Bojangles – Our Baby Dog – December 2, 2021

“Baby Bojangles” – 11″x15″ The painting I did of Bo when he was about 12 weeks old.

A month ago tomorrow we had to say goodbye to our beloved Bojangles. Though he was 11, he seemed to be doing just fine. He and I walked the 3 miles around Lake Bon Tempe the day before. Then the next day he collapsed, letting us know he was sicker than we knew and it was time to let him go.

April 28, 2021 – Finding each other again across the Pandemiverse

The paintings I’ve done since the beginning of 2020

There is a very beloved Rumi poem that has the line:
“the world is too full to talk about”

This is where I am – where I have been for the past year or so. Lots has happened – for all of us on Planet Earth.
And also in my personal world. I wanted to catch up with you. I wrote this for you. I found a way to talk.

I find it, in some mysterious way, more distilled and simple
than telling you the whole long story of the past year.

FINDING EACH OTHER AGAIN ACROSS THE PANDEMIVERSE

Hi friends.
I know, it’s been a while.
I got swept up in it all.
It feels impossible to just pick up where we left off.
We have catching up to do.

Let’s start back there, then,
last winter – not just months,
but worlds ago.

It’s just like the flu, I said. (Yes, I really did!)
Thousands die of the flu every year.
Let’s not panic.

Hmm, maybe we don’t go to Paris in April.
Roberto reported in from Milan – Armageddon.
It’s spreading across Europe.
Oh, shit! This is NOT just like the flu.
We have to stay home.
Cancel Paris.
Leigh will come here, stay with us
in the studio-made-dorm-room.

Joe says get two weeks of food – no, three.
Instincts overtake people everywhere.
The shelves empty of toilet paper, carbs for the pantry,
and anything to kill the virus.
Joe orders TP and hand sanitizers on Amazon.
Months later they arrive – from Germany and Poland!
What a bizarre world!

Checking the NYT coronavirus updates every night at bedtime.
Sweet dreams, sweetheart.
If we all do this maybe in a few weeks, it’ll pass.
Innocent optimism.

It’s not passing.
Everyone is sewing masks.
And Zooming, Zooming, Zooming.
Human connection in 2D.
Balcony concerts and serenades explode on Youtube.
Outside howling at eight every evening.
I’m here, are you there?

The spring – more wondrous than ever.
In our yard lemon blossom petals make a creamy carpet.
Bees and fragrance in 3D.
Humans everywhere mesmerized by the quiet,
by the creatures filling the space relinquished back to them.

What in the heck is a bubble, actually?
Can you believe they are SOCIALIZING?!!!
It’s the kids – the young people!
They just don’t get it!
FLATTEN THE CURVE!

Summer.
A new normal.
Life under COVID.
Breathing a bit easier.
No longer worrying about the virus on the groceries – or the mail.
Masks on faces everywhere.
Learning how to give home-haircuts.

My pants are getting tight, uh oh.
How do I try on new clothes under shutdown?
Look at this… 15 minutes 3 days a week.
If I can’t find time for that, I’m hopeless.
It’s hard and I hate every minute.
But I do it faithfully.
By the beginning of fall, eighteen pounds gone.
A new discipline and a fresh look at an old, nagging mindset.

Pop is nauseated – for days.
Something’s really wrong.
Mom drops him off at Emergency at 4:30am.
Alone at Kaiser, nearly two weeks.
Surgery, family Zoom calls, phone conferences with doctors.
Stage four cancer.
The tears start.
(They haven’t yet stopped.)

Slowing down even more.
Cancel the Wednesday Zoom group.
Joe says spend all the time you want with him.
Painting along side him in their bedroom,
while he dozes to the National Geographic channel.
Precious time.

11-11-2020 – 2:00am.
He is gone.
As good as death gets.
SO MUCH LOVE.
Present ’til the end, he blessed us in life,
and in the gentle way he left us.
A prince of a guy.
Luciano gives us the final word: vincerò.

Somewhere, somehow there is the energy for a 2021 calendar.
And a Zoom memorial to end all memorials.
FOUR – hours!
Then, our first holidays without him.
We make his enormous Zuppa da Pesce for Christmas Eve.
He is proud – I’m sure of it.

Whew! 2020 is over!
A new year – a new hope.
Not so fast!
Jeff Salzman says evolution is beautiful,
but it’s not always pretty.
Amidst the noise and chaos,
the beat goes on.

