power and resolution

These past many weeks I have been following the climate summit in Copenhagen. We seem resolved to talk this thing into the ground without actually doing much about it. I am a bit cynical about the process. The hope and need for a radical change in our relationship to the Earth seems clouded with petty ambition, greed, fear and apathy. Mostly I hear each leader with broad nonspecific goals. Each person representing his people seems to have a box full of intentions and hopes for future outcomes.

A few nights ago, My wife and I put our baby daughter to bed and cuddled to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. There is a part that stuck me. After George and Mary get all wet in the dance pool, walking home, George picks up a stone and throws a wish with it into the old Granville house. mary asks him what he wished for. As if waiting to be asked, he says “well not just one wish but a whole boxfull of them” while he is talking about all he wants to do with his life, Mary picks up a stone, closes her eyes and throws her own wish. She doesn’t say but she just makes one wish, for a life with him.

Now, nothing wrong with a box full of wishes. Indeed, we all admire a broad scope and big heart. But there is a great power in just one wish. There is great power in single resolution.

We hear politics and conferences a series of binding and nonbindng resolutions that make affirmations and declarations etc…

There is weak power in the watered down. There is a lack of change in a declaration. Eve this past week some seek to argue that climate change does not exist. Do we really need science to tell us what we feel in our hearts? That our planet is sick and we can be the healers. I pray we make one wish and resolve to see it a reality. To save our grandchildren from living hell.

Now Time

Time is a myth. At least many prophets and mystics say so, that there is really no such thing. But I feel an urge to reorient myself to the time we live in.

It is true that what we call time is a myth. We only need hours and clocks to orient ourselves to each other, like “I’ll meet you at five”. “time is a tool created by man to make himself in space relative to each other.” Take any of the mystics that philosophize about time realty and give a meal to prepare and a baby to feed and time becomes very real, at least because you may lack it. However, I feel a different type of time to write about. The kind without worry of fret as to the next thing. The kind without haste or stress about deadlines and struggle.

If I don’t pay attention, my day can become a bundle of worry over time. In the morning I will stress and fret over having a meal quickly and begin to get some things done by a certain hour and if I am not I will feel frustrated. If I see during a chore that I will not have enough time go get to another chore I was planning to do, again, my thoughts are consumed with angst and stress. I don’t like to live like that, always watching the clock and thinking and worrying about the next thing. Always trying to drive fast or do two or three things at once.

I prefer to live in no time. I don’t know the origins of the philosophy, maybe zen but who cares. When you mow the grass, worry about mowing the grass. When I mop the floor, just mop the floor. There is no next thing. Mowing the grass is all there is. Mopping the floor is all there is.  This is the life. This is a way to touch and walk in eternity each moment. In one way living present in each moment, fully livicated to that moment. In another way fully committed to the task or situation at hand that that is all you are. I hear more this way. I see more this way. We are more aware of life this way.

A teacher once spoke of this type of teaching. As a young boy he saw his teacher sitting on the ground paying rapt attention to the opening of a flower. He though he would snap him out of his trance and get his teacher to do something more fun. As the boy approached he asked, “watcha doing?”. without taking his eyes off the flower, the teacher said “all I am is now”.

While the teacher certainly lived without diapers to change or a job to be on time for, he lives in a different reality where time is only now to now to now. There is little concern for the then or the when. That is eternity, to live in the mind of now, to now, to now.

I feel no worry in this kind of time. I preform a task and there is no next thing until that task is completed (or interrupted by another). And, if you can hold onto yourself within this time too, I learn to be fully myself in each moment. This is the life.

Life

About  year and a half ago, I signed up with the arbor day foundation and was given ten free trees as a result. I remember well finding a package the size of a sunday paper, but inside were several very small baby trees no bigger than twigs with wraps of plastic and wet gel at one end. I was excited. I dug a deep bed in our front yard and planted then. I kept a chart to remember which one was the sugar maple, silver maple, red oak, pin oak, and river birch. Over the next year, I watched the blue spruce and white pine, the dogwood and red bud die. They really withered as many baby trees that big will. It is not easy to grow a tree nursery.

This past summer, I have watched several babies growing strong. The river birch was as tall as I am, 5′9. We decided that early this fall, it was time to move a few trees. I dug up two baby red maples (volunteers) and transplanted one to the back yard and one to the front yard. Both of them are doing very well and strong. The river birch however, had a hard time.

