FAREWELL TO SAMHAIN

A few crocuses are blooming. Some tulips are up. A few of the star of Star of  Bethlehem bulbs are up. The heather has bloomed most of the winter and it's flippin' soggy around here. The last couple of winters it's barely rained. We're working on over twelve inches for this month alone. That's almost a third of what we got for the whole year last year. Anyway, the Celtic winter quarter ends tonight.

Go with thanks and go with blessing, season of deep memory. Souls with joy are deeply freighted, hearts are charged with heritage. As ancestors you have traveled, You have come to Winter's home. Father Counsel, you have cheered us, Mother Wisdom, who has smiled, touch the hidden seed within us, may we grow as Springs own child.

From The Celtic Devotional by Caitlin Matthews

SALESMANSHIP?

(I think half my synapses got overloaded last week. My mind has felt curiously numb. Sort of a brain encased in feather pillows feeling. If that makes any kind of sense at all. )

 

I’m a logger’s daughter. That might have something to do with a lot of my basic attitudes. If my dad had been a farmer, a miner, a trucker, or a sailor the result would probably be the same. They’re all people whose jobs depend just as much on environment as skill. You can plan all you want but you can’t beat the weather. Fire, flood, storm, lightning, or hail. You can’t beat ‘em. You can only try to work around them.  People who work in nice safe offices can afford to hang on to the illusion that they can control their destiny for a little longer than some of the rest of us. At least they could until their jobs started getting outsourced or mechanized too. Or the stock market tanks and takes some if not all of their retirement savings with it.

 

I had a pretty happy childhood but we never had three good years in a row. It’s kind of like the joke about the farmer who wins the lottery. When somebody asks him what he’s going to do with the money it’s “farm until it’s gone. ”Heck, dad never worked a full year in all the years I can remember. If it the woods weren’t closed down because the winter weather made it impossible to get the timber out, they got closed down for a stretch in the summer when it was too dry to run the equipment. And when the forest ranger came by and said “closer ‘er down.” You turned off the machinery and headed for the landing. Yeah, if things were closed down too long, the guys qualified for unemployment, but it was nowhere near what they brought home from working. And every three or four years there was chunk of wood with dad’s name on it. In a lot of ways it’s a miracle that he managed to last almost twenty five years working in the logging industry. At least he walked away, even if he was limping pretty badly.

 

Until dad was disabled, mom was a stay at home mom. And she was a busy stay at home mom. Three kids, canning in the summer, sewing all year round, three meals a day, laundry. There were times in the winter when they had to hang dad’s wet weather gear and pants on the clothes line and hose them down before they could be brought in the house. Oh, and we didn’t get a dryer until after kid number two was out of diapers. Heck, I think I was in senior high when we finally swung an automatic washer. But, there was always time to go to thepark in the summer. There was time to make cookies for Christmas.

 

I’m not telling this story to make anybody feel sorry for us. It’s just the way it was. Since Oakridge was pretty much a timber town, that’s how it was for most folks. We had a roof over our heads, food on the table, warm coats when we needed them, warm beds, a car, you get the picture. And when you look at most of the world you realize now that we were rich beyond the dreams of a lot of people. When I look back, we were about as happy as anybody else in town. There were good days, there were not so good days, and there were a few down right crappy days. The only clothes that came with labels on the outside were Levi’s jeans. We hadn’t gotten to the stage where you’re sold the idea that you should pay for the privilege of being a walking, talking billboard for some designer or store. We hadn’t bought into the idea that wearing clothes with no writing on them made you less of a person.

 

In the last couple of years my company has been heavily involved with one of these motivational gurus. You know the kind, visualize it happening, believe it’s going to happen and it will types. Folks like these always seem to have specials during the PBS begathons. To say nothing of Dr. Phil and his clones. Since it’s up to you to believe hard enough to make it happen if it doesn’t it’s your fault. You didn’t try hard enough. Never mind that the deck favors the house and makes you happy may be totally unique to you. What you recognize as success may not work for any of the other six billion people on the planet.

 

 

I’m starting to wonder if that’s part of the problem with this administration and some of its policies. Especially the war in Iraq. It’s certainly the tenor of the president’s statements. Just keep believing it will work and you’ll reach your goal. Maybe it’s no accident that a lot of these guru’s started out as salesmen. And no accident that the president’s degree is in business not the law or political science. Only now they’re trying to sell “happiness,” “teamwork,” or “democracy” as if these things came in little tins with labels. Happiness by the ounce. Democracy by the pound.

 

If you’ll recall the opening statement of the Declaration of Independence, while we have the right to “pursue” happiness, there is no guaranty that we’ll actually achieve it. Or that we’ll have the wisdom to recognize it when we do find it.

 

 

The universe took out it's paint brushes and produced this masterpiece. It's a wonderful shot of the Orion Nebula.

A SENSE OF SOMETHING PART 2

 

I suspect that some of the individuals we call “insane” may be tapping more deeply into this sense of what we’re doing to the earth and ourselves. And they just can’t take the pain. Is this attempt to communicate always there and we’re drowning it out with drugs and objects? Or think it’s the devil tempting us and run screaming to the nearest fundamentalist house of worship. Oh, there’s a devil all right. It’s called fear and we’re choking on it.

