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

my repentant skin

“If we perish - I meant to say persist -

do we arise and turn

with the wind?….”

~Kyce Bello

I lose my appetite for distraction overnight. I’m full up with the world we’ve made, violent and exploitative, rapacious and unthinking. I’m full up on all the ways we can rehearse those realities as entertainment. I feel the great grief and burden of being human, full of possibility and yet incapable of restraint.

So many of our conversations now lead to: will the virus change anything? Will we just go right back?

My rational self fears writer Paul Kingsnorth is right:

“Now I will say what I believe: that this civilization will not learn anything from this virus. All this civilization wants to do is to get back to normal. Normal is cheap flights and cheap lattes, normal is Chinese girls sewing our T-shirts under armed guard, normal is biblical bushfires and barrels of oil, normal is city breaks and international conferences and African children poisoning their bodies sorting the plastic we have dumped on their coastlines, normal is nitrite pollution and burning stumps and the death of the seas.

We made this normal, and we do not know how to unmake it, or—whisper it—we do not want to.”

But maybe not for me, I think. Maybe for me (for you?) something else is stirring.

Prayer in the time of corona: Slow me down enough. Give me enough time to change, to really change. Drive the truth down deep of what I could be if I tried, of how I could really live.

Maybe I will not spend these weeks in the dark feeding from the trough of a broken culture. Maybe I will spend them instead under the sun, the moon, the rainy skies, listening to old wisdom, to the heartbeat of the world and its creative Spirit.

I went to bed last night sick of heart, but then I dreamed of bees. I was standing under the sun longing for them to find me, my arms held open, waiting for them to come explore the territory of my repentant skin.

March 23, 2020

Hello my friends,

The sun is shining today as I sit here and write to you, but it’s the last of the sun for at least a week.  I know that’s going to be hard for people who are just learning to stay home and be settled, and that makes me feel a bit anxious. (Fellow empaths, you understand: it’s hard to keep from absorbing everyone else’s feelings!) So far, at least in my small world, moods have stayed pretty positive and friendly despite the limitations put on everyone.  With the exception of those stubborn few people who refuse to stay home and isolate (which just baffles me !!) I do have a sense that we are all trying our best to save each other.

A lot of artists and writers have been rising to the occasion and posting extra content online and offering what they can to distract and cheer us all.  I’m so thankful for those people whose first instincts in a crisis are outward-facing.  They help us so much.  I’m not really one of those people.  In a crisis, I immediately go emotionally hypothermic:  all the blood and heat goes to guard my core.  I shut down all the extra functions, including anything creative, and close my circle to those who feel safest and most familiar.  It’s a survival function, as much as the instinct to reach out and connect is for others.  We probably need both things in a healthy community.  Some of us are just second-wave kind of people and our time to create and share and support will come. 

In the meantime, I’ve been keeping busy with projects around home.  My husband is working from my little basement office now (and rightly so, it has the best internet access in the house) so I have been fixing up another space for myself, painting and scraping and imagining new curtains sewn from my fabric stash.  I’ve also been making reusable sanitizing wipes (except I used Everclear since there’s no rubbing alcohol to be found), and cutting up old t-shirts for tissues so that the toilet paper will stretch a little further.  

I wrote at the beginning of this month that my current motto is Ora et labora.  That’s not changing any time soon and this week I’m going to make a new prayer altar as well.  We have four children, one who works in medicine, one living in France for the immediate future, and two who work in industries deemed “essential,” so I feel a little vulnerable about all of them being out and about in the world just now.  Somehow, it seems like a little altar might help the prayers be more real. 

So far, enduring a pandemic is like some kind of freestyle dance between focused work and focused nurturing.  Clean the pantry?  Yes.  Digital minimalism?  Not right now, thanks.  I would love to say that at the end of the day I am using all this time to read hard books and think deep thoughts, but really, I’m just trying to decide if I can eat more brownies and find something distracting to watch, just like everyone else I know. 

~ Once I get my new office space set up and it feels like things settle down a bit, I will get back to work on a newsletter for you.  I had planned on sharing a story this time.  Which is still unwritten.  (*eep*)  It will probably be an April newsletter since the days keep going by in a blur.  Our bookstore shut down so the giveaway will be on hold again.  Gee whiz.  Every once in awhile it hits me how strange this all is and how everyone in the whole world is feeling and experiencing the same thing I am right now.  Thank goodness for all of you who are able to respond right away and help us know what to do next.  I’m going to defrost eventually and get back to the words.  I will try to post something weekly though, so we don’t lose touch.  Thanks for your patience.  When I set up that prayer altar this week those prayers will be going up for you too. 

Peace keep you, my friends.  Second-wave people: no guilt. Just do you.

Love each other well.

tonia 

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. :)

the first days of March

A little Ellis, because, LOVE.

The pasture is usually home to only grass and blackberries (and wild sweetpeas in the summer), but this morning I saw two yellow daffodils nodding their heads at me as I headed back to the house after my chores. I squealed a little, then felt sheepish, even though no one was around to hear me but the poultry. It must be the aftertaste of this cynical world - this feeling that wonder and joy are only for children and not for grown humans. I marched on down the hill and found another daffodil clinging to the stone wall along the garden and appreciated it loudly, just to make up for my earlier cowardice. The revolution will not be wonder-free.

I had plans to be working on a new novel right now, but I haven’t even begun thinking about it yet. I’ve been taking in the wisdom of Ross Gay instead, who insists that writing “comes from our bodies.” I’ve been deep cleaning, organizing, painting, getting the garden ready, baking; working more with my hands than just my head. I have to say, after several intense months of writing, this feels wonderful. It’s a good reminder that I am at my healthiest when body and mind are both active. And I know that while I clean and putter around, words are churning quietly somewhere inside and they will let me know when it is time to put them down on paper.

I’m glad to be busy with physical work right now for other reasons too. It keeps me from being too worried about things I can’t control, like elections, and finances, and the fact that we are supposed to go to Europe in six weeks to see our daughter and the whole world is sick right now. Ora et labora is my current motto: pray and work. That’s old wisdom, right there, from monks who lived in the Middle Ages and knew a thing or two about having to wait and trust God that everything is going to work out fine.

Someone asked me the other day what I do for a living and I fumbled around as usual and tried to figure out a way to put it into words, this hodge-podge life of writing, and nurturing, and availability, and home-making. I never know what to say. Sometimes the words fall on sympathetic ears, as they did this time, and I can feel the warmth and appreciation of a kindred spirit, but many times they don’t. I am finding more confidence now to let that disapproval and misunderstanding go. I know what I believe, that if we are going to hold together at the center as communities, there have to be people who make beauty, who tell the stories, who have time to lend a hand, who set a table for fellowship. Fortunately, it seems like many of the people who are most sympathetic and open to that idea are young people. I love our young people; they are so bright and smart and determined and open. I’m always listening in, trying to understand how they see the world, how they think we can change it. I hope I am always flexible enough to hear and understand.

Well, I should wrap this little ramble up. There is more work to be done today, (“I’m blessed with work!” Bonus points if you can name that movie). Hope you are all finding daffodil-surprises and celebrating them shamelessly.

Peace keep you,

tonia

P.S. I’m in the mood for some good farm life/homemaking books. Fiction, preferably, so send me your favorite titles. I love Miss Read and Gladys Taber (not fiction, but she makes the cut), Elizabeth Goudge, Rumer Godden. All those 40’s and 50’s authors who write so beautifully about making homes. Swoon!