Ouch

Not a Monty Python Sketch

Driving through Arkansas today, a very large Dodge Ram pickup zoomed past me. In the bed of the pickup truck were two (2) male goats. Banjo music instantly played in my head.

I laughed for 30 miles.

Thought to Ponder

Is will the opposite of faith?

...and now I give you The Virgin Mary

I had every intention of sending an annual Christmas letter and then I read this article in the local paper. It's clear I mustn't burden you with the trivial events of my ordinary life when news like this is breaking:

What I enjoyed even more was the postage stamp sized ad below the Virgin Mary sighting...a notice that reads:

Lost

Prescription Eye Glasses

Somewhere around Ashland City. Rims are dark and ear piece fits across top of ear.

Call WQSV Radio 615-792-6789

"Ear piece fits across top of ear." Have I been living in the woods too long? Has there been some sort of scientific breakthrough allowing eyeglasses to hover in place on your face so as not to fit across the top of your ear?

These are questions I have. Do you have answers?

Ugh

A bag of fritos, 1/2 a can of bean dip and 1/2 an avocado later, I feel like I'm going to hurl...ugh.

On Being Still

The solitary life from the outside looking in can appear foreign, frivilous, even disconcerting. Many who come on retreat at Penuel Ridge will eventually ask me (while looking at their feet), "How can you live alone, deep in the woods without compliment of modern life?" I usually smile warmly and tell them I intentionally chose this life, a life of oneness with nature, self and the Creator.

I admit there are times of loneliness and a desire for connectdness. In hindsight, those feelings are strongest when I am pushing away from myself...times when expanses of silence reveal wounds in need of examination, understanding and healing, shortcomings in need of growth.

The gift of silence and stillness is difficult to conceive in today's world. One has to experience it first hand, over an extended period of time to truly feel the resonance, the vibration of oneness that is born out of being quiet and still. I have been called to this practice after many years. The restorative, healing power I experience today harkens me back to my early childhood when my siblings and mother would lay down in the afternoon to take a nap. I remember lying on my bed, feeling the vibration of hush as it fell over our house and hearing the collective breathing in and breathing out of my brother and sister exhausted from play and our mother, equally exhausted from tending to her children and home.

This morning, the benches surrounding the lake were covered in ice, but I braved a frosty posterior to take in the silent morning that broke gracefully over the eastern ridge. The world in silent stillness lay...so are the words of a well known Christmas hymn.

Silence and stillness are gifts one can give to ones self. I am gifted each day by the wonder of it all...so simple...so powerful...so peaceful.

There's No Place Like Home

This week, I received a Christmas letter from my Aunt Cheryl in Texas. It was as I expected...news about the kids, antics of the grandkids, right of passage for two of them shooting their first deer this hunting season and news from the farm. Hearing about their lives tugged at me in a place I thought was dead...or at least sleeping heavily.

I grew up in a farming family. My mother was the only sibling to leave the farm...a whopping 20 miles away in another small Texas farming town where rice was king. Every Sunday after church, we piled into the 57 black and white Chevy with my mom behind the wheel and flew down country lanes that were once nothing more than dirt trails to move the cows and farm equipment between pastures. Our destination was my maternal grandparent's house, where aunts and uncles and cousins would await our arrival for a hearty lunch. This ritual transpired every Sunday and it was magical...eating food that was grown right outside the back door and then playing with my cousins all afternoon to the point of exhaustion. Grandma would usually find us sleeping in the hay loft or under the satsuma bushes next the swingset. She would dust us off and take us into her kitchen where there'd be homemade ice cream, cake, pie, dewberry cobbler, lemon jelly roll or any one of her infamous confections. We'd sit around the counter, dirt covered legs and feet swinging from high oak chairs and refuel on Grandma's love.

