Thursday Poem - At the End of the Year

The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline's longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening us shapes of days.

As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.

The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.

Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.

The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.

The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.

Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.

We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.

John O'Donohue,
from To Bless the Space Between Us

Whatever form your celebrations take this evening, be safe, be prudent and be careful.

A whole new calendar year awaits us, and it is one of infinite possibility — radiant sunrises and sunsets, spectacular moons, winding trails and wide flowing rivers, wonder in every leaf and twig and root and blossom. Do whatever you can for each other and the Old Wild Mother, for Gaia and this dear little planet we are wandering around on together. Always remember that we are in this together.

Be wise and wild and well in the coming year — be truly blessed and mindful, fiercely contented in the earthly form you are wearing in life this time around.

Wordless Wednesday - Flowing

Budding Atomies

It was astonishing to peer into the lacy depths of the young maple in the garden yesterday and see buds, lavishly coated with ice and snow, but rosy and vibrant in the depths of winter.

Bud and branch, ice and snow - they were wonderful in the true sense of the word, and each bud was an atomy - each was a tiny perfect world of awe and life and infinite possibility. There was more incandescent hope in that moment of unfettered astonishment and in their minute sparkling presences than I have encountered in some time.

Artless Suspension in Darkness

There is ice everywhere at the chill edge of this calendar year, and the puckish lenses of eye and camera linger lovingly on it, whenever and wherever they encounter it. For medical reasons, I am spending most of my time indoors at the moment, but winter's attentive eye is passionate for all that, and it is astonishing what may be seen from one's window on a winter morning near the end of December.

Ice glosses trees, branches and twigs in the village, and it dangles in artless suspension from eaves, roof lines and windbells. Smooth and glossy as hard candy, it sheathes motorways and walkways, and when, once in a long while, the pale winter sun touches it, the ice becomes lacy coverlets draped across the sleeping hills and fields, delicate papery fronds of grass and ferns protruding here and there. Ice is lovely stuff, however it chooses to appear within the confines and enclosures of village streets or the rolling dunes of the snow drowned countryside.

Obviously, all this northern ice is trying to tell me something, and the messages it holds out are simple and eloquent. There is beauty in every seasonal turning if we have the wits and the grace to see it, and we need these liminal intervals and seasonal turnings to learn and grow and exercise the creativity which is our birthright. Winter's darkness is fruitful, and it is the doorway through which we must pass to make ready for an exuberant blooming somewhere up the trail. Beyond these dark turnings at the edge of the calendar year, Light, enlightenment, warmth and wonder await us.

Readings

The Long Journey Home: Revisioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for Our Time, Christine Downing (editor)

Mysteries of the Dark Moon: Healing Power of the Dark Goddess, Demetra George

The Fruitful Darkness: Reconnecting With the Body of the Earth, Joan Halifax Roshi

It Would Be a Pity to Waste a Good Crisis, John Tarrant, Roshi

The Light Inside the Dark, John Tarrant, Roshi

She is Risen: Reclaiming the Myth of Persephone as a Resurrection Narrative For Women, Rev. Victoria Weinstein

Frothy

Boxing Day - On the Library Table

The frantic "toing and froing" of Christmas Day has just passed by, and the weather on this day of boxing and réchauffé repasts is freezing rain. When I pulled the draperies open an hour or three before before sunrise this morning, the village already wore a thin glossy patina of jeweled ice, and every rose hip in the garden had become a work of glistening art. Walking will be a treacherous undertaking, and I am likely to go posterior over tea kettle at the drop of a hat (thus undoing all my surgeon's good work), so this is a good day to stay indoors and rest with several pots of tea and a good book.

I never need an excuse or rationalization for parking myself comfortably with a book and a pot of tea, but after the frantic exertions of Christmas, I am settling in happily for the remains of the holiday interval with a lovely great tottering stack of books, all of them already read (at least once) and all of them much loved. That carefully assembled heap of old friends will keep me amused for the rest of the winter, and the list below, by no means, includes all the dear companions who will find their way to the library table in the days and weeks ahead, but it is a start. There are at least three camera manuals to be added some time today. Perhaps a good word for next week's Friday ramble would be hibernation. Emulating the bears of the Lanark Highlands seems like a plan.

