Telling stories

     Ospreys, White-throated Sparrows, the first Yellow-rumped Warbler, a Hermit Thrush, and soon the Monarch butterflies -- these small beings have traveled heroic journeys to return to this land we share, and I have been waiting for them. They have stories to tell, and I wish so much that I could understand them. 
     I love stories. Telling stories is  the way we share experiences, and if we listen with awareness, it is the way we build wisdom.  We tell stories around a dinner table, on a walk or bike ride with a friend, when meeting up for coffee or a beer. We listen, and a natural response to that listening is to respond with our own story.  
     But do we listen to ourselves? 
     Each of us has lived a life that is its own heroic journey. We have the jewels of our own inner wisdom in our life's stories. Sometimes they are buried, sometimes we just never looked at them clearly. A few we tell over and over. We are rich with beautiful stories. But we often need a little prodding, a supportive community, some structure, to help us bring those jewels out.
      When I first heard about Guided Autobiography (GAB), I recognized it was something I wanted to get involved in. A few months and an intensive training class later, I became a GAB instructor. I love that this way of guiding people to rediscover and tell their life's stories doesn't use timelines, but instead uses evocative themes. That you write in your own voice to tell the story, not to have a perfect product. That the group becomes close, and everyone listens to everyone else. That it's fun. That every person's life is rich with jewels of wisdom. And I love that I get to witness these stories every time I run a class.
     I am about to start a nine week class that runs Wednesday mornings from 9:30-11:30 at the Merrill Memorial Library in Yarmouth. The first class is April 27. A couple of openings remain: if you are interested in one of them, contact me directly or at guided(dot)memoir(at)gmail(dot)com. Cost is $150.
     Meanwhile, I'll head outside to listen to the bird songs. This is my favorite time of year, and I want to be in the midst of it all.
    
     

Surviving

     This is week two in which sorrow walks into our house, takes off its shoes, sits on the couch, eats dinner and goes to bed with us. Its darkness has substance, sometimes like a second skin, sometimes like a separate being, sometimes like an opaqueness that colors the river we swim in each day. Time is changing it, for me. I can look at it with less fear now. It is different for Andrew and Anna and Bob; they are managing it in their own ways.
      Ten days ago, a young woman in Andrew's class took her own life. She died from an illness for which she was being actively treated and supported: depression. Her many friends played different roles in keeping her afloat for as long as she lived, from laughing and playing soccer and hanging out with her as lights in her life, 
to those who were willing to get into the muck with her and help her swim back towards the light. They showed her the many ways she could, and did, access help for her illness. Her singular choice ten days ago when her illness overcame her instinct to survive drove spears of shock and pain through our community, with ripples well beyond. 
      The stickiest layer of sorrow I have been carrying comes from watching Andrew. Stripped to the core of who he is, he has become a rock for his dear friend who was one of the ones who repeatedly got into the muck to swim the girl to the light. This work, even born of love, is exhausting. In his love and grief and strength, he is exhausted. I am exhausted.
     And I am inspired. Anna and a large cohort of her classmates are responding with a conviction that illnesses like depression should come out of the closet, released from the stigma that keeps them hushed and hidden. When a friend is in pain from an illness like cancer, we support them with friendship, community, offers of assistance, and by educating ourselves about the illness and various treatment possibilities. Anna and her classmates are planning programs and events, within the school and out in the community, to talk about depression and other mental illnesses so that likewise when a friend is in need, they can ask for help and we can support them through the hard times.
     In my meditation this morning, a very helpful image came to me. It was of a bubble becoming detached from the bottom of a lake, and rising to float lightly on the surface. I decided to be that bubble, and to feel first the mud of sorrow around my feet, then wiggling them free, swimming up and feeling the substance of water around me, and finally breaking into the sunlight at the surface. I floated there, asking my memory to pull forward the smells of water and the feeling of the air's coolness as water droplets evaporated from my skin. Above me was blue sky and sunlight; all around me was the rim of the lake, where pine trees held the community of birds and squirrels and mink and moths and all that live, as I do; and beneath me was the lake's water holding me. Even the lake itself was held by the earth. Everything was there, the mud and the sunlight, and all life. 
     I offer this as a story that needs telling. It's my small way of helping to bring this illness into the fresh air. To say "I have an illness" takes courage, but less so if we understand that many people struggle, and we have company. We can be medicine for each other, if not always to cure, at least to relieve pain, and often to heal.
     There is no neat ending to this, no tidy wrapping up of a metaphor. But there is a way through it that flows with time, and I know it is easier when we walk each day open to the hard stuff, the beauty, the stories and each other.  

