Eden

Eden May 29 2010


And God cast them from the Garden.

They lost God’s love.

Losing love – the hardest hurt,

The truest Hell.

Loveless, babies wither, grownups weep.

Without love, I live in turmoil --

Sleep deprived, feeling ill, hating others and myself, tired, lifeless.

Deprived of love, I shrivel like a tender flower in a drought –

Dried up, wrinkled, gray, before I die my many deaths.

I seek out your love, my darling – heliotropic -- drawn by you:

your smile, the pleasure in your eyes,

Your gentle voice, your soothing hands,

Your compelling spirit force.

You nourish and revitalize my soul – your love my nectar.

In trust, I open up, bloom, let myself be tender, give to you the power to hurt or heal.

I learn the might of love to beautify or trample

And give my heart to you withal – witness to your perfect God-love splendor.



Reflection

Building a relationship is definitely not for the faint of heart. The reward is bliss, a more transcendent connection with God, who is love. The challenge is to rid my self ( my ego) of fear – to trust, to be willing to feel hurt, and to continue trusting and loving, knowing that any perceived lack of love is a delusion. God cannot not love. God IS love. Love draws us to each other, and steadily awaits our enlightenment, our acceptance, our understanding, and our willingness to bask in and transmit its awesome light. We are God’s gift to each other. I am grateful beyond words for this gift of ever-flowing love.

Memories of Place

Memories of Place May 25 2010


A beloved house where once we lived--

Its trees, its drive,

Its empty rooms with traces still of long gone memories –

Ghostly wisps of past hours wafting through.

We drive up, we look, we feel the pain of loving still this place.

We walk again the ground, neglected now,

Where once our spirit dwelt in peace and love,

Where once our family ran and played and laughed and argued,

Where once we planted, built, and prayed.

We are spirits from another plane – from timeless, formless space,

Yet our molecules have sunk deep roots into the earth where we have lived and loved,

Entwining heart and body with that soil, that grass, the fiber of that place.

We leave behind so many threads of love – elastic – binding us though we may stretch them thin.

It’s thus that we leave heartprints on the earth wherever we have been,

And feel the earthprints on our souls.



Reflection:

Today I accompanied a friend who was revisiting a home she loved and had left behind. My friend’s attachment to this place was still palpable, years after she had left. Obviously a portion of her spirit dwelt still within that space, upon that ground.

Today I had also learned that the people who had bought the house I had just left were starting to tear out the part of that place I loved the most – cutting down trees and eradicating the wild areas to plant a lawn.

These conjoined experiences, on the same day, have made me go back in spirit to the different places I have loved on the earth and to which I have felt bonded over the decades of my life – from the fields, streams, and Atlantic water of Padanaram, where I spent an important portion of my childhood; to the rolling hills and brushy woods of northern Rhode Island, where I lived for three years as a nun; to the hardpan soil and mine-pocked trails of Old Mines, Missouri, where I wandered in the woods and scratched tiny garden patches into pure clay; to the bracing, cool Pacific breeze and restless ripples of San Francisco Bay; to the majestic pine and hardwood forests of the North Carolina Piedmont – the place I now live. My heart ‘s memory remains entwined with the earth, the air, the trees and grass of each of these earthly homes. When I return to them, I feel their unique magnetic pull signaling my ongoing relationship to each place, even after I have moved away.

As we live longer, we understand better our unity with every person and every place. With every love, we exchange elements of ourself with the beloved. In so doing, we grow ever larger, ever more connected; We ARE more.

Nurture

Nurture May 9 2010

People pause today to sing their mother’s praises –

How she held them, fed them, watched them,

How they learned to love from her,

How she led them gently into earth’s delights.


They’re the fortunate.


Some babies have to scrape for love.

They find it in the hearts of other women,

Surviving, love-starved, as do street kids seeking scraps of food.

As I join in celebrating mothers on this yearly day,

I pray for those whose moms are ill, or dead, or otherwise inapt

To give their children mother love.

I pray that God will give to all his orphaned ones

The love and nurturing they need to learn their beauty,

Trust their worth,

Know their glorious souls, and find deep joy while in this life.

