Happy New Day

Do not look forward to the ineffable New Year.
Devote yourself to the mundane, fresh New Day.
There may be no countdown or confetti
but, always, when you pay attention, there is a sunrise
that is a spectacle, even through the clouds.
There is stepping lightly over the wood floor
and breathing, aware of each movement.
There is a heavy globe of grapefruit to slice,
every jewel segment savored for its
bittersweet tang, its red juice running.
There is looking into your love's familiar, green eyes
and seeing the human who steadfastly wakes next to you,
behind any tiredness or distance, a vow
of disciplined love, untapped wells of joy.
There are soft pitter-patters of small feet
and sticky hands that come to lead you
to your next adventure-lesson or struggle-insight
that will make you humble and in awe.
There is something growing inside you, kicking.
There is the daily work: a sink of dishes,
maintenance, trying a new idea, and
tending whoever you meet with reverence.
There is turning to others, inward, and seeking
the path leading to the better world hidden in this one.
There is injustice and devastation to heal, first within.
There is learning to keep searching when
your heart's burdens are ice-cold and heavy.
There are sudden, seismic leaps for Good from
the cosmic consciousness that leave you bewildered.
There are miracles that come after aeons of effort.
There is grieving, celebrating, tearing down, building up.
There is always more work, perhaps not for you.
There are relentless deaths and births.
There are countless occasions to uncork champagne,
reminisce on what the past has brought,
toast to what the future may bring,
and sip life's fizz with good, faithful friends.
There are burning stars and infinite, unanswered questions
to guide and ground your imagination.
There is never a day, or year, or life, that does not end 
with your eyes closing on a planet continuing beyond you.
Evermore, there is night leading to New Day,
darkness rising into light.

Solstice Hymn

Winter comes on darkest day
Amid such times that blacken night.
Seeking hope, we make our way
As pilgrims off to gain new sight.

Violence, famine, war, and greed
Are bitter winds through suff'ring lands;
Frozen ground yields no fresh seed
To fill expectant, weary hands.

Peace's growth in human souls
Seems stifled by perpetual gloom
As embers die in long-burned coals
That cannot warm the icy room.

Distant echoes break the fright
With ancient song and starlight chimes:
"Always, darkness yields to light -
Eternity breathes in these hard times!"

Branches quake, at last reveal
The faithful roots at work below;
Kindled hearts come close to feel
The promise settling soft like snow.

Candles burn as pilgrims hold
Love's vigilant epiphany;
Companions sing the tales of old
That herald justice's symphony.

And as Winter starts its season's stay,
Earth creatures cling to one another.
Dear pilgrims, let your spirits say,
"Turn toward the Light in every other!"

Desert Sands

We found a spot next to a serpent sculpture that appeared to dive its artful body in and out of the expanse of sand and across the plain road that led us away from the small village's lights. Mountains of rock in the distance bordered our peripheral sight; the sun set and the moon appeared in the desert. In twilight, we set up our simple camp to watch the stars come out and the meteors shower. Soon, we could barely see our serpent neighbor's face or details of the terrain. The rustle of blowing sand punctuated the soft quiet.

Husband, brother-in-law, and I leaned back in our chairs and across the car hood to watch day turn into night, to witness regal hills of stone and stark stretches of desert, humbling in their magnitude, dissolve under darkness that fell like a blanket in greater and greater silence. Soon, even the desert seemed unimaginably small, and we even smaller, under the twinkling stars, the great arc of a faint Milky Way, the blazing bursts and fleeting tails of meteors that struck our planet's atmosphere.

The absence of light around us brought these distant bodies closer. The universe deepened with each further adjustment of our eyes as stars and galaxies came into focus through our minute, organic lenses. We marveled together at the wonder of such a view - laughing and creating new constellations, I imagined the generations of humans that have gazed at this same scene. I felt my baby kick enthusiastically. As the first meteor flared like a sparkler across the sky and we all cried out at its intensity, I made a wish that my descendants would find such intimacy with the cosmos.

Soon, even the moon sank below the horizon. Under the ancient story told to our vision this night - a tale of stars now long gone but still appearing to us, a song of nebulae and novas that have yet to reach us with their light - I felt connected beyond labels of our relationships to the two humans next to me. I felt only our common delight, collective curiosity, and intrinsic courage to seek space where we felt our smallness and entered a different plane of awareness of our place on a galactic scale. This, too, is an old story, as primitive and essential to humans as those told of the temptation of serpents, the ventures into the desert to find enlightenment, the dreaming of intelligible messages and images written in the stars.

The next day, my boy picked up a nondescript clam shell I found in the bay near our home away from home. In expectation, he put it carefully to his ear. I first felt inclined to correct him - "You can't 'hear the ocean' in that kind of shell" - but caught myself. That shell, made from desert sands, elements long ago forged in the bellies of stars, brings close the expanse of natural wonders he instinctively longs to know. Although it may not resonate with his pulse to give the illusion of hearing the sea, it resonates with something more.

Putting a shell to an ear; turning one's face to the night sky; touching the beauty beyond one's finite life by letting the spirit-mind wander cosmic sands: this is what the mystics and scientists and prophets and common people, adults and children, can know at the core in any moment of transcendent connection. Nevertheless, we lift constructed sand to our ears. Nevertheless, we journey to the desert. Nevertheless, we dream of stars and imagine we are one of them.

Spirals and Evergreen Sprigs

Sometimes, a moment is nearly impossible to capture in its full spectrum of wonder. As I drove away from my childhood home this afternoon, having dropped off Oak to spend some time with his grandparents while Robby and I worked, I glanced out my window to see my dad and my son sitting under a tree in the side yard. They had been wandering outside a while before I left, so to spot them in surprise from this distance felt like glimpsing a secret gift.

I could not see what they examined together, but it was clear in their mutual posture that both were engrossed in their common activity. Tears caught in my throat at this fleeting moment of sweetness: the man who has tended to me with the boy I tend, both tending to the other. I was suspended in a space between what has been given to me and what I have given, from and to my past and future. Removed from the center of that cyclical lineage, time collapsed to a still point of amazement as I felt the tug of eternal threads that tie me to these two beings.

