Rock My World

Stone is the face of patience.       

Mary Oliver 

Even rocks have stories to tell,

deep old stories of time passing through eons, 

slow and fast moving water 

shape the stones over millennia. 

I have such a stone, ancient, from a creek bed in the Colorado Rockies. 

It fills my whole hand with its weightiness. 

Hefty. It feels hefty.

The color of dusky charcoal with white threadlike veins running around it,

tracing the paths of its life, telling the earth's story. But my stone has another story; the story of how it came into my life in the summer of 1982 during a family vacation through the west. 

My husband, our ten-year-old son and I had climbed an easy sloping mountain where we sat, all three of us, hushed by the beauty of it all, the vastness from on high. The only sound, the flapping of a bird's wings. We sat in awed silence for a while, we three, with our own thoughts before we made our way back down the mountain. Our son, always fearless, made it down way ahead of us. It seemed like we all were craving continued silence as we went our separate ways to explore the creek bed, remaining within sight of each other, but feeling no need to talk. 

The creek was lively, yet easy to navigate. As I waded the shallow waters, the rock caught my eye. It was sitting there alone, glistening, serene, tempting. I moved to pick it up, but hesitated for a second, not wanting to disturb it in its ancient bed. In the silence it seemed to call me; a connection on a cellular level that has stayed with us for 32 years.  

She's a good traveler. (I think of her as female.) There is always room for her in my suitcase. She went to Scotland with me where I picked up a couple of traveling companions, two pieces of green marble from Iona. On a tour of the Isle of Coll, we saw formations of gneiss, some of  the oldest rock on earth. I think she felt at home there. 

I look at her every day. I hold her every day. She  has been a silent witness to my journey. She's seen every emotion it's possible for a human to have. Sometimes I look to her for answers. She never has any. What she does have when I hold her in my hand is solidity. She takes me right back to that ancient silence, which gives me the space to be calm and focused. It's her never-ending gift to me. One that I never take for granted. 

The few steady influences in my life are very precious to me. She has been a most steadfast presence. She doesn't judge. She abides. 

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

Puzzling

Puzzling

Today, I put the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle that has waited over eight years to be completed. The puzzle has set on various shelves in various closets over the years. Occasionally, my eyes would come to it as I searched for other things but they never lingered on the puzzle box.  It made me too sad.  The day finally came though, when I decided I would take it down from its shelf and put it together.

As I worked it I thought of my daughter, the puzzle had been a birthday gift from her.  Ten days before my birthday eight years ago the driver of a semi ran a red light and hit her car broadside. She passed away two weeks later.

She was almost twenty-nine when she died. Married to her high school sweetheart and a new mother to my ten-month-old granddaughter.  She taught first grade and always said the only thing she wanted to be more than a teacher was a mom. 

After her death, my son-in-law gave me the wrapped package. He explained why she had decided on a puzzle that year.  He said she had noticed that her dad and I liked to work puzzles together and it made her happy to see us enjoying each other’s company.  

It was a thoughtful gift, but that was her way. Being thoughtful. On her birthday she would always bring me flowers and thank me for giving birth to her.  She had been thoughtful and kind and had grown into such a beautiful woman.  

She would have been thirty-seven last April.  As the puzzle took shape before me I wondered about what she would have been like at that age.  What joys, what sorrows, what experiences would have shaped her thirty-seven-year-old self?   I think all parents that have lost a child must wonder about this and count the years. We are always left with the what ifs..., the I wonders....

I also wonder about those of us she left. Who would we be if she hadn't died? 

Our grief was so profound that it changed us on a molecular level. We are different beings now. We were turned and made to travel down a rock-strewn path that took us to an alternate universe.  We eventually found our way in this altered place but like beams through a prism our lights were shattered and our colors are a different hue now.

The world moved on and the years have passed and I found I could look at the puzzle.  I found I could hold it and remember all of the beautiful things about my daughter.  Perhaps, I also hoped for a cathartic healing, some purging of the sorrow, some definitive answer to “what if,” by finally working the puzzle.

Sadly, grief doesn't work that way.  In the end, the puzzle was just a puzzle. A last gift, from my beautiful, thoughtful, loving daughter who is gone and who I miss every day.

Diana, for the Poplar Grove Muse

Reflections on Nourishment

After a 24 hour Nourishment Retreat

Her true pleasure lies beyond rage…beyond sadness…beyond the things she can never change.   It requires that she feel her anger, weep her tears, accept what was, what is, let go, and forgive it all.  

This is a continuance of life work.  Important, necessary, sometimes very difficult.  May it be also joyful work.   

