Dear friends-

It is raining here after a very dry and warm November. I opened the door for the dog and he went out and came right back in. Yep, my feelings exactly. In the house, lights and heat are on. 

I'm nearing the end of my assignments for the year with chaplaincy. I have a paper to finish and the notebook on the precepts. I am illustrating them with small paintings. They told us we could be creative. I have also learned that I can't write with the TV on. Too distracting. 

Yesterday I renewed my certification for neonatal resuscitation, which I've done a thousand times. Next year is my last as a practicing midwife. Our building in being leased and the practice will have to relocate. I don't know what the owner of our practice will do. Next year is my 50th year as a midwife. I think that's enough. I really do. Today I'm on call and hoping no one goes into labor. The weather is encouraging me to stay inside where it's warm and dry. 

After my training, I visited an old friend who is being treated for non-Hodgkins lymphoma. We sat and drank tea and talked. He is tired from the chemo but seemed ok. He says he naps a lot. We talked about the inevitability of our own demise. It's the thing as we age, encountering our peers who have died or are recovered from hysterectomies or knee surgery. When I walk in the forest, the cycle is all around. Trees have fallen, or are standing snags among the ferns and the seedlings. 

Last night I celebrated someone who I am mentoring in recovery. We celebrated his two year sobriety birthday. I brought flowers and a shiny piece of obsidian he can put in his pocket for protection. I love him so much. We have entrusted each other with so many stories. I want the best, the very best for him. 

Diane arrives on the first of December. She's here and there, visiting friends. We're going to the coast for a few days with the dog. We'll dress for the weather because it'll be rainy an cold, just the way I like it. There are these little cabins, built in the 40's with tiny kitchens and fireplaces. And a short walk to the beach. And a pool and hot tub. Perfect. 

Another year is coming to a close. Still leaves on the trees and the rain has returned. As my old teacher Thundercloud called it, this is the season of falling off and dying. And under the ground, a new season awaits us. As my second year of chaplaincy starts, the question will be, what is my purpose, how can I be of service with the days left to me?

Be well and safe. Be surrounded by compassion and love. 

Antidote for anxiety

 

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

David Waggoner

Dear friends-

This is gonna be hard. 

Long ago I was involved in a Christian community that I now realize was a cult.  I wholeheartedly joined because I would learn to meditate and I was looking for a spiritual community in my small town. Morning services, the company of other young people that I became friends with, a series of 'initiations' I was eager to achieve. There were men and women priests (how modern!) and that attracted me too. I was married with young children. One male priest in particular took an active interest in me...some visiting with him in his apartment, hugging (where I could feel his erection through his robes) and eventually what I would now call a sexual assault. At the time I was infatuated with him. He was funny, kind and deeply spiritual, or so I thought. After all this time and a strong nudge from my chaplaincy training, I see that what I experienced was abuse by a spiritual leader who took my trust and my aspiration and thwarted it. I have held a very deep sense of guilt and shame from this story. I was noticing my flinching whenever the training I am in now would take a turn into christianity. But bigger than that are the life choices I have made; avoiding male teachers, male bosses, choosing to work with empowering women in their labors and births. I could go on. One friend, when I told her this, asked if that was why I chose to be with women intimately. NO. These things are separate. My gender identity and my preference are inherent, not a result of trauma. Please!

Anyway. Sitting here typing this, I am shaking. I have never felt such anxiety before. Losing my little cat was so painful and that is fading. This place where I am right now feels so deep in my bones, my heart. The experience is visceral, in the body. Tomorrow I speak with my spiritual advisor. On Tuesday my old therapist. I'm thinking some anti-anxiety meds might help. That poor young woman I was, trying to make sense of what happened, in silence and confusion. Telling no one. It's the secrecy and the shame. And the legions of people, mostly women, who have gone through this too. 

Today I hold in my very wounded heart all that have had their lives, their sense of self-worth, their faith stolen from them. I know how it feels. 

For me, telling the story over and over, owning that it wasn't my fault and excavating the shame and guilt so embedded in my heart, mind and body, is the work before me. As they say in chaplaincy, it's a Dharma gate. One to walk through like a hero, a warrior. Like me. 

