Month: October 2011

Daily Round, Dying, Nature, Photography, Spirit Level

Hallowed Life, Hallowed Death, All-Hallowed

by KittyLeave a Comment on Hallowed Life, Hallowed Death, All-Hallowed

Autumn frost has graced the trail these past few days and walks at dawn have been startling in their beauty: all is gilded with light and dipped in diamond dust. This morning I walked in the low golden light of dawn. Frost had breathed along the sharply cut edges of the grass, leaves, and branches, and scattered their surfaces with crushed crystal.

These are images fraught with dichotomy, revealing both nature’s fragility and its endurance, for even as I photograph the brilliant colors and life encrusted with glittering flashes of light, I am recording its dying; and anticipating its springtime renewal. Everywhere we walk is both a cemetery and a nursery. Every moment holds the yin-yang diminishment balanced with the blossoming of life-death.

Traditional fall harvest celebrations also recognize the paradox of abundance and blessing amidst death and loss. We witness the waning of the year’s light and enter a time of darkness, and so all of the attendant metaphors and archetypes make their annual entrance into our conscious and unconscious pursuits and rituals: death, the shadow, the metaphysical, and the immaterial. We fear our own deterioration and death, and so we mock our decay with heightened, deliberate grotesqueries and dark humor. We’ll trick death by disguising ourselves.

Loved ones who have died often feel closer to our hearts and spirits in autumn. We yearn to connect with them; we honor our ancestors; we recall the dead with stories, and ceremonies, rituals, and reflection.

We sense our own dying as nature dies back to the earth, and we can choose to either avoid these encounters, or quietly and consciously enter and be with them, reviewing our life, “rehearsing” our death, and pondering the miracle, meaning, and mystery of both.

Death, when it’s personal to us, is a close-up, freeze-frame event with a beginning and end. When people, companions, and things we love die, we’re thrust into the sharply-focused now-now-now, followed by days and months of time smearing past as grief shudders through our lives. Our spirits and emotions stagger like clumsy giants caught in the maze of memory and loss. It is a time we often recollect as experienced in shadows, pinned like captured butterflies to grief and its unique mixture of guilt, longing, regret, and emptiness, infused with exquisite sorrow.

But the journey of grief, if we’re willing to travel all the way through it–both alone and with guides and friends to support us–allows us to gain a greater perspective regarding our loss and perhaps rest easier within our own dying. The longshot replaces the close-up, and, in retrospect, we see that death is not a finite event, but only an arc in life’s endless circle. The light returns, and we begin to feel the resurgence it offers, the blessings offered not just by the one who has died, but by the journey through loss itself. Every loss kicks up all the others, and each time we walk with them, we heal more deeply. Our compassion for others’ suffering is more finely-tuned, as is our ability to put the cares of the world into better perspective. The daily round becomes unique and precious, and the mundane is more easily recognized and treasured as miraculous.

When I accompanied the dying on their journeys, I felt blessed by those who accepted death as a natural part of life, and breathed into the journey with love. They grieved their lives and their partings, but they entered the “next arc in the circle” gracefully and with peace. This goes against our societal fear of dying, our healthcare model, and our cultural demands to stay eternally young and to deny death altogether, but most of the many people I’ve journeyed with as their lives changed worlds, have courageously and intentionally chosen this path of acceptance.

Some, of course, preferred the “battle metaphor” perpetuated by our fears and western medical model. From this perspective, death is a source of embarrassment and shame, signifying weakness and defeat. “She’s a fighter!” “Do not go gently!” Their poor bodies were usually ravaged by treatments and drugs and surgeries that may (or may not) have gained agonizing days or months, but little quality time or strength to reflect upon and integrate their dying experience in peace. Their spirits seemed to leave both angrily and broken, and bequeathed the living a legacy of tragic, even fearful memories of the ways one can die.

People who fear death become anxious and parrot popular advice, whether it’s true and helpful or not. I’ve repeatedly heard the lines, “people die the way they live” and “we all have the right to die as we choose,” but my experience has made clear to me that the choices surrounding the way one journeys with death make a huge difference to the dying person and to the peace and the energy surrounding the grief journeys of those who remain. While there isn’t a right, or wrong, or only way to face our dying, there are certainly gradations in denial and acceptance that color the experience. And I have seen that many people do not die the way they have lived; they evolve and transform during the dying experience and exit it healed, granting deep comfort to their loved ones.

The spiritual life is a constant shift between these close-up’s and longshots, freeze frames and moving pictures, encounters with death and renewal. We go within and “introspect” our responses to experiences and loss; we pull back and “extrospect” how these fit into our worldview or gain insights that lead us to alter it. We review and, in retrospect, mine our relationships, experiences, successes, and losses for enriched understanding so we may know where and who we are now. 

Autumn frost invites close-up shots just as autumn colors benefit from long shots; the spiritual life requires a balance between these: both introspection and extrospection are needed as we examine our losses, bless them, heal them as we’re able, and look for the new life they’re generating.

Befriending death, rather than fearing, avoiding, or denying it, is a way of being loving and generous to ourselves and to the entire circle of our journey, and as a practice, it opens a path of gratitude for our lives. We’re continually invited to “heal today,” so that death will be a welcoming and wide-open doorway rather than an experience we’re ill-prepared to meet. Mend, forgive, move lightly, share gratitude, express love, make peace in your life and relationships. Now.

