Grace-full Thoughts

I'm moving ...

2007-02-11T23:38:00.000-05:00

I'm switching to another blog site. I'm not all that unhappy with this one, but the new one is a little easier to use and has more features I like. For future blogs, click here.

Hope to see you there soon. A Dios!

CG

Hunger Moon

2007-02-10T05:30:00.000-05:00

The calendar we use today is a fairly recent invention as far as human history is concerned. For most of our existence, we marked time by observing the seasons and the moons. Each of the twelve or thirteen moons that appeared while Earth made one full journey around the sun was named. Mostly those names derived from what was happening in the plant or animal kin-doms where a particular people lived. Systems for determining when one moon changed to another varied, too; some traditions considered a full moon the start of a lunar cycle, others the new moon and still others the first sighting of the waxing crescent moon.

In our neck of the woods we would likely be experiencing the Hunger Moon, which began about a week ago with the full moon on February 2. When our lives were closely connected with Earth's life systems, this time was often one of scarcity. Even following a good harvest, the winter stores of squash, corn and root vegetables would be running low. The little game that could be found was often scrawny from its own lack of nourishment.

The Hunger Moon. How far most of us live from that experience. Hop in the car and tootle on over to A&P: "fresh" vegetables and fruit line the produce bins; milk, eggs and cheese? no problem; beef, fish, fowl, pork? all here.

Over the past 50 years we've put the final touches on our disconnect from the Earthways of our ancestors. Personally, I think that's a great loss. (Besides, many of us would probably benefit from a "moon" or two of less food each year, and when the Sap moon appears in a few weeks, we'd all be tuned up for the fabulous taste of maple syrup.)

To everything there is a season. Perhaps, if we renew our relationship with the rhythms and systems of the sacred Earth from which we arose, it might be easier for us to recognize—and to heal—the false sense of separation that permits us to destroy the past 65,000,000 years of God's creative effort on this amazing planet.

I think that's a goal worthy of our undivided attention, our most fervent prayer, our all-out effort.

Another loss

2007-02-09T05:41:00.000-05:00

Last night we learned that a very good friend died unexpectedly. She was way too young, and the loss of her presence on Earth is just now beginning to settle in.

Her life was hard and challenging, yet she was one of the most courageous, faithful and funny people I've known. Over the next weeks and months her passing will be marked by a rolling wake of confusion, shock and grief. She was the superior of a religious order, and her sisters will have to find their way into the future without her body or her voice.

I know that wake will eventually relax back into the great ocean of life. We will mourn for sure—and then we will all get on with the business of life. But the molecules of that ocean will never be quite the same. We have all been changed by knowing and loving her, and the mark of her being stays with us; the song of her life will dance in the air forever.

Poison in the Shadows

2007-02-08T16:59:00.000-05:00

Today was interesting, enlightening, surprising, difficult, meaningful, hopeful — all of which came as a bit of a surprise to me. I'm attending an antiracism training.

I expected some shaking up; it upsets me when something poisonous creeps out of the shadows of my unconscious—like some horrendously bigoted, racist phrase. I learned a few such sayings at about the same time my first grade teacher was trying to get the idea of "subtract" into my head.

My mother taught me "sweatin' like a nigger on election day". Even in the context of this blog, it grieves me to admit I ever said such a thing. It was years before I really understood what it meant and how truly mean and arrogant it was.

Over the years I expunged those racist aphorisms from my speech, and by my early thirties I had a good working knowledge of what "white privilege" meant. I knew I had benefited from it all my life.

But that was head knowledge. Today I began to experience what it feels like to have sailed through life, free to get an education, compete for a good job, join any club or church I liked.

And it didn't feel good. I felt ashamed, frankly. I have been quick to judge my forebears in this country for climbing to wealth and privilege on the backs of the Native Peoples, but today I began to understand how I've kept that dynamic alive.

Cleaning out the shadowy corners is dangerous and not a little scary. It would be a lot easier to just dismiss the feelings and continue to think I'm not a racist because I don't say "those things" any more. But until the poison in the shadows is revealed, experienced and healed, I will continue to wear a face of racism.

I have no business claiming to follow Jesus until I'm willing to own up to my participation in the sin of separation, in any of its ugly guises.

Who moved the cheese? It was a group effort ...

2007-02-08T08:14:00.000-05:00

I'm traveling at the moment; now in New York City for a two-day training. The Melrose sisters came down to the city convent yesterday for some meetings here, which usually requires a few little adjustments to our daily routines; call someone to come let Simon out and feed him, check on the cats, set the ducks up in their straw bale mansions if we won't be back in time to put them to bed before the big predators begin the nightly hunt.

This time we had a more unusual concern: I had (unwisely) begun making a wheel of cheese on Monday, forgetting that it really requires some periodic attention over a three-day period.

Uh-oh. The third day—yesterday—was the day for the cheese to soak in a brine solution for 24 hours, including a few turns so the top of the floating cheese would get the full brine-benefit to make its rind. Now what to do?

Ever creative, we put the cheese, brine and all, into a five gallon bucket with a lid on it, and hauled it down here. Of course the purpose of the lid was to keep the brine solution from sloshing out, so I put the lid on tight.

A little too tight, as it turned out. Once here I couldn't get it off, so I left the contraption in my room to attend the meetings. When I had a chance I asked Sr. Lilli Ana to give me a hand by trying to get the lid off, but our meetings didn't leave much time ... sooooo .... at 4:00 when we finished and the other sisters were ready to head home, the peripatetic cheese was still floating around unturned, the lid still jammed on the bucket.

Ah, well. I tried. The rind may not form properly. The cheese may crack. The whole shootin' match may fall apart in the car on the way back to Melrose. Or maybe everything will come out just fine and we'll have another wheel of delicious homemade cheese in three weeks. Maybe this odd trip will actually add something fabulous to the cheese that we'll want duplicate in future cheese production. We'll just have to wait and see.

That's one of the interesting lessons learned in reconnecting with food. Sometimes a lot of effort results in — a lot of effort. But sometimes all that work results in a taste (and health) treat unmatched in any corporate American grocery store. And oh, is it ever worth it.

So don't be afraid to take your cheese out for a little drive. Who knows? You may discover something entirely new and fabulous. It's worth a try.

Retreat

2007-02-03T13:46:00.000-05:00

Today is a quiet day for me; I am "in retreat". At least once a month each sister spends one day in quiet reflection, mixed perhaps with a bit of physical labor to keep the body tuned. Today I finally covered my windows with plastic to keep the cold and wind from stealing heat from the house. A minor bit of work in service of Mother Earth.

The sky is painfully blue today, so Bob is stretched out in the afternoon patch of sunlight on the bed. I, too, am going to stretch a bit, though not to snooze and purr. I will practice a new form of meditation for awhile, a new path to keep me connected to the One.

Ah, blessed retreat ...

Bob Again

2007-02-01T07:30:00.000-05:00

It's been too long since I've lived with a cat. I've forgotten an awful lot about how they communicate. I remember tail-swishing, the end of purring and laid-back ears as signals to lay off and back away. But Bob finds attacking me with no discernible provocation an increasingly enjoyable pastime, and I couldn't seem to figure out if he was a sad mental case or if I was completely missing his point, whatever that was.

I was missing the point.

I finally wised up enough to check out "cat behavior" results on an internet search. Duh. Cats like to play, for heaven's sake. When Bob first arrived he was content to enjoy his new, safe, rife-with-food digs. I offered a variety of toys, but he wasn't interested. Maybe mature males just don't have that playful bent, I thought, or at least Bob didn't. The toys went off to Smooch, and Bob and I settled in together.

Fine; I'm happy with a feline companion who sleeps a lot and likes to snuggle.

But when the urge to attack me appeared, and soon became more and more frequent, I began to get worried. An entirely unprovoked and nasty bite on the nose at 5 AM this morning sent me off to Google-land. Thank goodness a lot of good, well-informed folk are happy to share their wisdom. Bob isn't actually attacking me; he's just ready to play. In fact, he needs to play. Stalking and catching prey is what cats do, and they need to do it whether they are safely indoors or taking their chances in the wild.

An interesting digression: if you jerk your hand away when a cat bites it (and who wouldn't), you've just informed him that you are pretty good prey, and worthy of chasing down. If you just relax your hand (much easier said than done), and blow gently in his face, the game is off. The wind is unexpected and not much fun, and the prey won't move. Who needs that. The trick is to teach your playful little furball that a toy is good prey, your hand is not.

One delightful cat toy later we're on our way down the road to redirected kitty enthusiasm. I think Bob will soon be an all-around happier guy. If it works, I'm sure going to be a happier nun.

When things go wrong

2007-01-31T16:46:00.000-05:00

I spent this morning testifying in court over in New Jersey. I've done this before, and I don't enjoy it. When it was over I felt several thousand pounds lighter and my mood improved enormously.

This had to do with a man who is adept at pinching other folks' identities. Credit cards, driver's license, the works. Strangely, he never seemed to spend much on himself; he had nice clothes for important events, but mostly he looked pretty much like the average guy. He didn't own a car, or even his own place.

As far as I know, that is. I suppose when you're good at stealing other people's lives, you could have as many of your own as you wish. He is obviously intelligent, but somewhere along the line of his own life he opted to use that intelligence to harm others. I guess what he got in return was a sense of power — perhaps limitless in scope. I don't know.

It was quite strange to be testifying for the prosecution. I knew him as a clever, funny, charming guy, and he didn't filch anything of mine so I have no anger or resentment toward him. I understand some of the best crooks are charming indeed; but there I was, offering information that was going to help provide him a lengthy stay in the local federal prison — and there he was, smiling at me with that same impish charm as if he firmly believed every word of the lie his life has become.

He thought he was happy; I thought I might cry. What a waste of a human life. All that cleverness could so easily have been channeled in wonderful directions. I don't know what happened to him; I doubt anyone else does, either. Perhaps he can't explain it himself. He is so deeply immersed in his charade that no one even knows his real name.

How much sadder can a life be than to not be known for who you really are?

Free—free at last!

2007-01-29T11:41:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the advice of an experienced "duck man", we've learned that Muscovy ducks do an amazingly fine job of coping with cold weather. Even when it's -15°.

Well go figure. Here we've been turning ourselves into pretzels, climbing in and out of the newly insulated duck houses (hey, the ducks got the first straw bale residences on the property), and now we find out all they need is non-frozen water, a bit of food and a shelter—and a simple open-sided lean-to would meet that requirement. They never did have to be confined to their fine houses when it got cold.

No wonder the ducks wanted to escape. They must have thought we were nuts.

I guess they were right, though; when we learn something new about what it means to live in harmony with the land and its wonderful creatures, our prior efforts often end up looking a little crazed. It's just like us humans to think animals need us to survive "out there".

They don't. When we take animals into our environment, we do owe them a safe and sustainable living situation, of course, but that's it. They can figure out the rest of it all by themselves.

That's a hard lesson to learn—that the Earth can take perfectly good care of itself without our help, and has been doing it for, oh, some four billion years or so. In fact, most of what we do to the Earth is detrimental, not helpful.

Maybe that's why most creatures don't have egos.

Of prophets ... and hometowns

2007-01-28T16:05:00.000-05:00

Today's gospel (Luke 4:21-30, RCL) includes that oft-quoted passage about how anyone with a prophetic message (which is pretty much always bad news) isn't going to get a fair hearing among his/her friends and family. "No prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown" Jesus says among his homies; and they are so angry they try to haul him off to the nearest cliff so they can throw him to his death.

Talk about not being accepted. Thankfully, Jesus — in true shamanic fashion — walks right through the middle of the angry mob, apparently unnoticed, and makes good his getaway.

On hearing this passage our minds usually drift toward empathy with Jesus' statement about inevitable rejection from our hometown crowd. But this morning, as I listened once again to this familiar passage, my attention was yanked, and then glued (I missed the rest of the gospel and a fair amount of the prayers that followed), to the whole idea of prophecy.

I have often said that we religious are (or at least should be) today's prophets; we are the ones commissioned to stand out there on the edge of things, challenging, inviting, cajoling the rest of the church and anyone else who will listen to leave that proverbial comfort zone and follow Jesus into the future.

Common understanding notwithstanding, a prophet isn't a fortune-teller, and s/he isn't the designated doom-sayer, either; there are no crystal balls involved. A prophet has the amazing ability to be obedient to today.

Come again?

OK, "obedience" is not saying yessir/nosir to the ones standing on the rungs above you. This lovely word comes down to us with roots in "toward" and "listen" (ob - audire). To be obedient is to "listen toward". Imagine leaning toward a speaker so you hear and understand every word. Quite a challenge when those lips are spouting something we don't want to hear, something that yanks our emotional chain, something we don't agree with and don't enjoy hearing.

A prophet has great skill in just that kind of deep listening. S/he is something of a blank slate upon which all of the information spinning around us today can be written. And what does s/he do with it?

A true prophet takes it in, and then looks at it with what I call the "35,000 foot viewpoint" — avoiding the devil-in-the-details snare so the big picture zooms into focus. S/he has the ability to look at the train we're all on, and then to figure out where that train is headed.

If you see a train speeding toward a washed-out trestle, you just have to do something. Call 911. Rehearse your CPR and crash-EMT skills. Try to get the engineer's attention. Anything.

Anything at all, because you can see an inevitable disaster looming on the horizon.

That is prophetic witness. No wonder we don't want to hear from these folks. We're sipping our martinis in the club car, looking sideways at pretty scenery sliding by the window. Don't annoy us with 911 calls and red flags.

But the prophets, who see the scenery, the passengers, and the destination of the train, are trying to get our attention. Considering that the entire Earth is our hometown, it's no wonder they're having a rough time.

Perfect Balance

2007-01-26T18:33:00.000-05:00

I suppose this picture will hike a few eyebrows. What is a nun doing showing an, um, amorous embrace between slugs on her blog?

Raciness aside, I think this is one of the more lovely pictures we have. That is saying more than you might imagine; last summer slugs were the bane of our gardening endeavors, easily consuming as much food (and I wouldn't be surprised if it were actually more) than six humans did. We confess to dispatching a goodly number of them using the tried and true beer method. They entered eternal slug-life as happy little critters; I was sure if I listened hard enough I'd hear drinking songs and raucous laughter from the strawberry patch.

But then Sr. Helena Marie took this amazing picture, and my attitude made an abrupt about-face. How can you not like creatures that mate in the yin-yang position? Suddenly I thought strawberry shortcake came in a poor second to the artistry of these amazingly beautiful creatures — and who would ever think that about a slug?

Natural conversation

2007-01-25T07:27:00.000-05:00

Living on the farm is teaching us firsthand what lies behind some of the sayings humans use freely. Brooding. A sitting duck. To squirrel away.

It was the red squirrels' squirreling this fall that caused Sr. Lilli Ana to predict a really, really severe winter. Those little clowns laid up a supply of pine cones that would keep all the horses on our neighbor's farm in feed for months. This is just one pile; there were a lot of 'em.

We've lived close enough to the land to respect the conversation available continuously from Mother Earth. In Colorado I used to watch the height of the skunk cabbage to predict the snowfall for the coming winter. Here we "listen" to the squirrels by noticing what they lay aside to keep them going until the riches of next spring become available. Huge piles of "squirreled away" pine cones predicts a tough winter.

But with global warming, we began to wonder if the squirrels had lost their predicting touch. October. November. December. By the middle of January we'd had one snow shower and an average temperature of about 50°. Not good.

Sr. Lilli Ana stuck with the squirrels, though. "Just wait," she kept saying. "This winter's going to be severe. Trust the squirrels."

Well, it's hard to trust a little tree imp. I'm human, you know, and we have thermometers, graphs, dew points, Doppler radar, and an overdeveloped frontal lobe that helps us believe we're the brightest and most skillful creature around.

What I forgot is that all the creatures have amazing abilities, and each one has at least one skill I can't even comprehend much less accomplish myself. Global warming has certainly stirred the climate pot in dangerous ways, and one result may well be uneven weather patterns with extreme fluctuations. But whatever is behind this strange winter, the brutal times have arrived for those who live in nature's housing. Tonight, tomorrow, Saturday ... temperatures near zero and enough wind to drive them down to fifteen below.

Those squirrels were right. Brrrrrrr ....

Out of Control

2007-01-24T21:10:00.000-05:00

You know how it is when someone does something funny in a situation where no one should be laughing?

Today during our daily conference, where we discuss the nits and lice of daily life — who needs the car, shopping needs for the day, house repairs needed and so on — one of the sisters jumped back and clapped her hands together loudly, then resumed talking as if nothing unusual had happened. Startled, the rest of us reacted. "Wow. That's quite a tic you've developed there ..." was probably the best one. We all laughed.

But somewhere deep inside each of us, the funny bone had been tickled. Snickering evolved into guffaws. This was really, really funny. Of course there was a reasonable explanation: the sister was trying to dispatch a bothersome gnat, buzzing around her head. Not all that strange, really.

But funny.

We resumed our meeting, and the day went on. I turned a newly made cheese every hour. A phone appointment occurred. A dog coat was constructed to protect Simon from the frigid weather to come. The duck houses were gussied up with tarps, straw bales and new hasps and hinges so the -12° temperatures to come wouldn't harm those fragile feet and caruncles. Plans were completed for the trip to upstate New York and the NOFA conference.

At 5:30 we headed out to the chapel for Evening Prayer. There we were, beginning one of the most solemn and lovely offices in the daily round of prayer. "Now that we have come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the Vesper light ... " Solemn. Beautiful. Serious.

Until the first snort of laughter exploded.

I don't know what triggered the connection to that gnat-killing hand-clap, but there it was. And all of us were laughing and crying at the same time, unable to stop.

As far as I can tell, this was the first time in the seventeen years I've spent in this Community that we thought we might have to memorialize an office due to hysterics. We just couldn't stop. We tried everything: saying rather than singing; laughing uncontrollably for awhile, to see if we could get ourselves under control. It got better, but it never disappeared entirely, even when we sang the final respond for a double feast. Poor Paul; not an entirely respectful honoring of his conversion.

We meant him no harm, of course; we tried our best to reign in the snickering. But sometimes you just have to let laughter have its way. Time will fix it eventually.

Our apologies for this unorthodox celebration of your life, dear Paul. We hope that you, too, had an occasionally quirky sense of humor that carried you away from your speaking goal on the wings of silliness. Or at least some tolerance for those of us who do.

Winter woe, springtime promise

2007-01-22T10:49:00.000-05:00

The ducks are out again today, and we're all glad about it. For the past two days they've had to stay in their houses, protected from the bitter cold. That means that two of us haul five-gallon buckets of water down to the duck houses, along with two dishes of duck feed and the empty water pans. While one of us sets up the food and water in each house and collects the eggs, the other keeps the ducks from escaping.

That is not quite as easy as it may sound. A twelve-pound duck with talons who wants to fly out of the house can pretty well do it. Imagine an un-neutered feral tom cat with wings and you'll get the idea. The whole procedure is reversed at night. We have to re-hay the houses then, too; if we don't, the ducks' fragile feet could suffer from spending the night on wet (and probably frozen) hay—the inevitable result of their feather and nose hygiene, and the very disaster we're trying to prevent by keeping them locked up.

Duck house-arrest happened quite a bit last winter, but this is the first time this season. Strange. I guess that's good for the ducks, because they certainly prefer to be roaming free, noshing on whatever tasty greens they find and soil-dwellers they can dig up. For the ducks, being cooped up, literally, is miserable—to say nothing of stinky. The sisters aren't too happy with added labor the confinement requires either.

On the other hand, those cold, cold days are necessary to maintain the health of the whole environment around here. Maple tree sap needs to "rest" in the roots for long periods of time to be fortified with nutrients from the soil. Good for the tree, good for making maple syrup. The cold maintains a balance among the tiny critters, like virii, bacteria, deer ticks, slugs, beetles and ground bees. Cold triggers hibernation in some of the local animal community. Cold sends the geese south each year. Cold keeps some of the more "challenging" plants, like poison ivy, from growing dangerously large and powerful. Cold is our friend.

So, I'm sorry Basil, Henrietta, Clementine, Petra and Macrina, that you have to suffer days of confinement. But the payback comes this spring, when you'll each have two strong, healthy feet and those amazingly strange facial decorations (caruncles). That's when you'll really have a great time, rooting around in the mud and finding the most delicious tender greens. Hang in there. It's coming ...

A Word About Bob

2007-01-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

I think I mentioned awhile back that another drop-off critter had joined our ranks: a (mostly) snuggly black cat. Buzz Lightyear is his official name; but over the months since his arrival his true nature has been revealed, and it is clear that he is a Bob.

Bob was a fine companion during my recent illness, spending most of his days purring loudly as he wrapped himself around my sore throat, cuddled on my chest under the quilt, or sat on my head so he could claim most of the pillow. I found the comfort of his warmth worth a few cat-hairs in the mouth. He purred a lot, and was extremely nice to me, even when I repeatedly rolled over on him in my sleep.

Now that I'm back to normal, so is Bob. He doesn't like it when I work at the computer; he sits on the tablet, makes phone calls with his feet, knocks my pen on the floor and swats it under the cabinet, rubs his face all over the keyboard (always dangerous to the work in progress), and stands in front of the monitor. He has a limited tolerance for the petting he begs for. He uses the latest rows of my knitting project to clean out the litter from his paws. Occasionally he yowls at a decibel level that sounds like he's being declawed without benefit of anesthesia, but all he's saying is "It's time for cookies, woman!" His main mode of communication, though, involves teeth and claws and usually draws blood. Mine.

