Author: admin

As a young pastor in a rural community, I participated in a community Easter service where the hymn Low in the Grave He Lay was being sung.  To my pompously theological, liturgical and musical ears, it seemed the worst kind of hymnic schmaltz. I couldn’t wait for it to end.  As it ended, an old farmer standing next to me turned to me, his face wet with tears, and said,  “Pastor, isn’t that the most beautiful hymn you ever heard?”  My shame knew no bounds, and I learned that morning that meaning, like beauty, like most things, lies in the ears, eyes, and heart of the beholder, the singer, the listener.  (Craig)

On Sunday mornings, we celebrate my hens’ over-enthusiastic laying by scrambling up masses of their eggs for whoever’s there (you’re invited), and chowing them down while listening to Andy Griffith, Tennessee Ernie Ford, or Wintley Phipps belt out old country and gospel hymns.  We sing along, and I’m transported back in time to the tiny Methodist country church that I grew up in, a prototype for “There’s a Church in the Valley by the Wildwood,”  “no  lovelier spot in the dale.”

As a child, those old hymns sank deep into my very being, and these many years later, I can still remember all the words to all the hymns, even though now I find it difficult to remember my own phone number.  Vivid memories of a chubby five year old, earnest little face turned up toward the picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane that hung in the front of the church, loudly shouting out the words to the old hymn “Rescue the Perishing,” (only to my five year old sensibility, the words I shouted out were “Rescue the parachute, care for the dying . . .” which I thought, still do, made a lot more sense) .  . . To me the hymns were rich stories of daring adventures, brave and courageous explorers, daring deeds, people in trouble ( all those “tossing billows” and “raging tempests”). And you know what?  They still move me deeply, and at the end, may I be blessed enough to be ushered into the Mystery with the words when peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul, ringing in my ears.

I may not interpret the hymns quite so literally as I once did, but lyrics such as “I come to the garden alone;”  “abide with me, fast falls the eventide, the darkness deepens . . .;”  “shall we gather at the river, where bright angel feet have trod . . .;”  still have the power to move me deeply, especially since after almost 72 years, I realize what it means to be “alone” in the garden; I know how it feels to experience the “darkness” deepening; and I realize the exquisitely sharp poignancy of imagining once again being at the “river” with those I’ve loved and lost.

So many of the hymns that I love because I grew up singing them have been and are being discarded or re-worded (some might say watered-down, made more politically correct), because they are too militaristic, too exclusively male, or theologically questionable according to modern trends. And I guess that’s okay. You sure don’t want anybody offended in church. Do we?  What if (magical words, ‘what if’) lyrics like “onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war,” meant being fierce in embracing all others, regardless of differences, with tenderness, reconciliation, and love?

Perhaps hymns-as-story-and-poetry are a better medium to hear, to hear and even celebrate this music as demonstrative of the wonderful and awesome absurdity of our faith. Spirit comes to us in a myriad of ways, and that’s okay.  I know people have been deeply hurt or wounded within the church — consider the fact that we even have “Just As I Am” Recovery/Support groups (for those of you not from a more fundamental persuasion, “Just As I Am” is an old and rather emotionally-manipulative “invitational” hymn, often sung at the end of revival services).  Literal interpretations can sometimes cause a great deal of pain.

Perhaps sometimes we mistake metaphor for reality.  Consider as an example, hymn singing in the lives of African American slaves, who used their music not only as an expression of deep and sustaining faith, but to express their values and solidity, and at times as a strategy to communicate in their struggle for freedom.  If a slave heard this song:  “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home . . .,” he or she would know he had to be ready to escape, as a “band of angels” were coming to take him to freedom.

As for me, my love affair with hymns will always be about Story.  I can’t begin to share the words to all these hymns here, but look them up sometime ( or maybe you even remember them), and let yourself marvel at the stories implicit in their lyrics — stories that have to do with our journeys,  both inner and outer — even the titles tell a story:  Abide With Me; Blest Be the Tie That Binds; God Be With You Til We Meet Again; I Come To the Garden Alone; Master the Tempest is Raging  (now there’s a great one depicting the journey inward with lyrics like “with anguish of spirit, I bow in my grief today”); Count Your Blessings;    Rescue the Perishing; Shall We Gather at the River; Blessed Assurance and on and on.

