initiation

Rode my Bike to get a few Groceries (and flowers) last week.

Hello friends,

It’s week 3 of isolation here and it seems like we’re in a new rhythm. Maybe we’ve worked through all the snarky first days of inhabiting the same space and trying to figure out how to honor each other’s fears (masks or no masks? Wipe down the groceries? Leave the mail on the back porch for two days? Weekly or bi-weekly grocery trips? Who ate all the nuts?) or maybe it’s the week of sunshine coinciding with the time to plant the garden which provides the feeling that we are doing something worthwhile with our time. Whatever it is, we seem to be less anxious and laughing more, which is a relief.

I read a short piece by Martin Shaw yesterday about whether or not this time in history is an initiation - a word I understand to mean a ceremony or event that ushers us into a new phase of life. Shaw made the point that if it is, our initiation has been organized by the Earth herself, and that is something worth pausing over. (i.e. It’s time to grow up, humankind.)

Whether or not it’s a global initiation (and I’ve big doubts about the receptiveness to such an initation for certain parts of the population) I’ve got my list of ways I want to mature, many of them around respecting the resources we use and creating a more community-centric sufficiency. (My friend Lesley asked recently what it would be like if we acted as though we lived in a small village that provided all our needs?) I already tend towards being a chipmunk and keep a well-stocked pantry (or larder, as the Brits say) at all times, but now our conversations have turned to the next level. Could we grow greens in cold frames? Harvest and freeze a year’s worth of berries and fruit from local farmers? Would it be possible to reduce our dependency on the grocery store by 50%? Install a rain-catch system? Only have toilet paper for guests? (Bidets are on the list of things to explore.) Things we’ve talked about in theory for years suddenly seem possible, doable, and even necessary.

In some ways, being forced to stay at home, dealing with the sudden disruptions in buying and consuming, is just what I’ve needed to push me forward.* I’ve spent a lot of time sitting outside just watching my world, suddenly aware of its tremendous abundance. (Consider the lilies of the field, they neither toil nor spin: a quiet cure for the panic I felt when the store was empty of so many things and I realized my survival skills are basically zero.)

Right at the beginning of this strange time, I signed up for an introductory course on Honeybees as a way to keep busy and distract myself from my fears. Our teacher shared the most beautiful quote at our last class:

“Every single bee relates to the other, and works for the whole of the hive. All is shared. All that is brought into the hive - nectar, pollen, propolis, water, is for the good of all.”

~ Heidi Herrmann

That spoke right to my home-keeping heart. “For the good of all.” I feel the invitation to make that a life’s goal and cause. Whatever comes into or goes out of my home, I want it to be nourishing for the whole community, from the Earth herself to the neighbor furthest down the supply chain.

In his article, Martin Shaw says,

“…if the initiatory experience doesn’t in the end become a gift to others, then it’s malfunctioned. Look for largesse. Look for gallantry…”

It would be lovely to emerge from this time with a feeling that it has not been wasted, wouldn’t it? That we’ve decided to make a better world.

I’d so love to hear what this time is speaking to you. Does the idea of initiation resonate with you? In what ways?

I hope you’ll share.

Thanks for always being here in this little community. I appreciate you so much.

pax,

tonia

A couple of links that have been meaningful to me this week:

Hearth: A Thesaurus of Home by Jay Griffiths. A four-piece meditation on what home means from a few years back.

Creatures of Place A short film about a family living a “radically simple permaculture life” on a 1/4 acre lot in Australia.

*I fully recognize the privilege and luxury of my position. Just trying to do the best with what life is giving me. <3

these are the things my soul was made for

This morning I woke up a bit disoriented by the still-dark sky and had to blink at the clock for awhile to figure out what was wrong. After I dragged myself from bed, I texted a good morning to my daughter, and she returned with a disoriented, “Why are you up so early??” reply from France, who is still on the old clock. Outside, the frost had returned and all the daffodils were bent over at the knees, but the geese and the ducks, sun-centered as they ever are, were entirely unfazed by the new time-keeping. The sun came up and shortly thereafter, the food and water arrived; they honked and chattered their way out of the pen and into the new week. It’s a kind of simplicity that tugs at something deep within me.

In a somewhat serendipitous moment last week, I finally found a copy of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism (which so many of you have told me to read!) and spent the weekend highlighting it and reading passages out loud to my family. (I just love it when I find a book that echoes all the thinks I’ve been thinking and says it even better than I ever could.) I realized there are about 30-ish days left in Lent, so I’m beginning his Digital Detox today. No technologies “including apps, websites, and related digital tools that are delivered through a computer screen or a mobile phone and are meant to either entertain, inform, or connect you,” for 30 days. (Exceptions for essential work-related tech, which for me includes my blog and email on a limited basis. I’m also keeping limited text messaging and my photo journal since that is a daily project I don’t want to disrupt.)