 

Spring's heart beat

     Anna's text came in yesterday afternoon: "I saw a turkey vulture!" My heart leaped.

     By now, if you've been following this blog, you know my  great joy when the first Turkey Vulture is spied. It means spring migration has started. I've been checking my birthday calendar where I keep track of signs of the season, marking a sighting (or sounding) on the date and accumulating data year after year. The earliest Turkey Vulture sighting I've had was February 17 in 2012. So I've been waiting.

     The other bird I've been listening for (usually for me its song precedes the visual) is the Red-winged Blackbird. The best way I can phonetically describe its song is a "bordl-a-dee" coming from the brown puffed cattails of a late winter marsh (the books say it is "conk-a-ree", but that doesn't work for me). Generally, male scouts arrive first to start setting up a territory. My birthday calendar records the first Red-wings arriving on February 26, and that was in 2002.
     Guess what I saw today, in my backyard, on and under the suet? A small flock of Blackbirds, male and female, mixed in with a grackle and some starlings!

    Be still my beating heart: spring is verifiably on its way, winging northward.

Talking with Mother

     About the time I got to the curve in the road, I realized it was a beautiful day. And I'd already been walking with the dogs for five minutes.
     "I love the brightness that the snow makes," I said aloud to no one in particular. My mind continued the thought inside. I actually do love it, everything is more cheerful. I never thought I'd love something about January. I've changed.
     And my mind began to wander off again. Except I caught it.

     When I talk out loud to "no one in particular", amazing things happen. Because "no one in particular" really is some thing. Call it my inner wisdom. Spirit. Often I talk with Mother Earth ("Mother" for short). When I started to do this, it was a practice to focus my attention on the present. But I began to get responses, almost faster than I could finish what I was saying. The responses come out of me, too. So if you were to invisibly tag along listening, it would sound like me reading a dialogue. There's no change in voice, I'm not channeling or anything. But what's coming out is insights, challenges to my old way of thinking, answers. 
     (This is where I acknowledge that this falls under the "crazy old bat" category for short-cut personality assessors. For many reasons, I don't think I'm crazy.)
     So this afternoon, I caught my wandering mind and brought it back as I came in sight of the clam flats shimmering in front of the low winter sun, and rose hips necklacing my view of the hayfields like red pearls. 
     "Mother, where to begin? I begin -- and end -- with gratitude. Thank you for the rose hips, the sunlit day, the chickadees' songs..."
     Mother was quiet today. I wasn't asking for anything, I didn't need a response. But I was focused on what was in front of me, little and big, visible and invisible, and this was changing me from who I was when I left the house. When I reached the causeway, I paused to let the dogs sniff where the clammers load their trucks (usually there's something disgustingly tempting for a lab there), and then I turned and walked home. By the time I got back to the curve in the road, I had ended my conversation by using the words of Sharon Salzburg's loving kindness meditation to ask Mother for blessing for all creatures. I walked quietly, totally present to where I was, happy. 
     And then I looked down. I had to laugh. Mother had responded, but I didn't think it would be in the asphalt of our old road.

Counting Down to Change

     I flexed my fingers. The clock on the screen was counting down. These were old muscles, the ones that got me great seats for rock concerts back in the day: U2, Bonnie Raitt, Crosby Stills & Nash, the Allman Bros. I don't like Ticketmaster, but I knew it would be faster than talking with someone on the phone.