When I was a child, my sister and I would sit for hours at the old upright piano, belting out hymns, (and if Mother wasn’t listening, sheet-music favorites of a slightly questionable nature like Pistol Packin’ Mama).  The following few lyrics are from one that we didn’t know about then, but one of the ones that I have grown to love.  Perhaps the writer meant the evocative descriptive phrases to speak of heaven, but for me, it is a “story” of possibility, of what could be, both in the outer world, and within each one of us:

. . . I saw the holy city beside the tideless sea; the light of God was on the streets, the gates were opened wide, and all who would might enter, and no one was denied.  

 

 

 

 

Perhaps human beings live best when they remember that they live inside a natural order, that the land includes us and all our schemes and creations, and that when we begin to imagine our lines of kinship and our bonds of responsibility extending out, beyond ourselves and our human families and our nation to the many forms of life and intelligence that comprise our home place, then it is that we will learn how to behave well, not only at home, not only in human society, but as inhabitants of the earth.  (Mark Tredinnick)

We were told by the Creator, This is your land.  Keep it for me until I come back.  (Thomas Banyana, Hopi elder)

Derecho, polar vortexes, bomb cyclones, blizzards, ice storms, straight line winds of hurricane force magnitude — all have taken their toll on the woods in which we live, and in recent years the forest has, in numerous areas, collapsed in on itself.  I have marveled at the phenomenon, and agonized over what to do about it.  Caught in the ambiguity of, on one hand wanting to be a good steward of the land and do what’s necessary to care for it, and on the other, very aware that the forest as a whole is a living organism which, left in its wildness, provides a rich habitat, and will eventually find its own balance.  What to do?

I’m also very aware that I do not live on this 35 acres alone.  Possums, raccoons, deer, bears, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, moles, mice — probably more than two dozen species of birds from wild turkeys, great blue herons, and pileated woodpeckers to juncos, cardinals, sparrows, finches.  Insects abound.  Turn over any rotting log or clump of decaying leaves and you’ll expose a host of wriggling invertibrates.  A microscope would reveal even more — mites and spiders, tiny algae and mold, bacteria whose job it is to perforate, ferment, digest, and otherwise transform all the vast residue and waste of my fallen forest into nutrients.  How do I serve them, also?

What I do know is that I don’t want to repeat the mistakes and injustices that have been done to this land in the past.

I think Native Americans must have been eternally optimistic.  Between 1778 and 1868, tribes signed 370 treaties with the United States government, each one violated and invalidated almost as soon as it was agreed to.  At the end of those 90 years, the original Americans retained only about 200,000 square miles. The whites had taken by force or been given treaty rights to about three million square miles of land. Native Americans were herded onto reservations.

The following words of Chief Seattle of the Duwamish League of Puget Sound to President Franklin Pierce in response to an offer to exchange a large area of land for a reservation are probably familiar to most of us, and serve as a haunting and poignant reminder today:  Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. . . We are part of the earth and it is a part of us. . . The earth is our mother . . . Whatever befalls the earth befalls us . . . We did not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand on it . . . Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves .  . .

Perhaps the Native American understood what we latter Americans only began to comprehend later: that the land is never owned, but only held in trust.  And now as I walk this land which is in my trust and smell the pungent aroma of the cut cedars, see the destroyed wildlife habitats, wonder whether these changes that I’ve chosen to make are truly necessary, I am keenly aware of what biologist George Haskell refers to as the ‘songs of trees,’ the way they speak:  whispering pines, falling branches, crackling leaves, the steady hum that can buzz through a forest.  And of what a friend recently told me about research demonstrating below-ground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate underground inter-tree communication and interaction, allowing the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism, with “mother-trees” managing information flow. This interconnectedness and exchange is communication, albeit in a language that is alien to us.  Some researchers are even speculating that trees are not competitors that struggle against each other, for light, for space, but rather seem to have some investment in keeping other trees alive, with mother trees being connected to hundreds of other trees, sending excess carbon to other root systems and seeds through this underground network.

