Catching Joy in the Breath

Photo: Last night’s full moon from Washington Park, Anacortes.
I felt my brother walking with me in the dark.

“…We may yearn to rest in some small piece of pure humanity, a strip of orchard between river and rock. But our own heart is too vast to be contained there. We can no longer seek it in a place or even an image of a god or an angel.”
End lines of Rilke’s Second Elegy.

This is my last real trip to the cabin. Friends, who are family, were kind enough to drive me here from Vancouver. I would not have wanted this ending to begin alone. There’s a vista from Interstate Five moving north, just before Conway, that always takes my breath for a moment. A hundred islands spread out off the edge of the Skagit Delta. The view reminded me of the Thanksgiving table shared with kin of choice this week. Our horizon served up with so many succulent dishes. Lummi Island is the turkey, Orcas Island the bowl of mashed potatoes, Lopez is the pie. I was in the back seat, behind my friends, feeling so sad and so blessed, even happy. The table is full of so many inner experiences.

This led me to wonder, what is it that catches the breath with joy? When you first spot your beloved at the airport curb. When you sit back and really see the painting you coaxed into the light over a long winter. Or driving away after the last day at a job that was beneath you. I don’t think it is the experience itself that fuels the power of the heart to sigh. The catch of joy in my case comes from an inner landscape. The islands are inside of me every day. The lover at the airport, in my adoring intentions. The paintings come from a dimension that is eternal. The actual objects and experiences are worthy (and loved) in themselves. But they are not the whole story.

As I stepped out of the heater’s hiss and the lantern’s glow of the cabin for the last time I knew that I would never forget the joy and dreams associated with the little home. This was a place for visions shared with a beloved. It became a lonely place with the song of ravens and coyote. And it was a place full of house plans made out of paper and prayers. Most of the intentions were not actually met. And I had to leave. Yet, the home is still inside me. Her hand still can rest on my shoulder as we sleep in the tall June grasses. The raven spinning songs in woodland flutters in my chest. It’s not necessarily about particulars. These things are real dreams. The catch of the breath, the joy of the unexpected moment are inside. And they are too big to be defined.

When I start the old Ford pickup for the last time in this place, I will ride the blue smoke and the turning wheels somewhere else. What do I take with me? Gratitude. Sadness. A little fear? But what I really take is Mystery. There is a joy of feeling every feeling, beyond the judgments about what is good or bad. There will be a new experience from within the rusted cab of the truck lumbering down I-5 toward the city. There will always be home. It just won’t be what I first expected.

42,181 Words

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Truth or Consequences

Photo: Lenticular Clouds hovering near Lava Beds National Monument.

“Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“This is going to be too messy.” I’ve said too many times. “Let’s deal with this some other day.” Sometimes another day does not come. And sometimes hiding an important feeling or event can lead to a fragmented self. That’s how affairs continue. That’s how people fall apart. I’ve hidden much of my life in fear of making things messy. Perhaps a mixed up dynamic is occasionally necessary for the growth of whole being. I found that there are certain moments in life when the truth, ruthless or kind, rears itself up through the consciousness. At these times suppressing the message would be a way to segregate and maybe even kill a part of the self. The “truth” seems like a moving target. Perhaps it can never really be seen without taking a chance on screwing up and processing it. Perhaps true feelings cannot be known without the witness of a loving friend or partner… where love wants the highest good for self and the other at the same time. I write about this because I made a few seemingly benign decisions in my life that had vast consequences. One was to play it safe and not hurt someone dear. They were hurt anyway. Another was to be dishonest about my own abilities and vulnerabilities. It was a way to act but not live. Secrets always come forward in one way or another. Why not be empowered by them instead of afraid? My writing project is a way to begin putting the truth out in the universe, into the embrace of the Creator and even myself. I want the process to move into my whole being so that I can be free in the world, not hiding parts of myself in shame. The ghosts of the past hover just above the internal landscape. But the ghosts are not really someone else. They’re only cast off parts of ourselves, parts that need to come home.

31,755 Words

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Relationship

Photo: Flying together in a storm near Weed, California.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is to love and be loved in return.”
From Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy”

I just returned from the southern part of my spiritual territory: Mt. Shasta and Klamath Falls. I’ve been thinking about how writing, or any other creative act, is made up mostly of collecting experiences from a place of curiosity and presence. Having an ongoing relationship with a particular place and people adds layers and depth to the stories. I’ve been going to visit my friends in Bear Valley (on the Oregon California border) for a decade now. I have found that the juniper steppe, the white wings of Mt. Shasta and familiar hum of the desert wind have actually seeped right into my bones. And the voices of the people that love me become the story tellers in my dreams. Right relationship builds lives and a rich story. What I have found about writing is that witnessing a particular part of the earth and her people, while being seen in return, can build joy from the inside out. I wrote so many words while I was with my friends. But the words (or any physical manifestations) are just reflections in a broken mirror. What rises above our thinking and planning and moves into our beautiful wounded world feeds the creator within each of us. I’m grateful for the witness of my friends and the love of the earth. They are the chorus singing within me.