FICTION

Coyote Cowgirl, Kim Antieau
The Church of the Old Mermaids, Kim Antieau
Tamsin, Peter Beagle
The Folk of the Air, Peter Beagle
The Hummingbird Wizard (3 volumes), Meredith Blevins
The Mists of Avalon, Marian Zimmer Bradley
The Dark is Rising (sequence), Susan Cooper
Moonwise, Greer Gilman
Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kay
The Beekeeper's Apprentice (series), Laurie R. King
The River Midnight, Lilian Nattel
Divine Circle of Ladies (series), Dolores Stewart Riccio
Prospero's Cell (trilogy) Jan Siegel
The Fifth Sacred Thing, Starhawk
Eagle of the Ninth (sequence), Rosemary Sutcliff
The Woodwife, Terri Windling

NON-FICTION
Dawn Light, Diane Ackerman
Deep Play, Diane Ackerman
The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram
Sacred Silence, Jean Arp
The Tree of Meaning, Robert Bringhurst
Everywhere Being Is Dancing, Robert Bringhurst
Beyond the Blue Horizon, E.C. Krupp
Sktwatchers, Shamans and Kings, E.C. Krupp
The Zen of Creativity, John Daido Loori,
Odysseys, Freeman Patterson
Shadowlight, Freeman Patterson
Ordinarily Sacred, Linda Sexson
Finding Beauty in a Broken World, Terry Tempest Williams

On This Day...

Merry Christmas!

Thursday Poem - The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Susan Cooper, The Shortest Day

One of my personal Yuletide holiday traditions is to read the five volumes of Susan Cooper's magnificent "Dark is Rising" cycle every year. Although Yule has passed by now, her lovely Christmas Revels poem is perfect for this whole holiday interval in which we celebrate the return of light to the world.

Wordless Wednesday - Crowned

Thoughts the Day After...

Here we are, just a day past the Midwinter Solstice, and the garlic chives photographed in seed only a few weeks ago are already up to their eyebrows in snow and wearing little white hats. Most of my garden has disappeared completely, and only a few higher branches and twigs are visible through the kitchen window as I stand here with a sunrise mug of tea in hand and and slow morning thoughts.

A German Shorthair Pointer, Spencer does not have much fur, and he is reluctant to spend much time outside in cold snowy weather. His trips out into the winter garden are brief, and he returns to his own comfy chair in the window with deep sighs and many reproachful looks.

One starts off on a new trail after December 21st, albeit with small steps - trying to coax order into the inevitable holiday clutter, lighting a candle at sundown to hold back the darkness which will continue to hold sway until the end of January, starting a candy-colored Amaryllis bulb in a sunny southern window, cultivating warm thoughts in these deep freeze days of double digit minus temperatures and deep snow.

Most of all, one tries to cultivate an open, thankful and very present state of mind, and I find myself viewing many holiday doings with dismay. Where does all this stuff come from anyway? Is it useful? What is one to do with it and where will it go when the holiday has passed into memory?

The interval between the Midwinter Solstice on December 21 and Little Christmas on January 6th is always a quiet reflective one for me, and its motif is Light: the perfect illuminations of dawn and sunset, the faces of clan and friends, the old fireplace alight with logs of apple, cherry and birch, fragrant honey scented beeswax candles burning on the old oak table - the kindling and nurturing of a steady light within.

Yuletide Candle

Yule blessings to you and your clan
at this turning of the Light,
a fire burning bright on your hearth,
friends and kin seated at your table,
love, health and prosperity in the year ahead.
May all good things come to you!

On the Eve of Yule

The grim news has come to my attention
that something in the world has come unfixed —
owls no longer haunt the fir lined alley
appearing out of the dreamtime as we pass,

indeed whole souls have gone missing, as if being
has itself gone dim — like an old man’s seeing.
A vital light is missing from the world, by which I mean
that ephemeral gold that spins the seen

and unseen worlds together. In my life
I don’t expect to see a springtime swelling
of the shriveled nut so many spirits
have become. What’s to be done?

