Toward Common Ground

Snake

There’s a snake in the Garden of Eden. A fat copperhead. And I myself must not amount to much because he was not startled enough even to bother to bite me. Instead he sidled away, s-wise, slowly, scaly belly to the fertile ground, while I froze in place, my hand on a broad squash leaf about a foot from his then disappearing head.

Freezing in place, of course, long-term, for me is, now, the biggest temptation, aged seventy and suddenly counting. Easy to give in.

For, oh, yes, he tempted me, the snake. For hours, later, far into the dark night, long after he had coiled down somewhere underground, he spoke, his sibilant voice making me shudder and quake and, yes, think to freeze in place. Permanently. Thus:

“Oh, just give it up. Give it all up. It’s all just, frighteningly, too, too much. Not just the garden, everything. So much work. No rain. For what? A few vegetables? Who cares? Who cares about anything you do? Do you really think you benefit anyone with your stubborn on-goingness, with your persistent presence in people’s lives, with your reaching deep into the uncertain dense canopy of, say, cucumber leaves, or, say, minds, to pull up, in hand, perchance, not a cucumber, but a writhing six-foot water moccasin, its gleaming, all-seeing eyes set square back on its black, triangular head, seething with poisonousness? Give up. It’s too much. All too much. Useless. Dangerous. Exhausting. Enervating. Meaningless. Hopeless.”

So speaks this snake, the one coiled in my head.

The real one was, perhaps, actually kindly, a fat red fellow. He didn’t bite me. He could have. Easily. Important it is, to distinguish him from the him in my head, that one full of archetype, myth, misery.

The snake in Eden, proverbial, also said “give up,” another kind. The message then was give up peace and contentment coming from awareness that enough is enough. The temptation then was to give up remembrance of the law of diminishing returns.

For wasn’t Eve, and then Adam, tempted to want more than the perfect abundance they had, more, and then, surely, more, and more? And wasn’t Jesus tempted in the desert to want three times more, not just of the gifts he already had and had to give, but more? And haven’t we too, today, recently been cast out of our financial garden of plenty due to our insatiable desire, we Adams and Eves of industry, finance, commerce, whatever; all of us, wanting always more and more? Our culture gave up enough, perhaps, and gratitude, in exchange for greed, and now we have tasted knowledge, surely, of loss, despair.

Ah, but, snake. I see you now in the light of a new day and in another way. You, again, slough off your skin for me to see a different stripe. Think. Without you rats would overrun. Without you, I wouldn’t shudder in the night considering dreads innumerable. Eventualities and consequences might escape notice, without your sudden sharp upbringing of attention, without your reminder that where I step or move matters. You jolt me awake to remember this. You remind me well to take care, beware, be watchful, and to move slowly enough to notice that freezing in place, momentarily, or, at least, becoming quite still, occasionally, has its proper use, and giving up some things, the right things, can a blessing be. Giving up pride or arrogance, let us say, or even righteous certainty, or intolerance, or prejudice, or divisiveness, or provincialism, or forcefulness. Give those up. Yes. Today. Otherwise hubris might triumph, and war could make sense, if only it seemed to benefit me and never mind the consequence. Give those up, yes.

So, snake. You too, rightly seen, can serve the common cause of wholeness. Your place in the scheme of things is not my favorite, snake, but honor you I must. You remind me that I am not the center of the universe, and you make me see how easily I can be tempted to over-reach, to misstep, to assume, to take for granted, to forget that other creatures matter, even those unseen, and other things, unknown, unimagined even, and other cultures, so dangerously different, count as much as me.

So, today, here, I do gratefully give thanks for being spared your worst, and, more, for the tempering thoughts you bring, and for remembering that I have enough, and plenty, really.

And I do give thanks for all the rest—for those golden squash among which you moved, and for fat tomatoes, red like you, and for berries, and cucumbers and basil, and cilantro and parsley and sage, and earth and water and wind, and sun and strength, and hope and consequence and promise, and, oh, always, balance.

And, so, yes, of course, I give thanks, snake, for you.

And, as for that—of the good, and of my abiding love for life itself, and of my own life, lowly though it be, and of awareness of the connectedness of all things, and of the meaningfulness of mystery, and of hope for the future, I do not, I do not, of these I do not give up. I do not give up.

Smile, archetypal snake; your work’s well done.

An Incomparable Earthsprings Moment

Mostly I experience, absorb, wonder, and move on. Sometimes I just have to share…

Many of you have been to Earthsprings and know the folks who live here, like Tux the tomcat, for example. Some of you haven’t been to Earthsprings, so let me fill you in.

Several years ago Tux came up out of the woods, a half-grown kitten, starving. It took me two weeks of his crying in the underbrush and my leaving food out, closer to the house each day, before he finally braved Milly Cat (the original pet), OE (the big black lab) and me (the giant human person). OE, (still young and healthy then), after his first startled, instinctive dog reaction (“It moves, chase it!”) became sweet and patient with the starving, ever-squalling kitten, and as Tux grew, Tux came to see OE as his protector, friend, confidant, whatever. Tux went everywhere OE went, right under OE’s feet. He worshipped OE, we could tell. When OE laid down to rest, Tux curled up right next to him or on top of him. If OE rolled over on his back, feet in the air, to sleep that way, Tux rolled over against him and put his head on OE’s tummy and slept too. I never saw anything like it, and, frankly, I don’t know how OE stood it!

But Tux has his own unique split-personality. I had given Tux his name because of his markings; he looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo. And he can be elegant and gentlemanly at times. But, full grown, still carrying a “starvation and victim complex,” and with his top tomcat personality, it’s now clear; he’d never wear a gentlemanly tuxedo; he’s more of a drug war lord or mafia boss type. He might dress up and wear spats, but he’d be carrying a switchblade, a sawed-off shotgun, and other concealed weapons, and he would be watching in every direction at every minute for whatever might threaten or offend. Only OE, and any human person with food in hand, could see Tux’s other side, his gentle boy side.

Therefore, when I got the new puppy, Happy (who looked exactly like OE, and, of course, being a puppy, right away wanted OE’s attention and to chase the cats), Tux was merciless and deadly persistent. You could look at Tux’ face, particularly the slant of his laid back ears, to see how well he liked the idea of a new guy on the turf, and especially one that took any of OE’s attention. Tux swatted and clawed and hissed and terrorized that puppy endlessly. He took every opportunity to harass Happy. Even when I tried to teach the puppy something, using my “No” voice, Tux, the self-appointed enforcer, would come stalking from clear across the yard to attack the puppy, face on. It was awful. OE just shook his head and walked off; the puppy cringed and withdrew. Tux remained furious, contentious; he was obnoxious, really.

