Wally Walks

Everything about Wally was big,
his paws,
his head,
his heart,
his presence,
his Spirit,
his love.

It’s hard to write this without blurry vision and the keyboard getting pummeled with teardrops. Wally our beloved yellow lab, my constant companion for nearly 12 years, crossed over on September 15th. Near the end we forbid him to ride in the four-wheeler wagon because of the discomfort it caused, both putting him in and taking him out. Well, I did give in to his insistence a few times.

Wally was given one last ride in the four-wheeler wagon but this time it carried the heaviness in our hearts too. His grave sits on a little hill under a sapling oak. The healing will take time. Like everything else about Wally, the void he left behind is big.

Below is re-post from a year ago or so with a few minor variances.

Walks with Wally in the open field are unconstrained. His boundary tethered to trust. Obedient to ghostly trails of scent, nothing stops the pursuit except one thing. My booming voice echoing, “BACK!”, over the land. He seemed to know the precise moment to come in my sights. Right before panic could set in. It was the way he returned, his joy knowing no bounds, that made me believe love and not fear returned him to me.

I often followed him to that place of freedom. Flushing out unopened places in my mind. Meandering through tight thickets of thought. Like Wally I went about it unhurried and unworried.

Now that Wally carries the heaviness of age, he’s more often than not a few steps behind than a few yards ahead. In his energetic youthful days, he’d pause occasionally to glance back. Confirming my pace as either keeping up or falling behind. Adjusting accordingly. I now faithfully return the favor to my dear friend.

Wally’s devotion runs as wide and deep as an old river. Together we have walked in beauty, in the darkness that haunts the light and in each other souls. Together is all Wally and I have. Our time together is all I will remember.

Believe in love and not fear.
Return to each other.
All of us—together— it’s all we have.

Love Is Our Truth

At a recent Native American gathering, a mouse tried to join the event. Quick thinking and actions by the person seated by he door prevented its entry. The incident brought to their mind a Mouse Spirit message from a previous gathering that was shared with everyone. Mouse Spirit had said, “I no longer want the cheese. I want to be free of the trap.” The wisdom is offered with no explanation. It is up to each individual to gain their own understanding.

Lessons can be learned but the understanding from what we learn leads to knowledge. The knowledge than gives us the natural laws to live by. The teaching walked with and around me for many days. As usual an understanding came in a quiet moment.

I interpret the baited trap Mouse Spirit speaks to as deception. Many Native American songs reference this. The songs tell us to; do it this way,secure our sacred pipes or we may be deceived. In simple terms, the sacred pipe symbolizes a connection to Creator for me. The traps are set when we disconnect from Creator. Through contemplative prayer we can re-establish and deepen that relationship. We begin to learn, understand, know and live spiritual truths. Within the unconscious of every human being is hidden spiritual truths. Given time and commitment they are revealed to you. Prayer is one method to attain them.

The bait is the powerful illusions of truth in this world that lure us into abandoning our connection to Creator and the spiritual truths that govern all life. At the present time, the illusion of truth is that we hate each other. When we act out from illusion (take the bait) great harm and suffering is created for all those concerned.

Love is the greatest power in the Universe. Not even death can conquer love. It is part of Mouse Spirit’s wisdom for me. The world is always trying to build a better mouse trap. Innovation has morphed into revolution. True change will happen when we learn to love those we do not love. An evolution of the soul. It’s not coming. It’s here.

A heart can only be deceived when it is separated from Creator. Hate trapped in the mind closes the heart; to Creator, to love. Hate is a mastermind of traps. It cannot be trusted. If you are unable to reconcile a belief in your mind with an authentic feeling in your heart, it is not truth. A

As it happened, the day Mouse Spirit’s wisdom unfolded, a mouse fell into the horses grain bin and was trapped. Mouse’s liquid black eyes told me to begin living the spiritual truth, to start small. With that Mouse was taken out to a far field to gather wild food or be food for the wild things. We may be on the cusp of a Universal soul evolution but it begins with yours. Start small.

Love is our truth.
The truth will set us free.

Help Heal Hurt

There is that saying…
Hurt People,
hurt People.

If so, do
healed People
heal People?

I ask,
How do we heal?

Ask for help.

Take help.
Help is useful if you use it.
Help is helpless if you don’t.
Help, hurt or heal.

Only you help—
help—
help you.

Act

Change starts in you.
Inaction stops change,
action drives change.
Choices choose the direction.
Help, hurt or heal.

I becoming change,
changes you—
you changing,
changes us.
The world is us.
Help, hurt or heal.

I ask,
How do I know I’m healed?

When you don’t want to hurt,
People…yourself…anything,
you enact changes that allow you to feel
but not become hurt.

We are all helpers,
here to heal hurts
from our center out in all directions.
Our actions help, hurt or heal the world.
Remember how to be a good relative.

I Watched

I watched you in silence.
Right there, a few feet in front of me,
hunkered next to a fading violet plant,
frantically scratching at the ground near it.

I watched the violet reluctant to release the earth clasp in its roots,
exposed and vulnerable, surrender inevitable.
Sharp teeth penetrate the tender white skin with ease.

