Rather than practicing Qi Gong, meditation, and writing a blog post this morning, I took my dogs on a long walk in the foothills. It started to rain. I didn’t have an umbrella or raincoat. It was a light rain and refreshing as I was so hot. It was quiet. We saw hardly anyone. The mountains in the distance were misty and covered in fog. All day I was itching to get here, to reach out to whomever and make a connection, to say, I am here. Where are you? I hope you are okay.
That’s what I’m doing here, why I’m doing this—to share with you that I am okay, fine, and brilliant, and sometimes wretched. I hope you are fine and brilliant as well, and if you are sometimes also wretched, my heart goes out to you. I wish we could be together. And we are, here, in this virtual space.
Peace be with you, my friend.
The way to turn this arrow into a flower is to open our hearts and look at how we try to escape. We can use our pleasure-seeking as an opportunity to observe what we do in the face of pain.
--Pema Chödrön. Comfortable With Uncertainty, p.41
My husband wanted my homemade cinnamon rolls for Father’s Day. I started them too late Saturday evening to make our rendezvous with the stars up in the mountains. We were planning to drive up to the observatory, a place we’d never been before, but the rolls took precedence. The dough needed time to rise, and by the time I got them rolled out and cut with a piece of thread into spirals like miniature Milky Ways, the sun had long set, and it was too late to start a trek into unknown territory along winding mountain roads.
There will be other times, I thought. The stars will be there for eons beyond my time. I am the one who won’t be here, and neither will my husband be here to enjoy my cinnamon rolls. He was delighted this morning, eating them hot out of the oven glazed with my rich vanilla cream cheese frosting.
Next time, I will make sure the real Milky Way takes precedence.
I looked longingly at the clear blue sky, thinking how lovely the stars must have been last night, happy for all the amateur astronomers who gazed at nebulas and planets. I would have liked to have seen them. My understanding is that even if you don’t have equipment, an astronomer happily gives you a look through their telescope, so long as you don’t fiddle with the dials.
Instead, we spent a pleasant evening at home watching His Dark Materials on HBO and The Crown on Netflix.
And in the morning, I rose early and sat on the patio reading the Sunday paper, looking up at the deep blue sky, thanking God for this wonderful life — thanking my lucky stars. Next time, I will make sure the real Milky Way takes precedence. I will view its trail before I die and become part of its dust, leaving my imprint in the darkness above, a mystery for all to see and wonder at.
"One can be a father and a virgin also...a person/soul to and within himself, as well as a father who leans out the window of soul and ministers to others in meaningful ways."
from p. 319, Untie the Strong Woman by Clariss Pinkola Estés
My 30-year-old daughter arrived yesterday to visit us here in the mountains. We went for a walk after dinner, and the first thing I said to her was, “Is there anything you want to know about me? Anything you’ve wondered? Any questions you might have?” She gazed at me, open-eyed, frank, totally accepting of the question, not like it came out of left field, confirming that yes, she has wondered; she does have questions. I started by telling her about a Tweet I wrote that got 434 likes, lots of encouraging, supportive comments, and several re-Tweets about surviving survival sex as a homeless teen and how the shame is still alive and that I’m writing about it because the shame belongs elsewhere. My daughter said, “Tell me about that.”
So I did.
Was it too much? For both of us?
Spirit Guides keep telling me, “You did well, Polly. You did well.”
So here I sit on this fine Sunday morning before the sun pops over the mountaintop, enjoying the quiet in the house before everyone gets up, feeling grateful for the guidance I receive from my Loved Ones. They always let me know the right action for my highest good and that of others where it is in my power to help facilitate Essence. I will ask my daughter today, ‘How are you doing? That was a bit much, I know.’ She promised to let me know when the stories I tell are too much. She wants to know me, who I was, the stories that have made me who I am in this physical human form. These stories tell of my spiritual evolution as well, the essence of me. At least, that’s how I think of it, of me. And her. We are a unit, she and I — mother and daughter. And she is her separate self, and I am my separate self.
I want to flow in the spirit of Life, to reach my highest evolution…
I want to flow in the spirit of Life, to reach my highest evolution, which will take forever, I guess. I don’t know for sure. But I want to live conscientiously aware of my Being and vibrate with all the energy available to me and do my part in my capacity as mother to help my daughter do the same. And so, I want her to know her roots, where she comes from, who helped bring her into this world and chaperone her for a short while.
The sun has now risen and is pouring golden light onto the dining room table where I write. We are heading into the mountains today to view the peak blooms of the wild rhododendrons.
"All this self-questioning is not meant to be punitive or self-deprecating, but rather in the spirit of the birth of the Light of the World, that is, in the spirit of loving and enlightening our tired, burdened, and stale ways of thinking/acting in the past."
from p. 260 of Untie the Strong Woman by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD
We ran into a mama bear and her two cubs on our hike in the mountains yesterday. My husband yelped, “Bear!”
I was in the lead. “Where?”
“Right there, in the bushes.”
Her brown snout, surrounded by black, poked through the leaves. We backed up slowly and sat on two boulders by a trickling creek about 20 feet away. I pulled out my phone and consulted the Internet on what to do when encountering a bear on the trail. I’d read such articles a dozen times, but still, I felt unsure of what to do next.
I often feel unsure about what to do next in life when I sense danger lurking ahead, real or imagined. In this case, we didn’t know how dangerous the situation was. A mama bear will be protective of her cubs. She instructed them to scurry up the tree, and there the two little darlings went. But soon, they came back down. We waited ten minutes. My husband advanced to see if mama bear had moved on. There she was in the same spot, and the two cubs went back up the tree.
The instructions on the Internet were mildly helpful. It said, ‘Don’t make loud noises. Wave your arms slowly. Speak in a low calm voice to assure the bear you don’t mean any harm.’ Well, our two dogs were with us. They bark. On the one hand, they might defend us and scare the bear away if she rushed at us. On the other hand, if we tried to sneak past her and the dogs picked up her scent and snarled, would she attack us from behind?
We waited for another ten minutes when along comes an elderly man with his hiking stick. He didn’t see the bear and walked right past her without a problem. My dog bit him when he held out his hand to greet her. Geez.
It’s good to be cautious when you encounter possible peril. It’s wise to pause and think about the best way to proceed.
We decided to chance it or we could be there until the bear moved and it showed no signs of doing so. The dogs were quiet. So was the bear. That’s the last we saw of it.
Two young women approached us with their yappy dog. “Watch out for the bear and her cubs up ahead,” we warned. The women were excited. I would have been, too, not long ago, but this was my fourth bear encounter. They are big and real and wild and, yes, possibly dangerous. It’s good to be cautious when you encounter possible peril. It’s wise to pause and think about the best way to proceed.
The old hiker walking alone without a care simply enjoying the day was a signal to us that the bear was probably as afraid of us as we were of it, and wanted no trouble.
No one was hurt, not bear, humans, or dogs, so how we handled it worked out fine. There’s no one way to react to hazard. Each situation merits its own approach. Ours in this situation worked just fine.
I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
--Psalm 4
