November 27, 2020 - Because it Works

I have touched on the idea of “tradition” before, but I am back at it again because a great willing is being heard, and my ears cannot unhear.  Tradition is the way.  It is the ritual.  It is what we do because we have always done it.  Some people question it and turn away from it, only to find that there was method to the madness after all, and they come home like the prodigal son.  Some question and turn away and stay away, and then they are lost forever.  Still others never question at all because it feels right and it works.  Those are the lucky ones.

There are things that are done in certain ways, and if you pay attention, you can learn those ways for yourself.  Perhaps a loving relative will teach them, and you will learn them without knowing you are learning.  Perhaps you will have to observe others and find out what works.  These ways become habits, and these habits become rituals, and these rituals become instincts.  But they all start with someone finding the best way through trial error and then sticking with that way come hell or high water.

The squirrels find their food in the way they always have, and they make secret caches as they always have.  In the winter they dig up the food and survive as they always have.  And the deer make their paths in the forest along the ley lines as they always have, finding their food and especially precious winter water as they always have.  The birds build their nests the same way as always, singing the same songs, flying south in the same formations.  Because it works.

In the house that sits atop my shoulders, there are many rooms in which I store my traditions.  I often wander through these rooms and touch the old books within.  Not long ago, I can remember that we really did go over the river and through the woods to my grandmother’s house during at least one of the holidays.  We always went the same way through the snow because it worked, and there was always a turkey to eat because it was tradition and we expected it and it reinforced who we were.

That’s the big thing, isn’t it?  Who we were.  Who we are.  We know these things by what we do, and we do them in a certain way because that way brings comfort, stability, and a sense of belonging.  It brings guidance and inheritance and tribe.  

“We have always done this.”  How those words echo in our ears during the hard times of life, and we all have our hard times, those times that try our very souls.  Sometimes things can get so bad that we feel we have nothing left.  We are broken, empty, dead.  But then, just as we think we might draw our last breath—just as we hope we will draw our last breath in order to end the sorrow—the voice says, “We have always done this.”  And so we get up, we pick ourselves up, we drag ourselves across the floor.  And we do what we have always done.  Because it works.

Sometimes it feels empty for a while, like we are just “going through the motions,” but if we stick with it, we find that somehow we survive.  And then we thrive.  What got us through it all?  Our traditions.  Our sense of self.  That home that was there somewhere at some time.  That tribe we belonged to.  Those things we did, those foods we ate, those songs we sang.  The comfort of doing things automatically by rote gave us the rest we needed to tap into the moral inheritance, into the hidden strength of our people.  They gave us a lifeline when we needed it most.

Be on the lookout!  There are those who would attempt to take your traditions away, to make them null and void.  They use many tactics:  Name-calling, humiliation, guilt, rage, haughtiness, bullying, etc.  They do this because they know how powerful your traditions are.  They know how your traditions tie you to the past and to those ancestors who went before you.  They know of the strength, the lifeline, the comfort and stability, the inheritance.  And they want to take it away from you.  Drop you into a field of snow five feet deep with no one around to help.  No road, no light, no secret cache of food.  No secret joy within your heart.

Cut off from everything that you are and were and might be, they offer a meager pittance.  Take it or leave it.  Take it, and it is the end of living and the beginning of survival.  Leave it, and it is death.  Oh, the choices they offer.  Empty prisons of ice.

Turn away from them.  Do not look at them.  Do not listen to them.  Do not allow them into your home, into your sphere.  Do not argue with them.  Do not discuss the virtues of your way.  Do not engage in their intellectual folly and word games that have no winners.  You do not owe them an explanation for your way of life.  Do instead what works.  What has always worked.  You do not have to give them a reason.  You do not even have to completely understand it yourself.  Just trust what you know to be true.

Because we really did go over the river and through the woods to my grandmother’s house.  And there was turkey and stuffing and gravy and potatoes.  There was squash and sweet potatoes and her own canned cranberry sauce.  There was apple pie and pumpkin pie and games in the woods.  Off in a faraway city, there was Macy’s parade and the kick off of the Christmas season.  There was singing and dancing and laughter.  And the adults always had a “cup of cheer,” usually more than one.