Vaccine – when can we get a vaccine?
Anxious, impatient, fatalistic.
Websites, signups, advice everywhere.
When can we paint together again – in person?
We are all so tired.
Tired of this.
Hope laced with exhaustion,
or is it exhaustion laced with hope?

Wait, stop! The traffic is back. Ugh.
Of course it had to, I suppose…
The slowdown brought mercies.
Can’t we go forward without losing them?

Another spring is here.
So much is starting up again.
But, something is different.
What happened to the whip I used
to make myself get stuff done?
Driving myself feels over with.
It feels so pre-pandemic.
It will all just have to happen as it does, I guess.
Please, please let this one mercy last.

I feel the pull to come out of hibernation.
Do more again.
Teach, write, sell art.
Reluctance lies right next to it.
I’m a happy homebody caring for my Joe and Bo.
Even the bookkeeping has become a solace.
You see, I don’t feel like I’m done being remade.
Not yet winged.
Can one even “do more” inside the chrysalis?

Hardship ushers renewal – if we look for it.
What has it brought?
Or, is it to soon to ask?
Nothing new really, just clarified.
Heart.
Love.
That’s it.
My beloveds, my home, my weekly groups, my family.
They have been my pandemic year.
They are my purpose.

Sounds trite.
Pollyanna, says the cynic.
Thanks for the feedback.
Now go away.
Or stay, and tell me what is hurting you so much.

As it turns out, this whole time I kept putting brush to paper.
There are paintings to show for it.
To share with you.

Here’s another pandemic revelation:
putting words together like this.
By this one-time-computer-scientist?
I mean, really?

This is who I am today,
near as I can tell.

Who are you now?

P.S.: I can’t help but wonder:
has everyone finally cooked and eaten their way
through the ALL that flour, pasta, rice and beans?

Your Hands – December 13, 2020

On November 11, 2020, at just about 2 in the morning my very beloved dad took his last breath and his spirit left his earthly body.  He was the most amazing dad.  Everyone who knew him says “what a guy.” The first man to love me, someone said the week he died. My first hero. He lived 89 creative, insanely curious, loyal, honorable and love-filled years. His body came to the end of its road; it was time for him to leave us.  I can’t see how I’m ever going to wrap my head and heart around his not being here anymore. Not to hear that baritone voice say “I love you sweetheart.” Or the touch of his warm hands. I will miss his presence for the rest of my days. But more than all of this, I feel steeped in gratitude for the good fortune of having this guy in my life for almost 59 years. How lucky are we who love him.

In preparation for what ended up being the most incredible virtual memorial – yes, over Zoom, like so much of life in 2020 – on December 13th, I woke one morning at 3am, unable to sleep.  I thought what the heck.  I got my laptop, and crawled back under the covers. I suspected there was something in me that wanted to come through about my dad… about his hands, his being a “hands-on” person and the incredible quality of his attention. This is what ended up in the Word doc.

Your Hands

As I cuddled with you,
sat by your side in your last days,
I held your hands.

The ones that you told me were often sweaty in your youth,
like mine were.
You had such sympathy for me.
You said the moisture made marks on your books
where you held them,
as you walked back and forth to school.

Not as warm as they always were.
Your systems were shutting down.
But I held them and marveled – how they had served us all for 89 years!

Let’s start here:
These hands put a ring on her finger
with a promise you kept for more than 60 years,
forming the foundation of our family.

I can see them still,
tying feathers on tiny, barbed hooks,
drizzling water over spinning clay,
sprinkling flat tomato seeds onto vermiculite,
carefully lining up the nail set on the finishing nail,
outer fingers fanned out on the wood for stability.
I can see them carefully getting ahold of the corner of the thin-thin paper
of the big Random House,
heading for yet another word’s definition.

All told, how many hundreds of hours did they hold a chef’s knife,
cutting up countless onions?
Using them, how many Band-aids did Dr. Brown
stretch over skinned knees and bloody stubbed toes,
as we sat on the blue toilet seat in the hall bath?
They attended to so much of life for you,
for us.

Not long ago you told me
you used them to pick me up –
your little girl, pink and white, peaches and cream.
You held my tiny toddler hand in your strong one,
as you danced with me around the living room.
And you didn’t even like to dance!

