Contemplation, January 2015

To me everything is supernatural.

-Richard Jefferies,

The Story of My Heart, 1883

2015.  The second day of the new year feels cold outside. A bit of snowfall early in the dawn hours on New Year's day greeted us in Albuquerque.  It is welcomed magic for the soul, a clean slate to begin again. By day two it is almost completely melted away but some dusting remains on the duck pond where I am enthralled by nature this morning.

My friend, Karen, is co-leading an educational workshop for teachers. While most of the class group takes a walk to the river, I stay back with another woman named Deborah and watch the ducks on the pond from a warm spot inside. With cozy chairs and couches, a library to our backs of reference books and bird specimens on shelves, we two are enamored with the feathered party happening beyond the large windows in front of us. Some aquatic creatures viewed through binoculars look like abstract paintings-especially the wood ducks.  Pairs of colorful green headed ducks and their camouflaged mates float in the small area that is not frozen.  Others walk about on the frosty ice leaving their prints and occasional skid marks.  The coots are my favorite, they have a dark grey plumage, a stark white bill and celadon- green lobed feet.  

Ruddy ducks, a stiff tailed duck with a broad bill are amongst the other ducks-they have feet set back on short legs for paddling around in the water but on the ice they are clumsy, almost completely disabled.  I see one struggling to stand up and walk, it is painful to witness. 

Groups of geese fly in and out. A lone coyote curled into a ball next to the edge of another pond we stood near earlier looked out at us from behind low shrubs with one eye, his other eye tucked into a fold in his fur. He is super natural.

Speakers in the corners of the room bring the quacking, honking sounds of the pond like music inside our glass -walled theatre. Deborah and I continue to watch the ruddy duck-we are distressed that she may be distressed- stuck on the thin ice. She sits in one spot with her back to us, Deborah tells someone who works at the nature center about the stuck duck and she let's us know she will keep an eye out for us when we leave. I wonder if the ruddy duck knows she is on thin ice, that underneath is water and freedom?  

Richard Jefferies, a nineteenth century nature-mystic-writer, a British Thoreau, speaks to me across two centuries in words that pull at my heart.  I just recently learned of him from one of my favorite contemporary environmental writers, Terry Tempest Williams.  She and her husband Brooke, reintroduced Jefferies book, The Story of My Heart, in the hope that it will be meaningful to a new generation of readers.  In it Jefferies says, 

"Through every blade of grass in the thousand, thousand grasses; through the million leaves, veined and edge-cut, on bush and tree; through the song-notes and the marked feathers of the birds; through the insects' hum and the colour of the butterflies; through the soft warm air, the flecks of clouds dissolving--I use them all for prayer."

I relate with his revery for nature- everything is supernatural- some great mysterious force in action, beyond our comprehension.  Every thing is cause for prayers, prayers of gratitude.

Later in the afternoon we get word that Ruddy flew off when someone from the nature center approached her at the pond's edge.  All is well. 

A Flight, December 2014

I am at a threshold experience that I long to share. Come with me please to marvel at a bird sanctuary less than an hour from the urban sprawl of Albuquerque where I live.  It is the time of the annual festival of the Sandhill Cranes, they migrate south along the Rio Grande River corridor from northern states to winter in the fields here in New Mexico.  Many who live here or travel to see them love the sound of their unique call as they fly over, reminding us of the ancient cycles of nature as the season shifts.  

We drive into the refuge area, just off the highway to the Bernardo Wildlife Area, I was unaware of this refuge until my friend brought me there yesterday.  We witness the elegant spectacle of hundreds of the Greater Cranes in the fields in the late afternoon on an overcast day, cool enough for a coat and hat.  We walk and talk of personal things, stories of our childhoods, memories of years gone by, while around our conversation a certain crescendo of glory is building up.  We spot a small grouping of mule deer among the cranes, they look toward us, as we look to them.  What does their shy manner speak to the cranes? They do not appear to fear each other as they mingle together in the fields; fur and antlers with feathers and long beaks.  Tenderly, the deer edge out from the trees at the end of the day, magnificent creatures, especially the males with their large treelike racks.  A good writer is encouraged to use descriptive adjectives to feed the reader a sense of the picture, but I know this picture- a technicolor movie really- is beyond my capability to paint in black and white or color, in words or diagrams.  But never-the-less, I am compelled to try. 