October 11, 2020 - The North Star

“But why cook your food or make your tea that way, when you can just press a button or turn a knob and have it done so much faster and cleaner?” she asked.

“Because I enjoy it,” I said, “I find it calming and clearing.”

“Okay, I get the aesthetics, but after a while the fun is gone and it’s just extra work and it doesn’t make any sense anymore.”

“It makes sense to me.”

“But,” she said, “Surely it must get tiring after a while.”

“It does sometimes, yes.”

“Are you ever tempted to just do it the easy way?”

“More often than I want to admit,” I laughed, in spite of myself.

“So what do you get out of it?” she asked.  “Honestly, I want to know.”
 

There is a star high up in the sky at night, a star the sailors love, a star the weary traveler at night searches for.  It is the North Star, Polaris, and it is directly over the North Pole.  If you can find the North Star, you can find the north, and if you know the direction of north, then by default you know which way is south, west, and east.  If you can find the North Star, you are not lost.  And it’s easy to find because it is directly above the top right star of the “dipper” portion of the Big Dipper, also known as Ursa Major.

On a clear evening, you are never truly lost.  But sometimes there are clouds, and sometimes the clouds last a very long time.  When they do, there is no Big Dipper to be seen, no North Star to be found, no guiding and directing point of light.  No beacon.  No ray of hope.  And this is very hard.  The longer the clouds persist, the harder it gets.  Sometimes the mist is so thick, you cannot find your way out of it.  So you have to believe.  You have to remember where you saw the North Star last, and then you have to trust yourself, trust your own intuition, trust your ability to navigate, trust your own knowledge.  You have to rely upon yourself.

Sometimes, for some people, there has never been a clear night filled with brilliant stars and brilliant possibilities—and a brilliant, guiding, beautiful hope.  For some people, there has always only been clouds, and they have known nothing else.  They have always done everything the same way, lived their life the same way, never tried anything else, never trusted themselves.  And so they never knew there was another path.

You can tell them about the stars, but they won’t believe you.  You can tell them of Ursa Major, that Great Bear in the sky, that constant light and strength, but they will scoff at you.  You can tell them of the great men of yore who used the North Star to navigate, sail, and conquer the world, but they will laugh at you.  They will tell you there are no points of light in the night sky, only the paltry points of light they hold in their own hands, a sort of glitter they covet and glut themselves upon.

They will warn you!  Do not travel alone!  Do not rely upon your own senses!  Do not trust yourself!  Do not look for a guide in the heavens!  Stay here, they will say.  Stay immobile.  Sit where I tell you.  Eat what I give you.  Feel the comfort of all those around you who stay connected to one another in the thick mist.  Do not wander, for you will get lost.

I walk away.  The mist is confining, and I find I cannot breathe in its depths.  I cannot think clearly.  The mist masks the stars I know for certain are up in the heavens, and I must remove the mask to see them.  I must remove the mask to think clearly again.  I leave the comfort of the crowd, the warmth of the throng, the seeming strength of the numbers.  To the edge, to the edge, to the edge I go.  And then I jump . . .

And I am alone in the clear and cold and beautiful night, and high above me is the North Star, guiding me as it has always done.  I am not lost after all, for I have my guide.  I know where I am, and I am not afraid.  I know which direction I am headed.  I am confident in my abilities and my knowledge.

Sometimes I cook my meals on an open fire or a little propane stove.  I collect the rainwater and filter and drink it because it tastes so good.  I do things differently, not because I want to do things the “hard way” or the “old way,” but because doing things differently on purpose forces my mind to walk in another direction.  It forces me to think differently, to calculate differently.  It makes me realize there are other ways of doing things.  It gives me a sort of security, and that security lets me know that I am not dependent on the crowd and the current trends for my existence.

Because I know where I’m going.  I have the North Star above me, and He has never failed me.  And I have the North Star within me.  There is no mist to blind me, no mask to hide the world from me.  I walk in the cold night alone, and I am not afraid.

September 20, 2020 - Fall From Grace

I cannot think of a better way to herald the Fall season than to make an apple pie.  Blueberries are Maine’s number one crop, but potatoes and apples are right behind them—both good keepers for storage and nourishment throughout the winter months.  I will be making pies as well as dehydrating hundreds of apple slices to bring along with me on my winter jaunts through the woods.

