Learning – THE DAILY ROUND

4-legged companions, Authenticity, Autumn, Autumnal Equinox, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Centering, Change, Daily Round, Discernment, Full Moon Cottage, Gardening, Gifts, Gratitude, Healing, Home, Learning, Listening, Mystery, Nature, Noticing, Presence, Relationship, Rest, Slow Life, Spirit Level, Spirituality, Surgery, Thin Places, Transformation

To Walk in Balance

September 22, 2016March 29, 2020by Kitty2 Comments

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Wakan Tanka, Great Mystery,
teach me how to trust my heart,
my mind, my intuition,
my inner knowing,
the senses of my body,
the blessings of my spirit.
Teach me to trust these things
so that I may enter my Sacred Space
and love beyond my fear,
and thus Walk in Balance
with the passing of each glorious Sun.
~ Lakota Prayer

The autumn equinox seems a fitting time to contemplate the balance we manage to hold and honor in our lives.

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And the currently overused word, “literally” does seem to apply to my sense of balance: Since July 8^th, most of my time has been spent lying on a bed or couch with my left leg elevated and the foot iced, following surgery. Prior to the surgery, the doctor had repeatedly stressed that the recovery would be a long slog, but the foot wasn’t working well, so I chose the misery for improved quality of life. I’m fairly active and need to be for my joy to flow.

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The past few weeks, I’ve been going to therapy and am now free of the walker and boot that accompanied the majority of my healing. But I’m still working on regaining my balance. I can’t yet support myself standing on the left foot alone, which impedes (excellent word, meaning “to shackle the foot”) my yoga and work outs. The foot still swells to a stunning circumference if it’s down too long. I call her Hindenburg.

The view during my confinement didn’t inspire too much photography.

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I appreciated the 4-legged companions and the friends and family who stayed in touch through visits, messages, and calls. These made all the difference in my healing. The days became static, drifting one-into-the-next, and the world diminished to the size of a bedroom. By week three, I felt like Grace Poole in Rochester’s attic. Highly imbalanced.

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Caregivers are the saints of the earth, and mine was the best. Phillip made Mother Teresa look like an insensitive thug; he was that great a support. There’s a lot to do at Full Moon, especially in summer when the many gardens are in need of tending, and he managed all that, the 4-leggeds, my needs, the housecleaning and laundry, and full time remodeling jobs…I think, for once, he’s very happy summer is over and he can get back to the cushy job of teaching high school students. (!) A good friend visited at least twice a week, sat and chatted, helped clean, made meals…Challenges always reveal so many blessings in our lives, don’t they? And the blessings help to bring our spirits back into balance.

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For a time, I felt guilty that I wasn’t doing more with my enforced free time…I could have written an entire book series in the time I sat and watched old movies and read several mystery series that others wrote. I could have taught myself to knit, or taken up some other craft, or bettered myself in some laudable way, despite the pain in my foot and the humiliation of being utterly dependent on others.

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But those feelings led to one of the great gifts of my healing time.

I’ve always powered through my schoolwork, my jobs, my chores, and my days, and done more than I should (I think, trying to make Sr. Mary Someone take notice and validate my wonderfulness) so the second-best gift I’ve received from this experience (Phillip is always the first), is the chance to finally learn how to stop and say, “Enough. For now.” I think I’ve always feared I’d just slide into indolence and never rise again, but I think I’m discovering a better rhythm for my days that allows me both productivity and peace. Both can call upon our creativity.

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For my first outing, we went to the dogpark. The weather was grand and, although I sat at a picnic table with my leg raised and iced (sigh), I cried, just to be there and enjoying the lovely world outside my room.

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I’ve managed a couple trips (again, literally) down to the bridge since then.

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And I’ve even spent time weeding gardens, although the first time I overdid it, and Hindenburg rebelled. Learning the parameters is tricky, but being in the garden heals other parts of me, so not a loss, but a lesson.

I’m also back in the kitchen, making candy, roasting veggies, baking treats and feeling like myself again.

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So we roll around our lovely sun to autumn. The combines in surrounding fields are running from dawn to dusk, when they’re able, and the birds are emptying the feeders maddeningly fast, preparing for migrations. The gardens are nearing the time for cutting back and cleaning, harvests drawing to an end.

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We’ve received 15.5 inches of rain since the beginning of August and more is coming tonight and next week. The river is high, but we’re not experiencing the flooding that others are. A roof leak has led to drywall damage we’ll need to rectify, so that will be the Next Big Thing. (At Full Moon, not nationally, as we all know.)

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Autumn, the time when our world becomes a thin place, begins, and my spirit feels strengthened and ready for the sweet encounters with mystery it always brings. We make commitments and then we make them again, revising, reviewing, respecting (to “look again”) them, honoring the challenges they present and gifts they yield. The equinox is a lovely symbol of the balance that’s come to me, finally, and which I hope to integrate more profoundly into my life’s dance, however inelegantly executed it currently is. I have faith I’ll be pirouetting on the left foot one day soon.

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4-legged companions, Autumn, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Celebration, Change, Daily Round, Dogs, Family, Full Moon Cottage, Gratitude, Healing, Home, Learning, Love, Mystery, Nature, Noticing, Relationship, Sacred, Slow Life, Spirit, Spirit Level, Thanksgiving, Transformation, Wholeness, Wisdom

Aremus

November 19, 2015March 23, 2020by Kitty11 Comments

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I collect quotes and snippets of wisdom wherever I find them. This usually results in happy synchronicity, when I rediscover scraps of paper in drawers, pockets, purses, and books, upon which I’ve scrawled sources of inspiration. The words I saved and tucked away months, or even years ago, often so perfectly describe or deepen my current experience that it’s like receiving a perfectly-timed gift from myself.

This morning, as Malarky took a blessed nap, I cleaned out my top desk drawer. I’m addicted to “neat,” but my top desk drawer is like my psychic shadow, where all my secrets are shoved and stored until I confront, assess, and reorder them into a semblance of intentional and meaningful wisdom. Again. This happens only when I can’t actually close the drawer. Again.

Today, I came across a piece of paper that held this sentence: “The Wabanaki Confederacy of Native Americans called their dogs, ‘aremus,’ an honored reference that meant, ‘the one who walks with us.’”

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I have no idea where I first encountered this, or if it’s true, but I love its identification of the way I’ve deeply experienced the companionship of all of my 4-leggeds as we’ve traveled through our days and years together. Their physical and spiritual presence colors my memories, which would be incomplete without them.