This is the winter solstice of an age,
although the season’s worst is yet to come.
What’s delicate and true has come undone:
is the only fitting answer
a pure and focused rage?

Today I wove a wreath of bone and fir
and filbert withes, twined in sacred holly,
incense cedar from an ancient tree.
I wove, affixed a star, and spoke a spell:

“Let this circle stand as the gate of winter
sure passage to the days of lengthening light.”
And then I whispered names in the fragrant bough
Lacing love like a scarlet ribbon through the fronds.

Long I wove and dreamed back friends and kin,
each great soul calling back the sun.
I thought at last, “My life here is not done.”
And some bright star rekindled from within

Sandy Jenson, The Solstice Wreath

The shortest day and the longest night in the ever turning calendar of the seasons, Yule is classified as a "low holiday" or lesser celebration on the Wheel of the Year, but it has always been one of my favorite observances. If you live as far north as we do, this festival in the heart of winter is one to observe with thanksgiving and reflection, with song, mulled cider, fine munchies, tales, firelight and rowdy vibrant fellowship.

From this hallowed moment onward, we will gain a few minutes of precious sunlight every day until the Summer Solstice on June 21. Let the bells ring out, and the games begin.

For some reason, I always find my Yule posts vaguely unsatisfying - I write and rewrite, scan DVD after DVD in my archive, searching, always searching, for an image which will somehow encapsulate the magic of this ancient snowbound holiday. When I have finished and uploaded my post, I continue to feel that I have not done justice to the day and its timeless rites of illumination.

Sandy Jenson's lovely poem is printed in the frontispiece of one of my favorite books on solstice observances, Richard Heinberg's Celebrate the Solstice: Honoring the Earth's Seasonal Rhythms Through Festival and Ceremony, published by Quest in 1993. Her poem is a poignant tribute to this stormy winter day on which we celebrate the triumphant return of old Helios, the ascendance of light in the fertile darkness of winter.

Happy Yule to everyone!

Clear Blue Morning

Wordless Wednesday - Peaceful

Curious

There he (or she) is, clinging to the old tree and looking through the kitchen window right at me as I stand looking out with tea in hand.

The face is a study in mischievous curiosity and the fond hope that someone will flounder out into the snow and replenish the feeders in the garden, one of which is just for squirrels.

Home Again

The road goes ever on and on (to quote J.R.R. Tolkien), and I often think that the last bend in that marvelous winding thoroughfare before one reaches home is the finest turning of them all. Does anyone remember that lovely song cycle composed by Flanders and Swann using Tolkien's lyrics from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?

The first surgery has been completed, and I am home again with Himself and Spencer, my books and music and tea stash within easy reach, a fine hazy winter day beyond the windows. There is a certain amount of discomfort at the moment, but I am really feeling quite all right, and that is something of a surprise, all things considered. Now I must rest before we tackle the other medical "stuff" in the new year.

A Zen koan... When is a committed blogger not present? The answer (if there is a right answer) is that she is not present when she is unavoidably detained in other places (like hospitals) and schedules her notes and images to be published while she is away.

This morning, I am truly present and happy to be here. Although I will be largely confined to peering at the world from my windows for the next week or three, there will surely be much to see. As Tarrant Roshi wrote in a recent article in the Shambhala Sun, when we are truly present in our own lives, they extend infinitely in every direction. Emaho!

The Sound of Snow

On days like this, the highlands are so still and hushed that one can hear snow falling among the bare trees, spiraling effortlessly down and coming to rest on barn roofs and old rail fences. Now and then turkeys call, or one hears the muffled footfalls of deer, but that is all.

Snowy Hills

Hills shrouded in drifting snow, and the sound of the little river running down the gorge to the lake....