Later, when I returned, Dad and Oak showed me the treasures they gathered while walking around the yard: several lovely pinecones of varying shapes and a twig of holly and berries. Spirals and evergreen sprigs - infinite patterns, eternal life, symbols for an afternoon of connections made near and far in time and space. What a joy to know I am part of it. What a gift to watch it unfold beyond me in every direction. What a blessing to know who we are to one another.

Anniversary Ode

Five years ago tonight, we said "yes" to each other. 

At the time, neither of us believed we were each other's soul mate...we still do not think there is such a thing. We weren't sure it was the right thing to get married when not everyone could marry who they love. We did not think marriage is the highest ideal of a committed relationship, rather a way of life some of us wish to choose. And though we understood that this chosen path would challenge and disturb us more than we could imagine, we had no real idea of the difficulty ahead.

What we DID trust and believe on that November night in is our ability to recommit to one another each day, to turn toward one another in humility and mercy, and to strive to learn the deepest lessons of love beyond preference, convenience, even emotion, by loving each other. What we have trusted - and continue to trust - is that we hold the capacity to ask for forgiveness, to find joy in one another, and, when things are dark, instead of "Why would you? How could you?", to ask, "What will we do together to take the next step?"

The depth of pain when trust is betrayed takes much time and effort to heal. Who I am now could not explain that fully to the young couple, bright-eyed and hopeful, on their wedding night. Yet, we chose the processional song, "'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free, 'tis a gift to come down where we ought to be...And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed - to turn, turn will be our delight, 'til by turning, turning, we come 'round right." Somehow, in a deep place, I think we knew we would learn.

I could not have conveyed how hard it would be to walk the journey of becoming parents together, the anger and jealousy and physical exhaustion...and the alchemy of self-sacrifice that leads to miraculous beauty. I did not know that, through 43 hours of labor, Robby would hold me up, that we would birth Oak together, and that it would be the most incredible experience of my life. Yet, we chose the poem, "The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous and discipline yourself...Work. Keep digging your well. Don't think about getting off from work. Water is there somewhere. Submit to a daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door. Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there." Somehow, I think we knew we would be taught the way.

Allowing one another to grow and flourish on our own paths while living and learning together is a challenge beyond articulation. How could that be told to any pair of people yet to spend years together? Yet, the ring with which Robby proposed reads in Sanskrit, "Ahimsa" - "Do no harm" by respecting the deepest nature of every being, including the one closest. And the words, "Blessed are the poor in spirit...Blessed are they who mourn...Blessed are the meek...Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness...Blessed are the merciful...Blessed are the pure of heart...Blessed are the peacemakers..." reverberated on the walls of the building in which we were married. Somehow, I think we understood the journey to come.

"Wherever you go, I will go..." That is our promise. Robby, I still love you with all my heart, perhaps more because I understand what we both have given, and realize I have no idea what we have yet to give, to make it true. Walking this life with you has reoriented my heart, expanded my mind, and given me a new directive. You help me to see "La Vie en Rose." You have nurtured me, tended me, and loved me beyond any capacity I could earn or deserve.

Today, I choose you, my love, to be my partner and fellow seeker, to hold me accountable and inspire me, to work with me to make the world, and our life, anew.

"Not in the dark of buildings confining,

not in some heaven, light years away—
here in this place the new light is shining,
now is fulfillment, and now is the day.
Gather us in and hold us forever,
gather us in and make us your own;
gather us in, all peoples together,
fire of love in our flesh and our bone."

In Kindness

Today was one spent mostly in bed, trying to feel warm and keep my nose wiped, staving off aches with tea and soup. My good partner allowed me the space by tending to our boy who, by mid-afternoon, it was clear, was also sick. A(nother) day of rest at home was welcome, but also troubling, given all that is happening in the wide world.

I spent too much of the time I had my eyes open today looking at a screen, taking in the vastness of pain and suffering in our world and letting out tears. I felt so physically weak, so emotionally vulnerable. And who cares how I felt? I was unaware that an attack had happened in Beirut until my more globally-aware friends showed me on Facebook. I was self-disgusted because I didn't know, and because I did not feel immediate outrage when I heard the news of Paris. I felt grief and despair - all violence deeply disturbs me. But I mostly felt selfish annoyance at my many friends posting pictures of Eiffel Towers...because I saw myself in you.

Please don't misunderstand: I honor and appreciate the place of solidarity from which these outpourings come. That is a GOOD place, a place that connects people, that ushers justice, that makes peace. What bothers me? Your circle is too small. No matter who you are, your circle is to small. And so is mine.

I fail to realize most days how ignorant and sheltered I am. Collectively, we do not care enough about people we think are not like us. Thousands dead in Nigeria and there is barely a peep in the west. Millions of Syrian refugees fleeing from the same source of terror that, when it threatens a city we romanticize, suddenly becomes understandable in its horror...but until then, is not enough reason to make room at our inns for the families who have been threatened for months and months.

No need to look so far away. Why can't I be bolder with the truth that Black Lives Matter? Just like terror, systemic racism and white supremacy are real threats that kill real people every day. Just like terrorism, their complex roots, old and pervasive, must be acknowledged by white people for us to seek holistic solutions. Why do I struggle to find the words as a white person to call in others to look, to challenge my own, embedded racist tendencies, to change?

I fall short because I am tired. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed that taking care of my tiny circle is more than I can do. I try to be a good mother, partner, family member, friend, co-worker, community member...and I feel stretched even then. I know that these are essential works of justice and that I try to do my part, but it never feels like enough. I continue to fall into the mental, emotional, and spiritual traps that lead to disharmony and violence on a grander scale...and the cynical pitfall, "What can *I* even DO?"

As I laid in bed and cried, tucked away in comfort and cushions of care, I knew my self-judgment was not healthy or helpful. It does not serve us to say to ourselves or each other, "Our circles are too small." What helps is to say, and MEAN, "I am always trying to grow my circle of care...and I need your help." It helps, first, to be humble and to admit that work needs to be done...in us. It helps to invite each other in and hold each other accountable. It helps to make the most of where we are, who we are with, and what we are given. It helps to remind each other that it is ALL part of the bigger picture.