My favorite part of this Detox though, is not just eliminating time-wasters and distractions, it’s the encouragement to craft a new life: “During this monthlong process, you must aggressively explore higher-quality activities to fill in the time left vacant by the optional technologies you’re avoiding. This period should be one of strenuous activity and experimentation.” I convinced my husband to join me (such a sport) so I’m looking forward to a fun month. I can see that this would be a good practice yearly - more like twice a year, if I’m honest - since technology has a way of sneaking up on you and hooking you when you don’t even realize it. I’m no longer tempted by social media, but don’t ask me how many times a day I read the New York Times and the comments. (Why??) That addiction to novelty is always needing to be tamed.

~ Truthfully, I feel like I am circling ever closer to the life I am supposed to be leading. I have a mental playlist of images and quotations, the witness of particular people, that I return to continually. And there are certain themes that spark a flare within me every single time I encounter them. It has only been recently that I’ve realized that they are endlessly fascinating to me because they are mine. These are the things my soul was made for and I will only ever be my best self when I fully embrace them.

Terry Tempest Williams wrote a story last year for Orion magazine in which she talked about her reciprocal relationship with nature, the way it is always calling to her and she is always calling to it, and how they are constantly calling each other into being. I think about that in times like this, how often I hear the world speaking to me, urging me toward what I know is my own truth. I do not mean truth of a theological nature, per se, but the truth of who I am in this earthly community and my purpose for being here.

A few years ago, maybe a decade or more, I was walking with my family on my Grandmother’s property. The kids were chasing each other around in a grove of Russian olive trees and the rest of us were climbing the rise along the horse pasture. It was a beautiful day, not too hot, though the sun was overhead and bright. We followed a line of old elm trees and I let the others wander ahead. I had heard an owl calling in the trees and wanted to look for it. I walked around, squinting up into the canopy with my city-blind eyes, but I couldn’t find anything. I gave up and left the trees behind, heading out into the open pasture. The kids were shouting and laughing, the voices of my husband and uncle drifting down the hill. There was a scent of sun-warmed sage in the air. I turned to look over the land my Grandmother’s family had homesteaded over a hundred years before. Just as I turned, there was a snap at my ear, a taffeta rustle that brought a kiss of cool air. It was a Great Horned Owl, skimming the space above my shoulder. It flew to the low branch of a tree directly in front of me and bobbed its head. I locked eyes with it for just a moment, dazed, grateful, astonished. Then it hunched itself and leapt into the air again, gone. All these years later I can still feel the pull of him, drawing me into a world of solitude, stillness, attentiveness, space. He was calling me to my own life, though it would take me so many more years before I recognized it as anything other than a memorable experience.

I believe there is purpose in my being here now, and so I believe the world is as much in need of my presence and witness as I was in need of that Owl’s and all the other living things that have graced my path. I believe it for all of us, whether we speak with the hurricane or the whale or through other languages of faith and presence.

This next month I’m going to be listening deeper, following the path I know I’m supposed to take.

Tell me, what are the messages your life is bringing you? Who are your messengers? I’d love to hear more.

peace keep you, friends,

tonia

EDITED: I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote this earlier and talked about the New Moon. Clearly it’s a Full Moon now. Whoops! I wasn’t quick enough to edit it out before the post went out via email. :)

Brigid's Day

A photo from earlier in the week.

The rain has swollen our community creek, so we couldn’t go down to dip our hands in it as we’d planned on this Brigid’s Day, but we prayed a blessing over it anyway. It’s home for fish and frogs, crayfish, the giant salamander that surprised our son one day, countless insects and creatures and birds, stones and root and branches, silt of our common land, and most importantly, water, which grows more precious to me every year. (Do we ever dare complain about rain and snow in these days when so many in the world have no water at all?)

“Let us bless the humility of water

Always willing to take the shape

Of whatever otherness holds it…

Water: voice of grief,

Cry of love,

In the flowing tear.

Water: vehicle and idiom

Of all the inner voyaging

That keeps us alive.

Blessed be water,

Our first mother.”

~ John O’Donohue

***

This week, I also found a lovely series of house blessings in my Northumbria Community Prayer Book to be said on Brigid’s Day. You stop at each room of the house and give a blessing specific to that space. We’ll do that tonight.