I’m dancing with my life and therefore my death every day, for they are the same partner. And every day, I hope to breathe wisdom and balance my perspectives between long shots and close-up’s; I hope to reflect the beauty of diamond dust at dawn; I hope to feel the peace of the journey; and I hope to rest in the wisdom that it is hallowed and forever.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Catherine O'Meara, Daily Round, Family, Home, Nature, Spirit Level

Nest-Building at the Spirit Level

by KittyLeave a Comment on Nest-Building at the Spirit Level

I love solving design puzzles and enjoy all the creative challenges that go into arranging and decorating a space to make it both comfortable and unique. Home-making, nest-building, dream-tending: for me, it’s all part of accepting that everywhere is a sacred space. It helps that Phillip can build anything I can imagine, and can also out-imagine me. Full Moon Cottage was a disaster when we bought it, but the stunning land and thin-place energy captured our hearts within moments of stepping on the ground. We knew we could do the work that would make it a home where family and friends could gather and celebrate. 

And so walls came down; windows went in; floors were replaced; trim was added; paint was applied. (And reapplied. And again.) The bathroom was stripped down and replaced. Phillip built cabinets and an island for the kitchen, and then a pantry, a hutch, and a buffet. He made stained glass windows for transoms. He changed out the lights and, eventually the plumbing fixtures. We took advantage of a government-assisted energy efficiency program, and installed geo-thermal heating.

All of this took years and was done on the proverbial dime (or as my South Milwaukee friend used to say, “A buck two-eighty”). We did all the work, often with the help of friends, and called it “better than it was” remodeling. We went to auctions, rummage sales, and St. Vinnie’s, and invented what we couldn’t find or afford. For years, I’ve been dragging home abandoned nests, dogwood, rose hips, grapevine, feathers and other treasures from the trail to create seasonal decorations. Full Moon Cottage has been our refuge for almost 16 years, and the ongoing creation has been a grand adventure. The fun has been in the creating as much as the finished work. The joy has been in welcoming others to join us for gatherings, visits, and celebrations.

I was reflecting on all of this after I read a recent feature in a decorating magazine that shall remain nameless, but that is ostensibly focused on country living. The homeowners spoke of their grueling remodeling experience and all the trials they had to endure during the year their upscale “1930’s colonial” was completely and richly remodeled, by highly-paid professionals, in a wealthy suburb of a large city.

The homeowners are quoted as saying that they so desired to live on this street that, “We would have lived in a cardboard box, if necessary…There was dust everywhere, and we had no kitchen or bathtub. We’d walk into the village to eat meals and take showers at the country club down the street.”

Showers at the country club; meals at restaurants: would the suffering never end? How very arduous life must have been for these people as they slummed through a year of renovation that gave them everything they wanted. For now.

Are these people aware that increasing numbers of our world’s population do live in cardboard boxes and spend hours searching for the next one to call home?

I begrudge no one their success or the rewards earned from their professional contributions to the greater good, but these quotes were striking in their revelation of smug indifference to the true poverty and need that are the daily round for many in our society, and were the very quotes the magazine editors had excerpted from the article, enlarged, and splashed across the expensive furnishings and the huge expanse of rooms now further confining and protecting the happy family from reality.

American society is changing, and not pleasantly or creatively. Disparate and immorally-earned wealth is isolating and stratifying our people, even as advertising feeds and stimulates the materialistic greed of those who cannot afford what they’re enticed to consider as their due. 

We have become a people who are ill-equipped and unprepared to recognize the hold of desires endlessly suckled from the glass teats of televisions, computers, and now our must-have pads, pods, and smart phones–desires that are ultimately destructive to the spirit.

Thanksgiving, a day once set aside to acknowledge and celebrate gratitude for the blessings of family, friends, and home, has become a day to be endured until eager shoppers can set out to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need. We are bombarded with messages that tell us we are unacceptable, at every level, without these things. And too many of us believe it.

It is an addiction to filling a bottomless hole. Like all addictions, acquisition imprisons us in a drugged illusion that denies reality. Buying things we don’t need thrills and assures us we’re visible, better, worthy, accomplished, safe, “there.” Until the next product that confers superiority is dangled before our desires, labeling us deficient till we own it.

And it will never end, unless we withdraw from the drug and awaken, because life isn’t about things at all; it’s about the challenge of loving and accepting ourselves, and then others, into wholeness. The ego can never be, finally, satisfied at the expense of the spirit, and an empty and disregarded spirit will never be made whole through the acquisition of possessions.

Entreated to live only at the surface level and to equate our self-worth with the amount, brand, and price of our possessions, we deny the voice of our spirit and its requirements for stillness, space, connection, reflection, and community. We forget that we are worthy, just for being here, just as we are. We no longer participate joyfully in the co-creation of our world, lives, careers, homes, or relationships. We surrender our power to create our lives instead of having them mass-produced and sold to us. We consider ourselves lesser beings than those who have greater wealth, and render those with even less invisible. We close our hearts and starve our spirits.

And so I am thankful for friends who make their livings as artists, and all those who are the artists of their lives, and who encourage me to design my life imaginatively, too. I’m grateful for a partner like Phillip, who celebrates creativity and honors the time it takes to make a home that reflects and feeds our spirits. I’m thankful for those who have taught me to live with eyes, heart, spirit, and doors wide-open to the blessings that come freely and uniquely into our lives.