Well, when OE finally died, Tux went into such a grief and anxiety state, it was amazing to watch. Anyone who says animals don’t have emotions never had animals around. I felt so sad for Tux then. He just seemed lost. And he got even meaner with the puppy, who was getting bigger by then.

Tux lost weight. Sometimes he would walk over to the spot where the vet had put OE down, where we had buried OE, the last place Tux ever saw OE, and Tux would just walk around and around, meowing softly, looking for his old friend and constant companion. I knew how he felt. Me too.

So. Time passes. Christina took Happy, the puppy, to her house after he knocked me down twice in his exuberance and dug so many holes in the yard we all were in danger of twisted ankles. Chris is being patient while Happy goes through the chewing stage; how she’s been patient is amazing, because, for example, he’s eaten half of her back door off, along with various other objects accidentally left within a two-mile range. She’s been teaching him not to jump on people. She’s been able to discipline him, without Tux around to confuse the issue. She’s been loving him, too, and teaching him about human companionship and commitment. She takes him down to her pond, where he swims happily, all by himself, dog paddling around, ducking under, splashing, obviously ecstatic. Happy is half grown now, and is behaving somewhat better, although one day last week when I was standing in the yard and he was running around full tilt just for the heck of it, he came from behind me and ran, without so much as a pause, right between my legs and kept going, turning around finally only to look at me as if to say, “Wow! Did you see that cool trick, Mom?” Such is his level of energy and the nature of his adventurous, playful spirit.

A few weeks ago, I brought Happy back over here to Earthsprings, since the holes he was digging were less dreadful than those of the armadillos and wild pigs and others who had taken up residence with both dogs gone. He’s as happy to be here as he was at Chris’s, and he has made his way all on his own to the creek to swim there too. I let him bark all night at deer and raccoons and whatever else wanders around in the moonlight outside.

Well, as you would expect, Tux reacted to Happy’s return with all the outrage that could come out of a bereaved tomcat. He let Happy know who was still the boss. Happy dodged, cringed, cried, and kept a safe distance, but true to his name, he was unrelentingly joyous, playful, etc.

As the days passed, I watched Tux and Happy circle each other, conducting drastic wars or delicate negotiations. They seemed to be having their own secret debates that took time, and the trans-species translations mostly escaped me. But I did see Tux following Happy at a distance, though I wasn’t sure if it was with a plan to attack Happy, or to use Happy as a protective shield from overhead hungry hawks, or what. And at times I saw Happy running big circles around Tux, stopping occasionally to do that “downward dog” posture and bark that “Hey, come on, lighten up! Let’s play!” signal.

Which brings us, finally, to “the moment.” Just about twilight two nights ago, a wind came up, a misty rain began, the air turned sort of yellow, and I started to go outside to check the sky for possible tornadoes. But I came up short just inside the front door. For through the glass I could see Happy, lying peacefully there, looking exactly as OE used to do, forelegs stretched out, rear end against the door, chin up, eyes surveying the yard. A lump of emotion, missing OE, caught in my throat, as I stood there, unnoticed by Happy because of the distracting noise the rain was making on the metal roof.

And then, coming up from the right, out of the misty yard, also not noticing me there behind the door, was Tux. “Oh, no,” I thought, “Here we go again! Tux will run him off.”

But instead, very, very slowly Tux stepped, one slow step at a time, up to Happy, who kept very still. Tux stopped and looked Happy over carefully, with Happy looking calmly back at him. Tux apparently made up his mind, took another step, and another, and another, over Happy’s tail, and then over his back legs, then he grazed past Happy’s chest, and then he rubbed right under Happy’s upraised chin, and kept going, his unguarded back to Happy. Then Tux made an even, slow circle, there in the gathering rainy mist at the edge of the small wet porch, and came right back to Happy, who kept such an uncharacteristic, mature stillness, just like OE would have done. And then, as calmly as could be, Tux settled himself right down next to Happy’s belly. Tux stretched out his full tomcat length right next to Happy, his little white paws lying gently against Happy’s leg, and his head right under Happy’s chin. Both of them stayed that way, then, heads together, gazing out calmly at something, a joint vision all their own.

The same trusting postures, the same far-gazing look, the look that I used to see when it was OE and Tux. Now, Happy and Tux.

I don’t have to tell you the waves of emotion that swept through me, or the layers on layers of symbols and meanings that came up for me out of that priceless moment I was lucky enough to observe.

I know. The next day it was back to sparring. Tux swatted Happy this morning for no reason at all that I could see. But, well, there was that moment. And there will be others. Many others. There will.

I just had to share. It is my job to share… That which gives me heart, courage, hope, renewal, the promise of endless possibilities for healing, and peace, and even joy.

Glenda Taylor
Earthsprings, June 2009

Perennials, Archetypes, and Eternal Life

Today the daylily that Rebecca Estes’ father hybridized in memory of Shelia and Rich’s son, Kenneth Collins, is blooming again here at Earthsprings. This morning, after taking a picture of it, I walked up the hill to the big old pecan tree under which some of Ken’s ashes were sprinkled. I spent some time thinking and praying.

Actually the old pecan tree has its own story and history with me. It was an old timer when I first set foot on this land back in 1980. The old man who owned the land back then, himself in his late 80’s, told me that that old pecan tree was dying. He said you could tell that because of the “resurrection fern” that was growing on the branches of the tree. (The resurrection fern is an amazing plant; it grows on wood, but it can completely dry out for a long, long time, and then, with a little water, come back green again; hence the name.) But this old pecan tree, year after year, puts out new green leaves. It’s green again this year.

So, today I stood under the tree and thought about Ken and about eternal life.

What a topic! Soon enough, I had to let those thoughts dissolve, for the mystery of that was so great. I went back to my flower garden to weed. But as I sat there, pulling weeds from around the daylily, my mind was free to wander. And wander it did.

The daylily is a perennial. Perennials are plants that, though they may die back completely in winter, they come back in the spring, year after year after year. Perennials are my favorites in the garden, so generous, so faithful.

Some people have asked me how I can afford so many plants here at Earthsprings, given my low income status, and I tell them about perennials. These plants not only come back year after year, they multiply.

Take my mother’s daylilies, for example, those growing right next to the Ken of Arlington. Mama got her “starts” some sixty years ago from a relative, who had gotten them from someone else, and so on. Who knows where or when they began. Likewise the Louisiana iris at the edge of the meadow. The four or five original bulbs I brought here have multiplied into the hundreds and are continuously moving themselves, without any help from me, down the low drainage runoff, so that, if their progress continues, they will be in the next county in due time! I planted six asparagus roots this year. They’ll last for hundreds of years after I’m gone, if conditions permit.

