Gopher Time

Christmas is over and the beautiful quiet period between now and the end of the year is beginning.  This year with it falling on a weekend, it gives all of those who must return to work, one more well deserved day of rest. At this moment my house is quiet, the rooms full of family sound asleep. The den has that wonderful jumbled up feeling of opened gifts, leftover boxes and total relaxation.  For the first time in generations, we received a White Christmas, the tender flakes beginning at mid day and covering the ground with just enough to be wonderful. and not completely paralyzing. The moon still very full, rose up late in the white darkness and we all stood out on the deck to marvel.  We have so many, many blessings.

This will be my last post for December as I settle in and enjoy my family.  I will begin posting again weekly beginning January lst at my Nature Journal site which you may access by visiting annpopepotter.com.  Until then, I am imaging lots of snuggling gopher time for everyone.  Rest, my friends.

                                                             No jump-starting the day,

                                                             no bare feet slapping the floor

                                                             to bath and breakfast.

                                                             Dozing instead

                                                             in the nest

                                                             like, I suppose,

                                                             a pair of gophers

                                                            underground

                                                            in fuzz and woodshavings.

                                                            One jostles the other

                                                            in closed-eye luxury.

                                                            We are at last

                                                            perhaps 

                                                            what we are:

                                                            uncombed,

                                                            unclothed,

                                                            mortal.

                                                            Pulse

                                                            and breath

                                                            and dream.

                                                   Marjorie Saiser, 'Weekends Sleeping In"

Love

Everywhere, everywhere, snow sifting down,

a world becoming white, no more sounds,

no longer possible to find the heart of the

day,

the sun is gone, the sky is nowhere, and of all

I wanted in life--so be it--whatever it is

that brought me here,chance, fortune,

whatever

blessing each flake of snow is the hint of, I am

grateful, I bear witness,I hold out my arms,

palms up, I know it is impossible to hold

for long what we love of the world, but look

at me, is it foolish, shameful, arrogant to say

this,

see how the snow drifts down, look how

happy

I am.

Joseph Stroud, Manna

Welcome Christmas

Hope

Passing by, he could be anybody:
A thief, a tradesman, a doctor
On his way to a worried house.
But when he stops at your gate,
Under the room where you lie half asleep,
You know it is not just anyone---
It is the Night Traveler.

                                                                     You lean on your arms on the sill
                                                                     And stare down.  But all you can see
                                                                     Are bits of wilderness attached to him---
                                                                     Twigs, loam and leaves,
                                                                     Vines and blossoms.  Among these
                                                                     You feel his eyes, and his hands
                                                                      Lifting something in the air.

He has a gift for you, but it has no name.
It is windy and wooly.
He holds it in the moonlight, and it sings
Like a newborn beast,
Like a child at Christmas,
Like your own heart as it tumbles
In love's green bed.
You take it, and he is gone.

                                                                      All night---and all your life, if you are willing---
                                                                      It will nuzzle your face, cold-nosed,
                                                                      Like a small white wolf;
                                                                      It will curl in your palm
                                                                      Likea hard blue stone;
                                                                      It will liquify into a cold pool
                                                                      Which, when you dive into it,
                                                                      Will hold you like a mossy jaw.
                                                                      A bath of light.  An answer.

                                                                                     Mary Oliver,  The Night Traveler

Faith

 "Faith is not being sure where you're going but going anyway."   Frederick Beuchner

The year is ending, Christmas is only days away, and soon it too, will fold into the past. In our part of the world, much of the Real World has gone to sleep.  Outside this is a time of endings in preparation for the arrival of Spring. Even though we are now able to live our lives outside the realm of this natural cycle, we still deep inside resonate to it.  From this natural quickening in us, our knowledge that endings bring beginnings, that darkness provides for light, emerges the gift of faith.

We will all have things that have happened to us this year, that we wished had not. Sometimes in an ending, whatever it may be, it is easy to be frightened by the space left in our lives by what is over. We forget that nothing stays the same, and everything about life is always ending. That is the blessing. Perhaps when we are scared and worried about what comes next, we can think about what is happening right now outside.  Deep down in the ground, life is pulsing in the dark. The world is moving on in its sacred rhythm and carrying us along with it.  We don't know just what will emerge when the light returns, but the Real World is showing us we can have faith that it will come.



 .

