Morning farm chores ... the drama of Dalmatians and the power of Puck

My mornings blossom in pretty much the same way every day. 

I suspect that is the case for most of us--that our mornings are structured according to family life or work demands. In my case horses, goats, chickens, dogs, and one annoying cat have, what feels like immediate needs, and my garden, another entity, is quieter about needs, but can be somewhat more dramatic, too. The internal pressure of knowing something may be going awry for the garden (or hoop house now in winter) is immense, because if something has really gone awry, it is very frightening to see frost-nipped, or thirsty plants limp and prostrate or ravished by hungry predators. Sometimes this internal pressure of 'plant worry' can drown out the physically louder demands of the animals. That includes the steely gaze of hungry horses and creaking of fences as they collect and push against gates, the bleating and bashing of empty feed buckets at the horns of hungry goats, or the desperate clucking of hens counting down the remaining hours of daylight while they are still COOPED. Oh, no one has heard despair until they have heard the wail of hens wanting to be released to free range for the day. 

So, yes, my morning routine is well-established. 

If I waver at all in my responsibilities, or change the order of things, the Dalmatians begin to worry. Fable begins pacing, running out the dog door, then back in again to see if I'm on my way and headed in the right direction. Walter looks distraught and begins quietly moaning. This is not a whine, it is a 'oh, dear' groan under his breath that sounds ghostly. If I stop to have a swallow of orange juice or a swig of tea, there are some serious looks exchanged between the two dogs. It is sobering to see such despair, so I do not linger. My breakfast can wait.

The order is always the same, although it varies by the season. But the cat is first. 

Don't even ask. Actually, if you have ever lived with a cat, you won't need to ask. If Parry is not first, the yowls and see-sawing across my path are a foreshadowing of what might follow. Beware the pissed-off feline. Chickens are second, horses next, then goats, and finally dogs. Then me. My husband will dutifully wait breakfast for me, although he has hit the coffee or tea pot pretty hard in the meantime. And then, only then, comes the work of the day. But that is not what this post is about.

Aside from the normal morning chores: checking water, preparing feed, cleaning the barn, moving hay, I have the added responsibility of sitting beside Puck while he eats. Athletically slim, Puck is the tallest horse in our little herd, but he is a pacifist and a gentleman. The mares, chunky beauties, will move in minutes to clean his plate while he politely steps aside to accommodate them. Unless, of course, I sit beside Puck. So, I have pulled up a mounting block and perch on it during the horses' feeding times, morning and evening, just beside Puck's feeder.

Puck adores these moments of just him and me (and so do I). 

Puck is a loiterer over food and will savor his meal in small bites, looking fondly at me, raining mash over my head and, every once in awhile, pausing to give me a gentle kiss. I always tell him the story I'm working on and he listens intently or looks politely bored. I value his opinion and, many times, have altered the course of a plotline, or reversed an ending, based on those eyes and ears. 

We humans make a big deal about animal communication and the 'whoo-whoo' of so-called animal communicators. Yet, those of us who live close to animals know that they communicate continually to each other and to us. And, between the two of us, it is we who have a harder time keeping up with the conversation. I know that we humans are the ones who pay the feed and vet bills and think we call the shots, but I'm not so sure that it is a fair trade for what animals and birds bring to the Earth and what they have the potential to offer to us. 

We don't really hear them. We rarely ask them. We really don't know what they truly want. 

We assign them the role of servant, bodyguard, pseudo-child, or companion-with-specified-duties, such as therapy, guiding, hiking ... . And they turn themselves inside out to do their best for us. Then, we get upset if in their stress they run off with the toilet paper roll (Fable, you know you did it), or hang around the feedroom door instead of going to their stall when asked (Puck, it is not your job to supervise the mixing of mash, and, Arael, it is not your job to guard the feedroom door from the onslaught of Puck).

I'm trying to ask and listen more. 

Keep talking, guys.

Puck & me

Advent (aurora borealis)

 

Advent (aurora borealis)

 

 The Northern Lights in Southern Canada are like Christmas in July.
 Red-green specters fading into being, rising and drifting through the night sky.
 
Elusive to the human eye, their dance is caught like a cougar on a night-cam,
a clip-still capture of a flying flame, more caricature than spirit.
 
I saw you real.
Living, you catalyzed a soul’s breath of energetic light and caressed the stars.
A cold fusion of sun and space igniting this Earth-bound child.
 
I saw the angels dancing on Jacob’s Ladder, felt the pointed message of the Nativity star settle in my chest.
 
I saw Mary’s roses glowing in the night, blossom and leaf. Saw graceful stems, needle-like, lacing the great gap between Heaven and Earth. The Christ Child, as tall as the sky, as old as the stars and as young as tomorrow’s sunrise.
 
There were no shepherds in my field that night.

Only three horses stood with me, eyes full of moonlight, mist rising from warm muzzles.
The angels sang cricket songs while four goats kneeled in the summer grass, their munching mouths forming a percussive beat.