26,002 words.

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Vows

A photo of standing stones near Langley, Washington, on Whidbey Island


“When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing or frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Excerpt from Mary Oliver’s Poem: When Death Comes.
From her New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press 1992
(Perhaps the best poem written in modern times.)

I’ve been considering the vows I made in a ceremony on Whidbey Island in April of 2001. In a round sanctuary called the Marsh House I fasted and prayed for three days. On the fourth I was met by two friends. I read a long elaborate list of vows of service for the world I was then asked to boil them down to three. I have kept those three vows close to my heart and private. As St. Francis said: “Preach the gospel constantly, and sometimes use words.” I was anointed with oil. I was given a blessing by the elders. Then I was sent out of that round house into the world. I felt like my life finally began to break the surface and breathe on that day. And I found myself actually making more messes and crying more after my initiation. Living is not an ideal or a thought or sixteen thousand words in a book. Being human is as messy and as rich as you allow it to be. In the six years since I have lost the friends from the circular house, experienced family turning their backs on me, lost a great and mostly unrequited love.

Today I dug up my long list of vows. One vow was to simply experience every emotion and event as a guest walking through my life, being grateful for their teachings. This writing project is opening internal space to be grateful again. Another vow was to allow room for creativity and art every day. The lifeline of the Creator’s voice speaking through art saved me. In the writing I’m reminded about how messy and actually delicious life is. Even the sadness and losses along the way. We all share these experiences. For me, the vows and the witnessing of/by friends has given me a structure to fall back on in stormy times. These have also helped me to call for the Oneness to bring compassion through me in some way mysterious and kind. I hope that kindness is the result of this project. Getting the resistance and turmoil to move through the body and onto the page is a step. Perhaps this project is another dedication to be real and live in the messy world.

What vows do you keep in the private areas of your soul? What brings joy to your heart?

Sixteen Thousand words this week.

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Sunrise Again and Again

This is a photo of sunrise this morning, facing the Northern Cascades.

Anacortes:
There is something bittersweet about walking through this town at night. After writing in the Brown Lantern Tavern I became a ghost. The main drag was empty save for the brooding victorian buildings, and the mist making grey hair fall from the street lamps. I became the dry leaf scuttling along the gutter. I became the shadow that should not exist in the already dark alley. I became a hundred memories singing with the keen of the foghorn. Last night I stepped out of my skin and melded with the salt air, dark as the raven dreaming. I simply let the words flood with the tides and then ebb at sunrise. The sun always comes. A million years from now it will still come. But I’m going to experience, if not celebrate, every particle of my life now. Facing the ruthless truths of seemingly small decisions that killed dreams. Then meeting the sunrise, when I know I can go on. It’s another day. Let’s see what beauty or pain comes. Let’s be present. And let the sun come. The night will return soon enough.

9220 Words so far

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Flying in the Woodland

“I know the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes. I can open
to another life that’s wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one it’s living roots
embrace,

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.”

Rilke, I.5 The Monastic Life

Good morning. Thirty six hours into the journey and my word count is over 4,000! To be honest, the words mostly seem like a mish mash of obsessions, longings and fears. Like bubbles from the sea bed, I let them rise and pop on the surface. I see glimmerings of characters with fantastic powers and full lives coming forward. But nothing feels substantive yet. I consider writing the primary daily form of my spiritual practice. It’s a form of mediation and creation. It’s also a clearing out of the junk collected by the mind monkey. Perhaps a clearing is what is happening now.

Yesterday was the Day of the Dead. It was a day to celebrate and contemplate the lives of those that have preceded us to other side. Some cultures and traditions have rituals of actually feeding the ancestors and including them in their daily life during this time of year. When my pen starts it’s scratching song the veils seem thin between me and the dead. So I feed them my words, hoping to remember their wisdom and lives. I find myself between two worlds, one outside the laws of nature and one very much in the thick of the groaning world. Yesterday I wrote in covey of writers huddled over their laptops in the food court of the Pioneer Square food court (a city mall). I was writing as fast as I could in order to outpace the inner critic. I found moments where I was flying through the shafts of sun in the woodland of my island home. For moments, I left myself and became light and free. I soon came back to the grit of the city, laughing. I hope that I brought some freedom back with me. Looking at the other writers I wondered where they were traveling. I wondered what treasures moved from their key board into the city night. I hope some day to fly through the singing woodland again. I hope someday I can write in a way that brings you along with me.

Where do you go for freedom and healing stories? Can I come with you too?

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