I wanted to really do this well, the transplanting. I know of caretaking. I know of plants and their emotional capacity to related to us humans. When i go into our garden to harvest food, I tell the each plant no to be scared of my knife. I tell them i will be quick and i am present to help the plant and appreciate its fruit. So when I planned to uproot a few baby trees I took my time, carefully grouping the roots together and telling the tree that I was being careful and that it would be okay. The birch did not come out with a root ball. It came out all exposed, root and all. I prepared a hole for it quickly and carefully. I was very careful and deliberate. Despite my best effort and a lot of watering, it seemed the river birch had died. After a few weeks, all the leaves had turned brown and fallen off. I spoke to it often encouraging it and praising it but to no avail. Every day I pulled out of the driveway and every night I got home I saw the bare tree and felt sad for it. In my head I thought about having to dig it up and what I would later transplant into the hole. It had gone from a tall green leafed strong tree to a bare branched skeleton.

Two night ago, I had a dream and in it I saw a few green leaves close near the trunk of the small tree,. When I woke, I went through a regular day activities. Then on my way to my truck to go to work, I noticed the tree and remembered my dream and went to take a closer look. There are a few small branches close to the ground with very small green leaves showing brightly against the brown trunk. The tree had told me in my dream that it was back. I was very excited. We’ve had two weeks of rain and I suppose it took flooding in some areas to bring life to others.

Life is like that. destruction for some means life for others. Even when all signs of life seems to have whithered and died, there is often hidden strength and vitality unlooked at. All is never lost. Have patience and faith and things can grow from that. reassuring

Birds and Wire

as related to the previous post…………

Today I sat at a stop light at a large intersection. It was sunset. It was nearly dusk and I looked at a crimson westward sky. I saw a long stretch of power lines covered by a large colony of starlings. If you live in a city in north america, you know starlings as small mostly black birds. They are often dirty and they move in huge numbers. Kind of like rats or cockroaches with wings, not to malign any of those species.

The power line was covered for three blocks by three rows  of birds, evenly spaced at pecking distance. A smaller group flew over the colony and must have started them because all at once a whole row of starlings took to the air and cause the power line to sway violently. Now, a starling weighs a few ounces. Several of them landing one at a time doesn’t cause the heavy power line the even ripple. Yet a few hundred caused this thick power cord to shake in its anchors.

We humans can only make small ripples in the world. Many of us trying something, anything, to make a difference, one at a time. Or we can sync up, join together. Find a course and take it to effect change. We can improve the future for generations. We are going to have to shake up the power cord. It is our work.

about her face

It is told that the moment your child is born, your life totally changes. In the first instant I saw my daughter emerge into the world what happen to me was something I sure never expected: nothing dramatic. I did not know what to expect.  I really tried not to expect anything. I wanted to be fully mindful of each moment. What I did experience was pretty awesome raw emotion. I was happy and excited and nervous and soothed all at the same time but there was no immediate or dramatic moment of life changing effects. The experience of the birth, the several days in the hospital and throughout our time at home, each moment changes everything

I work with babies and infants all the time, many very sick or injured. I found I had to focus to realize that my new daughter was not one of my patients. I stood in the newborn nursery during the first moments of her life. I was very familiar with the environment : the warmer she was under, the gear the nurse had out just in case, the hospital cap they put on her head, the blankets she lay upon, I knew all of it well. I looked around and saw other small babies and realized none of these are my patients. This baby is MINE. I touched her lips and kissed her mouth. I would never do that to my patients. I noticed a good vein should she need an IV but then I thought to switch from that and tried to put a connection from my deepest heart to her fresh soul, again, something I would not really do to my patients. I  tried to do the things I would only do to my flesh and it began to take root that I am her father. Things were changing. I paid close attention to my own heart and feelings.

My heart was also with my wife as we had had to leave her in the OR. The first moments the three of us spent together were warm as a fire in a winter freeze and just as nourishing. I felt the need to huddle together with my back to the world and shield the two women in my life. We were now a family.

The next several days in the hospital I felt a slow change of orientation. The first night I learned a parents sleep.It was difficult to relax as each little sound she cooed made me want to check on her. During the day I would sit with her in my lap and stare. I was coming to reality of fatherhood. I could not distinguish between my day dreaming, prayer and emotion talk with all the boundaries blurred. I just sat with her much of the time and felt my heart move like a needle in a compass.

In the middle of the night I soothed her to sleep. She was swaddled and tucked into my left arm as I rocked. Her head swayed gently from side to side. It felt like the ocean. The waves have a gentle soothing quality, calming and peaceful. She felt that. And I realized how your life changes. Like most life changing events, it does not happen with a bang. It does not spark like a match. Change happens like the tides. We can watch as closely but you can’t say when it has begun or while it is going on but we can sure tell when it has finished. Suddenly we notice where we are compared to where we were. Nature is full of changes like this. Parenthood causes changes in your heart all but inperceivable to the eye. Difficult to define but easy to feel. I suppose these changes never stop. As Nora grows before my eyes and in my heart.

day of life 2

first mother’s day

Mother’s day. Somehow as I see my wife as a mother for the first time, it feels like the first Mother’s day  for me too. Last week, Lauren and I went into the hospital for a procedure to try and turn our child from a breech position to a head down position. We were hopeful it would work as we had been looking forward to the experience of having the child free of any medical interventions. The relative pain, agony, stress and exhilaration we had been hearing about is an experience we, (Lauren especially) had been welcoming.