So, this morning, as I paused in my work, resting my aching back, looking at all the beautiful flowers that are blooming so generously around me, my wandering mind linked these perennials with the perennials of my inner landscape, those things that ancient philosophers and modern psychologists call archetypes.

Plato spoke of archetypal “ideas” or “ideals” that are everlasting, recurring again and again. The Swiss psychologists Carl Jung spoke of archetypes as innate patterns of behavior or thought that are embedded in every human psyche, patterns that can and will come up in any human person anywhere or any time automatically (without conscious thought) if the circumstances are right. Perennials.
Our word archetype comes from the Greek words arche, meaning “first,” or “original” or “source,” and typos, meaning “type,” or “model,” or, oddly enough, “mark of a blow.” So these types or patterns of behavior are innate, laid down from the beginning (from repeated “blows” of circumstance) as the human species experienced certain situations and responded to them, over and over, and a “mark” was left on the human psyche in general. These archetypes are embedded in the oldest, pre-logical layers of the psyche, Jung believed. (So archetypal patterns belong to the human race collectively, hence Jung’s term collective unconscious).

Examples? Well, there’s the archetype of the hero, the savior, the mother, the garden of paradise, the dragon in the underworld, the scapegoat, the innocent who is cast out into the wilderness, etc. We recognize Darth Vader immediately, as we do Yoda. We all long for some idealized something or other, and we worry about some inevitable monster. These archetypal patterns show up, over and over, universally, in myth, fairy tales, literary and artistic work, religious symbols, dream images, and images encountered in altered states of consciousness.

I went once with my daughter’s fourth grade class to the San Diego Zoo. A guide, attempting to explain instincts, pointed to a small chicken-like bird walking around. (She called it a pea fowl.) She said that whenever the shadow of a large predator bird, like a hawk, flies over, causing a hawk-shaped shadow to fall on the little pea fowl, the pea fowl will freeze in its tracks, becoming very still, hoping to avoid detection and thus avoid being lunch for the hawk. That is instinct, she said. The very youngest pea fowl knows to do this, without being taught. The behavior has been incorporated into the behaviors of all pea fowl; they are born with this instinct.
Instinct. Archetype. Perennial.

But here’s the odd thing. The guide at the zoo said that sometimes a kite or a small airplane flies overhead, with a hawk-shaped shadow, and the pea fowl will freeze. It doesn’t know the difference between a hawk and an airplane; when the “trigger” goes off, the little pea fowl just acts instinctively without discriminating.

So instincts (and archetypes and perennials as well) can be triggered inappropriately. And, I think, often that causes problems.

For example, sometimes perennial plants get “triggered” inappropriately by an early spring heat wave. They come up earlier than usual, and then a late freeze comes and kills their blooms. That’s what happened this year. That’s why there are no peaches on my peach trees this year. The timing of that late freeze was just wrong for peach blooms.

But, the freeze didn’t hurt the blackberries or some other perennials. Chancy thing, then, these triggers. Perfect for some circumstances; poison for others.

Many of the troublesome issues and conflicts in people’s lives, I believe, can be attributed to this. We find ourselves acting out in certain ways because something “set us off,” even when whatever it was wasn’t even what we thought it was. Often it is something from a deep, archetypal, layer of consciousness, something we can’t understand, or even identify. (“The devil made me do it.”) An archetype, an automatic behavior. Something “older than the hills,” as my aunt used to say about certain ideas that she held on to even when I said they didn’t make any sense, so that I had presumably “moved on” to some “new-fangled notion.” (Odd how many of those old ideas of hers I’ve come to appreciate.)

Working with women back in the 60’s, I used to say that you could scratch any woman and you would get to archetypal anger. And it was important for every woman to distinguish what belonged to her individually and what was coming up in her out of a collective anger, based on centuries of oppression and violation of women in general. That collective anger was immense, and could erupt out of all proportion to what some hapless male had done, all unwittingly. We women can’t take out our collective rage on one man or even on modern men in general, any more than an angry black person can take out his or her revenge on all white people, etc. Muslims who generalize that all Americans are devils, or Americans who generalize that all Muslims are terrorists, these are all guilty of mistaking the origins of their responses and ignoring the varying layers of consciousness.

Political conflicts, even wars, draw their energy from such confusion about archetypal layers of consciousness, in individuals and in cultures. Certain adept politicians are consciously or unconsciously motivated by archetypal patterns. Other politicians are activated by contrary archetypes. Hence the intensity of the “battle” between ideologies; they are no longer personal, they are archetypal. We must look to that layer of consciousness if we are to find balance, let alone resolution.

Certain other politicians successfully manipulate the public using archetypal symbols. Hitler was great at this. (And it’s happening every day, now, I might add. I saw an article the other day, inappropriately placed on the first page of a local community college catalogue, that was blasting Obama himself as well as his agenda; the illustration for the article was a close up abstracted, stylized image of Obama in lurid black and red, splashed over the full page. I thought, “Here we go again, this could be straight out of Nazi propaganda; they have used color, symbols and designs that evoke fear and deep memories of horror and bloodshed to manipulate negative public opinion.”)

So, if archetypes can be so strong, and are often conflict, what can we do? Jung even spoke of the archetypes as having “godlike” power over us, over our behaviors. He said that the individual ego is like a tiny boat afloat on a great sea of deeper collective patterns and archetypes and energies.
But, remember, Jung spent his life both working with individuals and also writing about the possibility of expanding any individual’s awareness, to bring balance between these conflicting human tendencies, and thus to achieve enlightenment and well-being for oneself and for the rest of the world.. Jung, like the Greeks from whom the word archetype originates, located the solution in the same place: Know thyself. Know thyself better and better, and on all the layers of consciousness.

Recognize, for example, that no matter what position one takes up in one’s life, the opposite of that will be automatically and inevitably constellated and activated. (Jung called this the archetype of the “shadow” of one’s conscious perspective.) The shadow’s purpose, it seems, is always to re-create balance, but usually, initially, we experience it as a tension, as a conflict within (or without), while the opposing archetypes “battle it out” from their differing perspectives.

Examples, please. Ok. I move to East Texas, which I love, living often like a hermit (that’s an archetype, by the way) to get back to nature and away from the stress of city life; then the opposite of that comes up for me when I get lonely for any or all of you, or when I miss the culture and vitality of the city (another archetypal conflict: Athena was the Greek goddess of civilized life while Artemis was the goddess of the wilds, of woods and the natural world. Mutually exclusive.)