 When I lived in San Francisco in the Castro district with my girls, we had mice. They were in the cupboards and closets. I used a glue trap once and was horrified. I would trap them under a cup and take them into the bathroom where I would put them in the tub and scoop them into a jar and walk them some distance away from the house and let them go.

I was on the phone one day and a mouse came out from under the sink and was ambling across the floor. Without thinking, I stood up and walked over to the mouse and stepped on it. So shocked by what I had done, I hung up and knelt down to the floor. The mouse was still alive and I don't remember how I dispatched it. Me, a person who nursed baby birds and worms and beetles and crickets, had callously killed a small creature who was just minding their own business. 

This past Thursday, a vet came to the house and euthanized Lola, the black kitty I've had since the early 2000's. I was working for Fred Hutch at the time, conducting interviews in women's homes. This house was near mine and as I walked up to the front door, a small black face appeared from under the steps. A child answered the door and explained that they had an indoor cat and an outdoor cat. I asked the mother if she had plans to adopt the cat out and she said she would be happy to stop stop caring for the porch kitty. I went home and came back later and brought Lola home. I had two other cats and there were dust-ups and scraps but eventually peace was restored. Those other cats disappeared, as cats will when they live outside. Lola remained and I decided after too many bird murders, to keep her inside. She has been my companion for so many years. Especially after the pandemic locked us all inside, she was on my lap, by my shoulder, sleeping on my hip when I was in bed. I have swept up mountains of her long black fur. A talker, she meowed a lot, and I mean a lot. As she aged, she threw up more, I cleaned her litter more often, symptoms that she was getting sick. On Monday the vet told me she had a tumor the size of a fist and she probably didn't have a lot more time. 

I've been crying all week, huge, shaking crying. Clark came over yesterday and helped me bury her in the garden. Felix keeps wanting to go outside. I think he is looking for her while I wander around the house, not eating or sleeping, blowing my nose and weeping. 

The air is so smoky today, not possible to go for a walk. Otherwise I'd go to Cougar Mountain and hike with the boy. Maybe a swim in the pool and a quick run for Felix. 

This is a bit long winded, I know. But grief is such a powerful force. I feel literally bent over with the pain. A friend just texted that her beloved husband has had a stroke. Jeezus. 

For chaplaincy, I am to make a personal ancestor panel:

I've written many names of all who have influenced and guided my life: my father, Quan Yin and Ram Dass,  Lola and Yogi, so many more. 

On this day:

Woods

              Louise Bozan

I part the out thrusting branches

and come in beneath

the blessed and blessing trees

though I am silent

there is singing around me

though I am dark

there is vision around me

though I am heavy

there is flight around me

Poetry saves lives. 

Been back a while. Boy o boy, kicked my ass. The mountains were beautiful. Lake Chelan is the deepest lake in the country and about 60 miles long, glacier carved and fed so it was cold. Yes, I went swimming. Once. VERY COLD but so clear, could see the bottom. We did trail work everyday, hiking in 3 1/2 miles to the site and 3 1/2 miles out. My feet hurt, My legs hurt, my back and arms, well you get the picture. We ate massive amounts of carbs. 

Anxiety is my new friend. Well, she's actually been there forever but newly expressed. Not fun. Waves of anxiety from outta nowhere then...nothing. It's annoying, to say the least. 

All my clothes feel tight. I lost 10 pounds over the last few years but I think it's all back. Who cares? I do. I hate wearing clothes at all and when they feel tight, I get grumpy.  Again I say, who cares?

Fired off another paper to chaplaincy today. This one about the precepts. The book, Being Upright by Reb Anderson was excellent. I massively underlined and highlighted. May have to read it again.  What are the precepts you may ask. They are a guide for living with heart and skillfulness, y'know do no harm-which is impossible BTW.

Last night I had dinner with one of my dear gay boyfriends. We were talking about series we love and we drifted into talking about The L Word, a silly Hollywood style lesbian soapy series. I disparaged the series because it was SO unrealistic. Fancy beautiful model type women with their dramas and the like. Yuck, hardly real. But I loved Queer as Folk, gay men all the time (in Pittsburg, surely NOT a gay mecca) who were being, ahem, very sexually active a lot. A lot. Anyway.  