Full Moon Cottage is humble and comfortable. We try to care for the things we’ve collected and been given, but in the end it isn’t about these things. Home is not “where the stuff is;” it is the place where we live, and love, and rest; where we feed our spirits; and–most importantly–where we welcome others to share what we have.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Catherine O'Meara, Daily Round, Spirit Level

Many Rapid Impalas: Fear and the Spiritual Journey

by KittyLeave a Comment on Many Rapid Impalas: Fear and the Spiritual Journey

I have an eye surgery scheduled this November and the surgeon asked that I have an MRI to ensure all was well with my brain. (Friends and family may enter their jokes here.)

Two years ago, my first encounter with an MRI took me by complete surprise. I’d worked on a hospital public relations staff and later as a hospital chaplain, and had observed–and been called upon to enter–tragic, even emotionally and visually gruesome situations. No problem. I’d endured surgeries of my own. Ditto. I’d spent weeks with my parents in their respective hospital crises. Check. And so, I felt prepared and calm as I entered the room where the imaging machine waited for me.

I rested on the elevated bed that would slide into the scanner, and conversed with the technician as she described the process. We chatted, laughed, and calmly prepared for my excellent MRI adventure.

Then she clamped down a head brace, like a cage around my head, and began to slide me into the belly of the beast. Instantly, without warning, a wave of panic crashed over my consciousness and set off alarms throughout my body.

I asked her to pull me out and open the brace. “Asked” is perhaps an inexact word; I’m quite certain I screeched like a banshee. I sat up, feeling my heart race, trying to invite deep breaths and reason into my spirit, so my body and mind could catch up with each other. I had no idea what had just happened. I was embarrassed. Tears formed in response to my psyche’s sense of being under attack.

The technician’s patience and my own determination got me through the next hour, but it had been a perplexing and frightening encounter I never wanted to experience again.

When my surgeon requested another MRI last week, terror entered my mind and stayed, like a squatter taking up residence.

I began to lose sleep, lying awake and entertaining adrenaline rushes while I relived the earlier claustrophobic, nightmare experience over and over, dreading the next one and counting down the days and hours.

I asked Phillip about his reaction to MRI’s. “I just lie there and hang out; it doesn’t bother me.” Others I spoke with, while not ridiculing my fear, admitted their own phobias didn’t include MRI’s (though I know I’m not alone in loathing them). The universe-spanning distance between our reactions to the same stimulus began to intrigue me, and I explored my fear more calmly, and with an awakened curiosity and need to understand.

If two people enter the same experience, why would one endure it calmly and the other respond like an unhinged hyena? I wasn’t interested in unearthing some childhood instant that set such a fear in place, but rather in the irrationality of the fear to begin with: there was nothing in the experience of an MRI that could harm me: I was lying on a bed, in a safe place, with a professional watching over me…my mind could control this experience, rationally. I could breathe into it, even enjoy it. Why should I spend time rehearsing and forecasting that the next MRI would be a repetition of the first?

I began seeing this as an opportunity to grow beyond my fear. I imagined the hour after the MRI, and the days, and weeks. I focused on people and 4-legged’s I love, and on all the loving energy they would be sending me. And certainly, I thought about the millions of people who would welcome an MRI as a gift compared to the experiences they were enduring daily. I played the “acting as if” game, seeing myself as one who would calmly enter the room and perhaps be even a bit bored by the procedure, but endure it politely. This could work.

I felt almost excited when I got up early yesterday morning and drove in the dark to the outpatient clinic. I could do this! Because I’d scheduled my MRI at 7:30, the process was underway within minutes of my arrival, a medical miracle in itself.

This time I shut my eyes before the head-cage clamped down, and kept them closed throughout the procedure. The radio was turned up and the MRI- generated noise wasn’t as frightening. I tried to breathe and focus. I managed a chuckle in response to something the attendant said through my headphones…hey, this was going to be alright! And it was, for the first two minutes.

But my fear wasn’t going to shake hands with my reason quite so easily, despite my generous attempts to subdue it. It tore into my fragile peace quite effortlessly, and soon I could feel myself riding it, like a bucking bronco. But this time I wasn’t going to let it knock me down. Forget about meditation, dwelling lovingly on those who needed my own peaceful energy, or resting in the Spirit: I had to do something that moved as fast as my fear. I began to create phrases for the initials MRI: Marching Russian Infantry; Melting Rancid Igloos; Milking Righteous Indignation; Mucous-Ridden Ibex; Multi-Rainbowed Iguanas; Males Revealing Idiocy; My Raging Imagination…

Elemental, but it helped.

In an hour, I was on my way home.

So I didn’t evolve to a higher spiritual plane; I can’t say I had that expectation (but what a great blog entry that would be). Instead, I took a few steps, entered a fear and began to befriend it, and welcomed that part of myself with greater compassion. I fell back on one my one of my gifts—words—and that was instructive as well: we can use our gifts to calm our fears.

The Spirit pays attention to our resistance. As surely as we decide, consciously or not, that we will avoid something, you can bet we’ll encounter it, again and again, in one form or another. Each time, it comes with the invitation to grow in our self-compassion and the compassion and connections we share with others. Fear is humbling; it unites us with the “humus” from which we’re all created, and thus more deeply with each other.

These encounters with fear are always archetypal journeys. The hero or heroine (which we all need to be in our own lives) enters the dark forest, armed with a few powers—or gifts—and is expected to overcome evil (the fear, the darkness, the monster; ultimately some unloved part of the self), and return home with greater wisdom. The souvenirs of such journeys may be lasting spiritual peace, healing, and wisdom, earned in increments, but nonetheless hard-won rewards.

