Author: admin

To see our lives as a story fills us with a passion for the possible and gives us access codes for a new range of possibilities for new life.  (Unknown)

We must pay a price for every freedom we earn, every choice we make, every obstacle we either face or turn from.  (Unknown)

Otters and seals have always fascinated me; I always thought if I were to be an animal, either of those two would be a fine choice, mostly because they seem to have such an exceptionally good time playing, apparently almost all the time.  They have some fascinating habits, too.  Ringed seals who live under the ice chew chimneys or holes in the ice in several different places since they have to surface to breathe about every seven to nine minutes or so, (altho’ in an emergency they can submerge for up to 20 minutes).  A series of such passages is kept open for breathing holes and for exits onto the ice.  If those seal holes are blocked, or if a predator awaits on the surface at the breathing hole, imagine the terrible vulnerability for a seal in that moment.

What it made me think of is how often this occurs in the human realm as well, how often those things that are life-giving are not accessible to us, how for so many of us, our own metaphoric seal holes are blocked.  And all too often, they are blocked by either ourselves out of our fear, or someone in our lives who cares about us, who is well-meaning, and good-hearted, but doesn’t really  accept who we are, who would change us if they could, “for our own (and usually their) good.”

Resolve today not to sit on anyone else’s “seal-hole.”  And may we all stay off of our own as well!

The goldenrod is yellow, the corn is turning brown, the trees in apple orchards, with fruit are bowing down.  (Helen Jackson)

The old apple tree that stands at the edge of the forest is bearing its usual ample autumn supply of cedar-rusted apples, but the deer don’t know or care that the apples are of the wizened, wormy, gnarly type; they love’em, and will go to great lengths to get them off the tall branches of the unpruned tree.  Nor do they care that Hank and I are watching them from the front porch; it’s apple time!  I imagine that they’ve dreamed of this all winter and summer, and now it’s time to party!

And I can understand.  What can compare with the fresh, crisp crunchy sweetness of an apple straight off the tree.  Maybe the apple pudding my Cajun in-laws used to make?  Here’s the recipe if you’d like to try it:

Heat 1 cup of brown sugar, 1 tbsp cornstarch (dissolved in a bit of water), 1/4 cup butter, and 1 cup of water, cooking over low heat until thickened; pour into sprayed baking dish.  Stir together 1 1/2 cups flour, 2 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp salt, 2/3 cup brown sugar.  Mix in 1/4 cup melted butter, 1/2 cup milk, and 2 1/2 cups sliced apples mixed with 1/3 cup or so of brown sugar.  Add mixture to baking dish and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.  (if you’re not a Cajun or a deer, adjust the sugar to taste.  And it’s better after it’s cold and aged for a day.)

 

 

. . . Where every road is another blessed memory, a new experience to carry inside my journey. . . (Chief Brynjulson)

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.  (Unknown)

At least once a week my sister and I take a meandering back-roads car ride.  Whoever is driving that week gets to choose the route, and we have only two criteria:  one is to find a road that we have never been on before, and the other is to find a “church in the valley by the wildwood.”  It usually turns out to be a journey into time — the nostalgia and sweetness of discovering old places we’d forgotten about, or the amazed delight of finding new places about which we hadn’t known.  Since we’ve been doing this for some time, we’re pretty familiar with many of the back roads in the area, so our search for unknown roads has pushed us to explore some far-from-the-beaten-track kinda places.  We’ve ended up on some mountain trails with grass growing down the middle and right sharp drop-offs, forded lotsa streams, turned around (maybe I should say “inched” around) in some dead-end spots, and found potholes which had no bottom.  We’ve discovered old spas from the early 1900s, hidden communes, more derelict farms than we can count, beautiful hidden lakes and streams, cathedral forests, fields full of emus, peacocks parading across deserted dirt roads, and what we’re sure are likely many “safe houses” inhabited by probable spies.  Always we return home with a big ol’ sigh of relief and a renewed sense of how much incredible beauty and wonder there is in this world.

For us it has been worship in the truest sense of the word:  awe, appreciation, gratitude, laughter, wonder, hope, and a sense of truly having been in the Presence.  I recommend it highly!  — to anyone, but particularly if you are ever in need of a bit of refreshment for your spirit.

Happy Trails!

Mercy, mercy me, things ain’t what they used to be.  (Marvin Gaye)

Lord, keep my memory green.  (Charles Dickens)

My sister, who volunteers at our local historical museum, tells me that the next special exhibit is to be one on “old houses.”  As I drive our back roads and see houses that are no longer lived in, that are being reclaimed by nature, I imagine the rich lives that once were lived here, the memories that still float through the hallways, the history that these houses witnessed.  It’s hard for me to let them go; it hurts somehow, and I have a longing for them to be honored.

I was eight years old when this song came out in 1954; I learned it by heart, and even now I remember all the words to it.  I know what it means to me now, in the dawn of my senior years; I wonder what it meant to me then.

