zena musings

Friday's Truth

To those working for the rights and health of the underdog, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm so grateful there are people like you who can do this. I don't pretend to know what's best for anyone individually or collectively, but when I pay attention -- intentionally or not -- to what happens in this world and how people, governments and corporations do harm, it's easy to feel despair.

Like many creatives, I wasn't born with emotional insulation, and despite being stronger and more stable than ever, sometimes my coping mechanisms are still pretty fragile. I'm extremely sensitive and simply not wired to handle shitty people, shitty behavior or shitty energy.

You will never engage me in a conversation about politics or religion. Even if we're in agreement.

If you are a local news reporter, weatherman or anchor, I have no idea who you are.

You won't find me in organized activist circles. Yet if we ever live in a time when it's necessary, you can bet my house will be part of an "underground railroad."

If you enjoy talking about government and social problems, I will do everything in my power to avoid you.

Sometimes I admonish myself, "I should pay attention to this. I should march in that. I should, I should, I should." But honestly? Every bit as harmful (to me) as cutting myself with a sharp knife. My default setting is Care Too Much.

I lived in a state of despair for a long time, and it's only in the last couple years that I've made my way to the light again. Not surprisingly I'm mama-bear fiercely protective of my peace of mind. For me, serenity isn't something nice to have, it's a matter of life or death.

So, to the bad news I heard and the awful photo I saw earlier . . . goddammit, you break my heart. And unfortunately there's nothing I can do about you. I have to turn you over to God. I have to do my best to make a difference where I can in my own life today. To smile at strangers. To extend my hand to the newcomer at the noon AA meeting. To enjoy -- ENJOY -- this day of my life as best I can.

By Inches

You want it here and now, a remedy for everything

gone wrong. A magic wand, perhaps, alighted

on your shoulders. An angel whispering

sweet nothings while you sleep so you wake benighted

with certainty that you are whole once again. You realize

your patience is diminishing, and yet what's required is the reverse.

This will not be some biblical miracle before your eyes,

a transformation of movie star proportions. No, healing is a slow nurse,

pausing bedside with drips of water, a hot cloth, a murmur of a touch.

By inches, a change sneaks into you, even if it doesn't look like much.

–Maya Stein

(Photo by atomic turquoise.)

Every day I eat, I pray, I love

Another pretty good day, punctuated by the realization that today marks three Mondays in a row I haven't tormented myself with "__ weeks ago today, Lucy passed." Prayer officially answered. Guess I'm now marking the grace of forgetting instead. Not forgetting Lucy — not on your life — but forgetting to torture myself with such thoughts.

A few things I'm appreciating today:

1. Hopping back in the Weight Watchers and training saddles. Proud of myself for allowing a necessary 1-month break without self-recrimination (or gain), and for getting back in the groove when it was time.
2. A peaceful, invigorating trail run with Silas through warm pine-scented woods.
3. The bubbling of unexpected emotions while sharing at an AA meeting. After, holding hands with two of my favorite men. Feeling anchored between them.
4. Hearing one of those men say, "I try to look for God's best at work in my life." Love that.
5. Cooking with fresh rosemary.
6. Tonight's dinner, pictured above. YUM! Chicken breasts liberally sprinkled with Herbes de Provence, browned, then baked at 350° for one hour with rice, chicken broth, carrots, garlic and chickpeas. My current favorite one-pot meal!
7. Cuddling a sleepy Silas.

When Good is Good Enough

I had a good day. It's been sneaking up on me since late last week, and today it softly landed. I'm both grateful and surprised. Grateful because it's my first good day since Lucy passed 6½ weeks ago. Surprised because I wasn't expecting to feel inner peace already. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm happy or joyful -- I'm still sad, still missing Lucy, still not liking her gone -- but I've started to settle into the new normal. Maybe my current good has been redefined as the absence of feeling shitty. Smiles come easier, and I've started to appreciate life again.