It is like bringing a little bit of stored summer along.  A dried slice of apple plumps up in the mouth and delivers sweet sunshine every time.  It laughs in the face of even the coldest and snowiest days, saying, “Catch me if you can!”

And so we plunge into Fall.  But exactly what it is we are falling from, I am hard pressed to figure out.  Are we falling from the pinnacle of sweltering summer days?  Then I welcome the calm and quiet coolness.  Are we falling from growth?  Then I glow with pride at the fruition.  Are we falling from days of ease and slumber?  (And surely summer is anything but that if you live in the country.)  Then I welcome the silence and sleep of the coming winter.

Perhaps we are falling from grace, from a time when the Earth trusted us to make good use of the growing season.  And if we did not do so, then perhaps we are falling into chagrin.  Or perhaps a fall from grace is a fall from the endowment of life to the gift of death.  Perhaps we fall from the land of the living into the land of the spirit.  Again.

“Catch me if you can!” the innocent child says and laughs as she runs in the summer sunshine in a field full of flowers.  And, indeed, she shall be caught and pressed into the grueling servitude of life until she falls wearily and gratefully from grace and beauty into peace and plenty and quiet.  Come, you Angels of Transfiguration, receive her into your arms and use the fruit of her labor in your work of renewal.  All of life has its exact price—and death an incalculable reward, worth a King’s ransom. 

 

August 29, 2020 - Road of Truth

The bird was clearly dying.  It was not a matter of if, but when, and it would be sooner rather than later.  I would not have stopped for so long had it not been for the commotion that brought me there in the first place.

I had been walking along my usual road and took a left turn along a path I seldom travel, and for a reason.  That is when I heard a woman’s voice in distress and a man talking soothingly to her in lower tones.  I came out into a larger part of the path, and the woman looked at me imploringly and pointed down at the bird.  She was crying hysterically, telling me that something was wrong with the bird, and that was certainly true.

These two were not from around here.  Their expensive clothes and equipment made that evident, although I do not think they realized it.  The dramatic scene was also a dead giveaway.  She kept telling me that we had to help the bird, that his wing was broken.  I went closer and looked at the bird.  His wing was definitely not broken.  He was walking about slowly and confusedly, and he was absolutely dying.

Because I know that look.  It is one I see often enough while I am out and about.  However, the two people before me were not used to it at all.  She seemed frustrated with me.

“Don’t you want to help??” she asked over loudly.

“This bird cannot be helped,” I said.

“WHY??”

“Because it’s dying.”

“Can’t we fix his wing?!” she shrieked.

“There’s nothing wrong with his wing.”

“Then what’s the problem??  I don’t get it!”

“He’s dying,” I said simply.

They both drew back quickly, as if I had struck them.  Up until that point, they thought perhaps there was something they could do (or better yet, get someone else to do).  But I know when things have gone too far, and this was definitely one of those times.

They eyed me warily, as if I had caused the problem to begin with.  They had never seen something like this up close and raw.  I deduced in a moment that their world was a world of representation but not authenticity.  They were the kind of people who received all of their information through a filter, whose lives were carefully planned out, who followed the formula given to them early in life by their keeper.

But I am not that person.  And as strange as they found me, I found them to be just as peculiar.  We sized one another up quickly.  I felt sorry for her because I believed her anguish was genuine, and they both seemed as if they truly wanted to help in some way.  The problem was that they could not help, and they could not accept that.

Their world is a world of symbols, of representations, but not of reality.  Their days are lived like scenes in a play, each year a new act, each decade a new part.  They are actors and actresses on a stage, complete with an audience that cheers or hisses at their success or failure in pretending to be who they are.  They have mastered the art of how to seem.  When confronted with this problem, they fell into their typical roles because reality is too harsh and has no stagehands.  No props.  No curtains or costumes or adoring fans.

I tried to smile, to let them know that this was normal and natural.  They smiled back nervously and then left quickly, whispering to each other down the path.  The bird hopped under a small bush, and I knew he would not come out again.  This is the way of things.  There is a price for everything in this world, and the price of life is death.  The arrangements are made at birth, and there is no way to opt out of the contract.  Attempting to do so merely brings the contract to an end quicker, and the debt is still collected anyway.

