HuckaMeme (September 2015) Keith

HuckaMeme (September, 2015) Katie

Fear (July 2015) by Katie

My boot pushes through the tall grasses on the way to the chicken coop

I keep a watchful eye for snakes and wonder

Why is it that I never see a snake when I’m looking for one?

We cannot always be so alert – it would be exhausting, distracting, wasteful

I stick my fingers through the deer-proofing wire barrier to the coop

Highly aware of the spider webs I am touching

I very nearly step on the thinnest end

Of a thick, egg-eating rat snake

How? How could I not be expecting this

When I was that very moment thinking about it?

The things I fear in life are like a snake in the coop

I'm going to run across them

But fear won’t prepare me

Mother's Day (May 2015) by Katie

Last Spring I blogged here about prayer and a "consuming hole at my core that is emptiness and loneliness and also what it means to be alive". And I can't get the thought out of my head.

I'm glad others raise the issue as well. Joy, Kate, and I talk about it a lot - this unquenchable thirst. This melancholy. This "God-shaped hole".

And we talk about our reaction to it. To fill it or numb it; to watch shows or eat treats. To prove each day was busy and successful. To reminisce about better times, to dream about better times.

I found a quote that hits the nail: "I am homesick for a place I am not sure even exists. One where my heart is full. My body loved. And my soul understood."

In last Spring's prayer post I reflected on a scene that still comes to mind: An incident where Wren was sick. She could not be consoled. She clung to Joy crying, "I want Mommy".

I know that feeling. 

I want what "Mother" represents, beyond the bounds of human capacity. I want the female divine.

---

I don't know what we're supposed to do with this emptiness. How to be with it.



It has driven humanity to explore and create; to chase the sun past the horizon; to paint the likeness of animals on the inside of caves; to reach up and touch the moon; to splice the cells inside us; to build, to cure, to discover, to invent, to achieve.



And still we are incomplete.



And that's a good thing. If we could fill the hole ourselves, as maybe we still assume we can, our entire motive would be to compete and consume. But that unquenchable piece of us pulls and pulls until we realize we need more than the story we can weave with our own spool; more than what we alone can know or do. For all our success as evidenced in salaries or Facebook posts or checklists, we feel incomplete. And so there must be something we cannot quantify. Something unnameable, even, and certainly not human. Maybe God. Maybe Goddess. Maybe the spirit of life around us; an inter-being, and a rediscovery of lost relationship and balance. I've touched all of these, and I have felt great, big feelings of connection and fulfillment, heart, body and mind.



And still I've ached with want.



How do we respond to this urge in a way that does not pillage and consume? In a way that does not numb or distance? What is left but to accept and love our incomplete selves?


It may be that women have an advantage in this arena. What distinguishes women from men if not holes and caverns. Empty wombs. Shedding of walls.


And mother's must know it even more acutely: That the world needs the low and empty spaces.

Mother's Day (May 2015) from Joy

I Stop Writing the Poem by Tess Gallagher

 

I stop writing the poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives

or who dies, I'm still a woman.

I'll always have plenty to do.

I bring the arms of his shirt 

together. Nothing can stop

our tenderness. I'll get back

to the poem. I'll get back to being

a woman. But for now

there's a shirt, a giant shirt

in my hands, and somewhere a small girl

standing next to her mother

watching to see how it's done.

This is the Expected and Holy Day (April 2015) by Keith

This is the Expected and Holy Day (April 2015) by Katie

“It must be nice to have a slower pace to life.” I hear this a lot when I travel to the office for work. And there’s truth to what they say, even if it isn’t my felt experience. Life seems busy; busier, even, than my ‘fast paced’ city or suburban life, but the tasks that keep me going “from can to can’t” take time.

I used to wake up five minutes before I had to run to my car, because I could. I’d roll out of bed, throw on some clothes, brush my teeth, and out I went. Here, it takes thirty minutes to get a fire going if you’ve lost the coals. In the summer it was the morning time that made the most sense to pick your harvest from the garden, since the afternoon would be spent prepping it for canning, freezing, or eating.

Taking care of animals has its seasonal occupations as well. In the winter, there’s keeping water in its liquid state, and picking away at frozen chunks of chicken shit so you can open the coop door (#Living the dream). In the summer, it’s chasing the escapees who are tempted beyond the fence for the lush surroundings.

And while this all keeps me moving forward, it does so at a slower pace. One does not simply catch a chicken. It’s a sluggish herding process. If you hurry, it takes longer, especially when you have an easily excited dog as your shadow.

It’s not a matter of opening the fridge, or turning a dial for the heat. Those are aspects of a fast paced life. And I’m sure I lose some accomplishments by spending more time taking the ‘hard’ way. But I gain two things:

#1: A bit of boredom.

Not distraction. Not numbing. Boredom. A special state that leads to increased awareness and thought. Weeding the poison hemlock from the garden is repetitive, and does not stimulate my mind in the same way reading a book or writing a curriculum does. But it stimulates me in other ways. I tune in to the color and shape of the plant; the sounds of my efforts; the smells of the mud; the very moment I’m living in.

It’s the same when I wash my clothing by hand. It takes an incredible amount of time, and keeps me from the other successes a day can hold, but it also brings me outside, delights my ears with the sound of sloshing water, and anoints my hands and feet with a welcome coolness in summer.  I take note of my clothing in a new way; the fabric and stitching; the memories of the dirt and stains.

#2: Relationships.

All this boredom and stillness and noticing allows me to develop relationships. Noticing when the blue jays return, and what the crows are up to. Listening to a hen lay an egg while I pick tomatoes, then collecting that egg and turning it into a meal with those tomatoes, returning the scraps to her coop coming full circle.

I am motivated in a new way to identify trees; to know their density and where to find them in the forest. Harvesting wood is very relational, lifting their heavy bodies one by one into a truck. Feeling the lay of the land on unpaved roads. Pushing a chainsaw through them, then using your whole body to swing an axe and chop that wood. Carrying it into your home piece by piece and sitting patiently as you try to get it to catch. And then feeling the heat blow over your face when you stand directly above the stove. It’s something you don’t hurry away from.