Besides all this, there’s something more,
maybe even more precious.
Papa, you were never aloof, never distant.
Present, interested. Always.
(Except when you napped – you had to get away from us sometime,
somehow!)

What a thing it was to be someone’s priority!
To know we mattered,
supremely mattered.

It was you who took us to have our wisdom teeth out,
and then nursed us afterwards.
It was you who took the time to teach us,
how to use our own hands,
how to make stuff,
how to teach ourselves.

You taught us the ways of growing plants to fill our bellies,
of making delicious meals to sustain our lives –
and our family.
You made sure not one of us was left
unable to feed ourselves.

Papa, you were a hands-on guy.
The dictionary says
(you gave us this compulsion too)
this means you were actively, personally involved.
I say it means you cared –
and you put yourself squarely in the midst of your caring.

Wordsworth said: “What we have loved,
others will love, and we will teach them how…”
Everyone who knows you, even just a little, knows
you freely loved what you loved.
And you loved so many things –
good stories, soaring arias, raunchy greeting cards, Wikipedia, oysters –
an impossibly long list.
At the top of this list, the tippy, tippy top
is us.
You so loved us.

There is no measure of the legacy of this.
You have left us with capable hands,
and hearts to match.

Going out on a limb, I speak
for us all.
And by all, I mean not just your family.
We promise you we’ll do our best
to use our hands – and our hearts – as you did.
You would say we are up to it,
that we already do.
If that is true,
you taught us how.

Papa, my sweet, kind, wise, funny-funny, oh-so-handsome,
forever-loved Papa, it is finished.
You can now rest in eternity.
Your work here is done.

Cara – December 9, 2020

April 12, 2020 – Peace and joy, even now… especially now

“Farewell”  – 15″x15″ A painting I finished in January that I named in honor of Joe’s flying mentor in the last days of his life.

It’s Easter morning, my phone said 5:37am.   I’ve not been sleeping well for weeks, waking up in the middle of the night hot and with my cranky shoulder aching. Thankfully I was able to get back to sleep so I have a reasonably bright brain.  I just read my dear friend Betsey’s hauntingly beautiful post “Beauty for Ashes” which may have rustled the desire to respond – a conversation of sorts.  I want to write.

We do things the way we do things. Betsey takes lots of time to carefully craft a piece of writing, interspersed with the most exquisite photographs from her time in nature; I wake and hear a voice that says “write” and sit in bed with my laptop and see what comes.

It’s been a month since I read “Cancel Everything” in The Atlantic on Tuesday March 10^th.  This article landed in me what we needed to do.  That night I wrote “stay home this week if you feel vulnerable” in an email to the artists in my regular groups.  Then as a few came in to paint or draw on Wednesday, it felt almost dangerous to be in each other’s presence.  That afternoon I wrote an update that I was moving our painting sessions online – like most of the world now – onto Zoom.

Since then time has become really, really strange.  Marilee in our Thursday group sent an email yesterday with a graphic that read: “2020 is a unique Leap Year. It has 29 days in February, 300 days in March and 5 years in April.”   Reflecting back on what we were doing, and how we were thinking just 6 weeks ago makes my head spin.

Feeling the fear and anxiety that is just everywhere now, knowing there are beloved people dying, even as dedicated healers are working to save them.  We are living through a global pandemic.

Though we want to, it’s impossible to make plans – not the way we used to.  It feels like the future has been erased, but it’s really that we are now acutely aware of what has been taught and taught and taught – all we have is this moment. The present moment – it’s a cliché – but clichés are clichés because they are true.

It’s always been the only place and time that life happens.  It is in a present moment when I witness something that inspires me to paint it.  I pick up my brush and put it in the paint and on the paper in a present moment.  I pet Bo’s soft ears, I kiss Joe, I open the refrigerator to pull out the stuff for dinner then too. It’s just that now we really have to live it.

In early March, on a Wednesday call with Maralyn and Lyn, my treasured conversation partners, I said that I wanted to let this moment have its way with me and the art I make.  As in, I want to surrender to the transformational capacity held in what is happening to us, to humankind.   Typical me – the one that so often feels not-all-the-way-baked, the one who is aching to live some imagined unfulfilled potential. God this is tiresome!

