Valentine’s Day arrived as a bright and wintry one here at Lightspring Glen, my Heart home. This is a post long-pondered since the new year’s beginning, and the first to finally appear for 2019. Lots of Life has happened since New Year’s day, much of which proved challenging to translate into words for posting here. Sadly notable was the passing in early January of two people very dear to me…a younger friend and my teacher, Nancy Eve Fanara-Berrian, and the poet, Mary Oliver. So, big dents were made to my heart that are only part way along in their mending. And coming to this past week I have been mindful that this Valentine’s Day marks a full year since the shootings at Marjory Stoneman-Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. For the survivors and their dear ones, for all of us, how to rise and continue? Indeed the same awful question repeated in too many subsequent tragedies in the months since. My own first attempt at an answer came in last February’s post, Persistent Hope.

So, in these times through which we are journeying together, my sister and brother Earth pilgrims, there just is no denying the Travel is too often rugged and daunting. A litany of worldly woes and disheartening news threatens to flatten us daily. We each do our best to cope, heaven knows. For myself, I take some comfort in Emily Dickinson’s steadfast vision that “Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul / And sings the tune without the words / And never stops at all.” Ah, the question for me is often how to stay connected to my soul and also to my heart? And even though the alternative holds little appeal, how do I manage to keep my heart open?

Last August, through an unexpected travel opportunity (and gift of the Universe) I joined ten others for a marvelous three-day retreat at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. It was led by a wonderful man and truly heart-wise teacher, L.R. Heartsong…River. We had available to us a stunningly beautiful, heart-shaped labyrinth. Sharing our meditative walks was simply amazing, nearly indescribable in how it wove us together body and soul. River prompted us to consider how each walk allowed us to spiral into and out of the Heart laid out in small stones and sandy red earth. The metaphor was one we embraced in our days together and shared retreat experiences in New Mexico’s extraordinarily beautiful high desert. Ever since then the Heart Labyrinth’s image and mantra have been a blessed and potent fuel for my onward journey.

The Wheel of the Year has brought us all forward to this seventh week of 2019 and to this yearly Occasion of heart-minded focus and thoughts. It was high time (and a good time) to return to my writer’s work once more and fashion an offering for this particular day.

Poets so often instigate and inspire my word-smithing efforts. Early this day I was twice such blessed. A new-to-me Mary Oliver poem came in a friend’s morning email. And on Facebook, Oriah Mountain Dreamer posted a most wonderful Valentine message and poem:

There are thousands of ways to fall in love.
 At night I open my eyes in the welcoming darkness
 And listen to the snow softening all sound.
 And I fall in love with being here.
 In the morning I smile, grateful for hot showers,
 Sweet tea, and cinnamon baked apples.

 There are thousands of ways to be in love,
 To listen to the song of another’s heart
 To hold them with tender attention,
 To forgive ourselves for all the moments we’ve missed
 In our hurry to get somewhere
 Not realizing there is nowhere to go,
 That love is already here.

 On good mornings,
 mornings when I am not distracted or forgetful,
 I get up and ask:
 How will I make love to my life today?

Oh my, how I love her question! And how I love offering it to all who come to this post. Oh my…How indeed will I make love to my life today? And then again tomorrow? And….?  I know how much I will be enjoying contemplating the answers in this unfolding year, 2019. And in Mary Oliver’s poem there is an eloquent and provocative suggestion. I intend, as I nearly always do, to take her advice to heart.

Don't Hesitate 

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
 Don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
 of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
 to be. We are not wise, and not very often
 kind. And much can never be redeemed.
 Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
 is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
 something happens better than all the riches 
 or power in the world. It could be anything,
 but very likely you notice it in the instant
 when love begins. Anyway, that's often the
 case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid
 of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

(Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, p. 61, Penguin Press 2017

~ Bright and heart-full Blessings to all from Lightspring Glen ~

(Note for followers of these posts: the promised continuation of September’s “Entering Autumn…”, further tales of the Ghost Ranch gathering, will follow this post…..Life happens!)