     The clock came to 0:00. The screen blinked, a wheely-thing spun for 30 seconds, and then the button came up that said “Purchase Tickets”. Two minutes later, I had them. 

     I've been to lots of concerts, mostly the Grateful Dead (ok, now I'm out of the closet – but what an awesome closet). These days I'm pretty choosy. I don't want to see a performer that sounds like s/he is sticking to the packaged goods. I want some improvisation, some in-the-moment, elevating, unpredictable beam of light into a way of being that has nothing to do with our every-dayness.  

     Sounds kind of religious, I guess. I prefer the word “spiritual”. Music can do that. So can certain people. 

     And that is what brought me back to Ticketmaster yesterday morning. Now I gleefully have in my hot little hands two tickets to the sold out appearance of His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama of Tibet at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His topic: “A Force for Good.” 

     What has changed? Me? Absolutely, and still at it. The world? Yes. I believe so. And still at it.

     Now, if only I can get tickets to see the Pope...

 

Taking stock

Steam lifts off my morning tea.
A robin sings its insistent curling song.
Dawn's light is growing.
A phoebe, no two, begin calling.
Anna is safe. She has finished her three-week hike. Climbed 
    Mount Whitney. She is coming home.
Spiderwebs in the tall grass are white with dew.
A door closes next door. A dog barks. The sheep bleat.
I pull the blanket closer around me.
A catbird mews.
The sweet tea warms me.
My dear friend, Teacher to my soul, will let the cancer take her 
    this time. She will move on.
The sun's first light glints through the trees.
A song sparrow, perched atop the willow, sings into the day.

Perfect timing

     This is the time of abundance.

     I found myself sitting on an overturned white bucket Tuesday morning, all alone in a field of blueberries. It was cool, slightly foggy. Nothing moved. That kind of air stifles noise; no far off road sounds or airplane sounds or distant chainsaw whines made it through the stillness. Everything was muted.
     Against that grayness, color started to emerge. My eyes focused on blue, the hazy blue of lowbush blueberries. And how amazing the berries are this year! They're packed on stems so heavy they lay on the ground. Fat and round. I've never seen them like this. I hardly had to move for an hour. Bent over in the cool damp, my eyes moved from blue to blue, and my mind quieted with the calm of a repeated task.
     And then the sound colors began to emerge. First the birds. Barn swallows – oh how I've missed them since they left our barn. A white-throated sparrow over the edge of the hill – one of my favorite birds. A robin in the garden below. The high-pitched “zeee zeee” of cedar waxwings, who always travel in a group – these landed in a birch tree close to me, and then dropped down to glean berries as well.
     I noticed the ground bees next. One or two flew in and hovered near me, their buzz alerting me, and I watched placidly until they flew off, or dropped into the berries. Actually, it wasn't into the berries, it was into a small hole in the ground, a little dirt cave near me. One would drop to the lower edge, then walk in. Just a few seconds later, it – or perhaps another bee – would walk out and fly off. They didn't seem to mind me, and I didn't mind them. I picked right around their hole, peaceful on my bucket.
     Everybody is feeding now, including me. Besides the berries, there are mosquitoes and flies and beetles and crickets and butterflies and moths and ants – all food for the young birds that, now fledged, are voraciously learning to hunt. Back at home, as I sort through my own gleanings for jam-making and freezing, I watch groups of juvenile catbirds, phoebes, waxwings and crows hop and dart and swoop through the crab apple tree and over the wet grass of my back yard, catching insects.

     This is all so perfectly timed. There is so much food here. There is so much life. Even the mammals are eating, usually at night, and I only see what they leave behind.
     In a month or so, there will be apples and hawthorns and rose hips and nuts instead. I like the berry-and-insect time. I like working quietly among the bees and the young birds. I'm so grateful that I slowed down enough to notice. I see it everywhere now, and feel part of it.