As this forest is being “repaired,” I think of all these things, and what I have chosen to do hurts, at the same time it feels necessary.  The ambiguity of life sometimes feels too much to hold.  I am so pulled to want to believe in the either-or, the good or the bad, the right or the wrong choice, when all the time I know in my heart that the natural order of things holds both-and, that life is circular, and that all will be well.  I hope my heart can convince my mind.  Or maybe vice-versa.

And every day, we directly experience the love of the animals with whom we share our lives — love without reservation, judgment, or expectation.  The animals by our side don’t care what we look like, how successful we are, whether we are fat or thin, rich or poor. They simply love us . . . Unconditional love that never doubts our motives, neither wavering nor withdrawing.  Adult humans, on the other hand, complicate love.  We tend to love ambivalently. Our love comes mixed with other emotions:  lack of trust, fear of loss of control, hesitancy to expose our vulnerability, doubt, and a resistance to relinquishing our own self-interest.  Animals can teach us about love, about becoming vulnerable, and about leaving doubt behind.  (Mary Lou Randour in Animal Grace)

Spice first came into my life when a distressed friend, who bred Siamese cats, called with the news that her youngest cat had just delivered six kittens and had no milk to feed any of them. Could I please look after Spice while she attempted to save the kittens?

When Spice, an undersized but beautiful Seal-Point arrived, I soon learned why it was necessary to separate her from the kittens. She was a diminutive ball of concentrated and distraught energy, flying about the living room with shrieking wails of protest, outraged at being in a strange place, and separated from her babies. Finally exhausted, she took refuge in the empty fireplace, rejecting any overtures on my part, and refusing food and water.

When at last I managed to gently touch her, I noticed that she appeared to be letting some milk down. I called my friend and suggested that we try reuniting Spice with one kitten to see if she could support it. Sugar arrived shortly thereafter, a tiny white slug, no longer than three inches. Spice appeared to be frantic with relief, immediately taking Sugar into the nest I had prepared for them, and keeping us all at bay with bared fangs and hissed warnings.

Attempts to introduce any of the other kittens met with Spice’s overwrought rejection. She bent the entire force of her will, which was considerable, into nurturing Sugar. As a result, Sugar spent most of her kittenhood in an over-fed state of somnambulence. She remained a slug, but now a very fat white slug. Spice dragged her all about the house with her, never willing to be parted for a moment. It was always a shock to awaken in the night and find them nestled in bed between my husband and me.

Only as Sugar’s velvety brown seal points began to emerge did she seem to gain personality of her own, a sweet, compliant, very loving one, in sharp contrast to her excitable and demanding mother.

Similarly fierce in protecting their territory from our other cats (who left them strictly alone), they remained very attached to each other and to me. Should I ever need protection, I thought, I would put Sugar and Spice, their eyes glinting a vicious and alarming red in the dark, at the head of my vanguard.

They spent their lives restlessly roaming the farm. Spice would often climb to sit on the very peak of the roof, from which height she would regale the countryside with Siamese tales and warnings. Sugar was usually to be found dozing in the sun.

When Sugar was ten, we noticed that she suddenly appeared to be both deaf and blind, although otherwise physically fit. Perhaps a stroke, the vet said, and because she still seemed to have such an appreciation of life, we could not bear to put her down.

Spice cared for Sugar more gently, more protectively, and more carefully than ever. They were hardly ever separated. Spice had even abandoned her top-of-the-house caterwaulings to restlessly prowl the perimeter as Sugar dozed in the sun, returning to touch noses with her frequently.

What did they say to each other, I wondered. Did Spice reassure Sugar that, although the world might be dark and silent, she was not alone?  Or was that relationship perhaps blessed with extensions of the senses, and powers of communication of which I cannot begin to dream?

 

So many people get involved with carrying grudges and having these moral battles with people, where they cast themselves as the righteous one, and the other guy is the dirtbag.  They waste tons of energy on it, create all kinds of darkness around themselves and the other person.  It gets you nothing.  (Stephen Cannell)

My last few blog-gy reflections had to do with shadow, that bag full of stuff we carry behind us that we are only vaguely (if at all) aware of.  Mostly I’ve talked about the good stuff that’s probably in that bag, stuff that we are, and that we could be, stuff that as yet has never had a chance for life.  And how good is that, to get more conscious of the good stuff?!

The not-so-good stuff?  Ah, a different matter, keep that inside, try not to look at it yourself, and for sure, try not to let other people see it.