Together, standing in the July night. Together we heard the whispered ‘wait!’ and felt the patience of the trees, dark and leggy around us like Stonehenge.
 
While the wise wonder and wander.
While the innkeeper stirs and mumbles in his sleep.
While Herod feasts with flatterers.
 
We wait.
 

 

Life re-fit ... finding that new sweet spot.

 

I've learned a lot in the last few weeks. 

It's amazing how the influence of one, very in-tune and connected individual can, in one action, reset your inner sight, snapping into being a deepened perspective and shaking loose a series of understandings. Honestly, it was like an avalanche of 'I get it now' over a flood of mental pictures and memories of past moments of discomfort, vague angst and plain fear. I could almost hear the click, click, click, of the past snapping into clarity.

President Joe Biden did that for me when he chose to stop campaigning and turn his energy to finishing his term well. Solidly successful, but underrated by those not in-the-know, I believe that President Biden did what I could not do so many times in my life: recognize that, although I had honed a 'thing' to be well-practiced and excellent, I no longer fit into the space I occupied while doing it.

Who knows why that space evolves, or mutates? Or if it is others, or not just ourselves, who morph and grow, or simply change over time. But when the uncomfortable moments begin to pile up and you start to feel a drag on your psyche-soul, the space or fit has changed. There is no denying it. It is not a simple matter of needing a break or a vacation; you experience an inner scrambling to reengage with the sweet spot that life was--only a few short days ago.

And what I learned is that walking away from the 'non fit' into the open space of life is a breath of fresh air. 

Yes, it's scary. Yes, there are more questions than answers and new discomforts of another nature, but there is the hope, too. Hope of a new sweet spot, just around the corner. And there is tremendous relief and a sense of reestablishing inner bearing: reconnecting with one's essentials, recognizing and acting on soul-promptings. 

Bottom line, there is freedom in walking away from the what was and toward what will be.

I think the truth is, that when one's sweet spot suddenly isn't, it means that there is another sweet spot that only is a fit for you. Doesn't mean that this new one is 'forever' either, but rather that it is only by leaving the old fit that we find the new fit. 

Have courage (I say this to myself as much as to you, dear reader!). Take the leap out of an imperfectly-fitting cocoon. You will likely need those new wings for your new sweet spot, when it finds you. Or you find each other.

Forget the nay-sayers who want you to believe you were 'never' a good fit. Forget the fear mongers who say this was the 'only' fit. Reconnect with the essential commitments you've made: who do you love? what drives your life purpose and passion? what brings you joy? For whom, or what, are you here ... in this time on earth?

The sweet-spot-that-was served to provide you a space to live out those essential commitments. Do not confuse the space with your core being's essentials. They are not the same thing--the 'sweet spot' is simply the office desk from which to work out your purpose and essential commitments to life.

The desk is too small for you now. Be brave and step out.

Be like Joe.

The practice of mindfulness

 

Mindfulness as a 'work around' ...

I've been thinking a lot about the role of mindfulness and resilience these last few months. For the first time in my, comparatively long life, I've been dealing with recurring illness that has altered some lifestyle choices. I have NOTHING to complain about--I realize this! I'm still able to live in my favorite place in all the world with my favorite person and our critter-kids, and still love to put words and stories together, and still continue my life-long love of learning. I do practice gratitude--even when hauling water buckets to the horses is not the easy job it once was ... and when I must now rely on others to haul and stack hay bales in the barn. Puck, my bay gelding has grown too tall for me to mount (I think my lanky and lazy horse is secretly quite pleased about that, by the way) and I seriously gauge the level of tinnitus in my left ear before taking on any extra stress. 

Yes, life has demanded some modifications--'work arounds' is my vocabulary for figuring out new ways to do old tasks that required more youthful strength and stamina. 

Seriously. I have benches and mounting blocks spaced strategically all over our farm.  

Mindfulness has become a friend to me and my journey of resilience.

There is nothing more resilient than watching tiny rose clippings root and begin to grow their own lives. Or a chopped-down tree sending up shoots from a sawed off stump. 

And, I think the definition of resilience when you look it up in the dictionary should simply be a photo of a dandelion breaking through cement and thriving in a concrete jungle.

photo credit: https://abolg.wordpress.com/2016/01/09/dandelion/

To me, mindfulness practice is as simple and as frequent as stopping, breathing, feeling the ground under my feet, the wind on my face, and hearing through my ears and my hands, the dog at my side, the horse beside me, or the chicken scratching the soil in front of me. Mindfulness is stopping to grin at the goats peering out of their window at me. Mindfulness is admiring the vigor of a growing tomato plant. Mindfulness is anything that centers me into the present moment. From there, resilience becomes a choice, and work arounds become an intriguing puzzle rather than a relentless scramble, juggling losses. 

Mindfulness may be different for you, and I've captured some thoughts of others more in the know about the practice of mindfulness below. But for me ... 

Mindfulness and resilience are two bookends holding space for a joyful life. 

Of Stones and Stars Christmas, 2023

 

    

 Of Stones and Stars                                                                                                      

The boulder we inherited from Sisyphus grows by hours, days, years, but often lies deceptively flat or stair-like and scalable for decades.