Again, this kind of conflict within is inevitable. When I am on the mountaintop, I cannot be at the ocean. When I am writing this piece, I miss my nap. When I sing, I don’t have silence. Inevitable opposites. What are we to do?

If we are aware and wise, we continually get to negotiate between these opposites within ourselves, attempting to find balance, walking “the razors edge” of consciousness, not falling over into either extreme.

I’m looking at my poppy plants, blooming so gloriously (despite the earlier attacks by feeding deer). I have to be very careful of extremes. If I water them too little, they dry up and stiffen and die. If I water them too much, they mold and soften and fall over. If I get a good balance, they bloom profusely, and then reseed themselves for next year’s glory.

When one of my dear friends got married, she asked me to do some ceremony with her and her mother and her bridesmaids. So I asked each of her attendants and her mother, using Greek mythology for vocabulary, to take the position and the voice of a different archetype. My friend was stepping into the “temple” of the goddess Hera, the goddess of marriage, commitment, fidelity to a single male partner. So one of the bridesmaids spoke to my friend about remembering, even after marriage, her Aphrodite self. To the goddess Aphrodite (and the archetype bearing that energy), fidelity to a specific partner is not the deal at all. Aphrodite will sabotage Hera. And Hera will blast any Aphrodite-inspired seductress coming near her man. But the bridesmaid told my friend that she could be “sexy” and “sensuous” and “attractive (all Aphrodite traits) and still balance that with being married. And she made some great suggestions in that regard. Another bridesmaid brought up Artemis, who is not only the keeper of the “wild freedom” of nature, beyond rules and regulations of civilization, she also has such an “independent” tendency that she can be deadly when dealing with any man whom she perceives to be difficult. This bridesmaid advised my friend to make time and space to “do her own thing” even though she was happily married, so she could kept her own inner Artemis in good order. And so on.

In good order. That’s the thing. I am told that the ancient Greeks had many temples to many “gods” and “goddesses.” And they wisely visited all the temples, appeased all the archetypes, keeping balance. As circumstance dictated, one might call on the god of war, while in other circumstances, one could call on the Great Mother for fertility, or the god of healing, or whatever.
Remember though, blessing in one instance could be poison in a different circumstance. We have to be discerning. And therein lies the rub.

We, in our western culture, wisely understand the concept of monotheism, the One God who is All, Infinite, Everlasting, etc. We do not, I think, have clear enough vision of the presence and power of the multiplicity of various and differing ways that the One manifests. We reject pantheism as though it has to be in opposition to monotheism. That need not be the case.

For example, we can take care of an individual without negating the community. We can acknowledge one nation, while being aware of individual states within that one nation. Likewise in the psyche, we can acknowledge the presence and power of differing archetypes without denying the unifying, overriding power and wisdom of the One, whatever we call it.

In my simple way, I refer to the eternal and unchanging as “Grandfather,” and to the eternally changing as “Grandmother,” or “Grandmother Changing Woman.” Obviously what that means is not simple at all.

Beyond those distinctions, unifying the opposites, balancing them, is what I call the Great Mystery—what some refer to as the Great Spirit or Allah or God. (The names may vary, the concept matters.)

Ah, but I have wandered far afield in my musing, far from my little daylily. That’s what happens when I garden. That which is so near, so present to my touch and sight, yet connects me to what seems so other worldly. My meditation takes me back and forth, here, there, anywhere. So, let me circle back.

When I think of the power of the archetypes I begin to question the idea of change. If these archetypes are such “first principles” in the psyche, so powerful, is there any hope for change?
The Ken of Arlington, the daylily, informs. It is, as I said, hybridized. That means that the original perennial, the daylily the Ken of Arlington came from, was, in fact, changed, altered forever. The new Ken of Arlington daylily is now its own unique self. The change is permanent. And it can reproduce itself. Indeed, it has. From the one tiny start I was given by Sheila, I now have several plants, all the same. So, change, then, even in that which is perennial, is possible, I say to myself.

This morning, as I admired the Ken of Arlington daylily, I was remembering Kenneth Collin’s own dear face and his voice, singing Broadway show tunes with me and others in the Lodge, not so long ago, and now he is gone from us, to another dimension, to eternal life. But the daylily is a sign, a symbol, not only of what he meant to us, means to us still. It is also a sign, hybrid that it is, that things can change. Have changed. Not so many people die now of HIV related illnesses as did when Ken was so ill. We haven’t solved that problem completely, I know, but change is happening.

In fact, it seems that the possibility for change is built into the whole system, is a part of the “givenness” of the whole she-bang, is part of the over-arching archetype Jung called the Self, the archetype of wholeness. Amazing. Paradoxical.

So, even the archetypes can and do evolve, Jung thought.

But slowly. Oh dear, so slowly. That’s why some “flower children” and “new agers” gave up on the “harmonic convergence,” on the idea that we would all, so easily, miraculously, change our level of consciousness just by deciding to do so.

But others of us went to work, knowing that, as Obama keeps saying, change happens from the “bottom up.” We begin by changing ourselves.

I continue to be amazed at how creatively nature evolves to deal with specific issues. Certain birds at the beach have long beaks to get down into the sand to get at those little sand crabs or whatever it is they eat. Cows have tails with which to brush off stinging flies. Nature evolves to fit the circumstances, but, oh, so slowly.

To say that nature is conservative is not to say that things don’t change, only that they change slowly, so that it is likely that any permanent change is life-giving and not destructive. Mother Nature is careful to try to preserve life—life in general, the life of the species, the life of the individual—and in that order, it seems to me.

So, part of me wonders, what’s with “endangered species,” and “extinct species?” And what about so many predictions and mythologies that speak of coming times of destruction, to be followed by a new, evolved age when things are better? What about dire predictions, global warming, say? The apocalypse? The rapture? The death, eventually, of the old pecan tree, and of me? What about everlasting life?

One of my good friends told me once, when I lived in California, about a dream he had. I’ve quoted it, with his permission, many times. He said he dreamed of a beautiful woman, larger than life. She looked at him, right at him, with such intense love that, in the dream, he felt more loved, more valued, more known, than he had ever felt in his life. It was incredible, he said. And then, after a time, he said, in the dream, although the woman’s eyes did not move, it was as if the woman was looking right through him, as though he was transparent, or not there at all; she was looking at the whole big picture. He said that he felt bereft. Then he woke up and thought about the dream. He was wise enough, and had the vocabulary to use, to know that he had dreamed about an archetype.
The archetype relates both to us as individuals, and also to the “whole,” to the big picture. It is not that individuals don’t matter. We do. But we are only part of the whole, part of something larger, something infinitely more enduring and essential.