There has been a tidal wave of spiritually supportive content generated in the past month.  Sandy, who has been coming to the Zoom gathering regularly on Fridays – now that she’s not driving 2 hours each way – sent me a recording of a talk by a teacher called Rupert Spira.  The transmission I received was this:

Regardless of life circumstance, our true nature is peace and joy. There is no work or practice to “get there.”  All there is to do is realize it.  And there has never been a time when it has been more imperative that we communicate our true nature to those around us, in the way that is ours to communicate. (Underlines are mine.)

His words were coming through ear buds while I was up on the hill with Bo and I stopped for a second, just before heading down the next steep deer trail and looked out to the hills across town.  I felt the return – landing back in the center of myself – and I heard Sister Mary’s words:

“The time has come to stop seeking – and to know you have already been found.”

There’s no transformation that my art needs to go through!  My true nature is peace and joy and my art – as it is – is one of the most obvious ways that I communicate this.

Last Christmastime I was in Ace Hardware in San Rafael – amidst their holiday decorations when my eye was caught by a piece of ceramic with a quote on it.  I was struck even more by whose words they were, as I was by the actual message:

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”  -Anne Frank

Teachers come in all forms, not the least a Jewish teenager hoping to survive the Holocaust.  There’s no way she could have known that something like 80 years later her words would be bringing inspiration to someone in a hardware store a half a world away, someone who would be born a couple of decades later.  Anne knew her true nature and communicated it regardless of her circumstance.

But so are millions of people now. Necessity is giving birth to invention all over the place and people are showing up in beautiful ways – sewing masks, grocery shopping for our elders, making signs, singing, clapping, howling and cooking.

I take heart in knowing, regardless of how this unfolds, that humans are responding with heart and creativity – working to connect in any way we can.  I’m letting myself be reminded – as much as can happen in any given moment – that what I really am is peace and joy.  I hope you know that you are too.

Wishing you peace and joy this Easter day.

Love,

Cara

December 6, 2017 – Awaiting what is to come

Not making much headway on this one – but I am still working on it when I do.

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In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t post last week.  The off-the-top reason was that it was my birthday and I was very busy receiving one phone call after another from my loved ones, singing and celebrating me – in the middle of what ended up as a whole birthday week!  And, the deeper reason is that the impetus to write has felt vague and distant again – sort of like it did in the summer when I was overwhelmed by life and took a few weeks off, only this is different.  Since before Thanksgiving I’ve been wanting to be more inside than outside myself.  I’ve come to know this feeling is right in line with the overlapping seasons:  winter – the season we are heading into on this half of the earth, and Advent – the season in the faith tradition that is closest to my heart.

For most of my life Advent was just the name of the calendars that opened with a piece of chocolate for each day before Christmas.  When I was part of a progressive church for a dozen years that spanned my 40’s I learned what it really is.  The time before Christmas is not a season of doing-doing-doing as is the cultural norm with parties and shopping and decorating, on top of everything else we do, but is rather a season of inner-preparation and waiting.

I had signed up for a meditation retreat that was supposed to take place this past weekend.  My dear Sister Mary Neill was to lead us in silence, prayer and meditation on the “fullness and emptiness of time” in this season of waiting.  Choosing to check out of the normal pace for a whole weekend in the midst of the holidays felt counter-cultural.  Since 2007 I have done an open studio the first weekend in December – and with other things on the calendar I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to offer fans of Life in Full Color a time to come see my art and shop for holiday gifts.  But a part of me was really, really looking forward to the time to be inside myself.  Sister Mary had to cancel the retreat because of a situation with her health, so went ahead and planned the open studio.  It was good, I’m glad I did it, but that same part of me that was hungering for silence and stillness and time to wonder what is to come – is still here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this year 2017 that is winding down.  It’s been a big year in a lot of ways, much of it quite challenging.  And I do want to write about it – it feels like I have something to share.  But until the words tell me it’s time for them to come out I’m pressing pause again, to celebrate the end of another year with my groups of artists and have Christmas with my families.  I will bake cookies, make panettone and ship out calendar orders as they come in.  And in the midst of all of that I will honor the part of me that is longing for stillness and silence in my creative life.

If there is one thing that seems to be rising this year it is that the time has come to honor ourselves.  Please join me in whatever way you are being called to do just this.

With my love,

Cara

November 22, 2017 – Welcome it all

The beginnings of the next painting. This one will be called “Napa” (photo on the left, painting on the right).

