Sunday, March 30, 2008
Getting Out
This weekend my very first friend came to visit (met in a playpen, longer ago than I should mention). The Boy had a sleepover with his Nonie, Aunt, Uncle and Cousins, and me and my posse went to see Thousands of One. It was so great to be out in the world dancing. Dancing is a sacrament you know...
Monday, March 24, 2008
Welcome to Spring!
My husband and Son picked me up at work on the Equinox, and exclaimed as I opened the car door letting in a gust of cold air and a flurry of giant snow flakes "Welcome to Spring!" The following day the meteorologist called for sleet, freezing rain, hail, snow flurries and snow showers. We had them all. What is it called when snow is shaped like hail, but still fluffy and white, rather than hard and icy? I don't know either.
Yesterday the sun shone all day. I took a phone call on the back steps and discovered that my back yard has crocuses in full bloom on the sunny side, and the last of the melting snow on the shady side. Little green shoots of courageous bulbs are coming up all over the neighborhood. This morning the sun is shining again. The thermometer says 25 degrees.
Welcome to Spring!
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Sunshine
The sun came out again this morning! I think that's twice this week!
I was driving up Rt. 13 and the stands of bare trees were coated with ice. The ground was white with snow, melted and re-frozen. Then I turned East and the low morning sun was shining through the top branches, shining through the ice like they were all diamond glazed. I gasped with awe. It was a perfect moment, and I tried to some how capture it as I zoomed east on the two lane highway. I was yearning for my camera, but knew this moment was too amazing to get on film. I imagined myself pulled off beside the side of the road walking up and down the shoulder trying to get the angle just right, trying to capture the vastness and at the same time each shining branch. I came to a red light, where the electrical wires, also glazed in ice melting in the bright sun. Rods of ice 5 feet long fell 20 feet and shattered on the pavement. The combination of brilliant sun and the night's accumulation of ice had met for one awesome moment and that brilliance would burn away before the morning was over.
I was driving up Rt. 13 and the stands of bare trees were coated with ice. The ground was white with snow, melted and re-frozen. Then I turned East and the low morning sun was shining through the top branches, shining through the ice like they were all diamond glazed. I gasped with awe. It was a perfect moment, and I tried to some how capture it as I zoomed east on the two lane highway. I was yearning for my camera, but knew this moment was too amazing to get on film. I imagined myself pulled off beside the side of the road walking up and down the shoulder trying to get the angle just right, trying to capture the vastness and at the same time each shining branch. I came to a red light, where the electrical wires, also glazed in ice melting in the bright sun. Rods of ice 5 feet long fell 20 feet and shattered on the pavement. The combination of brilliant sun and the night's accumulation of ice had met for one awesome moment and that brilliance would burn away before the morning was over.
My Dentist
I went to a dentist today, for the first time since we moved. It just wasn't right. Sure they were friendly, and the office was decorated in cheerful colors, but my California Dentist did everything differently. She did all the work herself, without the aide of hygienists. She used old-style films instead of digital x-rays. She used the manual scrapey thing instead of the new sandblasters they developed while I was under her care. She was gentle and kind. She cleaned my teeth while I was pregnant, and gave my son his first ride up and down in the dental chair when he only had 8 teeth. Because of her, he loves going to the dentist. She recently sold her practice to spend more time with her young children, so even if I was still in California, I would have a new dentist now. But in the immortal words of Joni Mitchell "You don't know what you've got till it's gone." I miss you Dr. W. You were a great dentist.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Winter Rain
Today I saw a kind of freezing rain I've never seen before. It wasn't hail, it wasn't snow, but there was a layer of it almost a centimeter thick on the ground. Weird.
Rain
Freezing rain
Snow
back to Rain
All in one day,
It's night now and the rain is dripping noisily outside.
Rain
Freezing rain
Snow
back to Rain
All in one day,
It's night now and the rain is dripping noisily outside.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Self Tending
In a recent article about personal practice a colleague of mine referenced “that small clearing deep inside myself, which is self tending...”