Yesterday was a Day of Kindness. That word, "kindness," often sounds trite or simplistic to my ears, sort of like "nice." We can be kind to someone without liking them...so I think it can be a wonderful first step. Our good acts should never depend on our subjective evaluation of another person's worthiness. Even if we struggle to feel for another, we can be kind. But that is not far enough. We also need courage. Coeur + large = courage. We need bigger and bigger hearts. We need kindness that comes when it is difficult to care, that transmutes to compassion - learning to suffer with others.

Such courageous compassion pushes against the edges of our awareness and expands our domain of attention. We begin to see people we didn't see before. The root of the word "kindness" articulates kinship, similarity. When our kindness begins to connect us more profoundly with people we did not even know we overlooked, it widens our circle of care. When our kindness helps to expand others' circles, it creates peace. "What can *I* even DO?" becomes, "What can WE do together?"

I need you to join me. Let's try to expand together. Let us mourn the victims in Paris, hold vigil in our hearts and homes, extend the love that is desperately needed...then, tomorrow, let's pay attention to the rest of the world. Let's never allow each other to overlook those killed across town or across the globe. Let's awaken our vigilance to our planetary kin. Is that too much to ask? Absolutely. Yes, there will always be too much to hold. That's why we hold it together. That's why you and I must stay courageously, radically open - to being challenged, corrected, consoled, and converted to greater compassion, and to do this for others with true kindness.

White people, call me in when I'm not being an ally. Friends of color, feel free to correct me when my view is narrow. Queer friends, let me know what I am missing. Tell me who I am forgetting to see or hear. Make me uncomfortable. Treat me kindly, but help me to love more courageously. Let me do this for you, too.

Tonight, Oak rested his head on my arm as we watched a video of Tracy Chapman perform "Imagine." Later, he proudly stacked the pictured structure that forcefully reminded me of the familiar landmark of a city in mourning. I never cease to wonder what he will dream and build in his life. Holding his vulnerable, sick body reminded me how vital it is to be gentle with ourselves and one another. Apathy or anger will not save us. Staying vulnerable and dependent on each other will. Judging the confines of my small space, my fragile body, my limited mind will only shrink them...but loving myself, and letting you see me and love me, too, will only help possibility to grow.

Rest well, my friends, and know tomorrow I begin again. I do not know if I will feel stronger on my own, but I want to be more connected. I know that, in itself, will strengthen me. Kindly, will you help me grow?

Eulogy for a Bee

Mandy Olivam 2015

I knew she was dead when I saw her. Although this November day is mild, the colder weeks preceding it have left little hope for insects to survive.

There she was, her glaring yellow fur and shiny black eyes catching my eye among green, hardy mint stalks and curled brown oak leaves. I bent closer, feeling my inside recoil as I dared to peer nearer than instinct cautioned. Her intricate legs clung to the flower, her grasp firmly set in death.

I felt spontaneous grief at the poignant arrangement. I have rarely seen a dead bee; I do not know if predators find them before I do or if the typical place bees go to die are usually unnoticed by the likes of me. But that this one came to rest on a blossom like the many she must have visited in her brief life read like a poetic eulogy.

Perhaps, whether or not she knew the end was near, she kept on doing what she was born to do as a bee and continued her rounds from plant to plant until chance led to her die on this particular one. But maybe she knew, in the way bees must know something beyond any human conception of knowing, that it was time. Maybe she sought out a green spot in a world turning red and orange, then brown. Perhaps the cold compelled her to a familiar site of warmth and summer, a memorial of her life in its glory.

Did she die with the taste of nectar on her long, agile tongue? Did she savor the sensation of petals against her abdomen? Did she want to delight one last time in the beauty that was living, to watch this holographic world grow dark from the color of springtime?

She would not even laugh at me if she could, surmising about her motives - I imagine bees do not sense humor or experience motivation, let alone sentiment, in any capacity I could apprehend. Nevertheless, something about her creaturehood, and the meticulous earthiness of her complex, still body, stirred the human emotions of love, sadness, and loss within me.

And like a human who seeks pattern and meaning in what she can never understand, I choose to imagine that she wished to make the most of her journey until the end, like I do. I think she, too, sought sweetness even as things changed and delighted in the simple pleasure of being the creature she was. Even in her death, the happenstance and choice of her existence left a mark on the world, left lessons for a stranger of another species, stirred foreign feelings to reverberate in a day of a life she could not have imagined.

Love's Bond

Sixteen months, a week, and two days: that's how long I have nursed him. I never planned to breastfeed this long, nor did I plan not to - since his arrival, we have simply taken each other's cues. I could have never guessed something so eventually natural would begin with such uncertainty, would feel so foreign, would require such work. I had to surrender to trust in my body, in him, and give up old ideas of ambition and independence. Soreness and fatigue, frustration and fear, slowly gave way to comfort and nurturance, joy and revelation.

In time, together, we found a rhythm that felt as familiar and reflexive as our mutual devotion. My days became patterned by this regular ritual. I felt as in need of our quiet spaces of connection as he did. In the dark, half-asleep, I would rouse mere moments before he would wake and root; latching him on as he laid alongside me let me feel his breathing, which I unconsciously mirrored. We aligned such that, even when he began to drink my milk apart from me, I knew when he was hungry because my body told me at a distance. Nothing could be more profoundly recentering than a constant awareness of my interdependence with my son.

The weeks slipped into months; I witnessed in wonder my own growth and his. The constancy of our nursing relationship was an anchor through transition and tribulation. Sickness and injury, unfamiliar places and overwhelming spaces, were made gentler by this simple, earthy comfort. All days required work. Each new milestone felt like a miracle. Every time, I breathed in surprise - "We made it this far." What was once unimaginable was now an integral reality. Not only was nursing normal, it was a part of my identity. I knew no more holistic fulfillment, no richer grounding in the condition of being human, than feeding him close to my heart.

