No trespassing

The shoreline below the sawtooth outline of the ridge embracing the cove is glassy, the rest of the pale waters only lightly ruffled. I lounge on the window seat next to a bay window at dawn, keeping an eye out for migrating gray whales, but this morning there are no spouts, no bow waves.

An apple tree in the narrow front lawn leans toward the cove. The lawn itself ends abruptly in a tangle of vegetation that falls down several hundred feet to the water’s edge. I can’t see the shore below the house but I know from the signs posted at the edge of the tangle and the repeated rules emailed to us and posted in the mansion that we are not allowed to descend here to the water’s edge. Private property lines are strictly enforced. No permission to hike through boundaries.

The eight of us, all responsible, rule-abiding adults, feel slightly insulted by the strict rules that prevent us from crossing over into the neighbors’ property in order to take “their” steps down to the water. We would not pick the flowers and we would not throw down trash and we would not yell and cavort.

But visitors like us are mistrusted, I suppose for good reason. Americans are trained in “to each his own” and not how to behave as good commoners. Some of us foul and wreck what does not belong to us personally. And some of us who enrich ourselves pay little heed to that which enriches all of us. We carve up and subdivide the great natural sweeps of gorgeous earth into small fiefdoms, preferring the small beauty we can own to a larger beauty that we must share.

The brother-in-law who made the arrangements to rent this elegant mansion on an island in Washington’s lace of waterways was interviewed by phone before the deal was settled. Who would be coming, did we smoke, were there any children, where were we coming from, and on and on. In the absence of trust, and common, culturally enforced assumptions about how to behave on other people’s private property, let alone any sense of the commons, we must feel each other out. Usually we sort ourselves out through money. If you can afford to live here you should know how to behave. As for renters and other visitors—well, it’s impossible to jack up prices high enough to exclude riffraff, especially for a group who is sharing expenses. Hence the interview.

In the UK it is possible to hike across the entire country, off road, because of the ancient culture of the commons. Paths cross private pastures, stiles and gates are strategically placed to keep sheep in their proper places and allow people to pass through. Hikers are expected to know how to behave and, I take it, they usually do.

Here, only the crows and bunnies get to trespass.

The joys of quitting

I am a quitter. Yesterday I dropped out of an online writing course for which I’d paid good money. Today I am removing one of those commitment bracelets I’ve been wearing for the last few weeks. I do this often, sign on for something in a fit of hope and enthusiasm and then change my mind when I realize that the enthusiasm was temporary and that the hope is likely to remain unfulfilled.

I’m puzzled about this tendency I have, how easily I give up. I’ve observed it over the years and noticed that it usually happens around very personal commitments, my resolve to be different, to improve, to fulfill my closely held desires. I am not fickle about commitments to group enterprises, to the community. I keep my promises to others but not to myself.

For example, I have just put together an entire new website (not quite public yet) on a topic that is not my favorite thing in the world to talk about and write about—cumulative impacts: the fact that harm adds up in the world, in communities, in our own bodies, and the harm comes from many sources. Yet our laws, regulatory systems, and ways of doing science fail to take this into account. In service to a dedicated corps of policymakers and community activists and theorists who are trying to change this, I have put together this website, figured out a snazzy search system, worked with designers and programming nerds, honed the descriptions and concepts, and got the job done. It is not my favorite topic or my favorite kind of job and yet I believe the website will perform a valuable service, I have the skills to do it, and so I have done it. And it gives me satisfaction.

And I just wrote an article for publication on the CongoCloth Connection, which was not my idea though I approve of it highly. I will get it published. It will do an important service. As I did this, I dropped into oblivion an idea I came up with, in the ditched online writing course, for an article on age-related hearing loss. I let go so easily of my own idea. It didn’t seem that important.

I have often chided myself for this tendency and others have confirmed my sense that truly, I need to stop effacing my own desires and give them priority. But, as with all my personal traits that seem to persist, I’m taking another look at it. I may keep trying to change, I may assert my own desires and agenda more forcefully, but I have a feeling that it will always be a struggle.

On the other hand what, really, is wrong with being essentially a team player? I enjoy being part of other people’s success, I enjoy making them successful, I enjoy the essence of community—everybody takes part and makes something bigger and better and sweeter than any one of us could imagine. I enjoy helping and I don’t particularly need to take credit. Sometimes I wonder why I am more often the helper than the one who is helped. But it doesn’t matter enough to try all that hard to change this fact.

I dropped the writing course because I have a whole string of communal and family activities coming up and I wanted to enjoy them fully without having the dark cloud of weekly “assignments” hanging over my head. And I took off the issue bracelet because I realized that I was never going to become a more gung-ho activist and persuader than I already am.

And this blog is proof that sometimes I actually do write my own stuff, about what I jolly well please.

A sacred weekend

I am trying to clear my desk before a sacred weekend. Earth Day and Good Friday coincide this year, and we will celebrate Easter with two baptisms in the family. That’s a lot of holy time, with emotional pulls in many directions. Plus cooking.