My own contract looms before me.  My greatest weakness in life has been my honesty, slinging the truth arrows of the Sagittarian, tipped with bitter drink at times.  But everything that I have done after my eyes were opened, I have done of my own accord.  There are no stagehands and no props.  There is no applause.

There is just me, weapon clearly showing at my hip.  No surprises.  No false moves.  No dishonesty.  And in return, I am given the freedom of the road, to live my life cleanly, to experience it fully, to face it with both eyes open.

When we shed our body at the end, will we realize belatedly that we loved it after all, with all of its imperfections?  Will that realization be our final, gut-wrenching heartbreak?  Or will we be like the bird on the path today?  Living honestly on the road, every moment experienced authentically and directly without props or symbols.  And now he no longer needs his wings, for he has become flight itself. 

To think that his whole life he was practicing to die.  Perhaps things are simpler than they appear.

 

August 18, 2020 - A Shift

The blackberries are ripe again.  It is a good time of year to be alive.  Such sweetness.  I pull them off the bushes one by one and eat them, still warm from the sun.  Organic before we were told what “organic” was.  Good for you before we were “educated” about them being an “antioxidant superfood.”  Just plain old berries that grow along the side of the road every year.  Or out in the meadows.  Or down by the river.  Or wherever a bird happened to drop a seed the year before.  Kissed by the sun, so they must be special.

They’re free but there’s still a price to pay, of course, as there always is for everything.  With blackberries, it’s the confounded thorns.  The large ones gash your skin, and you can avoid most of them if you pay attention.  But the small ones you can barely see are like fine little razors that tear tiny imperceptible cuts on your hands and forearms and legs.  You don’t notice it until you get into water later on and each tiny cut comes alive like an exquisitely tiny fire.  Ah, the price, you laugh to yourself, yes, the price.  But the fire is worth it.

There is no internet down by the river.  I laugh and joke with other berry pickers who bring small bowls and baskets with them.  We carry on about staking a claim on the best patch, but we end up calling one another over to partake when we find a good one.  I don’t know who they are.  Just people who like berries, I guess.  And no internet.

At one point I stop and look up at the top of the trees as the wind is rustling the leaves.  I am instantly transported in my mind to a moment when I was a child riding in the back seat of a car with my siblings, my parents in the front seat now and then telling us to keep it down to a dull roar.  We were always loud.  Something about the sunshine then looks the same as today, the Light catching in just that certain way.  We’ll be home soon, I thought, as I drank in every detail of my surroundings.  What will mother make for supper?

Then back to the river and now, and it occurs to me that I have glimpsed a bit of reality.  Somehow it has leaked again.  There was a realness I felt when I was younger that I don’t always feel now, but I search for it continually.  Longingly.  Because I know something is wrong.  My eyes tear over a bit, but I don’t want anyone to see.  So I keep picking berries, focusing intently on one bush away from the others so they won’t see the leak.  The fissure.  The crack in my soul.  The distant reality still glazing my eyes.

Something has changed in the world, and I know that you know this.  I know you feel it.  I know your eyes glaze over with tears and you try to hide them.  I know there’s a sunny day in your memory, when the leaves were blowing in the wind and rustling together and talking.  When the birds were singing and the insects were humming.  And life was slower.  And you were almost home, where the sheets were hanging on the clothesline, dry and ready to be taken in, the beds made and infused with the sweet scent of the outdoors.  To which you would fall asleep later on and wake up and do it all again the next day.

I have said it before and I will say it again:  Spend too much time looking at the black mirror, abounding with hypnotic pixels, and you will lose sight of the unpixelated real world.  Dots on a screen.  Words typed to someone who may not even be there, who may never have been there.  Ever.  “How beautiful you are and how pleasant, my love, with such delights!” said Solomon the wise.  What song might he have sung for the black mirror?

There is a knowing.  There is a great willing that can be heard if you listen closely.  Those of you who are awake know of what I speak.  You know the difference between the outdoors and face-to-face contact with people as compared to the pixels in the black mirror, however hypnotic they may be.  You see people fighting about things that don’t exist, about situations that are not real.  You see the created un-world.  Misshapen like a patched-together being in a Tolkien novel, groveling to the all-seeing eye in the mountain.