We walk awhile and then drive the loop road around the refuge spotting a red-tail hawk and later perhaps the same bird with it's mate on a telephone pole.  Around the horizon of the fields of corn, planted for the cranes to feed on are mountain views-blue violet silhouettes, Manzano Peak to the east. We are only an hour before the fly-in, when the birds move at dusk from the fields to the safety of a marsh to roost for the night.  There they will stand in the shallow waters until sunrise.  This evening ritual is a massive migration as hundreds of these great soaring ones, a nature film of flight, create a spectacle of sheer delight. My friend and I station ourselves at the north edge of one of the observation blinds and watch awestruck as the cranes float in while the setting sun glows dimmer with the last Naples yellow rays streaking the skies.  All the while an unusual rainbow ball of hues-red, orange, yellow, blue- appears to sit on top of the mountain range to the south and incredibly reflects into the marsh waters in front of us like a finger of God. The cranes call a chant to one another in a haunting baritone sound. Their chords touch our souls as we watch spellbound until the black-ink marsh is full with their bodies. Are you with me? Their legs come down to land first as they descend, their huge wings like parachutes glide them into place. They settle in as more then more, surely a thousand crowd together for the night to unfold. I am on safari in a sacred place. As the sun slips away my intuition tells me to turn around and walk away from the marsh to see the last cranes, the later arrivals coming in over head from the east.  At first I ignore this inner voice but it continues and I tell Elise I am going to walk back toward the car. I take a short path to an open field and look up to see their massive wing spans- six or eight feet across-so close I can hear them beat the air above, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. And then, to the east above the purple mountain range I see the full moon has just risen amongst the lavender cloud cover. Brilliant, it slips like a jewel in and out of view:  punctuating eternal.  I stop breathing.  I am one with it all, there is no separation, only amazement.  My mouth drops open as I marvel for some minutes, frozen in place to take it in, this sensory soaring sight. Then I long to share this with my friend; I turn and run back to where she is standing with her camera at the edge of the marsh. "Come quick! Come with me please." Come feast on this extraordinary, non-ordinary reality around us, and be humbled in speechless revery. For a few precious minutes, we transcend the physical, we become cranes and fly.

 Photo by Elise Varnadoe

John Muir: Ecology of the Heart

"Fountain Lake Farm in central Wisconsin, the boyhood home of Sierra Club founder John Muir, was recently purchased for protection by a Wisconsin land trust. The newly protected area will adjoin the John Muir Memorial County Park and be part of a larger 1,400-acre natural preserve..." -Sierra Club Blog Notes

When I was in elementary school, K-6th grade, I attended John Muir Elementary in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.  At the time, being a wee one, I did not know what a profoundly lucky thing that was and only recently have I started to put together all the factors that made that experience the perfect one for me.  I learned about the man, John Muir, when I was young and have continued to be in awe of his foresightedness and what he did to make our wilderness areas protected sacred spaces.  When I learned today about the farm in Wisconsin where he grew up when his family immigrated from Scotland, I thought again about how fortunate I was to know something of his life's work when I was a child. The father of ecological activism taught us about preservation. His life was built on the belief  that our wilderness areas were to be valued, that the Redwood forests and the mountain tops were temples.  

I just read a powerful couple of paragraphs by David Orr from his book Earth in Mind: 

"It is worth noting that [environmental devastation] is not the work of ignorant people. Rather, it is largely the results of work by people with [college degrees]. Elie Wiesel once made the same point, noting that the designers and perpetrators of... the Holocaust were heirs of Kant and Goethe, widely thought to be the best educated people on earth.  But their education did not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity.  What was wrong with their education?  In Weisel's words, 'It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers rather than questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience.'

     I believe that the same could be said of our education.  Toward the natural world it too emphasizes theories, not values; abstraction rather than consciousness; neat answers instead of questions; and technical efficiency over conscience."