Shortly after he turned thirteen months old, we learned he would become a big brother. I knew early because my breasts, and my nursing boy, told me clearly: something was different. Nursing had already started to happen less frequently throughout the day, but as the weeks progressed, my supply steadily decreased. The mutual comfort I had always felt when breastfeeding began to morph - at times, the closeness was stifling. The pain was strangely complex. I felt tidal waves of emotion, dramatic peaks of the familiar love but also newly roaring resistance. I was internally conflicted each time I put him to my breast. As he stopped asking to nurse during the day, and as he got less and less milk each time he nursed, I felt a new, stinging despair. "It's ending." Our precious and life-giving nursing relationship was changing. What was the right thing to do? And how could I even begin to imagine letting go?

Thanks to much support, I was reminded of the deep truths that allowed for us to have such a beautiful breastfeeding connection in the first place: trust in my body, trust in my boy...now, too, I must trust that the new life making her/his home in me is requiring what I can give. My boy is turning more and more to kisses, "ugga-muggas," and big hugs than to nursing for our physical affection. Although I put up a kind face when he sweetly asks to nurse, I can see in his eyes that he knows I am in pain. More than once, after a minute or two, he has simply unlatched and rested against me instead. The past week, he has only asked once each night to nurse. Even then, he does not get much milk, and I feel we both know these times are reaching an end.

Tonight was the first night I put him to bed all on my own without nursing him. He did not ask; I did not offer. I sang him songs we've shared since he was first born and I would put him to my breast. He soon settled with closed eyes in the cradle of my arms, hand gently resting over my heart. As I sang old, familiar words, tears choked my song - it became a whisper in his ear: "Baby mine, don't you cry. Baby mine, my oh my. Rest your head over my heart, never to part, baby of mine..." Holding him close, I let the tears come and the bittersweet ache of this new season permeate my heart. This dimension of our love will transform, but it will not pass. Everything is new, yet the bond between me and my boy will never end. The frustration and fear will give way to joy and revelation.

Soon, I laid him in bed, breathing heavily in his sleep. I don't know if the last time he will nurse has yet to happen. I do know that whatever these upcoming days hold will require work, will feel foreign and uncertain. But I trust in the beauty of what we have created together: a bond to shepherd us through unfamiliar places and overwhelming spaces, a love that, even at a distance, helps us to know we belong to each other.

Fruit and Light

This evening, I was heading to a meeting at 13th and Oak Streets from my home in the east end. On I-71, I found myself idling in traffic lingering from a long rush hour. I felt my anxiety grow as the minutes ticked on and the cars merely inched forward. I was facilitating our gathering's opening prayer and reflection, so my late arrival would crunch an already-full agenda. I was regretting not leaving sooner, not somehow anticipating this delay.

Then, like a fresh breeze through the fumes, grace cleared my heart. As I looked into the Louisville skyline, the setting sun cast a gold light over the tall buildings, the metal cars, the crimson trees so that all as far as I could see was touched and illuminated in its mundane splendor. I felt my mind soften; anxiety would serve no one. I felt gratitude well up inside for such a lovely moment and the space to pay attention to it.

I glanced to my left at precisely the right moment to see the next, breath-taking spectacle: a blue heron sailing so near and slowly over the stalled expressway that I could see her elegant legs tucked into her body as she flew directly over my car. Her long beak and gentle wingbeats, her steady and unhurried path through the air, was a wordless message from beyond myself. I looked right and watched her descend into the trees. Only then did the traffic begin to move again.

Twice today, two different friends shared this simple parable with me - the repetition gave me pause to listen with care:

A man was running from a pack of tigers when he suddenly came to a cliff. Quickly, he scurried over the cliff, clinging to some hanging vines to escape. But looking down, he saw more tigers below, looking up at him in anticipation. Then, he noticed a little mouse above him, nibbling the vine to which he clung. Tigers above, tigers below, an insecure perch. Glancing furiously around for an escape, his eyes landed on a vine of wild strawberries hanging within his reach. He then recognized just how beautiful the sunset looked from such a height. He reached over, plucked a strawberry, and savored it with all his will as he gazed into the setting sun.

I know these lessons have come to me because I need them. My straits are not so dire as the fellow clinging to the edge of a cliff - in fact, I am eager to dismiss my struggles because they seem like trivial preoccupations when compared to suffering near and far. There are not tigers immediately above or below me. There are vines and vines of strawberries at my fingertips. Many ache with longing for the faculties and resources to just hold on, like I can by no effort of my own.

But comparison does not change reality, it only undermines my experience of it. Neglecting my own pain is closing the door to awareness of our deeper, common pain. Tending to any pain can consecrate it, can transmute it in service of healing. So can tending to beauty. A wise mentor once said that, by fully savoring and using for good the privileges of my life, I could serve humanity by lending my experience to their utility. If I were to feel too guilty, unworthy, or afraid to use them, I would be squandering them on behalf of all Life.

There are always tigers above and below us. Oppressive systems that operate quietly in plain sight, corrupt leadership that perpetuates games of power, international conflict and gun violence that leave countless dead each day, old ways that keep us from manifesting what is meant to become, new threats that distract us from what it means to be human: these and many others are our common perils. If we are lucky, we cling to each other, waiting, working, hoping.

There are always strawberries and sunsets to savor. The fruit of true relationships, meaningful work, powerful community, deep engagement with the world; the light of gentleness, speaking truth, grounded introspection, compassionate action - these are what we must notice if we are to keep holding in the tension, with intention. Thank goodness we do not just look at the side of a cliff - we can look into each other's eyes and see the mirror of all that is most beautiful, most essential, in our perilous and precious human condition.

Eventually, I alighted off the expressway onto Market Street, due west. The evening air channeled through my open windows as the last strains of an operatic song floated from my car speakers. I looked over to see a festive cook-out happening in an urban park - neighbors laughed and ate while children played in front of graffiti across the lawn. Tables and tables of people and food, lovingly prepared and gathered in celebration on a Tuesday night. Tears sprang to my eyes at the common joy. Smoke rising from the grill caught the golden sun, and smiles all around emitted light. I watched them as long as I could, until they were out of sight.