My first husband was a Cajun from the swamps of southeast Louisiana, that wonderful, wacky group of alligator-wrestling people who call themselves “coon-asses,” and are some of the most open, loving, and crazily impulsive people I’ve ever met.  He taught me a saying, one that unfortunately was/is highly applicable to me ‘n my shadow:  “to have a case of the ass for ____ ,” referring of course to “holding a grudge.”

Meet Me, the ole original grudge-slinging, self-righteous one, out for Justice and maybe a little revenge — of course, Justice as I sees it — having a case of the ass for a lot of stuff!

As a child, my favorite book was The Count of Monte Cristo, which probably says a lot.  Revenge is everywhere in The Count of Monte Cristo.  No matter what the situation, no matter who is speaking, it lurks in the corners, propelling the story along.  The epic addresses the interplay between justice, revenge, jealousy, greed, power, and transformation, all great fodder for the arena of shadow.

Maybe I could lay some of my less admirable grudge-y self at the door of my culture — we are a grudge-happy people, we Scotch-Irish.  Oh, we like to say “it’s over and done with, forget it,” or as my grandmother used to say, ” I forgive her, but I don’t forget it, and I hope a fox bites her.”  But it’s just a way of keeping silent on whatever issue is in front of us — and that silence doesn’t bring peace.  It can bring centuries-long feuds.

It’s a journey, this forgiveness thing.  Self-righteous indignation and anger feels good to chew on, except it only gets bigger and more unwieldy in your mouth, like what my sister and I call “booger-meat.” I often keep on chewing on it, holding that grudge because I don’t want to let the other person off the hook, but who’s really hooked? — the one who’s moved on or the one left with all that booger-meat in her mouth . . .

 

 

Just as the shape of a leaf is determined by the absent spaces, maybe the missing bits and the misfortunes of our lives are actually the blessings that make us the wonderful and peculiar people that we are.  (Author unknown)

 

Once upon a time there was a water-bearer who carried two large pots on a yoke across his shoulders up the hill from the river to his master’s house each day. One had a crack and leaked half its water out each day before arriving at the house. The other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water after the long walk from the river.

Finally, after years of arriving half-empty and feeling guilty, the cracked pot apologized to the water-bearer.  It was miserable.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t accomplish what the perfect pot did.”

The water-bearer said,  “What do you have to apologize for?”

“After all this time, I still deliver only half my load of water.  I make more work for you because of my flaw.”

The man smiled and told the pot,   “Take note of all the beautiful flowers growing on the side of the path where I carried you.  The flowers grew so lovely because of the water you leaked.  There are no flowers on the perfect pot’s side.”

 

Many times as I sat with a client in deep pain, I felt like the cracked pot, bombarded by a sense of inadequacy and helplessness in the face of the pain and suffering in the world.  Added to that was the inevitable experience of being human myself, with all of my own personal issues, my “cracks.”  How could I claim to be a helper, let alone a healer?  How could I give support or encouragement or share out of any personal wisdom I had when I was so aware of my own shortcomings?

What I came to find over time was that all of us are wounded, some more grievously than others.  And it can be that out of our deepest pain can come our deepest compassion, empathy, and wisdom, and the capacity to give what we have into the world.

Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering.  There is a crack in everything.  That’s how the Light gets in.  (Leonard Cohen)

There are at least five effective pathways for traveling inward to gain insight into the composition of our shadow:  1) soliciting feedback from others as to how they perceive us, 2) looking at what we might be projecting onto others, 3)  examining our “slips” of the tongue and behavior, and looking at what is really happening when we are perceived other than we intended to be perceived, 4)  looking at what makes us laugh, our sense of humor, and 5)  studying our dreams, daydreams, and fantasies.  

As this is being written, our culture is celebrating one of its stranger holidays, Groundhog Day.  The first “official” Groundhog Day came about on February 2, 1887, in a small town in Pennsylvania.  The idea was hatched by the town newspaper editor, who for some unknown reason declared that this innocent rodent was a proficient weather forecaster.  And so a legend was born.

But the actual origin of Groundhog Day can be traced much further back to early Christians in Europe and the custom of Candlemas Day, which marked the midpoint between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  According to legend, on Candlemas Day, clear and sunny weather signified a long, harsh winter, while cloudy conditions indicated that warmer weather was approaching.

