GRATITUDE-GO-ROUND

November means empty seed pods. The yard and the fields are covered with the white cottony down of the milkweed seed giving a foretelling of the white that will come and lay a blanket of softness over my whole visible world. I'm still deep in the mode of Thanksgiving. Gratitude lingers and underneath it a touch of melancholy. I really have lost the motivation behind my tendency to "put on Christmas" as a one woman show. The kids are grown and we all seem to live fairly close to the financial cliff. Material proof of our love for each other no longer makes any sense. I don't know if I'd even dare to buy clothes for the guys so often some greenbacks make an appearance in a poem or card but we actually tend to give what is needed rather than what is wanted.(Isn't that what tax returns are for?) I'm holding on to the gratitude because our society's traditions for Christmas no longer feel real or even sane to me. I fondly remember the frantic schedule of working and shopping and doing all the x-mas shows, walks, parties...the photos in Santa's lap...the feeling of never being enough and trying to cover every base including the cookies, the gingerbread houses and men, the homemade decorations...I want to go take a nap just thinking about it.  We always entered the New Year with a debt on the credit card that took months to cover. Now the nest is empty. The guys understand the value of money and the separation between being happy with less versus the neverending greed for more. I believe we all agree that just being together on the holiday is enough for us all. Exchanging random stuff isn't the reason for the season. So as long as I am focusing on the gratitude, it acts as a buoy for my spirits. The seeping sadness beneath is probably more about the end of our little family togetherness anyway. But I do think about the Christmas messages that we are assaulted with by marketing managers and commercials that try to tell us what we need...hiding the real agenda. That our ecomony is based on people spending money and therefore Santa is like the bellringer for the Salvation Army...only the Salvation Army is actually a litany of merchandisers like Macy's, Cabellas, JCPenny...and on and on. Children and parents are manipulated by corporations to need their products for their happiness. Such expectation breeds dissappointment. And it's sad really. People in my neighborhood are struggling to put food on the table and boots on their feet. Our family gave up on the stockings and gifts in a mountain under the tree many years ago. I must admit...it felt alot like detoxing from a drug complete with mood swings, drama and ancient dissapointments of unmade miracles.

Nowadays, as Thanksgiving and the spirit of gratitude subsides and the stirrings of the approaching Christmas season begin to quicken in my heart, I am realizing that one must pass through the sadness of old to reach deeper into the soil for what has true meaning during this holiday season. Our American culture doesn't provide anymore. Even the traditions of other cultures are fun to try on but like a fancy dress you only wear once or twice a year, it never feels wholly me because my life is a working life and I wear working clothes. I look to the seeds for inspiration...the seeds and the bulbs...and the garden. As the nights become cold and mornings frosty, I am constantly aware of what I planted and this time of the season for darkness, cold and rest. I remember my garlic bulbs under their blanket of oat straw and watch the milkweed seeds dance on the northwest winds being spirited away to a new sight where more milkweed plants can grow and bear pods and feed the hungry monarch butterflies in July and August. Nature has sealed everything in the cold and this is as it should be. The original seeds of Christmas came from human beings celebrating the Solstice...the return of the growing light and the end of the increase of the dark. Deep in my soul's soil is a place that remembers this season as a time of deep quiet, candlelight and the scent of evergreens...and always the music...beautiful music.

I go from giving thanks to wondering...what can I give? Because there is something about the season that beckons one to give. This year I've decided that it is time to open my chest and take out the mountain of beanie babies that I collected years ago and set them free...into the wild with all the animals. It tickles me. I am in the process of seeking places and people to give them too and as I release them ...more room is made in my heart. I loved collecting the animals and now I love giving them away. I am a spirit of giving. Invisible to those that recieve my gifts. Beanie babies. Seeds on the wind. An empty seedpod.  Life in the air. It's really exhilerating...and who knows what will come of it? It certainly makes me feel rich and generous and for that...again...I am grateful.