We’ve learned to use the word ecology. We speak of interdependence. We are being called, at last, back to service, to concern for community and not just to “me and mine.” This is good. A needed correction in our cultural and individual habits. And a return to an older, more basic archetype, the Self, the archetype of wholeness.

So, to conclude this rambling morning meditation, I tell myself, yet again, that eternal life depends upon where we put our identity. If we identify with this body, even this situation, and hope that it will go on forever, we can be sure that some late freeze will nip us in the bud, we can be sure that circumstances will change, that we all will eventually die, and that any most wonderful (or awful) situation will change (the economic downturn today is bringing that hard lesson home again).
But if we put our identity in the larger whole—in the community, in the species, in life itself, ultimately in what I refer to, respectfully, as the Great Mystery—then we discover that there are eternals, perennials, things that live on, and endure, and recur.

It’s not one or the other. We move back and forth between layers of consciousness. We can grieve on the personal level, as we should, for our losses, while we may be serene on the eternal level. We are both, immanent and transcendent, all of us, and we must remember that we are much more than we usually think we are.

A deer can come and cut off everything above the ground of this daylily. But there, underground, is still a root, carrying the pattern of this beautiful bloom. From that root would come another plant, another bloom, also beautiful. One tree falls down, the old pecan maybe. But “treeness” goes on. As the old Buddhist once told an inquirer, after a long series of existential “what’s beyond that” questions, “It’s elephants all the way down.” It’s what Zen and Taoist folk call “suchness,” the essence, the core, that which is archetypal, what Native peoples call the “medicine” of a thing. Ken’s body is gone, but the experience of Ken’s beingness, the essence of him, that we have still with us. Eternally, I believe. He “made his mark,” and it lingers in the wholeness of eternity, beyond time and space and explanation. Love lasts.

I’m now, it happens, “friends” on Facebook with Kenneth Collin’s brother, Kevin. Kevin is a fine young man, in his own right, who has, incidentally, lost not only his brother to Aids, but also his sister to cancer. I pray for Kevin always, as I know he has been through much. I think, though, that, for all of his losses, he has also gained much in inner wisdom and appreciation of life’s complexity and beauty. He posts great links and wonderful quotes on Facebook, many having to do with the meaning and purpose of life. And I noted recently a posting by Kevin, a quotation from Euripides: “He is not a lover who does not love forever.”

Love lasts. Perennial. Circumstances—Aids, cancer, death, suffering—nothing overcomes it ultimately. We love, we love forever, we are made of love, and we endure as love.

Love is, I guess, the original perennial.

So, my love to all. And gratitude for this opportunity to muse “out loud” here on the website today. I’ve touched, however briefly, upon so many ideas. All of them could be expanded, turned this way and that, seen from many directions.

So I welcome your comments, which can be written in the space below.

A Life of Service

Jim Lemon wasn’t the very first person I met when I moved to Texas twenty-five years ago. But he was the first person I met about whom I thought “Now here is someone I can talk with about things that really matter!” And, off and on, we’ve been talking ever since.

But it hasn’t been just talk. Jim is all about doing, not just talking about doing. I’ve never met anyone (and I mean anyone) who is more engaged in actual activities of service to others than Jim Lemon. Through the years, I’ve seen him volunteer with countless organizations—hospice, Viet Nam Vets, Special Olympics, environmental groups, and on and on and on. He went to Virginia (I think it was) for months to volunteer to help Elizabeth Kubler Ross set up her center there where she was working early on with HIV-Aids patients. His work as an advocate for the disabled has taken him into all sorts of volunteer projects. And his willingness to show up to help any individual when a need arises is legendary.

I think of all this today as I move about in my new vegetable garden, picking the first summer squash and the delicious green peas, watering the tomatoes and cucumbers and beans. I couldn’t have this garden here if Jim hadn’t organized folks to put up a fence to keep the deer out. And, of course, he showed up with his tiller to get the grass out and the ground ready for planting.

He shows up regularly at Earthsprings Retreat Center and at Fellowship of Comparative Religion activities, and has for all the years I’ve been in Texas. Not only does he show up for the activities I plan, but he helps in all the countless ways required to keep the place and the activities going. “This place matters,” he says, and so he gives of his time and efforts freely to see that it keeps going. Most of the structures on the land have felt his hammer in their construction and, now, in their maintenance.

Jim introduced me to a great number of the people in my life who have been important to me. He’s a connector, an encourager, an avid supporter of people who want to “do their own thing” if he thinks it’s authentic and worthwhile. I remember his wedding vows to his wonderful wife Kerry, vows that said something like “I’ll support you in all your adventures.”

Life is an adventure for him, and he makes it so. Whether it’s white-water canoeing, backpacking in the wilderness, exploring another spiritual discipline, or daring to encourage the women in his life to be more liberated, Jim is “out there,” not necessarily as a leader of the team, but as the one who actually makes it all happen.

I’ve watched Jim, too, as he’s moved through the activities of his own personal life, opening his home to two teenaged boys in trouble, raising his own two amazing children, creating an off-the-grid home that is haven for anyone who wants to come to visit.

Of course, now, let it be said that Jim is no saint, as he is quick to tell you. In fact, he revels in memories of his “Dennis the Menace” childhood and his rebellious and adventurous youth. And he is such an irreverent tease that one would be tempted to think that for him, nothing is sacred, except that, in truth, for him everything is sacred and so anything can be held up to the light of laughter. It’s just that his coyote-medicine tell-it-like-it-is (or at least how it looks to Jim at that moment) is a natural eruption of his life-long delight at life’s ironies.

He points out freely one irony in his own life. He says that, for years, he must have unconsciously thought he could “beat the system” by volunteering to help others, so that, maybe, he wouldn’t have to have their problems himself. But life’s irony caught up with him.

Jim has been surviving leukemia for five years now. This next week he goes back for a bone marrow test to see how he’s doing. He gets a little more introspective than usual in the days before those visits to MD Anderson. We talk about “what it’s all about” and “making every moment count.” When he leaves, I say fervent prayers of gratitude for him and for his life of service.

Jim was adopted as an infant. He’s never been able to locate his biological parents. That surely has informed who he is, There’s always a strain of sadness that runs deep, deep inside him, a sadness that never really allows Jim to forget that life is a mystery, that a “family of choice” is a real family, that love comes from places that are not the usual obligatory places, and that everyone is an orphan on some level.