Loss

On a light day, the fall can feel like bright festivity. Blue skies draw awareness to the crimson tops of trees, cheery in contrast, playful in their varied hues. Busy squirrels and birds tend to nuts and berries and seem to prepare for a cool-weather party. Soft breezes offer gentle refreshment, warmed by the brilliant sun.

In time, the splendor makes way for inevitable decay. Soon, the leaves will brown and curl on the frozen ground. Animals will hide away and hope their storage sustains them through whatever winter brings. The sun will retreat into long, dark nights and gray days. The limbs of the trees will cling to an empty sky.

At times, celebration is clearly an appropriate response to life's beauty - the harvest, worthy of awe and thanks, leads us to effortless reverence and joy. But times when our efforts appear to lay fallow, descend like discarded leaves, or disintegrate into dead earth leave us hollow. How can such loss and letting go yield thanks? Especially when our work has been in attempted service to greater good, the pain can be felt as betrayal.

Both tenderness and decomposition make the fodder for our lives. Each instructs us, if we can receive the movements with malleable hearts, how to become shaped for the times we are given. We can learn to mute our own desires for what is required to receive the gift. We can relinquish old ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing to see the present as it really is. We can shed the hardened skin of ambition to bare our raw, vulnerable humanity.

Through fires and rivers, celebration and sacrifice, we are shown how to see the sacredness of every season; how to treasure what is precious and essential; and how to let go, to be saved.

~*~

"In Blackwater Woods"
by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

Freedom

My husband and I walk along the beach at night, hand-in-hand, guided by the roar of the waves and faint, distant lights. The thick clouds of the day's heavy rains are dissipating; with each step along the sand, another star shimmers through the gray veil. The water gently laps our feet to keep a path ahead smooth and clear.

We find our way to two wooden chairs and recline, taking in the vastness. The rushing waters necessitate an encompassing silence and draw us each into deep reverie and repose. I marvel at the keen twinkle of the stars that make them seem to dance in their firmament. If I was billions of miles closer to them, I could truly see the roiling surface of these monstrous gas spheres. But from such a distance, the stars are brought alive only by illusions of atmosphere and imagination.

I think of the small seed of a baby within me, minuscule and intricate enough to mimic the many lovely shells scattered over the sand. I think of my boy, now asleep not so far away, who earlier tentatively traced patterns in the sand with a scavenged shovel, discerning the appeal of this new matter. Tears catch in my throat as I feel in my spirit the grand possibilities of their lives, the wonder and adventure awaiting them. Will they, too, someday meander along a beach at night, look up at the stars, and feel the power of their finity and smallness? Will they think of their mother and father?

I lay my hand on my husband's arm and speak from my heart into the darkness. I tell him that I need times to rest in wildness and remember then what I am as a human. I long for spaces where I feel the edges of my life, my perpetual closeness to death, and can rekindle love for living. The sky and sand, the water and fire of ocean and stars, hold dominant sway over me - I want to remember and know it.

That which is most transcendent in me rejoices that I have a life to embody, a being in which to experience the holy terror of my lack of separateness. Someday, I will be the foam along the shore. Someday, when Earth has died, I will be mere molecules in a stunning planetary nebula. Tonight, however, I am amazingly human, and I am not afraid. Looking at the sky, I can only cry at the harsh beauty and wish that my children can be free, free, forever.

Our son was the first person in the world to be born an Olivam. Our next child will be the second. My husband and I chose a new name together because we believe in what we can choose to create. We did not choose it because we hope the name will live on for generations, or because we hope to impart some permanent mark on the children who will bear beyond us. All we seek to choose is what we can live for, which we hope will, in all things, be peace - an extended olive branch, fruit that nourishes and heals.

 the first seashell my son intentionally
chose, then gave to me as a gift 

My few hopes for my children I carry like fragile shells in my palm: a delicate prayer that they discover and cherish their hearts' passions against any judgment; a whispered song that their poetry is treasured by others who know them honestly; a silent mantra of promise that they taste bitterness with wonder and savor sweetness with grace. Though their lives, like mine, are ephemeral and granular like shifting sand, they too are wave-emanations of an oceanic cosmos, born to crest and roar and carry something precious before returning to the source. I delight in the mystery that I will never know their journeys fully. I am humbled imagining that I connect to them now, in some unfathomable way, as I gaze at the stars and envision a future in which they will do the same.

After a time, we stand together and begin the walk back home, spoken and unspoken reflections reverberating across the broad, elemental planes. Every step is washed away by the tide coming in; no impression is left except on our own patterns of memory. His warm hand, like the water, brings comfort in the cool night. His gentle grasp tethers me to the path we choose walk; my sinking feet in the sand tell me again the truth of what lasts forever.

A Season of Surrender

Resting my body between warm sheets and cooling my brow with the breeze through the window, I sigh, feeling the ache of a weekend lived well. My belly feels soft and full, the tiny seed of a child noticeable in the center of my awareness.

In the center of my awareness always is the beginning of you. I wonder about all you will be, little one. I marvel that the seasons will pass more quickly than I can imagine until you are welcomed into the world by the blossoms of May. I cannot yet imagine the balance you will invite our family to strike, completing us by offering the fourth element: grounding Earth. To your father's Air, your mother's Fire, your brother's Water, you offer the nurturing soil for roots and stability. Even in your gestation, you are already teaching me differently from your brother.

Your brother rested his body across my lap and slipped suddenly and heavily into slumber this evening. His body curled instinctively into mine, his face lax, his sweet and sleepy breathing as soft as when he was a baby. His trusting surrender reminded me poignantly that he is still my little boy, thank goodness, no matter how tall he looks or independently he moved through the world, who sometimes wants his mama to nurse him to sleep. His hair still smelled like the golden leaves at Cherokee Park.

At Cherokee Park this afternoon, we made an adventure through fields and woods, over bridges and to creeks. Kairi and Roxas, our pit bull puppies, led the way as Oak and his parents followed close behind. Human and canine companions were thick on the path; as Robby guided the dogs and I carried Oak, we received each one as a guest and they received us. Our direction meandered and our pace was erratic...and our eyes delighted in the crispness of leaves just waiting to erupt into color, our lungs in the freshness of air that heralds a new season of surrender.