Yet, we are all in this together. We all have had purchase in the Redwoods of California. We have all sat down for a meal at a picnic table, driven in automobiles, turned on lights in our homes and therefore contributed to the clear -cut Redwood story in one way or another through burning coal, cutting down the forests or petroleum use. I think John Muir would be saddened to know we learned so little from his words: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” We know by now the need to recognize the situation we find ourselves in today has been a story of unconscious consumption. The result of unbridled growth, overpopulation and greed--mainly, the fear that there is not enough to go around. 

    Even now in the midst of great awareness about global warming, renowned colleges and universities are unwilling to divest their portfolios of fossil fuel companies. What kind of education does that provide for the ones being educated in these centers for higher learning? What does it show by example? How can we transform when we are hanging on to a way of life which is unsustainable?  What would John Muir think if he knew that within the one hundred years since his death, we have covered the entire planet with concrete and asphalt and poisoned our water tables with chemicals, fracking, plastic and heavy metals?

    These are questions of ethics as well as matters of the heart. How can we connect on a level of solidarity with our global community and reinvent ourselves with greater conscience? How can we awaken as a higher collective together?   I am reminded of my teacher Jose Stevens's words about the false personality. We cannot rise in consciousness unless we let go of egoic desires.  If we live out of our false personality we are living in fear. Then we are afraid to divest our portfolios of the interests which bring environmental devastation and we are therefore educating our students to do the same. Learning of John Muir was my first schooling about a human being living from an awakened place with ecology.  I am grateful for his legacy and I hope we will have the inner vision to begin to live his wisdom teachings.

Finding Humility, Part II

On the train to Santa Fe two days ago, I met a wonderful woman from Oakland, California.  We talked about the book she was reading by Stephen Harrod Buhner,   Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm. This, his latest of nineteen books, is a further exploration of what he is so gifted in conveying about our environment and especially the plant kingdom, with profound insight and perception.  What I am pondering today is directly connected to his words in the first pages of this new book.  He recalls an experience from his childhood, when he felt an unusual charged vitality in the presence of his beloved Grandfather.  He shares how the whole room and everything in it came alive for a brief few moments beyond the ordinary: "something inside of me flowed into him and something from inside of him flowed into me. And our bodies and our eyes acknowledged the reality of it in...[a] simple glance even though our minds had no words to describe it."

Six weeks ago, I moved from a semi-rural place where a horse and five goats lived across the street to a busy city part of Albuquerque. On the last day that I was at the old place, after moving out, I came back to settle up a few final things.  The horse, I call him Sunday, was standing at the fence with the goats as he often did and we made direct eye contact. I felt a union with him for a few moments, ordinary time dropped away, I stood still  and felt we were in direct communication.  I felt in my heart space that he understood I was leaving for good and that this was a good-bye. I connected with those animals for six years and I miss them now, the daily presence of their grounding bodies underneath an old cottonwood tree. I miss watching their natural easy way with the seasons and the weather changes.  Sunday's fur would start to grow thicker after the summer and his breath would frost -up in the air on cold winter days. His mane and fur - all white -would seem to glow in the moonlight. I miss feeding him, and his little herd of goats, alfalfa treats.  I miss seeing him grazing in his field but I hold certain that we had genuine connection and that humbles me. I feel that something inexplicable flowed between us.

Stephen Harrod Buhner writes that most of us can recall a childhood experience of oneness.  "...in all of us such memories are tucked away. But as we are schooled, as life has its way with us-and with our hearts-those memories come less and less to the conscious mind."  I am so grateful for the moments when I touch down into that sacred place of oneness with another being and remember that we are all connected to each other beyond words.  I am grateful for the synchronicity of certain happy link-ups like the recent one I had with the stranger on the train, Lucy. Our conversation reminded me -as if by magical guidance- to read again the wise words from another book by Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants. In this book he explains methods to gather information, used by many nonindustrial cultures, beyond our standard verbal means of communication. 