We all need affirmation. We all need the kind of acceptance and opportunity to be our best selves that Jim offers, for example, to the Mental Health-Mental Retardation clients he works with every day. And Jim’s own experience helps him to understand just how important all that can be.

Jim was adopted by good people, who must have somehow instilled in him the kind of sense of self that has allowed Jim, through the years, not only to be a survivor, but a lover of life and of humanity. So, adopted as he was, he apparently decided to adopt the rest of the world as his family of choice, and to serve them all as though any one of them could be his unknown biological mother or father. It is an amazing thing to be Jim’s friend, and an honor.

I just wanted to say all that. There’s no reason for doing so, other than that my heart tells me that we too often neglect to say the “good stuff” about people we encounter, people who make our own lives richer. I haven’t told Jim I was going to write this, either, and no doubt he’ll have a few irreverent things to say about what I’ve written. It’ll be fun to hear. I can’t wait.

A Quote from Ramakrishna

“We are all calling on the same God. Jealousy and malice need not be. Some say that God is formless, and some that God has form. I say, let one man meditate on God with form if he believes in form, and let another meditate on the formless Deity if he does not believe in form. What I mean is that dogmatism is not good. It is not good to feel that my religion alone is true and other religions are false…All doctrines are only so many paths, but a path is by no means God himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with wholehearted devotion. Suppose there are errors in the religion that one has accepted; if one is sincere and earnest, then God will correct those errors.”

Holy Saturday

Today, in the Christian tradition, is Holy Saturday. Even for non-Christians, the associations to this holiday (holy day) can carry powerful life lessons.

The Christian liturgy says that Holy Saturday falls between Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified and buried in a tomb, and Easter Sunday, when Jesus was seen, resurrected. Thus Holy Saturday is the time between death and new life. Some Christian creeds even state that during this time Jesus “descended into hell” before “rising again.”

Whether or not one subscribes to the Christian spiritual tradition or even to the literal interpretation of the Christian creed, we can all, perhaps, benefit from reflecting on those times in our own lives when we ourselves are, or seem to be, in transition between death and new life, those times when some aspect of our lives has “died” but the “newness of life” has not emerged, when we “descend into hell,” so to speak.

Few of us easily call that a holy time, I dare say. But how helpful it is to frame it that way. It is, or can be, a sacred time indeed.

Buddhists call this state a “bardo,” and a rimpoche I heard speak once said that any time of transition can be a “bardo,” the “in-between” state between one thing and another, the time when things may seem uncertain, mysterious, unsettling, even frightening. The time, for example, after a divorce brings a marriage to an end but before a new way of life has emerged. The time after someone has lost a job but before a new situation evolves. Our whole culture, perhaps the whole world, seems now to be in a bardo, a time of transition, during the global economic downturn.

Such a period of time is fraught with meaning, not only for someone who has “crossed over,” like Jesus, but also for those left behind, in grief or confusion, watching, waiting. We actually are told little in the Gospels about what happened to Jesus during Holy Saturday, but we know a good bit more about what happened to those associated with him. What an adjustment was required!

Christian tradition says that Jesus was laid in a tomb during that time. Alone. In mystery. A bardo. A time of transition. We forget that, sometimes, when we want to race from Good Friday to Easter in our own lives. We want to get from our time of suffering to our renewal instantly, easily. Rarely is this the case.

Jewish and some Native American traditions alike set aside a year-long period of adjustment for bereaved individuals after a death in the family, with specific proscriptions and rituals and safeguards. Some groups of native people actually require that individuals in grief isolate themselves, have times of literal solitude, as they make adjustments to the new situation, not only for their own sake, but also for the well being of the entire group. How easily we forget that our transitions affect others.

Ancient religions, like that in Egypt, as one obvious example, placed great emphasis on how one should behave and even what one might safely say or do during such a time. The Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Dead are both extensive teachings on preparing for what I am here calling our “Holy Saturdays.”

What wisdom there is in that. Our present culture too often considers such a “bardo” an unnecessary luxury. Grief can take a long time, and too many of us forget that; when a friend or loved one is in grief; we may sincerely send our condolences and then go on about our business, forgetting that those in grief may need us more later than immediately following a death.

One minister I knew amazed me once, saying that as a “professional” spiritual leader, he just couldn’t understand why in six months he hadn’t “gotten over” his only son’s death in a motor cycle accident. I tried to say to him, in the kindest way, that I thought he had unrealistic expectations of himself and that he might consider how he could make his time of grieving a special “rite of passage” so that he emerged from it not only a different person, but a person more whole, more expanded, more wise and loving. And I gently reminded him that Holy Saturday can take a long time for some of us, especially if we do not have the right kind of practice or support.

Those of us in transitions other than that caused by a death may still benefit much by considering ourselves to be in a “holy” state, in a state like that of Holy Saturday. What can we learn, then, from the Christian story?

Jesus, we are told, was hastily buried before sundown on Friday in a tomb cut out of a rocky cliffside, and a huge stone was rolled across the entrance. A guard was set outside the tomb. After that we know nothing about what went on inside the tomb until, two days later Mary Magdalene and others found the tomb empty and then encountered a “risen” Christ, as Jesus in his new resurrected form is called.

What Jesus experienced during that time we can only imagine. He had suffered humiliation, brutal physical abuse, and even physical death, all this after having had the most extraordinary success as a teacher and healer, with such a large following of disciples and others who believed that he was “the chosen one of God” that was expected by the Jewish community. What a reversal. And in the tomb, what then, on Holy Saturday? How did the transformation occur? We are not told. Some aspects of our transitions are and remain mysterious, even to us.

We do know what went on outside the tomb on Holy Saturday. We do know what happened to those individuals close to Jesus—his family and his disciples and his followers. They all were scattered, some in fright, some in grief, all no doubt in a state of shock. Eventually the disciples, we are told, gathered together as they tried to console one another or perhaps tried to make some kind of sense of what had just happened.

Surely they were not calmly in a state of serene transition! Jesus, we are told in the Gospels, had warned them about what might happen, had tried to prepare them and give them the means to get through such a time. But they were still taken aback by events. The disciples had, the Gospels say, gone out previously while Jesus was alive and had done great things, healed the sick, preached and practiced great love and wisdom. But on Holy Saturday they easily lost touch with all that.