This phrase has really taken root over the days since it entered my consciousness. "Self-tending" describes something about the "self" we seek in meditation that I had never articulated before. It describes what I think of as the most amazing part of being "grown up" -- the knowledge that there is a part of myself which does not need healing and soothing to come from outside; it is self-tending. It calls to mind the word "autopoesis" which means we are also self-creating. This is one of the defining factors of a living system, that it be self-sustaining. Of course we are not a closed system; we inhale and exhale, but we are in some fundamental way self-tending.
The larger systems I am part of push and pull. What they ask from me sometimes takes me away from my self. But if I can just remember to return to my self when I am confused or depleted, I need only look for that little gardener inside who is already restoring and creating the living system that is my self.
This phrase has really taken root over the days since it entered my consciousness. "Self-tending" describes something about the "self" we seek in meditation that I had never articulated before. It describes what I think of as the most amazing part of being "grown up" -- the knowledge that there is a part of myself which does not need healing and soothing to come from outside; it is self-tending. It calls to mind the word "autopoesis" which means we are also self-creating. This is one of the defining factors of a living system, that it be self-sustaining. Of course we are not a closed system; we inhale and exhale, but we are in some fundamental way self-tending.
The larger systems I am part of push and pull. What they ask from me sometimes takes me away from my self. But if I can just remember to return to my self when I am confused or depleted, I need only look for that little gardener inside who is already restoring and creating the living system that is my self.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Different Dream
The preacher said this morning that when he was a child in fundamentalist Sunday School he dreamed of a non-dogmatic religious education, one where you could ask questions and doubt.
I grew up in UU Sunday School, and wanted someone to tell me it was okay to believe in something. As a child beset from a very young age by anxiety about non-being, I needed something to have faith in. It is true that when I visited more conservative churches I was glad to know I didn't have to fit into a dogmatic box, but freedom from dogma is not enough for me. What I needed as a small child, and what I want today is simply something to get me through the nights when one feels adrift in an infinite universe, and your non-being sits like a chaperon in a dark corner of your bedroom making the "why" of life seem urgent and ever-present.
As Nancy Shaffer writes in her poem "A Theology Adequate for Night"
"But-- this may work in the night:
Something that breathes with us, as others
sleep, something that breathes also
those sleeping, so no one is alone.
Something that is the beginning of love,
and also each part of how love is completed,
Something so large, wherever we are,
we are not separate; which teachers again
the way to start over.
Night is the test: when grief lies uncovered,
and longing shows clear; when nothing we do
can hasten earth's turning or delay it.
This may be adequate for the night;
this holding; something that steadfastly
breaths us, which we are also learning to breathe."
That is my dream for religious education: to learn again and again that there is something steadfast in the universe, to learn how to remember it in the dark of the night, and to breathe.
I grew up in UU Sunday School, and wanted someone to tell me it was okay to believe in something. As a child beset from a very young age by anxiety about non-being, I needed something to have faith in. It is true that when I visited more conservative churches I was glad to know I didn't have to fit into a dogmatic box, but freedom from dogma is not enough for me. What I needed as a small child, and what I want today is simply something to get me through the nights when one feels adrift in an infinite universe, and your non-being sits like a chaperon in a dark corner of your bedroom making the "why" of life seem urgent and ever-present.
As Nancy Shaffer writes in her poem "A Theology Adequate for Night"
"But-- this may work in the night:
Something that breathes with us, as others
sleep, something that breathes also
those sleeping, so no one is alone.
Something that is the beginning of love,
and also each part of how love is completed,
Something so large, wherever we are,
we are not separate; which teachers again
the way to start over.
Night is the test: when grief lies uncovered,
and longing shows clear; when nothing we do
can hasten earth's turning or delay it.
This may be adequate for the night;
this holding; something that steadfastly
breaths us, which we are also learning to breathe."
That is my dream for religious education: to learn again and again that there is something steadfast in the universe, to learn how to remember it in the dark of the night, and to breathe.
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