I would say just simply turn it off, simply go outside.  And while I think this is a good first step, I don’t think it is enough anymore.  The ties that bind are like the old Chinese finger traps we played with as children.  The more you pull, the tighter the snare becomes.  Something more is needed.

A shift.  A shift in consciousness.  There are two worlds now, and they are superimposed upon one another.  But slowly, ever so slowly, they are drifting apart.  It used to be easy to travel from one world to the other and back again.  It is not so easy now because they are drifting further and further apart.  Someday it will be impossible to travel between them, and I fear that day is coming soon.  Then we will be stuck in whatever world we were in when the parting became final, and never the twain shall meet.

There is a patch of berries down by the river, where the thorns mercilessly cut your hands and arms.  And the berries….they carry the Sun within them, who enters you as you consume them.  Upon which a thousand tiny points of Light stream out of you from every wound you have ever had.  It is good.  The pain of reality is a good thing, and the price is definitely worth it.

August 13, 2020 - Cold Seeds

The seeds are the key.  All around us now, the Earth works furiously and tirelessly to create the seeds that will become next year, without which there would be no next year.  I have pointed out many times that unlike man who plants in the springtime, Nature always plants in the Fall.  This year finds her doing the same thing she always does.  I bow in gratitude and thankfulness.

But there is something different.  There are new seeds, and they do not come from the Holy one.  They are ugly seeds, misshapen and swollen.  Crippled and putrid.  Bearing a terrible secret, a storage of unnatural and chaotic energy.  Forged in a sterile environment by a gloved hand and a masked face.  Pored over by greedy eyes and blackened hearts bent on disturbing the sublime balance, on plunging the world from order and beauty back into chaos and corruption.

The grotesque new seeds pulse with perverse energy that rips and tears and gnashes.  The snakes in the grass carry them and deposit them one by one.  The Lady instantly recognizes their foul nature, and all the seeds she creates also know the imposters for what they are.  But the people . . . the people do not.  They have become lost.  They cannot tell what is a bad seed and what is a good seed.  Those of reptilian nature who serve chaos, they count on this and, as Blake said, they “sunnèd it with smiles and with soft deceitful wiles.”

The Earth writhes and hacks the ugly seeds from her soil, but the reptiles replant them as quickly as they are expelled.  They pat the ground in a soothing lie, whispering promises of riches to the Earth, saying, “There, there my lovely.  Nourish and nurture and grow my grotesqueness, and you will be rewarded with wealth and ease.  It is just one seed.  Just one seed.  What harm can there be in just one seed?  In just one compromise?”  But the snakes lie.  They have always lied.  To no avail, though.  She is not fooled.  But the people . . . the people can be fooled.

Have a care, then, as you plow the furrows of your mind and the fields of your heart, readying as it were your soul-soil for new growth in this important season.  Be watchful for the reptile as he attempts constantly to deposit his ugly seed in your soul, which will suck out your very existence as it grows and consumes you.  Nightly as you intoxicate yourself against the blaring and jagged lies being hurled at you continually during the day, as you fall into a semi-trance to escape the pain of having to be constantly vigilant, watch for the snake as he whispers his own soft deceitful wiles.  “It is just one compromise . . .”

And expel him!  Regurgitate his ugly seeds filled with lies and hatred waiting to grow within you.  Heave out the constrictive snake, the wealthy boa, who would squelch your freedom.  Spit out the vile and twisted growth of imprisonment.  Give them no quarter.  Chase them to the far ends of the Earth and hack them to pieces.

Protect your mind from those who would enslave you.  Protect your heart from those who would siphon your goodness and kindness.  Protect your personality from the reptiles who would force you to conform and obey.  Do not accept their cold and twisted seeds of death.  Even one seed—just one—will eventually gnaw a hole through your innards, its twisted fruit slithering away after having consumed all you have to give.

Hang on to what you know is right.  Look to the natural world.  Look to the seasons as they roll on in perfect harmony and timing.  Fall in with their cadence.  Accept the goodness of abundance when it is here and the scarcity of the season of peaceful death when it comes.  Force nothing.  All brilliance and beauty and life will come back in its time to the Earth, to your heart, to your mind, and to your soul as it has always done from the beginning of time.   