After a long wait in the hospital room, the time had come from the procedure. Without getting to specific with the clinical stuff, the external version might be painful. The muscle of the uterus must be very relaxed to increase the chance of success. Lauren would be getting some serious but fairly safe drugs to relive the pain and cause the relaxation.

Now, I do this all the time. I have been at the bedside for hundreds of sedations. I never really mind them. It is a great way to fix and repair an injury without having to go to surgery. I have never taken lightly the responsibility of putting someone to sleep, the risk involved and the fear their loved ones feel. I am always highly conscious of these feelings but I remain appropriately removed from them as well.

As the saying goes, “everything changes when it is your family”. I knew that to be true. I did not know how it would feel.

As I saw Lauren’s eye get a bit glazed over as the doc pushed the drug I broke a sweat. I held her hand tightly and stoked her knuckle against my stubble. I spoke to her softly knowing the doctors around the bed would not hear my words, only Lauren. After the first try at the tuning, they stopped and put a monitor back on her belly to check the heart rate of the child. It had dropped as expected but I held my breath in the eternity that it seemed to take return to normal.

My thoughts were in desparate prayer…”Please Grandfather…..these two are my world”. As the second attempt to turn the child began I realized that everything I have in this world was on that bed and at risk. The simple, low risk associated with that procedure was enough to really fear for the life of both of them.

By the end of the third try, we were all convinced the baby would not turn by this method. The midwife spoke with Lauren and I about a planned caesarian. This was  completely opposite from the  way we wanted to go. But so be it. As we have heard about a million times and as we full well understand: all we really want is a healthy child and healthy mom. Still we mourn the loss of the experience and the gift of the experience.

The birthday has not yet come but as it approaches I can feel the prayers and caring of our friends and family wrapped around us like a big blanket hug.

I am reminded how close to death we must come to see life. The passage to a new life is a narrow one with the fabric of life and death brushing us on both side. And, it is mostly out of our hands. We orient ourselves as best we know how and hope we sail through the passage changed all for the better. I will still sweat and wring my hands and gnash my teeth until our baby is out and healthy and until a healthy Lauren walks out of the hospital. The rest of my life I will worry over these things, I know. I would not trade any of it. It is all life and all good.  Amen

Cordage

Weeks ago,  a storm took down a large branch from a chinese elm tree in my front yard. Poor tree; it was once struck by lightening and is not long for the living. When pruning was done last season I couldn’t have the tree taken down. It still grows green if even a little weak.

The branch was green and so not very good for burning. One morning while the sun was out and the air was warm I sat on my porch and began to strip the bark. Elm bark makes for good cordage. That is rope hand twisted from natural fiber, original rope. I  had just had my knee fixed and could not walk well nor stand for long. I thought i could heal my own knee’s connective tissue by making cord. I needed to keep my hands busy too. So while I sat still  with the familiar twisting of reverse wrap, my wife sat beside me on the porch, then more than six months pregnant.

I remembered the stories that come from the rope makers. It seems the Elm tree in my yard has a story to tell and a lesson to teach.

Prepare the bark. You must tear each piece into several strips very narrow but as long as possible, striping the outer and inner bark away keeping the middle bark to twist. It feels as if you are taking the tree skin apart. Then begin reverse wrap.

That is two strands of fiber twisted in opposite directions around one another. Like people.

Cord is a symbol for relationships, connections between individuals to form something greater than any one. Each twist and each wrap must be made carefully and tightly or the rope will snap with light pressure. The cord must be mostly uniform, withstanding stress from one end or the other. See? As we grow in relationship each experience binds us tighter to each other. If we rush or take sort cuts that relationship will break with the lightest of stress.

The cord is family too. Many frail fibers wrapped or bound tightly together to form an incredibly strong rope or line.  Stronger together than we ever could be apart. I sat on a cool early spring morning turning a fallen elm branch into a long cord meditating on relationships and family. I had daydreams about my child I am about to meet. What will I say and do as a father. How might our family grow. I am about to be a father. Just a few weeks left now.

May we all make each twist strong and lasting that our bound may never break.

not so fast

The world is made so that speed and flash often cause trouble. As a maxim might say, “that which is done in haste will result in poverty or pain”. I’ve been reminded of a valuable lesson. It is a modification of the old tortoise and the hare parable. Not that slow and steady wins the race, but rather survive by moving slowly, deliberate and with mindfulness.