Of course, we’re never alone on these journeys. The loving thoughts and energies of family and friends surrounded me yesterday. And our Source, Love, embraced me as well. There is a deep comfort in the presence of this kind of love, this sense that we’re accompanied. And when, in the midst of facing fears, we forget our connection to Love, I again learned that we can rely on the unique gifts with which Love has blessed us.

Mindful Revelations Illuminated. Merry Responses Ignited.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

 

Catherine O'Meara, Family, Nature, Spirit Level

Birdsong in Autumn

by Kitty2 Comments on Birdsong in Autumn

The past two weeks as I’ve walked the trail, I’ve noticed the blackbirds and robins have returned to their spring songs, or rather, the young birds are rehearsing these songs under the tutelage of their elders before the flocks leave for the winter. When they return next spring, the juveniles who survive the winter will be mature, ready to find mates and build nests. The songs they’re practicing now will be naturally and completely their own, and passed on to their young in time.

My father was a storyteller. He created stories and songs; he told stories well; he earned a degree in journalism; and he knew his way around the world of language. My mother was a grand storyteller as well, as were all the members of her family, with whom we shared wonderful vacations and visits throughout my life.

My father’s childhood was rarely discussed; his family unknown except for allusions to sadness and neglect, the early death of his father; a distant, emotionally-remote mother; and a younger sister who chose to stay out of touch. The absence of storytelling surrounding his childhood was felt in my own.

Storytelling was a characteristic that became more marked after a massive stroke robbed or altered other charming personality traits that made my father uniquely mine, and sadly exacerbated less-endearing traits, like flashes of anger, that would unexpectedly explode and wound, however understanding one could be about the after-effects of stroke.

For about 15 years following my father’s stroke, my mother’s continuous and patient care allowed him to pursue those activities that could still give him joy: to read, to write, and, especially, to tell his stories.

I learned that despite poverty and exquisitely inadequate parents, enough relatives and friends helped my father salvage a childhood that became the source for most of his post-stroke stories. Depression-era, small-town Northern Minnesota life was humble, but full of adventures, innocence, and the freedom to roam the countryside, fish in the lake, and create plenty of ways to enjoy the long winters. This time of my father’s life, his childhood and young adulthood, became vivid for him following his stroke, and his need to share these stories became crucial to the quality of life he could yet enjoy.

I worked as a teacher during those years and was able to visit my parents during the school-year breaks. Initially, I tired of hearing the repeated stories, however humorous. But eventually, as the years passed, I began to observe my mother’s ways of listening and facilitating my father’s storytelling, ways she had learned to widen their boundaries, having heard the same stories countless times. Her gracious listening encouraged my father to explore the meaning of his stories, to add nuance, to detour from the escape of humor into the reality that more authentic emotions afforded. He already, inherently, was graced with the ability to infuse his stories with wit and charm.

I began to listen more deeply and ask questions that encouraged my father to sharpen his descriptions, to offer subtext, and explore themes. The stories began to come alive for me; I knew these people, this place, this life.

Now, as I hear the autumn birdsong and reflect on the wisdom of elders, I know that these were my stories as well. They helped to heal my father’s spirit and they opened a door to his life that had long been closed to me.

 In the autumn of his life, my father was teaching me the notes I needed to integrate his life into my song. And now his story has become a treasured part of mine.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Catherine O'Meara, Daily Round, Discernment, Nature, Spirit Level

When Diverted, Make a Bridge: Lessons From Squirrels

by Kitty2 Comments on When Diverted, Make a Bridge: Lessons From Squirrels

The daily round has been beset by obstructions and frustrations this week, good reminders that change should always be expected, since we’re all transforming, every instant. But more than that, the awareness that my efforts and careful plans could be altered in a moment challenged me to either “breathe and deal,” or lapse into the comfortable role of the complaining victim. Family patterns and Irish blood allow anger to reside very close to the surface, always available for sharing when well-laid plans go awry. Blasting another’s inadequacies, vacuity, and faulty logic can bring such wonderful relief.

Living from the spirit level is so much easier to write about than to do.

Sigh.

The temptation to blame these changes on others’ incompetence is so very handy (as is a well-fashioned string of profanity), but why blame others for being human rather than perfect?

And then the real challenge becomes the introspective journey: Why would I even expect perfection of others and what do I expect of myself? How do I feel about the elements of control—and surprise—in my life? How hospitable am I, truly, to the flow of life-as-it-is? How gracious am I towards my own and others’ mistakes? Why evaluate and predicate life upon how close I and others come to perfection? And why the need to separate myself from the other in the first place? Aren’t we all in this together?

Human being is human screwing up. Homo Not-So-Sapiens. Accept it and get on with it; perhaps one day, in greater wisdom, revel in it.

We’ve been experiencing high winds more frequently this autumn. Leaves have been whipped from trees and branches have been scattered across the lawns and trails. A huge branch was partially ripped from a willow along the riverbank. I heard it crack and saw it swing downward, resting its tip upon the ground, its “shoulder joint” still attached to the trunk. In an instant, an arm that had always touched heaven now brushed the earth.

Squirrels had formerly enjoyed the views and safety of this branch, as well as the leverage it provided to those branches adjacent and above it. What I noticed within a half-hour following the storm was certainly a lesson in flexibility and adaptation to change: the squirrels now used the newly-fallen branch as a bridge between earth and the tree’s higher branches, and scurried playfully up and down the streamlined pathway.