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I started writing a post about a trip I took last weekend – a trip down an online rabbit hole into the darkness that is emerging in our world, seemingly at every turn.  I’m so compelled to understand human behavior in the big scheme of things, that I just can’t help myself!  Though I did have some insights from down there – about seeking wholeness rather than perfection, I’ve re-considered whether I really want to be that deep and complicated today.  I decided to keep what I say much simpler and to be much more brief.

This is Thanksgiving week in the US – when we are generally talking about blessings and gratitude, which isn’t as easy this year as much of what is happening in our world seems like anything but a blessing.  Life on Earth is complicated.  Every aspect of it is a mixed bag – and always has been.  But it seems like the bag-of-life is more mixed up than ever before.  Sometime last year I saw this statement go by on my Facebook feed:

“Things are not falling apart, they are being revealed – we just have to hang on.”

This rang so deeply true to me that it is now burned into my brain – and heart.  I repeat it to whomever I encounter who expresses fears about our state of affairs.  If I’ve learned anything from the times of great personal trial in my life, it is that my capacity to hold what is always increases by living through the struggle.  The greater our capacities, the more we find blessing everywhere.  And the less we rail against what is, the more we allow reality to teach us what we need to learn.  Our times are calling upon us to practice radical welcome.

There is much work to do, AND there is much to pause to be grateful for.  I am grateful for all my beloved teachers who illuminate my path, for a community of artists devoted to their work and to each other, for the capacity to see and create beauty, for those who support my endeavors, making what I do and who I get to be possible, for the belonging of family all around, for the love and support of a great person as my life partner and for the ever-faithful, ever-playful companionship of our Labrador, Bo-Doggy.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Love,

Cara

November 15, 2017 – Human Beauty in NYC

This is a *mosaic* in a New York City subway station.

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My Mama and I have just returned from four days in Brooklyn, New York City and New Jersey.  The catalyst was the opportunity to see Joseph Raffael’s art in- person at an exhibition in a gallery in Chelsea.  But the real heart of the visit was the chance to spend time with loved ones.  We spent the weekend with my niece Leigh and her partner Lena.  Then on Monday I went to Midtown to meet up with Randi, my former roommate from college – ours is my longest standing friendship.  After an evening in the City I stayed overnight at her place deep in the countryside of New Jersey.  (Yes there are parts of New Jersey that are very beautiful!)  It was a good trip.  And what is sticking with me is not anything we saw or did, but all the ways that I witnessed and participated in people being good to each other.

We saw the apartment Leigh and Lena share with two others in Brooklyn, we got to meet Lena’s mom, Lynn, over so-good butternut squash and kale pizza – every single thing we ate all weekend was delicious; we rode the subway every day and we walked in Central Park and Prospect Park near their place in Brooklyn.  We saw Joseph’s beautiful watercolors of flowers and some absolutely incredible mosaics in two new subway stations.  We watched skaters at two different rinks and wandered through a holiday market.  New York does itself up for the holidays like nowhere else.  It’s early in the season, so we got just a taste.  I went to the New York City Public Library for the first time.  The Rose Reading Room and its paintings of clouds on the ceiling are so beautiful!  There are certainly no libraries anything like it on the West Coast! Our time together was rich and full.

New York City and the surrounding area is a lot.  It’s busy, noisy, active, incredibly stimulating.  Most of what there is to see has been created by humans – buildings, bridges, vehicles – much of it devoid of color.  I said to my mom that there is no way I could find myself happy living there.  It overwhelms me.  All big cities are this way to a certain extent, but New York, with Times Square and Broadway and all the flashing lights and honking taxis seems even more big-city than any other I’ve been to.  Amidst all this big-city-ness I noticed something else for the first time this trip: the vast majority of people there deal with all the inconveniences and struggles and they treat each other pretty well.  I witnessed people helping a mother with a baby in a stroller navigating the stairs of a subway station.  I was offered assistance myself when I was trying to negotiate the turn-styles with my suitcase in the subway.  Leigh helped a woman who was flummoxed about trains not running because of repair work.  The reputation New Yorkers have for being brusque and un-caring wasn’t on display for me.