Young or old, we all need mothering.

Blessed are those who nurture others – they shall shine as stars forever.


Reflection

It’s Mother’s Day. Today, I feel separated from the general sentimentality. I realize, again,  that I can’t celebrate my mother’s nurturing care. She was disappointed in me. She was  also ill and depressed. She had no empathy, nor even common sense for caring for a baby. I felt alone and abandoned, from birth. I felt defective, unworthy, unacceptable.

This start has affected my whole life. It created the framework within which I have struggled to accept myself, to enjoy being who I am. My grandmother, my teachers (nuns teaching in Catholic schools), an older spinster who worked humbly as a priests' housekeeper, and the librarian in the small town library where I grew up were my adult friends and supporters. I confided in them, and knew, from their welcome and their support, that I was potentially lovable. They gave me hope. By default, they played the role of surrogate mothers, and I honor their memories today and express my gratitude for the love they brought into my life. 

 I’m not alone in this situation. Many other people’s mental and emotional stability through childhood was preserved by the love of neighbors, teachers, aunts or uncles, grandparents – other grownups who were not our biological mothers, and  who provided real  love -- essential spiritual and emotional nourishment for a child's spirits. On Mother’s Day, it seems appropriate to love and appreciate, along with our mothers, those other adults whose affection helped us to develop a greater reservoir of love to share when we would be grown up. 

. This day should really be called “Raised by a Village Day.”

Memories

Spirit Places April 26 2010



Bare shined floors, stripped now of rugs,

Purified of foot prints, cleared of scuff marks –

Pristine.

Windows washed and clear,

Rooms now unencumbered – no furniture, no projects

That lie about unfinished – eternal paper clutter.

No remaining signs of our four years of living there –

Now a fallow house, awaiting its new life –

My home no more.


Silenced now the shrill joyous cries of children

Racing up the walk to Grandma’s house,

The sound of bouncing balls and happy laughs --

They faintly echo in my heart amid the emptiness.



I speak and hear reverberations -- void. .

I open the toy closet – bare.

I enter our offices and bedroom – blank,

Though I feel in each room its ghostly memories –

Faint shadows of what happened there for us.


Bookshelves -- now just empty wooden cubes – are yawning shadow boxes.

With no clothes, the closets are stripped down to cabinets and rods –

Reminding me of our excitement when we built just what we wanted,

Deciding it was worth it, hang the cost.


The big surprise was when I bade farewell to my dear friends, my trees.

I loved the woods around that house – the trees and wildflowers were my friends.

My spirit frolicked with the birds and squirrels, trembled with the wind- blown leaves.

It was my little patch of Eden, where my soul found rest and joy.



Today I said goodbye,

I laid a crystal underneath the porch --

Giving thanks

For good memories and sad, good moments and hard – the life the house embraced for us.


It’s time to move forward, to give back, to mark the present,

To fully be in peace and love while taking leave.

A raucous crow, calling in the woods, tells me goodbye. I walk away.


Reflection:


It was wonderful to see that others really wanted our fabulous house. It sold quickly – in a few days. I’m happy to know that the buyers are excited about living in the house. I feel satisfaction in having been a good steward of a beautiful place, caring lovingly for its needs and putting good energy into it.

As the closing approaches, I felt drawn to visit the house a last time, walk through it, create a final memory of it as it awaits its next family. It’s my home now only in remembrance. It was time to release it, to say goodbye, to extend good wishes to the people destined to live there next as they create their own recollections of growing, loving, creating a home within its walls. Their recollections will overlay ours, as ours have overlain those of the family that built it and grew up in it before us. With passing years, the house grows richer in loving energy and acquires the patina of respectful care and use. It has been a home before and will be one soon again, though now, in waiting, it’s just an empty house.

I take my times there with me, packed into memory. I move through life, collecting more and more recollections. Happily they take up no space and weigh nothing!

Moving Day

Moving Day April 24 2010


A day of moving—

Pick this up, move it there,

Push this box along the hallway –

Can’t pick it up -- too heavy!

Walk up and down, back and forth,

For miles just inside the house

Till feet cry out in anguish.