And stand guard!  Always.  Should you find something, however infinitesimally small, that does not hold up to the Truth of the natural world—to the forest and the streams and the ocean and the animals—cut it out from you and burn it to oblivion.

July 25, 2020 - The Master's Hand

I told you before about the old painter, the one who hides his works of art in a closet, never to be seen.  But that does not stop him from painting, because that is what he does.  And as I also told you, when he dies, the house will burn down and all the paintings with it, and it will be as if the paintings had never been.  That is why I tell you about him and about them, so you will know and you will remember when he is gone.

He brings his canvas and paints and a stool with him on this early morning, slung over his back in an old familiar pack, the weight of which is chronic and causes pain but is sorely missed when not there.  It is our burdens we remember most fondly, I think.  The fleeting joys are just that—fleeting.  But the burdens, oh how we endure them.  A life well lived is filled with pain, this I believe.

Where shall he place his stool?  He cannot decide.  Now here and now there.  But he is tired and sits down to rest.  Perhaps the inspiration will come to him, like an angel settling on his conscience, reminding him of his duties, whispering of responsibility.  He runs his old calloused hand across the canvas.  Then again.  And yet again.  His old eyes do not see much of it anymore, but the feel is always the same.  The linen begs for touch, for hue.

I watch him secretly.  Sometimes it begins with a sketch, flowers and trees on a wispy landscape.  Or bold mountains and a crashing sea.  Or a woman’s face, saddened and looking down at her dirty hands.  Then the palette comes out and the colors are mixed, but not all of them are used.  The linen cries in pain if he should place the wrong color.  I can see the happy colors in a corner of the palette, but he does not reach for them yet.  He finds the darkened hues instead, the colors so like those I hide within my own soul.  How does he know?

It is a dusky red against a tired green, the kind of green that Summer gives when she cannot give anymore and longs to place her seeds within a cool earthly grave, no casket to adorn them, just hardened spiky pods of hidden life buried in a cold and bony embrace.  But she longs for it because the giving has become too much.  And somehow the painter, he also knows this giving of too much.  He knows the sorrow that abundance will bring, has no choice but to bring.  The jagged lines on his face deepen in recognition of what is to come.

Then unexpectedly, he quickly reaches down and pulls up a thorny hawthorn branch, raking it through his fingers.  I wince with the pain I know he must feel from the thorns, but the lines relax on his face.  He reaches out and a few drops of blood fall upon the holy linen.  He has gone too far, I think to myself.  He cannot put his own blood on the linen!  Does he know?  Does he realize what he has done?  Or has age finally taken his mind?  The lines in his wizened face deepen again in pain, yet the blue of his eyes against the red of his hands is striking.  Who am I to judge?

Then the master’s hand begins again.  Brilliant flowers dance upon a perfect linen landscape.  A perfect sky with perfect clouds.  And a couple in the distance, holding hands and walking through a field of ripening grain, the darker edges of the forest in the background not yet whispering of the pain of the years to come.  The tired green and brilliant blood berries in the foreground are unknown to the youths who walk happily in the field.  And how could they know?

It is done.  He sets it aside haphazardly, as if he is pushing away an empty plate from a meal enjoyed long ago.  Then he reaches into his pack and pulls out a weathered old sketch and places it on the easel.  It is the sketch of the woman who looks down at her dirty hands.  I recognize it.  The master does not paint her.  He removes a scant meal from his pack, a bit of bread and dried apple and a flask.  And he sits in silence and eats, staring at the woman who stares at her hands.  He tips his flask to her and then drinks.

The day has worn on and the shadows are growing quickly.  I have been here too long.  I should not have followed him.  I should not have looked at the blood berries.  I should not have noticed her dirty hands.  But hindsight alone is perfect.  There are always so many things we should not have done.

I turn to leave, freeing my skirt from a thorny bush.  He looks quickly in my direction.  Surely, he cannot see me?  Those old eyes can focus only on the past now.  Still he looks.  I back up slowly and disappear within the tree line.  I head for home, for the safety of four walls where there are no berries to be seen.

And the master, he packs up as well and begins the journey back to his own home.  He grabs the perfect landscape painting almost as an afterthought, swinging it uselessly from his lined hand.  Another perfect day to place in the old closet.  My, how the days add up.  All of them so perfect.