We took several Lyft rides and my mom asked each of them where they were from – some had accents, or wore head wraps, prompting the question.  The driver who picked us up early Saturday morning (we had taken the red-eye) from the AirTrain station was from the Ivory Coast.  I got to speak French with him and we discovered that we have the same birthday, one year apart!  This big black guy called me his sista!  One head-wrapped driver actually was born in Brooklyn, but his family was from Yemen.  Mama asked him if he experiences any anti-Muslim sentiment there.  He said New York is so diverse that people are used to people who look like him, so no, not really.  New York is diverse – there are twice as many people of color there than there are whites.  Forced by circumstance to live and make their way in the world with people who look nothing like them seems to be a good thing.  New York has not always been this way, I know.  But there seems to be something to learn from them as it is today.

My Beloved Brooklyn People – I love how dear they are with each other.

Part of this observation of mine stems from the fact that we see what we expect to see.  If we believe that we have to be on guard out in the world, then we see everyone as a threat.  These days I am making a conscious effort to see beauty everywhere I can.  And though I don’t find cities all that beautiful, I feel more at home surrounded by more nature, I found beauty in the people in New York.  I learned from Alison Armstrong that when I hear a voice inside complaining about the lack of something, to ask myself the question:  How is what I’m finding lacking actually there?  For example:  if I find New York lacking beauty, I ask myself the question:  How is New York beautiful?  It turns out it was there – in art and food and in my Beloved Brooklyn People – and in the way that people are good to each other.

With my love and in beauty,

Cara

November 8, 2017 – One place at a time

I may never paint this rose, but I was drawn to its strange beauty and the way it was lit by the last-of-the-day sunlight. Seconds after I took this, the sun sunk behind the trees for the night.

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I wasn’t raised with poetry.  Though, we did have Mother Goose and I remember reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses” at a friend’s house.  But apart from that, Mom read us story books.  I had two friends from middle childhood through high school who loved poetry.  Whenever they would read or write poems I knew I didn’t belong.  My family was into science, knowledge of the natural world and making stuff.  It wasn’t until I was going to the Fairfax Community Church in my late 30’s that I discovered poets and their poetry:  Rumi, Hafiz, Mary Oliver, David Whyte among others.  I still cannot imagine ever attempting to write any poetry, but I have come to appreciate the insight, richness and just the simple pleasure it brings.

On Being’s Poetry Radio Project page starts with this:

Poetry, David Whyte says, is language against which we have no defense.
We inhabit a moment in which defended language is practically all we know, and so we are re-learning our basic human need of poetry to flourish.

This feels like my life.  Defended language was practically all I knew as long as I was certain that my rational mind could get me through anything.  As my path showed me otherwise and took me deeper into the undefended parts of me, the gift in poetry was a welcome discovery.

My own words aren’t flowing in great measure today, so I thought I’d share with you some of my favorites.  These poems are loved by many – so they are likely to be very familiar to some of you.  For me they are worth reading over and over, so take them as you wish.  Here goes…

For those of us who feel compelled to go around being “good” all the dang time, permission to simply love what the “soft animal of our bodies” love is nothing less than amazing.  Thank you, Mary Oliver, for this and SO many other poems that accompany our souls through life.

Wild Geese – by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I’m so taken by the fact that this next one was written by a man.  This poem had me take as my very own the word “loveliness.”  And, though I never nursed any children, I can still viscerally relate to the experience of lying in the muck, having those around me feed off of me – a state that feels so far from anything close to loveliness.  This poem is a benediction, a blessing, to those of us living in a body that is designed to nurture others first.  As you read it, imagine being that sow.

Saint Francis and the Sow – by Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of the earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

This last one has come to me more recently.  When I discovered it, I related it to my friend Vicki and her courage to go to Africa and help women survivors of sexual violence.  I’ve decided that one doesn’t have to go that far to be brave.  I’m claiming this poem for what I’m up to as well.  I’ll have more to say about how this is very soon.

Mameen – by David Whyte

Be infinitesimal under that sky,
a creature even the sailing hawk misses,
a wraith among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.
Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed by circumstance,
how great reputations dissolve with infirmity
and how you, in particular,
live a hairsbreadth from losing everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path as if seeing your past
and then south over the hazy blue coast
as if present to a wide future,
recall the way you are all possibilities you can see
and how you live best as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not,
admit that once you have got up from your chair
and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge
and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary
you have become the privileged and the pilgrim
the one who will tell the story and the one,
coming back from the mountain,
who helped to make it.