LESSON #103

This face swirls through my conciousness whether I'm awake or asleep. This is Bartholemew...or #103. I prefer calling him Bart because it makes me think of Bart Simpson...a 2 dimensional cartoon of someone's imagination. My all too human brain wants to distance myself...frame this face with something that makes me feel better about taking  life. Wednesday was Lamb Day. A first for me because it is the first time in my life where I am face to face with a four legged animal...a sweet gentle face full of innocence having learned only that day after day brings the joys of friends and family, good grazing and the pleasures of earth...mud, grass, sky, rain, sun and butterflies...and I (in the form of Stephen) am about to steal that life away and wrap it pound by pound for my basement freezer. A cold November thought...a chilly act of murder. The only food I've ever known personally were 2 chickens that survived a summer of predators to our chicken coop. I personally took those chickens to a community chicken day where locals could bring chickens that they did not wish to overwinter. 2 little hens can't produce enough heat to keep them warm for winter so the stock pot became their final resting place. I have learned to handle death. Mostly, I force myself to face it and the more I do, the more my life becomes vital and filled with energy. November sees me feeling gratitude for all the human faces that I have loved and lost over the years. I thank each and every loved one for being a teacher and for opening a window into eternity for me. But I also thank my animal friends. As I flip through my memory file, it occurs to me that every little death I've faced has helped me meet this moment now. The little turtle who burned in the sun...the chameleon my sister stepped on,   our first dog and at least 4 cats...a baby bird I tried to save...the more I reflect, the more I remember. But I was brought up being protected from death. It never occurred to me that the package of burger meat in the skillet was a whole animal once because it always came from the grocery store. The first time I had Sushi, I couldn't swallow it because it was raw and I could imagine that fish alive and whole. I had to warm up to the idea in my head because something in my brain wanted to deny that I was capable of eating life and therefore just like any other animal. I can face the death...but not the killing. Stephen sent me away for a few hours on Wednesday to do the deed. When I took Sadie and drove away, knowing this animal would be dead next time I drove in the driveway...it was tearfully and with a lump of bitter grief in my throat. I had a long moment with Bart as he stood in the back of the truck wondering what was going on. I rubbed his head...saw the sweet innocence in his eyes. We butted foreheads and I thanked him over and over. He obliged by pressing his head against mine...he looked into my eyes unaccusingly. That is the look that has been following me around for a few days...more like an angel than a ghost. When I returned, Stephen confessed that he too had wept when he shot #103. I celebrate his range of emotion and am so glad I am married to a man who has the courage to share his feelings and to feel his feelings where other men tend to deny them in favor of an artificial bravado. I celebrate the range of his feelings and his owning them. He opted to be the trigger man in this, our adventure of harvesting our food.

Intense...yup. To make a killing on a beautiful bluebird day...to stain the grass with blood. Interesting to watch myself mentally wrestling with me as killer. I actually feel it sometimes in my garden...at the end of the season when it is time to pull up spent plants, I feel their demise as they have shared their fruits with me all season. There is no eating at all for anyone without killing. That is the bottom line. There is no such thing as "cruelty free" food. No matter what you put in your mouth...you are killing it. And if you have bothered to grow it yourself...you forge a bond with the living thing before you eat it...whether it's lettuce, spinach, brussel sprouts or basil...deer, lamb or chicken. Every manifestation of life is a repository of light from the sun...stars and universe. And every creature on Earth is a consumer of light energy to stay alive. What better way to learn that I...and all humans...are simply creatures doing what they must to survive. And that it is gratitude...that attitude of recieving a sacred gift...that allows a human conciousness to thrive.