Right now six men are tromping up and down stairs, drilling holes in the attic, and blowing in an extra batch of insulation so it’s extra hard to complete my tasks. I’ll just give up and muse for a bit.

I want to make an Earth Day reading recommendation. Read here what I have to say about my friend Sandra Steingraber’s latest book, Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis. Okay I’ll tell you what I say. “This is a very funny book about hair-raisingly serious topics.” Read the book to identify with a mom who knows way too much about a poisonous world, who does all she can but doesn’t want to be a HEPA filter. Read it to find out how heroic it is to mow your lawn with a push mower or dry your clothes on the line.

(I gaze with some satisfaction at two racks of laundry crowding my study. Sun is shining today for a change so maybe I’ll just fold those dry clothes right now, take the racks outside, and put a load of sheets on them. Real April smell, no chemical fragrances needed.)

Jesus was put in the Earth, entombed in the obdurate stone. Death is essential. Nothing, however, is unchanging. Even the great plates of the Earth groan and tremble and shift. Humans build as if we will last forever and at the same time we create permanent poisons, no-trespass zones that will last tens of thousands of years.

Easter brings a happy ending but it is not an easy one. The message of the resurrection is a fierce challenge to be life, to bring life, to serve life and reject the forces of hatred, poison, and destruction.

May everything we do this sacred weekend, whether it is picking up trash on the roadway, hiding Easter eggs, or dipping in glorious ritual in a cold lake, honor the Spirit who breathes life.

Beware, essence at work

I am supposed to be sleeping in my daughter’s guest room but here I am, wide awake in the middle of the night. Although I often have a wakeful period this is an extreme case. I feel like I could start my day. Or even . . . write. It is 2 50 a.m. I think I have to blame the essence I snuck before going to bed.

Explain “essence.” You may be familiar with Bach Flower Essences. That is sort of the commercialized version. Essences are the distilled energies of plants and places that contain particular qualities those beings are willing to share with people. This bedroom recently became a storage place for several hundred little blue bottles of essences, gathered by a gifted Ann Arbor herbalist, which my daughter and son-in-law use in their practices for healing and guidance.

I have slept in this room before and it feels different since the essences have been brought here. It feels a little zingy, vibrant. My first night here I slept really, really well. Then last night before I went to bed I randomly chose an essence and swallowed a few drops. Randomly, but I think the choice of essences is never entirely random. They present themselves. One has the sense that they are allies, offering help.

My selection was December Primrose: “goals, vision.”  I can use that. I’ve been a little aimless recently, starting things and not finishing them. I have new enthusiasms (like this blog) but I don’t trust them. I’m afraid I’ll lose heart. One of my new enthusiasms is online writing courses. I’m on my second and I paid serious money for this one so I feel like something should come of it, but I’m doing it mostly to keep myself going until I figure out whether I want to start a bigger writing project and if so, what. I love these 500-word blog chats. Maybe this is it. Maybe not. I’m playing with writing and that feels good. Not so serious. Really, “goals” are perhaps too serious for me right now but nevertheless, the December Primrose presented itself.

So what happened was I dreamed that the semester had ended at the end of last year and here it was, April, and I was still trying to finish the final paper for a course. I was determined to do it but it was one of those dream-tasks that is impossible to accomplish while you are asleep so of course it is very frustrating and you just can’t get the dream finished. This is what woke me up at 2 30. Thanks a lot.

I have not remembered dreams in weeks though I’ve had a sense that I’ve been dreaming things I’d rather not remember. And this dream seemed like it gathered the sense of those dreams and made it so clear that I can’t help remembering. Yes, I’m overdue as a writer. Running out of time to be a serious writer if that’s what I want to be. I’m not sure I do.

What’s the message of the dream and should I heed it?

I don’t need to wonder about that because as soon as I woke and rehearsed the dream, I got an idea for a longer piece that I want to write. That is what popped me wide awake at 2:30 a.m. So yes, thank you, December Primrose. I now have a goal.

First bike ride

The first bike ride of the season is like the first day of school. I face it with a mixture of anticipation and dread, mostly dread.

Spring has been late but today is lovely, my work is done, and I have no excuses. It’s time to take to the hills. Sunday afternoon it was really warm and Vic and I planned to go for a ride. But he had to finish something on his computer as he always does so I started cleaning the porch and then it got really hot, maybe 85, and windy, and I was tired by the time the porch was clean so that was that.

I don’t know why it’s hard to start the biking season. Maybe because I know the first ride is going to be hard. My knees will ache, my butt will kill, I’ll huff and puff up the hills, I’ll have to avoid an entirely new set of patches and potholes.

Then there’s the matter of finding the gear, nothing new and spiffy like the new plaid dress and box of number 2 pencils that used to go with the first day of school, just stuff scattered by the forces of entropy that reign in closets and garages. Pull the biking shorts over the bulges, dig out a long-sleeved tee because it’s sunny but only 55, extract the helmet from the back of the coat closet shelf. And why is there only one bike shoe on the rack? And where is my favorite water bottle?