All of which leads us to today, when we look to the world’s furriest weather forecaster to see if he’s gonna see his shadow and be frightened back into his burrow for six more weeks of winter, or if he will see no shadow and say, well-hey-howdy, I smell spring in the air, let’s get it on!

It was amazing to me to find that the groundhog (also known as a whistle pig — I love that!) is actually the largest member of the squirrel family.   Their habits are such that they gorge all summer and sleep all winter.  How good is that?  And their underground burrows have separate rooms for defecation, also known as bathrooms.  How cool is that??  And they have some pretty righteous courting and mating habits that I won’t go into here, but suffice it to say, these are pretty clever and creative critters.  I’d be willing to trust them as weather advisors.

At this point, are you wondering if there’s a point to this blog? Maybe. When was the last time you looked at your own “shadow”?  And were you frightened and did you run back to your burrow?  Or did you say, wow, I’m more than I thought I was! — there’s a big old hunk of me that is yet to be discovered and explored — a lot of which is bound to be good — bring it on!

The capacity to look more deeply within ourselves is not narcissism or navel-gazing, but rather a rare form of courage. . .  And water overflows from one dry patch to another, so you cannot be selfish in digging for it  . . . Lift the whole thing up and then your roots will go down and life will be green and fresh.

Happy Groundhog’s Day!

 

Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark.  (Zen proverb)

As a child, my greatest fear was vampires.  Maybe I should put that in the present tense, because I’m not too crazy about the idea now either.  But when I was a child, I was terrified. I can remember my first awareness that such frightening beings might exist came when my older sister showed me a horror comic story about them, and from then on, I was convinced they were real.

While over the years, I’ve revised my concept of vampires, I still “believe” in their reality.  How many of us don’t get a shudder when we read these lines from Giron-Cerna’s Dracula:

–he holds down the curtain on morning, growing out of dry bones and bitter dirt.  Shaped by forced labor in a stone country without trees or running water, he devours the gentle sweet thoughts that caress the softest folds.  Blooming flowers wither and faith turns in on itself.

As a child, I believed that “they” were monstrous beings who were after me, and if bitten by their horrific fangs, I too would become a vampire, a being without true life who preyed on others in the deepest darkness. Now, as an adult, I have come to know that I can still become “possessed” by a vampire, and that some of the forms his possession may take are a negative self-image, morbid self-doubts, the need to be a victim and take on others’ burdens, self-pity, the blocking of creativity, arrogance, jealousy, and addictive behavior.

If any of these sound familiar to you, don’t be surprised. They seem to be part of the human condition.  In particular, these traits are often the dark side of those who are drawn into the helping professions, where I spent much of my life, the opposite side of the coin from the deep compassion, empathy, desire to serve, and the need to understand that most helping professionals possess.

These unpleasant aspects of ourselves, this shadowy side of our personality, our inferiorities, our unacceptable impulses, our shameful actions and wishes, are difficult and painful to admit. It contradicts who we would like to see ourselves as, who we would like to seem to be in the eyes of others. So most of us suppress or deny that we are that way, and often project these traits onto others, seeing in them the very nasty, unsavory qualities we would like to deny in ourselves. Uh, oh.  Talk about trouble between individuals, groups, even entire nations!

But hey!  How if we each started recognizing the “vampire” within, however embarrassing or distressing or scary, acknowledging its unpleasant qualities and offensive behavior, coming to terms with its mischief and inadequacy, owning its character as ours and no one else’s?  Remember the one thing that the vampire cannot tolerate is the light of day.  So owning these qualities, in full recognition that this is by no means all or even most of who we are, bringing them out into the open, into the light, deprives “the vampire” of its power — Because once we own it, we now have the power of choice — we have the power to choose what we will ethically and morally do about these long-hidden impulses or fantasies.  That’s darned hard work, too, but not nearly as hard as keeping it all stuffed down inside ourselves!

And we might even find that this very frightening “vampire,” this part of ourselves that we have so not liked, is worthy of our compassion and understanding, and even love.

Kinda gives new meaning to the idea of “loving our enemies,” doesn’t it, if we can admit that the true enemy lies within?