A few things I'm appreciating:

1. The bounty of friendliness, food and community at my neighborhood South Perry Farmers Market. Every Thursday afternoon I walk over. I buy real farm eggs. And sometimes, like today, Gladstone peaches and GIGANTIC ears of corn picked this morning. I see people I know. I connect. I belong.
2. A visit from my Mom. Extra bonus: blueberry muffins that she baked.
3. Orders flowing in to zena moon.
4. Talking through a misperception and a misstep with a friend. Feeling my heart open wider.
5. My cooking. Specifically, my pasta. Sinfully delizioso.
6. Three little Lucy gifts in one day: a lovely card from Patti Digh, a found Lucy hair, and when I turned on the Travel Channel the first words spoken were "The Juicy Lucy" which turns out is a cheeseburger with a molten core of melted cheese, made famous in Minneapolis. (Lucy would so approve!)
7. A pile of Sami's favorite novels, just waiting for me to read.
8. Boston Legal via Netflix. I'm midway through Season 2. I adore the writing and the acting and how Alan Shore can even make the word penmanship sound dirty.
9. Silas the Dobie. He is my sweetest buttercup and my saving grace.
10. Maya Stein's poetry.

Sacred Life Sunday: Prowling for God

What would a man buried alive do?

Try with all his strength to breathe the sun again, of course.

Your hands, your feet, your eyes,
your every word and
thought,

there is
not one waking
second

the soul pounding against the cage of the body
does not want God

to rush into its
lungs.

The sleeping man is blessed with
a faith that is not
active.

Faith as it ripens turns into an almost insatiable appetite,

and the awake lion must prowl for God
in places it once feared.

St. John of the Cross

Love Poems from God is my favorite book of poetry. It features poems by 12 well-known lovers of God: Rabia, St. Francis of Assisi, Rumi, Meister Eckhart, St. Thomas Aquinas, Hafiz, St. Catherine of Siena, Kabir, Mira, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and Tukaram. If I could own only 10 books, this would be one of them.

Last night I read the above poem by St. John of the Cross, which I gather was written after he spent 9 months in prison getting beaten with vicious regularity by his fellow priests. Talk about a dark night of the soul. Turns out the most prolific period of his life followed his imprisonment, which gives me hope that maybe God isn't done with me yet. I've experienced such widespread loss the past 3 years, I've seriously wondered.

I would like to go back to sleep. I crave oblivion. But like it or not, that isn't my fate. Nor would it be even temporarily possible without resorting to deadening myself (again) with alcohol. No thanks! For whatever reason, I was born an awake lion. I get to prowl for God in places I once feared, because what alternative is there?

Thank God for the mystics. For poetry. They can be like a sun, words. They can do for the heart what light can for a field.

The World Spins as it Spins

Eat the last cookies in the box.

Wear the same pair of jeans two

weeks in a row. See the orchid die, leaf

by leaf. Wipe the countertop carelessly,

so it’s sticky as spit the next time

you lean on your elbows wondering

what’s for dinner. Watch hours

of television. Call for pizza, for Chinese,

for the cable company to give you even

more channels. Drive by the gym

without skipping a beat. Wash your hair only

when it starts to wilt, when the mirror

produces someone who doesn’t look like she wants

to get laid. Think about sex constantly.

Order cocktails. Play pool. Spend your money

on a massage, on t-shirts from the warehouse sale,

on inflation-priced bagels from the café down the street.

Ignore the obvious fact that the sheets

need changing. Occupy your bed gratuitously.

When you’re done reading for the night,

flop the pages open, straining the jacket.

Allow the avocados to ripen beyond repair.

Stain the kitchen sink with grape stems,

mango peels, olive pits with the meat

still clinging. Use vast quantities of paper towels

for a simple spill of water.

Lavish attention on the minute landscape

between your eyebrows.

Lose time. Ditch the mail into the bulging

plastic bag near your desk. Almost mistake it

for trash. Abandon the task of fixing

the dresser drawer. Turn your car

into a wastebasket.

 

And when it comes, fall with extravagant

ugliness. Grieve noisily into the balls of your fists.

Push your heels against the carpet, your chest squirming.

Feel the walls of the house vibrate with your pain.

Make pockmarks of your heart.

Collapse if you have to. It is like this.

The world spins as it spins.

No one knows,

even though we all know

this is between

you and you alone.

So yield. Commit your entire body.

Recognize your own astonishing anguish.

Tear it from your skin like a wolf

eviscerates her trapped leg. Shriek like

the downed bird you are.

Invest wholly in your damage.

Lap up each tumescent despair. Swallow

the pinbones of your loss. Caress

every razor edge of not enough. Gift yourself 

long, bruising hours of hopelessness.

The world spins as it spins.