A new season of surrender is turning in my soul. At The Guest House, we held the question, 'What do I need to sacrifice? What could that new energy bring me?' I want to do everything right for my family, to fulfill my purpose, to make the good choice so as to not squander my life. My striving at times gets in the way of my hope for true freedom. I must let go of the thought that I can decipher the plan. Like the arrival of a second baby in my womb, like each phase of Oak's growth, like the surprise in finding in plain sight the love with whom I could create this beautiful family, like the questions that will remain forever unanswered in me, each gift and guest is right on time.

Right on time, the clouds began to part and the blue sky showed through as the Saturday afternoon wedding ceremony transitioned to a celebratory reception. Children ran through the grass, music wafted across the lake, roses beckoned guests to sit and laugh and delight at long tables around which food and blessing were shared. I looked into my husband's eyes as we held one another close. I thought back to nearly five years ago when we ourselves had pledged to weather all storms, to endure all seasons together. We only knew the edge of what could be our struggle and suffering. We only knew a few dimensions of our particular, ecstatic joy. We only knew a touch of the humility of turning toward each other again and again.

Again and again, in all our unknowing, we have said "Yes" with courage and conviction. A life lived well is not one that is understood but one that is kept close as something to love and tend with all one's heart. As we stood with our oldest child in our arms and our next child between us, the circle contained a small infinity. My love felt as wide as the evening sky.

The evening sky, in its ethereal brilliance, left behind the grays of noon and shone in vivid pinks and blues to remind each onlooker that, before the night guides us home, we will be greeted in mystery and majesty by the grace we have given in this short, magnificent life. The beauty will not evade us. It will flash like a sunset, then sink into eternity's memory to become the colors of a new dawn, which none of us will ever see.

No Separate Shores

The little boy, my son, on his belly and knees with his arms by his side, is gently resting his cheek on sheets, not foreign sand. His eyes are closed in slumber, not death. The sweet ebb and flow of his breathing, like the tides, is a safe, secure rhythm of survival.

I, his mother, watch him through eyes bleary with tears, not sea water. My breath is shallow not because I am fighting for my life, but because I do not have to. We will live tomorrow. We are so safe. Our comfort is decadent. My rage roils in gray waves and retreats under the white foam of despair.

The little boy, OUR son, was carried in waters too shallow to ferry the suffering of his people to the hearts of those who could have saved him. His lifeless body, delivered by the water, was a bottled message from humanity to humanity: "There are no separate shores."

The salty ocean of the world's grief can drown our apathy and wash us anew in compassion. We can respond before another person is thrown overboard without dignity. We can cradle this child in our hearts, his dead mother and brother, his bereaved father, his family left behind, his people - our family left behind, our people.

May this holding keep us from throwing our hands up. May our children, the living, breathe easier tomorrow because we have sent them a fleet of lifeboats. May our children, the dead, forgive us our evils.

The spanses of Earth's water are not walls, but channels. May we seek to traverse the distance with our hearts and walk together on new shores where children play, where they wonder what beauty their lives may hold, where they fall asleep in peace under the stars.

This I Believe - 2008 and 2015

Seven years ago, I wrote and read a "This I Believe" essay at The Rudyard Kipling. Today, I wrote one for tonight's Finding Our Voices event. What has changed in seven years? Only that I continue to know less and less. I can't wait to see what I write (i.e. learn) in another seven years.

The face of my savior is the face of a young girl I met in Haiti when I was fifteen years old. Her eyes were warm and wide-set above a shy, genuine smile, her head crowned with springy dark braids that glistened in the tropical sun. I knew her for only a few days. I cannot remember her name, but I will never forget her shining face, nor the way her voice stirred me as she whispered my name in her beautiful lilting Creole, calling me to a moment of transcendence that revealed to me the deepest truth I’ve come to understand in my short life. As we gazed into one another’s eyes, the barriers of division put in place by the world melted away: we were neither white nor black, poor nor rich, young nor old. We spoke not the same language, except that poetry that now danced between us, the wordless expression of commonality, of shared humanity, of belonging to the world and to one another. She smiled at me, and I smiled back, knowing that we both understood. In that moment, I felt that I could sense every heartbeat on the planet, every pulsation of every creature in the air and the sea, each breath of every tree, the stars swirling in the cosmos. I would feel this way almost exactly a year later as I hugged a homeless man at the St. Vincent de Paul shelter right down the street as he cried that he couldn’t express the gratitude he felt knowing that someone saw him as more than a bum, a nobody. I sensed this as I fed a paraplegic man at Active Day two summers ago and he grasped my hand, looked into my eyes and said, “You are a very beautiful girl,” and I realized he saw his own beauty reflected in our simple act of taking time to be present to one another. I am liberated in the same way as I sit quietly under a canopy of trees or dig my feet into the sand and gaze out across the ocean, recognizing that I and my sisters and brothers of every species belong to this earth, and it is all one.

This I believe: we are here for one another. Dissimilarity is an illusion. We must come to grasp our unity through short lives lived in a world into which we are seemingly born apart; it is our deepest and greatest spiritual challenge. Thomas Merton once said, “In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.” I am ever grateful for the gift my Haiti-sister and savior gave to me: a life of ever-present redemption through relationship, a life lived in reverence of the oneness that connects us all."

- Mandy Zoeller, "This I Believe" Essay         The Rudyard Kipling, 4 June 2008

~*~

The face of my savior looks back at me with my own brown eyes and smiles with his father's chin. He came into the world because his father and I longed to be as close to one another as two humans can be. He originated in mystery; he grew in secret; all the while, I felt him as myself. By stretching the most vulnerable places in me so far I did not think I could hold together, he opened a doorway to the infinite. I did not hold together. His birth caused me to die...and be born anew.