…..but nonetheless, “The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. / Don’t go back to sleep” And the first secret of this morning’s November dawn is a sweet discovery: that the spiral of my Journey here at Lightspring Glen echoes in near-same detail the morning four years ago today in 2014. The pond is skimmed with ice from last night’s mid-20s and the pines and the frost-withered goldenrod are lightly draped in a snowy mantle.  Out for this morning’s wood’s ramble I needed my  warmest hat and gloves to enjoy the dancing swirl of snowflakes, and pleased to find myself warming up to the Season’s frosty delights. There’s always a spell of foot-dragging for me, so to speak, (and occasional heavy sighing) reluctantly accepting that barefoot pleasures need to be set aside for six months, and that pond-side Tai chi is now happening indoors looking out through the living room windows at the pond and hemlocks. :::sigh:::

Summer’s green-fire has subsided to just embers winking in the oaks’ burnished bronze leaves. These particular Standing Ones are loathe to part with their foliage for a few months more. And I am treated to the yearly pleasure of the trees’ beguiling strip-tease, the slow reveal of sturdy trunks in delightful hues of grays and browns all the way up to their crowns. Graceful patterns of sinuous limbs and branches come into sharp focus. The bare-treed woods opens itself like a stage curtain being gently pulled back revealing the outline of the hills rising beyond, the full backdrop of my woodsy neighborhood filled out and expansive once more.

We’ve just monkeyed with the clocks as we do every six months so that dark now descends a little past four. It’s a bit of heavy-handed shape-shifting, depending on whether you’re a morning- or night-person. As a happy early-riser, I’m glad for the brightness again at 6 AM. And for the darker end of the day I’ve laid in a supply of tea lights to cheer the evenings, their golden flicker a cozy addition to the seasonal scheme of things. 

So the citizenry of the Green World has drifted into needed slumber and hibernation’s secretive renewal. The Winter Solstice is five weeks away. The deepest dark of the Year’s Wheel approaches, its always mysterious reckoning and potent gifts offered to those who entertain its possibilities.  Even though there’s a certain reluctance, I turn myself toward the cold-edged beauties of the coming Season.  I have an ever-deepening appreciation for the gifts of these months. No one better than Mary Oliver to coach us in this. And so, on the occasion of the first snow here at Lightspring Glen, may you enjoy her earthy wisdom and joy shining in the images of the poem of that name. 

First Snow

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles; nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain - not a single
answer has been found -
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one

The calendar reports that this is the 12th of June. Summer Solstice, the mid-point of the year’s Wheel, is only eight days away.  In today’s bluest of blue skies, the midday Sun is nearing its zenith with the just-about-new Gemini Moon close behind…..tomorrow it will be exact. Bird-life is bustling all about, the Starling fledglings launched earlier this week from their nest in the eaves of my neighbors’ house. Our door yards are now somewhat quieter without their hungry clamoring from sun-up to sun-down for those three weeks and a bit more. And after the longest wait and a bit worried I’d not hear them this year, the days on Richardson Hill once more begin and end with the enchanting songs of the Wood thrush and the Hermit thrush. Continue reading “Luminescence – Notes for Summer Solstice” →

We are nine days into April and today’s temps, promised to soar into the low 40’s, are a much yearned for, very long-awaited warm-up and hopeful heralding of Spring’s full arrival. By this date each of the four previous Aprils, I’ve already thrilled to the Spring peepers’ evening chorus here at Lightspring Glen. This year I’m imagining these wee amphibians are only now starting to stir out there behind the still-snowy hemlock woods. On a brighter note…literally…the recently returned and persistently optimistic song sparrows were singing this morning in the 20-degree chill air.  Ah, and as I write this, Simon and Garfunkel are softly reminding me, “April…come she will…” Continue reading “Me & Mary, Captured by the Light” →

 

Earth Pilgrim report:

It is more than a considerable blessing to live on these seven acres tucked into the northwest corner of the Catskill Mountains. With a conscious shift of my focus the too-often thunderous cacophony of the news-of-the-world can be muted to a tolerable rumbling. Here this late Summer’s important news is how magnificent the fruit crop is, especially the apples. Four years ago I was impatiently waiting for the bank closing on my new home. When I paid surreptitious visits to walk the land that was not quite-yet mine, I was thrilled to discover three or four venerable apple trees from the farm’s long ago orchard, trees likely over 50 years old. Their branches that year were heavy with delicious apples. Weather vagaries in the intervening years resulted in far fewer and nearly none at all last fall. This year once more they are laden with heirloom apples whose names I’ve pledged to discover. How marvelous to be present to fully enjoy them. Continue reading “September at Lightspring Glen” →