Your life is on that same axis,

half shadow, half radiance 

and turning, always turning.

Maya Stein

Thanks to Patti Digh for sharing this poem today. It speaks mightily to me, too. Especially because my Mom is bringing half of Lucy's ashes over in a little while. They've been on Mom's altar because I haven't been ready for this to be the form Lucy's body is now in. I'm still not. But tomorrow I'm driving to Seattle, and my ex-husband (Lucy's Dad) asked me to bring them.

So I've been praying my ass off this morning. For strength. To be held in Spirit's lap as I am sure to weep again and again. And to be open to grace. Maybe, just maybe, it'll be OK.

Sweet Beans are Made of This

Lucy's favorite napping spot, upside down in the backseat with door open

"Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for awhile."
The Princess Bride

A rough emotional week. Mornings are hardest. Before Lucy I'd never suddenly lost someone I love, much less witnessed the passage. One minute here and fine, the next . . . gone. In my arms. Before my eyes. I'm still reeling from the shock and it hurts like hell. I've started what-iffing. What if I hadn't taken her to the river that day? What if I'd known doggie CPR? Could I have saved her? Questions I have to nip in the bud because they torment.

All of the sudden looking at photos of Lucy hurts, but I can't/won't stop. So happy, so alive, so silly, so NOISY—things I know she still is, just not in her body. Yet it's her physical presence I miss with all my heart and all my senses. I love her body. Her body seems such a part of her spirit. Floppy ears, floppy tongue, three legs, her ghost arm, her hippity hop, her beautiful eyes, her long wonkable nose, her fast-wagging tail, her smiles.

Night before last I had my first dream about her, which I believe was actually a visitation. In the dream I opened a dark pair of curtains just enough to peer through, and there she was: Lucy, curled up on a chair like I used to have, just looking at me like, "Hi Mama."

Wish I could say that peeling back the curtains into the spirit world comforted me, but I just miss her. It's one of the few truths I know.

People keep telling me to be gentle with myself as I walk through my grief, and I'm heeding their advice. I'm discovering then keep doing what provides some relief: talking about Lucy, writing down memories, spending chill-time with friends, going to AA meetings, praying (on knees), playing with Silas, swimming, walking, zoning out with movies, working as needed, soaking in every gesture of support. Last night a friend and I watched About a Boy and I actually felt delight. Stephen Colbert delights me. Being silly with Silas delights me. I think intentionally seeking pleasure (the healthy kind—and the occasional milkshake with whipped cream kind) is the only way I'm going to survive this lifetime.

Yesterday at Home Depot I heard a man say he'd lost his dog that morning. He was grief-stricken. They'd just lost another dog two weeks ago. "Two dogs in one month," he said softly. I looked in his eyes, touched his arm and offered my condolences.

Why do people get so aggravated with each other? We never know what another soul is going through.

I have no words of wisdom. But I do know the importance of a kind word, a warm hand. Of being witnessed. There's a saying in the rooms of AA: "We don't shoot our wounded." I am grateful to have learned from my sober sisters and brothers the necessity and grace of being totally open and honest.

Marion Woodman wrote, "At the very point of vulnerability is where the surrender takes place—that is where the god enters. The god comes through the wound."

I don't know what the god is. But I'm learning that the wound needs fresh air. The wound is an opening where grace and love enter too.

P.S. About the title—Beans is one of Lucy's nicknames.

Sacred Life Sunday: A New Normal

My favorite stretch of the Flathead River between Perma and St. Regis

Yesterday I drove home from a spontaneous trip to Montana. I needed to be with my family at our annual reunion. Being there was surprisingly healing and definitely what Lucy would have wanted. I both missed her and felt her presence, especially by the river and in her corner of the couch. My good girl. I left while I still felt OK, before I hit the skids. I'm learning to spot my limits on the horizon.

Sadness comes and goes in brief yet powerful waves. Smiles followed by anguish buying dog food at Petco and writing beans on my shopping list. (Beans is one of Lucy's nicknames.) All these firsts, which I'm trying to not make such a big deal of, because I can slip into tormenting myself. But sometimes they rear up on their own. Notice me, they demand. Feel me.

Mostly I'm hanging in there. Taking care of myself. Taking care of Silas. Somewhat taking care of business. Not pushing it. I've given myself permission to let my feelings be, without judgement. Even letting moments of inner peace and joy have their time onstage guilt-free.