Chaos rules; might as well accept it and adapt accordingly, with as much peace, grace, and joy as we can summon. Look for the bridges where none were before. Perhaps especially those that exist between ourselves and others. And recognize that we, like all our fellow humans-being, are doing the best we can.

There’s just this moment and we co-create what it is with what is presented to us.

 Which is what humans do.

Which is imperfectly perfect.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Daily Round, Spirit Level, Teacher

Not Just a Teacher

by Kitty5 Comments on Not Just a Teacher

Early Saturday morning, Phillip and I sat together sharing coffee and one of our “good visits,” before we each lapsed into the comfortable silence long years of loving relationship can invite. Eventually, I asked him what he was thinking about.

“Pencils,” he said.

“Pencils?” Where could this be leading?

“Yeah…I was wondering why one of my kids never has a pencil in class.” He paused. “Is it because his family is too poor? Can they really not afford pencils?”

My husband teaches science in a small-town high school. He chose the district because of its small size, believing it would give him opportunities to know the students, their families, and his colleagues, that a mega-school in a sprawling district wouldn’t afford. In our state, this meant a lower salary than a wealthy, larger district could pay, but Phillip really wanted the sense of community and collegiality, so he took less pay and has been happy with his work and his colleagues.

He is a good teacher: eloquent, elegant, and focused on his students’ sense of confidence and delight for a subject area that gives Phillip joy, but what is most indicative of his approach as an educator is this sense of deep compassion for his students’ well-being, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

He’ll tease and joke with his students, but he will never bully, embarrass, or humiliate them. He’ll hold them accountable to high expectations for learning the material and fairly grade their effort, but students who earn low grades are as likely to hang around Phillip’s room before and after school as are the students who excel. He’s taught guitar to kids who asked to learn, not for a fee or because it was required of him, but because he wants his students to name and develop their gifts, whether those gifts are specifically science-related or not.

Last week, Phillip gracefully agreed to wear a ridiculous costume and return to school one night for a Homecoming Week skit some students had written. Another night he returned to supervise a class’s attempts at building their Homecoming float.

Phillip’s students do well, but it pleases my heart that he is remembered for his kindness. Former students drop by our house at holiday and vacation times to share their current adventures, studies, and goals, and Phillip welcomes them with the hospitality I imagine he showed them when they were high school students. Above all, he is a good listener; he holds their stories in the high regard they deserve, and so teaches his kids the very important lesson that they matter. Regardless of their home situation, their academic success or lack of it, their social standing, their physical appearance or athletic prowess, they matter. Their feelings and thoughts are worth being heard respectfully and considered deeply.

Like most teachers, Phillip’s time away from school is often spent preparing for the next class, the next week, the next year. But this means so much more than taking ongoing classes, designing curriculum, reviewing learning materials, and updating licenses. It means lying awake at night and worrying about ways to connect with students who are troubled or lonely. It means planning for meetings with parents who are angry, abusive, demanding, or distant towards their children.

It means pondering and creating a way to preserve a child’s dignity while giving him a coat, a meal–or a pencil–that will boost his spirit, ensure his physical comfort, and allow her to feel important, safe, heard, and ready to learn.

One moment of such regard can change a life; I have seen it and heard it over and over from people engaging in life review as their death takes shape and approaches. People recall moments when a teacher’s glance, note, comments, praise, and focus changed their lives. Altered their lives’ direction. Saved their lives. Or made them the person who could save his or her own life. Of course, a teacher’s neglect and negative energy can do great damage, but the well-intended and good educators far outweigh the bad, and we know it.

Teachers have recently, again, come under fire undeservedly and simplistically, as scapegoats for others’ poor decisions. The list denigrating educators is endless, vague, and finally illogical, like blaming the poor for Wall Street’s greed. Teachers stand out as easy targets for the bullies and crooks who sadly wield power in much of our current government and media, and we should beware of such behavior and castigation of their efforts and energy.

We are quick to call police officers, fire fighters, and military personnel our heroes, but every day, in myriad classrooms, teachers are offering the look, the comment, the listening–and the pencil–that saves a life and tells a child she is important; he is heard; they matter.

I married a teacher. He is intelligent, funny, and compassionate. He listens deeply, and tends his students’ learning and sense of self-worth diligently. He values their minds, bodies, and spirits. He safeguards their dignity.

He is my hero.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Daily Round, Gardening, Nature, Spirit Level

The Writing Spider

by Kitty3 Comments on The Writing Spider

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single spider in possession of a good web must be in want of prey. But in the garden this season, I learned again that there are many ways we nourish and are nourished.

I first met Jane in early August, when I was weeding the large garden near the river. She had woven her distinct web across one of the sage plants, and its intricate stabilimenta zig-zagged, zipper-like, across the orb-web’s center. She was the largest and most brilliantly-colored garden spider I’d ever seen, so I fetched the camera and took several pictures from a respectful distance, and later researched her species and background. Her scientific classification was logical: Kingdom: Animalia; Phylum: Anthropoda; Class: Arachnida; Order: Araneae; Family: Araneidae; Genus: Argiope; and Species: Argiope Aurantia (like an orange, though she was colored in brilliant yellow and black).

When I learned that one of her nicknames is “the writing spider,” she of course became further classified as a kindred spirit, and I christened her “Jane” after Jane Austen, a name to which she did not evidence rejection. For more than a month, we met several times a week, and she hospitably endured my observations.