Isn’t that familiar? When we encounter our own Holy Saturdays, don’t we find ourselves in a similar state of shock, our minds scattered? Aren’t we also frightened, confused, having difficulty making sense of what has occurred? Don’t we seem to forget all that we have been taught or have experienced that might help us through such times?
We are so hard on ourselves about that, too. So I commend us to the Christian church’s wisdom in calling this a “holy” time, making it a sacred time, a ritualistic time.
What would it be like if we could give ourselves permission, and have the permission of those closest to us, to withdraw during our own “Holy Saturdays,” not into a tomb, to be sure, but into some place of solitude, for a period of time? There, we might be emptied out of our old self, after having suffered our own inner “crucifixion” of something precious to us—some old way of life or being, some hope, dream, desire, some job, some love, some relationship. Having lost all of that, beyond any hope of going back to the old way of being, we could, in the sanctity of “Holy Saturday,” in a sacred way, transition into the next phase, the new thing, the “resurrected” life.

What would it be like if we supported each other in such times? One woman I knew said, after her mother’s death, that she fantasized about going off by herself to a cave somewhere, where she could be alone, and people would just show up a couple of times a day and leave cooked rice and lentils at the entrance to the cave and then leave, without saying a word to her. Instead she felt she had to continue at her job, as though nothing had happened, and she felt she had to continue being a “good mom,” taking care of everything for the family, even though her heart wasn’t in it. Her heart was broken, in grief. Her heart, shall we say, was going through Holy Saturday. But nobody knew what to do for her or even with her.

The ancient ones had whole manuscripts given over to instructions for such times. Both the Egyptians and the Tibetan Buddhists had, as previously mentioned, Books of the Dead, with elaborate instructions for getting through the “bardo” times. Present day counselors and ministers are often the ones who can offer contemporary suggestions to us for our own rituals.

For me personally, I have often said to myself, on behalf of myself, Jesus’ words to his disciples in the Garden of Gestheseme shortly before his arrest and crucifixion, “Can you not watch with me one hour?”

When I am in my own internal “Holy Saturday” experience, I know I need to be still, to trust myself and life and Spirit to get me through to the other side of whatever is happening. Remembering the mystery of Holy Saturday, remembering that somehow, beneath the surface of what I know or can imagine, hidden from my ego’s sight, miracles can happen. I can be transformed.

So, in those times, I just want to lie down and experience the emptiness, the letting go into the experience. Just to be empty of all thought, plan, reasoning. Just be there, still. Participate in the bardo, the transition.

But when I try to do that, I notice that there are those other parts of me, parts like the disciples, that are scattered, busy blaming or reacting, busy giving up or charging forward prematurely, feeling shame or hopelessness or horror, or whatever. So I have to say to those parts of me “Can you not just be here quietly, patiently, waiting, can you not watch with me one hour?”

Usually it’s more than an hour, of course. And there’s the rub.

Even in the early centuries of Buddhism, there was much controversy over the timing of reincarnation, with one side arguing that rebirth follows immediately after death, and the other saying that there must be an interval between the two. With the rise of Mahayana Buddhism, belief in a transitional period prevailed.

But we, and those living with us, want our transitional periods to be over, if possible, within an hour, or in a day, at least in a reasonably short time.

But Holy Saturday is not reasonable. Nothing about it is reasonable. And to get to Easter Sunday we have to accept that. We have to accept, often, the mysterious, the non-rational, even the miraculous. We have to be willing and able to be transformed, as Jesus was transformed, and as the disciples were transformed.

For we find, later in the Acts of the Apostles that those same frightened, scattered individuals that ran away and hid, that didn’t even recognize the risen Christ when they saw him, later, after the bardo of transition had occurred (or as the Christian church has it, after they were filled with the fire and passion of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost), those same individuals went out all over the known world bravely to do the work that they had been called by Jesus to do. They were newly empowered. And they changed the history of the world.

Why, we may ask, did Jesus have to die for all that to happen? Why do we have to suffer in order to transform? I don’t know. I don’t even know that we do have to. What I do know, for certain, is that whether we have to or not, most of us do suffer. As the Buddha taught, suffering is ever-present somewhere in our world, and our “enlightenment” involves knowing how to deal with suffering, our own and that around us.