After the grown ups finished their domino and card games, mom would pile us back in the car and we would drive another 10 miles to my paternal grandparents house for a vist and Sunday night supper. My dad was the oldest of 9 in his family and as my mom tells it, she and my grandmother were often pregnant at the same time, so my aunts and uncles were more like cousins. After supper, we'd play in the pastures, along the creek, in the chicken house. We pretty much roamed where ever we wanted to until it was time to go home.

This happened every single Sunday in my childhood. I never once questioned who I was or where I belonged. I was part of a big, salt-of-the-Earth, hard working family and it gave me a strong sense of being at a very young age. No, it wasn't perfect and I learned just how imperfect they were in my late teens, but I wouldn't trade those Sundays for anything in heaven or on Earth.

Be A Candle of Hope

Last night was the season finale concert for Nashville in Harmony. The music we performed was challenging and diverse, from an English madrigal to an African processional march and 'it' happened. Something I've been waiting for since I joined this chorus. We brought the house lights down and the entire chorus spread out around the perimeter of the sanctuary holding lit candles singing, "The Size of Your Heart." The words speak so eloquently of how we can touch each others lives:



The size of your heart is the size of your life
for out of your heart comes the kind of your life
The way you reach out
to the world all around
is first in your heart to be found



Toward the end of the piece, 'it' happened. The blending of our voices rose with such perfect harmony and volume and pitch that it created what I call an angelic chord...so divine that when you finish singing, 'it'...the sound continues and the audience is afraid to applaud for fear they will break the spell. When 'it' happens, my breath is taken away and I cry. So there I am, singing...feeling 'it' coming, holding my little candle, lending my voice to the divinity with crocodile tears streaming down my face. I love this chorus...

Catching Up Is Hard To Do

A LOT has been happening in my world and I haven't been able to blog about it.

The coughing and the sneezing and the blowing of the nose and the fever and hacking up foreign objects that look like jigsaw puzzle pieces from my lungs and the constant drinking of tea and taking of pills and taking of temperature and the good God I have been SO SICK! Today was my first full day out of bed since last Sunday. Anyway...all of this to say I've been too sick to blog...can you imagine?

So...here's short list of what's been going on and when I'm feeling better and have more time, I will expound or not because I'm sure more stuff will have happened that I want to blog about and the stuff from last week will seem like...well, stuff from last week.

1. Had a wonderful visit with my ex-husband before Thanksgiving. I think we are actually going to be able to be friends now...that's nice.

2. Performed in the new Schermerhorn Symphony Center with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra Gospel Choir for a Thanksgiving concert. The guest artists were Wynonna and Donna Summer. Seriously...Wynonna and Donna Summer. One's a true diva and the other...well, let's just give her the benefit of the doubt and say she was having an off day!

3. Looked up from the stage of the Symphony Center at the boxes (you know, where the loaded people sit) and there was my entire ex-family!!!! I had no idea they were going to be there and it was more than a little off-putting to see all those people whom I haven't seen in like 4 years.

4. Entered 3 writing competitions for cash prizes and publication!!!!

5. Applied for a two year writing fellowship at Stanford University...omg!

There'll be photos and links and all kinds of bells and whistles to add to this later, but wanted to get it all down before I lost it the next time I blow my nose.

Back to bed.

Say What?

I am a big fan of Say What?, broadcast Sunday mornings on NPR. It's a weekly dose of wit, wisdom and tom foolery, usually instigated by Paula Poundstone. I always learn something, especially new vocabulary words (which you know makes me hot!) and this past Sunday in a complete break from the show format, I learned something that literally had me rolling on the floor...involving Texas and Poetry!

Did you know any Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas? Really...it's true and if you don't believe me, here's a little ditty by the Belle of Amherst to prove the point:

The Day Came Slow

The day came slow, till five o'clock
Then sprang before the hills
Like hindered rubies, or the light
A sudden musket spills

The purple could not keep the east,
The sunrise shook from fold,
Like breadths of topaz, packed a night,
The lady just unrolled.

The happy winds their timbrels took;
The birds, in docile rows,
Arranged themselves around their prince
(The wind is prince of those).