The rooms grow cold, and echo oddly

As one by one they’re emptied out.

They’ve absorbed and resonated with our years

Of living, loving, weeping, feasting.

Now, one by one they revert to how they were when we first entered –

Empty, square, waiting.

On the other end, my stuff, filled with all my hopes,

Finds right places in a new house --

Starts shaping new days, new years, new life.

I sit, unfamiliar, in this new home,

Aching -- even as I pulse with hope.


Reflection

This day responds to the fulfillment of hope and purpose. One house sold, another bought; one left behind, another taken up; one leave taking, another exciting beginning We move on in our lives as circumstances change, for both better and worse. Both fatigue and excitement mark these transitions, regret dancing with appreciation, body aches with resurgent energy. Such is life.

Remodeling

Remodeling April 20 2010


Entropy. A fact of life.

Things fall apart – ongoing dissolution,

Little piece by little piece.

Maintaining is an ever-present task of life on earth --

Attention, form of  meditation.

Molecules recycle, travel, transform ,dissociate.

Inanimate organism, a house needs updates,

Renewal – surgery, in fact –

Replumb, rewire, refresh, repaint, repair, replace.

Then, when all is righted,

It can be a place of peace -- become my home --

Embracing me within its walls and doors.



Reflection

The remodeling has begun on the house I've just moved into.  This house was once loved, then was long neglected and exploited, with no return of energy or attention. All the surface items needed replacing, to bring it back to a state of beauty and pride rather than a constant headache with things broken and useless. The heating and cooling systems are being replaced today, as well as the thermostat so that we can control the inside temperature.  The contractors are also replacing the ducts that no longer bring warm or cool air to various rooms. Also today, I spent time selecting faucets, toilets, and a shower, as well as ceiling fans, light fixtures, and appliances. For the next couple of months dust will fly as we polish the house back to pristine loveliness. This is one way to make a house a home in a hurry!

Saying Goodbye

Saying Goodbye April 19 2010


A house – a home, a friend, a shelter,

A place alive with memories and molecules and stories,

Where pieces of all those who’ve lived there

Lie embedded.

On leaving, I am like a tree uprooted.

I've moved away,

Though roots and tendrils – tenacious – stay behind;

My  roots the love  poured forth within that house –

Along with sorrows, joys, laughter, pain – the memories of life.

When I go back to my now former house the day the furniture is moved,

I’ll say good bye –

Take leave of that of me that stays behind,

And pack up tenderly my bag of memories –

To store them -- treasures to unwrap and savor

When times are right, some day.



REFLECTION:

This Saturday, I’ll know if the house is truly sold. At that point, I’ll empty it of my remaining possessions, and leave it for good. It’s been “Grandmas’ House” since we moved here four years ago – the only grandmas’ house that the kids remember. In this house, we’ve welcomed friends, enjoyed many happy holidays, meals, parties, and tranquil times with family and with each other. Ellen and I both suffered serious illnesses there, and Ellen, as she had predicted and resolved, did indeed “leave feet first.” In fact, as her body was being removed by the mortician, I made sure he turned her in the right direction so her feet left first.

I’ll go back to the empty house the day after the move, to bid it “good-bye.” It’s the last place that Ellen and I lived together, and moving on requires that I firmly put those memories d in a trunk stored in the attic of my memory – and turn to inhabit fully the next wonderful chapter of my life.

I will weep as I bid the house “goodbye,” and visit for the last time the place where our cat, Merlin’s, ashes still fertilize the front garden as his spirit watches over the house.

I’ll plant a crystal in a secret place outside the house – a symbol of my willingness to pass the house on to its new owners, and to wish them deep happiness as they enjoy good lives within its walls – a symbol, likewise, of my enduring appreciation for the house’s embrace while we lived there.

I’ll turn away, deeply grateful for the blessings that my new life, new relationship, and new home have already bestowed on me. A chapter in my life will end at that moment, as another begins. My life – as I suppose all lives do – has seemed to have distinct chapters, each filled with suspense, mystery, delight, and discovery. I am truly blessed, as a beloved child of the Universe. And I give thanks.