I think Bob misses being outdoors, now that time has erased the memories of starving, running from coyotes and raccoons, and yearning to sleep peacefully (and safely) in a human lap for an hour or so. Mercifully, all he remembers now are the birds, the warm sun, the thrill of the hunt.

We struggle to understand each other, and are both grateful for those moments when we seem to have figured out what the other wants and is willing to give. So I try to be tolerant of his crabby moods; I work hard at "reading" him, which is of course impossible. I try anyway, because I love him, and to the best of cat possibility, he loves me.

And when you love something, you learn to cut it a lot of slack. After all, they do the same for you when you need it most.

Learning Another Lesson

2007-01-15T11:41:00.000-05:00

I'm not too adept at sickness, having been disgustingly healthy most of my life. Things go downhill fast when I feel mostly good but just flat out starchless; my patience (never my strong suit) goes right out the window. Talk about crabby. Good thing I wasn't around my sisters more. Crabby drooped downhill to depression as the weeks (six, count 'em) wore on.

I've been told, by many fellow pneumonia sufferers, that staying down is critical to getting better. They tell me, if I were to try to get back to my normal life before it's really time to do so, I would suffer a relapse which would be, of course, much worse than its predecessor. Hunh. Pretty effective threat.

I should probably note that this advice comes from a perspective of some distance for each teller. Like childbirth, I suspect they have forgotten something of the agony and looniness that set in with the long days of cotton-brained, isolated, frustrating boredom. I suspect this because I've now been vertical (except for a pretty good night's sleep) since mid-day yesterday, and I'm already beginning to look backward at this experience with more perspective and less hopelessness. It wasn't all that bad after all, was it?

Wellll ... maybe, maybe not. Not enough perspective yet.

But I feel that inner rising, the bubbling to the surface of optimism, that heralds a return to health and active engagement. Everything I look at or think about is interesting again. Even the foggy, gray day is beautiful once more, the bright red of cardinals and woodpeckers a surprise visual blast of beauty that makes my heart sing—the taste of newly-made cheese a delight on my tongue, cleaning two fresh duck eggs a satisfying use of five morning minutes—in a day in which I am so grateful to be alive, to see and smell and hear and ponder and laugh and love.

Now that I think of it, those long days of feeling only minimally "alive" may have been something of a pseudo-burial; an enforced resting time during which my ability to appreciate was reawakened and focused in ways my "regular" life couldn't allow. I wrote this to a relative this morning: "Isn't it amazing how something awful, like the death of a parent, opens doors that were firmly sealed shut until the awful thing happened? Convinces me yet again that there is a Cosmic Wisdom waaaay beyond our understanding."

It is amazing. Thank you, Cosmic Wise One, for helping me sink into a place where my [st]illness unearthed a key to new life.

Duckie Update

2007-01-14T11:31:00.000-05:00

I just realized that we had another duck re-arrangement in the past few months that I missed sharing with you duck fans out there.

Sadly, Terry (Teresa of Avila) died this fall. Somehow she picked up a bacteria that caused a severe infection in her heart. Apparently ducks appear perfectly fine, as did Terry, until they are at death's door. I know people like that — stoic to the literal end. I'm not convinced this is a great idea.

Anyway, Terry was fine until the evening we tried to put her into the duck house for the night and she didn't want to move from under the bush. One of the sisters thought she might have an injured leg, as she seemed unable to get up. She picked her up, called me and we headed off for the vet. Though the doc saw her quickly, she had just died in sister' arms when the vet entered the examining room.

The vet said she had been very ill for months, but ducks just do that stoic thing. There was nothing that could have been done with the amount of bodily damage Terry had suffered by the time she began to show signs of trouble.

We've kept a close eye on the rest of the flock, but so far everyone seems to be just fine. Luckily, this seems to have been an isolated infection. I do think the loss was hard on the little duck family, though. Everyone has been a little more subdued; the egg production slacked off, Petra has been in brood mode for months ... death is a difficult part of life for just about everyone. So we do what we can, we continue to love each other, we celebrated her little duck life, and we appreciate every day, every egg, every funny little waddle that our precious duck family shares with us.

The times, are they a-changin'?

2007-01-14T11:18:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting here in a semi-dark room (and yes, I'm still in my jammies, though I have plans to change that), it's nearly noon and I'm eyeing the bed with thoughts of another nap drifting through my head. I'm still thinking I may never feel normal again.

When I'm healthy and begin to recognize that I'm in a rut, my usual remedy is to clean my room and rearrange all the furniture. The sisters laugh about this, usually accompanied by a significant eyeball roll; but for some reason a change of scenery does wonders for my attitude. That works fine when I'm feeling healthy and full of pep. But unearthing the broom and a dust rag is just more than I can accomplish right now. Hmmmm ...

OK, I do have enough energy to sit here at the computer, at least for an hour or two. The least demanding renovation I can think of is the web site and this blog. Soooo ... voila, new looks on both.

Now I'm heading back to bed to wait for that wonderful, energetic surge that comes with change to arrive. Surely it will happen soon.

The Winter Blahs

2007-01-13T11:03:00.000-05:00

OK, I know it's been months since I blogged last. I've been hearing about it. But really, I have some great excuses. The best one is that I managed to be "serially sick": first the flu, which swallowed up almost three weeks, followed by bronchitis and pneumonia, which is still lurking meanly in my lungs. Then my computer got even sicker than I did, so I finally had to surrender to getting a new one; I'm still trying to get it on its feet. As I'm sure you can tell, this is to make you all feel sorry for me and not get on my case about not blogging.

And no, I'm not oblivious to the fact that six weeks of feeling only slightly more energetic than the winter mud outside my window doesn't explain why I didn't blog in September, October or November last year. Guess I had an early case of the winter blahs.

You know what I mean. The garden has transformed from a wild green food jungle to a few droopy brussels sprouts and kale, surrounded by mounds of earth-toned mulch. The trees are bare sticks, through which I can see all the way to the top of our hill and across the lower valley to the depressing subdivisions to the west. There's not enough sunlight each day to keep anyone happy for long. And this year the weather stayed way too warm, which may mean the 2007 maple sugaring season won't happen at all. Now that's really depressing.

I'm sure I'd be less gloomy if I felt better, instead of sitting here in my PJs, thinking I should probably take a little nap before I finish this, waiting for GoToMyPC to drag more files from the dead computer to the new one. Here's what I think is going on: I'm just like the parsnips, carrots, turnips, Daikons and their other hearty winter friends, who are snuggled in the ground, getting sweeter every day. They're not growing, not sending up any green leaves to capture a few rays of yummy sunlight ... they're just lying there, waiting, allowing the Earth to work its winter magic in their still bodies.

I'm not so sure "getting sweeter" is precisely what's happening to me, but surely all my recent down time is allowing my body to garner its resources in service of my health. I may not feel it yet, but one of these days I'm going to wake up and feel more like my old, energetic, cheerful self than I do now. And when that happens, I'll probably notice that the sun is already up longer every day, that the maple trees have survived the scary warm spell, that I'm thrilled to have fresh turnips and potatoes and carrots for dinner.

It's worth the wait.

Hands-on help

2006-08-28T06:51:00.000-04:00

Although this time of year is extremely busy for us, as we harvest and preserve our garden bounty, I've found enough little dabs of time to spin up some yarn and begin a scarf. I'm still captivated by the process.

But I need to find a human instructor; the Internet is a great source of information and guidance, but when it comes to the fine points of drafting fleece, for example, I need hands-on help. Though I can create passable yarn, I still manage to turn the fleece slowly back on itself as I spin, and I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.

I also learned a lot about the different breeds of sheep by reading articles on the Internet ... but visiting a local spinner/knitter/dyer who uses the fleece from her own sheep made a huge difference in my understanding of the process. Running my fingers through a chocolate brown tangled coat provided more information (way more) about what it takes to transform that warm mess into spinnable fiber than I could ever get from the many helpful Internet sites available.

I've learned several important things on "the farm" up here: Doing something yourself isn't just educational—it's exciting, awe-inspiring and life-changing. Finding your morning egg still warm and snuggled in a freshly made nest, for example, is an experience so far removed from picking up a dozen factory-produced eggs in a plastic box that it seems to come from an entirely different world. It certainly comes from an entirely different worldview. Homemade sauerkraut seems almost to be made from an entirely different vegetable than the store-bought variety. (It's simple to do and delicious to eat—try it!) For that matter, any food taken directly from the Earth and eaten within hours will open and entirely different—and fabulous—world of taste.

Here's another one of my little "ah-ha" discoveries: the human appears to be well designed to give and receive help. Not only do other folks know more than I do about a lot of things, there's something deeper going on when people get together and help each other out. Reading is fabulous, and I would never even suggest giving that up as a resource as well as recreation. The Internet is another excellent source of information. But you just can't beat sitting down with an old friend (or a new one) and learning the fine points of spinning—or farming, or teaching, or anything at all—with them.

And one's own store of learning and experience is a gift meant to be shared. Each of us has something she knows a little more about than someone else does. And when that someone else wants to learn, it feels really terrific to be able to pass along the little wisdoms we've acquired. In the midst of this human weaving of knowledge and learning, wonderful things happen. Friends are made, new ideas appear, fresh discoveries are made.

And that's when the real magic begins.

A push for more

2006-08-03T05:40:00.000-04:00

This year I'm really (really) noticing how our world is changing. I fear much of the change is the result of human influence, and probably doesn't bode well for some of Earth's species—us, for example.

There's no doubt we are heading into a time of weather extremes, with massive hurricanes, monster tornados, melting glaciers, rising salt water levels, diminishing fresh water reserves, heat waves and cold snaps. The Earth also has her own weather pendulum, and whether or not we can survive at the far reaches of its movements, it may be swinging toward an ice age.

Interesting. It is said that the human ability for symbolic thought and speech developed into language around campfires inside ice caves. I wonder what we might come up with if we survive during the wild weather that may be ahead for us.

I've read that poison ivy will begin to grow larger and more potent in the years ahead. There's a pleasant thought. Here on the farm we're well acquainted with this plant's current power, and I admit I'm not inclined to think too hard about our prospects with this green neighbor.

As always, there are glorious bright spots as well. This spring we had one of the most prolific displays of flowering plants I've ever seen. The lilacs bent their branches and filled the air with their intense perfume. (Lilacs produce one of my particular "memory smells"; I played under lilac bushes as a child, and one wee sniff sends me right back to 1950's northern Indiana.)

Right now we are enjoying monarch and swallowtail butterfly displays, and it seems to me they are particularly large this year. I watched a yellow swallowtail on the anise hyssop yesterday, and it looked to be about 6" across. Have they always been this big, or am I just beginning to take note?

Carpenter bees, deer, robins, turkey vultures, click beetles, even the duck eggs ... so much seems either larger, more prolific, or both this year. I hope this isn't a last Cenozoicc gasp, though it could be.

Or maybe it's Mother Earth doing what she knows how to do: being beautiful, providing something wonderful to enjoy, giving her human offspring as much leeway as possible (though even loving parents have limits), simply delighting in the vast power of creation that blesses her existence.

"We" — a little, powerful word

2006-08-01T06:30:00.000-04:00

The Episcopal Church (yep, that's "mine") did an amazing thing this year. It was time to elect a Presiding Bishop—not exactly a Pope equivalent, but the closest we can come. Oh-my-gosh, we elected ... a woman.

We have already been the object of intense media attention, as we elected a good man to be the bishop of New Hampshire; a good and honest man who happens to love another man. I can't believe Jesus cared about this one whit, or we'd have heard about it big time in the scriptures. We all know same-sex relationships have been around for ages, and are not limited to the human species, so if God or any of God's human manifestations had wanted to squash the idea, we'd know about it.

Then there's the fact that we decided to ordain women about a quarter of a century ago, and some furor over that step continues today. Though most parishes and dioceses at the very least can "stomach" the female priest business, more than you'd expect cry just-hold-on-one-minute when it comes to bishops. And God knows, a female primate is just out of the question, isn't it?

Nope.

The election of Katharine Jefferts-Schori as our next Presiding Bishop is causing comments from many quarters, some good and some less felicitous. I happen to know her, and she is a wise, humble, intelligent human being. I don't care if her plumbing is indoor or out; I think, if anyone can, she will be able to move the Anglican Communion toward reconciliation.

And here's why. Shortly after her election she was asked about her ability to handle male-female conflict, especially when she happened to hold the upper hand. As usual, she paused to think before answering (gee, I wish we all could do that). She then related her experience as the in-charge person on an oceanographic cruise, where the ship's captain wouldn't speak with her, just because she was female. This is what Katharine said to the audience: "That lasted about fifteen minutes. We got over it."

Not he got over it, but we did. When we are in conflict with one another, the difficult dynamic involves us all. It's never that "you" have the problem, it's that we do. It takes a bit of give and take on both sides to move past the difficulty.

Maybe it's time we all got over it—together.

A Spinning Passion

2006-07-31T23:21:00.000-04:00

In some ways, summer is almost too intense to bear. The garden swiftly shifts from slow, little sprouts to raging, bulging harvest. Bringing in this abundance, cooking, trying to stay one step ahead of the fierce weed crop, replacing the hot water tank and the entire house-full of plumbing pipes, welcoming a new headmaster to the school ... it's all a challenge, and most of it is good.

Most of it. I could do without the hot water and plumbing thingies.

So what is the latest blip on my radar screen? Spinning. Yep, I've got the spinning bug. It may be worse than Erlichiosis (a particularly nasty tick-born disease) or even cellulitis (I've already logged my annual event). A good friend gave us some wool roving and two makeshift drop spindles, and a few days later I'm history. I've already ordered my first Kundert spindle (is there possibly any better?), and taken apart my first efforts so I could keep spinnng something—anything.

Including the dog's hair. Not just any dog, or even our dog, mind you — I used the hair of the adorable little poodle entrusted to our care by our summer intern (and fabulous blessing herself). It's entirely possible; You can actually spin dog hair. Is that amazing, or what?

Now I have my eye on Smooch, our long-haired cat.

I love all kinds of handwork—knitting, crocheting, sewing, quilting ... but this spinning business is a life unto itself. I'm a nun, and probably shouldn't be using this language, but it feels like a calling. I think I could spin all day, every day, and never be bored.

Jeez, that's scary.

I'm trying to figure out how this passion might be useful to our community. Can I learn to do it really, really well? Maybe experiment with natural dyes? Sell the stuff?

I don't know those answers yet, but I do know what it feels like to discover one of the passions we are each (yes, every one of us) endowed with when we appear on this planet. It sings you. It dances your body. It delights your heart in a thousand ways. You would give up food, sleep, maybe even sex, just so you could do it some more. That's passion, my friends.

And if each of us could connect with one or two (or, God help us, three) of those gifts, what an incredible world this would be.

Justice ... for whom?

2006-06-05T07:43:00.000-04:00

One of our dear friends had a horrific experience last week, and it breaks my heart. She was riding her bike in a peaceful demonstration with the group called Critical Mass, a movement that promotes bicycle-riding as one solution to the rapidly dwindling availability of petroleum products, and our rather scary dependence on Earth's oil resource.

Apparently a row of police cars appeared and blocked a cross-street in front of the riders. They slowed down, and as our friend passed by one of the cars, the door flew open, knocking her off her bike. As she fell, her shoulder was broken. The officer who did this is claiming it was her fault. He did come to the hospital—not to see how she was, but to give her five tickets amounting to $150.

This is tricky. No one can prove whose fault this "accident" was, though witnesses believe the door was opened both violently and with purpose. But that's a tough thing to prove, and in our litigious environment, suing a police department has a pretty small chance of succeeding. At least, that's what the lawyer is telling her and I suspect it's right.

On the other hand, paying the tickets is tantamount to admitting guilt, strengthening the police claim to innocence. With the medical costs, the interruption to both her work and personal life, and the physical pain, to say nothing of the injustice of it all, such an act goes against the grain. I ache for her. She's been going through a rough patch in life, and this is the last thing she needs. She's a good and holy woman, who wants to participate in creating a better world for us all.

Here's what breaks my heart: we are a country crumbling under the weight of our consumer worldview and excessive lifestyles. Many of our police departments (along with churches, businesses and educational institutions, among others) are struggling to right themselves from reputations besmirched by members who have forgotten who they are and what (hopefully) led them to these occupations in the first place.

What has happened in that officer's professional and personal life that opened the door to such a cruel, needless, unfair act against someone he doesn't even know? And what continues to exist in our organizations that promotes the cooperation and tacit approval of their colleagues and superiors in such behavior? The Enron debacle has shown us how pernicious is the spread of participation in illegal, unethical, immoral behavior. And we are all cohorts in these crimes if we simply sit back and tsk-tsk about them, doing nothing to change our world.

"Terrorism" isn't a person we can shoot or a place we can bomb. It is a willingness in the heart to abandon self-respect, to forget that when we hurt anything else on Earth we hurt ourselves as well, to lose track of what it means to be a species capable of (and responsible for) compassionate behavior. The possibility for being a terrorist lives in every one of us; whether we act it out or not is a choice we must each make.

It breaks my heart that a people founded on, and quick to claim, the high ideal of "freedom and justice for all" has become the laughingstock of the world. Sadly, we continue to earn those snorts and snickers.

Marie Shirer: Quilter, Priest, Friend Extraordinaire

2006-06-04T05:54:00.000-04:00

June 4, 2002.

She slipped away in the middle of the night, as many people do. We, her friends, family and colleagues had been sitting vigil with her for six weeks as she surrendered her Earthly life to the ravages of cancer.

We laughed and questioned and cried. We suffered and we celebrated. On this morning four years ago, we gathered one last time in her hospice room to say our final goodbyes. It was freezing in there—the hospice's attempt to preserve her body and keep the environment as safe as possible. But her room was always cold; she suffered terribly from "tumor sweats", so the rest of us wore sweaters and shawls and even used an extra blanket once in awhile to tuck around our shoulders or feet.

Marie's departure from us was an anguish, of course, and on this anniversary I find myself crying over the loss of her wild and wonderful presence as if it had happened yesterday. I miss her terribly.

And yet those days of her dying wove a holy coccoon of transformation around us all. She faced her death with the same honesty, humor, and intensity that characterized her whole, brief life. Whether she was designing a new quilt, challenging a seminary professor, entertaining her Colorado friends over a traditional Swedish Christmas dinner in her Arvada home, playing with her adorable Corgis, or sitting with a grieving family, Marie gave her entire being to the task of living.

Margaret Guenther called me at the convent to tell me that the investigation into Marie's troublesome cold had revealed a much more serious problem: stage IV liver cancer. As Marie quickly added to the diagnosis, "There is no Stage V." Everyone knew the remaining few weeks for her wouldn't include chemotherapy or radiation or any other attempt to delay her inevitable death. They would be filled instead with finding her a comfortable place to die and providing relief from her pain. (I can't say enough about Washington Home and Hospice; my sisters are going to have to cart me down there if I wind up in similar circumstances.)

Those short weeks were also filled with an amazing group of women who surrounded Marie and quickly learned to love each other with a depth that awed us all. Not one of us escaped Marie's challenge to engage in this dying as sister, comforter, companion of the heart. The day I arrived, she looked me in the eye (a classic Marie glare), and said, "OK, Sister. What really happens after death?" And she wanted a meaty answer, nothing that even hinted at platitude. Whew; I knew immediately the days ahead would prove to be an adventure typical—and worthy—of Marie.

No matter how awful a situation could be, Marie would occasionally find a way to lighten things up. She understood the healing power of humor better than anyone else I ever met. One day we suggested wheeling her bed her out to the patio to enjoy the warm sun. This was one of the first days that she knew she would never leave that bed. She was in a crabby mood, and we thought the change might ease her frustration. Suddenly she sat up, grabbed the bed railings and pasted a wild look of glee on her face. She made racing noises and rocked back and forth, just like a little boy in a pretend race car. We all burst out laughing; her Barney Oldfield impersonation had evaporated the building tension.

In late May, as I sat beside her shivering in the cold while she soaked her bed with sweat, she told me that the dying process was really boring. Our long, wonderful relationship allowed me to tell her I was finding it boring, too. I had knit enough scarves to outfit the entire crew of an oil tanker, and she could no longer engage in a book, TV or a long conversation. And we were both tired of the cruelty of cancer.

Near the end, Marie began to shift into dream-language; we often think a dying person is just "out of her head", but I believe that the same symbolism used by our dreams crosses over into our more wakeful moments, communicating important information. Days before she died, Marie awoke from one of her lengthening naps and said to me, "Sister, let's just get out of here, get in the car and head for the airport."

I hesitated as I thought about what she might be "processing" internally. Clearly her conversations had increasingly reflected a desire to move on. As I sat there she added, "But you would lose your parking space, wouldn't you?"

"Ah, yes," I finally said. "And I'm not really ready to give up my parking space yet." Marie closed her eyes, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

My last moments with Marie's body were incredibly healing. She had died with that same small smile tickling her face, and it was still there three hours later. I sat with her body as it traveled its own journey into the future, and was awed to realize that bodies don't "just stop"—they have a job to do and they do it with an elegance and beauty that stunned me. It was the opening of my own healing process.