I watched intently as you nibbled off tiny pieces.
Sickle shaped claws pushing, pushing,
forcing a place for another tiny bit, then another and another.
Was there no end to Chipmunk cheek capacity?
I watched you scamper off into the nearby woods.

I watch and learn
I am a student
I am being watched
I am a teacher.

Observer and observed,
silent watching.
I wonder what am I teaching?
I will have to wait and watch.

The Salesman

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

I became acquainted with Robert during my search for an affordable alternative to ag lime. Soil tests the previous year revealed that most of the ground our hay fields grew on had turned sour. Their PH levels were under 7. Calcium is what you apply to the ground to correct the PH. It was the cause of our dwindling harvests. If you are a wise farmer you understand the sacredness of soil and do all you can to preserve and protect it.

Robert worked for a company that sold liquid calcium. Liquid calcium had many advantages over dry lime but I had never used it before. I had questions. Lots of them. I needed to educate myself on the product. After receiving Robert’s initial response to an email, I could tell he was a salesman through and through. The email was pages of information and customer testimonial’s singing the praises of his product. As I sifted through the information I had to wonder, was it all smoke and mirrors? Or was his perceived confidence trusted truth?

Then the phone call happened. His sentences strung together like a fine pearl necklace. I could tell the sales pitch was recited hundreds, if not thousands of times, locked in his memory from the repetition. He drew out the vowels of his words in typical southern drawl fashion. By its tone and fluctuations, I guessed he was close to retirement. Here and there his words slurred together into unintelligible sentences. Even so, it was a pleasant voice to listen to. That was fortunate because Robert did most of the talking. True to his old school sales techniques, he peppered the conversation with sweetheart bombs and young lady references. I didn’t mind. They lightened the scientific nature of the conversation and ever so gently tickled my heart. Occasionally, to make sure I was still a captive audience there would be a quick, “You follow me dear?” He had me smiling at the first sweetheart.

Questions came about long I’d been farming and the animals we kept, the joys and tribulations that come with bringing in hay. We lamented briefly about getting older. More questions came. How long had I had the horses and their names? Did I ride often? They began to reflected a genuine concern for the land and the people that tended to it. I didn’t feel any pressure. I wasn’t wasting any of Robert’s time. Whether he got the sale or not.

It was near the end of the conversation that I learned Robert was 73 years old with no plans to retire. At the conclusion of the call I was reading off my credit card number. My encounter with Robert brought to mind a quote by Theodore Roosevelt, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”.

As it turned out, Robert was just the person I needed to educate me.

Songs Pray

Dew holds tight to the bushes and berries
Its grip loosened by the soft caress of dry cloth
Mornings these days are early and damp.

Flower faces reflect the sun’s smile
Standing tall above them all
a perfectly pink Phlox bloom
I pause to savor the sniff
Heaven dreams of a smell so sweet

In the patch worry rests
You can hear songs
Ancestral songs
The kind that come on their own
The kind that sing themselves
The kind that pray

Hollow bones hold the songs
I sing the praises of mobility and ruby red raspberries
Oh, the voice may crack and pop
But it carries the tune well enough

Handfuls of delight dangle from the tips of grateful fingers
I’ll harvest all I can from this juicy life
Fill my bucket and then some
Before I’m dead ripe

Patch Ponder

It’s how I will begin every other day until the harvest ends in August, on my knees next to dew covered blueberry bushes, filling first my belly then a small bucket with berries. Its a humble prayerful posture. I seek the plump soft berries that hide among lush green leaves and bowed branches. I take only those ready to relinquish their attachment from tiny stiff stems. I always come to the patch with an attitude of gratitude. Anyone that helps pick has to be willing. No one is forced to pick because I want the bushes to feel nothing but appreciation for their gift. My movement in the patch is slow and easy. I know I will be returning many more times in the coming weeks. Great care is given to do no harm or hurt to the bushes that surrender their fruit.

When you pick blueberries there can be a large cluster but only a few will have color and of those few only one or two will be blue through to the stem. You can feel they’re ripeness by their willingness to release. I look too but each year I feel more and look less or my back yells at me. Blue to the stem are sweet. All other’s have a tang of sour.

Many of us are working on releasing negative experiences, thoughts and people. The blueberries reminded me this morning not to force this process. It’s OK to wait for the healing to be whole—ripe for the picking. You will be able to release AND relinquish attachment to the experience. There will be a willingness on your part. You will feel it and be Okay with whatever place the other(s) are in their healing in that shared experience. Only then can you move forward consistently. Healing can hide. Feel for it in a gentle way. You may have to return many more times.

Wish you all have ripe—sweet—healing!

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

Sky Kiss

Father Sky came down to kiss Mother Earth this morning
Reassured by the sacred union,
the hard worry in my heart softened.
The affection walked beside me around the field.

I let it inside.

Opened wide and deep,
my lungs embraced the cool moist air.
Momentarily I held its love,
Then gradually I released it to the life around me.
Going, going, gone.

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