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something that needs our love . . . (Rainer Maria Rilke)

(A gryphon is a fabulous beast with the characteristics of two of the most noble of living creatures, the lion and the eagle.  It is most easily recognized as an eagle, having the hindquarters of a lion.  The following is a tale about one such legendary creature that I knew in the land of  Once-Upon-A-Time.)

by guest blogger, Sol    

Once upon a time, there was a farm near a mountain where an old woman of uncertain age lived.  She lived there with an odd assortment of animals — a crippled cow, a goofy goat, 13 crazy chickens, 11 cantankerous cats, two dotty old dogs, and a bird named Sol.

Very early one morning while the still-slumbering mountain breathed faint mists over its head, and Blanco-the-Rooster was just beginning to sing The Light into being, a new creature arrived at the Farm. It was a gryphon.  His name was Lark.

He arrived alone, striding up the crooked, rutted lane with a quite splendid arrogance.  He was a guardian of hidden treasures, he told everyone, and he had many stories to barter, should they be interested.  He was very sure of himself, and the only vulnerability he ever displayed was a slight quivering in his long, majestic neck, and an eager intentness in his great dark eyes as he accepted offerings of bread and apples.

He told us many tales, at first only in exchange for the freshest of fruits, but later, as he became more tolerant and perhaps even a little fond of us, he volunteered other stories, which he had always known, he said.  The stories I offer to you now were those told by Lark in the misty half light of early mountain mornings.  He gave them to us in a rather offhand manner, eyeing us in an amused fashion as we huddled together listening . . . .

One day as the old woman sat nearby giving the older hens pedicures (occasioned by their unfortunate and untidy habit of taking dust baths in the mud, and thereby accumulating large mud balls on their toes), Lark gathered the others of us together and said he would tell us some Sicilian fairy tales.  He spit at the notion of the sanitized, modern day fairytales as being children’s pap, and favored the Sicilian versions, in which the wicked stepmothers not only killed their sons and daughters, but then carved them up and served them for supper.

He sent a sidelong glance at the old woman, who shook her head reprovingly and gestured with her head (her hands being full of hen and mud balls) to the young chicks in the group of eager listeners.  Lark looked disgusted, but turned back to us and told us the following tale.  (Why does he always listen to the old woman?  Now that’s  a story for another day.)  He also whispered that if any of us were interested in the other versions, we could meet him down by the old log cabin, where a variety of disreputable characters hung out.

Lark’s Version of  The Ugly Duckling

Once upon a time there was a splendid duck, golden yellow with blue feet and beak, who frolicked and played all day long in the sparkling blue waters of the lake where she lived.  One day, just as she was surfacing from a dive she had taken to see a glittering bit on the lake’s bottom, a North Wind picked her up, swirled her around, and dropped her with a great splat back into the lake.  Unbeknownst to her, the North Wind had been spewed forth by the Sorcerer of the North, in a snit because his undershorts were too tight and pinching him, and so the wind held a nasty bit of enchantment.

This enchantment was such that the splendid duck immediately forgot who she was.  She felt ugly and stupid and quite unlike who she really was.  She looked at the other ducks’ cleverness and was overcome with shame, and swam in smaller and smaller circles.  This went on for quite some time, with the duck drawing further and further back into her golden feathers, which, if the truth be told, lost a bit of their golden luster, as the duck forgot to preen herself properly.

One day she was swimming listlessly about with a Swan companion who had befriended her.  (Having been through a similar experience himself, he Understood her.)  Very softly and slowly, a luscious wind from the South, bearing the scents of jasmine and orange blossoms, spread its comforting warmth about her, ruffling her feathers, filling her with a forgotten wonder and peace.

And she Remembered.  Who She Was, and who she had always been.  Her eyes sparkled, and her feathers gleamed.  The duck had come Home.

 

There are two constant and opposing cries.  One the poet has phrased,  “I want to take the next train out, no matter where it’s going.”  The other is as directly put, in the words of any child:  “I wanna go home.”

After a lifetime of traveling, my only sister has decided to move back to the small valley where we were born and raised.  She says that she is coming back to where the “roots go down.”

I am delighted. It has always felt to me as if my sister and I were close, although we have become increasingly good companions and friends as we have learned to appreciate one another as adults.  (As a child, the seven years between us frequently gave me the sense that in comparison to her older, beautiful, smart, athletic, and creative self, my sturdy, plodding littler being was something that lived under a bridge and ate billy-goats — formative sibling dynamics!)