Comfort

O

Once, years ago, I stood on a levee in the midst of thousands and thousands of snow geese.  It was a gray midwinter day and the geese were feeding and calling to each other, lifting up and swirling back down across the vast acreage and shallow marsh pools of the sanctuary, their plump white bodies filling the dark day with light. It was the largest number of birds I had ever seen in once place. The magnitude of their presence, so much aliveness and being able to witness such an enormous expression of the natural order of things, swept over me. It was a thrilling spectacle. The longer I stood there, the more I felt a different awareness growing in me. I began to take in that I was witnessing a massive expression of the natural order of things; a demonstration of how the world goes on all around us being what the world is; not worrying about taxes or politics or fighting about religion.  And that as I stood there, one of the few humans present, that there was a place for me in that world.

Meanwhile the world goes on.                                           Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air , are heading home again.   Mary Oliver

We live with strife. All of us will have experienced some of it in the year closing causing us to feel marginalized and separated. As populations increase everywhere, and resources become more and more politicized, we lose sight of what I felt that day in the sanctuary...we all have a place here. The world works and given the opportunity, it can provide more than enough for everyone. The message of Christmas and all faiths, is that we  all belong--to this world, to each other and most important of all to a magnificent mystery beyond our ability to completely understand but out of its love for us, comforts us through the beauty and order of the world.  

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my childrens' lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water,and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

or grief.  I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry,  The Peace of Wild Things

 

Trust

                   I got out of bed                                                At noon I lay down
                   on two strong legs.                                            with my mate.  It might
                   It might have been                                            have been otherwise.
                   otherwise.  I ate                                               We ate dinner together
                   cereal, sweet                                                    at a table with silver
                   milk,ripe, flawless                                             candlesticks.  It might
                   peach.  It might                                                 have been otherwise.
                   have been otherwise                                         I slept in a bed.
                   I took the dog uphill                                         in a room with paintings
                   to the birch wood.                                           on the walls, and
                   All morning I did                                              planned another day.
                   the work I love.                                               But one day, I know,
                                                                                          It will be otherwise.
                                                                                                               Jane Kenyon, Otherwise

 We are told to trust at every juncture of life, yet what does that mean?  We try to trust ourselves and each other and our God. Sometimes we can, often we cannot. It's not too hard to do when our lives are placid, but there is a place in us that knows another, tougher form of it will be necessary when our lives are not going well.  Perhaps that is the forgotten character of trust--we build upon it all the time. We strengthen it with  delight, beauty and ease.We fortify it with our love of self, each other and God every day, every bit of which builds a net that will hold us on the day our lives are otherwise.

Balm

When we are struggling with our lives, are full of hurt, feeling alone, sometimes not even the love of those close to us is able to lift us up. This is when the Real World can be the most real to us; when we are searching for comfort beyond what the world made by us can provide. This is when the mystery in us is seeking the mystery of the deep world--like seeking like.

 I climb up through the field                                                    I leave work's daily rule
That my long labor has kept clear.                                         And come here to this restful place
Projects, plans unfulfilled                                                       Where music stirs the pool                               
Waylay and snatch at me like briars,                                      And from high stations of the air                       
For there is no rest here                                                         Fall notes of  wordless grace.                               
Where ceaseless effort seems to be required,                         And I let go my hopes and plans
Yet fails, and spirit tires                                                          That no toil can perfect.               
With flesh, because failure                                                      There is no vision here but what is seen:
And weariness are sure                                                          White bloom nothing explains
In all that mortal wishing has inspired.                                      But a mute blessedness
                                                                                              Exceeding all distress.
                                                                                              Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

Going to the wild, the natural, in whatever way we chose, is going to our original home. It opens up a channel for us to receive the invisible soothing potion our hearts and spirits naturally recognize.  Where ever this place may be, no matter how modest, it can still draw out the toxins of in our hearts and  clear away the debris that chokes our decision making.The wound will still be there--that is our work to do--but we will have received from our time spent there a bit of the ineffable balm of God to use in healing it.

Grace

                     

The first thing I heard this morning                                       

was a rapid flapping sound, soft, insistent--

      wings against glass as it turned out
                     downstairs when I saw the small bird

rioting in the frame of a high window,                                   

trying to hurl itself through                                                     

the enigma of glass into spacious light.

                                                  Then a noise in the throat of the cat                                       .

who was hunkered on the rug

told me how the bird had gotten inside,                           

carried in the cold night                                        

through the flap of a basement door,

and later released from the soft grip of

teeth. 

 On a chair,  I trapped its pulsations
in a shirt and got it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the next of cloth.

But outside, whenI uncupped my hands,
it burst into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
then disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks.           