Every other Wednesday morning at 7am I am part of a conference call with women from my coaching group.  I love these calls; they are less structured than our official coaching calls, but every bit as supportive.  We are changed by being seen and gotten in the way we do for each other.  But today, so that I could make an appointment at 8am, I needed to get exercise with Bo at the same time as our call.  I’ve called in with my cellphone and ear buds while I’m out with Bo plenty of times before.  But today a voice in me said:  do one thing at a time, be one place at a time.  I, like most women, am an accomplished multitasker, but I still cannot offer the kind of attention to Bo, to the patch of Earth I’m walking through, even to the sensations of my own body, if I’m listening and conversing with people who are thousands of miles away.

This voice may have been spawned from having read several poems before going to bed last night.  Reading poetry has me see how poets must pay attention – how they must be in a particular state of receptivity in order to perceive with such sensitivity.  It’s the same with painting.  And I’ve not been honoring this.  I’ve been splitting my attention with my painting time for a long while.  It used to be that all I did was listen to music while I painted. But I’ve been listening to talking – radio programs, audiobooks, people on the phone – as I’ve been making my art.  I’ve claimed that painting is my meditation, it’s my spiritual practice.  But the way I’ve been doing it, it hasn’t been feeling like spiritual nourishment.

Doesn’t it seem like time and the pace of life is accelerating?  And that there is ever more clamoring for our attention?  In the face of this, I’m wondering what difference it would make if I went back to only listening to music as I painted – for a while at least.  Just writing that has one part of me rise up in protest (when else will I ingest the contents of the books I never have time read???), and another is feeling so… very… relieved.  I also see there are so many other ways I might re-think the multi-tasking I do on a regular basis:  eating and driving, eating and reading the paper, reading email on the fly… it goes on.

I’m not promising that this will turn me into a poet – but – I’m a big believer in listening to – and heeding – the voices inside us that rise up out of the blue with a request or a new direction to take.  These voices are our souls speaking to us.  As Donna has told me over and over again:  to not hear them is one thing, but to hear them and ignore them is to live three rungs below hell.  I’m all for attending to my soul before finding myself there – as much as I possibly can.  You too?

With my love,
Cara

November 1, 2017 – Making friends with challenge

The view of Bon Tempe Lake I was rewarded with this past Sunday morning after huffing and puffing up a steep grade near where I live.

My hope and intention when I decided to hike 60 miles up and back to the summit of Mount Whitney this summer was to give myself a physical test.  I wanted to know the strength in my body.  Though it did take stamina and I ran out of energy on day 5 because I didn’t sleep well at the high elevation, the time spent hiking was pretty do-able.  I’d trained enough and the relatively slow pace our guides set for us meant that I never found myself reaching the point where I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it.  That test came when I was in my early 20’s.

In the late 70’s, early 80’s my parents were quite involved with EST.  They did the Training and The 6-Day which inspired my mom to offer to pay for any of her four kids who wanted to do these programs.  It was September 1984 and I had just finished college.  I still had my suntan from spending the summer with my boyfriend travelling with a backpack around Europe when I drove up to the 6-Day retreat center off of Mark West Springs Road in north Santa Rosa.  (I wonder if it’s still there after the fires that just raged through that canyon?)

I remember very little about the time spent in the seminar room; what has stuck with me are the memories of the physical activities.  Every morning we had to run a mile up and around a fairly steep road that circled the camp.  Whether or not we were in physical condition to run, we had to pick up our feet, no walking, even on the steep part!  There were people lining the sides of the road yelling at us not to stop.  This was EST – so it was pretty intense!  One day of the six was spent on a three-event ropes course: a zip line, a short rappel down a rock face and a Tyrolean traverse.  I felt jitters standing on the platform before jumping off the zip line, but flying down to the field below was a completely thrilling experience.  And I loved the rappel – I found it super fun and freeing bouncing back off the rocks.  But the Tyrolean traverse pushed me in a way I’ve not been pushed – before or since.

Crossing a river via Tyrolean traverse. (Image from Flickr).

A Tyrolean traverse is, according to Wikipedia, a method of crossing through free space between two high points on a rope.  Hanging from the center of your body from the rope, you kick off across the canyon, head first, pulling yourself hand over hand on the rope above your head, feet and legs dangling. The first part was fun – an easy glide down. Across the middle it got a bit harder, but I did fine.  The challenge came in getting myself back up the other side, using just the strength of my arms.  This was so incredibly hard! I was convinced that I did not have the strength to do it.

