of mowing and mindfulness

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Yesterday we took some time out to mow the pasture. My husband rented a big brush mower which he had to push up and down hills and around, but I worked with my scythe on the edges and the places too narrow or delicate for the mower. I love working with the scythe; it’s quiet, rhythmic work, and the swish of the blade cutting through the grass is enormously satisfying. I’m not a person who loves outdoor labor, but that’s a job I would do willingly every day.

I’ve been reading on mindfulness lately and it occurred to me as I worked that’s exactly what I love about it: the design of the scythe, the grass, the sharpness of the blade, they all invite mindful attention and presence. I can’t have the scythe in one hand and my phone in the other. My whole body is engaged with the swinging, my eyes and my thoughts are always aware of the blade. It’s one of the few times I don’t feel pulled in myriad directions.

I carried that little gem of insight with me at the end of the day and thought about why I have been feeling so fragmented lately and what I can do about it. As dark came on, I turned off most of the lights and lit a few candles and sat with my knitting. I usually listen to a reading or something while I knit, but last night I wanted to let my mind roam through what I’d learned during the day. It’s strange how rarely I do that, just sit in the quiet with my own mind. It didn’t take long to identify ways I could help myself. I already know what they are, they just get buried under other, competing messages.

As many of us are learning now, we can be operating right inside of systems that are invisible to us. We can be acting on beliefs we have no real consciousness of. (This applies to all kinds of belief systems, not just racism, though that is at the top of many minds these days.) Those deep-seated, so-intrusive-we-don’t-even-recognize-them systems of belief can only be seen when we make a practice of sitting down with ourselves and looking inside. Even though it’s cliche, it is difficult to be alone with our own minds. Somehow, deep down, we know that we will see and understand things that will be too difficult to fix right away, and that’s frightening.

I’ve developed many strategies over the years to avoid such inner-looking, but one way is to imagine myself too busy. Busyness is a nice excuse to keep the eyes focused on some distant point in the future. I usually accomplish this by having ridiculous standards, too much stuff, and co-opting other people’s passions and goals (this is the intellectual version of impulse buying that print/skirt/necklace/mug I saw on Instagram that one day.) The other strategy I employ is being too overwhelmed. Sometimes, the compulsive checking of news and opinions is actually a way of not engaging. Sometimes I am giving other people’s drama too much of my inner space. If I keep myself in a state of anxiety I can’t actually be expected to deal with anything real, can I?

The hardest thing of all is to enter the quiet of this moment and attend only to that and what it reveals (especially when the war drums are beating outside). But to me this is where everything begins. Life is like a golden spiral. What I learn of love and truth in the center of my being will remain constant for my interactions with the world outside of myself. This is why the greatest rule we have is basically, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s a rule that is impossible to follow without intimate knowing and engagement. But it’s also a rule that provides a livable scale.

Myself.

My neighbor.

Spiraling naturally out and out and out.

This practice of mindfulness is one in which I want to continue to learn. I would love to hear your thoughts and insights if you want to share.

Peace to you, my friends.

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

~ Thich Nhat Hahn

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I also wanted to share with you this opportunity to help amplify black writers! Amistad Books is hosting #BlackoutBestsellerList .

“To demonstrate our power and clout in the publishing industry, Saturday June 13 – Saturday June 20, we encourage you to purchase any two books by Black writers. Our goal is to Blackout bestseller lists with Black voices.”

(I ordered the first two books in N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth series. If you order books by black writers this week, please leave a note and let me know who you are going to be reading!)

at the close of a year

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It’s Sunday night here - a time that always feels like an ending, but is actually a beginning. It’s late in this twilight space. I should be tidying and settling down to sleep, but it’s the last night I’ll ever be 48 and I want to write a little.

I made signs this week and I’ve tacked one up on my office wall: “Power to the Peaceful”, where I can see it while I work. I have been reminded these past days how quickly I can lose my inner equilibrium, how easily righteous anger can spill over into just plain old ugly, demeaning anger. What a balance this is, to be appropriately angry at injustice and yet not dehumanize those who refuse to (or can’t) see it. To destroy immoral systems and yet somehow care for the redemption of the people who perpetrate them, including yourself.

So the sign is up where I will see it daily, a reminder that peacefulness is difficult work, that the power that comes from it is not the kind that follows in the wake of guns and rigged systems, but the kind that flows inside vines and seeds, rivers and bloodstreams. At the end of this year of living I feel such a call to go deeper with the practice of peace, to move it out of an intellectual space into a lived space. The upheaval around us, the upheaval inside myself, only makes it more clear to me that this is important work.