The orchard sparkled like a Jew,
--How mighty 't was, to stay
A guest in this stupendous place,
The parlor of the day!

Pretty funny huh?

Banquet

The sun has returned
this Thanksgiving morning,
warming Mother and child

I am a pauper, indebted to your rays
of respite from dark awakenings...
restored, even if for one day

I am thankful for you,
with all our starts
and stops
and starts anew…
you remain as constant as breath

You are the banquet table
on which I feast,
‘tho yesterday, there
lingered only the slightest taste
of you in my mouth

It was enough to sustain me
when there was but dust
on pantry shelves

I am grateful for gnawing hunger
entreating you break
fast in brilliance over the Ridge,
through barren arms of a forest once green
hastening o’er a meadow of sparkling gems
spilling into my soul

de profundis

de profundis

out of the depths
comes a cry of the heart
a lava flow of fire and ash
scorching the landscape
creating anew
a path never before imagined

If I Scream in the Forest, Will Anyone Hear Me?

When balmy gulf breezes blew just right, I could hear shrill screams from the amusement park, located 5 miles east of our house. This sound conjured images of teenagers with arms raised above their heads, anticipating the moment when gravity would rip them from the security of their perch at the precipice of the wooden roller coaster. From our front yard, I could also see the loftiest fireworks shot off at 9 o’clock every night, framed by the tops of our neighbors oak trees. If not for the oppressive heat, ever-present humidity and mosquitoes, I would have sat in the front yard until the park closed, smiling at the sounds of life as it floated in on night air.

Like the anonymous thrill-seekers I heard in the night, I would stand in line for what seemed like hours to experience 2 to 3 minutes of adrenaline-laced fun (?). What I can admit today is that most of the time I was terrified. As we would inch closer and closer to the inevitable, I would scan the perimeter for an escape route, my eyes darting left to right as I nervously shifted my weight from foot to foot. I could feel a greasy ball of fear growing in the pit of my stomach.

On one particular visit to the park, I found myself waiting for an agonizingly long period of time to ride Greezed Lightnin’…the latest loop roller coaster the park had installed. I soon realized from my vantage point in line I could watch the entire operation from start to finish. People being loaded, strapped in and cars slowing inching, click by mechanical click, up the 80’ vertical climb to the top where they would be jettisoned at breakneck speed on shrieking rails towards a loop that would slingshot them at 60 mph skyward only to fall prey to gravity and experience the entire thing again, only this time backwards. From start to finish, the ride only lasted 33 seconds…I know because I timed it.

I learned a life coping skill that day that is the centerpiece in my arsenal against fear. If I stand still long enough in the face of what terrifies me, watch, analyze and intellectualize it in repetitive motion, I am no longer afraid. On that hot Texas summer day, I stood in the same spot long enough to be able to anticipate every twist turn, bump and jolt I was about to experience, hoping that someone, somewhere west of the park would be standing outside at just the right time to hear my shrill scream and smile.

No Words

Mary Oliver is a poet whose work is always nearby. It's fluid, graceful, breathtaking, funny and at times tragic, just like life. A new book of her poetry has just been published entitled Thirst. In it, she captures once again the beauty and mystery of nature, but also speaks to the profound grief and loss of Mollie, her partner of more than 40 years.

I don't know Mary Oliver personally, but when I learned of her loss, I was stricken with sadness. In sharing the news with fellow admirers, their reactions were the same. She very rarely revealed their relationship in her published works, but when she did, I felt deep joy, awe and reverence for the sanctity of their union.

On Monday night, the writers group to which I belong gathered to share our words. It's a small group of women and men who savor language and life and when we come together, there is always laughter and sometimes tears. One of the members entered into the group a bit timidly, not truly believing she belonged. I was privileged to have read some of her poetry and knew full well not only did she "belong" but we could all learn and grow from her words. She too, a lover of the work of Mary Oliver, offered this poem...the profoundness of which I have no words. Thank you Linda Z, for allowing me to share your words, dipped with grace and compassion, with the world.