Again there was the cheering/yelling section telling me to keep going – and to stop trying to use my feet to propel me along the rope – and to stop telling myself I couldn’t do this.  I was pulling with all my might and I was going nowhere.  Though I was not quite 23 years old and had just carried a backpack for three months, my arms just weren’t up to the task; my natural strength has always been in my lower body.  Ultimately, I did do it; I remember sort of coming-to on the other side, amid the cheering of my group.  But the act of actually pulling my body up that damned rope happened in a complete memory black-out.  I ended up being very thankful that this was our group’s first event and it was all downhill from there (actually the other two events literally were all downhill!).

Reflecting on this experience more than 30 years later, I don’t feel a great sense of accomplishment.  I do appreciate knowing that when pushed, I did do more than I thought I could, but I still find it sort of disturbing that it was so hard for me that I have zero memory of actually doing it.  Possibly because I don’t remember feeling any sense of triumph, it wasn’t enough to have satisfied me that I am strong.  I still felt the need for the Mount Whitney experience.

I stayed with my friend Stephanie before and after the Whitney hike.  I got back to her place late in the afternoon on Saturday, the last day of the hike.  All I wanted was to take a shower, to wash my filthy clothes and to rest.  She worked part of the day on Sunday, so I spent some time writing about the experience to share with you.  When Steff came home, she wanted to take me to where she and her puppy dog, Chumley hike.  A short, steep drive back up to the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada mountains near her house in Big Pine and I was hiking – again!  With my hiking boots and poles, heading up a steep, switchback trail… I had just done 60 miles and 11,700 feet of elevation gain (and loss) and here I was the next day, hiking!

The trail and the view that was the reward – the day after my big hike.

I remember saying to Steff that I felt differently about hiking uphill than before I started my training in the spring.  I used to dread hills – voices in my head telling me: stop here, this is far enough, you’ve done enough – before I was at the top.  These voices were constant!  But after getting through many steep ascents, one step at a time, this shifted.  I realized I had a new relationship with challenging myself.

Looking at all of this today, I see the contrast between these two experiences.  With the Tyrolean traverse there was no reward other than having gotten to the other side.  Whereas hiking hills nearly always ends in taking in a spectacular view – beauty is motivating!  I was elated taking in the 360-degree view from the top of Mount Whitney.  There was also a difference in the spirit of the support I was given.  I didn’t find the cheering very helpful; I remember feeling like I was wrong for my wanting to give up – no understanding or even acknowledgement of it.

I wonder what would have happened if instead of yelling at me, the leader or someone I trusted had quietly spoken to me, honoring my struggle and then asked me to go deep inside myself and find the place where more strength than I knew I had was to be found.  I bet I’d have remembered getting to the other side.  I didn’t end up needing this kind of support from our Whitney guides – I chose to get myself through my exhausted hours on my own, but I witnessed them supporting others through hard spots – and the quality of the interaction – the kindness and connection with my fellow hikers – was loving and lovely.

Doing what’s hard is… hard.  It’s a lot easier to not take on our challenges.  And I’m convinced that doing so is what it means to be really alive.  What I’ve learned from these physical tests applies to doing other things – like learning to paint and pushing ourselves to take on greater challenge with our art.  The support and the environment so matters.  It helps enormously to have the struggle normalized.  We fantasize about our time painting that it will be pure bliss, immersed in the colors, watching the art take shape.  There is some of that, but it comes with a lot of challenge mixed in.   And this is ok.  It’s good, actually.  Otherwise you never scale a mountain or have the equal thrill of making art that astonishes you.

The idea, I’ve learned, is to become friends with challenge.  This doesn’t mean that it’s ok for challenge to knock us on our ass – which isn’t very friend-like.  Having compassionate support that keeps you in the game is key here.  But we also can’t be friends with challenge if we avoid it at all costs – which is where being brave comes in.  The nature of our friendship with challenge is quite individual.  We each have unique needs from our friendships.  It’s up to you to decide how much to take on and what kind of support you need.  Drill-sergeant may be what does it for you!

Looking at challenge as a friend – or as a potential friend can shift everything.  So, what challenge is before you?  What challenge can you shake hands with and get to know better?  I promise you (and myself) what we really want is found on the other side.

With my love and my brave – and in beauty,

Cara