Her true pleasure lies in the feel of the air on her skin, nourishing water to drink, to float in, solid ground to walk upon. It travels on paths through the trees, stands on a lake shore, looks down from dizzying heights.   It requires a new kind of bread, fresh veggies, fruit and the newfound delight in food that nourishes and satisfies…it requires indulgence when the body, mind and spirit want to indulge, in dark chocolate and wine.  It requires loving touch,  a re-strengthening of the parts of her that have grown weak. 

Revisit the core.  Re-adjust daily priorities.  Reclaim parts lost, but not forever-so.

Her true pleasure is not to have to work too hard at this, but work on slight adjustments and create the space to embrace and live these pleasures.  These are small movements, really.  More and more doable as the demands from others lessen and as she learns to listen to her yes, her no and to sweet words she whispers to herself: "You do not have to be in charge",  "You can rest now", "I love you just the way you are."

Her true pleasure is in the exchange with other beings who seek pleasure and depth, the wisdom of their bodies and souls;  these are allies for the journey who, in embracing the changes in themselves, whether intentionally or unintentionally, change the atmosphere around them.

I take her true pleasure with me, this weekend.  I leave behind remnants of “can’t do that”…and enter another bend on my own spiral, seeing possibility, knowing something deep inside of me is capable of ever more generosity to myself and that this can only be good for me and for the people around me.

24 Hours on Kelley's Hill.  Thanks to Kelly and Allison and all the circles of women in my life who find nourishment in words shared and conscious community.  

BLR July 14, 2014

Why We Go

Today our weekly Sunday hike had its share of figurative hills to climb and poison (ivy) to avoid. These obstacles are so very much with us each week, no matter the season. They resemble for us what the seasons of parenthood have looked like. Sometimes we climb, step over, stumble, stand strong. We are often on unsteady feet until the phase or obstacle finds its way into our normalcy or we forget it was something in our way. 

Today we knew feet that refused proper shoes would get itchy and tired, bellies would ache though they'd just been fed. We probably knew we'd rush like we do so often when we set ourselves up for being somewhere "on time," and we knew that among all the things that can make a couple mile hike feel more like ten, there would be more gifts than challenges. 

This is why we go each week. Why it is on our must do list. 

Out Here is where we give our thanks, learn to listen together, to step so lightly in case something small may be under foot. 

Here we look with intention. 

It is where kindness towards others and ourselves is modeled, requested, remembered. 

Here is where the much that is alive on earth and sky is noticed. It reminds us to do so at home. To find joy (screaming, LOOK! joy) in a cardinal, a worm, the moon.

 Here, we are out and yet so very much a part of the whole. We meander, we wander, we have direction. 

Here we are kept on our path when the other moments of our week mean to weaken our spirits. We hold on to these moments, speak of them often, go back to them so we can be filled back up when we are feeling a little low.

 We are each seeking 

treasures: to touch, to keep, to witness, to quiet, to bring togetherness.

We find what we seek.

This is why we go. 

~KGS

Borrowed Thought Art

"....you go down, you descend, and you disintegrate and you do it willfully...you get the core of the self, or the stone. And you do it awake and then, you come back out again…"

Last night, a new experience.  I dive into a chapter, 34 pages long, about my life. 

34 pages, that's a lot

Somehow she did it.  Not just with me, she collected a whole handful of us: self-identified..."seekers, spiritual practitioners, self-discoverers," and completed her dissertation.  I'd been curious to find out what I said, what other's said, what the center of her thesis was.

Our group has been meeting on and off in different forms over a couple of years.  During that time each of us sat down with her for four or five two-hour interviews.  I remember meeting her for our first discussion, as she does as well (I know because I read it in the chapter: the location I chose, the chair I sat in, and what I said, and how I said it).

Fascinating-am I entranced my by own self...is that me?

I wasn't prepared for the intial shock of digesting my own quotes,

Do I sound like this?

"It’s like being at rhythm with the pose of vitality that is true to everything. And being as close to that as possible without any jump on top of it.    I am this rising up very momentary, small beautiful thing that comes in cycle and crashes back down."

Damn that feels potent.

Besides the work of digesting my own quotes, something else emerged.  My writer voice and my speaking voice have personalities of their own.   I noticed when my writer voice stood up and witnessed my speaking voice being written down, she ruffled her back.  My speaking voice stood there and shrugged, smiling.  Even now I can feel the dialogue between the two.  My writer voice loves to make order of chaos, my speaking voice loves to cycle and free flow.    Now, here I am somewhere in the middle of both of these, I'm holding the opposites.  Making sense of desire to build, and the desire to cycle and dissolve.

