Category: Weather

White Prayer

In this, the third week enduring a polar vortex, I retreat from winter’s cruel bitter cold, which is a turn towards home, for body and spirit. I joyfully follow the open way to the inner mysteries that warm and sweeten one’s soul. A mind’s haunting howl is hushed when its wrapped in winter’s white shawl.

The one white that covers the landscape, inside and out, softens the pointy places that poke holes in my peace. Beneath the layers and layers of heavy cold and clothes, I search for something to raise my heart above the worries of this world. I feel the lightness of wonder watching the snowflakes sift and drift through the sky’s blue like dreams in a deep sound sleep.

I am blanketed in the warmth of winter’s prayer, to trust Creator will give me strength and endurance to face everything that hurts, everything that makes me turn away, everything that tries to blur the beauty of winter, even a polar vortex.

Summer Feelings

Summer’s breath has been hot and heavy these past few days like an agonizing slow exhale that is forecast to reach into next week. All day the heat’s stronghold builds. My bodies profuse sweating the lubricant that allows me to penetrate its walls.

As I halter up the horses, a faint breeze offers a welcome but fleeting respite from the oppression. The horses walk at a leisurely pace down the path towards the lush field of belly high grass. Not a wrinkle of worry on their brows. Every voluptuous curve on their form moves like a gentle rolling wave disappearing into the sand. Summer is a time of loose fullness. More than bodies soften.

Growing up we didn’t have air conditioning. My Mother used to tell us when the heat and humidity of the day carried into the night and kept us awake, it was because we could hear the corn growing in the fields. The grumbling over sleepless nights instantly turned into gratitude. The saying still holds true. All around in the heat of summer things are growing. Including parts of myself.

Every season offers us gifts. We need to learn from nature how to be in harmony with each season. It’s especially difficult during times of extremes when the human minds twist nature’s wisdom into whining. When Mother Nature is in control, stay in the flow. The challenge is to turn inside if something outside makes us uncomfortable. It’s how we were designed to grow—from the inside out.

Today I feel summer feelings (inhale).

Breathing it all in

A minute ago, a glance at the woods outside my window was clear and now tiny white specks are falling from the sky like powdered sugar shook through a sieve. All I see is covered in a dusting of tiny white specks. There is a soft sweetness that comes over me when I watch snowflakes that fall in straight and true lines from above.

The snow comes after a sharp cold snap. The bitter cold reminded me to appreciate the warmth in life. In words, deeds, the saffron orange flames lapping at the wood stove glass and snowflakes floating down like powdered sugar.

Below is an excerpt from the book I wrote, Sweet Wisdoms. The piece was written during a grueling period of below zero temperatures that stretched all living creatures to the limits of their breaking point.

Keep a warm heart in a cold world and you won’t become a bitter person.

Cruel Cold

Here in Wisconsin, it’s freeze-your-nose-hairs-together and turn-your-whiskers-frosty kind of weather. As I make my morning rounds of chores, I keep pulling my hat down and my long underwear up! You can feel the landscape’s bones on these sharp cold days. I delight in the simplicity of winter~ stay warm. Bitter cruel cold, you can’t make me a bitter cruel cold person!

Apples and Onions

Rainy fall Saturdays put me in the mood to bake. It’s the rest year for our apple orchard but hidden among the Wolf River and Cortland branches I managed to find a five-gallon pail full. Enough for a batch or two of applesauce and a family favorite, Apple Cinnamon Cake. I don’t know of anyone whose dull spirit isn’t polished to a shine when the scent of apple and cinnamon greets them at the door of home. Perfect choice for the mood my relative, Weather, is in.

While the apple cake was baking, I decided to string up the onions I had laid out on the dining room table to dry for a few days now. I hang the onion string in my kitchen. Easy access and I think they are pretty.