When she was a small child in the 1940s’ days of gas rationing, a huge automobile trip for our family to make was the 25 mile journey into the foothills of the Appalachian mountains where my grandparents lived. Where the valley floor met the ridges of the mountain slopes, a dirt road had been carved out, leaving exposed the long angular, curling roots of the roadside trees — the “roots going down.”  What they meant to her was that she was approaching “Mom’s house;” she was going to our grandparents, always referred to in our family as ” up home.”

And so, in the autumn of her life, she has come back “up home,” back to where her roots go down.

For each of us, home likely means something different.  A place.  A person.  Sanctuary.  Comfort.  Roots.  Something for which we’re searching.  For some, the word might be very aversive, bringing images of pain or heartache.  For others, “home” might be just a longing or wish or fantasy of what might exist somewhere.

Regardless, “home” has to be one of our most evocative words.  There’s a line from a John Denver song:  This old farm feels like a long-lost friend  that conveys for me the comfort, the love, the sense of belonging held in the phrase “going home.”  A safety, a warmth, a refuge from the uncertainties of the larger world.  The security, the sense of something unchanging . . .

What would it be like, I wonder, to know that our life Journey is our home — when ahead of me is the empty unknown, and around me is only chaos, to know, within my very soul, that I am already “home.” I AM where the roots go down.

From the poet Rumi, there is a poem that speaks to this:

This being human is a guest-house, every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness — some momentary awareness comes from an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!  Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of all its furniture, still treat each guest honorably.  He may be drawing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice — meet them all at the door laughing.  And invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

So even as I write this from the warmth  of my fireside on this winter day, I wonder, not only what going  home  means, but what I have to gain by staying on the road . . .

A poem by Karle Wilson Baker  speaks to my questions in a way that makes me say “ah-h-h . . .”

My life is a tree, yoke-fellow of the earth, pledged by roots too deep for remembrance — to stand hard against the storms, to fill my place.   (But high in the branches of my green tree there is a wild bird singing.  Wind-free are the wings of my bird; she has built no mortal nest.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a passionate interest in looking at how God works in an individual’s life. Although I believe this activity is ongoing in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary experiences in our lives, it often seems most apparent in the intersection of fate and destiny.  By fate, I mean the hand of cards we’ve been dealt — our genetics, our biological makeup, the family into which we were born, a cultural context, a historical period — to a considerable degree, we’re defined by these realities. And yet, at the same time, destiny, your soul’s calling, is knocking at the door, offering, inviting the individual to what he or she is capable of becoming or actualizing.

And at the crossroads of Fate and Destiny is the individual who has to make choices, most of the time without understanding entirely (if at all!) what is going on.

So in that spirit, I offer you this lighthearted example of every individual’s story:

Mike-y, the Caverns Cat

If there is anything I can say about myself, it is that I was particularly blessed with a good set of vocal cords.  In fact, one of the first memories I have is that of screeching at the top of my very small lungs at the indignity and injustice of having been dumped in a drainage ditch.  Obviously my first people were not compassionate or responsible sorts.  I was sick to boot, and truly did not know what was going to become of me.

There I was in the ditch, a tiny scrap of yellow fur, howling away, feeling perfectly sorry for myself, when I looked up and saw a woman with kind eyes (and yellow-red fur just the color of mine!) looking down at me.  She murmured some soft, soothing things and lifted me right out of that ditch and cuddled me to her chest.  Cold and wet and miserable as I was, that felt so good that I commenced to purr as loud as I could.  She seemed startled at the magnitude of my purr-ability but fortunately did not drop me.

However, after some warm milk, and a soft towel to sleep on, I awakened to find myself in what I later learned was that most dreaded of places, a Vet’s office— slightly better than a drainage ditch, but not much.  He must have said I was very sick, because I spent the next part of my life in the sad isolation of a basement “hospital.”  The only bright spot in this sorry experience was all the tender, loving care I got from my new people.