This old house once knew my children
This old house once knew my wife
This old house was home and comfort
As we fought the storms of life
This old house once rang with laughter
This old house heard many shouts
Now it trembles in the darkness
When the lightning walks about . . .
This old house is gettin’ shaky
This old house is gettin’ old
This old house lets in the rain
This old house lets in the cold
This old house is afraid of thunder
This old house is afraid of storms
This old house just blows and trembles
When the night comes after dawn . . .
This old house is getting fragile
This old house is in need of paint
Just like me it’s starting to die
I’m getting ready to meet the saints . . .

Ain’t gonna need this house no longer
Ain’t gonna need this house no more
Ain’t got time to fix the shingles
Ain’t got time to fix the floor
Ain’t got time to oil the hinges
Nor to mend no window pane
Ain’t gonna need this house no longer
I’m getting ready to meet the saints . . .

(abbreviated, by Stuart Hamblen, sung by Rosemary Clooney)

 

Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.  (Herman Hesse)

I grew up with parents who held onto and saved everything.  And we’re not talkin’ big things; we talkin’ pieces of string, miscellaneous scraps of fabric, hunks of wire, tangles of twisty-ties.  Because — wait for it:  you never knew when you were gonna need it.  And you know, holding onto stuff worked, it was handy — my mom once created a whole fence for her cabin yard with pieces of string and sticks — kept the deer outa her garden and her dog from chasing said deer, by cracky.

I think I’ve whined before in these pages about a pesky sinus infection that, like an unwelcome guest, has moved in and shows no signs of departing.  My fantasy is that I am holding onto something in my head that it would be better if I let go of.  I’ve got lots of ’em, probably a lot more than I’m aware of — old grudges, negative thinking, sadnesses I could let go of, bizarre worries that plague me (I should do a blog about those sometime . . .) — makes for a rather “stuffed-up” head.

Indeed it does.  Just let go, my friend.

Be not forgetful to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing, some have entertained angels unawares.  (Hebrews 13:2)

Mystery came into our lives at Christmas time shortly after my husband died, a scrawny, half grown feral cat discovered comatose and almost frozen on the road leading to our house.  I wondered at the time if he had sent her to distract me from my grief that first Christmas.

My sister and I thought she would surely die, but a few hours on a heating pad brought her round, literally. All she could do was walk in bewildered circles for days.  She appeared to be blind, and was obviously brain damaged.  We thought she had perhaps been hit by a car, because we couldn’t see how she would have survived for any length of time in the wild in the shape she was in.  She knew nothing of litter boxes or traditional cat food, and was terrified of us, and very sick to boot. I worked with her for a couple of days, but had started to despair of her ever being able to live anything approaching a normal life.  Lying in bed on Christmas Eve morning, I  was seriously thinking I might have to have her put down before the long Christmas weekend made vet care impossible.  But this was the day Mystery decided to live; when I went to her room that morning, I found that she had used her litter box for the first time (how had she ever even found it in her bewildered, dazed condition?) and had begun to eat; she even let me begin to touch her that day.

And so Mystery became one of the farm gang, an indoor member since her maladies made going outside pretty hazardous.  She became “Mystery” since none of us, including the vet, quite ever understood exactly what was going on with her.  Within a short time, she ended up with a broken tail which had to be amputated, and developed seizures for which she had to take phenobarbital daily . . . which in turn led to terrible kitty constipation (and little pellets dropped at random) and lotsa zoned-out napping.

And over time Mystery, with all her disabilities and maladies, became a beautiful star! Her personality was a sweet and loving one, appealing to humans and non-threatening to her animal companions.  She became very playful, making up her own games, romping and leaping about with blind abandon and enthusiasm, and somehow searching out her favorite toys.  She was smart in her own funny and endearing ways, and the other cats cared for her tenderly (and I could swear, sometimes with amazement).

She graced our lives for thirteen years before she crossed that rainbow bridge, and we’ll remember her always, the Mystery that came to visit on that cold bleak Christmas when I didn’t know where I was going to find the courage to keep on keeping on.

 

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine . . .

And if everyone lights just one little candle, what a bright world it will be . . .

The state of the world is probably no worse than it has ever been, and is likely even a bit better than it has been during much of our history.  But it’s gettin’ me down, maybe the result of a sinus infection that won’t leave.  The news seems truly wretched, tacky even, and for a Southerner, that’s saying a lot.  I try to avoid it whenever possible.  My husband is a news junky, and deeply concerned about our current political situation, so whenever I pass by his den (TV on), I move quickly, eyes averted and ears cocked in another direction.  Ole Hank has picked up on my aversion, and huddles his bulk by my chair in another room, hiding in the shadows from something he is picking up on as truly fearsome.  Maybe we should trust more in the wisdom of our dawgs.

During my indoctrination in church school, summer Bible school, weekday religious education, the whole nine yards of my benign Protestant upbringing, (which I loved, both as a student and teacher in our small country church), the two refrains above figured largely in the songs we would sing, accompanied of course by appropriate motions.  They sunk into the fibers of my soul, and I still believe ’em to my very core.