                                                                                    

                                                                For the rest of the day,

 I could feel its wild thrumming

 against my palms as I wondered about   

the hours it must have spent

  pent in the shadows of that room,

  hidden in the spiky branches

  of our decorated tree, breathing there

  among the metallic angels, ceramic apples,

  stars of yarn, its eyes open,

  like mine as I lie in bed tonight

  picturing this rare, lucky sparrow

  tucked into a holly bush now,

  a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.

    Billy Collins,  'The Christmas Sparrow',  from Nine Horses

Delight

Delight is such a lovely word--and its cousin delighted.  Doesn't that sound appealing?  Even the spelling conveys a bit of what it means: a light, airy feeling of enjoyment.  It isn't heard much in conversation anymore is it?  Somehow the lack of its use has something to say about the intensity of our modern lives. The other day I heard someone use the word astonished. That's another one getting rusty. But let it roll around in your mouth for a moment.  It conjures up some wonderful feelings, doesn't it?

 Everyone works so hard these days.  We have learned that 'life is difficult' to quote Scott Peck, but perhaps in accepting that it is, we forget to give equal time to it's capacity to delight us.  I think we are looking for it, but are not quite sure of what it is we are seeking.  I wonder if the huge interest in video games and other visual entertainment is part of that search?  I wonder if our insatiable desire for more and more of them rises out of their inability to lighten us? to delight?

 What delights you this Saturday morning?  Could it be the quiet in your house before the children wake?  The smell of the coffee brewing? How about out your window?  Is the sky tender and beautiful? The bare trees lovely against the blue?  Did you realize how many squirrel nests were in your yard?  As you are sitting there, sipping your first cup, planning your day--maybe you could stop for just a moment, and rest in what delights you.  That may take some thinking ...but after wards, see if when you go back to your planning, you don't feel just a bit lighter...


I get up from the tangled bed and go outside,                   But this is all I want to do--
a bird leaving its nest,                                                    tell you that up in the woods
a snail taking a holiday from its shell,                              a few night birds were calling,

but only to stand on the lawn,                                        the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,
an ordinary insomniac                                                   and that at one point, the moon,
amid the growth systems of the garden                          looking like the top of Shakespeare's
and woods...

I am simply conscious,                                                 famous forehead,
an animal in pajamas                                                    appeared, quite unexpectedly,
                                                                                   illuminating a band of moving clouds.
sensing only the pale humidity                                       Billy Collins, excerpted from
of the night and the slight zephyrs                                  Night Letter to the Reader
that stir the tops of trees.

Paradox

 The Real World is beautiful and inspiring and sustaining.  It is also brutal and unrelenting and deadly.  It provides for our daily sustenance and takes it away. We find solace and comfort in it and are then laid low by its power to devastate. We are part of it and yet stand alone on it struggling.   in an endless attempt to overcome the paradox of existence.  One of the most important gifts we can receive from living is to accept the existence of this paradox; not by giving up facing the challenges it brings but by acknowledging it is through the wrestling we do that we are able to experience the deepest aspects of being human . All these things taken together, are the way of the world and our lives. That is the moment we move from simply existing to being. Christmas steps out of  the mire of marketing and touches our powerful, dark need to accept what we cannot understand. When this happens to us, we come upon the truth of this season: that the paradox is redeemed only by seeing God present everywhere.

I am the blossom pressed in a book,                         I am the heart contracted by joy...
found again after two hundred years...                       the longest hair, white
I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper...               before the rest...
When the young girl who starves                               I am there in the basket of fruit
sits down to a table                                                   presented to the widow...
she will sit beside me..                                               I am the musk rose opening,.
I am food on the prisoner's plate...                             unattended, the fern on the boggy summit...
I am water rushing to the wellhead,                            I am the one whose love
filling the pitcher until it spills...                                   overcomes you, already with you
I am the patient gardener                                           when you think to call my name...
of the dry and weedy garden...                                  Jane Kenyon,  "Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks"
I am the stone step,
the latch,and the working hinge...

 

 

Failure

     How surely gravity's law,                                           Instead we entangle ourselves

     strong as an ocean current,                                        in knots of our own making

     takes hold of even the smallest thing                           and struggle, lonely and confused.

     and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

     Each thing---                                                              So, like children, we begin again

     each stone, blossom,child--                                         to learn from the things,

     is held in place.                                                           because they are in God's heart;

     Only we, in our arrogance,                                          they have never left him.

     push out beyond what we each belong to

     for some empty freedom.