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Malarky is proving to be a “good boy,” who takes to training happily and isn’t shy about exploring and realizing his own personality as well. I conveniently forgot, after 15 years with Riley and Clancy, what a great amount of energy and attention puppies require, but we’ve settled into a fairly reliable rhythm, dancing mainly around the needs of puppy’s bladder, puppy’s need for exercise and play, and puppy’s naptimes. My free time to write, photograph, shop, garden, cook, bathe—you get the picture (but not from my camera)–has diminished greatly, but I know it’s a phase, and a worthy one we trust will result in a healthy, happy companion. Hopefully, when that time arrives, I’ll still be mentally capable of being his companion, because right now I’m not so sure.

I’ve developed a new-found love for Tuesday nights, because that’s when Malarky goes to Puppy Kindergarten with Phillip, and comes home ready to spend most of Wednesday in recovery from all the fun he’s had. Yes! Thank you, God of Puppy-Training!

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He seems to enjoy practicing commands, which is encouraging, but responding to them when one of the cats is approaching is probably the best test for all involved. In casting about for the “gift in all things,” let us say that establishing these feline-canine relationships will strengthen and improve my patience considerably. We’ll leave it at that, for now. (Sit, Malarky…SIT, Malarky…SIT, MALARKY!) I’m supposed to use a high voice when I praise, and a firm voice when I command, and they get mixed up and have even been directed at Phillip, at times. Oh, dear. (But he sits like a charm.)

We’ve been held in the spell of an El Nino weather system for the past two months, which allowed us to set out on a warm, lovely canoe ride last weekend. Malarky seemed to enjoy it, although we kept it brief for his benefit.

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Phillip is great about thinking of little field trips to broaden Malarky’s experience and social skills. We went strolling through a local park filled with effigy mounds a few weekends ago, and he’s accompanied Phillip on weekend remodeling jobs, too.

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He helped us (finally) clean the gardens, on Sunday, and his obvious delight with everything he encounters continues to renew our own delight with life. I’m excited that we might receive several inches of snow tomorrow night. I can’t wait to see Malarky’s reaction when we step outside Saturday morning. Every day, his wonder lifts my heart.

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I’ve been baking for Thanksgiving in fits and starts. Family will be visiting and making merry with us next week, my favorite time of year, and this year we have so many blessings to celebrate!

The last time we gathered was the day before our sweet Riley died, and so the turning from sorrow to joy marks the holidays as especially sweet this year. That, and the “Dina Tates” we harvested this autumn. They are named for a friend who encouraged me to plant potatoes and relish the taste, compared to store-bought spuds. She was absolutely right!

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Yet it feels like we’re traveling into the holiday season with heavier burdens of anxiety, fear, and sadness regarding humanity’s failure to forge lasting, loving relationships. I continue to believe humankind’s currency can be kindness and our common language compassion, but the fires kindling these hopes are dying down, due to the violent and angry choices so many seem to be making. It breaks my heart to see a world of such magical and miraculous potential lack the imagination, energy, and love required to be realized.

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But my darling aremus continues to pull me along into joy, each tiny miracle revealing itself and reminding me that there are mysteries of endless delight to be uncovered every moment. And each time I open a book, a desk drawer, a purse, there are words from another traveler to inspire my journey, while the one who walks with me is at my side kindling fires of hope.

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May hope, grace, gratitude, and compassion bless all your gatherings and partings. May your journeys be safe and your love returned, in abundance. May hope grow and fear depart; may peace live joyfully within your heart. May we dream and then create a new world, fiercely and deeply aware of the great good possible, and believing it’s already being accomplished.

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Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for. ~Seamus Heaney

Hope is the deep orientation of the human soul that can be held at the darkest times. ~Vaclav Havel

There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. ~ Hannah Senesh

We can start from where we are, with what we have, and imagine and work for the healings that are necessary. But we must begin by giving up any idea that we can bring about these healings without fundamental changes in the way we think and live. We face a choice that is starkly simple: we must change or be changed. If we fail to change for the better, then we will be changed for the worse. ~ Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. ~A.J. Muste

If planetary peace seems beyond our reach, recall: Miracles are natural when we rely on the Source of All to carry our burdens with us. Then, even peace is possible. ~ Nan Merrill with Barbara Taylor, Peace Planet: Light for Our World

It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one’s intentions, makes one the enemy. ~ Charles de Lint

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. ~ G. K. Chesterton

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. ~ Albert Einstein

Gratitude is so close to the bone of life, pure and true, that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its planning and plotting. That kind of letting go is fiercely threatening. I mean, where might such gratitude end? ~ Regina Sara Ryan

No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture, but within oneself…If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts the responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. ~ Barry Lopez (excerpted from Arctic Dreams)

Becoming, Blessing, Change, Community, Conscious Awareness, Daily Round, Full Moon Cottage, Gifts, Gratitude, Home, Hospitality, Immigration, Learning, Migration, Nature, Noticing, Relationship, River, Slow Life, Spirit, Spring, Transformation, Web of Creation, Wholeness

Fellow Travelers

April 26, 2015March 23, 2020by Kitty10 Comments

The sunrise shouted me out of bed like a réveillé call this morning, and I had high expectations of posting some photos and a few paragraphs by 8 A.M.But that’s not how it works this time of year, and I should know better. Any day may find me migrating far afield with my camera, following winged, two, or four-footed fellow-travelers. So, by 7 A.M., I’d looked through a few photos, sipped coffee, chatted with my Beloved before he headed out to a remodeling job, and then wandered outside with my camera to see if any tulips had blossomed yet. They had not, so I roamed a bit, and eventually found myself three miles east along the bike trail, resting at the Rock River bridge. Thankfully, I was not still in my pajamas, although I’m getting to the time of my life where it wouldn’t matter all that much if I were.The Crawfish River, upon which Full Moon Cottage is situated, right on the curve of a drumlin, flows into the Rock River, a 300-mile river that is a tributary of the Mississippi, joining it south of us, in Illinois.

In spring, bird migrations follow the rivers to find their way to a kind of grand gathering of the clans at Horicon Marsh, about 40 miles north of us. The migrants offer all kinds of varied bird-watching treats, if we happen to be looking in the right direction, at the right time, and on the right day, because some are here and gone very quickly.