With Bart...I have entered into a holy union. It is the deep reverence and the ability to recieve Bart's life and death with an attitude of gratitude that puts me on the same wavelength with him. We are one. To be willing to open myself up to the experience of killing my own food is a gift I've given myself. Many people never experience that intimacy. It is WILD. The wild self ...the animal self...at it's most basic level tends to be something we humans defend against in our civility. And yet that wild instinct is deeply tender and kind. Behind the killing is a softness...a tender gentleness that runs beneath the act itself. How else do we grasp the deeper truth of life on this planet than by challenging ourselves to face our fear...and sometimes that fear is protected and defended by what we think of ourselves. One act of courage in the face of fear has the power to bring a deeper level of knowing. Under that cruel killer of innocent life is a wild animal doing what it must and even deeper than that is the sweet reverence for life in all it's diversity. Loving my wild self has been one of my fondest dreams. It's why I'm here...in Maine.

I'll spare anyone who reads this of the details of my experience as a butcher. It's definitely not a hat I want to wear on a daily basis and I have a new appreciation for how a person can hear this career as a calling. We can eat meat only once or twice a week and it is plenty...so one or two animals a year is all we need. It is important to my wild soul that the animal I eat had a good life and a healthy environment. I realize that by making sure my food has a good life, I am putting myself in the same environment...and exposing myself to a good, healthy diet of light. And I hope that when I am the harvested animal, that my energy brings light and sustenance to those who contributed to my life.

So I'll leave you with the syncronicity of my Killing Day as an example of how the wild universe provides us with support and affirmation when we most need it. As Stephen concluded the act of killing, I was throwing a ball for Sadie...keeping her focused and distracted from the bloodletting. I noticed a huge hawk circling above us. In my peripheral vision, I noticed two of our neighbors chickens had escaped from their chicken condo and were walking around oblivious...innocent to the circling hawk who obviously had his sights set on dinner. I am frequently the recipient of eggs from these particular chickens and I felt a responsibility for them as no one was at home. Sadie and I rounded them up and got them under cover. The universe gave us an opportunity to save life at the same time as we were consuming life. And I take that as an indication of karmic balance. I am grateful to be alive...grateful for my life and grateful to give my life when my time comes. Lets just say...I am gratitude this year...grateful to be me...grateful to be traveling through life with my Stevo and for being open to recieving our 2 wonderful male children...I'm even grateful for our lifetime of economic challenge because it has taught me...life supports life...even if you don't know how or where or why. Somehow...our needs are met and I am so grateful.

MAKING A KILLING...GRIEF AND GRATITUDE

The November chill has begun...though the commitment just isn't there. We're looking at 60's for Monday and Tuesday after a tiny slice of hard frosty mornings and even a frosting of snow that looks wonderful from the porch as we look up into the ridge where Mt. Washington, Madison and Adams stand white against the blue sky. Winter is coming. The harvest is in and even as I write I can feel myself backing away from where my heart wants to go with this blog. I feel the fingers of grief squeeze a little around my heart chakra as I look up towards the woods behind the house. Now that all the vegetable labor is done, I have begun preparing for the more intense labor..the harvesting of our year's meat. Stephen has gone hunting for a deer. And Monday, we will go to a farm to pick up our lamb. I feel the coming of the killing. There is a sense of dread...an empathy for one warm blooded creature for another. I imagine that one day, my life will be taken. And I hope it is taken for the enhancement of someonelse's life. But today...as I walked with Sadie in the woods behind our home, it was with a heaviness of heart. I feel intense grief and have myself a good cry among the trees. Our neighbor has been logging so she can put a new roof on her house and the removal of many trees has changed the appearance of the land. The logging combined with the the loss of leaves makes everything look strange. There are sheer clouds in the blue sky telling of upper level cold while a warm front begins to make it's way through. It is fitting that the work of death and killing be done in the dark days of November. Stephen is the one who actually does the deed. I have killed fish and chicken but have never summoned the necessary commitment to kill a 4 legged animal myself. I remember when I lived in suburbia, how horrified I was by the mere thought of Stephen hunting a deer and hanging it. 12 years have passed and my whole attitude to hunting has changed. I always believed that if I could face cleaning and dressing a fish or bird, I had a right to eat those creatures for food. I have always felt that if a person is going to take the life of a creature, it should be considered a great gift and reason for gratitude. But in the past 12 years, I have educated myself about factory farming and the irony of purchasing meat from a grocery store. Now that I know how American meat is raised, I can no longer eat it. For me...it's not about the depersonalized packages wrapped in plastic and never seeing the actual animals hanging in the butcher shop. I've heard many folks confess to preferring grocery store meat because of the anonymity between you the buyer and the meat you take home to roast. The killing of thousands of animals who have never lived to move or graze or enjoy the summer sky...that seems to be the most violent of all killing. If it was the only way to put meat on my table, I don't know if I could do it.