Let’s be about the business of lighting candles, no agenda other than holding a simple light . . .

In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength, but through perseverance.  (H. Jackson Brown)

Seems like it’s rained all summer, and now we’re into fall and it’s continuing.  The ground oozes water when you walk across a field. Should it keep on into winter, we’re in for some mighty snowy scenes.

I recently found this small passage in a travel book by Andrea Sutcliffe about the area in which we live:  . . . the many caves and underground streams in the area took shape when drainage water dissolved the limestone.  Over the years, residents of some areas have reported hearing the sound of rushing water beneath their homes after a heavy rain.  There have also been reports of local people tapping sticks or poles into the ground and then watching them either disappear or descend to as far as 16 feet below the surface.

When we built our house 40 years ago, our eighty-plus year old builder dowsed for water, finding an underground stream easily.  My fantasy is that after all this rain, the ground water level is likely so high that we’ll easily hear that “sound of rushing water beneath” our house!  That would be cool.  I’m gonna keep my ears cocked.

And keep the joe-boat ready . . .

Books are a uniquely portable magic.  (Stephen King)

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.  (Eliot)

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.  (Marten)

I just finished a whole buncha beach reading.  Yeah!  Reading might be a necessity for students, a pastime for a retired person, a pleasure for many, but an exquisite joy for a confirmed bibliophile.  I love books.  The best birthday present I ever got was a whole six Nancy Drew books when I was about nine — I have never felt richer in my life since then.

Now while the reader may be thinking that’s a sad thing, let me hasten to reassure you it’s not.  As a child, reading a book under the covers at night by flashlight was a magic carpet and a passport to adventure that has lasted a lifetime.  I was right there with Nancy and George and Bess, tramping on Larkspur Lane, and discovering the Secret in the Old Clock.

Reading not only stirs our imagination, it amuses us, it stimulates our thinking and emotion, widens our mind and our heart, gives us spiritual, intellectual and sensual satisfaction, satisfies our curiosity.  We relive the past; we create the future.  It can take us away from an unpleasant reality into the world of imagination.  Just look at the gleam in the eye of the reader, the furrow of the brow, hear the explosive laughter . . .

Anyway, I probably don’t need to convince you of all that, not if you’re reading this.  My very favorite books right now are those that are laugh-out-loud funny.  One of those from awhile back was Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, a book that I read once on a long solitary train trip, so funny that my usually inhibited self forgot herself to the extent that I was snorting and guffawing and laughing out loud until it hurt.  It is about a zany buffoon of a main character in violent revolt against the entire modern age, a mammoth misfit imprisoned in a world of Greyhound buses and Doris Day movies; the author died too soon; it is his only novel.

Another is a series of books by Betty McDonald from the late 1930s-40s, the best of which I found to be The Plague and I, the true account about her experience in a tuberculosis sanatorium — it should say a lot that a book about a terribly serious illness is that funny.  And the Alabama sisters in the more recent cozy mysteries of Anne George are delightful.

Oh, read on, dear readers!!  So much is waiting for you.

 

You cannot know yourself until you know the weather and the country that surround you, the trees and rocks and animals, as well as the people that keep you company.  Our identities are formed and constantly reformed in relationship with everything else in our experience.  (Kathleen Norris)

I’m always amazed at how the place, the particular landscape where we find ourselves can speak to us, can tell us about ourselves — who we are, why we’re here, where we’re going.  There are thousands, maybe millions of things happening in any one landscape in any one moment, and those particular things that we actually see, tell us a lot about ourselves.  The way we perceive the personal landscape where we are at this minute is our story.

Right now I’m at the seashore.  As I experience this place, I see the beaches littered with storm debris, I smell the mucky aroma of rotting plant life and the occasional dead fish washed on shore, I’m aware of how messy it is, of the raucous calls of the gulls overhead and the occasional brilliant flash of a songbird’s wing.  There are thousands of other things I could be attending to in this landscape, but in this moment, this is what I am aware of, this is my story at this moment.

And so I acknowledge those parts of me that are “messy,” “littered” by past storms or traumas in my life, those parts of me that feel dead, that are rotting, smelly.  Conversely I also acknowledge that part of me that is the incredible beauty of the flash of the cardinal’s wing.

This is a gift:  To let the place where we are speak to us, to let it tell you about yourself — to find ourselves inside things, living in every tree, in the murmuring of the little creek flowing into the bay, the call of the birds, the crash of the waves, the small tracks of the crabs, the holes the clams have dug, the sunlight that filters through the clouds . . .  To let ourselves know that we are not in this place by accident or coincidence at this moment in our lives. . .   To allow nature to be the crucible of change.  This process can resurrect disowned parts of us, can lead to a more whole and integrated life.  Our surroundings have a story to tell us that just may save our lives, or at the very least, greatly enrich it.