothering spirit that makes me doubt the benefit of the holiday. And then there IS the assumption that comes bearing down on the day--that this must be a happy occasion.

When I was pastor in a church, Mother's Day (and Father's Day) were those very uncomfortable holidays when I and fellow pastors struggled to find a balance. It was a secular holiday for one. And even if you played on how Jesus cared for his mother, even from the cross,still we couldn't really 'win' on this holiday. If we didn't honor mothers enough. we heard comments about it. But if we did, we also were made aware that not everyone had a mother they could honor, not everyone could become a mother even they really wanted to and some had just lost their mother, making the holiday very difficult for them. Obligation and expectation amidst the joy of motherhood.

This year, congregations had the unusual occurence of Mother's Day falling on Pentecost, a holy day celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit. In John's version, the Spirit comes in the Upper Room on Easter as Jesus breathes on the disciples and says the words, "Peace be with you." In the Acts version, the Spirit comes in a much more dramatic way--a rush of wind and tongues of fire on the heads of the disciples, who then can speak so that the gathered multitude from all regions of the known earth can understand.
I'm not sure Mother's Day and Pentecost can be entwined meaningfully--but if pressed, I can say this. The gifts of Pentecost came unexpected and without obligation. Yes, the disciples had their work before them, difficult and rewarding work, but work that came from this source--love-- from being loved.
The best gifts of motherhood also came to me in this way--unexpected kisses or funny questions, uncontrollable giggling or snuggling with a book. Most unexpected was that rush of love from the moment I saw each of them that felt like a fierce fire--a love I would die for. A love given to me only by grace, a powerful moving of the Spirit, a love that made me understand the world in a way I hadn't understood before.

Again

2008-05-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

I am deeply delighted
by the sight of
the first green leaves
on the tall swaying birches,
catching the awkward sun of May,
that shy green of
just stepping out,
testing the air
to see if it is
really safe
at last

And I am delighted
that I am yet able to be
delighted, as if to see
this hesitant green,
this moment of
immense discernment
on which my soul
counts so much,
for the very
first
time.

More on Seeing--my Easter Discipline

2008-05-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

Here in the last week of the Easter season on the church's liturgical calendar, I've been looking back on my Easter discipline. Yes, I've had an Easter discipline, as one would have a Lenten discipline. And it has been revealing. Instead of giving something up, as is the tradition of Lent, I've been 'adding on." Each day I've been looking for the joy in what my day brings.

I've been intrigued by the possibility of joy for a while now. I wrote of it in my last blog as well. It came after the revelation that somehow I'd been living out a kind of martyred, grieving sort of Christianity. Lent was my favorite season; Good Friday far more meaningful than Easter. I was identified with Jesus on the cross, more than Christ resurrected. I've examined it more in the days since Easter and what it means now that this season is ending.

I had early losses that perhaps opened me to grief and this way of seeing my faith-- learning at age 10 that a baby brother could lose an arm to cancer, then a sister could lose a leg to cancer, then a father could die of cancer, then a sister. I became a hospice chaplain, started and facilitated grief groups, and sat with many at times of deepest loss, feeling quite honored and comfortable to be present. And there is nothing in that I regret.But there has been a leading toward joy in the past few years, and I have had unlikely guides.

One was the director of a refugee center in Tijuana, Mexico. We had just finished a building project in the dump city with a group of volunteers and I was with him in a back room, pulling out bright blue T-shirts to give the volunteers on the night we were leaving. I remember we were talking about the city in the dump and I was still 'bleeding' the images of families living in garbage, when he stopped me, looked me straight in the eye and said, "They don't need your pity. They need your joy."

The Philippines continued my conversion. Early last year on our three week trip deep into the country I felt myself being pulled into righteous anger, disgust and grief as the injustice and poverty scorched my eyes. Yet again, my spiritual director said, "And where was your joy for them?"

This year my Easter season started when I had an unlikely Lutheran vision of the Mother Mary when I sat in meditation. She came to me and said, "Everyone knows how I suffered at the cross," she said. "I've been feeling the pity for me for centuries now. It's true; it was a time of agony for me. But the other half of my story is mostly lost. No one tells the story of my joy in the upper room, when I saw my son resurrected. It was so much greater than the loss. In fact, I moved away from that grief immediately. All I felt was unimagineable joy. Think of your own son! What if he died and then was suddenly alive? Can you feel how my heart split open with love? How I glimpsed the surging wave, the vast ocean of Grace? I am known to be with people who are ill and grieving. Yes, I have that ability. But don't forget to call upon me for joy. I know joy even more deeply than grief."

It was finally her words that moved me to examine the real possibility of a life lived with a foundation of joy. It is not a denial of grief, pain or suffering, or even the gifts in them, as joy is only fully experienced by the contrast. Yet suffering is of this world; joy of the truer Reality. Noticing joy, I become hopeful. Noticing joy, I mysteriously am able to forgive, to serve, to love. At the end of this Easter season, I'm ready for the flames of Pentecost, seeing not a fire that burns, but a fire that blazes light.