On June 8, a large group gathered at her beloved St. Columba's Church to grieve her death and celebrate her life, and we did both. Margaret wrote the following prayer for that occasion, and I find comfort in it today as I did in those first moments when I realized that I would spend the rest of my own life without the challenging, joyful presence of my dear friend.

Loving, gracious God,Creator, Mother, Father, Look upon this weave of women! Mothers, daughters, sisters, friends; Woven together in love of you and in love of our sister Marie. Artist, creator, seamstress God, Gifted, ingenious user of scraps and pieces, big and little, look upon this patchwork quilt of women's lives, unfinished, filled with color, filled with light and filled with darkness, moving toward wholeness and stitched together in the intricate loveliness of your quilting.

Help us to be midwives. Help us to reflect your tender mother love. Help us to be fully present to the wonder of your presence. We offer you our thanksgivings. We offer you our hopes. We offer you our prayers. Help us to remember that this circle is and will be unbroken. Help us to remember that we are bound together in your love.

Marie, my dear friend, may you rest in the arms of the angels of Light. I'm sure you are entertaining them with your eternal, lively wit; may nothing ever bore you again.

News from the Front

2006-05-28T05:00:00.000-04:00

Fear not, the raccoon wars rage on.

I was sure the large flower-pot-type unit over the duck food can was the answer. It worked for three days. I guess in terms of raccoon wars, that's a long time. But in terms of keeping the cost of feeding the ducks at a reasonable level, it's not long enough.

So, back to the drawing board. OK. They can unhook bungee cords. Those they cannont unhook, they just eat. They can knock a decent-sized rock off the top of the can. They can certainly remove a simple lid, and it took them only three nights to figure out how to remove a wedged-on, very large plastic pot from the top of the container. Hmmm. Even I couldn't get that danged pot off without lifting the entire, twenty-plus-pound contraption, food and all, and banging it down several times.

At this point, I just refuse to put the food in the basement. It's not that I don't think that's a good idea, I just can't admit an animal with a brain one-twenty-fifth the size of mine can outsmart me. My pride just won't allow it.

Now I think I've really, really got it. I located one of the many pavers that were used around here and that we laboriously dragged from hillside and garden to the side of the house for future use. Like to keep raccoons out of the duck food. Those babies must weight thirty pounds themselves. Maybe more.

Great. So I picked one up, huffing and puffing it down the steps, across the lawn, back up to the porch, and finally on top of that pesky food storage can. Boy, that should do it.

And it has. For three nights, now.

Perseverance

2006-05-27T12:17:00.000-04:00

It has been quite a year for lilacs. The ones in the parking lot island have finished their blooming and are now lush in their summer greens. I guess the long, cold, snowy winter was just the ticket for lilacs (and a lot of other plants, by the look of things around here). But the poor bush I yanked unceremoniously out of the ground last fall isn't faring quite as well.

I decided this plant was in the wrong place, snuggled up in the corner by the kitchen porch—not enough sun, too much wind, and stiff competition from the forsythia. So I moved it about fifteen feet west, where it could get good sun, now that ten of the twelve hemlocks once crammed into that space are gone. And when the chapel doors stand open in the summer, it would provide a lovely view. So with about half an hour to kill one afternoon, I tackled the move.

Wrong plan.

Lilac root balls are impressively large and deeply buried. Once committed, I had to get the job done, so I just got what I could of the root ball, dug the deepest hole possible (not nearly deep enough), in the remaining few minutes I had, and hoped for the best.

When this bush budded out with her parking lot neighbors in January, I was thrilled. She had made it! What stamina. But in April, when the rest of the crew was bursting with color and perfume, this little one just sat there with the same tiny buds she had produced months earlier. Uh-oh.

Every day I visited her, made sure she had enough water, checked her limbs for any sign of life, sang to her and convinced myself that there was suppleness just under my fingertips. Let's give her another week before pronouncing her past hope. Every day when I examined the little buds, I told myself something was happening there. Truth to tell, I just couldn't face the fact the I may have killed this little bush myself. Please, God, don't let me be a murderer this late in my life.

Then, a few weeks ago, there it was, the proof I had been watching and praying for all that time. No doubt about it now, there was green appearing at the bud tips. Oh, wow; we both had been reprieved.

But a few days later, I got a bigger surprise. This bush hadn't flowered in the three years since I moved here, so I assumed moving it would mean no blooms for several years more. But there, right at the tip of about half the branches, were tiny blooms!

She may be nearly half a year behind her sibs across the driveway, and she may look puny to other folk, but to me she's simply gorgeous. You can be sure I spend time with her every day, still watering, and touching, and speaking words of praise to her.

She has become one of my teachers. Hang in there, no matter how hopeless you feel, she says. If you're yanked out of your comfortable home, leaving most of your roots behind, just sit tight in your new digs. New life may appear when you least expect it, and it will be all the sweeter for the surprise of it. Rough treatment certainly is no picnic, but you may find out you are tougher than you think. And don't worry too much if your neighbors seem to be more beautiful than you are; there is someone in the world who will love you to pieces, just the way you are.

Things Change

2006-05-22T12:24:00.000-04:00

From days of rain to a day so clear your eyes hurt. Well, that's weather for you. I don't know why I fuss when things like weather appear to get stuck with the needle pointing to "lousy". In the first place, that's a pretty lopsided judgment to make—that rain is lousy and sunshine is wonderful. Actually, I love and appreciate them both, so what gives?

I think some needle deep inside me hangs up occasionally, pointing at lousy. Then I just look around and blame it on the nearest possibility. Like the weather.

But things are changing all the time, and if I could just unstick my own internal value monitor, I could avoid that gray, nasty, hopeless feeling that this (whatever "this" happens to be at the time) is just the way life will be forever. OK, maybe only for the foreseeable future, but when this happens, I'm not appreciating such distinctions.

Maybe I could remember this, instead: I went out to the rocky area beside the kitchen garden about a week ago to see how the new weed crop was going. That would be dandelions, plantain, wild violets, a few little ground-crawlers I haven't met yet, and some big dude that sports deep purple leaves all summer. That one was so pretty I actually watered it all last year, right along with the herbs.

But when I got out there, the only returners were the dandelions and violets. Where the little ground cover and plantain once shoved rocks aside were plants I've never seen there before. There are two huge docks, for example (a large critter that looks a lot like rhubard early on). And a bunch of smaller greenies; I have no idea at all what they are. The big purple dude? No sign of him yet, but there's nothing in his place, so I'm still hoping.

Then I started checking father afield. The front "yard", the back meadow, the hill from the driveway to the playing field; they are all home to plants that weren't there last year, at least not the way they are this. Wild chives and wild onions are really popular (we eat both). It's back to my plant book again to find out who else has joined the Bluestone Farm family.

Yep. Things are changing all the time. Enjoy whatever is under my nose right now, because sooner or later it will surely change. I just need to remember that.

Raining again

2006-05-19T12:25:00.000-04:00

It's pouring rain again today, so I just have to put some sunny photos under my nose. Here we have yet another view of the woods with the morning sun. I find our woods enchanting. Fairy tales were written with such views in mind.

And then we have ... potato plants!! Last year it seemed to be in late June or early July before these plants made their appearance, but here it is, mid-May, and voila, potato wannabes.

No preachy lesson this time. Just a chance to share in the beauty of the Farm.

Got real milk?

2006-05-19T11:23:00.000-04:00

I was less than happy to see this sticker on a recent raw milk purchase. This is the result of our powerful dairy lobby, hard at work.

The message appears to be offered in the spirit of health-consciousness, but it is actually there in the interest of business. As in huge agri-business, factory farming, petroleum-dependent food production. The motive here is profit, not protection.

The truth is that raw milk is loaded with goodies that are beneficial to mammalian bodies. If you're not allergic to milk and want to drink it, raw's the way to go. Why? Because milk (obtained from grass-fed cows), when it has been properly gathered and safely stored and transported, is quite healthy. For example, some of the enzymes that raw milk contains actually assist the body in processing the fat in the milk. And the fat itself is healthy. If you're interested in the truth about raw milk, take a look at this brochure, produced for the Campaign for Real Milk (Weston A. Price Foundation, Washington, DC). Here's just one sentence from that brochure that should set you to thinking:

"Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer."

Sr. Claire Joy remarked this morning that pasteurization is like chemotherapy. I started to laugh, then we suddenly realized that it is chemotherapy. The process is violent (milk is quickly heated, especially in ultra-pasteurization, which takes less than two seconds) and destroys all the friendly, healthy contents as well as the rare bad booger in its path.

Then more chemistry is applied: scary-sounding stuff like oxidized cholesterol, neurotoxic amino acids, mucopolysaccharides, colorings, and bioengineered enzymes ... none of which even touch the antibiotics, hormones and pesticides that find their way into a cow's body, all in the name of increased milk production. The treatment of high-production animals, the destruction of small farms and farmers, and the dangers of genetically-engineered additives are each rich fodder for an entire blog of its own.

Yes, this is definitely a preachy entry, and for that I apologize. But I'm willing to take on just about any epithet if it helps awaken even one person to the dangerous "food" that lines our grocery store shelves, and to spurious marketing ploys that promise us health but give us junk.

They're here!!

2006-05-18T09:48:00.000-04:00

For all you duck lovers out there (and those of you who just tolerate my frequent duck-gushing blogs), all the hard work of the past two weeks is finally paying off!

Because the ducks aren't fond of close scutiny, and therefore waddle away when I try to take their pictures, these aren't the best ... but I think you can still see those amazing new little feathers, just pushing out of recently-naked quills. Petra is at the top, and her new, perfectly formed tiny wing feathers are that lovely blue-green-gold that marks a healthy feeding environment.

Basil, below, is even harder to catch on film, but his blossoming white wing feathers are fairly obvious in this shot.

Spring is bustin' out all over!!

(And stay tuned for more pics tomorrow. The garden has already begun its own fecundity; we will have our first salad of the spring for lunch today.)

Abundance

2006-05-18T04:22:00.000-04:00

This spring has a wildness about it I don't remember seeing before. Everything is sporting an eye-popping lushness. My theory is that the harsh winter (and perhaps the more reserved production of several prior years) has something to do with this year's extravagance. Then again, it might just be something cyclical in the nature of an ecosystem.

I really don't know, but I am certainly enjoying the show. This picture was taken from our kitchen window early in May. The pink blossoms front and center are on the redbud tree; the bright green leaves to the right are on the wild cherry tree just behind the redbud. Across the driveway is the ancient and always gorgeous copper beech, which displays a variety of red leaves from early spring to late fall. In the lower left corner is a dogwood that is actually behind the main building, and behind that is one of our many maples, just beginning to wave its own green signs of spring.

The view changes constantly. A few days ago the redbud began to exchange its deep pink beauty for wide green heart-shaped leaves, and will soon receive its first pruning in some years. The wild cherry is beginning to build its own blossoms: right now they are tiny green buds that look a lot like the cherries that will appear toward the end of the growing season, but soon they will appear as banana-like clumps of small white flowers. The copper beech leaves are beginning to darken, and the dogwoods are tossing their delicate petals to the ground in wild abandon. The azalea and lilac bushes are so prolifically decked out this year they are actually bending their branches toward the ground.

And it's not just this eye-candy thing going on; for some time the heady perfume of lilac blooms has saturated the air. Every day sisters, teachers, students and bees jockey for position to drink in that smell. (Okay, I know the bees are doing a little more than smelling, but you get the idea.)

I'm trying to figure out how all this works. A lot of animals and birds and insects are either waking up or showing up, most of them hungry. Do the showy colors and smell attract them in ways they wouldn't figure out on their own? I mean, really, is all this necessary?

I know nothing is wasted in a healthy ecosystem, but I'm convinced the beauty surrounding us is both necessary and gratuitous. Something changes inside me when the lilacs bloom. One deep breath, and I'm back in 1954 or so, lying down under another lilac, a nine-year-old transported to lilac heaven. I can see that same dozey look on the other adults as they take their turn at the purple blooms. Lilacs have a gentle "power" over most of us.

It might work for the birds and bees and every other hungry soul to be attracted to one color, or one smell, or one shape for that matter. It could have been that way ... but it's not. Our Universe seems intent on variety, and its living systems are built to enjoy that wild abundance, whether we're eating, or smelling or remembering.

I'm so glad.

Birdsong

2006-05-16T20:31:00.000-04:00

Its about time for a picture. But it has been raining for the best part of ten days now, and that doesn't provide the best picture-taking opportunities. So here is one from just before this long rainy stretch began. There's no reason for this particular picture; I just like the look of this Grandmother Maple.

Its hard to say for sure, but I think morning is my favorite at this time of year. The sunlight slanting into the trees is especially inviting. As you can see from this shot, the four directions circle in the back yard is wonderfully illuminated, while the rest of the meadow waits its turn for the light of day.

But what I love most is the birdsong. It's mesmerizing. I'm slowly learning who's who out there by the sounds they make. Cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, mourning doves, a whole raft of sparrows, bluebirds, robins, crows, woodpeckers, nuthatches, phoebes, tufted titmice and many I have yet to identify.

My all-time favorite bird call comes from the thrush family, though. We have both wood and hermit thrushes in the woods nearby, and their clear, flute-like melodies stand out like the Big Dipper in the night sky.

Identifying birds from their song can be quite a challenge. Try it: pick out one sound from all the rest, remember it, and then go search the internet for an audio clip that matches it. It's sort of like trying to use a dictionary to find the correct spelling of a word. And in the spring, birdcalls change quite a bit, as mating and nesting songs are added to the variety of sounds any one bird produces.

This is one of those times when it's quite obvious we need each other. Those thrushes, for example, are difficult to spot. They are shy, for one thing, and by the time they appear in our neighborhood, the trees are already decked out in their lush summer garb, making bird-spotting all but impossible. On the other hand, bluejays are not only raucous singers (though "yelling" is more like it), but they also hang around in plain sight, stealing the duck food every chance they get.

I only know about the thrushes because I sat on a bench near another wood several years ago, joined by someone I hardly knew. We were attending a conference. She was an older, reserved woman, and we sat quietly together, listening. "OH!! Did you hear that??" she said suddenly. "That's a hermit thrush!" She said it with hushed awe, and I knew were were hearing something very special. It took awhile for me to pick out the sound, but she was patient, and fortunately the little bird hung around, singing its heart out for some time. Once I could isolate its beautiful lilting voice, I knew I would never forget it.

That's what we do for each other; we sit together, listening, and we help one another sort out the voices of the world. The next time someone shares her wisdom with you, thank her—and remember to pass it along.

The "Habits" of the Universe

2006-05-16T08:41:00.000-04:00

We are studying Swimme and Berry's The Universe Story in chapel each day, reading one paragraph at a time and using the structure of the African Bible Study model to explore, ponder, discover, and challenge ourselves to delve into this amazing place in which we live.

Today it was about the "habits" of the Universe: the four basic forces of gravity, electro-magnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear. These four immutable actions determine relationship and interraction throughout the Universe, and though we rarely think about it, they determine how we live our lives in minute detail.

But what caught my attention was the instant before those forces coallesced into existence. In the primordial moment, there was no gravity, no electromagnetism, no strong and weak nuclear forces. There weren't any atoms or quarks, either, and I can't even begin to imagine what "time" and "space" meant at that point.

Just as I cannot grasp the concept of time or space having a beginning point, I can't wrap my limited brain around the idea of "pre-gravity". In the beginning the flaring forth was wildly chaotic—an exploding soup of heat and light and infinite possibility. And almost instantly, in Universe time, that soup differentiated into forces and particles, and the infinite span of future possibilities narrowed dramatically.

There is something about our Universe that yearns toward organization—not to the exclusion of ongoing creativity, certainly, but that "leaning into" the creation of determined structures is clearly there. Our Universe seems to prefer building its unique body on a skeleton of predicability.

So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I have the tendency toward organization as well. I have a definite penchant for neatness and clear space; I am driven by a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place thinking. I can't be creative when surrounded by personal chaos. In fact, I find it hard to breathe in a chaotic environment. (Perhaps literally: the dust bunnies under my bed were beginning to grow teeth and develop language.)

So I spent most of yesterday implementing my own laws of structure in the mini-universe of my bedroom/office space. I know my sisters find my leaning into organization annoying (on their best days), but I prefer to think of it as echoing the nature of the Universe. Of setting structure into place so that creativity can blossom forth. Of living in harmony with the basic nature of the Universe.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

The Raccoon Wars

2006-05-15T07:07:00.000-04:00

We're at war again. Oh, we're not about guns and smart-bombs (isn't that an oxymoron?) and terrorizing our Earthly neighbors—we're just trying to figure out a way to keep the raccoons out of the duck and bird feed storage. It's a war of mind and skill, not murder.

All winter we keep the feed in metal garbage cans outside on the porch. No problem. But with the riotous explosion of spring, the raccoons awaken and are famished. In additional to a ravenous appetite, they also have extremely clever brains and opposable thumbs. A raccoon is a formidable competitor, even for humans.

So instead of a simple push on the lids at night, we placed a cement paver on top. That worked until the raccoons were actually awake. The first signs that they were completely conscious was that the plastic liner, which hung (notice the past tense) over the lip of the can and down its side, was shredded in the morning, the lid was off and the the food supply noticeably lowered. No problem, we'll use the bungee cords. We don't mind sharing a bit; we like to think of ourselves as good neighbors, after all.

Two short cords, threaded through the lid handle and secured (ha) on the can handles should do the trick. "Should", maybe, but raccoons can't read. Off came the cords and down went the food. My "good neighbor" attitude vanished. Enough of feeding those little bandits.

The next night I twisted the cement paver into the cords and stretched them tight. With a great deal of effort, I also managed to wedge a good-sized log under the cords as well. I wasn't sure I'd be able to get in the next morning, but I knew I'd sleep soundly that night.

I did, but the 'coons didn't. I can just imagine the sniggering as they surrounded the can. "Look at this!!" [Snort-snort.] "Oh, those humans. What an entertaining bunch! But so stoooopid. OK, guys, let's do it." Chomp-chomp. BANG goes the cord as they chew through. I doubt if even one of them got clonked in the head in the process. "RESTAURANT OPEN!" one hollers to the waiting hordes. Down goes the food.

That's it, Jodi declares. The food goes down to the basement. I agree. I'm pretty sure the raccoons can't get into the house (though it wouldn't surprise me if they have a key to the door stashed somewhere). OK, so we'll schlep food cans up and down stairs every day for the rest of the summer. I can use the exercise.

But this morning I decided to google (great verb, hunh?) "animal-proof cans" and found something even a grizzly bear couldn't break into. Big old twist-top lid. Slippery, killer-thick poly construction—they could even bounce it down the steps and not get to the food. Only $49.95. Plus shipping and handling.

I almost did it. But then it occurred to me: grizzlies don't have opposable thumbs.

Our Mother(s)

2006-05-14T05:00:00.000-04:00

My biological mom died twenty years ago, but Mother's Day still stirs the memory of her as if she were still here, home with Dad in their little house in Kentucky. Her last years weren't her best; she couldn't remember our names or who were were in the family hierarchy. When we gathered for our folks' fiftieth wedding anniversary, she ate butter for dinner and insisted that I pour her wine exactly to the top of the glass.

When I finally managed to push the limits of surface tension in the glass, she settled down to playing with her blouse buttons, and ignored the rest of us (and the overfilled wine glass) completely. It was the last time I remember seeing Mom dressed and in a normal setting.

She wasn't always that way, of course. When my sister and I were in our early teens, we got a wild hair to make mudpies one rainy day. Mom surprised us by hauling out the wheelbarrow and joining in the messy fun. I must have looked bewildered when she rounded the corner of the house with that wheelbarrow, because she said to me, "This is the last time I'll see my children playing in the mud. I don't want to miss it."

Moms come in all shapes and sizes and with a wild variety of personalities and parenting skills. I've been a mom, too, and it's not all that easy. Loving your children is the joyful, natural and practically brainless part. It's raising them well that makes your stomach ache and sprouts the gray hair. Most of us manage to botch the job thoroughly on occasion, even with the best of intentions.

There is something about that tension between maternal loving and living—tenderness bound by steel—that draws me in. A child enters your life and for years afterward you live in the chaos of trying to shape them safely into their future without destroying their uniqueness, and mostly you can't figure any of it out in advance. Basically you really don't know how you're doing until your chance to change it is long past.

I often think Mother Earth is suffering a similar angst with her human children. We are filled with possibilities, eager to try every new thing that catches our attention, convinced we will live forever, blind to the messes we make in the process of growing up.

So, Happy Mother's Day — to you, Mom, wherever you may be, and to you, Mother Earth. Both of you gave me life, and sheltered me, and fed me, and tried your best to see that I grew into a compassionate, responsible, happy adult. I hope you are thinking all that effort was worth it.

Duck Feathers

2006-05-12T21:10:00.000-04:00

Let me begin by acknowledging that I have been more than remiss in my blogging. I have many good and valid reasons, but I won't bother trotting them out, because I know everyone can produce a "good" excuse when she needs one, and the rest of us don't think too much of it.

OK, then, let's talk about ducks. (This one's for you, Lynne.) We have been wading through duck feathers for a couple of weeks now. I can't seem to find a reliable source of information that can tell me how much longer this may last, but it seems to be somewhere between two more weeks and maybe next November.