This week, the bit of river overflow opposite Full Moon Cottage has seemed to be taken for a temporary, but welcome, wetlands hostel of sorts, as every morning has revealed different guests, who have flown to Horicon or points north by late afternoon. Blue-Winged Teal ducks stopped over, as did shorebirds like Sandpipers and Snipes. (Sorry, my photos aren’t showstoppers because I was too far away, and didn’t want to wear waders and slog down to the guests’ resting place, disturbing them for a better photo, but you get the idea.) Flocks of American White Pelicans soared above Riley, Clancy, and me, during our walks this week, also headed to Horicon, to nest until late September. Their numbers have increased since the beginning of our current century, having largely disappeared during the last. Their 9-ft. wingspans and interesting flight patterns always delight me; they shift and flow in horizontal, then vertical lines, then V-formations, gathering clusters, and then shooting off with partners. Somewhere, I imagine a pelican flight choreographer named Randall or Jonathan, clacking his bill and snapping directions at their migration rehearsals. “One-two-three-and…Oh, shit; this is hopeless! Partner up, people! More jazzwings! We’ll never be ready for opening flight!”Their black and white coloring, and long, ridged bills are stunning, and always remind me of Audrey Hepburn in the “Ascot Gavotte” scene in My Fair Lady.

The little wetlands is drying up, due to our lack of rain, but the migrations continue. This week, I’m hoping to see hummingbirds, orioles and grosbeaks; they’re usually here the first week of May. I’m always excited to see them, maybe because of the many migrations I’ve made in my own life; it seems a natural impulse to seek the home that meets one’s needs, and it seems right as well, that strangers should be welcomed for the gifts, color, and variety they offer our lives.So, I set out feeders of sugar water and slices of oranges, as I hope I set out compassion and kindness; hospitality naturally invites such beauty that I would otherwise have missed. As others have welcomed me, I want to welcome others. One of my teachers said, reducing the philosophy of servant-leadership quite tidily, “It’s all about relationship.” We’re all of us coming from our home or going to our next home, sometimes both at once, and the least we can be in passing is generous in our embrace and wise in the recognition that we’re more alike than different.

4-legged companions, Art, Authenticity, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Centering, Change, Creativity, Daily Round, Discernment, Easter, Environment, Family, Friendship, Full Moon Cottage, Gifts, Gratitude, Home, Joy, Learning, Love, Nature, Noticing, Relationship, Rest, River, Slow Life, Spirit, Spirit Level, Spring, Stillness, Transformation, Web of Creation, Wholeness

Gentle Peace

April 5, 2015March 23, 2020by Kitty4 Comments

We’ve been on a break from school this week and, as with most vacations, the time has flown by. Our days have been filled with daily sessions of spring cleaning, followed by long walks, gatherings, periods of solitude, and late afternoon dates with wine, treats, and enough warm sunshine to sit outside and soak up some gentle peace together.

I fiddled around with a few new art projects I can share with my students during our remaining weeks together.

For the first time we can recall in our decades of living here, the April river is too low for our inaugural canoe ride, but we stood on the bridge and watched those who could enjoy the river do so. This little muskrat seemed to relish his leisurely swim and Narcissus moment of self-reflection and grooming time.

Despite some days of lovely warmth, we couldn’t get into the gardens just yet, except to cut back the grasses where the local bunnies love to nest. Apologies to Peter Cottontail, but I suspect that beneath the porches and decks at Full Moon Cottage, there exists an entire cosmos of warrens and teeming rabbit life; they are not welcome to my gardens as well, although when long-eared scouts venture out on reconnaissance missions, their hopping-stopping behaviors provide energetic barking workouts for the pups, who live to feel useful and appreciated through their protective guardianship of Mama and her gardens.

I’ve learned over (many) years at Full Moon that it’s better to wait until all possibility of frost has passed before I rake away mulch, and too eagerly dig and till…but I could feel the rising joy in my spirit when I noticed how the tulips and daffodils are growing, and the lilac buds are reaching a ripening fullness. Wild daisies, irises, bleeding heart and all manner of weeds are waving their little green flags, and along the trail, the garlic mustard continues its invasion as the ash trees die back from the beautiful, wicked Emerald Borer destroying them. The wild roses, grapes, and raspberries are as determined to thrive as ever; we shall see what evolves.

I learned this week, or perhaps relearned, as I’m old enough to forget and then delight in rediscovering so many things, it seems, that trilliums are also known by the wonderful names “wakerobin” and “birthroot;” who cannot be moved by the ways we address and welcome spring?

We added some finishing touches to the guest room, which has offered a good and pleasant pursuit, as we’ve worked to create a retreat of contentment. This week, we’ve been the guests, enjoying the peaceful colors of the room and the night songs from the river and woods that punctuate the stillness. These are the days for opening doors, opening windows, airing and refreshing our minds and spirits.

Happily, too, we had plenty of time this week to meet with friends for breakfasts, and lunches, and card games, and walks along the trail. We browsed salvage and antique shops, watched a few movies, took luxurious afternoon naps in sunpuddles, as instructed by the cats, and lingered over our morning coffee, sharing our dreams.

And so the earth has turned and we are Winter People breathing into Easter People once more. Wakerobins and birthroots. The dark cocoons are pierced by light and fall away. Again. Always. This week allowed us to emerge in grace, and gently. Stepping lightly into the almost imperceptible unfolding of who we are now.

I’m grateful for the tenderness of the transition, the peaceful companionship of my husband and friends, the restoration and renewal of my spirit, the signs of life and calls of the wild, more music than clamor, a love written in my name and sent as gift, reminding me that all shall be well.

I wish my friends a Blessed Easter, a continued celebration of Passover, and the Gentle Peace of the season.

Becoming, Childhood, Creativity, Daily Round, Education, Family, Gardening, Gifts, Gratitude, Healing, Home, Hope, Learning, Love, Nature, Noticing, Ritual, Slow Life, Spirit, Spring, Student, Teacher, Wholeness

Gardeners, All

March 15, 2015March 23, 2020by Kitty8 Comments

Such a splendid week we’ve had at Full Moon Cottage! We’ve been breathing gratitude, along with the sweet scent of geosmin, the organic compound released by active little actinomycetes as the earth reheats in spring. Like earth’s signature sachet, it evokes a million memories of gardens I’ve tended and loved since I was a child. The comforting reliable signposts assuring us that spring has arrived and is busily establishing her known rhythms has caused our enthusiasm and energy levels to rise like sap and respond by honoring the rituals this time of year calls forth: opening windows, cleaning and winnowing through closets, washing rugs and curtains, and going outside as often as possible to notice homecomings and welcome back old friends. The Canada Geese and Sandhill Cranes have been winging in on great southerly winds crying out, “Here we are! Here we are!” The male birds—cardinals, chickadees, flickers, jays–are establishing territories and will be seeking mates for nesting, so I’m scattering pet hair and dryer lint, and continuing to fill the feeders. Our owls make their presence known, as do the bossy crows, and this morning, Phillip heard a robin’s song. The river’s coat of ice is melting away. A lack of winter snow has caused the water level to be quite low this year, so we’re hoping for rains, but just to see the water sparkle in sunlight touches and begins to thaw every frozen particle lodged in our winter hearts. The long months of chilled confinement have ended; winter’s dark and snarled mind knots loosen and dissolve, allowing our spirits to flow. We’ve been laughing more this week. It’s too soon to get into the gardens, but at least I can see them again, and am trying to locate the very detailed list I made last autumn of all the uprooting, dividing, and replanting I had planned for this spring. Of course, first, we have to wait and see who did, and who did not, survive the bitter cold and lack of adequate snow cover we experienced until late winter. Ever hopeful.