Take hunting. Stephen is out there waiting to meet up with his buck. He must move through an entire process of stalking, making eye contact and then prevailing over the animal with a sharp aim and quick pull of the trigger or the animal will prevail with his instincts and speed to preserve it's own life. When the moment for killing happens...a hunter can freeze or become all shaky and miss the moment. If he shoots...there is another whole process to go through. The deer can keep moving...run scared and wounded until it falls or God forbid, the shot isn't fatal...a further killing has to happen. Perhaps a hands on moment with a knife to the throat. During the process, a man and his animal are breathing together the same air...sweating together...communing together in a deeply personal way as hunter and hunted comingle in the November woods. Sometimes a hunter can get kicked. I guess the thing that makes this meat different is the soul's connection made during the hunt. It is met alive...individual to individual.

The same process will happen when we pick up our lamb. Stephen will be shooting it himself. Again...I probably won't be there for the actual moment of killing. He will share his story and I will shed my tears. I always do. Life that is taken is a moment for sadness. It is a time of deep grief. There is no getting around it. My heart aches for both the wild hunted creature and the creature who has been raised for food on a farm with others grazing under the warm summer sky. Both animals will have lived. They will have enjoyed their lives and their food foraging and their families. They will both meet Stephen's eyes before they die and they will feel my tears...and they will know our gratitude by our grief.

Growing my own vegetables has tenderized me to the subtle difference between eating store bought vs. eating my homegrown. I hugely favor my homegrown because it isn't just about eating that carrot. I made the bed for that seed...planted it and weeded it and watered and worked for it. That carrot, to you might taste the same as the one at the farm stand but to me, that carrot feeds my soul. It is the result of my labor and sometimes my tears. So to is the harvest of our 1 deer or our 1 lamb. There is a wild encounter in the plucking of the animal as there is in the picking of the vegetables. I welcome it. I welcome the grief. I welcome the gratitude. And yes, I will help cut up the meat and bag it for the freezer. But I'll cry first. And I'll give thanks with words written by an ancient friend...the poet Kahlil Gibran.

"When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart...by the same power that slays you, I too am slain and I too will be consumed. For the law that delivers you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

Truly. I am that deer. I am that lamb. There is a killing moment and not only will our souls merge but our bodies will too...over the course of the next year. May all who are hungry be fed and satisfied.

TIS MY SEASON OF GRATITUDE

Happy November. I meant to get 1 more blog posted for October but yesterday just slipped by so fast that I rolled into November without even realizing it. October has been wild...yep! One wild month. I spent the first 15 days of the month sick with some kind of flu bug and I turned sixty. We then had an earthquake and a hurricane...mild though they were, they were enough to make my mother tremble and me kneel down on the ground in prayers of gratitude to live where I live. Two of our dear friends died of motorcycle related injuries and their void is huge. Mortality is a strict teacher  and I try to pay attention without losing heart. October saw me planting 220 bulbs of organic garlic and bedding them all down in compost and oat straw. The ground can freeze anytime it wants to but I  haven't yet had a killing frost in my garden and I am still picking broccoli, collards and kale. Now it's hunting season and in some ways I feel like the woods are taken away from me because there are enough accidents that it's rather scary to go walking in the woods even with hunter orange on but I do sometimes just because I need to NOT feel intimidated. Sadie misses our woodsy wandererings and so do I.

