Thank You

Sun in Pisces and Gemini Ascendent, I have all of the signs in the Zodiac that look in two directions. As a result, I can often see both sides of any argument. It makes me a good lawyer, but, on occasion, an annoying friend and, to tell the truth, at times I can even frustrate myself: "Yes!" cannot be the answer to EVERY either/or question. Which is a long (two-sided) wind-up for saying that I can see both sides of the whole "gratitude" thing.

On the one hand (we Pisces haven't hands, but we Geminis have four!), I can agree with Barbara Ehrenreich that this whole "Bright Siding Thing" has gone way too far. Too many of us get talked into doing crazy shit in the name of being "positive," and the whole "be grateful" thing can cover an awful lot of privilege when it's directed at victims of abuse, people whose jobs got shipped off to someplace where there's available slave labor, or women with cancers growing in their breasts because it is profitable for multi-national companies to pollute our air, water, and food chain (Carolyn Myss has a standing invitation to bite me). My Ascendant Gemini comes with a rather well-developed capacity for cynicism and snark and there's a reason that my first poetry love was (and is) Dorothy Parker. As Derrick Jensen has said, there's actually something quite liberating about realizing that we're completely screwed; I've drawn energy from that wave for almost my life's entire dance. (Parker: "Drink and dance and laugh and lie. Love the reeling midnight through. For tomorrow we shall die. But, alas, we never do.")

On the other hand, I've found the spiritual practice of intelligent gratitude to be very rewarding. I work pretty hard at never having a drink of water and never eating a bite of food for which I don't stop and thank Earth, the people who worked to bring those gifts to me, and myself for the work I've done to ensure that I have what I need. I sit zazen almost every single day in my garden or my ritual room and send gratitude out to the Universe for my healthy, happy family, for a job that I love, for my circle of women, for the roof over my head, and for the absolute lagniappe (years after the breast cancer and the broken ankle that, even mere decades ago, would have killed me) of the moment when G/Son points to my computer and says, "Nonna, that word is 'fox,'" or says, "Nonna, I think your cold is better; I don't hear you coughing as much." When I was in my 20s and going through a very rough patch (personally, professionally, physically, and spiritually), I somehow, long before I'd read anything about practicing gratitude, began the practice of forcing myself to write down three good things that had happened every day. When I go back now and read that datebook, some of the things I had to count to get to three seem pretty strained (it was a tough time), but the practice was transformational for me. It forced me to focus on what I wanted more of and to stop only thinking about the things (almost everything, at that point) in my life that hurt. Whenever Son, growing up a Scorpio through and through, was mad at the world, I would say to him, "OK, that's all true. But tell me three good things that happened today." (Sometimes, I think he thought the best thing that could possibly happen in the whole world would be to have a mom who didn't ask idiotic questions. But he never got to be grateful for that.)

And, so. We have a secular holiday devoted to being grateful. We Americans should be not only grateful but also ashamed and afraid for the fact that we consume far more of the planet's resources than we ought. And we owe a debt of gratitude to so many.

Plants and Animals in the Garden,
We welcome you -- we invite you in -- we ask your forgiveness and
your understanding. Listen as we invokve your names, as we
also listen for you.
Little sparrows, quail, robins, and house finches who have died in our strawberry nets;
Young Cooper's Hawk who flew into our sweet pea trellis and broke your neck;
Numerous orange-bellied newts who died by our shears, in our irrigation pipes, by our cars, by our feet,
Slugs and snails whom we have pursued for years, feeding you to the ducks, crushing you, trapping you, picking you off and tossing you over our fences;
Gophers and moles, trapped and scorned by us, and also watched with love, admirations, and awe for your one-mindedness;
Sowbugs, spitbugs, earwigs, flea beetles, wooly aphids, rose-suckers, cutworms, millipedes and other insects whom we have lured and stopped;
Snakes and moths who have been caught in our water system and killed by our mowers;
Families of mice who have died in irrigation pipes, by electricity in our pump box, and by predators while nesting in our greenhouses;
Manure worms and earthworms, severed by spades, and numerous microscopic lifeforms in our compost system who have been burned by sunlight;
Feral cats and raccoons whom we've steadily chased from the garden;
Rats whom we've poisoned and trapped and drowned.
Deer chased at dawn and at midnight, routed by dogs, by farmers, by fences and numerous barriers;
Plants: colored lettuces, young broccoli, ripe strawberry and sweet apples, all of you who have lured the animals to your sides, and all plants we have shunned: poison hemlock, pigweed, bindweed, stinging nettle, bull thistle;
We call all plants we have removed by dividing you
and separating you, and deciding you no longer grow well here;
We invoke you and thank you and continue to learn from you. We will continue to practice with you and for you.