I remember my first garden, when I was about eight, and the deep joy I felt planting my bachelor buttons, moss roses, zinnias, and cosmos. Every morning, for weeks, I dashed from bed to garden, pajama-clothed and barefoot—a habit that endures—to examine the earth for signs of green life. I weeded and watered and spent most of that summer immersed in “my” garden, as I have ever since. Daddy had encouraged this, utterly, and supported my dreams of color and blossom; Mama didn’t garden, but supported everything that gave me joy. I took it for granted that everyone had parents who so lovingly tended their dreams. Until I can grab a rake and trowel and get going this spring, my garden jones is satisfied at school, where, led by our intrepid team of visiting Master Gardeners, we’ve spent a few weeks planning, and are now planting seeds for this year’s garden. The little pots will sit in long trays on counters in the school’s basement, warmed by grow lights and watered from the bottom. It gladdens my heart to see how joyfully and naturally the children connect with these activities. They cannot always name the steps or tools involved in gardening, or even evidence familiarity with the resulting food, but they so merrily dig into buckets of soil and so tenderly plant seeds in tiny, plastic earth-filled homes. I think there’s nothing so healing, creative, or natural as gardening.

The children’s spirits have been thawing, too, and warmer days have increased their energy, and the need for its release and creative expression. Their city skyline artwork turned out beautifully. I was stopped in my tracks, though, when more than one child asked where in their skyline the jail should be represented, or a child showed me his city and identified a building as “the prison.” Once again, I was reminded that the familial, reliable, and seasonal rhythms in which I have always taken comfort and joy are very different from those circumscribing the lives of many of my students. Sometimes their behavior is angry and puzzling, and then comments like these reveal the missing pieces, and my heart breaks open, creating spaces for new seeds of understanding to be planted.

Phillip and I talk, often, of our students and the ways we might touch their spirits and hearts, and give them hope, or a bit of light to companion their journeys. It’s not likely they’ll remember us, but will they remember that a teacher once told them how special, and precious, and gifted they are? When they doubt their purpose, or lose their way, or struggle to make the right choice, will they feel rooted in courage and reach for a light-filled path? Breathing in the wonders and invitations of spring, I’m reminded that we are all stewards of each other as well as of the earth, and that how we prepare, nurture, and tend one another’s spirits is our calling as humans and, certainly, as teachers. Not everyone was gifted with present and loving parents who cultivated their gifts and wonder from the beginning, and we all have dark spaces that can be filled with self-doubt and self-loathing, or planted with promise and loved into bloom. We may never see the amazing blossoms and glorious results we have helped create, never be identified as one of the gardeners, but we must, over and over, plant the seeds of possibility, expectation, and affirmation, and shower them with love. Ever hopeful; gardeners, all.

Merry new spring and joyful planting!

4-legged companions, Art, Authenticity, Becoming, Cats, Celebration, Creativity, Daily Round, Education, Family, Full Moon Cottage, Gifts, Home, Joy, Learning, Love, Slow Life, Snow, Spirit Level

Sing, Anyway

February 1, 2015March 23, 2020by Kitty12 Comments

Here at Full Moon Cottage, we have been singing up some glorious sunrises this week.

I should correct that. Riley and Phillip have been singing, gloriously. Clancy and I bark, enthusiastically.

As for the cats, Murphy only sings like Johnny-One-Note when he’s locked himself in another room; Mulligan and Fergus have lovely voices; Finny has an eerie pre-furball ejection song, and Fiona apparently believes life is a silent movie.

But Clancy and I sing, anyway. We enjoy it. We bark at the sunrise and at the dogs’ nemesis, Bertie the Squirrel, and his Gang.

I was thinking about this during today’s howling blizzard. We felt sorry for Bertie, so we didn’t bark at him today. In fact, we tossed a few extra sunflower seeds out there, in an effort to keep our nemesis going strong.

So, no visible sunrise this morning, but we’ve been cozy, hanging out and making art. I was asked to teach art class to our after school group this year, grades 2 – 5. I love it, although I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, a visual artist. (Which is why I love photography; I can [try to] capture scenes that take my breath away, but that I can’t reproduce with paint or any other media.)

I can design; I can teach about talented artists; I can come up with fun lessons; and the fact that my examples are less than stellar removes any intimidation factor: the kids have responded most enthusiastically and with amazing gifts. They can tell how much I enjoy fiddling with color and pattern, and how little I care that I’m not the “best” among our group. We just have fun.

For many years, I denied myself the joy of playing with art materials because I knew the end result would fall so very short of what I imagined. I had a great, but rigorous elementary education, and it remained rigorous when we had “art class,” once every week. By the end of September during my first grade year, I had learned I wasn’t an “artist.”

But time kind of strips away such self-judgment and doubts, doesn’t it? And life is so much more fun, as a result. We’re all as capable of making art as we are of making love, and the results needn’t be measured or judged in either undertaking, so much as deeply enjoyed. The pleasure derived from creativity, or making something unique (and therefore, holy) from nothing but love, is a gift no one should be denied.

Today I made some Kandinsky-inspired circle trees, a chalk cityscape, and a paint-blob creature.

Oh, and—inspired by the storm–I painted these tiny owls in a tree “printed” with bits of cardboard. I can’t wait to see what my students create from these ideas!

And I designed a barn wood caddy to hold these twelve cream jars I bought at an antique store last summer. I wanted it for my dining table, so I can put garden flowers in the jars as a centerpiece. In-between shoveling and snow-blowing, Phillip used our blizzard-day to finish some carpentry for clients, but he also took time to create this for us:

Perfect! Hooray for the artist!

I’m grateful for the snowy day and the time it afforded us to make art. Actually, Clancy and I prefer to think we barked down the storm. Who says we can’t sing? We love it, and we’ll sing, anyway.

4-legged companions, Aging, Art, Authenticity, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Change, Daily Round, Earth Day, Family, Friendship, Full Moon Cottage, Gifts, Gratitude, Home, Joy, Learning, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Slow Life, Spirit Level, Spring, Transformation

Entertaining Angels

May 6, 2014March 23, 2020by Kitty10 Comments

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. ~ Hebrews 13:2; KJV

Winter lingered. Just when we thought it had taken its last breath, it gasped and continued to test our hospitality.