So, what can these spiritual traditions—Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and others—tell us that will help us to make our own transitions? A great deal.
The Buddhist teachings about the bardo refer to times when our usual way of life becomes suspended, and so there is a time of great opportunity as well as a time of great danger. As one Buddhist writer has said, “Such times can prove fruitful for spiritual progress, as external constraints diminish, although they offer challenges because our unskillful impulses can come to the fore.”
So, we can arrange our lives during such times so that our usual way of life is suspended. We can take a time out, small or large, or several time outs. We can reduce external constraints.
According to Tibetan tradition, during the bardo after death and before one’s next birth, one experiences a variety of phenomena. These usually follow a particular sequence from, just after death, very clear understanding and experience of reality, to, later on, terrifying hallucinations arising from the impulses of one’s previous habitual ways of thought or action.
Is that not true for us, as well, during such times as our own bardos, our own Holy Saturdays? Do we not have moments of the richest clarity and profound sacredness, as well as wild imaginings, chaotic thoughts, confused actions, all based on whatever we have known and dealt with and practiced prior to our times of challenge?
The Buddhist practice is largely one of learning how to calm and even eliminate these wild thought patterns, these unhelpful habits of thought. We too can practice, in our daily lives, stilling our frantic minds, so that in time of great transition, we are prepared. I have heard that the Dali Lama, the senior Tibetan Buddhist in the world, sets his wrist watch alarm to ring once each hour during the day, to remind him of his own mortality, and he spends a few minutes each time stilling himself, meditating on the ultimate state of reality and of his own largest identity that transcends death.
What can the Jewish tradition teach us about all this? Many things. Passover is the Jewish celebration of the sacred holy day when the angel of death “passed over” and spared the lives of the Israelites and ultimately freed them from slavery. (The Christian Gospels state that Jesus’ last supper was a Passover seder or ritual meal (Luke 22: 15-1). Easter is actually still called “Passover,” or a derivative of that word, in most languages other than English, and Easter’s central theme is that Christ was the Passover’s sacrificial lamb in human form.)
The celebration of Passover is also called “The Feast of the Unleavened Bread.” So it is a time that is not “yeasty or inflated” but is rather a sacrificial time, a time when people are held to strict ritual guidelines, including fasting and the eating of bitter herbs along with unleavened bread and a sacrificed lamb. Traditional Jewish people were to do no manual work during the ritualized days of Passover (that is, in fact, why Jesus was so hastily buried before sundown), and people were to fast and pray and consider their own true nature and the goodness of God and be grateful.
Observant Jewish people not only must not eat anything “leavened,” but must get rid of any leavening agent, get it completely out of their homes; that includes not only bread stuffs but also ingredients in, for example, beer or other food stuffs. So there is a “house cleaning,” an emptying out. (Good practice for us, as well, internally, a ritual house cleaning, an emptying out of what may “inflate” us.)
The associations to the unleavened bread also offer us instructions for getting through our transitions. One writer comments: “The Torah contains a divine commandment to eat matzo (unleavened bread) on the first night of Passover and to eat only matzo during the week of Passover. The Torah says that it is because the Hebrews left Egypt with such haste that there was no time to allow baked bread to rise; thus, flat bread, matzo, is a reminder of the rapid departure of the Exodus. Other scholars teach that in the time of the Exodus, matzo was commonly baked for the purpose of traveling because it preserved well and was light to carry, suggesting that matzo was baked intentionally for the long journey ahead. Matzo has also been called Lechem Oni (Hebrew: “poor man’s bread”). There is an attendant explanation that matzo serves as a symbol to remind Jews what it is like to be a poor slave and to promote humility, appreciate freedom, and avoid the inflated ego symbolized by leavened bread.”
Therein some of our instructions. Be ready at any moment to escape into freedom from what enslaves us. Be willing to “travel light,” to let go of all the unnecessary “baggage” that would prevent our transition. Be willing, within ourselves, to “promote humility, appreciate freedom,” and, perhaps most importantly, “avoid the inflated ego,” hence the “emptying out” of all that is inflated within us.
Doing all that allows us to be still and trust the transforming agent within us and within the whole of life. On Holy Saturday, I give myself permission and I encourage you to give yourself permission to know that you can, as the Christian prayer book suggests, “Be still and know that God exists.” Be still and know that amazing power and wisdom and love is available, that these can get you through whatever state you are in, and that, miraculously, it sometimes seems, things may turn out to be even better than before.
Easter Sunday can follow Good Friday in our own lives if, and I repeat, if, we allow the Holy Saturday experience, if we give proper occasion and time and practice to a safe and fruitful transition. Perhaps Easter doesn’t happen if we do not observe Holy Saturday. Maybe Holy Saturday is the pivotal point, and we should make more of that holiday than we do of Easter, in our own lives, at any rate.
So, when we are in a transition state, when all appears lost or dead, when our hopes, dreams, plans, relationships, jobs, IRA pension plans, or whatever is precious to us, is lost to us, we can, quite rightly, call this a “Holy” time in our lives, a “bardo,” we can enact, in our own manner, a “Passover” in which we move from one state of being to another newer, richer state than before.
And so, today, Holy Saturday, I think of you as on all holy days. And I hope you know that I do try to be willing to be available to you, as I am able, whenever you are going through your own Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays, as we all eventually do.

May you be blessed, and may all be blessed , on this and all days.

Glenda Taylor
Earthsprings 2009

“Earth” and “Linda Hogan”

Today I added to the Fellowship website two new items.

Under the “Newsletter” heading, I added an excerpt from Circle of Sisters, a monthly email newsletter I send to women who have attended some workshop or retreat with me and who have expressed an interest in the mission of the Fellowship. The title of the excerpt is Earth. Click on the Newsletter button above and select “Earth” to find this posting.

I also added Linda Hogan as “An Inspiring Person,” along with a bit of her writing from Walking. Click on the button “Inspiring People” above and select “Linda Hogan.”

I hope you enjoy reading each of these. As always, I welcome your comments.

Julian of Norwich on “God”

“We are in God, and God, whom we do not see, is in us.” Julian of Norwich

To learn more about Julian (or Juliana) of Norwich, click on the “Inspiring People” button above and select Juliana of Norwich.

Karen Armstrong on Compassion

I highly recommend last night’s discussion on PBS between Bill Moyers and Karen Armstrong, author of numerous books on a variety of world religions, as they discuss Compassion, which Armstrong says is the touchstone of all religions and the key to solving so many of the controversies in the world today. She references ancient as well as modern sources and speaks of her “Charter for Compassion.” Don’t miss this one.

What We Assume

It wasn’t the raccoon, as I thought.
It was the old black crow who turned over
the cats’ metal bowls I had moved
way out to the picnic table
to escape the hissing ‘possom that otherwise
terrorizes the kitchen doorway at night.

Things are seldom what we assume.

This morning I walked in stars,
millions of tiny stars, blooming underfoot,
white, soft pink, with here and there
purple wood violets to remind me
of my stepfather who brought them
to my mother by the handful
when she could no longer get around
in the kind of broken ground,
rooted up by armadillos and wild hogs,
that I walked in this morning
among the wind tossed little stars and violets.

This afternoon the temperature will reach eighty,
and one might assume, wrongly, no doubt,
that we’re done with the cold, but, no,
it could yet snow on Easter, or freeze
on my birthday, my seventh, in a few weeks.

Things are seldom what we assume.
There are no guarantees.
The news on the tv and the talk shows is dire.

So it’s best, I guess, to give up assumptions,
judgments, worries, predictions,
and any certainties whatsoever,
and, instead, wander sanely in the meadow,
taking in scent of wildly blooming
serviceberry trees, along with the bees and butterflies
that cover every single shining ruffled bloom.

None of them—birds, bees, or butterflies—
are economists or media pundits or politicians,
nor are they suffering from loss of jobs
or health care or concern about bombs.

At least I assume they aren’t, but then again,
things may not be what I assume,
since naturalists are asking us to report
changes due to global warming that may
indicate the birds and bees and trees
and all the rest have worries too…

But, anyway, today, I’m setting aside,
for now, wrangling with tangled taxes,
and I’m taking in sight of the ornamental plum
all regal, white too, and the first iris,
and the red coral vine, and the waning yellow jasmine,
and the tiny, tiny, tiny purple or yellow blooming things,
unnamed but not unknown,
you can’t walk for stepping on.

The book, all knowing, says that, last fall,
I sowed the red corn poppies
too close together and they won’t bloom
at all. Well. We’ll see. May be.

Things are seldom what we assume.
So I’m banking on hope.
It’s paid off, more than not,
through all my years. Anyway,
things are always changing,
day by day, blooms go away,
but the fruit will come, and go,
and compost, too, plays its part,
so, who knows, but what
this economic downturn
will turn out to be…
well, who knows?

For now, then, scent of rain,
hinted in the gathering clouds,
paynes gray and mauve and rose mallow
watercolored clouds,
reminds me to go inside,
to paint, to write these words,
to think of you. I do.