This is the day on which the gates of the Two Hundred Acre Wood swing open and remain so all winter. That permits our friends to keep the long steeply sloping laneway clear for us through the long white season, and their kind gesture allows us to visit our favorite place from now until springtime.

Thursday Poem - Walking North

No matter how I turn
the magnificent light follows.
Background to my sadness.

No matter how I lift my heart
my shadow creeps in wait behind.
Background to my joy.

No matter how fast I run
a stillness without thought is where I end.

No matter how long I sit
there is a river of motion I must rejoin.

And when I can’t hold my head up
it always falls in the lap of one
who has just opened.

When I finally free myself of burden
there is always someone’s heavy head
landing in my arms.

The reasons of the heart
are leaves in wind.
Stand up tall and everything
will nest in you.

We all lose and we all gain.
Dark crowds the light.
Light fills the pain.

It is a conversation with no end
a dance with no steps
a song with no words
a reason too big for any mind.

No matter how I turn
the magnificence follows.

Mark Nepo

Wordless Wednesday - Still in the Wind

Old Barns and New Snow

How moving and sad too, to stop by the side of a country road in early winter and look across fields of new snow, woodlots, split rail fences and bales of hay at abandoned farms, log cabins and old log barns. On a cold morning, one can hear the wind whistling through the gaps in the walls, and it has a hollow lonesome sound, even from quite a distance.

Snug in our warm and comfortable twenty-first century homes, it is easy to forget such things, but well over a century ago, a family homesteaded here. They cleared the land of trees and rocks by hand, erecting a home for themselves, barns and other outbuildings for their livestock, fences to define their fields and keep their creatures safe. They made it through the deep cold winters year after year, carving out a life for themselves in the wilds and laying the foundations for the modern life we enjoy here today.

Now the fruits of their back breaking pioneer labors lie abandoned, forgotten and sleeping in an early winter sun. Every year, I find myself wondering if these magnificent old barns will persevere and hang on for another year. There is a story here, and I should be telling it.

Blues Skies and Snow

You awaken, and the world is magical, a different place - it snowed overnight, and the snow is still here this morning.

The sky is that perfect shade of blue that only appears in a northern winter. The landscape is dusted with fine white powder, the trees touched with a filigree of hoarfrost and the first icicles. The early sunlight shines through the icicles and turns everything platinum and gold.

The forgotten trail along the edge of the field beckons, and it calls in a siren voice that simply cannot be ignored. Come, come, come...

Dana and Happy Nattering

Here we are again, and so it begins - the seasonal dana or winter feeding of creatures large and small, feathered and furred, who dwell on the Two Hundred Acre Wood all year long and give us so much pleasure in each and every season.

For the last several days, we have been met right at the car by flocks of hungry chickadees, a woodpecker or three and a small number of nuthatches. Our avian friends have already emptied the feeders along the trail into the deep woods, and they are waiting exuberantly for their banquet table to be replenished.

Off we go, all of us together, the two-leggeds carrying suet, niger, millet and sunflower seed, the chickadees, woodpeckers and nuthatches dancing from branch to branch and chattering happily. Ravens circling overhead announce our too slow (for the birds anyway) progress along the meandering way through the trees.

Wreath of Good Fortune

Friday Ramble - Always a Doorway

Every once in a while, something drops into your life like a fragrant refreshing rain, and just when you need it. This week that something was the January 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun, and in particular an article called "It's a Pity to Waste A Good Crisis" by John Tarrant of the Pacific Zen Institute.

The article exists in its entirety as a PDF file at Tarrant Roshi's own website here, and it is a powerful piece of writing, an eloquent reminder of something I always seem to forget. Happiness lies within us and not without—it is not irrevocably linked to exterior circumstances and exterior modes of being. We can embrace the ambiguous, the unknown and the ostensibly painful in our lives with open arms and rest in the sure knowing that there is beauty, balance, fruitfulness and an indescribable richness to be found in what Roshi calls "the warm darkness of uncertainty".