~by Wendy Johnson, Green Gulch Farm, in Earth Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations for Honoring the Earth, ed. by Eliz. Robers & Elias Amidon.

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Grace

There are two kinds of blogposts that I don't normally do. The first is the "gratitude post." You know: tea, sunlight, morning sex. The second is the "journal post." You know: Here's what I've been doing lately and some random thoughts.

There's nothing wrong with those posts; some folks write amazing blogs full of little else. They're just not my style. But, what's itching my fingers to be written today is a combination of those two posts, so, if you're not a fan of them, either, I won't feel at all offended if you just skip this and come back tomorrow.

There's a song in The Sound of Music that says, "Somewhere in my wicked youth or childhood, I must have done something good," as a way of explaining extraordinary good luck. I use that phrase as a shorthand, but, honestly, I don't believe it. I don't think I did very many good things at all in my own wicked youth and childhood. But I do believe in complete, extraordinary, totally unearned Grace. And that happens to me all the damn time.

I have an amazing doctor. She's a down-to-Earth, unpretentious, good old girl, who talks with me about politics, Arts and Crafts architecture, kids, living in DC, and gardens. She does something most doctors simply cannot do: she listens. And, then, she talks to me, adult-to-adult. She saved my life more than a decade ago when she sent me for a baseline mammogram. Seeing her is more like seeing an old friend who has a needed area of expertise than like seeing a doctor. Especially in our broken health care system, I'm lucky to have found her. Grace.

I have the world's best pharmacist. A guy who will walk out from behind the counter, tip his head, pull his own ear, and show me how to put in the ear drops and then say, "Here, now you show me that you know how to do it." And there we stand, in the middle of the nation's capital, heads tipped and ears pulled, not at all self-conscious. He's been in my corner ever since he was filling my chemo prescriptions and used to give me little slips of paper saying, "Laughter," because he wanted me to take some every day along with the other medicine. I would, and do, trust him with my life. He's just an honestly good person and I'm lucky to have found him. Grace.

I have the best Landscape Guy in the world. Ever since I read The Secret Garden as a little girl, I've longed for my own secret garden. I was in my fifties before I could afford it, and I spent a long, long time looking for the perfect ally. And, then, as soon as I found Landscape Guy, I knew. Over the years, he's helped me to realize a vision that I only kinda-sorta-vaguely knew that I even had. A good xian boy, he completely groks how my garden is a part of my spirituality and he is really expert in local flora. I value his advice as much for the things he talks me out of as for the things he talks me into. I'm lucky to have found him. Grace.

Nothing that I ever did, nothing, could have ever entitled me to my magical women. It's pure Grace that deposited me in this circle. There's a small group of women who are really pieces of my heart, out, walking around. A piece of my heart is on the West Coast, knocking people's socks off, shining as bright as a star in the Milky Way. A piece of my heart is heading bravely into an unexpected challenge. A piece of my heart is starting life with a new-born piece of her own heart, sending pictures to her magical sisters for us to ooohhhhh and awwww over. A piece of my heart is working overtime serving the country at a big federal office. A piece of my heart is preparing for an intense spiritual retreat. A piece of my heart is cleaning out decades of stuff, preparing to move. I was born to live in a community of women and, through no fault of my own, I do. Grace.