I was invited to help the doctor collect the honey from his bee hives. To use the correct terms, we were robbing the hive and spinning the honey. I didn’t realize until I got there that he meant actually put on the suit and net and everything and get face to face with the bees. I was thrilled. Once suited up and protected, we uncovered the hives. Each white box called a super contains a dozen or so frames, like hanging shelves where the bees store their honey. The doctor used a clamp tool to free the first few then handed the tool to me. They were stuck together by wax and it took some muscle to free them. The first one I lifted, I did so rather abruptly. “Slow and easy” he told me, “no sudden movement”. I should have known this. So often we forget the basics when trying new things. We finished robbing the hives and the bees were markedly calmer when our movements were slow and deliberate. I thought of all the images in my head of bee charmers. They move with careful grace where each movement has no definite beginning or end, and they proceed controlling their fear.

I learned this lesson long ago. It was taught to me by the greatest of all teachers, Nature. The natural world can often be understood as a mirror into your own Spirit. If your heart is in turmoil, animals flee from you, bush and bramble stand defiant in your path and the very ground seems to shift to throw off your balance. If on the other hand your heart is calm and still, animals don’t seem to notice you, and each step…. “like a prayer blessing the Earth”. Really all that is a difference in intention and balance but speed is a symptom and by product of both. With all things, if you want to learn a skill to mastery do it over and over very slowly until your muscles can preform without thought. And to put out the calm cool and collected vibe to other people, move slowly, relaxed and steady. And the opposite is true. You want to make a person unsteady and nervous, move with short fast clipped motion and watch their distrust and stress level rise.

This is a life lesson. I am always learning it. As a small child I remember watching my father and the slow, calm deliberate steps he would walk going into the grocery or walking on the beach shore, or even from the back gate to the back door of the house. I find myself as a grown man walking with the same calm and mindful speed.
There are many qualifiers to this speed thing to. Quick decisions are not always fast ones and impulsiveness is not always careless…..too far perhaps.

As if to literally drive the point home, on my way home from the doctor/beekeeper’s house, my thoughts were on the lesson of the beesand treir delisious honey  when I fell prey to a speed trap on the highway. I didn’t get a ticket but I got a very real and golden warning……”slow down and make it home”.

Wild

As my friend Mr. Scott is fond of saying,”people are wild”. I suppose this has always been true from the hunter gatherer times but it is still very true today. Our wildness has some strange ways of surfacing these days.

The past few weeks I have been watching the conventions of the political parties. I had watched them in past years but never noticed the look the attendants have in their eyes. They’re ferocious.  I think of the Yeats poem The Second Coming:

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity

The people seem to believe every syllable uttered from the lips of those leaders reading words from a teleprompter. I understand from history that these conventions were once an event when all the members of a political party met in the same place the elect a candidate, to vote a representative. But now they are little more than a pep rally or as PBS phrases it, “a four day infomercial for the party”.

And still, the crowd chants scripted replies to slogans handed out to then on cardboard plackards. The speakers are more like rock stars slinging words and rhetoric rater that guitar riffs. The faces of the crowds are in love with the ideas, they seem to believe the person they are cheering for will solve all our problems. Many of the speakers can hardly finish a sentence for the crowd drowning them out with generic planned cheers for God, country and candidate. How strange a ceremony we’ve adopted.

And true that the these political fanatics so full of wild passionate intensity for ideas that will likely never form into reality nor touch their lives with any policy. More likely that the children or grand children will owe the debt we accrue. Nor see a shift from the illusion of choice and the myth of a government that will not change itself. Their eyes wild with belief and anger and hope.

fix this

Siting still without acting upon the world is often the most difficult of tasks. As children we are taught that every problem can and should be fixed. On TV, all problems and conflicts are solved in a half hour. In medicine, each pain, discomfort or hiccup as a drug and health regimen to stop it. It would seem we are never past mending. We are too thin, too fat, too tall, too lazy, too motivated, the list is unending. It would seem we are always about a problem and a plan to fix.

This manifests all over the place. Our culture obsesses over the instant gratification and the quick fix. We see babies obese because whenever they cry, they are fed; customer service run amok with the belief that the customer is always right and must at all cost have their problem fixed.

Being a Man in this culture I feel a heavy pressure to always find the solution, solve the problem and help fix people. No where is this more palpable than in relationships with other people. While it is true that sometimes people will ask you to act,  most of the time advise is not their greatest need.  When difficult times arise, there is often nothing to fix. Not every problem has a solution to find. So often I hear the pain in friends words and when I offer advise it is like I had never said a word, the words of pain just go on. Most of the time I think we just need to share our pain and have it acknowledged.

We talk with a friend or loved one about a problem not because we need them to fix but because we want company while we sit with it. And this is wisdom, finding a dilemma and siting with it until an answer presents itself. All else seems to be struggle. A story I once heard says  the Earth has all the cures to all the diseases. Like a puzzle, there is a match for every piece. I think most of our emotional difficulties or relationship problems are similar. Somewhere in our being we are equipped with everything we need to be the brilliant spirits we were made to be. A nice thought……