Here are a couple of them:

At the Doorway:

May God give His blessing to the house that is here.

God bless this house from roof to floor,

from wall to wall,

from end to end,

from its foundation and in its covering.

We call upon the Sacred Three

to save, shield and surround

this house, this home,

this day, this night,

and every night.

In the kitchen:

Seeing a stranger approach,

I would put food in the eating place,

drink in the drinking place,

music in the listening place,

and look with joy for the blessing of God,

who often comes to my home

in the blessing of a stranger.

May your homes and your places be blessed as well, friends, with generosity, compassion, abundance, and life this weekend.

Peace keep you,

tonia

a nightime ritual

I know we are not supposed to love the long, dark winter nights, but I do anyway. (Especially now that we finally have our little hobbity wood stove installed and every night means curling up by the fire.) The only thing I don’t like about winter really is trying to get up in the dark, cold mornings. I’ve been working on waking up at 5 am for quite awhile now and I’m doing much better, but I do find that what happens the evening before is really the key to an easy wake up.

Right after Thanksgiving I noticed I was feeling stressed already about the holidays, so I wanted to make a little more effort in keeping to a nighttime ritual in December. When I keep to this ritual it makes such a difference in my sleep and my mind is clearer the next day to get right into work:

• Dinner together and conversation

• Clean up kitchen / make fire (usually my husband does this)

• Get things soaking: beans or grains for the next day, my herbal infusion*, seeds sprouting

• Put away screens

• Turn off overhead lights, turn on lamps

• Light candles

• Choose relaxing music

• Wash face and put on pjs

• Knit (with tea and my two squares of dark chocolate - such an old lady)

• Read

• Go to bed by 9:30 (my daughter is waking up in France at this time, so we usually text a little, even though that means looking at a screen. I sleep better after talking to her. <3)

Other things that help are exercising during the day so my body is tired, not eating too much at dinner, and sleeping with an eye mask.

What about you? Any nighttime ritual tips?

(Obviously, I don’t have little ones at home anymore, but when we did, I kept a pretty similar routine but instead of having personal time, I would read aloud to everyone for a good half hour or more while the kids drew or played with legos. Those were some of our favorite times and we read a lot of good books! We kept it up until they were older teenagers - although at that point they would mostly just fall asleep on the floor. :) )

For more inspiration:

Niamh at Fairyland Cottage has some videos about setting the tone for sleep and waking up early that are so lovely I’ve watched them multiple times.

*I do a quart jar with nettle and red raspberry leaf overnight and drink it over the next two days. Sometimes I add oatstraw or red clover or hibiscus too. I find the raspberry leaf helps even out my hormone swings quite a bit! You can read more about infusions here.

Martinmas

I love that Martinmas and Veterans Day coexist on the same day (at least in the U.S.) Even as we remember the sacrifices women and men have made for their country, we’re reminded by St. Martin, the Roman soldier who became a Christian and then refused to kill, that there is a third way we can choose. (And this reminds me as well that although religion has been used to justify enormous amounts of persecution, war, and violence through history -and is still doing so now, God help us - it can also be a catalyst for conversion and peace. Anyone else need that reminder?)

When my children were at home, we always made Martinmas lanterns and hung them from the chandelier for a candlelit supper. Many other children and families take their lanterns on a walk through the night. I think it’s a lovely image to represent Martin’s witness to peace shining through the darkness of war and oppression.

On this day, I also like to spend time with other pacifists. Since I don’t really know anyone in my everyday life, it means revisiting the writings of William Stafford, Walter Wink, Thic Nhat Hahn, Leo Tolstoy, Vera Brittain, Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others. I think most of us who come to pacifism and nonviolence arrive there after a struggle between what we know to be true internally and what the rest of the world is determined to make us believe. Having a day to remember those who have stood courageously against the tide of public belief is a lovely gift.

So Happy Martinmas, my friends! May we be reminded of what is possible and courageous enough to believe in peace.

***

This would be a great time to revisit Desmond Doss’ powerful story. And here’s a poem from William Stafford, who spent WW2 in a Conscientious Objector’s Camp:

Learning

A piccolo played, then a drum

Feet began to come - a part

of the music. Here came a horse,

clippety clop, away.

My mother said, “Don’t run -

the army is after someone

other than us. If you stay

you’ll learn our enemy.”

Then he came, the speaker. He stood

in the square. He told us who

to hate. I watched my mother’s face,

its quiet. “That’s him,” she said.