My little blue hybrid has been languishing in the garage for months. Doing nothing, her tires have managed to lose pounds and pounds. I wish I could say the same for myself. I pump her up. We roll carefully down the drive, swing out onto the road and down and up the first hills.

By the time we round the corner onto Oak Forest, I remember why I bike. Wind and sun on my face, brand new green grass and the first leaflings on trees. The hills aren’t so bad; I get up them with a few gears to spare. I glimpse migrating ducks on the marshy pond across the stateline but I’m going downhill too fast to stop and look. For most of the ride, though, I take my time. I pushed myself enough just to get this start on the biking season.

I promised myself a few months ago, when it was all hypothetical, that I would train for a century this year. That’s a 100-mile bike ride in a day. I’ve done two but not for a while. The late September Apple Cider Century winds through our neighborhood. It is, in fact, how we discovered this woods-farm-orchard-vineyard territory of southwest Michigan some 20 years ago.

I’m not saying one way or another, not yet. I’ve got 5 months. I’ve just done my first 10 miles. My butt is sore but not as sore as it will be after my second ride because it takes a good week to acquire the necessary numbness. It takes many miles a week to toughen the legs and the willpower. But once you start rolling it isn’t bad at all, not at all.

Congo Cloth Connection

Southwest Michigan in early April: gray and grayer, rainy and rainier. Chilly. Spring on hold. It was especially bleak yesterday because I was just back from a glorious, warm, sunny, convivial staff retreat in Sanibel, Florida.

I was desperate for color and so I delved into a project I’ve been working on called the Congo Cloth Connection. The idea is to promote awareness of Congo in a way you won’t get by listening to the news, which is infrequent and always horrifying. Without downplaying the horrors, we want to share the beauty and vitality of Congo as it is represented by cloth. We want to use the cloth that is sold and worn in Congo to connect with Congolese people, especially women.

My friend Nina writes more about the Connection here, and  I describe my own connection on that blog as well. We’re not sure where the project is going, how long we can ask travelers from Congo to bring back suitcases full of cloth, or whether we will have the wherewithal to bring portable Congo Cloth markets to churches and groups as we have started to do.

All we know is that the connection works. The cloth gets snapped up, beauty creates more beauty, like this quilt made by Mennonite women in Indiana.

The personal links between women are taking hold as well.  I’ll just give you some pictures to feast your eyes upon, in case your days are as gray as mine.

Forgot to pray

I intended to honor two prayer requests yesterday and I forgot both of them. These were requests to pray at a certain time. One was to pray at noon for the nuclear situation in Japan, specifically for the healing of the radioactive waters. The other was to pray at dusk, when a certain prisoner in Alabama was scheduled to be executed. Our friends Mark and Sara had befriended this death row prisoner over many years, through letters and visits, and would be present at his execution.

These are not trivial matters and yet they fell totally out of my consciousness. Two questions arise. Do I believe in prayer? Perhaps the forgetting was a sign that I really don’t. And the second is, even if I do believe, was it important for me to be praying on these matters at those times? Perhaps the forgetting was a sign that those prayers were not mine to offer yesterday.

Oh there’s a third question, too. Am I totally losing it? Yes, probably. I’m not as post-menopausal foggy as I used to be, like when I forgot a birthday dinner for a friend to which my husband and I were the only invitees, but things do evaporate from my memory. I am easily distracted by such things as the presence, yesterday, of my grandbaby and the arrival of spring. See below: Hazel in front of jasmine-fragrant witch hazel and the first hepatica blooming in my woods.

Do I believe in prayer? My belief has been intermittent but in recent years I have been more of a believer than an unbeliever. Belief, for me, requires experience. It is not a matter of putting my trust in something that somebody else tells me is so; it has to hit me in the face, or the stomach and even then I lose faith. The power of prayer has demonstrated itself many times. I have prayed and things have happened. I have found peace and answers to knotty problems. Loved ones have been healed and helped. Protections have held. I have seen signs and wonders. So yes, I do believe in prayer, though my belief requires the constant nourishment of experience.

The second question comes close to what I believe about prayer. Were these the prayers for me to offer? I did pray yesterday but not for these things. Maybe I’m wrong but I do not believe in perfunctory prayer. Instead, I pray about what is front and center in my attention. I have come to believe that the matters for prayer seek me out, and the nature of the prayer itself is also given. That is, I may not know what to pray for, or how to pray, and then I do. So prayer is not a matter of imposing my will on a situation but of entering into a larger harmony that brings peace to all concerned because it represent divine rightness. Prayer is participation.

Both of the prayer requests represented that potential and I wanted to participate. But my attention was elsewhere and so I participated in something else. A different prayer was given to me. May yesterday’s prayers, by everyone, be blessed. And today’s.