And Then She Saw

2008-03-23T08:40:00.001-07:00

On this Easter morning, I'm preparing to go to the tomb. I've got the spices and I'm dressed to prepare a body for burial. But when I get there, it's not at all what I expected. There is no body. Only a gardener...
I have always loved the John version of the Easter story. Even as a small child, I was drawn to Mary Magdalene and her faithfulness no matter what. She had experienced a deep transformation in her life through the love and healing of Jesus and nothing would keep her from following him.
So I've never been surprised that she lingers at the tomb, even when the others leave. But I have always wondered why she could not see him at first. The text only says that she mistakes him for a gardener when she asks where they have taken the body. How could she not recognize him? Had he altered that much? Was he held from being recognized in some mystical way? Was she simply crying too much and couldn't see him?
I will never know that answer, but this Lenten season, I have realized that I have gone through many Easters never getting any further than seeing the empty tomb and pleading with the gardener. I have never let that veil slip to see Christ in a resurrected state. Oh, of course, I thought I had and I have celebrated the promise of new life often and well. But this Lenten season, I was led in my prayer to understanding that it has been easier for me to see Chist on the cross, than Christ risen. For much of my life, I have grieved deep hurts. Grief that has had many moments of transformation and grief that has led me to become more compassionate and able to serve others. But also a grief that never fully trusted life. A grief that held me to the past.
But this Lenten season, I was led to see that I had not balanced grief with the sheer, blinding joy and awe that is in every moment of life. I was more often Mary Magdalene, faithful and ready to bury the body, but unable to fully see the love and light right in front of me. And to accept what it would mean to live a life where grief is felt and the gifts of it received, but to also see joy, and not only see it, but "live it abundantly." It is what Jesus said he came for, and died for. He never said I came so that you might grieve forever my death on the cross. The cross was unlikely liberation.
This Easter when I hear the rest of the story, I have been prepared to let the veil fall from my eyes, to release my grief, and hear Jesus the Christ say my name. Now I must go. It's time to go to the tomb once again.

Lunar Eclipse

2008-02-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

Last night the moon slowly winked
its luminous eye at me,
Me who wonders about being stardust
or moondust.
There was a dangerous opportunity
when its eye closed
for those many minutes and left me in
the dark.
I could fear.
I could flirt.
I could be silent.
I could shout.
I could leave.
I could listen.
Unable to decide, I held my breath.
Seductively, the lashes lifted again.
Blue light fled across the sky, freed,
seeking all it could see
Like me, staring up with my eyes wide open.

Missing the Ashes

2008-02-19T13:09:00.000-08:00

I missed Ash Wednesday this year. I missed the announcement about it the Sunday before because the whole service was in Fijiian on the island of Tavenui where we were visiting. And it was too early to be Ash Wednesday anyway. I was sure it would be the week I returned home. So when I did see a calendar again and realized I had not even thought about Ash Wednesday, let alone observed it, it was strangely disorienting for someone who follows a liturgical calendar. I flailed about a bit for the first week, trying to find some grounding. Getting over jet lag and the other disorientation of the change in temperature, culture and hemipheres didn't help as well. A part of me felt if I wasn't there for the start of it, it couldn't hold the same meaning; if I missed the start, I missed the season. But now, nearly two weeks since Ash Wednesday, I am observing the season after all and as the start of it would suggest, not in the ways I usually observe Lent.
The devotion I am using this year is online at www.paintedprayerbook.com. The writer is a Methodist pastor, Jan Richardson, who has written other books I've enjoyed over the years. She likes collage, as do I, and her blog includes interesting clips of art as well. When I caught up with her blog, she was talking about the text in which Nicodemus and Jesus have a conversation at night and Nicodemus asks. "How can a man be born a second time?" She goes on to explore how questions are a part of faith, how Jesus accepted questions all the time from his disciples, and how he was the son of Mary who asked that question, "How can this be?" when told of God's plan for her. Richardson asked at the end of her blog, "What questions are you asking this Lenten season?"
I realized that I'm not asking the same questions I've asked in the past. When I was a child, I asked myself the question that the Lenten service hymn asked over and over.."Where you there..?" It was a question that caused me sadness and guilt, to have sin, my sin, contribute to the death of Christ. Or the question that would come up with Lent was "What are you going to give up?" And although I come from a tradition that emphasizes again and again that we are saved by grace, not by works, it is difficult to shrug off the underlying belief that if I give something up, God will like me better if I do. There was a time in my life that I questioned whether or not to even observe Lent at all. What did it mean? Did God really send his Son to die? Was all this blood and torture and betrayal necessary to do God's work? What kind of God is this anyway?
I've come to accept the mystery of the cross, not fully understanding it, but knowing by faith rather than logic that it was glimpse of a love greater than I can comprehend. AND it followed the truth of all created life here on Earth: there will be birth, there will be death and then there WILL be new life, as plants grow, die and reseed, or 'born again' as Jesus said to Nicodemus, resurrected as we say at Easter.
The questions I ask this Lent aren't ones that cause me guilt or sadness or struggle with the story of Jesus' crucifixion. The questions I ask this year are about how I am willing to accept, or not accept, the totality of life as it is. How can I come to accept all parts of myself and live truer to how I was created? How can I accept my friends and family in all their beauty and problems and see God in it--letting things birth, letting things die, letting things come back to life in surprising ways I couldn't have predicted? How can I see God in this world so amazing in its creativity and yet so full of strife and death? How can come to trust and accept all that is, trusting that the mystery of the cross speaks to this as well?
There are 'ashes' in this Lenten season for me--things burned up and dead that I've had to release, or would like to release. There are many reminders to me, my recent birthday being one, that life on earth is so brief, and that one day I will be dust again.
But this Lent, I feel God's Spirit is moving me to an understanding my dust as stardust, part of a cosmos that turns in the cycle of birthing, dying and rebirthing. And to see it as God sees it and say, "It is good." Not in a way that denies pain, grief, struggle or even evil in the world, but in a way that understands the Creator and the intention for Love in all things, all persons and all circumstances-- a 'goodness' in knowing from the cross that Love underlies everything and trumps any other kind of power. However different this Lenten season is for me and even though it started without my knowing, I trust that it helped 'shake me up and wake me up' to something good--something being 'reborn' in me.