Understand, Gentle Reader, that were Jane to visit my home’s interior, the sound of my arachnophobic screams would make international (and possibly intergalactic) news, but spiders do not bother me when they are outside, weaving their webs and living their lives within the larger web of nature, the home we all share.

Miss Jane, I learned, liked to remain in one place for most of her life, a homebody like myself. The creation of her web took hours and its complexity was miraculous: its architecture could be up to two feet across and up to eight feet off the ground. She usually remained at the web’s midpoint, head down (as I always found her), awaiting innocent prey’s entanglement. When I met her, the remaining wing of a swallowtail butterfly decorated her web, as did bits and pieces of insects.

Jane consumed the center of her web each night, possibly for nourishment or to recycle chemicals used in the web’s construction, and re-wove it daily, including the delightful “written” zipper (“stabilimenta”) across the middle. I could not discover a definitive  explanation for this part of her web, except that some scientists have suggested it may serve as camouflage or in some way attract prey. I also learned that among orb-weavers, the Aurantia is known for her unusually tidy and clean web. Other orb-weavers are content with disorder, clutter, and mess. Jane rose yet again in my regard and respect.

I never met Jane’s mate. He would have woven a “lesser” web nearby, including an escape line in case she attacked him; at any rate, he died after their love was consummated and she likely ate him. (Understandably, my husband Phillip does not like this part of Jane’s story.) But Jane’s partner did exist, for one day I discovered the egg sac, a delicate brown silken ball almost an inch in diameter, fixed near the web’s enter, and Jane hanging nearby, guarding it as vigilantly as  any artist watches over her creation. I read that within this tiny ball, up to 1,400 eggs were settled and would be harbored till spring, were they not harmed by birds, the elements, or other likely hazards.

We had a gentle frost one night several weeks after Jane and I became garden companions, and Jane was nowhere to be found; it is the common way for females of her species to die. I mourned her loss; we had an elegant, mutually intriguing (or so it seemed to me) relationship.

When I cut back the plants this weekend and neared the sage that was Jane’s home, I gently severed the branch holding her egg sac, and placed it under an evergreen shrub, settled within a bed of sedum and violets.

If the egg sac survives through winter, one day next spring, I could see what seems to be pollen or dust collecting within the silken sac…the tiny bodies of Jane’s progeny responding to Love’s call to write their own life stories. I hope some will decide to stay and grace our gardens with the elegance and artistry—and kinship—I shared with their mother.

We’re all here such a precious little while, invited to write the words, dance the dance, and create the art seeded within our spirits at its inception; the whole of life depends upon both our singular contributions and our abilities to form connections that welcome, encourage, and sustain the unique contributions of others.

It may be in the nature of the Kingdom Animalia to capture and devour prey; however, the instinct to forge connection and co-exist with deep humility, hospitality, and respect is also a lovely part of our mysterious story. In relationship, we nourish and are nourished.

Thank you, Jane.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Catherine O'Meara, Daily Round, Spirit Level

The Good Sense to Play in the Rain

by KittyLeave a Comment on The Good Sense to Play in the Rain

Riley and Clancy are half border collie and half lab. At ten years old, they have more energy than many younger dogs leisurely strolling behind their owners down the trail. Riley and Clancy, on the other hand…er, paw…wake every day with the desire to run and herd, and are happiest when they leap from the car and enter the wonderful and many-acred dogpark near our home. So much to smell! Life forms to chase!

Today has been a grand autumnal rainy day, with dark skies and howling winds, shifting to stillness and gray light, and back into heavy rain. The absence of lightning seemed to indicate a trip to the dogpark would meet with the 4-leggeds’ approval, and so off we went. The drizzle occurring when we left home had turned to a downpour by the time we arrived, but they were eager to race into the park, so I followed, and opened my spirit to the adventure.

It was glorious. Their energy seemed to accelerate in the rain, and they jumped, bounded, and flew through the fields and forest, barking their utter joy. On some agreed-upon cue, first one, then the other, would sidle up beside me and shake with glee, then look up sweetly: their way of requesting a “pep-and-energy treat,” before dashing off to explore new territory.

We were quite surprised to meet two other happy dogs and their human, a man who looked at me sheepishly and said, “I thought I was the only goof who’d be out in the rain!” My grin and appearance—Irish oilskin hat and drenched sweatsuit—seemed to assure him he had met a kindred goof…

Somewhere in the vicinity of the park a wood fire was burning, despite the storm, and the sweet perfume surrounded us and infused the moist air, as Clancy and Riley danced ahead and I settled into my rain-walk. The deep metal blue-gray of the sky brought the brilliant rusts, greens, and golds of mid-October into rich relief, and the scent of wood smoke and touch of the tingling rain heightened the sensory pleasure. I felt both relaxed and alert, and deeply at peace, as I watched my 4-legged darlings playing, utterly selfless and in-the-moment. We were drenched and happy as we headed back to the car.

The old saying, “He didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain,” crossed my mind, and I laughed out loud.

I discovered again there’s something much better for the senses than staying indoors and watching life happen outside. Clancy and Riley reminded me that the world is always beautiful, and joy is always ours for the taking. How grand for the spirit to follow the lead of my 4-legged companions and play merrily in the rain.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

 

Daily Round, Gardening, Recipe

From Seed to Table

by KittyLeave a Comment on From Seed to Table

Part of the daily round this time of year means harvesting the fresh produce still offered up by our vegetable garden before the frost reclaims the earth and bids it rest through the winter. Although a few tomatoes are still ripening, the yield at this point is largely peppers, squash, onions, garlic, carrots, and autumn raspberries, along with the faithful herbs, rosemary, French tarragon, and sage. The basil died during the cold nights two weeks ago, and the dill and cilantro have gone to seed. To me, the smell of basil is synonymous with summer. I’m always sad to see it go, but I freeze cubes of pesto, so we can celebrate its life and scent till spring.