But for well over a week now, despite chilly nights, the days have been warmer, or rainy, and coaxed out the greens this late spring offers up as gift to eyes surprised by anything other than black, white, and gray.

Spring’s winged and 4-legged angels, arriving with all their usual and new messages regarding reasons to hope and deepen our love for the earth and each other, have been sailing, trotting, hopping, or crawling up and down the river bank. Choirs of blackbirds and spring peepers, with guest soloists—grosbeaks, robins, sand pipers, woodpeckers, ducks, geese, pelicans, warblers, finches, and cardinals—alert us to miracles daily and hourly. Today, my first sightings of a Baltimore Oriole and Rose-breasted Grosbeak set my heart dancing. The silence and solitude of winter are definitely over; whatever dreams and seeds were planted in the dark have been called forth most dramatically this spring. It took a while for the stone to be rolled away, but the light is now shining like a drama queen. “Grow!” it seems to command.

We emerged, tentatively and cautiously, peeking out from under winter’s blanket like the proverbial groundhog, and then began to meet, socialize, fill in the calendar, haul out the garden tools and dig into life with the vigor only pasty-white winter people can summon when spring returns in the fullness of her resurrection power.

Our pups, Riley and Clancy, who will celebrate 13 years of being next week, had a dicey winter. Age-related health encounters gave us some sad and frightening moments, which time and our saintly veterinarian helped us through, gently. We’ve all made adjustments and adapted. We feared their loss (knowing it will come, but please, not yet, not now) and are therefore utterly grateful they’re still here and again able to amble down the trail with us. Their kennels have moved upstairs; our walks are shorter; their schedule is a bit more closely monitored; at night we protect each other; and—if possible—we celebrate our funky family even more than ever. I guess my years tending dying parents and elderly patients have readied me for this, as well. If so, Full Moon Cottage will be the best damn nursing home for elderly 4-leggeds we can imagine.

One evening we had company visiting and the night became so merry and so filled with heady conversation and children and music that our five-year-old guest crawled into his mother’s arms and softly cried. His mother held him and asked about his tears. “I feel so happy,” he said. So much joy, some needed to spill out a bit, I suppose, to re-balance his mighty little spirit.

I know exactly how he felt.

On Earth Day, my students and I cleaned up the school grounds, washed bits of the refuse we collected and then made art…their sweet hearts and lively spirits feed me, daily. I’ve come to a time in my life where most teachers arrive, if they’re lucky and as blessed as I’ve been: we know that teacher and student are the same thing.

As are life and death.

I’m trying to gauge my wealth differently than financial advisers might counsel: How engaged with life, how open to its invitations have I been this day? To what degree have I given and received as I’ve circled through the daily round? How often did I pause and connect with all the angels and their messages streaming towards and through me? How freely did I share those messages with others?

In my life, angels, or messengers who remind me, “This is it! Now! It’s all holy!” have never been pretty men with wings, though some of my angels have been men, and many of my guides have had wings…Only look and listen, they’re everywhere: winged, legged, fluttering, croaking, singing, blooming, dying, laughing or weeping. See! These unique and sacred collections of particles gathering and forming, dissolving and reforming: Be moved to dance, to hobble, to wheeze, to weep with joy by all the ways Love calls you out, every moment, into resurrection and new creation.

Clancy questions whether he must entertain his sibling cats as angels, especially if they appropriate his kennel.

Balance, Becoming, Change, Daily Round, Droughts and Floods, Environment, Gardening, Gratitude, Healing, Hope, Learning, Loss, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Transformation, Web of Creation

Blowing Hot and Cold

September 10, 2013March 23, 2020by Kitty6 Comments

Nothing is glummer Than a cold in the summer. A summer cold Is to have and to hold.

~ Ogden Nash, Fahrenheit Gesundheit

It is ironic that on the hottest day of the year (September 10th!) I continue to harbor a nasty late-summer cold. We’re five weeks into another drought, and during the long, necessary hours of watering the gardens, it feels odd to be sneezing and taking breaks to greatly enrich the investments of Kleenex stockholders.

My voice sounds like a sheep crossed with a foghorn, and several bees and wasps seem to be lodged, circling and thrumming, in my head. It figures: a couple of weeks ago I smugly announced to Phillip how interesting it is that “I never get sick. Just never. It’s been years.”

Lesson learned.

Again.

It does seem, though, like the hours spent watering are also cooking the tenacious virus out of my system…More irony: What’s killing the garden is healing me.

It looked like we might avoid a drought this year. We enjoyed a temperate spring and bountiful summer, harvesting more asparagus, gooseberries, and cherries than ever.

The gardens seemed to be recovering so well from last summer’s horrendous months of aridity. But August and September have set us back again. We’re grateful that several gallons of tomato sauce are already in the freezer, but the grass is dying back, the trees and wildlife are suffering, and there are more of both than we can care for, thoroughly.

So I’ve begun to blow a bit cold on gardening, too. I’m willing to plant, weed, and tend my gardens for hours, and have, for 50 years, starting with a tiny flower patch my father and I prepared for my first garden. (Moss roses, bachelor buttons, zinnias and marigolds: A gardener is born.) But I have to admit that the past two summers have robbed me of the rewards previous years have afforded. I used to feel the joy of midwifing a nursery full of thriving greenery, blossoms, and food; now, I feel like a full-time hospice worker once again: Who might die today?

The long hours that formerly yielded deep peace and contentment are leaving me feeling, well, forlorn and bereft. I miss the partnership of Mother Nature; we used to co-create so happily together, though I understand her abandonment after decades of maltreatment and abuse by beings who should know better.

Still, there’s a garden in the front yard that needs to be overhauled, and I can’t help but get a little excited about planning its design…all the plants could be drought-resistant, and irrigated wisely.

Maybe I need to keep working at it, showing Mother Nature my intent here is earnest and my commitment faithful; maybe that’s the only way both of us will heal and find each other again. Isn’t true love always renewed in a garden?

Ah-choooo!

Now, where are those garden-design books?

(See Ogden Nash’s entire whole poem here.)

Authenticity, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Centering, Daily Round, Discernment, Gifts, Gratitude, Learning, Listening, Nature, Photography, Slow Life, Spirit, Stillness, Transformation, Wholeness

A Lot Of Slow

August 29, 2013March 23, 2020by Kitty16 Comments

A Lazy Thought

There go the grownups
To the office,
To the store.
Subway rush,
Traffic crush;
Hurry, scurry,
Worry, flurry.

No wonder
Grownups
Don’t grow up
Any more.
It takes a lot
Of slow
To grow.

