The world’s best journal

Best journal ever

I swear you will not regret starting this journal.

Way back in 2006 I bought a small wire-bound journal with penned indecipherable cursive writing atop its ivory cover.

Barry and I had experienced too many conversations that went like this:

“When did we Grandpa Elsholz die? How old was he when he died?”

“When did the old Sentinel building burn?”

“Hey, do you remember when I got my wisdom teeth pulled out?”

“When exactly did we have that Downhill Slide party at our house back in the 80s?”

“When did we go to that boat show in the eastern Upper Peninsula?”

And so on, and so on.

Of course, we rarely recalled the appropriate date.  We THOUGHT we remembered, but who knew?  We could discuss it until next May and never know for sure.

Turn back time

Play it again, Sam

Sometimes I want to turn back time and write a blog with the enthusiasm of 2009.  A time when blogging felt like the be-all end-all of the Universe.  To share about our Little House in the Big Woods!  To respond to the six comments of friends!  To deliciously dive into reading other blog posts, to resonate with the stories of friends from Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania, California, South Africa, Australia!

This blogging felt like a glimpse into the Bigger Wider World.  Beyond these trees, beyond our humming wood stove–what joy to discover that a great Universe existed.  To be able to communicate effortlessly with that strumming throbbing Universe!  It felt like the greatest love…to share, to connect, to tell stories.  To listen deeply to others.

My journalist husband always said–if you want people to read, be sure to post pictures. Even though my inclination is not photographing the visual world, I realized his perspective carried truth and bought a camera and snapped, snapped, snapped.  Pictures of our life in the woods, along the shore of Lake Superior.

To learn how to sit in the scary woods of the mind

Woods in fog

“Do you really,” my good friend asked, “want to be an old woman who can’t remember things?  Do you really want to lose all your faculties?”

Sigh.  She had read my latest blog post.

“Ummm, no,” said I.  “If the Universe is asking, I would like to be completely healthy, happy and wise and live to a ripe old age with all faculties intact.”

“So just wondering–why did you say you wanted to be that other kind of old lady?  I mean, why did you put that out there? It’s like telling God that you want that.”

I adore my friend.  Just sayin’.  She’s the kind of person that exudes positive affirmations.  She’s always smiling.  She tapes positive sayings to her refrigerator.  Sayings that I love.  Sayings that really remind a person to stay on track, not to get lost in the foggy recesses of a fearful mind.

She had me scared for a couple seconds.  Yikes, did I just DO that?  Did I tell the Universe I wanted to lose all my faculties and memory, just to be radiant?  (Yes, Kathy, you did, even though it was under the guise of quoting the book Wild Comfort:  The Solace of Nature by Kathleen Dean Moore.)

I want to be that old woman.

Bleeding hearts

I am reading a book these gray December afternoons, breathing in toward the poetic words and out toward my own life’s reflections.  It’s called  Wild Comfort:  The Solace of Nature by Kathleen Dean Moore.

It may not be allowed to share this paragraph with you due to copyright restraints, but I shall do so anyway until someone shakes their finger with a warning frown.  Perhaps, instead, you will scurry to your nearest book shop and purchase this book of nature essays yourself and read as 2017 births into new possibilities.

She writes:  The door to the woodstove squealed as Frank reached in to stir the fire.  I backed my soreness against its warmth.  I felt like an old woman, which would have been all right, except I was the wrong old woman.  When the time comes, I want to be the woman Hank wrote about.  She was a regular old plaid-jacketed Alaskan until she began losing her capacities.  She lost the ability to balance.  She lost access to her memories.  Her hair fell out.  One by one, the capacities we think are essential dropped away, until she was stripped of all conscious thought and intention, leaving only the transparency of her inner mind.  But what she had stored there, though all a lifetime, was radiant.  Hank says that when they sat together, watching rain roll down the window, what ballooned from her was glass-clear gladness.  That’s what she had left.  That’s what she had become.

Kathleen then writes:  How does a person do that?  This is what I need to know.

Wings

I don’t know, dear reader, if that’s what you want.  But that’s what I want.  So that when and if everything falls away–which someday it shall, perhaps with our dying breath–all that’s left is glass-clear gladness.  I wouldn’t even say gladness.  I would say shining awareness.  Pristine, compassionate, shining.  All-encompassing.  Radiant.

The world and our minds may try to rob us of that birthright of radiance, but it’s the essence of who we all are.  I do know that.  We can get so caught up and befuddled and confused in the ever-changing world that never ceases spinning something different.  But beneath it, our birthright exists.  The old woman knew that and when her mind left…the glass-clear gladness remained.

As the seasons turn…

The last time we saw Chippy in September

I am stopping by to say hello to this blogging world: Hello, Hello!

I am sorry to have seemingly deserted this rich and beautiful place, but it seems like the Universe (whom I hold dear and absolute) has alternate plans lately.

I am sorry to have not faithfully read your blog. And yours. And yours. I do not want you to think I don’t like you. It’s just that the Universe beckons elsewhere and like a smitten lover–I follow when the Universe points another direction.

Living as gift

Amazing leaf-gift from my friend, Catherine

I have been pondering the act of giving, and how we can live more as a gift to ourselves and others.  Instead of living in the commodity mode of exchange our culture fosters, how can I give of myself more steadily to others?

Is this even a goal of which to aspire?

Here is how I’ve been thinking about it.  Life itself is an amazing gift we’ve all been given.  If we’re alive and reading this sentence, we’re blessed with minutes and hours and days and perhaps years.  The earth gives so much to us: fat books with delicious stories, blueberry pies baked by a co-worker, smells of sweet grass in fields.  She gives us sunrises, sunsets and wild thunderstorms.

Just think of what she supplies, so graciously, oh it’s nothing.  Here’s breakfast, lunch and dinner and even a decadent red apple hanging oh-so-beautifully from that dappled tree. Here’s wood to keep warm, wind to blow your laundry dry, cool lakes to relieve that summer heat.

Dive in, enjoy all the gifts!

Feelin’ birthday blessings…

 

I am driving back home today along the shores of Lake Superior, thinking now of you and you and you. The car tires strum pavement, waves lap and seagulls wing overhead.

Have just spent almost a week with my mom downstate. It was a rather unexpected trip, not planned until the last minute. I wish I could spend more time with her. It was also a delight to see my brothers and their wives.

It has been a little more than six months since my dad passed.

And today, yes today, is my birthday, 59 years since Joanne and Dale gave birth to their first child, a baby girl.

I wasn’t planning to celebrate on social media and turned off the birthday setting on Facebook a couple weeks ago. I love birthday celebrations but am off line so much during the year at times that I miss wishing Happy birthday to so many others. So I thought–let’s just keep quiet this year, Kathy.

The Universe, however, had different plans and somehow the birthday wishes are singing on my cell phone and Facebook because the announcement is unexpectedly on anyway. It feels so warm and lovely.  I feel so blessed. (And the Universe is grinning ear-to-ear at its little joke.)

I will never forget that a Native American friend once shared that traditionally her people utilized birthdays as a time to give thanks for friends and family. Gifts were showered on others.

Therefore, I give thanks to you and you and you. Thank you for being in my world. You have enriched it with your presence.

P.S. The fawn pictures come from the farm where my dad grew up in the Thumb of Michigan. Mom and I were walking along Nostalgia Lane and glimpsed these two spotted babies.

P.S.S.  Mom, don’t worry–I am not reading birthday messages while driving!

P.S.S.S.  Even stranger than anything–WordPress tells me I published this on July 17th. Three days before my birthday!  Now the Universe is belly-laughing.