I grew up in sequential suburbs and then lived in a city for 20 years. My father gardened, but he focused on roses, rather than vegetables. My own suburban homes were crammed with perennials and provided years of education in garden design, but never afforded the space for vegetables, beyond a few peppers and tomatoes, so when Phillip and I moved to Full Moon, we were ready to start a “real” vegetable garden. Farmers’ Markets are wonderful, but we love growing our own food, despite the hassles of weeds and pests (though this year’s invasion of Japanese Beetles was discouraging).

The 4 acres surrounding our home were surprisingly “gardenless” before we became Full Moon’s caretakers. When we first toured the property, the woman living here said, “I never knew where to put a garden.”

Really? How about anywhere?

18 years later, we have many flower gardens and a wonderful vegetable garden. From asparagus to the potatoes and carrots we’ve dug up after snowfalls, the annual parade of homegrown produce has blessed our table and fed our spirits–and guests–as well.

Gardening is many things, but it’s never “finished.” The designs and plans are always evolving, the living 3-D sculpture is always changing, and gardeners are forever hopefully dreaming about the next opportunity to co-create their art with Nature. The satisfaction of planting seeds and reaping both food and beauty offers a continual enticement and delight.

 Bless the seed; bless the fruit; bless the meal and bless those present, enjoying the lovely, spiraling energy of life, dancing in our gardens, bodies, and spirits.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

 

Catherine O'Meara, Spirit Level

Encountering Spirit

by KittyLeave a Comment on Encountering Spirit

Thanks to Netflix, Phillip and I have been re-watching the first few seasons of Northern Exposure, a series with profound respect for the spirit level of life. Last night, we saw an episode featuring Ed, a young man native to the indigenous people of the show’s fictional locale, Cicely, Alaska. Orphaned and raised by his tribe, Ed was seeking answers regarding his parentage. The spirit of a long-dead chieftain, One Who Waits, accompanied him on this journey. Ed accepted his ancestor’s help and wisdom gratefully, and spoke with the spirit as they sought the truth of Ed’s roots.

The non-indigenous citizens of Cicely observed Ed talking with One Who Waits (played by the excellent actor, Floyd Red Crow Westerman), and worried, assuming Ed was having a psychic break, for they could not see his companion. “They cannot see me, because to them I am dead,” said the chieftain sadly.

It reminded me of the wonderful books on indigenous spirituality by Malidoma Patrice Some, that discuss the same concept: the wider our acceptance of mystery and the more we are able to understand that spirit permeates and animates all creation, the more we realize that everywhere is the Celtic “thin place.” Keeping the eyes of our hearts and minds open floods our every moment with meaning that otherwise goes unnoticed. We become fluent in the languages of myth, symbol, metaphor, and mystery; we see what others cannot, because they can’t conceive it to be so.

Some’s West African tribe, the Dagara, believe everything originates in the spirit world, the world where our ancestors abide, and that the ancestors travel between worlds and make themselves visible with frequency. They believe in the spirits of our ancestors, of nature, and of worlds other than our own, and the energetic exchange that takes place between and among these spirits and ourselves. The more conscious we are of these relationships, the clearer and more informed by wisdom our invitations and choices can become, and the wider our perspective regarding what is and isn’t possible evolves. Rigid definitions and rational boundaries demarcating life and death blur. We consent to mystery as a playmate.

Shortly after my mother died, I was visited by the owl pictured above. The day was bright and the mid-afternoon light illuminated the bird’s feathers. It remained in the tree outside my window for a long time, as we gazed into each other’s eyes. I took some pictures, which my visitor seemed to graciously allow. I went outside and stood on the deck, about 4 feet away from the owl, and reverently entered its space.

We began to breathe together, and the world closed around us in a golden timeless meditation. I really have no idea how long we were together, but the bond was strong and utterly peaceful, and then we both took a final breath together and “let go.” The owl’s long wings extended and it flew away, and I came back inside, grateful, and knowing my mother’s spirit had been somehow present in the encounter.

I’m not sure about enlightenment as a permanent state of being, but I’m open to the moments of insight and deep healing that an “eyes open” readiness has afforded me, and I welcome encounters with spirit whenever they grace my path.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Spirit Level

Requiem

by KittyLeave a Comment on Requiem

Inspiration…

The daily round began with a long walk on the bike trail near my home. Brilliant white egrets posed along the river’s sandbars, flashed in the sunlight, and stood, as peaceful as Buddha, in their meditative stillness. Like guardians at the door of a hallowed shrine, they set the tone for a hushed contemplation as I walked along.

The trail is curtained by trees now peaking in autumn’s colorful translation of the life-to-death dance we enter with our first breath–an intake of spirit–and exit with our final breath, when we set that spirit free. People track the changing hues of the leaves and plan trips to enjoy the movement of “peak colors” as they flow through the forested regions of the state.

The dazzling colors signify the leaves’ coming deaths, but not just that; for once fallen, they fertilize the earth and enrich the creation of life-to-come.