In the meantime, I pick up several dozen discarded feathers a day, with hundreds more passed by. Our three older ducks (that would be Basil, Macrina and Petra) are molting.

Oh, boy, are they molting.

I've never experienced this before (nor have these particular ducks), and I am definitely impressed. Everything else in duck life is put on hold in the effort to be decked out in a new feathery spring outfit: no eggs, no wandering about the neighborhood, no mating ... just feather-dropping and feather-making. Though I admit I don't really see much evidence of that feather-making part just yet.

It's really sad.

The ducks are looking shabby; everything from the teeniest pin feathers to impressive wing- and tail-tips are scattered around the yard and in the duck houses. Looks like a major pillow fight happens daily out there. All three ducks wander about with little feathers hanging on by a thread and bigger ones hanging off their bodies every which way.

It never occurred to me that some (all?) birds need to change clothes every year or so, and that it takes a humongous effort to do it.

I pick up the least damaged feathers and look at them carefully. The big female feathers are half brown and half blue-green-gold, separated by a deep burgundy quill. On one side of their body the shiny part is on the right side of the feather; on the other side of the body, it's on the left. The feathers arc in opposite directions, too. The base of every feather begins with about 1/2" of boa-like wisps, soft and fluffy shafts that curl and float in every direction. Then, suddenly, perfectly formed shafts "glue" themselves to each other and form the part of the feather we recognize as "feather".

Hunh. Never noticed that before.

I've also discovered that each duck has an extensive feather inventory—from 1/2" to 10" long, each an exactly formed feather, from boa-fluff to tip. Needless to say, no two feathers are exactly alike. Makes you wonder how a duck looks coherent, doesn't it?

But if we were to take such a careful look at any creature, whether bird, mammal, insect, rock or brussels sprout, we'd discover similar characteristics. Now that is amazing. All our pieces-parts are quite individual and completely unique, yet when viewed as a whole, a bird is percieved as a bird, not as a conglomeration of a few thousand feathers; a lion is a lion, not a bunch of different kinds of hair and nails and teeth; a mountain is a mountain, not a scree field here, a schist out-cropping there ...

Think about it. Doesn't that just make your jaw drop in wonder?

When the conditions are right

2006-03-11T05:00:00.000-05:00

We have cold frames in the garden again this year. Two of them seem prone to creating incredible works of art. When all the conditions are just right, frost forms on the glass. This is just one of the beautiful images that appeared this winter.

What season is it, anyway?

2006-03-10T22:27:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting here, 10:30 at night, scratching a mosquito bite. I know that sounds prosaic, but when you're munched on by a "skeeto" in early March, that's a bit odd. After all, there's still snow on the ground (OK it's just a dab, but it's there); we were shoveling more than two feet of snow just a month ago, and as of yesterday we only went outside bundled up like ten-year-olds out for a day of January sledding. So what was that little bomber doing awake at this time of year?

And s/he wasn't alone in early rising. I sent a small troup of slab ants to their greater reward in the kitchen this afternoon, along with a good-sized spider (which I'm loathe to kill; but she wouldn't have fared too well outside, either). Just because it was unseasonably warm today (an amazing 70°), that's no reason for insects to jump the gun and haul themselves out of hiding and into the world at large. It's not a very workable plan. Come Tuesday and the return of respectable March weather, they'll pay a dear price for their premature appearance.

This is sugaring season, when temperatures usually run below freezing overnight and into the low 40's during the day. Those are the ideal conditions for our maple trees' sap to roar up from the rich Earth, zooming skyward through the sapwood in the morning, then reversing direction and falling back to Earth at night. The sun plays a big role, too. When the high branches sense the sun's climb up from the southern sky, they holler down to the roots that it's time to draw up the lifeblood, stirring the tree's first yawns and stretches from a long winter's nap.

It's possible that this little warm spell might trigger the maple tree's full awakening; when a tree leaves dormancy, buds will begin to appear. During that phase, the sap changes from crystal clear to a brown-ish yellow. It's no longer ideal for making syrup, taking on a darker color and a "buddiness" to the taste. And that's when we cease our busy sugaring operation, finishing off whatever sap is in storage, labeling the last of the bottles, washing the pans one last time ...

We're all on a cusp. It's not exactly winter. But it's not exactly spring, either. Should I sleep or get up? Stop making syrup or keep going? Make buds? Crawl out of whatever hidey-hole protects a brave little mosquito and venture into the daylight? We don't know. None of us. We just make our decisions as we go, some great, some dangerous, some ridiculous, some brilliant.

This time may be hard to navigate, but it's also loaded with wonder and surprise. Everything is hovering between the was and the will-be, death and new life. Maybe we should call this in-between time "sprinter". Or maybe we should call it Lent.

Bruno, the King of Melrose

2006-02-02T06:46:00.000-05:00

A few times a year we are blessed with a vist from a little four-legged God-spark named Bruno—a cuddly black dynamo (otherwise known as a Pug) of affection and entertainment. He sits respectfully in his own chapel seat throughout offices and Mass, and when we leave he bounces along he path beside me as we return to the house.

Because his head is only about a foot off the floor, he prefers laps, chairs and beds to the isolation of the floor. He doesn't enjoy the company of ankles as much as that of hands and arms and faces ... and the occasional peek at the dinner table when he can arrange it. Right now he's snuggled in the crook of my arm as I type this, snoring softly. This is a little too early for him, so he's finishing up on last night's beauty sleep.

He's a charming creature of routine, yet he is quite tolerant when things don't go exactly as he planned. Early with breakfast? Late with the afternoon walk? No problem. The only exception to his amazing adaptability is the evening treat, which is timed roughly in the middle of meditation. He is usually snuggled in my lap, sound asleep, when his internal snack-alarm goes off. His little eyes pop open, he jumps down and runs to the table where I keep ... not the snacks, but the cleaning pads used to keep the folds of his nose healthy. The drill is clean the nose, eat the treat, and he knows it. The nose routine is only every other day though, and in his usual display of flexibility, he gladly forgoes that part, as long as that tasty sausage thing gets into his mouth. Mmmmm.

He and Simon are quite the pair: large taupe racer and mini black snugglebug. Simon's still not quite sure if Bruno is safe, so, Beta dog that he is, Simon gives way to Bruno. The seven-pound King rules over a seventy-five pound dog. But he is a gracious sovereign, and other than taking over Simon's huge bed, Bruno pretty much ignores the Big Brown Dog.

As you can probably tell, Bruno captivated my heart long ago. I spoil him rotten, preferring him on my lap whenever possible. I'm great with food control; I know how easily humans can harm their animal companions with love in the form of food—that's how we treat ourselves, after all. But when it comes to petting, holding and all-around loving, I have no control.

There is something wildly alluring about the unconditional love manifested in many of our non-human friends. Wouldn't life be grand if we two-leggeds treated each other with the same kind of "stringless" affection?

Western Sunrise

2006-01-21T08:45:00.000-05:00

I was trying to capture the Earth's shadow this morning; it was a perfect sunrise for it. I knew the shadow would have disappeared by the time I made it outside with the camera, so this is what I saw from my window. The shadow is the faintly darker, grayish area just at the horizon to the left of the chapel roof. OK, you'll just have to trust me. It was there.

This was one of those rare mornings when the western sunrise sky is more striking than the eastern. I sat in my rocking chair, watching the sky change as our side of the Earth rolled toward the sun behind me.

Watching the sunrise toward the west is actually watching the night fade away. When the atmospheric conditions are just right, the last little bit of departing night I can see is the changing angle of Earth's shadow. It becomes more obvious and darker for a few moments, and then the new-day light chases it over the horizon and out of sight.

For eons we've referred to the Earth's spinning journey as the "activity" of the sun — sunrise and sunset. This is not only logical — it does appear that the sun travels around us and not the other way around — but it is our wonderful, life-giving local star that is the source and sustenance of all Earth life. On the other hand, I love the idea of using language to reawaken a sense of awe and wonder about our amazing planetary home. So how about these: nightset and nightrise. Or maybe Earthdrop and Earthroll.

Hmmm. Well, it was a thought.

And the beat goes on

2006-01-20T22:24:00.000-05:00

The pear tree isn't the only storm casualty on the farm, though these remnants of a horse chestnut were created several years ago. But the Earth's wisdom in using absolutely everything is wonderfully obvious here. The "dead" piece of trunk is home to millions of little creatures and plants, some working to transform the wood into soil — and they'll get the job done, too, never mind how long it takes from a human point of view.

When Lent arrives we will be singing the haunting refrain "In the midst of life, we are in death ... " during Compline, the last, quiet service of the day. And here, right under our noses, the Earth is singing its hopeful counterpoint: "In the midst of death, we are in life ..."

The Ruach of Winter

2006-01-20T19:21:00.000-05:00

First it was eight inches of snow falling on top of the last rainstorm-turned-to-ice, then the wind came, and with it a torrential downpour. The car windsheild wiper transmission (wipers have a transmission?) died. Along about the time the wind was kicking into high gear (if car wipers can have a transmission, I guess wind can have gears) Simon caught yet another duck, this time puncturing a leg muscle and instigating a trip to the vet.

The electricity was knocked out by a huge tree falling on the wires just up the road from us. The fence around our emergency generator (which chugged along for eight hours or so when the lights were out and the heat was off) was blown apart. One of the bee boxes was smashed. Most of the maple sugaring buckets and tomato cages "hidden" on the back side of the chapel porch are now scattered in plain sight around the back yard.

It was quite a day.

The old Bartlett pear next to the school was ripped apart — the poor old thing was torn in half in a lightning storm several years ago, leaving three trunks branching from the main tree. One of those was lost this past fall in a heavy rain, and the second went in this latest storm. The final insult occurred at our own hand, as the wonderful folks from SavATree came to remove the lone, lopsided trunk before another storm could send it crashing through the school roof.

During the heaviest part of the rain, we sisters were out with our bow saws and secateurs and a well-worked chain saw to get rid of the big piece of pear tree that landed over the sidewalk and into the driveway before the buses came to pick up the kids. (Can't hold classes with no heat or light. Aw, poor little tykes ... a free day.)

We got along fine, though: a little basement flooding, which we are used to by now (I don't even look any more), a whole lot of mud, and six really happy ducks. Once we finally got the wet jeans peeled off and our hair toweled dry, we lined up our soaked shoes in front of a blazing fire and read and snoozed and chatted.

We've had some strong winds this winter, but this one was fierce. We were lucky; plenty of folks in the area suffered much worse damage and longer power outages than we did.

All of which got me to thinking more deeply about wind. We had just read the scripture passage that reminds us we don't know where the wind comes from — it just blows where it darned well pleases. I know all the scientific explanations about temperatures and invections and air pressures ... but the idea of wind beginning from somewhere is tantalizing. Where would that be?

Wind appears to be alive. It has a voice which can vary from a soft whisper to a whistle to a roar. Though you can't see it, its effect on everything it touches is obvious, and ranges from soothing to devastating. It can wander aimlessly, spin in frantic circles, or sit perfectly still. Wind is ... mysterious and amazing.

And at the end of a wild and scary day, that wind just left. Or died. Or quarked off into another dimension. And in its wake was yet another glorious sunset. I don't know where the wind comes from, and I don't know where it goes. And I don't know why sunsets after a raging storm are so incredibly lovely. But they are.

The Possibility of Carrots

2006-01-05T06:54:00.000-05:00

I was the main meal cook yesterday. I usually have a plan, some idea of what I'll be cooking, but yesterday was all last-minute. That's uncomfortable for me. I have to have a mental picture for just about everything that will occur in my future. (Hey, did someone out there just whisper "control freak"?)

Winter cooking is much different than summer cooking when you're trying to eat locally and from your own garden as much as possible. Our gardens, and everyone else's within a several hundred mile radius, are covered in a lot of really heavy, wet snow. That limits the possibilities. The automatic greenhouse window was broken, so the tasty salad greens in there froze. They are coming back, but there weren't enough to feed us yesterday. Hmmm.

There are still some possibilities: the root cellar has potatoes (sweet and otherwise), some squash and turnips. There are canned tomatoes and pickles and chutney. The freezers have tomatoes, zucchini and some basic tomato sauces. We had a great tomato year. The garden itself hides more than you would guess: believe it or not, some of the greens, like kale and collards, just hang on all winter, looking all droopy and frozen, but they are as delicious as ever. Someone read that celery plants can be brought inside at the end of the season, so we tried it — now we have some growing happily in the library. And our dried bean crop was grand, with lots of variety.

Off to the Genesis Farm cookbook (a definite winner). Brazilian Black Bean Soup. Gee, that sounded great, and we had nearly everything: sweet potatoes, tomatoes (for sure), celery, onions, garlic, dried midnight turtle beans and ... carrots. Oops. I dug around in the storage sand in the root cellar, but no luck. Hoping I'd just missed some, I asked Sr. HM. "Oh, sure" she said. "There are some in the garden. I'll get them for you."

Hunh?

I don't know how they accomplish everything, but our farmer sisters managed to add the building of several cold frames to their work last summer. There, under a box covered with six inches of icy snow, a second crop of carrots was growing. Wow.

But here's the really amazing thing. Our first crop was slow in growing (not the best weather for them last season) and the results were a little puny, which is why our root cellar supply was gone by January. But I had asked for four carrots, and sister brought in four of the most gorgeous carrots I've ever seen. Perfectly formed, chunky, beautiful bright orange carrots! Big luscious green tops, too.

With just a wee bit of protection (it is a cold frame, after all — mostly it just keeps the snow and ice off the plants and capitalizes on what weak winter sun is available), you can grow fabulous food in the "dead" of winter. Yes, it's really, really cold. Yes, the sunlight is marginal at best. Yes, we've had nearly two feet of snow already this winter. But hungry bugs and voles are sleeping, so the plants are free to thrive uninterrupted. The result is truly beautiful.

So here's my Earth lesson for today. Just because I think something is impossible or impractical, I'd be wise to remember that the Earth is all about possibility. A little ingenuity and cooperation might transform "no way" into a fabulous lunch. That's worth knowing, isn't it?

Snow and Ice

2006-01-03T07:13:00.000-05:00

We are in the middle of the second winter storm of the season, this time with ice and wind thrown in for good measure. A winter ice storm is a mixed blessing; only the strongest limbs on the older trees will survive the weight of the ice, and many of the plants around the farm will receive an early nature-pruning by the time the ice melts.

Nature trims for survival and strength, whereas I planned to prune to my own idea of what the flowers and bushes should look like next year. Humans are never as effective in this process as we think we will be. Ah, well.

But should the sun come out over the next day or so I'll have the trusty digital camera in hand, because that's when the diamond sharpness of ice coating every limb and twig will become unbearably beautiful. Apparently without any effort or design, the Earth will be transformed into a scene more elegant, more fabulous, more thorough than Hollywood or Broadway could ever produce.

Computer technology can appear to compete faborably with nature, but the result would be energy bits of stored data. Amazing in its own way, yes, but for my way of thinking, actually being able to see the shards of sunlight slashing off in every direction with my eyes, to touch the frigid sheath on a twig and have it melt under the warmth of my body ... well there is simply no comparison.

Our computers can create ice storms on demand. Mega agribusiness means we can eat grapefruit and kiwi and bibb lettuce in the middle of a New York winter. We can (at least for now) hop in a car and visit friends a hundred miles away and be back in time for dinner. Yes, our technology allows us to do much that would have been impossible a scant century ago. But the question I think we should be asking is, just because we can do these things, should we be doing them?

Of course much of the fallout of our techno-benefits hurts the Earth. We know that, even if we choose to continue on that destructive path. But it harms us spiritually as well. We are losing the ability to be awed. We have all but forgotten that food is precious and sacred. All we see in an ice storm is a royal pain when we want to drive somewhere. We are forgetting that limits are good and serve us well, not bad restrictions to our every whim.

We are forgetting how to look beneath the surface, beyond the name, of all that surrounds us to the Mystery that is revealed beneath. I think we are in danger of substituting computers and TVs and video games and cars and eighty-hour work weeks and diets and drugs for the lived experience of being human on an amazing planet.

There is time to change all this, but we have to want it first.

In the Dark of the Year

2005-12-31T07:23:00.000-05:00

I just went down to get an early morning cup of coffee, and this was the view that greeted me from the kitchen window. No matter what kind of rotten, sad, grumpy or grinchy side of the bed I might wake up on, the God of wonder can yank me to the other side in a heartbeat.

A New Year to Celebrate

2005-12-31T05:31:00.000-05:00

New Year's Eve. That traditional time to remember, to check out the highlights, laugh over the spilled-milk goofs, cherish the tender moments. And then we begin celebrating the coming new year. Frankly, I think we use it mostly as an excuse to have a good time. Other than the dangers inherent in drunk driving, I'm all for celebrating for celebrating's sake. We need it.

There's not a lot to cheer about. A doubtful, dangerous, destructive war waged under the most spurious of circumstances. 40,000 babies dying every day from hunger and its deadly companion ailments. A consumer-based "civilization" that threatens to plow through the last of the Earth's precious resources with hardly a nod to its own culpability. No wonder we tend to grab for the nearest alcoholic beverage before we can make merry. How else could we possibly face the truth of the mess we've managed to make in our own nest?

Given that gloomy reality, you might wonder why I think celebrating is a good idea. I rejoice that, as long as we're still hanging around as a species, there's hope. Hope that we might look backward some New Year's Eve with a sober, unflinching eye and decide to make some real changes in the months ahead. To live as if the Earth mattered, as if we aren't disconnected from those starving children, the poisoned water, the filthy air. What if we decided to figure out what we truly need, and buy only those items next year? What if we committed to producing half the trash we did last year, personally? What if we all gave Christmas gifts of a heifer, or a tree, or a year's worth of breakfast for an AIDS orphan? What if we awakened to the fact that food doesn't have to be locked up?

Sounds radical, I know. It will take radical to bail us out at this late date. But radical doesn't mean impossible, and it's in that wee little difference that my hope lies. So grab a noise-maker, strap on a silly hat and have some fun, knowing that next year could make all the difference in the world.

In the bleak mid-winter

2005-12-30T06:57:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't know the hymn "In the bleak mid-winter", it's worth researching. It's a haunting, lovely Christmas carol, vying for my favorate rating with "And every stone shall cry".

Ah, Christmastide.

I've morphed into something of a Scrooge over the past fifteen years or so when it comes to the celebration of Jesus' birth. Here in the convent our traditional practices ran along the lines of let's-see-how-much-we-can-possibly-cram-into-two-days. I think we're now easing up on that, but the hectic preparations, the long hours and scant rest of Christmas have taken their toll. I've developed a Grinchy heart.

It doesn't help much that the daylight hours have shrunk to about nine. Brewster is as close to the Arctic Circle as I can bear. Our lovely December snow has been rained down into a few dirty patches of ice. Everything is either gray or brown. There's mud everywhere. Waking the ducks up in the morning now takes nearly forty-five minutes. Drag the hoses from the pantry to the back porch. Fill the pools. Remove yesterday's duck leavings from the porch. Uncover the hay and schlepp it around to all three duck-house areas to provide a safer, cleaner roost for the coming night. Feed them. Crawl into the Triplets' house to reconnect the light they managed to pull down again. Empty the outside hose and drag the inside one back to the pantry. I usually love this work, but in these darkened days it is naked drudgery.

The only fun part is looking for an egg or two. Another duck is laying, probably Petra, and searching the tell-tale "nesting holes" in the hay brings back a touch of my childhood Christmas wonder. Will there be a surprise this morning?

I know this is the heart of the Christmas story — finding a gift in the hay of the animal house. And against all reason and hope, there it is. A tiny spark of life. A promise. A possibility.

I have to remind myself several times a day that winter is not only the season of my discontent, it is also the Earth's time for transformation, when everything appears to be hopeless but big changes are afoot. Those precious few reminders are all we get to keep us plodding along through the mud. That and a huge amount of trust in the wisdom of the Universe.

Here's to gifts and trust and surviving the bleak mid-winter.

EGGS!

2005-11-28T10:57:00.000-05:00

FINALLY!! After weeks of checking the nesting boxes, we have our first eggs! We're lucky that either Macrina or Petra (they don't sign their work, so who knows) used the boxes so carefully made for this purpose. After all, every night it's a not-very-friendly race between Bernie and Basil to see who gets which nesting box to sleep in. The girls wait out the war; eventually one or the other takes the third box. I don't see this part, so I assume the odd duck out just snuggles down somewhere nearer the warm light bulb. Smart duck.

Sadly, Simon dispatched our smallest (and clearly female) duck from this life a few weeks ago. Slave to those old murderous genes, he caught her in the open field, and she was too small to fly away. She came down with a nasty cold early in her life, and spent several days in the cat carrier in my bathroom. I hoped that filling the room with warm steam would help her breath more easily. Miraculously she made it, though she was clearly way behind in her development. Nature — hard at work maintaining sturdy stock.

That left Teresa, whom we've been calling Terry, thinking s/he might be a drake. It's still up for grabs, but we got two more females, half-sisters to her/him, and they are the same size — a major gender-determining factor. All three of them are white, like Bernie. Maybe we're going to luck out after all and the Triplets of Belleville will join Macrina and Petra on the egg production line when they mature.