And I learned this: he LOVED The L Word and hated Queer as Folk because of the representation of gay men being indiscriminately sexual with whomever. All the time. Ok, fair enough. On the other hand, the women talked to each other and cared about their relationships. 

So. this morning on my swim with Clark, my main gay boyfriend, I inquired about the two series (as a scientific experiment) and he SAID THE SAME THING. 

Then I asked Kenny, my gay boyfriend neighbor, and he LIKED Queer as Folk and never heard of The L Word and wouldn't watch it when I told him what is was about. 

So there you have it -2:1. I have my new friend JR, the millennial in the sample size to ask. He's probably never heard of either series. I will get back to you about this. 

I mean what does it all signify? Absolutely nothing, I'm sure. Except that life is a great mystery.

"To live in this world you must be able to do three things,

Love what is mortal, hold it against your bones as if your life depended on it

and when the time comes to let it go, let it go."

                                                                             -Mary Oliver

A grasshopper walked into a bar and the bartender said, "Hey, we have a drink named after you!"

The grasshopper relied, "You have a drink named Steve?"

Here is an example of a rakusu, a Zen bib that we hand sew. Hope that helps. 

https://tricycle.org/magazine/buddhas-robe/ 

When I get back from the mountains, I will tell you all about it.

This morning I got up at 5:40 AM and went to the lake for a swim with Allison. In the water, we watched a gorgeous sunrise. I came home, picked all the grapes and prepped them for jelly. Then I made a blueberry pie. 

I offer each of you a big slice. 

 Dear friends-

I am frankly stalling. I leave for my mountain trail building week on Friday. The grapes are all ripe at once, of course and I have to pick and prepare them for ?? jelly?? when I get back from the mountains. I've been harvesting thyme, drying it and grinding it up for use. And I promised a blueberry pie to friends before Thursday. My rakusa is coming along (all hand sewing, mind you) and I have to write a paper or two before I leave. Ghaaa. 

Anxiety rising in this moment. After writing to throw myself into my darling lake. Fixes everything. 

Wedding plans coming along. Diane is the queen of organizing, unlike me. Well, I managed to get in an application for a spot on the lake, a bath house with a nice little beach. 

Eden will do food, no music except for Clark singing. Very simple please. Our rings came and they're very pretty. 

After we say 'I do', everyone can go for a swim. I know I will. 

I can feel the plant world withdrawing into themselves as fall approaches. Can't you? 

                  

                        Woods                  by Louise Bozan

I part the out thrusting branches and come in beneath

the blessed and blessing trees

Though I am silent

there is singing around me

Though I am dark

there is vision around me

Though I am heavy

there is flight around me

Dean Young has died-RIP dear poet

 

“Delphiniums in a Window Box”
by Dean Young

Every sunrise, sometimes strangers’ eyes.
Not necessarily swans, even crows,
even the evening fusillade of bats.
That place where the creek goes underground,
how many weeks before I see you again?
Stacks of books, every page, character’s
rage and poet’s strange contraption
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn’t one.
Every thistle, splinter, butterfly
over the drainage ditches. Every stray.
Did you see the meteor shower?
Every question, conversation
even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud,
because of you I’m talking to crickets, clouds,
confiding in a cat. Everyone says
Come to your senses, and I do, of you.
Every touch electric, every taste you,
every smell, even burning sugar, every
cry and laugh. Toothpicked samples
at the farmer’s market, every melon,
plum, I come undone, undone.

Well, dear ones. I have finished my 10 day retreat/training with Upaya, the Zen Center and boy howdy, I'm still recovering. 12 hour days on zoom is gross. I will remind myself that I am immensely grateful that I have the time and money to do this program at all. But sheesh. Getting up at  4:45 to meditate and then we're off to the races with more sits and walking and some breaks when I ran down to the lake and threw myself in.

Now I have to write eleventy hundred papers, read more books, finish my rakasu, make an ancestral lineage chart X 3 on mulberry paper, do more volunteer hours and make three more field trips. No problem. Most of this by the end of December. 