                                                                                       This is what the things can teach us:

     If we surrendered                                                        to fall,

     to earth's intelligence                                                    patiently to trust our heaviness.

     we could rise up rooted, like trees                                Even a bird has to do that.

                                                                                        before he can fly

                                                                                                                          Rilke, Love Poems to God.
                                                                                                                                                                

We do not like to fail.  Even when we are 'entangled in knots of our own making', we rail against the fairness of events, who else is to blame, who needs to be punished.  We do not want to accept that the web we are caught in was made by ourselves.

In the Real World, failure is threaded through every moment of existence.  For each living thing that reaches maturity there are unimaginable numbers who are churned through the maw of life.  It dispassionately balances the natural world and that still includes us. When we respect and honor its role in our lives as a teacher, we step into a life that is full of meaning . Hardships and suffering become trans formative experiences instead of nonsensical and random events. We learn compassion, gain understanding, develop trust and discover hope. Opening ourselves to accept the reality and value of failure in our lives  transforms our hearts, turns us away from the exhausting, deforming belief we are everything.  In the year ending we can all look back on failures in our lives. When we do, perhaps we can look deeper at those times, past the hurt and sorrow, the sting of social standing and consider  what we received. It isn't easy work. The struggle is an essential part of the gift.  But the goal remains the prize. We become real, and our eyes turn toward God.

Bounty

 If there is a word that is truly descriptive of the Real World, it  would have to be bountiful. Nature does not scrimp. Even in difficult places --deserts or ice caps-- you will still find endless ecosystems flourishing. In order to achieve balance in the long run and stack the deck for life, Nature always makes plans for more than enough.  That goes for roaches, ticks, mosquitoes and us. When there is balanced husbandry of the earth's resources, all have the opportunity to prosper.

"Suppose we did our work / like the snow, quietly,quietly, / leaving nothing out." Wendell Berry

 

These days not many of us are  feeling very bountiful. Our capabilities to artificially control bounty of every description, has caused a lot of complications in the many worlds we have created as well as the real world we live on.

Christmas is a celebration of the never ending source of love, a richness of plenty beyond any we have ever known. When times are hard and we are frightened by what we lack, perhaps it would be helpful to remember the unselfish abundance of this beautiful, beautiful world and let ourselves be taken in by the love which created it.

I know that I have life

only insofar as I have love.

I have no love

                                                      except it comes from Thee.

                                                     Help me,please, to carry

                                                     this candle against the wind.

                                                                     Wendell Berry, Leavings

Determination

 "In every heart there is a coward, and a procrastsinator. / In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting/ to come out of its cloud and lift its wings."  Mary Oliver, The Kookaburras

Squirrels have a reputation as rather simple, feckless creatures. Here in the woods I have watched their numbers rise and fall in relation to the supplies of food and the numbers of hawks fledged.  They are curious, animated, adventurous and appealing.  Many an evening I have sat out on the deck and watched new babies creep, creep close to investigate me, their little tummies pressed close to the deck boards, their noses quivering, as they  inch their way closer. But their strongest trait has to be determination. Anyone who puts up a bird feeder knows that. They are relentless in their pursuit of the seed.  Over and over they try all sorts of strategies and  to my consternation, most of the time, they win.  One summer I kept score of the number of  times I outsmarted the squirrels in my efforts to position the feeder and obstruct their access.  Given enough time, they eventually compromised every feeder. They are a great example of the power of focus, even if your brain is the size of a grape.

Determination is fueled by desire.  We see that in our own lives.  There is something we want to achieve, or have happen and we direct the use of our energies and gifts towards making that occur. In the world of the squirrel, this revolves around food.  For us, its much more complicated.  Our desires extend far beyond the necessities of living and its direction can profoundly effect the lives of others. Sometimes in our determination to reach a desired result, we forget this very important aspect.

 As the year gives itself over to the past, now is a good time to look back and consider those moments when our determination was an ally and the times when it was not. Reflection may help us to reconsider and be even  more resolute next year or perhaps be unflinching in accepting an outcome we may have been avoiding. The message of Christmas is filled with the determination of everyone involved: Mary and Joseph against great odds,  the shepherds and wise men to come and witness.  Each in their own way, were steadfast.  They remind us about letting the fuel of determination be the desires of our hearts.

Forgiveness

"The Earth offers gift after gift--life and the living of it, light and the return of it, the growing things,the roaring things,fire and nightmares, falling water and the wisdom of friends, forgiveness. My god, the gift of forgiveness, time, and the scouring tides.  Kathleen Dean Moore, from Wild Comfort

Life is going to provide lots of opportunities for forgiveness. It is one of the gifts of living--maybe the most difficult to accept or give, but  the most essential for love to flourish.  When we forgive someone else, or even harder, ourselves, we are deciding to know longer carry the hurt we feel.