We're lucky to have found these eggs for another reason. Muscovy ducks are famous (or infamous) for depositing eggs anywhere but a nesting box: a pile of leaves, any grassy area, under the bushes ... so these may not actually be their first eggs. But we're going to hang on to that belief anyway.

It's so amazing. Years of buying eggs at the grocery store, and I never marveled at what I was doing or what I was getting. Now I pick up a "free" egg in the back yard, rather nasty-looking until cleaned up, and am just blown away by the miracle of it. How sad that with the onslaught (an apt choice of word) of factory farming, we consumers lost all sense of the mystery that drives energy exchange. Eggs are good, but when we eat what is produced by "our" ducks — after watching them grow up, traipsing (or flying) around the property, learning their routines and watching them establish relationship with each other — well, that makes a difference in my consciousness. I'm deeply aware that eggs, though plentiful, are still miraculous.

Only humans could (and did) dream up the idea to start charging money for the natural gifts of creation. Only humans could (and did) set up factories that had to squelch their workers' ability to see birth, life and death as miraculous in order to treat the animals and plants in ways that would enable huge profit-centered production. Oh, I know we can't all set up mini-farms in our back yards; we know how very, very fortunate we are to have access to the land that allows us to do that. But we consumers have lots of power; we could stop supporting factory farming, and start encouraging local farmers again.

We've been lulled into believing that factory farming provides cheap food. That couldn't be more wrong, especially when we consider the cost to the Earth and all her living systems. Big business marketing also purports to provide healthy food from its mega-system, but that is wrong, too. Mass production demands a whole array of drugs and chemicals to keep its "products" going, and our bodies don't need, nor can they handle, that kind of assault.

So, yes, when we pick up fresh, organic eggs just out back, it is a miracle — and a precious gift.

Nap time

2005-11-11T21:42:00.000-05:00

The pressure's on: the first frost is looming, and the garden needs to be put to bed for its long winter's nap. Move the greens to the greenhouse or into the seed rooms on the second floor; mulch the strawberries, shore up the fences, harvest all the last-minute stragglers, transplant some herbs and harvest the rest, enlarge the kitchen garden, move the lilac and azalea, cut back the peony leaves and stems. No need to bother cutting back the hosta; the deer have kindly done that for us all summer long. Now no self-respecting slug would come near them for their long winter's nap.

We didn't get it all done. And by sundown yesterday three of us were walking like we'd celebrated our centenaries several years ago. Shoveling rocks and moving big pots full of wet dirt and cold-sensitive plants will do that to a spine.

But, oh, what satisfying work it was, painful backs notwithstanding. Things look almost too trim, now that most of the wild greenness is gone. The neat raised beds are obvious again, the mad profusion of sweet potato vines and marigolds gone to compost. Even underground must look different to the voles. I can hear them now, "Hey ... what happened to those yams??" Sorry guys, they're safely tucked into boxes in the basement for our winter consumption. You should have planted your own.

It seems only days ago that we were madly trying to get things planted, that there was no Duck Lane or Duckville Manor, that the trees were still bare and the days too cold to get the peas into the ground. And here we are again, winter lurking around the corner. Soon we'll be collecting maple sap and filling the house with the sweet smell of class A syrup.

Spring leaps into summer, which passes in an eye-blink, and there's never enough time to be bored by autumn colors before the first snow, which heralds the impending mapling season that hints of spring. I can still feel March's subtle disappointment that I hadn't tired of snow before it was gone.

I needn't have worried. It snowed today.

Outcasts

2005-11-08T05:10:00.000-05:00

Basil [r] spent last night on the chapel roof.

We're fairly certain this is happening because in the tradition of barnyard fowl pecking order, Basil's on the bottom. Everyone picks on him, literally. So I guess he finally got fed up with it and decided to hang out in the only other fairly safe place he could find.

It must have been miserable, since this roof is metal and is always wet. His feet may be frozen to the roof this morning; we'll just have to wait and see how he fared. But I know he's still there, because I checked on him at 4:15 when I got up, and he was still up there, standing just like he was at 8:00 last night.

We humans do it, too. "They" (that is, the latest out-group) don't belong here. She's so weird. He doesn't fit in. They aren't as smart as we are, they're a different color, their sexual orientation or gender identity isn't "normal" (though by whose standards?). They are from the wrong side of town. The reasons are rife, and the consequences usually mean.

In any number of ways, "they" are from across the border. Locally there is a big move to get rid of people from Mexico, Ecuador and Brazil. They are "illegal aliens" — a sweeping generalization (and a completely artificial differentiation) that is supposed to justify their place at the bottom of the human pecking order. Much of our exclusionary behavior is based on human construct, not on reality. This is my place, and you don't belong here. Interesting.

But check it out — there are no borderlines on this planet. We are all expressions of Earth, which is one of many expressions of the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of many expressions of the Universe. The Universe: the One Story. In spite of our long experience of acting as if it were not true, there is no out-there, no not-me. We are all differentiated expressions of the sacred One.

We aren't behaving exactly like the ducks, though; they are obeying genetic instructions that say each drake needs three or four females to preserve a healthy reproductive environment. The other ducks don't hate Basil; he's just one too many on the male side of the ledger at the moment. Should Bernie become duck a l'orange for a local coyote some day, the remaining ducks would immediately rearrange themselves into a new community, and Basil would no longer be the "outcast". It's not about him, it's about what works to sustain a healthy duck community.

We humans might want to rethink the practice of separating ourselves by artificial borders. It really isn't a very good idea. We may find ourselves on the equivalent of a cold wet roof someday, alone, unable to reach out to or communicate with each other. Which would be truly sad, since we are blessed with wondrous gifts of differentness, one of the immutable manifestations of the essential nature of our Universe. And it well may be that solutions for our current dire environmental straits will arise from within that blessed richness.

So today I think I'll watch myself closely, on the lookout for my own ways of creating separateness where none exists.
__________________________

[6:30 AM update: Basil had flown over to the convent roof—and appeared to be his usual sweet and chipper self—when I went out to ring the Angelus this morning. He may occupy the low rung on the duck family ladder, but he's one tough bird.]

Design Flaws

2005-10-23T07:37:00.000-04:00

I've been taking a six-day retreat, and today is the last day. I awoke this morning, troubled by a question I had been asked several weeks ago during a program Sr. Heléna Marie and I gave in Arizona. The question has been rolling around deep inside my psyche, and this morning it finally popped out into my consciousness: the words "intelligent design" were clear as a bell at 6:00 AM.

"So you believe in intelligent design?" asked one of the women. Alarm bells rang in my head as I answered, "I wouldn't use that combination of words, for sure; they are loaded with a particular 'baggage' that I don't wish to carry."

This is incredibly dangerous territory, and I've been mulling over just what bothers me about the whole intelligent design theory. I know in the ground of my being that intelligent design, as preached by people and institutions (like the Discovery Institute in Seattle), is off-kilter. There is an inherent deception about their efforts, and I cannot trust or believe in a god (or its followers) who condones deceit to establish its validity. I have a jaundiced eye for a god who would apparently disappear if it were not for human interpretation, verbal lid-banging, vilification of others, and behind-the-scenes manipulations.

ID proponents attempt to use their traditional adversaries — the legitimate scientific community and an increasing body of amazing scientific knowledge — as proof for its not-always hidden agenda. There is more than a whiff of political maneuvering among the ID folks that intensifies my suspicion — ties to politically obvious groups who want to turn our schools into boot camps for government-by-theocracy, for example.

An interesting (and probably dangerously simplistic) explanation of intelligent design is one that uses a picture of Mt. Rushmore, where the pattern of the rocks below and on either side of the carved faces is ascribed to natural law and chance, whereas the faces themselves were created by intelligent design. True, but the design for those faces came from humans, not God. Somehow the ID folks want to be sure that the human, above all other aspects of creation, maintains its current elevated status over creation; a status that was created by itself, by the way, and is proving to be phenomenonally destructive. ID people would like us to believe that that devastaion, the result of "materialistic science" they claim, can be corrected if we'll only let them take over education and government by way of religion.

"Intelligent" design theory is not one most intelligent people would subscribe to. But it does get sticky. When one studies that vast body of scientific empirical data — quantum physics, "seeing" the leftovers from the original fireball, amazing photography from traveling cameras zooming around our galaxy, the development of a planet that for most of its four billion year life transformed its wild, chemical-rich seas into palm trees and anteaters and the Rocky Mountains without one human helping hand to do it — one has to wonder. Is there not wisdom in this Universe? A force that yearns toward complexity and self-revelation? In my mind, absolutely everything in this Universe is an expression of the Sacred, the Numinous.

What is not useful is to sustain the belief that one set of ideas should hold sway over another, that one group has the "right" knowledge and must therefore wipe out or control the others. Behind-the-scenes, under-the-table machinations and ill-disguised political dance-steps for power are not useful.

What might be more useful would be to step back and observe creation with awe and wonder, to celebrate the beauty and wisdom of it all, to honor and respect everything that shares this lovely, sacred, "fragile Earth, our island home" — yep, even the ID folks.

Sunrise Moon

2005-10-22T21:13:00.000-04:00

Any of you who follow my blogs or visit our website know that I'm enamored of sunset skies. We are halfway up Joe's Hill and have a marvelous west view, so we are treated to a lot of spectacular twilight shows. But early Friday morning I looked out back and saw this lovely sight.

When the sun hovers near the horizon, day or night, the sky can transform into breathtaking artistry. Today the rising sun bounced pink and yellow off the western clouds, Earth's shadow was still discernible (just above the trees), and the barely-waning moon stood out as brightly as if it were midnight.

Jet contrails across the sky to the south and east were bright pink, too. Toward the east, the clouds reflected deeper yellow tones as the sun cleared the horizon but not our hill.

I absolutely never tire of looking at the sky, whether it's the characteristic deep blue of dry air, heavy with water-logged thunderheads, blazing with hot red sunset clouds, or vast with the awe-inspiring galaxy-studded blackness of night. I seem to be eternally fascinated by the sky.

Sometimes I just stand there, unaware of the time or weather, awed into wonder and silence. Never, in the entire four billion year history of the Earth, has the sky looked exactly like this. And it never will again.

Don't miss it.

A Sleeping Giant

2005-10-21T08:02:00.000-04:00

Macrina took a looooong flight today. I was standing in the little ducks' pen when I heard the familiar sound of flapping wings. I looked up to see her about 200 feet away from me and 30 feet or so in the air, skirting the edge of the trees to the north. Clearly she had been down in the woodland near the athletic field. This is a major flight distance for her. I assumed she was heading back to the rocks and stone benches where the big ducks spend most of the morning, but she never wavered. On past the house and out of sight she flew.

Though all the big ducks do fly, Bernie rarely does (I think he's too heavy to enjoy it much), and Petra and Basil only fly short distances, and then only when it suits them. So far I've seen no (human) logic in what triggers these short forays into the air.

"Well," I thought, "there goes Macrina." And I meant it literally. She's gone. She's discovered the lure of a larger world, and it's a lot more interesting than home. I worried. It's a lot more dangerous, too. The wild geese and ducks will peck her to death. She'll get lost. The coyotes/raccoons/hunters will kill her. She'll starve to death. She'll never want to come home again. She'll be injured in some painful, horrible way that causes her to suffer for hours. Maybe days.

Wait a minute. She's a duck in a beautiful duck environment. I was standing there, worrying like a human mother for a child heading off to college. Macrina is barely domesticated, really, and her ability to survive is instinctive, not something she needs to learn the hard way. Of course awful things can and do happen. Everything in the entire Universe is subject to destruction, and eventually it will happen to each of us, for some a prettier process than for others, but it will happen nonetheless.

There is something deep within us that cares for the other, for beings that appear to us to be not-us, which is an illusion, of course—we are all infinite expressions of the One. That means caring is instinctive, hard-wired within. It is a powerful and necessary force for survival. Over the past 13,000 years or so we've done a dangerously good job of putting this tendency toward caring to sleep, but it's still there.

It may be a sleeping giant, but thank goodness it's not a dead one.

By the way, Macrina finally appeared soaring in from my left. She'd made a huge aerial circuit through the woods and around the house and school. She was checking out her environment, taking risks. And this time she came home.

It's Hard to be New

2005-10-20T06:38:00.000-04:00

As promised, here are our two newest duck family members, Terest (L) and Avila (R). They are new in several ways: new to the Earth, new to this home, new to the ducks who already live here. Their covering is new: soft, fluffy, not-very-protective down that is still (mostly) duckling yellow. Almost everything they do is new, at least to them. New home, new pen, new yard, new food, new pond ...

Being new is tough.

The big ducks are pretty sure they don't want the newcomers to stay, even though I don't think they are entirely sure just what these little yellow critters are. But they understand that the fuzzy little invaders want to hang around, eat their food, play in their water — and generally act like little sibling annoyances.

So Bernie, Macrina and sometimes even Basil (Petra, as ever, is gentle with everything) go after the little ones. Once Bernie and Basil got them cornered and something ruthless clicked in their pea-sized brains. Luckily I was there and stopped the frenzied and brutal pecking almost as soon as it began, but it was a little scary. I actually had to push Bernie away, and he rarely lets a human get close enough to whiff his tail feathers, never mind execute a serious shove. Thankfully, a nine-pound testosterone-poisoned duck is no match for a ——— well, never mind how much I weigh, but I definitely have the edge on Bernie. He knew I meant business and he quickly came to what little sense he ever has. He calmly wandered a few yards away and nibbled politely on the smart weed. "See?" he seemed to say, "I wasn't doing anything ..." Yeah, right.

It will be several weeks before Teresa and Avila are big enough to endure the inevitable tail-feather-removal pecking that will establish Bernie as the Main Man. Then everything will settle back into a routine that includes our little newcomers.

I remember the misery of starting a new job. I hadn't any idea what I was doing, where to find things, how to remember all those names. I hated feeling new, and my first days as a newbie were intensely and exhaustingly focused. I just couldn't bear to look foolish, and I hated the feeling of not belonging. Inevitably, there was one co-worker who seemed to go our of her way to make me understand that my place, whatever it turned out to be, would be less than hers.

It's the same here in community, where (thankfully) we have new woman joining our little family fairly regularly. They are powerful women, coming from strong business and professional backgrounds. Yet in a way it's back to step one for them, and they struggle to embrace the profound differences between living independently in a secular world and living faithfully in a family of flawed humans, engaged in their own struggle to move into a new monastic vision. They can feel picked on, as more experienced Sisters bring errors in reliigous practice to their attention. Lord knows we're not perfect, and we're not always as welcoming as we'd like to think we are.

It's not exacty a picnic. It can feel like having a rug yanked from under your feet, like having your skin rubbed with sandpaper, like ... well, like being new, I guess. So I watch our little ducklings, and I watch our brilliant newcomers in community, and I pray that all of them will weather the storm of adjustments, eventually nestling happily into a nest that no longer feels so darned new.

The Angelus

2005-10-19T17:58:00.000-04:00

Every day now we ring the Angelus, which is a series of eighteen strikes on the chapel bell, in a particular rhythm. We encircle our day by ringing the Angelus at 6:30 AM, as the day begins with an hour of meditation (which we call The Hour of the Wolf); at noon (a respectiful nod to the tradition of Angelus-ringing); and at 6:30 PM, at the close of our evening meditation (The Hour of the Deer). The traditional monastic practice is to stop whatever you are doing at the first bell to say the prayers [see below] as the bells are rung.

I most enjoy the noon Angelus, because that's when we might be engaged in any number of daily tasks: Pia's been finishing the hermitage renovation and making a new pen for the ducklings; Sr. Lilli Ana might be cleaning out a guest room or planning an afterschool program; Sr. Heléna Marie and Sr. Donna Martha might be pulling weeds, planting, harvesting or otherwise tending the garden; I might be doing laundry, raking leaves or paying bills; Sr. Claire Joy might be cooking or shopping; Sr. Emmanual may be riding herd on the lunchroom at school. And then, suddenly, "CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!!" sings the ship's bell we use for chapel, and simultaneously, seven woman stop in their tracks to pray.

When the Angelus began at noon today I was looking out the window of my office at the changing leaves. I could see Sr. Donna Martha working on fencing under the apple tree. and suddenly there we were like children playing "statue" — me with a cup of coffee in hand, Sr. Donna Martha with her hands full of deer netting and fence post. And there we stood for the next few minutes, two nun-statues, praying the same prayers together. Just then I felt the deep connection between our little family of Sisters, all of us standing quietly, praying words steeped in monastic tradition.

Old and new, shaking hands across the ages, joining time-tested tradition with emerging vision. It doesn't get much better than that.

Prayers for the ringing of the Angelus

The pattern of ringing is three sets of three bells, rung fairly close together and with a pause between the sets for the completion of the Hail Mary. After the three sets of three, nine bells are rung evenly but spaced further apart for the final prayer. (Imagine a bell ringing at each asterisk.)

* The angel of the Lord announced unto Mary
* And behold she conceived by the Holy Spirit
* Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, prayer for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

* And Mary said, behold the handmaid of the Lord.
* Be it unto me according to your Word.
* Hail Mary ...

* And the Word was made flesh,
* And dwelt among us.
* Hail Mary ...

* Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
* That we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.
* Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have * known the incarnation of your Son, Jesus Christ, * announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his * cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection * who lives and reigns with you * in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, * now and forever. Amen.

The Community Grows

2005-10-16T06:00:00.000-04:00

Well Bernie the Duck may be in love with Petra (or at least in lust), but there's no love lost between him and our two newest duck family members: Teresa and Avila, who arrived this afternoon, all yellow ducklette fuzz and brash mini-quacks. They are about four weeks old.

They can probably hold their own ... but "probably" isn't enough for me. Once I saw how aggressive Bernie was being to them, I just couldn't risk waking up tomorrow morning to fuzz-less ducklings, or, worse yet, dead ones. Back into Smooch's cat carrier they went, and up to the second floor just outside my room. It may smell like a barn up here, but I think I'll put up with it until I know they can hold their own against a testosterone-saturated nine-pound bully.

[CHECK BACK NOW AND THEN — I'LL GET A PICTURE OF THESE LATEST ADDITIONS TO DUCKVILLE.]

God's Promise

2005-10-15T22:44:00.000-04:00

I do love a good storm, especially when I can lie in bed and listen to the hiss of raindrops falling on the brick patio below my window. But during the past week, as the rainfall pushed toward ten inches, my passion for stormy weather began to fade.

A small locust tree halfway down our back hill fell over in the saturated soil. The clothes never got quite dry, hanging down there in the basement. I began to think about large boats and pairs of animals. Sara, our friend from New Orleans, was beginning to feel like The Flood Jinx.

So being able to see tonight's sunset brought joy well beyond the delight of a gorgeous evening sky. This small community of sunlit clouds and blue sky sang of hope and possibility and trust. After days of flood control, chilling damp air and low-slung sooty clouds, we have been reassured that, as Dame Julian noticed all those years ago, "... all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

Amen.

Love in the air

2005-10-10T06:08:00.000-04:00

Two days ago I was out before breakfast, enjoying unseasonable early-morning warmth, when I heard a frantic quacking from the back yard. That was alarming, since our ducks are Muscovies, which don't really quack at all. They make a soft, whirring noise at most. Uh-oh.

I ran back there just in time to see Bernie climbing on top of Petra. Apparently nature is firing up Bernie's hormones, and this seemed to be the cause of the racket. Petra wasn't entirely sure she wanted to become the object of Bernie's affections, however. By now Bern probably weighs in at around nine pounds, compared to Petra's svelte five or so. The process looked a little too aggressive and unbalanced to me, and I was pretty sure Petra wouldn't have opted for this amorous attention if she'd had a choice.

Bernie didn't seem too skilled in his technique, either. His position made effective mating anatomically impossible for one thing. He was having a hard time balancing with his feet halfway up Petra's back, and occasionally he slipped sideways until he was perpendicular to her. His idea of foreplay was to peck roughly about her head, focusing (cruelly, I thought) on her damaged eye. It took a lot, but I resisted the temptation to yell at Bernie and chase him away from Petra.

Trust nature, I kept telling myself. It may look impossible, ludicrous and mean, but they'll sort it out eventually.

Finally Petra managed to bounce Bernie off her back, quacked madly and made off for Duckville Manor. Bernie wasn't deeply enough in love to follow her up the ramp, and his testosterone rush seemed to wear off quickly. She reappeared in the duck yard within minutes and life returned to pre-puberty levels.

But a line has been crossed. Soon the relationship between the four ducks will change permanently. Adult juices are flowing: eggs will be laid, the boys will fight each other, the girls will divide their time between incubating and foraging.

Something in me felt a little sad. Oh, I'm looking forward to delicious breakfasts of duck-egg omelets all right, and it's exciting to watch our duckies grow up ... but I'm not quite ready for them to take on the serious business of reproduction, with its competition and harshness. I like my ducks sort of daft and adorable.

Maybe it's time for a few more new ducks.

Water

2005-10-09T20:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we finally got rain. Oh boy did we get rain. It poured all day — so much that I needed to sweep the excess water off the patio (four times), much to the great disappointment of the ducks; drag all the hemlock needles out of the second floor gutter drains (thankfully, just once); pull the leaf dams out of the sewer drains out on the road (twice); place seven wastebaskets in various places under the leaky school roof; spend almost five hours today dispatching a third of the pear tree that fell during the storm; and generally enjoy the soothing sound of a steady, pounding rain.

