Life Anew

Today feels like a birthday, a day of new beginnings and possibility.  For more than two years I have lived with chronic leg pain that, for the last eight months, has kept me in my house mostly alone.  Being housebound was a surprising experience, not one I anticipated for my early sixties. It was hard and trying. Being cut off from friends and normal life experiences increased my sense of isolation and loss.


For most days I sat in a comfortable reading chair with my legs propped on the ottoman. My window on the world was three full length glass doors to the back yard where I watch robins skitter this morning after last night's rain and thunder.  I have seen the trees green, gold and bare. I have watched the days lengthen and shorten, the moon rise, wax and wane, the temperatures rise and fall, the hostas push, unfold, and die back. I have rested because I could not walk. I have listened to silence because the voices I love were not present. I have eaten alone, wondered and prayed, wept and whined, been broken and healed. For minute after hour after day after week I have waited and hoped for healing, for a return to active life.

And yet inside me, deep inside, was a relief, too, a relief for this pass from the daily chaotic scramble of my friends still in the working world. If I felt chosen for this pain, I also felt chosen for the gift of silence even though it was far more than I wanted. Because of my training in spiritual direction, I did not take this experience as purely a physical one. I have known that somehow this time would serve me even though I could not figure out why or how.

Today I feel like myself in more ways than I have for several years. After months of working with healers and sitting in solitude, I believe the healing has happened. I won't be running down the street or driving to DC but I believe I can walk again with out injury and that soon I will be driving myself and going places without someone to help me. I am grateful for those few who have stood with me, tended me body and spirit. I feel a surge of creative energy in my whole body, especially in my heart and hands. I want to bring forth beauty and love, compassion and creation. It is my time now. My time to live anew with more awareness of what matters to me, with less will and ego, with more true essence and less concern of what others might think. How grateful I am. How happy and thankful for this new day.

A Visit to an Art Museum

    The blunt shapes and colors: red, pink, blue, white, the big brown hands, the smoke of the train, the birds, the two women in their bright patterned dresses stir me. They say goodbye and my essence says hello.  I travel on the train, look out the windows to the backyards where families gather to listen to guitars played by men in railroad overalls. I sit on the porch with the family and look into Madeline’s lush gardens.  My hands ache with the work of the day in them and delight in the lift of a baby into my arms.  For several hours I move through the Mint Museum’s exhibition of Romare Beardon’s collages, and they take root in me.

     These images invite me to cut and paste, to paint and draw, to look out my own windows and create the vista with paper and glue.  I lean into the colors and shapes. I back away to see the views through windows in the kitchens of everyday people.  I wish I had come earlier so I could come again.

     We move to the yarns, weavings and textile creations of Sheila Hicks. Her use of yarn makes my hands want to hold thread and clothe. She gets me thinking. How can I create a piece with color and fiber? The large installations are too costly and big to consider. What could I do at home? Embroidery thread! Available in many available colors and inexpensive, the soft threads would be fun to work with. I promise myself that I will get some soon. I make a mental list of the creations I can feel on the tips of my fingers: collages, fiber sculpture, balls wrapped with ribbon and thread, lines of color side by side on white paper. My energy runs fast the whole day at the museum. An electric buzz permeates my skin and muscles, my heart smiles and my head says, “Create something. Soon.” Something is planted in me that I want to grow. The seeds have roots and I realize once again how important creativity is to my life. It makes me feel whole, open, at peace. It cultivates who I really am.

Notes from my journal      September 11, 2001

As I write this I am on a spiritual retreat. In the North Carolina mountains lies a small cabin tended by good-hearted creative people who offer a weeklong gift of shelter and quiet to writers of one kind and another. For days I have been sitting with my thoughts, observing the natural world, making music, drawing and practicing yoga, and writing, writing, writing.  This week is presented as a writing residency but for me this is a spiritual residency.  This week is seven days and nights to let my self speak, play, reflect and write in the company of no one else.  No distractions or television or radio or email. No voices other than my own greetings to Mr. Spider or the blue tailed skink who guards the deck steps. And of course, because the silence reigns here, I hear that inner voice. You know the one that we think of as our conscience, the one that guides our choices or actions. In this space I know that this voice comes not from me but from Spirit or God. It comes from that which lies within and beyond all that exists. 

Here I find myself at a time of the greatest turmoil in the history of modern America.  I am here when the hijacked planes destroy lives and buildings in NYC and our capitol. I am here at a time when few Americans have the privilege of isolation from the onslaught of facts, numbers, analysis, questions and constant discussion of every aspect of this horrific act against not just our people and country but against freedom and humanity worldwide. 

As a city dweller I am used to the activity and presence of people around me. Here I am totally alone.  The news of such a violent act and such widespread ramifications for our country and individual lives is unthinkable and frightening.  As darkness falls I notice fear creeping in.  I play chants of Hildegard von Bingham written in the 12^th Century. I read prayers out loud before bed and ask for safety and protection. I rely on my faith in God’s presence to quell my fears. I hear the voice of spirit urging me to write and to notice everything.  One morning I spend 1 hour with a black fly on the white page where I write. He walks the lines of my words as though he wants to know what I have to say.  And I know the sacredness of life in every molecule of my being.  Each day I awake in wonder that I am here on earth, here at the cabin dwelling among the trees and other living creatures.

My intention here is to be open to God, to fill myself and my days with creative acts that come through me into reality.  I know they come not from me but through me.  I feel the channel and honor the gift of my life as a vehicle for my unique expression of values, thoughts, and beliefs in this outer world. Here I am able to practice ways to live intentionally with Spirit. This is a week of Sabbath days kept in the presence and recognition of Spirit in my life.