The earth is a living expression of forgiveness.  Terrible storms, and fires have raged across its surface. Volcanoes and earthquakes have heaved the deep mantle of its frame open.  Droughts  have choked it and floods drowned it.  And then of course, there is us.   Yet over and over, in the aftermath of what we believe is total desolation, it continues.  It does not keep score. Life returns where we thought it impossible; leaving the past behind and turning its energy to starting over.

Forgiveness is not forgetfulness.  The earth's face carries the scars of what it has endured, as do our own hearts. But in the Real World all attention is directed to healing; towards life and the living.  Some recovery arrives almost instantaneously, while other places take eons of time. But the goal is always the same-- to step away from the pain and move into living. It is a valuable gift we can use in our world where grudges disguised as righteousness fuel power and politics and relations. The year is drawing to a close. A measure of time is ending. Think about the beauty of the hills and valleys. Look across the woods, the rushing streams. They have all been created through an act of forgiveness. Imagine what beauty we could create in our own lives, if we could do the same.

Gratitude

The sounds of engines leave the air.
The Sunday morning silence comes
at last. At last I know the presence
of the world made without hands,
the creatures that have come to be
out of their absence.  Calls
of flicker and jay fill the clear
air.  Titmice and chickadees feed
among the green and the dying leaves
Gratitude for the gifts of all the living
and the unliving, gratitude which is
the greatest gift, quietest of all,
passes to me through the trees.
Wendell Berry,  from Leavings


There is an easy kind of grateful and a hard kind of grateful.  Easy grateful is 'thank you very much'. with a smile or  "thank you for remembering me"  with a smile or 'thank you for including me' with a smile and a hostess gift. We are taught from childhood to be thankful for the nice things we receive.

Hard grateful is a tear stained face accepting forgiveness, a heart stunned in the presence of  true compassion, a breathless moment when the tragedy is averted or the terrible illness finds a reprieve in death.  We are fortunate if we have learned there is a place for thankfulness when we are experiencing the hard times. That is the purpose of the Sabbath, to ordain time for praise and gratitude even when confronted with things we cannot understand.. Every faith has time it hallows with rituals to deliberately provide the opportunity to name  blessings and cultivate a thankful heart. The Real World was the original place in which to do this, and it remains so. Being able to know and spend time 'in the world made without hands'  is Sabbath time. There the quiet and grandeur witness true power and frees us from the belief we orchestrate the world. There in the Sanctuary of the Real World we are able marvel and wonder and perhaps most precious of all, give thanks for everything.

 

Realism

There is tendency to romanticize life in the Real World but it is unwise to do so. It's true the natural world is beautiful but life within it is fraught with conflict and danger. The world we have made for ourselves is not exempt. We may not be someones supper, but we also live off the rise and fall of each other for reasons equally as harsh  It is a lesson in wisdom and maturity to respect this in both worlds.





There also exists an aspect of life that balances all this tooth and claw.  It rises up most powerfully, when we come upon the beautiful unexpected.  Long bitter winters break open one morning to a softness in the air. Clearing the leaves in the shrubbery reveals a bird nest. A person whom we hardly know, stops and asks about our ailing parent. A gang of rowdy teenagers come upon an elderly woman and one of them stops to hold the door. The winter moon rises in the dark afternoon and washes over us on our drive home from work like a blessing.

After the bitter nights

and the gray, cold days

comes a bright afternoon.

I go into the creek valley

and there are the horses, the black

and the white, lying in the warm

shine on a bed of dry hay.

They lie side by side,

identically posed as a painter

might imagine them:

heads up, ears and eyes 

alert.  They are beautiful in the light

and in the warmth happy.  Such

harmonies are rare.  This is

not the way the world

is.  It is a possibility

nonetheless deeply seeded

within the world.  It is

the way the world is sometimes.

Wendell Berry,  from Leavings

To see the world realistically is to honor the natural laws upon which it is built and our existence depends. It means we accept that there is hardness and greed, sorrow and illness and ultimately, our own mortality. It also means we acknowledge it contains deeper mysteries that exist alongside. That awareness is at the core of all our faiths  The holiday excitement and bounty is meant to celebrate this truth, to  remind us the world and our lives are more than just tooth and claw but most of all, to help us remember what we are really seeking is a world with a lot more sometimes.