I gardened this morning before the heat, watered everything and contemplated which plants are truly dead and which ones I need to prune. I know nothing about pruning. Nothing. I'm averse to it but if this garden of mine doesn't get room to breathe, they will have to hack through the underbrush to find my front door. 

In two weeks I go to Holden Village to be on a trail building 'vacation' with Washington Trails Association. We're gonna stay in a Lutheran camp and move out from there every day. No tent camping, hooray! And there's a sauna. After the first 7 hour day, I will probably need to be carried back to base but there is another old queer who is going and we can keep each other company in our oldness. 

Don't know if I've said this here but I've been exploring my 'identity'. For a long time there were a few choices: to be lesbian and be butch or femme. Definitely on the femme side. But now there are a plethora of choices and the lesbian never really 'fit'. Vacillating between non-binary and gender queer. I was using non-binary but have settled on gender queer. A better moniker for me. Even though ultimately there is no gender or labels or whatever. 

Our wedding rings came while I was on retreat. Have to investigate whether it is more advantageous to be unofficially married for tax reasons. Must ask my tax guy. Regardless, next July it is. With a party and family and friends. I just hope it isn't a terribly hot day...

Ok, I must get back to the business of writing a paper I started this morning. I will reward myself with  a swim.

Much everlasting love

 

There I am. Without swimming I'm done for. I hope they can lower me into the water when I'm too old to get there on my own.

 Dear friends-

I did it. I swam from Martha Washington to Seward Park with Robb on a paddle board beside me. I alternated between anxiety, fear, elation and calm. The water was mostly calm with some wavy bits. I found myself grinning the closer and closer I got to the shoreline. It's about 1/2 mile, I guess. No soreness the next day either. I am officially a badass. 

Now next challenge...swim a longer distance, right?

Sweet young Nik came over and tiled my backsplash in 2 days. Beautiful. However getting the outlets back into the spaces he left has presented a challenge for me to solve. Ah well. 

Starting a mindfulness based childbirth class tonight, goes all weekend. Unfortunately the blue angels (yuck, nothing about them is angelic) will be overhead. They are 30 BILLION dollars fighter jets that do formations in the sky directly over our neighborhood. They are incredibly LOUD and scary. This happens every year.

Just visited an Olmstead park in my old neighborhood. The Volunteer coordinator contacted me because I'm looking for volunteer hours for chaplaincy. And she wants me to initiate sitting/walking meditations (!) among the greenhouses and the gorgeous trees, some of which are more than 100 years old. There's even a gigantic sequoia on the grounds. I am screaming, I'm so excited. What she/they want is exactly what I want to be doing. The one catch is making $$ for the park, after a two year shut down, they're pretty broke. I can ask for dana donations. I of course, require no $$. We also talked about bringing in folks who need to rest their anxious/fearful minds and hearts from the current fuckery, to allow them to rest and give and get love from the trees. The conservatory is gorgeous too and we walked through the back lot where the maturing plants are. 

Well, time for a swim in my big momma lake. Sooooo grateful she is so near by. 

Pema Chodron, in the new edition of When Things Fall Apart, reminds us the this moment is the path, just this moment with its' misery, joy, confusion, anger and peace. The only path we're on. This living moment. 

May we all walk with awareness in this present and precious moment. 

Much big love. 

Her voice like a bell

Wow

 It's summer hot here today and I'm volunteering at Kubota gardens, one of my favorite places. It's normal hot here today, unlike other parts of the country. 

Pulling weeds is what I can do. Following the news is painful so I avoid it. The NYT is my source, already a week old. I read once that a man in the outback of Alaska came into town once a year for supplies and he was given the daily papers from the previous year, all the news that was a year old. He started with January one and went through each day with a year old paper. How would that be? Knowing what happened the year before, thinking about it with no recourse to fret about it (well, I suppose you could) but it was all in the past. I don't think I could read the daily paper from 2021 without breaking down. Or maybe I'd just stick to the crosswords and Wordle and what the celebrities are up to. You know, Spanks and designer clothes and the Oscars. Really important stuff. 

My AC is a beautiful thing. 