There are seven koans or sections in the Shambhala article, and I am particularly fond of No. 4: If You Are in a Predicament, There Will Be a Gate. It could not have resonated more if it had been written in a letter for my eyes only. We need to remember that mindfulness traces a powerful glowing doorway in the fabric of the universe, and that there is always such a doorway (or gate) waiting for us when we need it. I shall carry the words with me wherever I go as I contend with my own medical "stuff" in the weeks and months ahead, particularly the last sentence.

"... when my mind stopped reaching out and fell back into the warm dark of uncertainty, time stretched out infinitely on either side and there was a pool of joy that seemed bottomless—joy in breathing, joy in hearing the birds in the cold before dawn. Having cancer was much more exciting than sitting in an armchair watching the game on Sunday. And everything I looked at had the aspect of tenderness and delicacy. I looked into the checkout clerk’s eyes and saw the universe looking back."

Simply magnificent...

December's Moon of Long Nights

This morning, I was tempted to indulge in a few verses of very bad homegrown poetry, but refrained from doing so - I wanted to honor in a net of inadequate words what appeared at first glance to be the last full moon of 2009. As it turns out, December blesses us with two full moons this year, and the thirteenth moon falls on the very last day of the month and this calendar year.

There is something poignant, telling and rather melancholy (or wabi sabi) about viewing December's moon through the bare branches of the old ash tree in the garden as Spencer and I did last evening. My beloved old tree is slowly expiring, or as Wendell Berry once put it, "passing into the fund of things". Branches and twigs have been falling away for some time, and I have no idea whether she will exist next year in December. That makes me a little sad, for I have been watching the moon rise through her eloquent outstretched arms for many years.

We also know this moon as the: Ashes Fire Moon, Bauhinia Moon, Bear Moon, Beginning of the Winter Moon, Big Bear's Moon, Big Winter Moon, Birch Moon, Center Moon's Younger Brother, Cold Moon, Cold Time Moon, Bitter Moon, Deer Shed Their Horns Moon, Dumannos Moon, Eccentric Moon, Elder Moon, Frozen over Moon, Heavy Snow Moon, Holy Moon, Hellebore Moon, Her Winter Houses Moon, Hunting Moon, Ice Lasts All Day Moon, Ice Moon, Little Finger Moon, Little Spirits Moon, Long Snows Moon, Middle of Winter Moon, Moon Before Yule, Moon of Cold, Moon of Long Nights, Moon of Much Cold, Moon of Popping Trees, Moon of Putting Your Paddle Away in the Bush, Moon of Respect, Moon When Buffalo Cow's Fetus Is Getting Large, Moon When Deer Shed Their Horns, , Moon When Little Black Bears Are Born, Moon When the Young Fellow Spreads the Brush, Moon When the Wolves Run Together, Moon When the Sun Has Traveled South to His Home to Rest Before He Starts Back on His Journey North, Narcissus Moon, Night Moon, Oak Moon, Paulownia Moon, Peach Moon, Poinsettia Moon, Popping Trees Moon, Poppy Moon, Real Goose Moon, Sap Moon , Sjelcasen Moon, Small Spirits Moon, Snow Moon, Star Frost Moon, Turning Moon, Thirteenth Moon, Under Burn Moon, White Orchid Tree Moon, Winter Maker Moon, Winter Moon, World Darkness Moon, Yule Moon

Winter Light

A Cold Frosting

On this first day of December, the north wind has a bite which awakened Spencer and I the moment we stepped outside to greet the day with a gassho.

A slight frosting of yesterday's snow still remains on the old box elder (Manitoba maple) tree in the south-east corner of the garden behind the little blue house in the village. With its thousand and one winding branches and artfully curling twigs, the old tree is a thicket all by itself, and I am not alone in loving it - the tree is the preferred perch for crows just after sunrise.

Fluffed up against the wind, the dark birds wait for their breakfast (whatever remains of Spencer's meal from the previous evening) to be brought out and placed under the tree. We think of it as an offering of sorts, and the crows are always pleased. Is our morning group "a murder of crows"? We prefer to call the wily assembly " a rowdy of crows".

Happy December!