When I finally got better enough to get out of the hospital, I found that I was not the only cat around.  In fact, the farm my people lived on was fairly crawling with them, and they did not particularly like me.  But with all I’d been through, this was a small thing, and I explored the farm to my heart’s content, and had LOTSA adventures.  After a few months, one of the other farm cats brought home six newborns, and declared in no uncertain terms that she was tired of being a mother.  Since I well-remembered my own abandonment, I felt the least I could do was check on them occasionally.  Well, would you believe it??  Other than nursing them (obviously not something within my abilities), she left me with the entire responsibility for those little suckers, and I became their surrogate mother.  Now, six kittens following me around, having to be cleaned and taught to be tidy, helping them to be farm-street-smart, letting them play leap-frog with my tail, and getting them outa scrapes, was tough on an adolescent male cat like myself.  But I’ll have to admit I grew to like it, and was sad when one by one they left to seek their fortune.

One farm cat, a huge, untidy, quarrelsome creature named Fluffy (HA), took a particular dislike to me, and dealt me a grievous blow, which almost ended my life. It took 18 stitches to close up my backside, and it was back to the hospital again.  Good grief.

After a few years of this type life, three things resulted in a major Life Change for me.  The first thing was that a family of mockingbirds (nasty, sneaky, and very  flighty critters) swore a vendetta against me, all because I merely climbed a tree to have a peek inside their nest.  Now I ask you — was that fair??  I tell you, I got mighty tired of their swooping and swearing at me all the time, and I even heard they had put a contract out on me.

The second thing was that I was real tired of Fluffy and his ilk.  As if looking out for mockingbirds wasn’t bad enough, Fluffy and his cohorts were always lurking around the food bowls, looking for trouble.  I began to be very sorry for myself.

And the third thing was that on one of my nightly escapades, I scrambled across a river (on a log, I think), and couldn’t find my way back to my farm!  I wandered around for awhile, and finally climbed a hill and found a whole bunch of stone buildings nestled at the foot of the mountain (the one I’d often looked at from the front porch of my farm).  I hollered awhile, since by then I was getting very hungry (remember, hollering is one of my gifts), and finally people came to check me out.  I told them my sad tale, and they were appropriately sympathetic.  They treated me very kindly, and the Eats were good.  I decided to stay, little knowing how the people at my farm would mourn my loss.  (I can’t say the same for the mockingbirds and Fluffy.)

I soon learned that this place which I stumbled into was a place where lots of people came to look through caves, a place called Endless Caverns.  Now I did not know what a “cave” or “caverns” were, but upon investigation, I discovered it was a large hole deep in the ground with fascinating tunnels to explore, and magnificent shapes and colors and dripping water and streams.  Wow!  (I even met a Rock Troll named Eddie there, and exchanged many wonderful tales with him — he was a fine fella, but that’s another story.)  But the best part of all was all the people who would come to see the caverns!  I loved them all, and they loved me back.  Often on sunny days, I would be on the warm blacktop of the parking area to greet folks as they came in, or to get my belly scratched as they left.  Sometimes the children would want to take me home with them, but I was always FIRM about staying near my caverns and my new people.

One day as I was snoozing on a side porch swing, I heard a familiar voice — one of my people from the farm! He called me by my real name, Mike-y, and I was pleased to see him again.  Soon after that he came back again with the woman from the farm who always talked to me with a special voice, and I was very pleased to see her.  We had a reunion complete with tears, and I was touched to know how fond of me they were.

They were so fond of me, in fact, that they gave me the choice about whether I wanted to remain at the caverns or return to the farm.  With memories of deranged birds and Fluffy-cats, the choice was not hard.  I became The Endless Caverns Cat, and if I do say so myself, grew to be rather famous. I even had a book written about me!  The people from the farm came to visit me often, so I had the best of both worlds.

I grew to love the gang of people at Endless Caverns, too.  Sometimes I went on cave tours, sometimes I sat on the counter at the gift-shop and watched people, and sometimes (when the noise and commotion got to be too much), I went to my special roost, high in the rafters of the front porch.

One day not so long ago, I had the urge to travel across another river, and this time I ended up in wonderful green fields.  And do you know what?!  Fluffy was already there, and he was a heck of a lot nicer!  I haven’t seen those mockingbirds yet, but you never know.

I miss my farm people and my caverns people, but do you know, I think they’d be glad that I’m here.

So I’m telling them.