Give thanks.

Listen to your inner voice

Keep your daily practice

Honor your creative process

Respect your relationship to the natural world.

Mother's Milk

I notice the tall thin rabbit most mornings. She has hopped around our gardens and yard for several years.  This morning I see her and then notice a small bounding creature coming toward the house. I think it hops strangely for a chipmunk, and then it turns to show me its bunny profile. It is tiny, smaller than my fist. Mother watches from a disinterested distance and the little one plops into the ivy.

At dusk I see Mother again as we clear the dinner table. I say, "I wish you could see the tiny bunny" at the same time that I see it in the grass! We ooh and ahh until it hops away. Mother nibbles grass on the path to the patio. I brush my teeth and am drawn to the window to the garden where I scan for any movement. Suddenly a bunny hops out from the opposite side of the path. I am confused because I saw the bunny go left and this is on the right. It hops under Mother who waits patiently, still.  So quickly that I almost miss it, the first bunny darts out and under her mother.  I call to my husband to come, "There are TWO bunnies!"  We watch from the dining room only seeing the mother but knowing the two are there under her. It hits us at the same moment. They are nursing! And then we see the smaller of the two, flipped on her back, white belly and underside of leg to the sky. The leg pumps and wiggles as she gets gets her evening meal, just like Thumper in Bambi. The whole scene is so peaceful and unreal. I know this happens all the time but right this moment it is in my view, in the cathedral of our trees and my heart soars with joy and gratitude.

In the Moment

April 17, 2011

Usually I arrive at the mountain house in the late afternoon, open the blinds and step onto the second story porch to survey the changes in the valley below. Typically it is only a few minutes before I notice myself breathing easier and sporting a ready smile for just about anything. Life here is relaxing, refreshing and spacious in all ways. 

But yesterday I arrived at noon. I had passed through driving rain of a huge system that spawned dozens of tornadoes in North Carolina and across the South. The wind was 55 mph, so I could not stand outside or pull open the porch doors. I was unsettled. I could not find the ease and release I am used to experiencing.  The internet and cable were still off from the winter, and the deluge overnight had left the fireplace wet and dripping, so I could not have a welcoming fire. I took Cheyenne for a walk along the raging Toe River, ate dinner and went to bed with a movie at 7:15 pm. I still was off my bearings.

When I woke this morning, something had shifted. I happily built a fire to heat the firebox and me, fixed hot cereal and tea, walked in the cold morning air and remaining blustery wind. I opened my collage basket to see what I might create. Creating a collage for my daughter-in-love made me smile. Throughout the morning, I gathered broken branches and twigs from our property to feed the fire and eliminate future disposal of them. I listened to podcasts of sermons from our church and drank more tea.

Later, when I move to the porch and speak with a friend, I realize that part of the reason it took me so long to settle is that here I have space and time to integrate what has been going on in my life.  And I just wasn’t quite ready. For the last two months I have lived more fully in the moment than I usually do. I have lived with others who needed my support. It has been a gift to be able to be present in the everyday lives of those I love who are facing big challenges.  What I realize is that when I live in the moment, I am able to be peaceful, calm and thoughtful about how and what I do and say. I can do that for weeks on end and it feels good. But at some point, I have to face and begin to integrate the totality of the situation.  Our daughter-in-love’s medical challenge is overwhelming and full of uncertainty. She has been courageous and strong through surgery and recovery, but the journey is not over and what lies ahead is daunting.

Yesterday I needed to let myself connect all the medical pieces of her situation and the emotional and psychological aspects for her, my son and for me.  It was not my brain doing this, it was my heart.  And my heart needs space. I could be physically in the moment, that comforting space usually so accessible to me here at the mountain house, but the rest of me needed to let it all sink in and come together however it could.  Today, I rest once again in the greening mountain and the dogwood blossoms dancing in the breeze. Although her life is changed, possibly forever, and the treatment is what everyone wants to avoid, although there is fear and uncertainty, a grim reality and suffering ahead, I am here, in this moment with the stone earth under my feet and the spring wind renewing my faith.

April 19, 2011

I lean into the soft cushion of my chair and consider the forty miles of mountain views beneath me. For most of the day, Cheyenne and my legs share the ottoman on the edge of the terrace where hundreds of iris leaves portend the indigo and white flowers to come.  A fat bronze lizard rustles through last year’s leaves. A small white butterfly and a black swallowtail join a bumblebee in the wild asters above the old stump on the slope.

I alternate reading Traveling with Pomegranates and writing in my journal. While I read, I stroke Cheyenne’s black back and head. I bathed her in the laundry sink this morning so she could air dry in the sun on the terrace floor. But we needed to be together, so I hoisted her onto the ottoman grateful for her presence.

Sue Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor fan my hopeful spirit. I love the book’s structure and the chance to consider two stages of women’s lives through such wise and honest hearts. I think about mothers and daughters as the mother of two sons. My heart holds my son’s wife. With five medical opinions, the news is grim. My son says they realize that the life they had and the one they were living into is no longer a possibility. When they try to return to work, it is evident that nothing is the same. They fear for her life and cannot comprehend how this is happening.  She is my daughter. While I learn to be a grandmother at the beginning of the last third of my life, she is just completing the first third of hers and cannot see much hope or joy ahead. I struggle to know how to support her. Like any mother, I want to make it better. I cannot.  All I can do is be present with her as she moves through this challenge and struggle.  All I can do is hold hope and faith when she cannot.