I couldn't have been happier.

By late afternoon I was playing in the rushing water along the curb. We have a sweeping curve in our driveway; rainwater flows toward the forest on one end and toward the road on the other. I was fooling around with the broom, sweeping water along so that when it reached the lip of the driveway where it spills into a little rivulet in the woods it would make a great splash.

Earlier, when I was pulling leaf piles out of the road grates, I was treated to the satisfying rush of a hundred-foot-long run of water released into the underground "box" the city installed years ago. What a sound! There was so much water and so much power in it that I was darned careful about where I was standing. Oh, there was no danger of being dragged into that box of roiling water, of course, but I sure could have been knocked off my feet, and I'm just a little too old to think that would be fun.

Water is amazing. In a hurricane it can bring incomprehensible devastation. In a pouring rain, it provides gentle, soothing sound. On a winter pond it is ground for skaters, a slide for otters, and protection for fish and other semi-hibernaters. In an iceberg it becomes glorious shards of blue light, crashes into the sea in the impressive act of calving, or takes out a gigantic sea-going vessel like the Titanic. Rocks are carved, smoothed, even worn completely away by the patient passing of the smallest steady trickle. Yet water will give way to a clump of newly fallen maple leaves, finding itself a different course around the blockage.

I've always loved water, even when it appears as an impressive gusher in the basement during a heavy storm. You just have to love something so versatile, unique, and mysterious. Everything else has the decency to follow the rules: shrink when you get cold, expand when you get hot. But not water. And thank God for that, because if it followed the rules we wouldn't be here. And precious little else would be, for that matter.

Once again Earth teaches me. Be like water. If it is beneficial to live by a different set of rules, give it a go. Know when to hang in there long enough to wear down something as unyielding as rock, and when to step aside for a tender possibility like a clump of leaves. Once in a while sweep someone off their feet, even if they think they are too old to enjoy it. Be flexible. Be playful. Be useful. Be beautiful. Sing a haunting, soothing song.

And once in a while, be ferocious. It will keep others respectful, compassionate and resourceful.

Morning glory

2005-09-24T13:38:00.000-04:00

"Arise, shine, for your light has come; and the glory of God shall break upon you." [Isaiah]

Not all of our morning glories did well this year; the purple ones under the crab apple tree, for example, just didn't get enough light. But the one you see above has been having a blast all summer. She's "glory-ous" indeed; her electric blue trumpets announce a new day every morning. And what a great message that is.

Every day these flowers appear, looking a lot like they did the day before. But they are not the same. Recognizable, yes; we know they are morning glories. But something changes every day, and by now the plant looks nothing at all like the frail little shoot that poked out of the ground several months ago.

And that's the way we are meant to be, too. A little shift here, a new leaf there, a bit more stretch, a little bend around the pillar, a tiny lean toward the sun. A minimal difference each day seems hardly noticeable. But over time all those little shifts and bends and stretches mold us into the beauties God had in mind. Every morning really is a new day — a new opportunity to step into our greatness, a new chance to begin afresh, a clean slate upon which to write our lives.

Arise, shine — let the glory of God break upon you.

Another peek at our place

2005-09-23T23:30:00.000-04:00

I've been working outside a lot this summer, and part of my effort has been to give Major Haircuts to some of the plants around the convent. In some cases, that meant cutting the plant right down to the ground. We have a glorious porch that wraps around three sides of the house, and we decided to create an area where we could sit and watch the day go by, just for the fun of it. Here are a couple of pictures showing the result of those efforts.

I'm not a great fan of destroying plant life, but on the other hand, if destruction results in the transformation needed to open the door to something new, I'm willing to participate. At one point a large azalea and two rhododenrons were sacrificed, partly due to their ill health, partly due to their invasive behavior on their neighbors, and partly due to their willingness to house a large next of stinging creatures.

Life moves on.

Transformation

2005-09-23T23:03:00.000-04:00

The following blog entry is a copy of a short article written for our AweWakenings newsletter.

A couple of years ago I was thinking about life processes, particularly from the perspective of “deep time”—the full thirteen-plus billion year history of our amazing Universe. While studying what was happening throughout that long history, I began to see a pattern in the journey that all life makes.

I had always thought that resurrection was the natural and logical progression from death. The awareness that transformation is (and always has been) an essential and thrilling ingredient of existence was an entirely new concept for me.

Suddenly I recognized the great circle of life: birth leading to life, which leads to death, which is the door into transformation, out of which flares an infinite geography of potentialities. With the selection of one of those rich possibilities, resurrection flares toward the realized experience we call “birth”, which leads to life, which leads to death ...

On and on, round and round, the glorious wheel of life spins through time. From grape seeds to galaxies, there is no beginning and no end: the hydrogen that flared into existence shortly after space and time and everything else in the Universe began, has been recycled through supernovae, moons, giraffes, smart weed and me. I don't look anything like smart weed or a star, but that's because my perception is limited by the particularity of my species.

I don't know why it never struck me before, but I found myself feeling the affirmation of Jesus' own experience. Between the crucifixion and resurrection Jesus experienced transformation—how could I possibly have missed that? I once thought of the “harrowing of hell” as a job Jesus had to do; but what if our scripture is the best effort of Jesus' followers to report their understanding of a process Jesus had to experience? And what about the inability of Jesus' friends to recognize the resurrected Christ? Surely he was transformed—the same, and yet not at all the same.

Transformation does occur within the capability of our human senses, but I think we see the process so often we don't particularly notice it. When we do, we take it in as “ordinary” rather than as the sacred miracle it reflects.

A maple tree seed flutters to the ground and lands in a pile of leaves, which mix with the soil and rain to bury the seed in protective mulch. Over the winter the seed appears dead, but the promise of a tree stirs in that “dead” matter, and when that promise awakens to the call of sun and spring thaw, a tiny green shoot struggles through the soil. There under our foot is proof that transformation has occurred.

Every child born is entirely new and entirely unique thanks to Mystery and the miracle of transformation. Yet every child born is made from star dust that has witnessed the unfolding of the Universe for billions of years.

We live in an essentially transformative Universe, constantly manifesting reflections of the Divine Mystery that comprehends and brings into existence something new every moment. From a scientific perspective most of our Universe, from quarks to quasars, is not matter at all but a “fecund nothingness”, a soup of creative energy out of which particles appear and disappear as if by magic. The way I see it, the vast majority of our Universe is occupied by transformation in action.

I have barely begun to understand the science of the stupendous transformation process, but I readily accept that the creative nature of God floods us with its glory, and that we are made from the Mystery that dreamed an entire Universe into being and set its circle of life spinning through time. Whether we are mystified by quantum physics or awed by the birth of a child, transformation weaves its magic from under our noses to the far reaches of the Universe.

How could anything so marvelous and miraculous and seemingly impossible as transformation escape our notice, our reverence, our respect, our praise?

Night Prayers

2005-09-22T22:42:00.000-04:00

Good heavens, August 13th. Is that really my most recent blog?? Where have I been and what have I been up to?

Time really does speed up as you age. This is provable in the theories of quantum physics: everyone now knows that the faster one travels through space, the slower time goes by; and the slower one travels, the faster time moves. OK, so as I age, I'm definitely moving slower and time definitely moves faster. See? Quantum physics rules.

All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with the following blog entry.

We've once again changed our schedule (well, yes, I suppose that does have to do with time), and switched from a "combined Office" (a combination of Evening Prayer and Compline) to two separate visits to chapel. That makes Evening Prayer occur in the late afternoon, while there is still light enough to read in our electricity-less chapel.

Compline, on the other hand, is experienced the same way our brothers and sisters of old did it: by the flickering light of candles and oil lamps. I confess that I've added a high-tech booklight to my prayer equipment, though. I probably could sing Compline in the dark, which is precisely why these traditional night prayers were designed to be simple and consistent. But I'm more comfortable with a little more light and a lot less dependence on my memory. Like the rest of me it is slowing down.

There was more than candlelight and monastic atmosphere present tonight, however. Tonight we were joined by our non-human neighbors. During the silent pause between halves of Psalm verses, and in precisely the same key, a Barred Owl inserted her "who-cooks-for-you" hoot from the trees surrounding the back meadow. And as our Compline prayer drew to its quiet close, a pack of coyotes off in the forest tuned up a yelping, howling chorus.

Night Prayers: the vocal offering of God's creatures in reflection and hope and joy. Thanks for a peaceful, safe day. How about a good rabbit for dinner? Any mice or voles available?

Sometimes the sound of our own voices is prayer enough to get us through the night.

Sticky Stuff

2005-08-13T06:57:00.000-04:00

Garlic. Cooked milk. Two natural items I've always thought would make great glue. Now that I'm living much closer to the Earth, I'm discovering more really sticky stuff.

Like duck poop.

Okay, this probably isn't the most gracious of subjects, but it fascinates me. Earth wastes nothing, so the tail end (so to speak) of food processing is no less important than the gorgeous greens and corn that begin it. Ducks produce high-nitrogen fertilizer, and are quite efficient about making sure it's applied usefully. For one thing, there is quite a bit of it. For another, it's applied in liquid form and then solidifies on its own. For a third, it's sticky as all get-out. This is great for the Earth, assuring abundant and fairly even addition of nitrogen to the soil.

It's not so great for shoes, though, which is probably why all the duck books suggest changing foot attire when entering the duck pen. Not realizing all the implications of duck doo-doo, I ignored the books and learned about this the hard way. Please take my word for it: getting the soles of your shoes free of this amazingly clingy stuff takes quite awhile. And while you're doing it, you probably won't care at all how much the Earth enjoys receiving all this nitrogen-rich help.

But it gave me a lot of time to think about sticky stuff. It seems that "poop" of all kinds attaches itself to us like glue. Wanting to hang on a lot of stuff we don't need now, and probably never did. Knowing good and well that being angry or judgmental or pouty or a drama queen will get us nowhere fast, but we still do it. Thinking our own ideas and plans should be listened to and followed by everyone else. Always.

This might be what Jesus was talking about when he told the young man he had to let go of everything before he could be really free. Some of our sticky stuff can be quite useful to others, once we get unstuck from it. A lot of it should just be abandoned.

Either way, getting the duck poop of life off your soul can be hard work. It's really sticky stuff.

Fire in the Sky

2005-08-06T23:08:00.000-04:00

My office/"cell" has a west window, but I have to be in a rather contorted position to see much besides another side of the house and the little chapel. Purely by accident, I was in that contorted position tonight, and was stunned to see a little slice of this sunset in progress. I tore down the stairs, grabbing the camera on my way.

Once in a while the sun, the western clouds and pure chance combine to reflect our local star's fire back to my eye; all the variables are exactly tuned to this kind of display. When it happens I seem to have trouble breathing.

I just can't imagine any purpose for this spectacular show other than to awe and silence us. As far as I can tell, humans are the only creatures who even notice such a thing, and if we're at all conscious, we stop whatever we are doing and stare, transfixed. We dare not look away; within minutes the light will go out and we'll be left with a burning memory that we aren't completely sure really happened quite the way we remember it.

If we are indeed the only creature aware of this prodigal beauty, we should be responsible and respectful enough to celebrate — yes, to praise — the astonishing glory of our Earth, and to do so for all her living systems.

We should do this, just because we can.

Star singing

2005-07-30T07:44:00.000-04:00

We all worked hard yesterday. Of course we all work hard every day, but some days have a special quality about them. I don't know what causes or triggers it, but we seem to move through the hours like a single dancer, whirling about to a piece of music no one can hear but everyone feels. On those days we absorb bad news (like the death of our large freezer) with facility and grace, a few wisecracks, and a brainstorm session about how to use the body as an underground root "cellar".

Some days are just crammed full of grace.

A sense of celebration and joy takes hold. Yesterday, when our little spot on Earth finally rolled away from the sun, we made guacamole (with the season's first garden tomatoes) and tortilla chips, and sat on the patio to watch the evening sky show. Soon one of our summer guest/helpers brought out the guitar and a singing session got underway.

Crickets and tree frogs provided the shruti note for our voices, and song became a blessing to the night, soaring out over our little Bluestone Farm. Gospel laments, folk song, show tunes — braided with jokes and memories — drawing us ever more deeply into each other's lives, filling us with peace that we carry into a troubled world.

By the time we called it a night, the sky was dotted with the light from galaxies light-centuries away from us. All that vastness and mystery, singing its own melody, gift of the Master Singer.

The Universe is a song-strong place.

Of Ducks and Wasps

2005-07-25T22:14:00.000-04:00

Petra is still hanging in there; she's a tough little bird, all right. We added two more Muscovies in the meantime; Basil (another blue) and Macrina (same coloring as Petra, though "Mac" is larger). I suspect both of the new ducks are females, but I'm basing that on their sound production alone. Probably not a sure-fire gender predictor. Bernie seems to have plucked the ends of Basil's wings clean, behavior not uncommon among ducks getting acquainted. Seems unnecessarily rude to me, but I'm not a duck.

It has been about ten days since B and Mac arrived, so I think the Pecking Wars are over and, though Bernie is a control freak about the pools and feeding trough, all four are getting along. Petra is decidedly smaller than the rest, and the loss of sight on one side hampers her foraging. But Bernie has taken a bit of a shine to her, and that may be enough to keep her going. We hope so.

llllll

A few months ago I mentioned having been stung by a yellow jacket; yep, the one who was rude enough to fly up my skirt. That encounter left me with a doctor bill, an EpiPen, and some scary information on how dangerous both a sting and the treatment could be. Just what an already sting-phobic soul needs. Today I got to check out my theory that my "allergic" reaction was due to the chemicals sprayed into the nest rather than to the venom. If I had trouble breathing this time I would inject the epinephrine, eat a bit of crow, and head for the nearest emergency room.

Here's how it happened: I decided to tackle the side of the house that fronts the driveway. This area has been growing without human intervention for years, and was in bad need of a haircut. Actually, what it really needs is radical surgery. By 7:00 AM I was half-way though a major trim job on a rhododendron. Forty-five minutes later I was putting a second rhody out of its misery when I dragged a large branch through an overgrown azalea, which was next on my Extreme Landscape Makeover list.

What I didn't know was that a large colony of bald-faced hornets (which are also called white-faced wasps, but which are neither hornet nor wasp, but an aerial yellow jacket) had taken up residence in the azalea. I also didn't know, but found out fast, that bald-faced hornet workers are fierce protectors of their paper nests. I was fortunate that I was only stung once — these guys are really serious about keeping bothersome intruders away. I ran for the ice (which I highly recommend to quell the immediate pain of the sting), and decided to wait out the reaction before I grabbed the EpiPen. Gadgets like that scare me.

Sure enough, my reaction was classically "normal local", and there was no indication of any systemic involvement. Gosh, I love to be right. Of course, "normal local" for a bald-faced hornet is ugly enough. I still have ice on it to keep the swelling down, it itches like crazy (thank you, God, for Benadryl), hurts to touch (or scratch), and is a fashionable shade of pink.

In spite of all that, I went back out to work for a few more hours. I stayed away from working on that rhody, the azalea, and an andromeda on the other side of the azalea. But I did spend some time watching the activity around that nest. The hornets quickly went back to their own normal behavior, zooming in and out of the nest as they foraged for food and wood to increase the nest size. As long as I didn't disturb the nest, they left me completely alone.

It made me think about my reaction to the raccoons who made the murderous assault on our ducks. I was angry for days; I even enjoyed seeing raccoon pelts hanging in a cabin at Connor Prairie (Indiana), a sight that would normally have pulled at my heart. But once my bald-faced neighbors knew I was no longer a threat to their home, they forgot me entirely. One non-fatal sting and it was back to business as usual for the hornets.

I used to think of yellow jackets, hornets and wasps as being intentionally vicious, capable of harboring a grudge and willing to pursue something several gazillion times its own size just to get even. [Ahem ... just a little anthropomorphism there.] Non-human critters are rarely mean for mean's sake. Attacks are almost always undertaken in service of survival and abandoned as soon as the threat is gone.

I think we humans still have a lot to learn.

Petra update

2005-07-09T03:12:00.000-04:00

Here's the latest Petra update: she will probably lose the sight in one eye, she was covered in scratches and the feathers of one wing were completely stripped. It's rather amazing that she survived the attack — I like to think that Bernie protected her, but I rather suspect she has her own inner toughness. Sr. Lilli Ana often reminds me that an accidental step on a plant will either kill it or toughen it up. Petra may turn out to be one tough bird.

She has spent the last two nights in my room, which smells a little too much like a barnyard right now. I'm playing nature sounds on my computer for her. I suppose this is more for me than for her, but it makes me feel like I'm contributing something to her well-being.

And she is doing well. The eye still looks pretty bad, but she eats and drinks (a very good sign), and she chirps happily, allows us to administer her medications with a minimum of fuss, appreciates our attention and shows interest in what's going on around her. I think she'll make it. Last night she snarfed up a good-sized bug I found in my room. Death for life. Energy exchange.

I spent some time researching raccoons today, trying to find an acceptable place in my heart for them. They are an aggressive, occasionally violent animal, in spite of their rakish, cuddly appearance. They are sort of the cockroach of the mammal world. They give as good as they get, and occasionally go out there and attack just to remind everyone else they are there and a serious life contender. They can cause major headaches for humans, taking houses apart as well as killing ducks. They can muck up a chimney in no time, and are almost impossible to remove. I suspect the next attack will occur in our garden, probably on our tender corn crop.

But this is how the Earth has always worked: competition among species sharpens the senses and the skills and wisdom of all the participants. As Brian Swimme says, be sure to pick a worthy "enemy" if you want to grow and thrive. It will demand your very best. And it will demand your respect, too.

Prophesy and bandits

2005-07-07T11:10:00.000-04:00

It was the raccoons, not the coyotes.

Last night for the first (and probably the last) time we forgot to close the door to the house in Duckville. We all feel guilty about it; irrationally, I wish I hadn't written what I did here yesterday afternoon. I wish I had not just assumed that because I could see the ducks in the house, and the gate to Duckville locked, they were safe from predators. I wish I had followed my own advice and looked out for the little ones.

This morning Lynne found them — Brigid, Graham and little Blue. Bernie's fine, but little Petra looks roughed up and seems to be in shock. We'll have the vet check her out this morning. Lynne and Sr. Emmanuel buried the other three, and I picked up a lot of feathers — white and downy, with rust-colored stains on them.

If the coyotes had killed our ducks I could handle it better. Oh, I'd still feel guilty, no question. But coyotes kill to feed themselves and their young. Raccoons seem to kill just because they can. They did the same thing to birds in the cloister and fish in the pond several years ago, leaving the little bodies for us to find in the morning. No wonder raccoons wear masks. Nasty little buggers.

But just because I don't understand it doesn't mean this apparently gratuitous behavior is, in fact, without purpose or meaning. It makes no sense in my world, but perhaps in the raccoon world something necessary happens. I hope so. I want Brigid's and Graham's and Blue's deaths to have been — I don't know, worthwhile, I guess. I want to feel better about what happened, and I can accept violence and death with a purpose. If anyone out there understands raccoon behavior, let me know.

We certainly learned something and, sad as it can get, learning from our more serious mistakes is the most effective (I hate to say "best") way to remember a lesson.

You can bet the farm at least six of us will be checking all the Duckville doors every night from now on.

The Ducks of Bluestone Farm

2005-07-06T16:52:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted any pictures lately, so I thought it high time to introduce the newest five members of our Bluestone Farm family: Brigid, Graham, Bernie, Blue and Petra. These are our five Muscovy ducks. Here's how we arrived at their names: Brigid (of Kildare, my favority Celtic saint), Graham (Quacker, of course), Bernie (we got these three on Bernard Mizeki's memorial day), Blue (a blue Muscovy and half our name) and Petra (Greek for stone, so we have "Bluestone" ducks).

In the photos, Bernie and Graham are the two large white ducks in the blue pond. Brigid is the other mostly-white Muscovy in the black pond, and the two little ones with her are Blue (the lighter-colored small duck) and Petra. You can't tell it in these pictures, but Petra has irridescent green wings.

Duck wings stay small for awhile, though Muscovies eventually become good flyers and will head for the trees to scope out the joint when they get a little older. Ducks are fascinating to watch; they stick close together and watch out for the little ones. They move from place to place in a line, Brigid in the lead usually, with Blue and Petra in the middle. Every now and then all of them will stretch tall and flap their wings, for no apparent reason I can fathom. This is an impressive display for the larger ducks, but for Blue and Petra, with their stubby duckling wings, it reminds me of children playing dress-up, trying to look like the adults.

We have to trust these wonderful creatures to the vagaries of life outdoors. We do secure them in their new house in Duckville at night, but during the day they pretty much have the run of the world if they want. They forage a bit farther from home each day. I know the dangers that lurk in our woods — coyotes, hawks, raccoons — but this is how life works. We live in harmony with our surroundings, but that doesn't mean the coyote family won't have duck for dinner some night. Or that we won't ache with Lyme Disease. It's all a balancing act, and you pays your dime and you takes your chances.

Just the same, we keep an eye out for the little ones.

Seeding the Future

2005-07-06T05:02:00.000-04:00

I've been awake since about three this morning, my brain in high gear for some reason.