~ Eve Merriam

All this hurrying soon will be over. Only when we tarry do we touch the holy. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, In Praise of Mortality, translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Where are you hurrying to?
you will see
the same moon tonight
wherever you go! ~ Izumi Shikibu

Laughing with somebody till the tears run down your cheeks. Waking up to the first snow. Being in bed with somebody you love. Whether you thank God for such a moment or thank your lucky stars, it is a moment that is trying to open up your whole life. If you turn your back on such a moment and hurry along to business as usual, it may lose you the ball game. If you throw your arms around such a moment and hug it like crazy, it may just save your soul. ~ Frederick Buechner

I get so preoccupied with the details and pressure of my schedule, with the hurry and worry of life, that I miss the song of goodness which is waiting to be sung through me. Joyce Rupp, O.S.M.

We are naturally reverent beings, but much of our natural reverence has been torn away from us because we have been born into a world that hurries. There is no time to be reverent with the earth or with each other. We are all hurrying into progress. And for all our hurrying we lose sight of our true nature a little more each day. ~ Macrina Wiederkehr, Source: Radical Grace, the Center for Action and Contemplation

Hurry, hurry has no blessing. ~ Swahili Proverb

Balance, Becoming, Community, Daily Round, Gardening, Gratitude, Learning, Love, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Poetry, Relationship, Spirit Level, Transformation, Web of Creation, Wholeness

dancing lessons

August 14, 2013April 16, 2023by Kitty8 Comments

In the garden,

old steps forgotten

can be relearned,

a pause in your own dance

sometimes necessary

to witness and honor again

those lovers and opposites,

ironically, flawlessly

meant to be matched,

who meet and feed,

each upon the sweetness

of the other

in open abundance and joy.

Revolving, one to the next,

a wheeling reel of life—

giver and receiver,

now the flower,

now the bee,

then the flower’s seed

and bird.

Bow, drink, feed, love.

Turn.

Become food.

Or god; perhaps they are the same.

Sacred intimacies

silently studied

by the lover in you who,

seeing Love’s circular dance,

loves the world better…

and so you turn to the other

to offer

then turn again,

to receive

sweetness and sustenance.

Old steps relearned,

the dance goes on.

Bow, drink, feed, love.

Turn.

Become food.

Or god; perhaps they are the same.

Authenticity, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Celebration, Centering, Community, Daily Round, Friendship, Full Moon Cottage, Gratitude, Home, Learning, Noticing, Ordinary Time, Photography, Relationship, Slow Life, Spirit Level, Summer, Transformation, Wholeness

Ordinary Time

July 19, 2013March 23, 2020by Kitty11 Comments

The great lesson from the true mystic…is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends and family, in one’s backyard. ~ Abraham Maslow

Our summer has blessed us with a holy balance that we found it very difficult to maintain last year. The difference in our energy is profound, substantial, and named as gift.

Hot and muggy weather has been moderated by temperate; rainfall has been received and followed by aridity; days and evenings filled with friends and activities have altered with times of silence and stillness. No great or monumental changes have occurred in our lives, but transformations have, of course, been ongoing, and we acknowledge that the anchors we use to steady and focus our attention can at any moment be lifted to allow for sailing with those currents always carrying us home, beyond one now to the next.

It is an ordinary time of picnics and gardening, of art fairs and meeting with friends, of sitting with a good book and enjoying our 4-legged companions, of celebrating the exquisite good fortune of being alive and finding each other and being well together in spite of our impediments, frailties, and the dreams we’ve let loose like so many colored balloons floating away through summer-blue skies. All is well within the boundaries of what, actually, is.

Above all, we at Full Moon Cottage have felt a rare quality of grace this summer and the heart’s response is gratitude.

It is lovely to arrive at a place and time that offer both presence and reflection, hunger and satiety, desire and its fulfillment, all in an even flow of moderation. And although we know that life’s fierce tempests will once again tumble our minds ahead of our steps, that grief and regret will make their entrances and speak their lines through our hearts, and that this soothing rhythm may suddenly jangle into jerky syncopation, perhaps some sense of this deep peace will continue to whisper its blessing and steady our spirits when it feels as though the ordinary has departed and our hope seems to hang again on the promise that all shall be well.

I hope we’ll retreat to this time and place, so as to recall we’re always circling the still point, and our proximity to peace is driven more by our receptivity to the miracles shining through the mundane and the willingness to discover the poetry hidden in the prosaic than by the perceived drama of external events and characters. I believe we’ll again be blessed to rest in the center if we can recognize the sacred balance offered by the ordinary.

We need to find ways to lift the moments of our daily lives—to celebrate and consecrate the ordinary, to allow the light of spiritual awareness to illuminate our days. For though we may not live a holy life, we live in a world alive with holy moments. We need only take the time to bring these moments into the light. ~ Kent Nerburn, Small Graces

Droughts and Floods, Environment, Full Moon Cottage, Gardening, Home, Humor, Learning, Nature, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Summer

Heat Wave

June 27, 2013March 23, 2020by Kitty10 Comments

It ain’t the heat; it’s the humility. ~ Yogi Berra

Almost two weeks of hellishly high temperatures, thunderstorms, and the resulting steamy atmosphere have made the world around Full Moon Cottage a sauna. A Finnish winter in reverse. We dash outside to sear our lungs and open every pore, then run back inside to chill ourselves silly.

Nonetheless, despite sketchy weeding and deadheading missions conducted in haste while smothered in mosquito repellant, I seem to have kept the gardens happy. And at dusk, cloaked in conditioned air and holding glasses of chilled wine, we’ve enjoyed the seasonal spectacle of fireflies flitting about, seeking romance and union.

Every morning, I refill the birdbaths with fresh cold water, check the many feeders, and make sure all of our summer guests are tended. A kind friend sent me a wren house her husband built and we now have house wrens serenading us with their aggressively happy chirping.

Nights have been less pastorally soothing. Thunder and lightning have rumbled and crackled through most of the last week’s dreamtime. I can tell by the dark circles under our eyes that both of us need a long, quiet night. It looks like that may happen sometime between Sunday and Tuesday, when a dry, temperate spell is forecast.

No complaints. The rain has been welcome and the high river allows for canoe rides to continue. Other parts of our state have been flooded, and for many farmers, hopes pinned to a planting season and eventual harvest have vanished. Last year these were lost to drought and this year to flooding, a vivid reminder that we are still tethered to our climate and its health for our sustenance.

Well, almost no complaints.