My body and soul expand as he grows. My breasts and belly are carved by a tracery of sacrifice and surrender. My breath, my pulse, my life rhythms no longer belong to me. They never belonged to me; they were given from an ancient lineage of ancestors who hurt and bled and birthed and loved. Now, I give to him. Because I carry my son in my heart, I am reminded each moment that life comes from death comes from life. His arms around my neck, his breathing "Mama" in my ear - an inhale. His little feet carrying him away to some new adventure - an exhale. Every day is an end and a beginning in the story we write on the cosmic tablet of time.

This I believe: only our children, the Life that comes from and continues beyond us, can save us from ourselves. Each beguiled giggle, each sharp tear of knowing pain, each wonder at the complex art of the world unfolding marks a stage in his journey of becoming something I will never know. My son belongs to a world I cannot inhabit and can only cultivate in his tending. I have known no greater teacher, no more humbling master, than the little one who looks at me with my own brown eyes.

The only response to his lessons is to change my life. My being is heavier because I cradle the question: What will his world be like? How can I prepare the way for what he is meant to be? Loving him has compelled me closer to everyone. In such radical intimacy, our collective destinies come together in the simple commandment: Hold on to one another. Walk through the infinite doorway. Give up your life for love.

- Mandy Olivam, "This I Believe" Essay                    The Loft, 28 August 2015

CONNECT - Listen.

Written as a reflection on CONNECT at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest.

"Listen."

Under the trellis, hung by a string, floated a paper with the image of an ear and this simple invitation written on its visible side. My curiosity piqued, I reached out and turned it over to read more - "What are the closest and farthest sounds you can hear?"

My body responded to the question before I could make a conscious decision to comply. The human chatter from a nearby beer tent; the rattle of insects; distant drumbeats; my little boy's delighted exclamations at the wonder of plants and people all around - these came into sharper focus as my awareness honed to my body's particular portals for Sound. I felt my oft relied-upon sense of vision muted in favor of a different vibration. I closed my eyes.

"Listen." This time, the invitation came near musicians' strong rhythms. The pulsations curved palpably through the air, turning each body and tree into a percussive instrument of attention. As I reflexively received the guidance of the beat and thoughtlessly altered my gait, I wondered what systems the pulse of my heartbeat may direct day-to-day by simply doing its work. I swayed in tune.

"Listen." On a bustling path through the woods, the word spang from the sea of leaves and people curtaining an approaching bridge. The still forest and serene lake startled me with their silence in contrast to the milling crowds. The word lingered there, insistent, drawing me into the paradox. I let go of my distraction and fell into the question. Suddenly, I felt transported into the old trunks and ancient waters, vessels for deep resonance. "It isn't just about identifying what you think you can perceive," they whispered in language beyond what my ears could hear. "Sometimes, it's a matter of noticing what you don't know you can sense."

"Listen." As the day slowly darkened, the shift happened without my help. The sunset colors gave way to the muted shades of moonlight on clouds, and my ears began to ring with insect song. My vision dimmed; with every step, the night seemed to be calling more clearly: listen, listen, listen. Soft lights flickered all around, but the blackness steadily narrowed my focus to my most immediate sphere of connection. Soon, I could not even see my child's face - I could only feel his weight in my arms and hear his sleepy breathing. His ear pressed against my cheek.

Sound transcends barriers to light by allowing communications from what we may not see. The calls of distress or delight from creatures upon which we may never lay naked eyes can become a map for kinship with more diverse Life. As I made to return to my familiar habitat for sleep, I felt that my body carried a heightened sense of all things near to me and a memory of all things far, enabled through a slower wavelength. My cells reverberated with the unique, fresh frequency of being alive and engaged.

"Listen," I heard, as I drove home in quiet.
"Listen," whispered
Woods by the road,
Trees by the highway,
Stars above the city,
River below,
Rabbit in the grass,
Moth in lamplight,
Oak tree over our house,
Boy sleeping in his bed,
Moon shining in the window,
Earth, my cradle,
my heartbeat as I closed my eyes.

Scenes of Paradox and Illumination, and What Lasts Forever

...getting stopped by a slow train at the end of a long day, feeling anxious to finally arrive home and rest...then looking up into the majesty of a black line of geese floating on ribbons of pale blue and pink clouds, which I would have missed if I had kept going.

...speeding along, driving through the internal and external traffic patterns that distract and numb me from true attention...then glancing over at just the right moment to see a lone deer nibbling grass in a quiet field behind the trees.

...noticing the slender girl just entering her womanhood curled up in the arms of a tall, thin boy at the bus stop and wondering fearfully to myself what possessive power he exerts on her...then understanding that their limbs construct a tender Pieta, that their posture is a prayerful icon, that her weariness and his protectiveness are sacred in their palpable humanity.

...seeing billows of smog trailing from the garbage truck making its early rounds, loathing its ephemeral poison and even more my own habits that keep me complicit in the planet's destruction...then marveling at the mystical beauty of the smoke's suspension in air, the refreshment of cool morning breezes, the wonder that anything exists at all.

...looking across the dinner table and realizing I will never fully know the depths of the one I made my life partner, nor will he entirely know mine...then looking into his eyes and feeling the ebb and flow of love's waters on our separate shores, remembering that the multitudes are not what we contain, but what we share - what contain us.

...watching work into which I have poured my heart and hope be put to rest or forgotten, tasting labor's bitter futility...then discovering the tools to make something new from the embers of my inspiration and seeing that it is all part of collective evolution.

...realizing that life's labyrinthine pathways lead to the same places no matter how far I think I have come, that progress is cyclical, that many have been where I am and will be where I am going...then sighing at the gift of claiming my particular part, choosing it, and trusting the Greater Work unfolding in and as All Things.

...gazing into my son's eyes and feeling the familiar terror that I will miss significant stretches of his life, that he will have such heavy burdens to bear with the other children left to heal what is harmed, that I cannot protect him from his fate...then being filled with awe by the force of his spirit, the steadiness of his destiny, his tenderness to my fear, his directive toward connection, his innate knowledge of a world I will never see.

...surrendering to today's dark sleep full of unresolved questions and incomplete offerings...then rising tomorrow as something new to begin my work again.

Flower Life

Summer, autumn, winter, spring -
season-petals, Flower Life -
destined path of every thing.