For My Friend
Mary Oliver

This great ocean
It's called loss
And grief and death

And yes, it's called
Life

It's our common christening
Where tears are shed
Or not shed
Where we drown
A million times

Only to find
That we've been invited
To float

Camouflage

I've been thinking about exposure. This train of thought has been inspired by the seasonal push and pull of leaves off the trees, down gullies and over ridges. The trees are so dense where I live you truly cannot see the topography of the land, nor what may lie 10 feet into the woods, be it a listing and abandoned barn, a 3 story house or a pack of coyotes in concert to the moon.

We shed, I understand 40 pounds of skin in an average lifetime, but wouldn't it be delightful to have a shedding season, just like the leaves in fall or winter coats on animals in the spring. It would be much easier for us to see each other for who we are, underneath all that camouflage.

I wonder what I might look like.

Makes Me Glad to Be Alive

Go to this website NOW...Puppies Behind Bars.

Seriously...I mean RIGHT NOW!!!

My two favorite subjects...

PUPPIES so damn cute you want to kiss their faces wearing red lipstick

and

THE INCARCERATED

What an amazing organization...makes me want to break the law just so I can train a whole litter of these cuties! I mean...look at those paws.

I Could Knit a Puppy

Hair...most of us have it. We fill our world with pets who have hair, which means our homes are filled with it.

My dog has full access to the furniture in my living quarters. Who am I kidding? She has full access to the furniture in the entire retreat house! Between the two of us, we leave our calling card, in the form of hair, pretty much everywhere.

Each night I flap the sheets and comforter and brush off as much dog hair as possible before I crawl into bed. Once a week, I hang my comforter outside in the sun and sweep/beat the dog hair off with a broom. It's a fun ritual and for a few days my bed smells like the outdoors, but by day seven, I'll be honest, it pretty much smells like a dog.

So, this morning, I'm sitting in my big comfy chair in the sun drinking coffee and reading emails. Mocha is curled up behind the chair taking a post-hike nap. She wakes up, comes from behind the chair and stands in front of me for a pat on the head and to see if food has magically fallen from the sky onto the floor. That's when I notice 3 or 4 very long, very curly blonde hairs hanging decoratively from her chin.

Hmmm....it might be time to vacuum!

What's the Difference?

What is the difference between wounded and injured? I hear these words used interchangeably on NPR reports that drift into my office on radio waves.

When someone is writing a news story, how do they decide which one to use? What does one convey that the other doesn't? So, I started thinking about it. I scanned my brain for an answer. Here's what I came up with:

To me, to be wounded means someone/something has inflicted bodily harm upon someone else, i.e. "The wedding party was wounded when a suicide bomber detonated himself outside a temple in Tel Aviv." Whereas injured carries for me a tone of accidental injury , i.e. "A woman was injured when she dropped a bowling ball on her foot."

Now, I don't claim to have a firm grasp on the English language, I almost used cadre incorrectly in a sentence yesterday, so I consulted several references and here's what they had to say:

To injure implies the inflicting of anything detrimental to one's looks, comfort, health, or success, where as to wound implies an act that causes bodily injury, especially the puncturing of one's skin.

Hmmm...the difference is still not clear to me. I suppose I'll need to pay closer attention to how others are using them.

Which is Funnier?

THIS....

Chuck as Princess Leah

or

THIS

Chuck as Darth Vadar

or

THIS

Chuck as Yoda

I'm going on record that this is one of the best dogs ever and here's the woman who (lovingly) exploits him: Dooce

Leave your vote in comments!!!!!

Show Me Your Belly

I live for the moment when someone reveals their true self to me. It happens so quietly, so quickly, so fleetingly it's easy to miss if you aren't paying attention. It's the moment of absolute honesty when there are no walls, there is no pretense, no sarcasm, no synicism and it's always the moment when I fall head over heels in love.

I guess I've been lucky...it's happened twice in my life. The memory of those moments haunt me at times. Should it happen again, I wonder if I'll notice.