This full Moon has been so powerful and, as is often true on full Moons, I've found myself unable to sleep as the amazing silvery light of mystery and ecstacy floods each of my cells and all of the spaces in between. I go out in the moonlight to weed the front cottage garden and, old woman that I am, I weed sitting, and often laying, on the ground. And, Goddess, I can hear it thrum. Feel it thrum. Feel the intense activity of roots, rocks, water, moles, gophers, rabbits, bugs. I've never heard the Earth so ALIVE. Grace. Complete Grace, that the Mother and the Moon would give this gift to someone who drives a car, eats food in packages, runs the air conditioner, pays taxes that support war, prints out cases off Lexis because it's easier for me to read them that way, uses electrons to blog, pees drugs from the amazing pharmacist into the ground water, and, in general, transgresses in a million unjustified ways.

So, there you are. Gratitude and journal all in one; I live flooded with Grace and amazed at what I've received and made solemn when I consider how little I manage to give back.

May it be so for you.

The Waiting Moment Of Grace

Cabbing back from an appointment to my office this morning, I had one of those moments that only happen in (and that keep me in love with) Washington, DC. The street was blocked by some protestors in green shirts, carrying signs that said, "Congress! Listen to Us!" My cabbie took a detour, only to be stopped by a motorcade with two black SUVs, several limos, and a bunch of police. I always ground and send a strong, "Repair the Web" vibe when I get that close to a motorcade in DC; it's bound to be someone powerful. Biden's out of town; Obama gets more SUVs; I'm not sure who this was.

Trying yet another route, the cabbie was apologetic. It was a crazy traffic morning: Gay people were lined up outside the court house to get married, protestors were protesting, crews were filling in pot holes, and now, a government official was moving around the city. I assured him that I wasn't in a hurry, I'm delighted that gay people are getting married on a fine Spring morning and, even when I don't agree with protestors, I love the fact that people care enough about their government to protest. We stopped at a light and -- just like that -- there was what I've come to recognize as "the waiting moment of grace" -- the reason that the Universe brought you this way. Sunlight shining through the tiny, tender, green leaves of a tree in a protected court yard. Something I haven't seen in the months and months and months since Summer ended and Autumn began. Dappled sunlight, one of the great loves of my life.

I love this city, this one, on the banks of the Potomac, with this particular tree standing in the late-morning sunshine. With these protestors and this motorcade and these police cars and this cabbie. I just do. I understand that I'm simple and silly and foolish, but, well, hell, this landbase needs someone to love it. I'll have to do until someone better comes along.

Picture found here.

Home For The Holidays

Breathe.

Center.

Remember who you truly are.

Can you find 10 minutes to go outside and feed the birds? Some seeds, some bread crumbs, a bit of apple spread with peanut butter.

Fill your lungs with the cold Air. Notice your feet upon the chilly Earth. Connect with the Fire deep inside the planet. Watch the Water of your breath turn into mist when you breathe.

It's all real. It's all metaphor. There's always more.

Picture found here.

Howling At The Moon

A few years ago, my husband and I went out howling for wolves, with a dozen strangers. It was a clear, cold night -- so cold. Our guide told us to work for discordance, all of us howling on a different pitch, switching keys randomly, to imitate the sound of a wolf pack in full chorus. We always started out that way, but as each group howl drew out at the end, we found we had turned ourselves into a minor chord -- a rich, deep chord, something Bach would recognize. In a clearing, surrounded by pines that cut the shape of wolves sitting on their haunches, the wolves answered our chorus -- a full pack-howl coming from behind the wolf-trees. I have never loved my husband more deeply. More than that, I loved all those strangers that night. I didn't know a thing about them but I loved them.

I have come to believe that natural beauty can be the ground of human connection, and the richer your experience of the natural world, the richer your experience of the people around you. When we alienate ourselves from the natural world, we alienate ourselves from fundamental parts of ourselves, and become lesser -- and impoverish our relationsips with ohther people, too, because we have less to give.