~ My favorite part about birthdays is the freshness, the whole new year lying ahead, full of potential. I have written out some intentions, thought about how to maintain my attention on those things in the long term. I’m sure I will be writing about them over the next months. Right now they are so fresh and tender, small buds just emerging from under the dark of leaves; I want to keep them close and quiet.

For now, as darkness falls and I can feel sleep calling to me, I’ll share this section of one of Kyce Bello’s poems that I have put in the footer of my blog. I keep it as a prayer, a dream for going forward:

Make me a figure with a womb

And relict heart.   Make me

the seam that holds the tattered land together

and let me be the speaker that sings

rise, rise

all across the shapely ground.

Kyce Bello || Refugia

Love to you, friends.

tonia

a way in

Yesterday we went to the city to walk. Portland is a river city and we love walking the length of it, crossing and recrossing the river on the many bridges. Going anywhere by foot changes your view of a place, takes you into a sensory experience far different than rolling by enclosed in a car. We intended to stay near the waterfront, which is a pedestrian-friendly, beautiful space that attracts joggers and strollers, but when we got there I found I wanted to go deeper into the downtown core. The last few nights have been violent there, fire and anger; I wanted to see the aftermath for myself. The city already feels surreal, stripped of its business people and tourists by the pandemic. Those who remain are the ones who have nowhere else to go. We passed tents and camps, street preachers and ravers, a woman lost in some kind of trance, dancing herself free of her clothes, countless sleeping bodies slumped against walls or stretched out in doorways. Grafitti was everywhere, the same few messages repeated over and over: “I can’t breathe.” “F*** the cops.” We passed a couple of police officers, walking slowly, heads down in conversation, each with an unconscious hand over their holstered guns. Men in hard hats were pulling broken glass from windows, replacing it with sheets of plywood. No one was smiling, no one was making eye contact. There was a palpable grief in the air. I found myself unconsciously placing my hands at my heart in the Anjali mudra (prayer position), breathing deep, exhaling a prayer of peace into the streets as we walked them. I live so far from those streets, in every way, but these are all my neighbors, every one, and I wanted to join them somehow, in some small way.

I’m not suggesting there’s anything noble in walking nearly-empty streets in the aftermath of the struggle, I’m only saying I live far from so much of the collective pain in our world and I need a way in. I need to pinch my flesh, wake it up, quit thinking that my life is the status quo instead of the privileged exception. (Honestly, I feel like curling up in the fetal position and plugging my ears until it’s over, but that, too is a privilege not granted to my neighbors.)

For those of you who are feeling the same, a few links:

~ Want a reminder to connect? Helen shares her heart.

~ Want to do more than post social media memes and outrage? Mireille Cassandra’s 10 Steps to Non-Optical Allyship

~ Want to do something? Colin Kaepernick has been leading with non-violent and effective protest for years now. He holds camps to train young Black and Brown people to do the same and to be safe in interactions with police. Consider supporting his work.

Or take a look at Campaign Zero.

~ Want to understand? Ibram X Kendi’s work is well worth the time.

“Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy. It's a pretty easy mistake to make: People are in our faces. Policies are distant. We are particularly poor at seeing the policies lurking behind the struggles of people.”

Love to you, my friends. This is heavy work, life-time work, so be gentle as you go. Breathe, pray, turn off the hourly updates, connect with real people, remember small changes are vital too. xoxo

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Newsletter is coming! And May's Book Giveaway - The Door on Half-Bald Hill

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The next newsletter will be arriving in your inbox on Thursday or Friday. It’s been my (loose) goal since I started these letters to send you a new one around each New Moon. Since I’ve added stories to the newsletter offering, I’m realizing that may be a little ambitious, so I’ve changed my goal to “semi-monthly” to give myself some room to breathe. I want to try and keep to my original plan, but the story this month took many, many more hours to write than I anticipated, so I’ve decided that creativity and steadiness should be the guiding hand here, not the calendar (even if it is the gentle Moon’s). I hope you understand. <3

But, at any rate, May’s newsletter will be coming toot-sweet and so will the Book Giveaway! I’m super excited to be able to offer you Helena Sorenson’s newest novel this month, The Door on Half-Bald Hill. It’s a good one.

When the Bloodmoon rose, death came with it. 

 Now the water is bitter, blight consumes everything, and the Crone haunts the hills. The Druid of Blackthorn searches desperately for hope, the Ovate of Blackthorn returns from the underworld with omens of despair, and Idris, the Bard of Blackthorn, Keeper of the Sacred Word, will walk through fire and iron to uncover questions no one has ever dared to ask. 

 But time is short. And the Bloodmoon is rising again.

Make sure you sign up for the newsletter so you can have a chance at it! (You can also order it here.)

And if you know someone else who needs a chance for a free book or a few minutes with a cup of tea and a story, send them this way!

Thank you, friends!