One of the mental trains I've been riding is about saving seeds. The winter and spring crops and early flowers are bolting — going to seed. Odd that we use this phrase in a rather pejorative way with ourselves. Going to seed in the natural world is actually a time of fabulous abundance and promise. Because we at Bluestone Farm are committed to preserving as much of Earth's wisdom as possible, we have instituted a seed-saving program.

Each plant has some ingenious strategy for propagating itself. One of my favorites is the columbine. Not only is it beautiful (and the state flower of Colorado, my home sweet home), but its seeding design makes gathering a breeze. As with many flowers, the base of the flower becomes the seed "womb". The base of a columbine looks like a cup formed of tightly rolled petals. As the seed matures, the petals unfurl to form a pretty little open cup.

The cup remains upright on the stalk, so it takes a passing animal or a heavy bee or dragonfly to tip the cup and drop the seeds to the ground. For human gathering, this design allows me to simply tip the cup over my own little gatherinng bowl and out come the seeds.

Each flower has about six petals to a cup, and each petal holds about seven to ten seeds. Let's see ... that would be somewhere between forty and sixty seeds per flower, right? Our columbines have somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty flowers going to seed on each plant at the moment, which means the columbine plant knows it will take 1200 to 1800 seeds to insure that at least one new plant will make it to adulthood, flowers and seeds, next year. Whoa, is that abundance or what?

Or take the broccoli raab plant. When it bolts it looks like an entirely different plant. Gone are the tasty green leaves and little yellow flowers. When this plant goes into seed production it transforms into stalks with long slender seed pods growing on a short stem along the main stalks. Brocoli raab pods hold about ten small seeds each, and to get them you have to wait until the plant — stalk, stems and pods — are thoroughly brown and dry. Then comes the fun.

The stalks must be carefully cut, since their pods are designed to burst open at the slightest jarring. What with deer, turkey, coyote, raccoon, voles, wood rats, swooping owls and God knows who else playing near the plants, this design strategy is a great one. Makes human gathering more of a challenge, though.

Carefully, carefully select the driest stalks and place them gently in a roomy container. Carry this gingerly back to the harvesting table. Now at this point my own harvesting strategy differs from Sr. Heléna Marie's. She goes with the oldfashioned way: hop into the roomy container and stomp on those pods until all the seed has fallen out. Then toss the pods and stems carefully back and forth between your hands to free any lingering seeds; throw the chaff into a bag for future mulching duty and admire the seeds left at the bottom of the roomy pot.

Now I prefer a more refined approach. I carefully use my hands to squeeze the pods (OK, it's more like crushing them) open over a collander in a bowl. Then I use a classic threshing move (like TV chefs do with food cooking in a frying pan) to remove the seeds from the chaff. If I'm really being anal-retentive, I then use a fine strainer to remove dirt from the seeds. A perfectly ridiculous process, since the seeds will be going into the dirt again next year anyway, but I think it looks better. I'm all about appearances.

Back to the number-crunching: ten seeds per pod, an average of twenty pods per stalk, and maybe twenty-five stalks per plant ... um, that's ... 5,000 seeds. No wonder I'm making so many seed packets for broccoli raab.

Earth wisdom says if a few seeds are good, a zillion must be better. It's a great survival strategy. Even humans are given to amazing abundance when it comes to reproduction: millions of sperm are produced every minute in males and a few thousand eggs form in each female fetus before birth. Given the odds against eggs and seeds surviving the perilous reproduction process, abundance is a very good thing.

Lots and lots of potential babies mean that the whole system can sustain itself. A few aren't high quality, some never get to the right conditions, many are consumed to provide energy for other species, lots of them root and grow, but never make it to adulthood ... we are flooded by the message of abundance, and yet we humans seem to hang onto a scarcity context for ourselves.

Pretty hard to live in this abundant Universe while holding on to the belief that there's not enough — of anything.

The Wright Brothers

2005-07-05T15:34:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, it's been entirely too long since the last blog. It's not for lack of material, for sure. Life just spins all around me, filled with oddities, miracles and wonder. I've been so busy enjoying all that I just haven't plopped myself in front of the computer. As whizbang-fantastic as computers may seem, they just don't hold a candle to Life According to God.

Here's the kind of encounter I prefer: a few days ago I was driving along the north edge of the Danbury Airport, of which there was much recent ado in the news. Seems a young lad, given to a tad too much alcohol consumption and with a yen for flying, "borrowed" someone's plane from said airport and flew it down to Westchester, at night, with two friends on board and enough alcohol in his blood to fuel the flight and earn him a place of honor in the local jail to boot. Bad business. Dangerous as hell. Sad, too. He seems a bright and worthy young man, wandering a bit too far down a dangerous road. Misses his mom. Has a dad who cares and can't figure out how to help his son find a safer, more promising direction for his life.

Of course the news folks leaped on this opportunity to notify any lurking terrorists too dumb to have already thought of it that small airports might be a good source of transportation for their next US mission. Let's kick that fear level up a notch. Let's implement big-city security at every little airport in the land. Think of the money that will change hands. Ah, consumerism at its finest.

Oops, sorry. I'm off my own trail.

What I wanted to write about was what I saw in the sky the other day. Thank goodness for a long stoplight, because watching the sky while driving is generally a poor idea. But I'm glad I let my eyes wander, because right there above me was a small plane, flanked by a turkey vulture. The little plane flew a nice, exact, gentle curve toward the airport. The vulture, however, was having a blast, gliding with the air currents — up, down, sideways, up over the plane and down the other side, swooping and diving, lagging back and speeding up ... I just know that bird was laughing at the odd little machine that used all of its energy simply to stay in the air. What kind of fun is that? A lot of noise and not much beauty in just staying up there.

How can we possibly believe we can compete with God's design strategies? Yes, our planes do a pretty good job of staying in the air. But sometimes they don't and when that happens disaster strikes. A turkey vulture in bad weather, or on a collision course with another bird, just makes a minor adjustment and keeps right on going. God forbid the bird encounters a speeding bullet, or a nearly-invisible power line. In that case it, too, crashes to the ground. But at least only one being dies, not two hundred.

Look, I'm not against airplanes. But I do think we lose a lot (too much, actually) by acting as if our plans are so great they should take precedence over the rights, needs and very lives of all other living systems of Earth. That's a whole lot more dangerous to us than we know. Let's not find out the hard way that turkey vultures can teach us something, not only about flying, but about living.

Oddities

2005-05-27T16:47:00.000-04:00

I'm in retreat today, which means that I spend the entire day in silence. What a fabulous gift this is!

The clouds of the past weeks finally gave way to the sun, so I sat for awhile on the back patio, working on a little counted cross stitch I'm making for a gift. The birds soon accepted my presence and let their incredible music fly around the yard and forest. I'm not very good at bird recognition, but for sure I heard cardinals, chickadees, robins, a mockingbird and a hermit thrush. Glorious.

As I looked down at my sewing, I noticed the shadows of carpenter bees (yes, they're still at it) flying around me. Little pale blue butterflies bounced past on their way to the herb garden. The last of the dogwood petals fluttered around my feet. Soon the shadow of a red-tailed hawk caught my attention, and I looked up to watch it soar in search of lunch. I wasn't getting much sewing done, but I has having a fine time.

Then something odd appeared. A bat. Now there's a sight you don't see much at 1:00 on a sunny afternoon. In fact, there's a sight you don't really want to see on a pleasant May afternoon. Bats are definitely night creatures, and they are supposed to be safely tucked in their little beds during the day. I immediately thought "rabies". For sure, this awful disease causes creatures to act strangely, doing things they'd never be caught dead doing otherwise. Like flying around in the daylight when you're supposed to be sawing logs in a safe roost.

"Never be caught dead" is an unfortunate phrase, since being caught dead is most likely what will soon happen to this marvelous creature. I can't think of one other reason why a full grown, large-ish bat would be zooming around with the sun shining through its amazing wings. My fascination overrode my apprehension, and I sat there watching it dive after insects. I often watch our little brown bats coming out after sunset, but I've never seen a bat in the full light of day, and I wasn't going to miss this opportunity. It flew over my head several times, but I guess I wasn't interesting enough, even to its diseased brain, to investigate further.

Good thing for me.

Finally it headed off to the woods. I'm really sorry this creature is probably very sick. Rabies can't be much fun. But I'm oh so glad I was sitting there in silence, letting Mother Earth show me a few of her wonders, when this bat made its rare appearance.

Eat well, my friend. And may your death be quick and peaceful.

Genetic lessons

2005-05-26T15:34:00.000-04:00

Simon caught a chipmunk today. If you've ever watched chipmunks for long you know that's a nifty trick. Simon is, oh, about 520 times their size, and though I wasn't there for the chase, I can imagine how incredibly fast and nimble Simon appeared as he ferreted (or chipmunked) out the little creature.

That's what Simon's ancestors were trained to do — find little furry critters who discover too late that a burrow in the ground is no match for a Weimaraner. This one wasn't in her burrow, though; she was crossing our porch. I'm sure she was out shopping for the kids because that's what's happening in the chipmunk world this time of year. It seems to be a full time job for chipmunk moms. (It may be for the dads, too; honestly, I can't tell the boys from the girls, so I'm shamelessly anthropomorphizing that feeding the 'munklettes is a motherly task.)

Catching is only half the job, though. These dogs were also trained to kill what they caught, and millennia of genetic coding can't be ignored. Simon dispatched the little body quickly and efficiently.

But there he stood, his prey at his feet, just staring down at her. Or him. These dogs were trained to kill for killing's sake, not for nourishment. I suspect the behavior was developed to make human life less complicated — let the dogs rid the place of rodents. So Simon wasn't sure what to do next. In fact, I don't think he was sure what he had just done.

I've seen Simon ecstatic, and I've seen him when he's angry (he bites the door when he's not allowed to come with us in the car), and I've seen him sad. I know these are human emotions and words, but the stimulus and response of a dog are suspiciously very much like our own.

Simon looked at that little chipmunk, and he looked at Sr. Lilli Ana, and he look at me. His ears were "hanging low", a sure sign he was feeling lost and unhappy. He loves animals, and I wonder if he just couldn't figure out why he, of all creatures, had just committed this violence. Of course I don't really know what he was thinking, but he moped around for hours afterward. Very uncharacteristic Simon-behavior.

I felt sad for him, and I felt sad for the little chipmunk and her babies, and I felt sad for Sr. Lilli Ana who had stood witness to the whole thing, helpless to stop the inevitable. But there's more to this than sadness. We humans have fooled around with Earth's life systems so much that we have no idea what should be or might have been if we'd participated as one species among many rather than as clumsy tinkerers and destroyers. We'll never know.

But I do know that violence has always had a place in this sacred Universe, much as we'd prefer it otherwise. Death is the only door to transformation, the only way for the adventure of life to proceed, for diversity to blossom, for vital energy to be exchanged. So I buried the little chipmunk in the fertile soil of the forest, blessed her life and her death, and thanked her for gift to the Earth.

And I hoped that chipmunk dads do go shopping.

Fishing in the Garden

2005-05-18T18:36:00.000-04:00

Did you know that if a really, really big giant came along and tried to pick up the Earth in her hand, she couldn't do it? Nope. The Earth isn't solid enough; the "hard" ground we walk on is just a thin, fragile layer of rocks and soil — everything else is fluid or mighty close to it. The Earth would just run right through her fingers, like an egg with no shell. Pretty amazing.

That's a little hard to accept when we've had to call in heavy-duty equipment just to till our backyard for this year's expanded garden. Looked pretty solid to me. Felt like it, too. And in this little corner of our bioregion there seem to be more rocks than soil.

Our rocks were deposited here by glacial movement, so when we found a patch of small-ish rocks, we were pretty sure the mother rock wasn't far away. Sure enough, we'd soon hear that solid "thunk" as a shovel met up with her. When you dig long enough in this soil, you learn to guage the size of a buried rock just by the sound the shovel makes.

When we'd come across one of those, the work changed from tilling the soil to digging around the edges of a boulder. Little by little she was revealed ... a bump here, a shelf there, an odd craggy place over there. When a large rock is being unearthed, there is a stage where it looks like a whale surfacing for a breath of air and a little look-see.

The soil holds other wonders, too. Every handful contains millions of organisms. Most of those are too small for us to see. But the ones we can are numerous and darned interesting. Dark maroon millipedes twist and spin through the loosened soil; earthworms are everywhere, beetles, roly-polies, teensy spiders, grubs and ants of at least three different varieties are swimming around just under our feet.

Even the rocks move constantly, boiling in slow motion toward the surface. The rich layers at the top of Earth's crust aren't any more solid than the Atlantic Ocean. Just because we can walk on it, our perspective says "solid", but for the life that teems in its midst, the soil is beautifully fluid.

Maybe we should call it the Earth Ocean.

The Pause that Refreshes

2005-05-04T06:21:00.000-04:00

As I reworked our daily schedule for the next few weeks, I discovered something. I've always known that as spring progresses the days get longer faster. I always thought that was true until June 21 when, on the journey around the sun, Earth's axis tilt begins to cause the northern hemisphere to lean further away from the sun, making the days shorter again.

But here's what I didn't know: during May, the times of sunrise and sunset are changing pretty dramatically — about a full minute each day. This is consistent throughout the month. OK, so far so good. But at the beginning of June, everything seems to just stop. From beginning to end, the sunrise change is zero! Here at Bluestone Farm the sun rises at 5:23 AM on June 1, and it's still rising at exactly 5:23 AM on June 30.

During the month there is a little bit of time wobble, a minute here or there. On several different days the sun will appear three minutes earlier, but that reflects the entire swing. Amazing. There are perfectly good explanations for this, of course. But why is it so? It certainly could have been different — but it's not.

I was taught that ancient folks were simple-minded and superstitious, and thinking that anything other than another human could "speak" with them was just one more proof of their backwardness. But I imagine early peoples on Earth noticing this little quirk in the sky; its irregularity must have communicated something important to them, as all things in the natural world did.

I'm beginning to learn a few things about Mother Earth myself, and I know for sure that the natural world does communicates with us, all the time. We just decided to quit listening. (Well, mostly ... all of you who bake bread know that the dough "tells" you when it's ready to be set aside to rise, right?)

Somewhere in our past we resigned our membership in the Earth community of life and began to become our own teachers. We just stopped learning from the marvelous planet that gave us life and of which we are one of many expressions. Instead we decided that everything on Earth except us is either unconscious or completely lifeless, unimportant in itself, and available (in fact, meant to be) for our use.

We are a species long on verbal communication, but a little short on wisdom.

So, what about the little strangeness in the sunrise time? I can only tell you what it whispers in my own ear. When something in my life is about to undergo a complete change of direction, I've found it best to hesitate on the brink. Wisdom speaks in the midst of that kind of stillness, for one thing. And there is also something delicious about balancing on the knife-edge between surrender and anticipation. I guess that's why every roller coaster in the world begins with a steep hill that gives one that moment of hesitation at the crest, stretching out the opportunity to think about it before plunging onward, a chance to feel the drag of the upward pull and grab a look at the thrill ahead at the same time.

Before I know it, it will be June. And I'll have a whole month to think about it.

Transformation

2005-04-25T07:12:00.000-04:00

I walked outside early this morning to check out how the garden liked yesterday's rain. It was still windy, and like a new mom, I worried for the little seeds I had sown during the week. But generally, children are supple and resilient. In fact, my own little "babies" had loved that cold rain and were doing fine.

I remember being supple and resilient myself. Not that I'm fragile these days, but working in the garden revealed a few changes. I had to stand up regularly to ease the pain in my knees; walking on the uneven ground takes just a wee bit more care than it used to; garden gloves, a big hat, sunglasses and long sleeved shirts are a must. I think the days of physical labor from early morning to late evening are behind me now.

As I stood quietly admiring our handiwork and God's prodigal design for life, I listened to the sounds made by the huge trees that surround our yard. Most are just now beginning to bud out, and together it looks like a huge wad of pale green gauze has been caught in the top of the trees. This is not primal forest, but these beauties are old by my standards — many have stood out there for at least two hundred years.

In the wind they sway slowly back and forth. And they creak loudly. They aren't fragile yet, either, but their creaking speaks of changes afoot. Little saplings don't creak in the wind. For all of life, change is the name of the game. Without it, there would be no concept of "life" at all. Existence would be dull and repetitive to the point of madness, with no way out. Change means surprise, creativity, beauty.

The "prime" of life isn't just one segment of one phase of being — it's the whole thing, from the birth of the Universe some thirteen billion years ago to this moment and beyond. Wow.

Carpenter Bees

2005-04-19T06:17:00.000-04:00

I don't remember who it was, but years a go a neighborhood friend and I were sitting outside eating our sandwiches. All of a sudden he screamed and threw his sandwich on the ground — a bee had found its way into the egg salad and didn't take kindly to being eaten. Fortunately, my little friend wasn't allergic to bee stings.

I was young enough that this made an immediate and unshakable impression on me. I suppose I could have spent the rest of my life being terrified of egg salad sandwiches, but my child-brain settled more logically on fear of the stinging creature itself.

I've been stung myself a few times in these intervening years, and though it's not an experience anyone enjoys, it obviously didn't kill me, either. One time I stuck my bare foot into a shoe and discovered that solitary wasps can sting repeatedly. Another time a yellow jacket, dazed by chemicals sprayed into its nest a few days earlier, flew up my skirt and rudely stung the inside of my upper thigh. That one did cause a nasty reaction, though I'm not convinced it was allergic on my part; I think the poor creature just returned our toxic favor. But now I carry one of those bee-sting injection kits, just in case.

Last year I discovered carpenter bees. These are impressive fliers, since clearly their bodies are much too large for those filmy little wings to support; they are encumbered with a ponderous, shiny black rear segment that looks like armor with a rather attractive purplish or greenish patina. In spite of their hefty build, they zip around like humming birds, hovering motionless in the air for long periods of time before zooming upward or sideways or just disappearing so quickly I can't tell where they've gone. They sound like mini-helicopters to me. Impressive.

Our school/convent building was designed by a California architect, so naturally it's redwood. Boy, do the CB's like that. Just about this time each year they wake up and begin preparations for mating, which means the males scout out a nice wooden locale and then begin to bore amazingly precise 1/2" holes in it. You can actually hear them drilling. If left to their own devices for years, they can take down a building.

But I'm more impressed with the creature itself. The males protect the nesting site by hovering menacingly outside. The larger the site, the more boys hang out in the 'hood. There is usually only one female causing all the activity. The males behave as if they have testosterone poisoning — even their buzzing sounds mean and aggressive. They make a beeline (sorry) for anyone who comes too close to the nest entrance, and if you didn't know any better you'd back off in a hurry.

The problem is these guys have no stinger. Not even a little one. Lots of bark but no bite. I think the only damage they could cause would be to fly in your eye, and that's not very likely. Now the queen can cause a lot of trouble, having a quite meaningful stinger; but she only uses it if she's actually handled roughly, a feat no one is likely to try anyway.

I just love Nature, don't you? Here are all these aggressive, macho bees dive-bombing humans and skunks and anything else within reach (and pretty much scaring the daylights out of all of us) ... but they can't do anything more than look and sound dangerous. Amazing. A wee tick can make you miserable without you even knowing it has buried its head in your skin; a honker bee can chase you twenty feet in about one second, yet is capable of little more than ruffling your hair.

Wouldn't it be just grand if humans could holler up a storm, but couldn't figure out how to build bombs or what to do with an Uzi?

Our Friend Mary

2005-04-16T12:26:00.000-04:00

This probably will sound tacky coming from a nun, but I've always wanted to do a retreat based on the bumper sticker "Shit Happens". Needless to say, the few Sisters to whom I proposed this idea when I first thought about it some fifteen years ago were not amused. But I think there is a huge truth in that sticker. Horrible things happen to people who, no matter what skeletons may lurk in their historical closets, don't deserve it.

Our Community has a wonderful friend who has visited us for years when the New York Marathon happens. She runs it. This has always fascinated me, who has run one mile once in my entire life and I still think of it as a major achievement. But our friend Mary runs twenty-six miles, and she does it every year. God knows how many miles she runs in between the marathons.

Mary is a lot more than a runner, of course. She is a physical therapist, a gentle woman, a good soul. Before I moved north I always looked forward to marathon time, just to have her quiet, solid presence in the house.

Now she is caught in medical hell betwen two diagnoses, neither of which is particularly hopeful. Both involve the degeneration of her muscles. I'm angry, and I'm sad, and I'm scared for her.

I don't believe in a God who picks and chooses people to punish or reward. And I for sure don't believe in a God who is capricious and mean. But Mary's situation seems particularly cruel to me, and I want to blame Someone.

I'll never forget the year when the weather for the race was beastly — freezing cold rain fell all day. Many runners dropped out because the conditions were so brutal, but Mary hung in there and finished. She didn't, and probably never will, come in first. Winning isn't the point at all, it is just getting it done. Trying something difficult and finding out you can do it. It is getting through the hard stuff, the hills, the sleet, the feeling that you can't take one more step.

But you do.

I guess Mary's going to need all that experience and self-knowledge over the next weeks and months. The marathon's grueling one-step-at-a-time training has become the basis for the one-day-at-a-time life she has been thrust into. The sparks of grit and determination and present moment awareness and trust that live deep within Mary will continue to guide and strengthen her.