Lessons

What should have been a fun family walk to the park tonight became difficult and challenging, then full-out stressful. It happened because, first, I didn't listen to my own feelings and respond accordingly. When my sweet husband asked how long of a walk I was up for, I should have said a short one because the day had been tiring. Instead, we took the long walk. I felt too tired. I snacked on a little of Oak's orange to tide me over until we got home.

Then, I didn't listen to Robby. He knew it was too far to go to the playground at the opposite end of the park, but I was so fixated on my understanding of what our time would look like, I couldn't stay flexible and receptive enough to do the right thing. I also had no idea it was already almost Oak's bedtime. As a result, poor Oak was way overextended - he had to sit too long, we didn't have much time to play, and then it was really late when we walked home. And his mom had stress-eaten his snack-distraction. Then, he hit his head on the stroller when we went over a bump on the sidewalk. Cue meltdown.

Strained energies and sleepiness made the tearful walk home almost unbearable. When I am not in a good place, I tend to project my perceived insufficiencies in a moment as the reasons why anything that is hard or unclear in my life is hard or unclear. Pumping my sore legs and pushing with sweaty hands, I fought back my own meltdown the whole way home. It helped that my gentle husband carefully corralled the dogs and tried to be positive and patient, but I felt even worse for messing up this chance for a nice time together.

I got my act together once we were home and my boy was tended to and fast asleep. First, food to take care of the dizziness. Then laying down to rest tired body and spirit. Some tears to relieve the stress. A kiss to my hubby and gratitude. Then a pause to reflect on my lessons.

They sounded simple, even rudimentary, when I considered them: Trust yourself, Mandy. You know best what you need and want. Listen to people who know you well. Trust your intuition and understanding. When in doubt, be less ambitious and more present. Remember that everyone has times they disappoint themselves and their family. Remember that you are doing the best you can.

As I slipped into judging the reality that I am still learning these lessons, I suddenly recalled sitting in the grass at the park, hot and frustrated, wrestling Kairi and Roxas on their leashes, and huffily looking at the playground for Robby and Oak. I thought of the moment I spotted them:Robby with a big smile, holding up his arms for a push, and Oak flying with joy in a swing, rising higher and higher into the air with mounting delight. They took my breath away.

Their complete happiness readjusted my internal posture in that moment. Tears, happy tears, sprang to my eyes. Those are my precious boys, I thought, my dear, beloved boys, so fully in the *now* and captivated by the fun that they aren't worried about getting it right or wrong. And the mistake I made in pushing us there led to a moment of beauty. My puppies even enjoyed watching them play. Mercy glowed around me like the setting sun and the love of my two, wise teachers.

Thank goodness I have a lifetime to make mistakes, find the small graces in the paths they create, and walk with companions who help me to see what it's all about. What a gift, this bittersweet, long walk of a life that makes our bodies ache but leaves our hearts full. How poignant it is to struggle and enjoy, then fall into rest with the knowledge that the spectrum of experiences come part and parcel to one another, and it is good.

Sweet dreams, one and all, and mercy on you tonight.

Limitless

In the dark, we stand in the small room between his bedroom and mine and his father's. The doors are open to our left and right, giving full sight of each adjoining space. He reaches intently around my neck and turns his face toward me; his cheek rests on my shoulder, my chin rests on his little arm. Our ears press together and, like trying to hear the hidden seas in a shell, we listen to the common rhythm of our breath.

Suddenly, my feet are resting on sand as I hold my child and gaze upon the roiling ocean, black beneath the night sky. Comets fly overhead to the roaring waves, unrelenting in their ancient motion. Our upright stance unites Earth and Stars, Sea and Sky - earth, fire, water, air, elements that comprise our complex mortal bodies. In that space where there is no end to any direction, the limitless universe makes itself known again.

I feel my son's weight in my arms and the awe of our human task to give meaning to the beauty. Our alignment connects the parallel matters of infinite depth and breadth. Blessed be you, Holy Matter, which leaves me more aware of the certain light we humans bring to the harmony of things. This place of gratitude - for the night and the water, for my son and his tenderness, for imagination and mystery - is, like our spirits, neither wholly immaterial nor perfectly substantive. As far as we know, it is a new frontier in the galaxy.

As I settle my child back to sleep, I find myself whispering an abridged bedtime story: "You are the universe become conscious of itself." Moonshine bathes him in cosmic light. I leave him curled in the soft comfort of a blanket like a turtle resolutely leaves her nest of eggs in the sand: hopeful of the life that will find its way again to the Source, of another generation to carry us deeper and farther.

First Day

As the many First Day of School pictures fill my newsfeed with joy, I have been moved to tears by the innumerable faces beaming with anticipation and excitement. We begin again with a new year, a fresh start, another chance for teachers and students, parents and children, for our systems of education and those who influence them, to get things RIGHT. What a precious and sacred space in-between what is and will be.

As I gaze upon the face of each child, my heart breaks because, while I know the possibilities are endless and the potential is brimming, I also know we will, once again, not fulfill the promise. I know that these bright children will all, at one point or another, be disappointed or let down. I know that the students will be limited by unfit standards or inadequate resources; they will be weighed down by poverty and violence. I know that teachers with the best intentions will be limited by beaurocracy and politics. I know that loving parents will be strained and harried with too much to do. I know that those who affect schools with power and influence will be distracted from the deep questions around the necessary restructuring of our education systems or will grow apathetic as the barrage of needs desensitizes them.

But behind each child’s face, I see the striving Being of Light longing to flourish in the world. I see artists and scientists, prophets and poets, architects and anthropologists, dreamers and doers, seekers and creators of a world made new. My mentor and friend, whose birthday happens to be today, reminded me yesterday: “Remember: there is always space.” There is space for us to do it right. There is space to begin again. In fact, we need not wait for a new school year – each moment is an opportunity to manifest space for growth and hope, for awareness and intention, for justice and peace. May we hold this space of enthusiasm and wonder in such a way that it permeates today…and rises with us tomorrow as we again say “YES” to the promise of what can be.