 

I’m still a little overwhelmed by what happened this morning and frankly it scares the hell out me. I’m getting an overwhelming sense that the scales are tipping and it’s not in our favor. I’m also convinced that the answers we need won’t be found in the organizations that run the churches, mosques, synagogues, ashrams or political parties. Too many groups are too invested in defining who belongs and who doesn’t. Too worried about what might be happening the bedrooms and not enough about what is happening in the boardrooms. Too tied up in the power games. Too busy screaming that they have all the answers that they can’t even hear the questions. So damned scared that if someone else gets a little “more” of something we’ll end up with “less.” Somehow we have to tap into the individuals that realize that the balance needs to be righted. That if we stick to what really matters, there is enough to go around.

 

We matter simply because we are. Each of us is unique. Each of the over six billion people on this planet is unique. No one is expendable. And I think that’s what scares us. The refugee in Darfur is just as unique in the universe as President Bush. And just as special. What we can’t seem to admit is that the whole universe matters simply because it exists. Too many are chasing things that they believe will make them better somehow. And so many have so little that just surviving takes everything they have.. One group can’t make the time to look up and the other group can’t find the extra strength.

 

I know that getting everybody to join hands and sing Kumbayah isn't going to solve the problem.But, I'm not going to give up, I've got too much riding on the outcome of this little thing we call life and so do the rest of us.

A SENSE OF SOMETHING

Something totally freaking weird happened this morning. And folks that’s the mild description. I was thinking about the journal entry I did last night. The phrase “the whole planet is alive” popped through my mind. That fits, that was the theme of the entry. Then the sentence completed itself. I was not expecting this, I really was not. The whole planet is alive; and screaming.  And just for an instant, maybe half an instant, there was this mind-bending sense of “wrongness." A jumble of sounds and images. Continental plates grinding, whole forests falling, winds howling and a feeling of bottomless, endless grief. Sorry, that’s the best I can do with the sledgehammer we call language. I had to get out of the office for a few minutes. I was almost in tears for crying out loud.

 

That’s the best I can do. I don’t think there are words for what I felt in that microsecond. And I haven’t had anything mind altering this morning. Last time I checked oatmeal, applesauce and lemon ginger tea aren’t on any list of controlled substances. I suspect it was the entry itself. If words are mind altering, then I’m altered. While my brain is still doing little (and not so little) summersaults this had to happen for a reason. What the reason is I’m not sure….yet. I tapped into........what or who?

PART OF WHERE I'M COMING FROM

About two years ago the company I work for got involved with one of these motivational gurus. Who shall remain nameless. I'm low enough on the totem pole that I managed to avoid being shipped clear across the country. I guess this stuff works for some folks but the more I heard the less I liked where this guy was coming from. Near as I could figure out it's a cross between a mini boot camp, revival meeting and a rock concert. We got a mini taste at an office meeting and when I asked one "graduate" what the loud music was supposed to do I was told it was "part of the program." I still haven't figured out how keeping me up most of the night three days running or trying to fracture my eardrums is supposed to improve my team building skills. I guess this is why they pay him the big bucks.

Having figured out where I didn't want to go, I found myself trying to put where I was comong from into words. I think what still troubles me the most it the effort to keep us all running so fast we don't have time to think. To keep the man made noise so loud that we can't hear what the world around us is trying to say.

Anyway this is what I came up with. If you were to bet that I haven't shared this with anybody at work, you'd win. I think what bugs me the most is the idea that you can do it by yourself. The old visualize success and it's your fault if your vision doesn't come true. That may be true to a point. But nobody and I mean nobody makes it alone. And that is what brought this little entry to life.

Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each element has a voice-but it can't sing
without the others. Without the Earth in the form of the moon there would be
no tides-no waves. Without the waves there would be no hiss of the little waves meeting the sandy beach. The great booming roar when tons of sea water meets two hundred feet of black basalt cliffs would be lost forever. Without the mountains to form cliffs and steep falls the roar of the waterfall would not exist. Without the rocks and stones in their beds, rivers and streams would lose their voices

Fire has a quicker, harsher song. Without water to make steam and sizzle,
without trees or wood to burn, Fire would have almost no voice. As a lava flow cools the rocks grind together and the escaping gasses hiss and twist. Take away the fire from the earth's mantle and these fall silent.

Air has a voice when it meets Earth and what grows from the Earth. The
sighing of the trees, the lonely whistle around the cliffs, the cry of the gulls carried from a windy beach, the rustle of the grasses, these come together to make a chorus when the Air sings its songs.
 
Earth sings some of her songs alone; the sounds of rocks falling and sand or
gravel rustling when someone walks across it are earthly solos.  But many of Earth's songs are sung by what grows from the earth or swims in the water. But, without air to carry birdsong or the sea  to carry whale songs the world would be a quieter, lonlier place. Let us join our songs to the songs of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Together these are the songs of Creation.

ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL STAR FIELD

I couldn't resist this one. It's called the Iris Nebula. I'm not sure if it is the shape or the color. It doesn't exactly look like an iris but we've got some in our yard that are close to that color. The nebula is in the constellation Cepheus which is visible towards the northwest this time of year.

Had my nose stuck in a couple of books on English history over the weekend. Just getting reminded that is much as we'd like to think it, there is very little new under the sun when it comes to political hanky panky. Somehow Americans have had the idea that we're immune to that sort of thing. Sorry guys, there is truly nothing new under the sun. Doesn't make it any better, just more understandble. Too bad those who refuse to learn from history will turn around repeating it.