The chiggers that plagued my gardening for several summers disappeared completely during last summer’s drought, I expect from lack of food and moisture. I am made, utterly, of smells and tastes most delicious to mites; they’d completely ignore Phillip if he were lying nude in the garden and I stood beside him covered in armor. They’d head straight for the chinks in my metal and pierce my flesh with their nasty stylostomes, injecting enzymes that melt my cell structure into chigger malts. I’d hoped that between the drought and our lovely cold winter they’d disappeared for good, but discovered this morning that they’ve not only survived but are thriving…the confident human gardener, smug in her knowledge of where to dig and what to plant and how to improve the landscape, bustles outside to rearrange and redesign the earth surrounding her home and returns covered in itchy red welts, brought low by a voracious and nearly invisible mite.

Yogi Berra was right: It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility!

4-legged companions, Ancestors, Authenticity, Balance, Becoming, Change, Community, Daily Round, Dying, Family, Gifts, Gratitude, Healing, Home, Learning, Light, Loss, Nature, Photography, Relationship, Slow Life, Spirit, Transformation, Web of Creation

Breath of Life

April 29, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty16 Comments

Phillip, my cousin, Don, and my Aunt Mary

My beloved Aunt Mary died several weeks ago, early one Sunday morning in February. She was my mother’s younger sister, but not by much, and their close bond throughout their lives always made me long for a sister, too. It often surprised the three of us how much more I resembled my aunt in attitudes and preferences than I did my mother. And in the years since my mother died, Mary and I had become even closer, sharing e-mails and phone visits regularly.

My aunt was a remarkable person, utterly funny, charming, intelligent, and alive to the society, interests, and amusements that paraded through her days, the kind of person who had many lifelong friends, enamored children, nieces and nephews, and beholden strangers who benefited from her kindness and acts of charity. She was someone whose wit, wisdom, ready listening and encouragement were vital to making others see that a better world, or just a better day, is always possible. She had a vital spark most lack. She breathed greater life into those around her than they sustained alone.

I write this not as a eulogy, for I cannot do her gifts or influence on my life justice in such a brief forum, but by way of sharing that my grief in losing her has been gentle and so coupled with relief at her peace that it’s traveled with me these past weeks more like a soft grey cloud than a terrible storm, as my parents’ deaths engendered. I am grateful for her gifts and presence in my life and I am grateful that she is no longer yearning to be with her husband or suffering from ill health.

But I sure miss our e-mails, visits, and shared laughter.

I was thinking of her one morning when spring beckoned more than chores and I’d wandered outside to see what the world could tell me. I saw this daffodil, so earnest in its reaching for light that the dead leaf circumscribing its leaves couldn’t restrain its rising momentum.

That is how the dead can be with us, how grief can restrain joy…The next day, the leaf had fallen away, joining others that surrounded the plant, becoming food for its continued growth. In death, still the breath of life.

Grief takes its own time—and must—but what a gentle reminder that winter leads to spring, and death to life. Just the kind of message my Aunt Mary would send me.

Another gift of spring has been these darling fox kits, just emerging from their den to smell the world and take a few tentative steps into its songs and mysteries. They make every pore of my being tingle with maternal instinct, but, like everything wild, including my own nature, they also teach me over and over again to respect their boundaries and not interfere with instinctive patterns followed for centuries. So I observe from a distance and leave them to their necessary dance. I hope they will know peace, and comfort, and joy, in whatever form these may be known by foxes. I breathe a prayer and send it to their den at night.

I read about a wealthy inventor, futurist and engineer who believes people will, eventually, live forever, and who has hopes that his dietary, vitamin, and exercise regimen will allow him to remain healthy until this is possible.

I have no desire to live forever; I just want to be alive for all of the life granted me, and, if I’ve done it well, maybe I can feed the growth of others in their reaching for the light after I’ve gone, breathing still through their lives and the ways they love the world.

Like my Aunt Mary.

Art, Balance, Becoming, Blessing, Change, Daily Round, Discernment, Family, Friendship, Gifts, Gratitude, Learning, Listening, Love, Noticing, Photography, Relationship, Stillness, Transformation

Falling in Love Again

January 15, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty6 Comments

One day last week I reread Paula D’Arcy’s moving spiritual memoir, Gift of the Redbird, in which she shares her lost-and-found relationships with the Holy over the course of many years, and how her sacred encounters, whether prompted by the utter depths of grief, illness, or yearning, always led to her willingness to notice, attend, and surrender images of the Holy that no longer held meaning for her. The gifts yielded by these journeys—hard-won, as the best gifts often are—seemed to be greater expansiveness and deeper evolution regarding her capacity to love and to perceive connection with all creation.

And so I’ve been traveling with the book’s wisdom in the time since closing its covers. (All art, for me, requires this time to be with my atoms and energy, rearranging my understanding of life’s big questions before I can even begin to speak about its effects on my spirit. And, of course, these alterations change when I revisit a work of art, even a book that’s slim and a deceptively quick read.)

I’ve been thinking about all the significant relationships in my life, from the openness and intimacy shared with my own spirit and sense of the Holy, and then rippling out from there to include my connections with my husband, family, friends, 4-leggeds, and even my home. It seems all of them have followed the pattern described by D’Arcy’s relationship with her God, in that the connections are at times deeply intimate and lively, and at other times, somewhat flat and stagnant

It’s good to be reminded that ongoing discernment and faithful checking-in can help us recognize the degree of effort and attention we’re offering these relationships and how well we’re tending them. But there is also the need for the field of each relationship to have its fallow time for deepening; what may, at first, feel stagnant may more truthfully be the sacred period of stillness necessary for the rigors of the relationship’s evolution, its next stage, requiring re-commitment and patience as this unfolds.

The dark nights our spirits experience, as do each of our relationships, may be accepted and unpacked as gifts, although at times they feel so antithetical to anything desired, supportive, or helpful. But traveling the circle as many times as I have, I’ve begun to see these places of dark blessing are like the silent depths beneath the earth where seeds are loved into growth.

And to realize that my partners in relationship, perhaps even the Holy, have their own steps to dance, their own needs to withdraw, to be renewed, and to evolve.

And how lovely when we waltz together once more, embrace, and fall in love again, not only with our past adventures and the relationship we have shared, but with the shining place we now find ourselves in and all the steps we have yet to dance together.

Blessing, Change, Childhood, Children with special needs, Healing, Home, Hope, Learning, Mental health, Spirit Level, St. Coletta, Transformation, Wisconsin

A Child Shall Lead…

January 2, 2013March 25, 2020by Kitty14 Comments

In 1900, children born with mental and physical disabilities were often delivered to mental hospitals and institutions that were devoid of the gentle care and treatment suited to their ages, abilities and growth. A few decades earlier, state and private schools that were dedicated to the teaching and care of children termed “idiotic,” “backward,” and “feeble-minded” had just begun to be formed throughout the United States.