So yes, "shit happens". It pays no attention to the person or the circumstance or anything else. It just happens. But it doesn't happen in a vacuum; it doesn't rule the day all by itself.

Thank God for Mary and for marathons and for freezing rain. Thank God for resilience and friends and hope and love.

Hope for the Flowers

2005-04-14T06:15:00.000-04:00

"Roses", Maria Felicitas, CHS

Remember the wonderful book Hope for the Flowers — a delightful little gift we adults exchanged with each other back in the 80s? Children's literature is fabulous stuff, and I suspect moms and dads and aunts and grandpas and other adult friends buy these books as much for themselves as for gifts. Why is that?

I'm not sure, but I think the ability of a child to observe the world with eyes of wonder and hearts wide open is something we adults have just about forgotten.

But not quite. And that teeny hint of memory just might save the world.

Imagine what life would be like if we adults could once again shut out everything around us except a daddy longlegs or a hollyhock or a tire swing over the pond on a hot summer day? If following an inchworm were more valuable to us than squeezing one more task into our busy days? If we allowed ourselves to be captivated by the glory of the rest of Earth's life community for an hour or so?

The next time you get a chance to hang out with your favorite child (and if you don't have one of those, by all means go find one), give your adult self a break. Share a child's view of Life.

My, what an idea.

Plundering

2005-04-13T06:04:00.000-04:00

I didn't sleep much last night. Just one of "those nights" where, in spite of feeling exhausted when I retired, I awakened wide-eyed and refreshed ... at 1:30 AM. Ah, well.

I did what I always do when this happens: I read, practiced relaxation meditation, roamed around in my thoughts, and petted the dog, who is extremely generous in this regard. I figure my body knows what it needs — and what it doesn't. If I'm not sleepy right now, I will be later. This I learned in my twenties, when I was plagued by insomnia, and the approach continues to serve me well as sleepless nights become more frequent in my later years. I think of it as found time and try to use it respectfully.

Part of last night's musings sprung from watching The Corporation for the second time, and from reading Genesis Farm's latest newsletter cover article. [If you're not on their mailing list, by all means sign up. And participate. And contribute.) Both sources call our culture into question.

We are a nation of plunderers.

We are certainly not alone, as nations go, but we lead the way in many of the most destructive practices in existence today. I keep telling myself we aren't bad people, we're just unconscious. But our Community facilitator constantly reminds us: "that which is unconscious is unjust". I have yet to be able to prove her statement wrong.

"Just unconscious" is not an excuse, and it's a sorry explanation. In service of our own desires, we are pushing all of Earth's life systems into steep decline. I don't mean for this blog to be a scolding, or a warning, or a judgment. I have spent most of my own fifty-plus years contributing to Earth's demise, and I know speaking from arrogance is self-serving and worse than useless.

We might try asking ourselves if there is a way to live differently.

I think we begin to make necessary changes not through action but through passion. As in Christ's passion, where Jesus submitted himself to judgment and death without seeming to stand up for his rights. He was trying to show people what it means to live differently, to step away from destructive ways of being, such as slavery, discrimination, and exclusion. Two thousand years ago, no one could possibly have imagined what is happening on Earth today. Yet Jesus tried every way he could to teach us to live with compassion and respect for all of God's creation, to love with such intensity that one would sacrifice the self in order to reveal the Self of creation and possibility. Jesus was trying to set us free.

If we were to practice passion ourselves, we would have to back off from our impress on the Earth. At this point, we'd better be backing up pretty far and pretty fast, because there really isn't much time left.

Pay attention to what you buy, what you use, what you discard and leave for others to deal with. What is your personal impress on Mother Earth? That should give you an idea where to begin in your own life, which is the only thing you can really change anyway.

We live in bondage to a life of consumerism and competition. The first steps to freedom are exciting. Take a few today.

Stardust

2005-04-10T08:15:00.000-04:00

Life is incredibly fragile. But it is also profoundly hardy. Go figure.

Last night we attended the school's annual Spring Gala, a delightful affair with good food, terrific company and a fabulous collection of baskets, services, tickets, trips and hundreds of other tempting items that can be obtained through silent and live auction. Parents and school folks alike work for months to make this happen, and everyone looks forward to the evening.

So do the Sisters. We founded this School forty years ago, and they are thriving. This benefit evening is wildly succcessful, and we are deeply grateful for our excellent administrators, staff, teachers, students and parents. On this night there's always something being auctioned that fits in nicely with our own focus of Earth education through sustainable and simple living. So we join in the fun, bid on a few things, renew friendships, and probably eat more than we should. It's a wonderful night.

Unfortunately and quite unexpectedly, one of our youngest Sisters, sitting quietly at a table, passed out. There was immediate help for her; the chef was a paramedic, two nurses and a doctor appeared from the group of party-goers, one parent called 911, and the entire group supported the mini-drama with prayers.

Our Sister was taken to the hospital where she's suffering the predictable poking and prodding to see if anyone can discover what caused her loss of consciousness. She seems fine this morning and is a bit embarrassed about the whole thing, though they're still x-raying and scanning and drawing blood to complete the detective process. God willing they find nothing and life will go on as before. Almost.

This Sister is unusually hardy; last summer she spent nearly every day, all day, out in the sun in our first-year garden. That's a lot of back-breaking work in really hot weather. She didn't faint then. She teaches every day and only misses a day when our Community activities demand it. She doesn't faint there. She does everything everyone else does throughout their lives — she cooks and cleans and plays and studies ... and she doesn't faint during any of those efforts.

We may never know what caused last night's episode. Probably not, in fact. There is so very much we don't know about the grandeur and mysteries of our bodies. So we enjoy our hardiness when that's what's happening, and we remember that this, too, shall pass.

By the way, we won a gorgeous outdoor moss-lined planter, already filled with an assortment of beautiful plants. It is designed to stay outside year-round, so we'll watch those lovely plants bloom and grow, mature, wither, die back, rest, and reappear next spring as if by magic.

I think we'll put this by our new kitchen garden, where everyone who comes to school or to see us can enjoy it. When I look at it, I will remember that life is an upward spiral with no real beginning or end. Birth - life - death - transformation - resurrection - birth - life - death- transformation ... from stardust we are formed, and to stardust we shall return.

2005-04-08T19:56:00.000-04:00

Sunset Sky

The Hour of the Deer

2005-04-08T19:29:00.000-04:00

The blogger was under the weather this morning, and then I headed off for the city so I missed my early morning blog. Horrors.

So here I am looking at the sunlight on the wall behind my computer. The spot of Earth I'm sitting on will roll completely away from the sun in about half an hour. Something particularly holy happens in the hour before sunrise and the hour before sunset. In the morning, everything becomes profoundly quiet. Indigenous traditions called this the hour of the wolf — when the wolf headed home after a long night of hunting.

When we set our schedule to meditate during these two hours, we decided to call the sunset time the hour of the deer, since that's when our local deer herd wanders through our back meadow for a last little snack before bed.

But ah, that sunlight. Cast through the trees at a nearly flat angle to our position on Earth, it takes on a buttery shade before the oranges and reds begin to appear. Bronze sunlight dapples the woods, creating a sense that anything could appear there — deer, eagles, fairies ... who knows? The magic lasts a long time.

After the sun itself disappears behind the curve of Earth, the sky takes its turn at the palette. Wild roses, hot reds, soothing lavenders, smoky grays, deep oranges, soft violet, and then ... the most glorious shading from rich blue-green to deep navy blue. In a few weeks, this is when the bats will wake up and flutter out over the back yard, dipping and diving for the first insect appetizers of the night.

Finally, finally, the whole sky breaths itself into the blackness of deep night.

It's a show one should never miss.

Communion

2005-04-07T07:27:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about that syrup business again this morning. It's hard not to, when your kitchen table is full of gorgeous amber bottles and folks stop by for a bottle and a chat all during the day. This is a whole new phase of the Magical Sugaring Season.

But that's not what grabbed my attention this time. It was the finishing process. That's the time when the quality of the bubbles in the sap begins to change, and the surface looks a little bit different, and if you leave it right now you'll have candy for sure.

Batch after batch I stood there, watching the bubbles blow up clearer and slower, gradually spreading across the pan. Every time this began a delightful excitement built inside of me. The syrup and I were communicating directly. I was in awe; it was telling me when to cut the heat and praise the miracle of syrup.

Thermometers are just fine, but I finally realized that it was one more piece of technology stuck there in between we two communicants. The sap and I, two different expressions of the Earth, talking with each other. We were right there in the same room. We didn't need a telephone. And when I began to listen to the sap, and pay attention to my own ability to "hear" it, magic happened.

Every batch was just a hair different from the last as the days passed. This I never would have known if I'd stuck with the gadgets instead of letting the sap teach me. I find myself resisting the temptation to buy "more professional" doodads so we can produce more syrup so we can make more money so we can ... hmmmm, what was it we wanted that money for again?

We are all teachers for each other, we marvelous amazing creations of God-through-Earth. What happened to us humans that we cut ourselves out of that great communion and began to rely on our own devices?

P.S.

2005-04-06T20:47:00.000-04:00

But what if today you're a turkey and not a chickadee? What if the shadow stuff is holding sway right now, and it doesn't seem to make any difference if light is planning to triumph. Or if, in fact, it will. Even knowing that isn't particularly helpful news.

When you're a turkey, and you're hungry, and the shopping center is closed, and some hairbrained little chickadee is buzzing around over your head nattering on about how beautiful this storm is, gratitude and hope are just two words hanging out somewhere near the middle of Webster's Dictionary.

Crammed down there, way deep inside each of us, is a turkey who just needs to know where the next mouthful is coming from and doesn't care anything about next week, when the sun will be shining and yesterday's rain has washed all the dirty snow down the hill and into the reservoir and tasty green things are popping up all over the place.

That turkey just hangs out there in the backyard, without a clue. It's not about knowing, or belief, or trust or any of those wonderfully positive possibilities. It's about something much more solid, yet frustratingly elusive. It's about hope — that teeniest hint that the light at the end of the tunnel that isn't a freight train after all.

It's about spring — against all odds — dragging green things and longer days in its wake. Even during the turkey-times of our lives, Something whispers "hold on" into our weary hearts.

Hang in there. Don't give up just yet.

If profound Mystery means anything at all, it means that tomorrow will be a new day, filled with surprises and hope and possibilities never dreamed of. Leaves will appear on bare branches, flowers will bloom, squash and cucumbers will take over the garden in spite of your best efforts, eggs will hatch and turklettes will be born and will captivate your heart and the days will be warm and you will be ... dare it be true? ... happy again.

Aren't we strange birds?

Early morning

2005-04-05T06:27:00.000-04:00

Finally the rain has moved on and this morning dawned clear. And cold, even though it's April and green life is sprouting all around us. Good thing God added hardiness to the blueprint of life.

I awakened with a miserable headache and a bad attitude. I hate when that happens. There are no good reasons, and the few weak ones I do have aren't worthy at all. I'm generally good-tempered, I love being where I am and doing what I'm doing and the wonderful women I live with. So what's the deal?

Our schedule changed this past weekend — we shift our days around about eight times a year, responding to the movement of the Earth around the sun rather than the clock. We all love this; it gives us a chance to meditate during the hour before sunrise. So it was deeply dark when I woke up. Now, more than an hour later, the sky is gently shaded with blues and pinks as the Earth rotates toward the sun. It's really gorgeous, and stirs the best in me, as it always does.

Maybe the deal is this: we carry a darkness within, and though it's not all (or not always) "bad", it's important to remember that my own shadowy potential exists and has power. If I ignored that possibility, then I'd also miss the wonderful things that occur only in darkness. Like new life springing out of the cold ground, or the sky subtly shifting from black velvet to pink.

Neither the headache nor the attitude will last. Darkness is sometimes scary, but light is more powerful and will always make the shadows disappear like magic. It's hard to remember all this when my head hurts and I feel like I could bite glass. Looking at the sky helps.

And it's a very good thing God threw in hardiness.

One Bird's Hardship is Another Bird's ...

2005-04-04T00:30:00.000-04:00

... excuse to go berserk.

While the turkeys were poking around in the birdfeeder, the chickadees were practically turning somersaults in the air. I've never seen a bird more delighted to be in the middle of a blizzard. Everyone else is puffed up against the cold wind and icy snow, but not those chickadees.

I never noticed this before, but I recently read one of Tom Brown's [the famous tracker from the Pine Barrens in New Jersey] books. As a youngster he learned a lot from his good friend's grandfather, a Native American who was himself an accomplished stalker of animals. This man loved chickadees because they have an unmistakable joie de vivre.

He's right; never mind that the windchill is around forty below or the sleet is coming down like little arrows. These tiny birds are right out there, darting around in the air, singing their hearts out. They just love bad weather.

Even the little guy in this picture has an attitude, doesn't he? Perched up there with that stone bird, jaunty little stance, checking out the wind speed for another aerodynamically impossible zoom over to the apple tree. I swear he's smiling.

Can you imagine how freeing it must be to see adverse conditions as an excuse to have a blast?

Think about it.

Wasting Time

2005-04-03T22:08:00.001-04:00

One thing you need in abundance when sugaring is patience. It takes a long, long time to boil off 39 gallons of water from the tree sap, leaving behind that one precious gallon of syrup. In fact, if it hadn't been for Charlie's fortuitous visit to our kitchen one morning, we'd still be down there, trying to process hundreds of gallons of sap in a large frying pan.

Charlie is an organic farmer who works on a nearby farm. He knows how to sugar. We struck a wonderful bargain — Charlie's advice and the use of a large 15 gallon "stove pan" in exchange for tapping a few of the trees in our wonderful sugarbush [a stand of maple trees]. But even with the magic pan and four burners on high, it takes a long time. Hours.

Oh, you can prepare the next batch of sap by doing some filtering. And you can sterilize bottles. But mostly you watch the steam rise and fill the kitchen, checking regularly to add small amounts of fresh sap as the evaporation process transforms the astonishingly clear sap to a heavier pale amber fluid.

For days on end, I'd rise around 5:00 to begin boiling down the day's sap. If I stayed by the stove, I could process close to 40 gallons in a day, sometimes working late into the night. But watching sap boil is a lot like watching paint dry, and I'd be tempted away to other things to make better use of my time. I'd take off to hang a load of laundry, make some phone calls, prepare a sermon. Of course I'd get caught up in whatever I was doing, and down in the kitchen the sap was boiling away. I'd miss a chance to add fresh sap earlier in the process, making the day's production smaller. If I'd really gotten sidetracked, I could have ruined a whole batch, which thankfully never happened.

We so easily lose our patience with a job that seems to be inefficient. Our cultural message is to do more: work more, make more money, buy more stuff. The average work week is now over 60 hours, because we can work from the minute we get out of bed until we collapse at night. We have to arrange play dates for our children because they're so busy. Wasting time is abhorrent to us, and immediate gratification is our idol.

Living this way is costly, however — to ourselves, to each other and to the Earth

The days I stayed in the kitchen were the best days. Not just for making syrup, but for my soul. My whole being slowed down; I paid closer attention to the changing sky and noticed the possum outside the kitchen door. I heard the birdsong change with the coming of spring. I thought a lot about what it means to be an expression of the Earth, and how deeply connected we are to everything around us. I got to know every nuance of that sap, and soon abandoned the thermometer for my own instincts for finishing the syrup (which, by the way, became quite reliable).

I've heard praying called "wasting time with God". I like that. Whenever I've wasted time according to our cultural standard, I've ended up happier and healthier. We need the practice of patience in our lives if we are going to survive as a species.

So start a revolution today: waste a little time.

Finished Product

2005-04-03T12:54:00.000-04:00

Now here's a miracle for you: this is a picture of bottled sunshine. All this lovely syrup came from the energy of the sun, transformed over years into clear, sweet maple sap. If we had appropriately developed senses, we could also see hours of laughter and wonder, feel a warm and humid kitchen, witness the bonding of new friends, watch the laborers in a glass factory, hear our calls to the Mitchell man to deliver more propane, thank Bill for collecting and boiling when we had to leave for a week at the height of the season ... perhaps we could even taste the half-finished sap, dipped out into cups for a late-night refreshment of maple tea. And all of that came from the sunshine, too.

With a bit of attention and focus, we could see and feel and smell and hear miracles all around us, every day.

Adaptation

2005-04-03T08:41:00.000-04:00

When the snow is too deep for the turkeys to find food, they — like all creatures — adapt. This isn't long-term adaptation, where bodies change and new species appear. This is the kind of movement that happens quickly, while drawing on thousands of years spent struggling and learning, gaining experience and innate wisdom. This is the miracle of survival.

As winter glides toward spring, the turkeys begin to gather in flocks, anticipating the time when toms will spread their back feathers, huff up to the the size of a Volkswagen and strut before a crowd of disinterested ladies. At least that's what it looks like to me.

Despite their reputation as profoundly lacking in mental acuity, turkeys are glorious birds; they have irridescent feathers that radiate copper and green in the sunlight. The boys sport bright blue heads and fire-engine red wattles to further attract the women when the time for mating arrives. When startled, the whole flock will take wing and sail over the trees and into the hills. Yes, they do fly, and with amazing grace. They just need a lengthy runway. Once airborne, they glide on their huge wings, looking a bit like chubby eagles.

They can be aggressive and have been seen surrounding a local housecat, cornering her in the rhododendron bush in the back yard. But mostly they gobble quietly, grazing along sedately. Occasional spats seem to occur, when they jump in the air and flap their wings furiously at each other. Or maybe they're not arguing at all, but dancing to a tune we don't hear. In any event, they never seem to hurt each other, and these encounters usually end with the participants scurrying away from each other.

Adaptation. How to compete and share at the same time. How to find each other when productive lust rises like sap to the brain. How to settle arguments and establish order among neighbors. How to protect each other and intimidate intruders. How to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. And how to locate and dine at the human's birdfeeder when the rest of the grocery store is under two feet of snow.

Teaching the children

2005-04-03T07:44:00.000-04:00

Several days after the mapling season began, Sr. Lilli Ana's Thursday afternoon "Outdoor Adventure Club" helped collect sap. Afterwards, they gathered in our kitchen to taste the sap, learn about the seasons of a tree, see the various stages of evaporating and finishing, and finally to try out the finished syrup on biscuits they baked themselves.

The precious children in this picture will join millions of others in facing a bleak future, where food has been genetically modified beyond repair, where the Earth's resources have been exploited to exhaustion and life itself will be in danger. We don't think it has to be that way; we help educate for a different, more hopeful future — for all the children of Earth.

Grandfather Maple

2005-04-02T15:30:00.000-05:00

This was our first year at the transformation of maple tree sap into maple syrup — our year of experimentation — to find out if we could do it and if we wanted to do it seriously in the future. We didn't keep any records, though ... counting gallons collected or quarts produced, which trees gave what when and so forth. We collected and boiled, ate and gave away as we worked, so who knows?

"Sugaring", as this process is called, is more than the production of a delicious treat, though it is certainly that. As the brief sugaring season moved along, I realized that I was experiencing a meditation in action.

There are basics: forty gallons of tree sap produce about a gallon of syrup, for example. And as sap approaches 219 degrees, one learns to be extremely careful. Then there's timing that fragile moment where sap becomes syrup but not candy. All of that is important, yes, but it's what I learned from the Earth that turned these few intense weeks in a mystical direction.

Our first attempts at tapping were on a lovely old grandfather maple just down the hill from our house. We weren't sure exactly how to do this; the minute Sr. Helena Marie drilled into the sapwood, the tree gave of its bounty. She ran up the hill and into the kitchen, shouting "It's running! It's running!!!!" Off we ran, spiles and containers in hand, to begin our sugaring education.

I was amazed, several days later, when we realized that in our rush the drill setting had slipped from forward to backward, making the subsequent holes really hard to make. Each hole is a small wound in the tree — one more opening in the bark that allows the sap to slip down the trunk and back into the ground. Drilling in reverse meant we were using only our strength to make those holes, not the natural power of the drill. Grandfather maple seemed to understand our enthusiasm and good intentions and did not close off the flow of precious sap, even as we burned into the bark around the holes.

It seemed to me that we had "wounded" the tree more than was necessary, adding heat to the cutting. Yet the natural abundance of Mother Earth showed itself once again through this old tree's generous sap flow.

That beautiful tree has taught us a lot: that we can make mistakes, sometimes hurtful ones, and be forgiven. That the nature of our planetary home is to be generous, to provide in profusion beyond imagination. That nothing is wasted, not even the sap that falls to the ground. That trees and rocks and bodies of water have a deep interiority — personality of their own.

Or, perhaps it is we who have a "treeality" of our own?

Preparing the first tap

2005-04-02T13:26:00.000-05:00

In spite of a fairly deep snow cover, our first sugaring day was warm enough to work in shirtsleeves. Sr. HM rigged up a bit of electricity to power the drill and we were off and running. So was the sap, and our first season was on its way.

The perfect mapling day

2005-04-02T13:24:00.000-05:00

It was a warm February afternoon when the first tap was drilled. As Sr. Helena Marie worked, I couldn't stop looking at the intricate lace-work of the bare tree branches above us. The quality of winter sun on a clear and dry day is extraordinary. When I stood in just the right place behind the Grandfather maple, the lovely image below demanded a quick photo.