On a positive note: Silas is now with me permanently. No more shared custody. I have full custody of Silas, and God has full custody of Lucy and Elliott. (Until I join them in the spirit world.) It's a new chapter in my life, one I would gladly exchange for one that still had Lucy written all over it. Never before have I sensed the transience of everything. It's just for now, I tell myself. This separation. This missing-ness. This everything I can and cannot name.

So. Today. A blazing hot Sunday afternoon. Silas has a Montana hangover and is flat on his couch with a fan blowing on him. My evening includes banana pudding, Mad Men and an abundance of gratitude.

Day by day, whether we like it or not, we're forging a new normal, because that's how life goes on. With the custody decision, something has shifted and settled. It's Silas and me. Relieved and grateful. Tentatively excited to gently explore and discover what's next.

Holy Lucy Goodness

Yesterday I received a card enclosing a small gold heart from my friend Carole. Carole and I have known each other since the mid-80s, when an old spiritual tribe found one another at Digital Equipment Corp. We reconnected on Facebook. She is an astrologer and healer. This is what she wrote:

Dear Carla,

As I wrote in my email to you, Lucy asked me to send this to you. The dream experience was very short and very clear.

This heart was hand carved by Stephen Huneck, the creator of  The Dog Chapel in St. Johnsbury, VT. I got it when I went there for Stephen's memorial service. The beautiful dog energy that flows from there knows no boundaries, and dogs in spirit I'm sure hang out there a lot. I believe Stephen is now working at the Rainbow Bridge.

I feel blessed that Lucy came to me this way and asked me to be her messenger. I've charged this Heart with Reiki, and Lucy has filled it with her unending Love. She is so excited! Lots of puppy smiles. She wants you to know that her heart and yours will beat together forever, and she will love you always.

Many, many blessings Carla!

Love, Carole

The heart was wrapped in pink tissue paper. Lucy's favorite color. :) That this arrived on a very difficult day is no coincidence. My gratitude to Carole is inexpressible. It simply brings me to my knees. There is the seen, and there is the unseen. I continue to pray to be open to the unseen.

Our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving

One of the first things I read this morning was "Grief is Universal but grieving is personal." My grief for Lucy comes in waves. Mornings are tsunamis. I pray. I snuggle with Silas. I read Facebook and grimace at the predictable plethora of Life is amazing! Everything's perfect! status updates. Fuck that. I go downstairs. I feed Silas. I feed myself. I play with Silas. I open my car's back door, because that's what I did when Lucy was here and I'm not ready to stop yet.

I miss her so much. I'm going to write soon about some of the things I miss about her. It's still really hard. Sometimes I'm OK, sometimes all I can handle is Good Orderly Direction (one acronym for God) one moment at a time.

I do my best to get through the day, doing what I can without pushing myself. Most days someone comes over, distracting Silas and me for a few hours. The companionship is extremely comforting.

Today is only the second Monday since she passed. I hate Mondays right now. I prayed pretty much constantly this morning and had a good cry while packing candle orders and working in my studio.

The mail delivered a sympathy card from someone I don't even know, plus a gift from my friend Carole. I want to write about it and will as soon as I get her permission to share what she wrote in her card. It was so powerful -- a gift not only from Carole, but from Spirit and Lucy. I stood at my altar, lit my Lucy candle, closed my eyes to say a prayer and as I touched Lucy's collar it felt energetically exactly as though I was touching Lucy. I stood there quietly for a while, peaceful inside, basking in the knowledge that I was touching her energy. I've never experienced anything like that before.

Immediately afterwards I said something to Silas about his sister and he trotted over to the dining room drawer where I keep their dental chews aka Dobie crack. Lucy was OBSESSED with dental chews, wanted them 3 times a day. Silas likes them but rarely asks. I really believe Lucy was here and prompted Silas to ask for a treat.

Silas and I had a really nice afternoon. Some work, some play, some laughter. I am so grateful for Silas. I am equally grateful for today's energetic connection to Lucy. I've been praying to be open to experiencing her in new ways, with new senses. I knew I wanted to write about today even though I don't have enough focus to write flowery details. This is mostly for my own memory. Two weeks. A very hard morning transformed into a very special day.

I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving.

Mary Oliver

I love you, Lucy.