One of these schools, St. Coletta, was founded in 1904, and staffed by Franciscan nuns in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where the nuns had formed their convent in 1864. The original campus, comprised of dormitories, classrooms, kitchens, a chapel, and several outbuildings, covered 174 acres, although this grew to 650 acres throughout the Jefferson area. Children from all over the country came to St. Coletta’s, originally called The St. Coletta Institute for Backward Youth.

In 1931, they incorporated under the name St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children, out of respect for the residents and their families. Their website mentions that one of their students had said, “We don’t walk backward!”

Over the years, hundreds of residents passed through St. Coletta, which became nationally known for its dedication to advocating for the rights of people with disabilities to be included in all aspects of life and treated with the dignity they deserved. For some residents, this was the only home and family they would know, but as society’s understanding of these disabilities evolved, many residents were able to receive the training to live, eventually, in group homes or with family members, and some in their own apartments, holding jobs that honored their gifts and differing aptitudes for independence.

Decades ago, St. Coletta began to adapt to the changing needs of its students, who no longer required on-site dormitories, since children with special needs were acclimated into school systems that allowed them to live with their families, and St. Coletta’s adult residents transitioned to supervised group homes. Acreage was sold off and then buildings were emptied and possessions sold, although St. Coletta’s remains active in training and assisting people with special needs.

A few years ago, there was a weekend-long sale of furniture and household items and we went to explore the grounds and honor the history of St. Coletta’s exceptional children. I discovered two old wooden sleds leaning against a wall, covered with dust and neglect. One of the people assisting with the sale said we could take them for $10.00, more as a donation to St. Coletta’s operating costs than because they were of any value.

During Phillip’s Christmas break, we decided to restore the oak sleds as best as we could. I’d washed them over and over at the end of the summer, and cut away the disintegrated, filthy ropes. Phillip sanded (and sanded), then primed and painted the steel runners. I refreshed the logo on one of the sleds, and then we used coats of tongue oil to seal the wood. Phillip still wants to add a layer or two of spar varnish to them, and we’ll lace new rope through the holes.

They’re still not worth anything, monetarily, but I can see the worn places where little hands and feet gripped the sleds, and I can imagine the laughter and joy of children who had found a place they could call home, where they were loved and schooled, and encouraged to play…and it touches my heart. The sleds are worth nothing, yet they are treasures.

They remind me that we can evolve in our understanding of each other; we can change and grow meaningfully towards greater love and make deeper invitations to each other’s highest self. We can stop defining each other with labels that denigrate and cease judging each other’s worth. There is such great need and such discouraging behavior on the part of those we look to for leadership presented to us every day…As the New Year offers fresh pages to fill and wide-open paths towards better dreams, it is good for me to look upon these humble sleds and allow the sweet, brave spirits of exceptional children to restore my hope. We can change. We can grow. We can listen and learn. We can evolve, together.

A former resident of St. Coletta’s created this lovely tribute to his childhood home. (I had to use the enlarged version to read his words.)

One of St. Coletta’s more famous residents was Rosemary Kennedy, whose sad story is retold here.

Becoming, Education, Learning, Student, Teacher

When the Teacher is Ready

September 1, 2012March 25, 2020by Kitty16 Comments

When I was a teacher, this was a bittersweet time of year. Spacious summer days were diminishing to the daily routine circumscribed by hourly school bells and small boxes in a big book of lesson plans reduced further to prescribed goals, but balanced by the excitement, love, and mystery generated by discovering unique teacher-student relationships and the prospect of a wide-open new year of traveling together in our learning.

I sensed this meeting of beginnings and endings in my husband’s energy as he bustled to complete house and garden projects before rejoining his faculty this past week.

I already miss Phillip’s constant easy presence and the time for spontaneous adventures we’ve enjoyed during his summer break, and sometimes I miss teaching…not the endless meetings or the mind-numbing impediments bureaucrats use to block the profession’s creativity and growth, but the intimacy of relationships, the give and take, the teaching and learning and surprises each year brought.

One of the lovely gifts derived from my many years of teaching has been the joy of watching my former students blossom into maturity, becoming parents, professionals, and compassionate adults. Many of them e-mail me, or let me know through social media how they’re doing and I’m always happy to hear from them.

Then, there’s Kate.

Kate has always been more than a student to me…she stole my heart even before she entered my classroom. At this time, I worked at a small school, grades K-8, and we had the luxury of watching students “grow up,” knowing their families, and forming strong teacher-student-parent relationships.

One day I was outside, monitoring the playground during the noon hour, and Kate arrived at my side, a curious, opinionated, funny, and bright 7-year-old. Some kismet brought us together. I was charmed, and although professional discretion was always honored between us, she somehow became one of those happy students who visited my classroom after school to tell me about her day, or share her ideas about books, or films. I can’t even remember now if I left that teaching position before she was actually my student, or if I served as her teacher when she began middle school.

At some point as she finished middle school, Kate began writing me e-mails, updating me about her learning and life as a student, and we kept up this correspondence through her high school and college years. Occasionally, we’d meet for lunch, or go on an adventure, and I’ll always remember her kindness in visiting my mother at the dialysis center. She’s always seemed a merry “old soul” to me.

Her wonderful parents invited us to Kate’s college graduation party, and I gave her a printed copy of our years of e-mails, chronicling her wonderful development into a mature young woman, one who has since moved to the East Coast and begun her professional career as an editor.

She was home this weekend, and I was deeply touched that she saved a day to visit me.

She is not my daughter, but over the years, Kate has taken up residence in that part of my heart I always reserved for the daughter I’d hoped to have.

It may be, as the proverb states, that when the student is ready, the right teacher will appear, but I count my blessings that one day on a school playground, something in my spirit and heart made me ready to welcome Kate into my life. She has taught me so very much, and I am grateful. The best relationships have this reciprocal flow of learning and teaching between those involved, I think.

So I send my blessing to all teachers as they begin a new school year, especially the dear souls who continue to live out this profession in my home state, where the past few years have brought denigration to their efforts. Budgets and programs are cut, classrooms are overcrowded, collective bargaining is destroyed, and salaries and benefits are precarious.

But you show up. You plan and hope and open the door every morning, welcoming the happy, the sad, the hungry, the lost, the eager and bright…and you supply what you are able, and more. You feed their minds, and their hearts, and their spirits, sometimes at the expense of your own.

I wish you a year of gentle peace, happy surprises, sustained energy, and compassionate relations…and I wish all of you students like Kate, who come to learn, but end up teaching you more about your own journey than you could have expected.

© 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.

Category: Learning