When I worked as a hospice chaplain, I walked through the forests of long-term-care facilities and sat with the peaking colors of my dementia patients. One would think their lack of verbal abilities and mental acuity would preclude the gifting of wisdom and inspiration, but I found it to be otherwise. As I sat with their energy, I was often bathed in the light of their peace; insights flowed between us, evolving, and leading me to a keener appreciation of those who meet death with an energetic purity unimpeded by language.

My thoughts often drift back to these moments; though the nursing facilities were often drab, my memories of sitting with my patients are bathed in vivid colors. As their bodies declined, their spirits flamed, and their lives certainly have continued to enrich my own. Decomposition–the end of our life’s song–leads to recomposition, the creation of the new music inspired by those lives.

And so I wonder if my “true colors” are peaking as I age, if I’m sharing them as boldly and bravely as the trees, and if I’m using my gifts in ways that will entice and nurture the creativity of others after I’ve “changed worlds.” 

May we tend to our peaking colors, cheer on the singular rainbows of others, and be grateful for those who have pursued their uniqueness with unrelenting enthusiasm, thus fertilizing the creativity of all.

Expiration…

Requiescat in pace.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Spirit Level

Celebrating Francis

by KittyLeave a Comment on Celebrating Francis

Today, I join my Roman Catholic friends in celebrating the life of Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone who, as a young man, turned from beliefs and membership in the military, and then rejected his expected inheritance of easy wealth and power, and instead chose to pursue a different wealth: a conscious connection to, and respect for, all of creation.

It is said, too simplistically, that he “loved animals and nature.” I think he realized–and loved–that he was just another animal and part of nature, but born, as are all humans, with the responsibilities that come with our intellects and the potential to dominate the rest of creation, unless we recognize our kinship. I don’t think he “chose poverty” so much as he rejected the poverty of spirit offered by enslavement to his society’s definition of wealth. In our time of startling corporate greed and concentrated financial wealth, when students are taught more about branding, marketing, and acquisition than they are about developing a moral conscience and care for the earth, Giovanni Francesco has much to teach and offer.

Francis has been my anam cara (soul friend) for most of my life. He is the reason I have welcomed 4-legged companions into my life. (In fact, three of our current cats joined the family on St. Francis’ Day, 3 years ago.) He is the reason I earned an MA in Servant Leadership. He is the reason I am a pacifist, an environmentalist, and a gardener living in the country. Francis informs my politics and my decision that my body will one day be offered back to the earth in a green burial. He is one of the chief architects of my spiritual belief system.

Above all, Giovanni Francis di Bernardone has taught me about authenticity. He had to turn from all the important, learned, and “adult” voices in his life except the inner and most important one, to be the artist he came to be. And we’ve all come with art to share, and must, if we’re ever to be whole. Not perfect, just whole, a word related, at its root, to healed and healthy.

One summer during my college years I worked in a paper mill in Alabama. One of my co-workers, Miss Honey, was an older woman who shared her breaks with me. I had a lot of questions about life and my direction at that time, and will always remember her holding her carton of buttermilk, squinting at me seriously, and saying, “You just gotta do who you are, and be who you is!”

I think Francis would agree.

Celebrate his life by sharing your art, blessing your loves and companions, caring for your earth, speaking your truths, creating meaningful rituals, doing who you are, and being who you is…

Prayer of Francis

(Adapted)

 Spirit of Love,

Make me a gardener of your peace:

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, let me sow pardon;

Where there is doubt, let me sow faith;

Where there is despair, let me sow hope;

Where there is darkness, let me sow light;

Where there is sadness, let me sow joy.

Help me to see that by consoling others, I will be consoled;

By offering understanding, I will come to understand myself;

By loving, I will rest in love…

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is when our bodies die that our spirits are set free.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

 

Catherine O'Meara, Discernment, Spirit Level

Co-Creation

by KittyLeave a Comment on Co-Creation

So ends a weekend full of fall’s bounty and invitations…for me, the proper response is gratitude: for friends, for family, for 4-legged companions, for the mystery of life we enter, and for the meaning we co-create in community.

Early Saturday morning, my husband and his friend, Scott, helped me plant over 160 tulip bulbs (wonderful bulbs, from www.AmericanMeadows.com).

 They dug, and I placed and covered the bulbs with a silent blessing for their peaceful rest and eventual vernal emergence, when all creation rises to the light. I like to plant in groups of five; certainly, this is in keeping with the elements of formal design, but for me, it also ensures the bulbs will rest in community: fragile companions nestled together during the time of fertile darkness, while cold winter winds and gentle–or fierce–snows swirl above their earth-womb, and safeguard their needed gestation.

And so, too, my own spirit is led downward to the coming darkness and cold of autumn and towards the solitude and centering of winter, where losses may be recounted and griefs healed, and where seeds of hope and dreams of growth may be harbored, incubated, and cradled. I’m gathering in the lessons of the year: winnowing, discarding, and laying out the questions I want to plant for winter discernment. Like the bulb’s requirements for transformation, this is best done deeply and in stillness, and never without community. Phillip, the 4-leggeds, friends, gardens, everything in every moment–my relationships with all–reveal myself to me. For each of us, whatever vulnerable potential will bloom into light requires co-creation and the support of community. Our growth is never done in isolation. We collaborate in fashioning the questions with all of creation, in awareness or not, and within these relationships we refine the paths where the questions lead…

Together, Phillip, Scott, and I joined the dance of co-creation with Mother Earth, planting hope and joining our energies with the web of nature, connecting with life’s eternal circle. Planting seeds is always a co-creation and collaboration with mystery, as is a life lived consciously.

 

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.