Hurricane Sandy did the job of removing all the golden brown and yellow leaves from the diciduous trees so once the yard dries out, I can do my last mow of the season. Then the mower gets sent to the back of the barn and the snow blower comes down to the garage. Our delivery of firewood is nearly all stacked and under the porch roof. This weekend we will turn the clocks back and our mornings will naturally start earlier. Stephen has been working on a remodel of our downstairs bathroom that comes to completion today or tomorrow. It is a huge change...a healing of sorts and I imagine it will have a wild effect on our psyche's over time. I've been enjoying long swims in the pool at the Bethel Inn, thinking about my Dad and the warm turquoise water inspired me to paint the bathroom the color of Carribean water. Perfect to show off a little water color my Dad did of the beach house we enjoyed our lives long at the beach we went to as children. Stephen and I wander around the house just loving it out loud. For us it is a perfect blend of old and new...a craftman's house that delights our souls with the slant of light, the placement of the trees and porches. Again...we are so grateful to be here where we are. We don't really need all the photos of Sandy's destruction to count our blessings and our hearts break for the pain so many are going through to see their lives upturned and their belongings destroyed. Just as easily as not, the hurricane could have followed a more northern route and our season of gratitude might have gotten off on the wrong foot. As I reflect on the month of October, I am amazed by the intensity of the changes wrought by mother nature. Nothing exemplifies it more clearly than the my experience of the earthquake on October 16th. What was an ordinary evening reviewing the nightly news turned extraordinary when the couch began to shake and the corner of our home vibrated to the sound of a runaway train. I thought there was a black bear on our porch shaking at the corner of the house. I kicked Stevo and told him to stop it. He thought an 18 wheeler went by with no lights. How we tell ourselves stories to explain reality...its a very human phenomena but all our explanations did was avoid the truth of the moment. That we were having an earthquake occured to us but only as a shared joke. When the ticker tape came across the screen and the truth was out...I went to bed in a state of awe. All I could say was...my mother trembles. We all tremble.

October was a good month for bringing out the true colors of our presidential candidates. It will be a re-leaf when it is all over. I've never been political. I just don't see the functionality of our government beneath the greed and lies and manipulation of the truth to make a political stand. I don't trust the government no matter who is in office...but I'll tell you this. I will always vote. And I will always vote for the person I percieve as being a human being with some integrity. Thank you to hurricane Sandy for showing us all one of the reasons for a good government...to come to the aid of people dealing with mass destruction. If the government wasn't owned by big oil and big Ag...there might not be a censure on the mouths of our nation's scientists and the general public might be able to see the truth of global warming. The biggest issue of all is the one the politicians are most silent about. What better way to create jobs than to deal with reality and begin the great work of saving our planet for our grandchildren.  Personally I hope Sandy has been helpful to Obama because as our choices stand...he is the man with a heart for the most diverse of American people and his word isn't changing every other day. The whole planet is at stake...and if the American people back Romney...say goodbye to the environment. We can't wait for big money on the issue of climate change. There has never been so much at stake in a presidential election. I may have my own private Earthquake if Romney gets voted in and I'll never believe the numbers...not when his son owns the voting machines of the swing state the whole election may depend on. October's political climate has been very like a cyclone.

Ah but now it is November...the season of gratitude. November is the twilight of the year...the river is swollen to overflowing and there is an unkindness of ravens in the hayfield across the street. All the trees are bare naked and stand against the sky like black lace. The huge orange moon has plenty of visibility even when you can't see the forest for the trees. I'm praying like a nun...on my knees yes I am for Obama to win the election...for the lamb that is readying itself for our table to have a good death...quick and sure...just the way I want to go...for jobs to come to our western mountains. but not too many...for the cold to come so the bugs die. The more I depend on my garden for sustenance, the more nature determines the flow of my days. The wild of October has worked it's magic and now I will give thanks for this one wild life.

Tonight I will put out a bowl of food for the souls who wander nearby. Maybe a weasel...maybe a bear or maybe a human...anyway...to me they are all saints. Happy All Saints Day.