I also noticed that I am much less of a solitary "I" than I thought I was.  Suprising.  And wonder if anyone else will recognize in the writing, or knows that at least 80% of what I say and think do not belong to me.  I guess the Buddhists are right about emptiness -  wind through bamboo.  Reading the raw artform of my thought, unrefined by the process of writing I recognize clearly when I 'm a channel of someone else's thought art, or when I am generating my own.  I've come to a 'borrowing shamelessly' period in my life.  But I trust the process. 

Perhaps borrowing thought art at first is what makes all genius possible later.  If you mix in good seeds, right condition, hearty influence, and a spark of something unamed, eventually the 'borrowed' bits begin to bloom fruits of their own....genius.  Genuine.  I have a sense that genius goes beyond the typical scientific, intellectual archetype.  I have a sense that we all have the little seeds rooted, waiting to sprout in the right conditions.

I give thanks to this unique opportuntiy to see the little bits of genius running through my mouth.  My own and those borrowed thought artforms from many greats before.  And I deeply know that this movement is made possible by being 'held with kindness and compassion' - I thank the being who made such a sturdy, thought art container for her continuing project of enlightenment.

Allison Distler

Summer Solstice 2014

 The long, liquid light of the June solstice illuminates the bittersweet season of the closing days of mothering two daughters, in an intact home, where I tuck them in each night, and coax them into the day each darkened morning.

Bitter, and sweet. This week, I noticed a title on the bookmobile shelf—Parenting Your Emerging Adult—and plucked it down, adding it to my stack of entertaining and enlightening loan materials. It is dense, and daunting, and clearly can’t begin to address the welter of feelings and challenges that fill my heart.

The day before, I had stated my two intentions for this last, languid summer to my emerging adult child: I want to get you ready in every way we can for the adventure ahead, half a continent away. And, I want us both to conduct ourselves in such a way that when the summer is over, we aren’t both filled with relief at parting, and with regret for the summer we didn’t have.

All along, I have tried hard, almost every day, to parent with intention, to make meaning in the spaces between the unending chores of parenting, homekeeping, partnering my spouse. I’ve tried to have conversations with my girls that held real content, communicated deep values and ideas, and in recent years, that communicate more of my real, non-mother individual self, as best as I can recall her, to my children than I feel I gleaned from my own mother.

It has been exhausting and exhilarating work. I hear many parents looking forward to the lightening of the load, the easing of the endless round of family-tending, but the long light of this June makes me yearn to travel back to a solstice 19 years ago, a long evening spent poolside in the tropical heat of St. Maarten, where we waited for it all to begin.

June 20, 2014

Mary for The Poplar Grove Muse

My Summer Reading List

There is no intentionality to any of this.  Some books I happened upon at opportune moments, some arrived off my library wait list, some were thrust into my hands.  I have several books stacked next to my bed or riding in my purse.  I hope to get through all of them by summer's end.

A memoir by best selling author and social agitator Barbara Ehrenreich.  The author tries to make sense of a mystical experience she had when she was a teenager given that she is also an atheist.  This one came off a long library waitlist.  Loved her stories and her life; some of the philosophy and existential angst was not proper summer fare, more of a winter book.  Its been returned if you are also on that looonnnnnggg list.





Never read any Richard Russo but the introduction about his home town of Gloversville, New York  swept me away while standing in a bookstore one sunny Saturday.  The bookstore was magical and probably imparted some imperative to support it upon me.  We have to keep our independent bookstores alive--especially the ones tucked away in small neighborhoods underneath bridges in Kentucky.  They gave me a free cup of coffee to thank me for my purchase. Need I say more?   




I am going to be 50 next year.  I hope by reading this book and acting upon it, I will never be more than 50.  So far they are telling me that I need to exercise a whole lot.  a whole lot.









I found this at a bookstore at Heathrow Airport terminal 4.  I needed some plane reading and I am always a sucker for travel memoirs especially women's travel memoirs.  So far it doesn't disappoint but surprise surprise--it is not yet available in the US.  Makes it seem that much more special.

This is the second book I bought at the Roebling Bridge Bookstore when I was so captivated one Saturday. And there was light was written in 1961 by a Frenchman who was part of the WWII resistance and one of only 30 people who survived the concentration camp. Lusseyran was blind from a childhood accident.  The memoir drew me into his lucid observations of life without site as a child. I look forward to what it is like organizing the resistance with no sight.






I've got a few more on the list,but these will probably take me a few sittings at the pool to get through. Be sure to post your best summer reads in the comments.  Recommendations appreciated!

~Amy for the PGM