• At the center of all things is spirit.  In other words, there is a central underlying unifying force in the Universe that is sacred.
• All matter is made from this substance. In other words, the sacred manifests itself in physical form.
• Because all matter is made from the sacred, all things possess a soul, a sacred intelligence or logos.
• Because human beings are generated out of this same substance it is possible for human beings to communicate with the soul or intelligence in plants and all other matter and for those intelligences to communicate with human beings.
• Human beings emerged later on Earth and are the offspring of plants. Because we are their offspring, their children, plants will help us whenever we are in need if we ask them. 
• Human beings were ignorant when they arrived here and the powers of Earth and the various intelligences in all things began to the teach them how to be human.  This is still true.  It is not possible for new generations to become human without this communication or teaching from the natural world.
• Parts of Earth can manifest more or less sacredness, just like human beings. A human being can never know when some part of Earth might begin expressing deep levels of sacredness or begin talking to him. Therefore it is important to cultivate attentiveness of mind.
• Human beings are only one of many life-forms of Earth, neither more nor less important than the others.  Failure to remember this can be catastrophic for individuals, nations, and peoples.  The other life in the Universe can and will become vengeful if treated with disrespect by human beings.

All this reminds me to remain humble and keep an open heart. To be in awe each day at the wonder of it all, to remain mindful that each moment is truly once-in-a-lifetime and to consider that wisely. If we want to come into harmony with living on Earth in a sustainable way, perhaps the nonindustrial cultures have something to teach us.

Finding Humility on Route 66, Part I

Recently, a colleague, (thank you Marta) helped me to formulate a question for my best interest now and in the future: "What is the quality I most need for present circumstances and for proceeding into the future?"

After I got off our call, the answer came swiftly: Humility.  I need humility now and into the future.  My life deepens upon it. I woke up the next day with the remains of a delightful dream, perfect guidance to help me integrate the quality of humility.  It came in the form of humor.  In the dream, a great being, an Archangel acted out the body expression of arrogance- head held high, nose in the air, neck snapped back, hips askew-you get the picture.  The image of an angel taking on the posture of arrogance was very funny to me. Then the great being in my dream shape-shifted again taking on the posture of self-deprecation, with head hanging low, near perpendicular to it's slumped body, heart compressed, bent at that waist, knees buckled together.  I got it, not this posture, no that is not the picture of true humility.   In the dictionary, hu-mil-i-ty, a noun, is defined as: a modest or low view of one's own importance, humbleness.  However, my dream showed me different.  Humility is not having a low view of one's importance, but rather a neutral view, neither high or low.  Humility is not arrogant or self-deprecating, it is neither greedy or impatient.  Humility is not stubborn in the face of change or self-destructive.  Humility is love, self-love, not martyrdom.  Humility is not concerned with feigning or exaggerating one's experience to others, nor is it being in fear.  It is a natural state of equanimity - it is disengaged from being driven by ego.

Route 66

It is fall, a natural time of change. I see hot air balloons in the air today as I look out from my new home three floors above historic Route 66- a constant river of movement along which many have traveled east and west for generations. A big shift from a semi-rural earthy casita in one Albuquerque neighborhood on two acres of garden, flowers, trees to a busy city street. I find myself thinking about this idea of humility and how to find it, tune into it each day in this strange new place. A seeming homeless person was sleeping outside the front door to my complex yesterday, another person asks me for money, another asks to use a phone;  I am more aware of the division between the halves and the have-nots here.  There is a food bank for those in need one block from my new building.  On the weekends, motorcycles cruise up and down the stretch in front of my building until all hours of the night- very different than my former quiet- hood.

Change brings up my insecurities, fears about my safety arise; I feel  emotional upheaval.  I prefer to have stability or the illusion of control over my environment. By day number nine of my immigration from one residence to another I hit a wall of overwhelm, too much stress, little sleep.  I have lost my center, my peaceful center, my humility: my garden of grounding.

Humility and home have a root connection, like Christ said, "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Though I do not know exactly what that means, I do know that it is not through separation from the others that we inherit the keys to home but rather through acceptance and heart.  A month passes, I use earplugs, I sleep again. I unpack a bit each day and become more accustomed to the new space and the noises from the street that rise up - an endless playlist of jarring urban beats.  I realize the action of folding into fear- judgement and resistance -is always to create more fear, so I am learning to adapt, embrace the new soundtrack to my life and to continue to cultivate acceptance of what is.  With humility.  After all, I am just one of many dwellers in the city on route somewhere, seeking something.