Well, I better go get my gardening jam on. A hat. Sunscreen. Sandals. I already have my bathing suit on for later. 

 

Dear ones,

I have been working to figure out how/what the hell am I doing with chaplaincy, whatever that might be. 

I have thought I'd be helping traumatized healthcare workers who have witnessed terrible things at their jobs. Where is the respite for us???

But.

As I go through this journey I have discovered that I am being pulled toward my non-human friends. All of the Earth. Her trees and frogs and birds and rocks and waterfalls and more trees. Diane and I did a hike called Lake 22 up by Granite Falls, north of Seattle. 

It was spectacular. And hard. The old growth trees were the largest old growth I've even seen in the PNW.  Trail ended at a snow fed alpine lake. We scrambled over rocks and sweated and ate our peanut butter sandwiches. There were so many trees, so many beautiful trees. I told Diane I wanted to do my chaplaincy right there, among those old women. 

Haven't we always loved the Earth? As children we discovered the smells and sounds and creatures as we lay on our stomachs watching the most minute bugs and snails and the occasional garter snake. I would crawl under the bushes in my yard and construct tiny houses for the fairies who lived there. I climbed trees just to sit there and look out at the world. 

I told my teacher that I felt loving the Earth was somehow less important than ministering to humans. She gently reminded me that we are not separate from all of life, that we are inextricably bound to Her body, fed from Her body, one day to return to her body. 

Well, of course. 

So how do I enter into an intimacy with the Earth herself? I know and I don't know. 

She is our mother and we are all her children. How could I have forgotten? 

I'm being called home.  Home.

 Here I admit things I don't anywhere else. I guess I'm willing to be embarrassed in a post. 

I have watched Young Royals twenty eleven thousand times. It's beautiful and heartbreaking and sexy and troubling. The acting is gorgeous. Season two can't come soon enough. Like HeartStoppers. Jeezus, adolescence. As the art teacher in HeartStoppers says, "Being a teenager is terrible."

Rachel, a buddy in my chaplaincy program texted me this:

"I'm just gonna watch teen television, work at a cemetery and pretend the world doesn't exist." My sentiments exactly, well maybe not the cemetery part (part of her volunteer hours). 

I still cry so often. Am I depressed? Scared? Overwhelmed? All of it? Boris Johnson is gone and that's good. 

In an hour I go pick up Diane (AKA Jolene, my preferred nickname for her as she is from the south). We'll hold hands in the car, I'll cry some more, we'll walk the dog and then we'll go to the spa for soaks and massages and Korean food in their little cafe. Then we'll come back to my house and we will just be together. I can hug her and she can hug me. We'll talk and laugh and get serious about trust and love. I don't know how to do any of this and I'm not sure I ever did. Me and the teens being all awkward and clumsy and weird as we try to figure it out. 

GAWD. 

For fucksake I'm OLD. 

Love you all. 

Joshua Hyslop - More Than This [Audio]

 Dare I write this? December 3rd, 2022.

We're gonna get married. OMG. I know I thought I would marry someone back in 2017 and that was a HUGE mistake.  And I didn't marry her. This is not a mistake. Diane;  funny, talkative, quirky, thoughtful, tender, trustworthy and lovable, this person who I have loved forever. So much history, so much water under the bridge.

We needed to grow up, deal with our shit and land (in our 70's!) with our open hearts. 

If we lose our constitutional right to marry, we'll be ok in Washington State. Jeezus.

Because of Roe, I'm coming out all over again. At this age, I'm invisible anyway. So I'm owning it and letting people know. This is what a queer person looks like. We're everywhere. As I have made my way through many documentaries about queers and trans folk, the damage it has done to people who can't come out or the people who do or can't hide who they are who have been shamed and shunned and beat up and killed, I have to show up for them. Maybe I posted this before but I'll keep saying this. 

May we all be free from fear and hate. May we all live lives of beauty and peace.

Tonight we go dancing together. In a candle lit room with gorgeous music. Every day, every minute is precious.

 

 

 Let Them Not Say

Jane Hirshfield - 1953-

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Let them not say:   we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say:   we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say:     they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say:   it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say:     they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.