~Kathleen Dean Moore quoted in How Shall I Live My Life: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization by Derrick Jensen.

Picture found here.

Moore describes the experience in more detail here.

Grace

I saw a fox!

This morning, on my drive to work, I passed, as I always do, a stretch of land that's recently been cleared of almost every single bush, branch, and shrub in order to "develop" the area with a bunch of townhouses. Seems an odd thing, to me, to be doing in the midst of a real estate bust, when there are already far more homes for sale than people looking for homes, but, Goddess forefend, there was land, just sitting there with trees and plants growing on it, providing a mini-habitat for wildlife, and we can't have that in the Patriarchal States of America.

As I drove past, a red fox, likely drawn out of her den by our unseasonably warm weather, came tearing out of the plot of denuded land, down the steep slope that's already losing soil and becoming way too steep, and into the road. I slammed on my brakes, believing all the while that I was going to hit her, I was sure to hit her, I couldn't help but hit her. At the last possible moment, she turned, quick as, well, quick as a fox, and dashed back up the hill and out of my sight.

And that's grace. That's how grace happens. Grace comes dashing out at you unexpectedly while you are driving to work and making lists in your head of things that you need to do and half-listening to the weather report and -- bam -- there's grace. Suddenly, you're yanked into the real, real, real world and every cell in your body is alive, including the synapses that only synapse in response to what we'll call, for lack of a better word, divinityeverythingimmanencegaia.

I love foxes. I love all the trickster Gods and Goddesses and every culture that has known Fox has recognized her as an avatar of the trickster Goddess. She's sly and she's tricky and she lives by her wits and, damn, she's just so gorgeous. I used to have a fox who visited my yard in the snow, but I haven't seen her in a few years; suburbanites tend to harm foxes.

In his amazing book, As the World Burns, Derrick Jensen tells the story of a young woman who wants desperately to save the world while holding on to her iPod and car and all the accouterments of modern civilization. She keeps trying to "work" the lists of Ten Things You Can Do to Save the World or Fifty Steps to Fight Global Warming. She inflates her tires and washes her clothes in warm, not hot, water, and walks to the store.

And of course, it's not enough. Finally, she does a very Pagan thing. She asks the plants and animals what she has to do to save the world. And they give her at least fifty answers. The manatee tells her, "Stop treating us as your enemy. We used to be your friends!" The ram tells her, "Remember that the natural world is not your enemy. The natural world is the basis of your life. If you don't have a good relationship with it, you'll die." The tree tells her, "You evolved together with us to be with us. You're part of us. Let go of your destructive culture and you'll remember how to live with us and how to be happy." The fox tells her, "You're here as much for us as we're here for you."

I've been thinking a lot about that, about the notion that, while we may have to give up some material things -- such as cans of soda and unthinking access to electricity -- in order to save the world, we might get back something important in exchange: a relationship with the natural world that would, in the end, be more far more rewarding and make us whole. A relationship that might expose us to more regular, and less terrifying, encounters with, say, the red fox, which is to say with grace, than the one that I had today. And, even that encounter, fraught as it was, left me stopping at moments throughout my day, during conference calls and meetings and while digesting pleadings, and looking out the window and whispering, "A fox. I saw a fox. I saw a fox and I didn't harm her."

It's almost the Dark Moon and I'm an old woman who's spent a lifetime learning law and not how to track a fox. I could wander that plot all night and never find the fox's den. But I'd like to find her, offer her some berries, and apologize to her for the scare that I gave to her. I'd like to thank her for bringing grace right out of the denuded land into my morning. I'll go off to my altar and see if I can do it between the worlds.

Hey! Fox! "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about language, ideas, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense." Rumi said that, that old fox. He might have been talking about that denuded field on Lee Highway, next to the Whitman Walker labyrinth. He could have been.