I struggled with tying them at first. But then I began to tie them like my prayer ties. A loop knot slipped over each dried tip. Each onion is now a prayer for our family; good health and well-being, peace, joy, laughter, abundance, good relationships. I’ll probably wonder which prayer the onion I’m using is and cry while I’m wondering. The purest form of prayer is crying.

As I stood back to admire the onion prayer tie’s prettiness a teaching came. I’m going to have to use whatever onion is at the end of the string. No picking through them. Just like life you have to take it as it comes. One onion at a time. Layer by layer.

Hay Day

It has been an unusually soggy summer here in Northeast Wisconsin. Both in rain and humidity. Instead of making 2nd or 3rd crop this time of year, most farmers are just getting off 1st crop. The worry that comes with the struggle to harvest hay was getting real. That was until a four day break in the weather was forecast two weeks ago. How quickly lack can turn into abundance if we are willing to cease the opportunity….even if it means a whole lot of hard work. The inspiration for this piece.

Bronze skin leather tough
Drenched in salty drops
Thirst burns
I drink in the sky

Prayers pour out of my heart
Machinery and God be merciful
Long windrows lay ready to make perfect hay
Keep breakdowns and tears of dark clouds away

Bound tight with twine square bales bulge
Full wagons waddle over the bald field
Each one—together—enough
Winter’s hunger aches for your green

As stars usher in night’s moist breath
I walk up to the house feeling spiritually quenched
Exhausted muscles and mind rest peacefully in gratitude’s joy
Hard work fears me

Heaven’s Kiss

through the night’s darkness
an icy mist fell
fog floats over the earth
like a grey phantom

nothing left untouched
dampness drips from the landscape’s heavy bones

a mystical mist
mother earth’s breath
trapped in the fallen sky
silently heaven’s soft kiss moves in

sunrise sweet lips
a gentle warmth reached

chill crumbles in the face of light
numbed emotions thaw
mysterious meanings revealed

I walk with my feelings
towards light’s waiting kiss
behind me
lost in the shadows
my darkness

Ready For Anything

With good reason, many Wisconsinites are agonizing over the blast of Siberian like cold passing through the region. Temperatures with the wind chill plummeted to 50 below zero in parts of the state last night, creating exasperating problems in our daily existence. We have descended downward to temperatures that could surely freeze hell over.

Dressed in the wool of two sheep, I found myself sweating before I finished feeding and watering the horses. At times, being over-prepared can be no better than being under-prepared. Sweating was my body’s voice of common sense, telling me to restore the balance between the outside and inside climates. Taking two sheep’s worth of sweaty wool clothing off was more of a relief than the warmth that consoled me at the wood stove. Extreme cold weighs heavy on the mind and body. Clothing adjustments will be made, a last minute decision to throw on a pair of ski goggles— borderline genius.

I am grateful for the bitter cold’s wide opening to feel compassion’s inexhaustible warmth. Folks are filling bird feeders, checking on the elderly and helping each other, two-legged and four, survive the cold. Duchess my 23 years wise Pinto mare, insists on standing outside. Even though I’ve hung two heat lamps in the shelter and laid down a good two feet of shavings on the floor. I did blanket her, more for my comfort than hers. She spent most of the night standing in the shelter of spruce trees bordering the pasture; out of the wind, underneath the light of stars, in a good two feet of snow. Who am I to argue against 23 years of horse sense?

I am also thankful that the jet of glacial cold is forecast to leave the area tomorrow afternoon. By the weekend, meteorologists predict the temperature to be in the upper thirties. Mother Nature’s playground is the weather and she has two pieces of equipment in it, swings and teeter-totters.

I am walking in two winters, one outside and one inside. How well I can balance the climate changes in each has intense implications on my life. Winter invites us to explore the hidden closets old thoughts get hung up in and forgotten. Temperature fluctuations outside, mood swings inside, both create chaotic conversation within us. We become uncomfortable but they are necessary to “feel” what we’re wearing. Adaptability is fundamental to restoring balance in one’s life. It is the sheer definition of preparedness— for anything!

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