At times the growing hulk even holds the warmth of sunlight and we find soft mossy edges to curl against and rest.

Familiarity has its own comfort.

But, in a millisecond of time the reality of camel backs and straw spines become cold stone fact.

When ‘that which does not kill you makes you stronger’ becomes an ominous echo of inverted meaning.

The boulder speaks in granite tones too hard to ignore.

Did you not remember that even Jesus died?

Reeling at the un-sensical pouring out of vengeance and death as Herod’s rage stains the earth yet again, I see that quiet Baby in the soft manger hay sleeping amidst a twinkling torrent of star-eyed angels; safe in temporis.

But we know this will not last and Mary’s heart will break over and over again until it is so large that only Heaven itself can hold it.

The boulder rolls on bruising out a cyclical message across the landscape of time:

Death is inevitable as night. Innocents suffer.

The thrones of earth silence voices, we learn, but not the sound of weeping.

Rock begats rock; flint sharpens flint like rage fuels rage.

We see no end to Sisyphus’s nightmare or to twisted truth, hog-tied and harnessed by influence.

But that rock. That unmanageable stone sitting like death itself, it rolls away.

Moved by liquid love dropped for Lazarus and his grieving friends, the welcoming of strange ones to supper, the outstretched open hand to stem suffering of another, that boulder lifted.

Weight shifted, borne aloft by physics of light: laughter defying gravity. For what is more joyful than Love?

The boulder ceased to burden. Unfolded like a curtain until Tolkien’s ‘far green country opened up under a swift sunrise’ and a new day arrived for all.

It is hard to see that death itself is not the triumphant answer to this essential tale of Light and Dark.

Look deeper, unflinchingly through pain and the inevitability of death, rage of power, and false naming of ‘the other:’

There. A sunbeam dances on a dandelion emerging through a cement crack.

The tree, cracked in two by the storm, sends up a green shoot.

The rains arrive and small seeds swell.

An elder hands me a bit of bread torn from a small loaf.

Exhaling, I’m able to mirror back this small sliver of grace given me by sharing the cup.

We breathe together.

The stars and stones align.

Redemption

 

December gardens are cold and wet as the Pacific surf,

Limp as seaweed strewn across channels of rain draining into a larger sea.

Tomato plant pride, after weeks boisterous with green and laden with red, lie limp beside other pale stems, now just memories of a summer’s worth of peppers, eggplant, and squash as big as footballs.

Time deferred is time lost in a garden.

There is no hold that can be placed on growing things, no pause or backspace on the riches of seasons.

The sun, save for that one Elijah moment, moves with persistent passion in a horizon arc, our Earthship harnessed to giant tresses circling it in a pedantic yet predicable cycle of moody encounters: now warm, now cool, with now and again Goldilocks moments of perfection.

Fall rain washes the air and slakes the thirst of soil and trees. I hear the old horse coughing out the dry dust of summer and breathing in the night air, humid with life.

Winter rain plumps moss like green pillows lining sleeping logs and etching waving limbs so that slender grey-brown bark is festooned with winter-green, and further laced with drops that catch moonlight and cast a silver sheen.

We live in this moment, in this promise of redemption, in this seasonal shift.

Renewal of water-stores and bone-rest, foundational in their primacy, gracefully prepares the way for the resilience of spring and abundance of summer. But now, now is this essential moment.

Winter skies clarify star vision. There is no sky gazing like winter sky gazing where stars strum and throb above us like platinum plums, and moon beams form Lazarus ladders linking heaven and earth.

The horses and I watch the night grow large and light and through half-lids I see angels dance holding in their cupped hands the moment of Birth.

The tiny Appaloosa beats a soft rhythm with her small hooves. The old buckskin nods and snorts and my two gentle giants gaze skyward high and long. I hear the gelding’s airy whicker, the long sigh of the mare, and a stirring breeze in the tall trees.

Together we touch this moment, tasting snow sifting over us like a clean blanket from heaven.

Redemption is born.

 

Merry Christmas from Faith & Vincent

Grace

There is a space in the innermost sanctum of heart-mind where hope lives and joy frames the doorway to a world where dandelions and dragonflies dance.

There is a space in the innermost sanctum of heart-mind where dread dwells and draws shadows down disguising all exits. 

We seek patterns, meaning, sense, to dark dawns and thirst for sudden joy. 

But mind is like a railway track switching destinations relentlessly: In a blink, we arrive in dread, or hope, or a far-off place where lonely poets hide; 

a no-where vista set for watching mind-trains. 

 It is in this hour of hate and hope and viral fear, 

It is in this moment of time, with brilliant rainbow blazes of hope and dark depths of crawling chaos, 

 It is in this second of sunlight’s wane and midnight mania, 

That journey is sensed. 

That meaning may live in small milliseconds of movement toward hard love. 

That mind may be secondary to the journey of soul, moving with quiet caterpillar feet in tiny undulations and circular wandering with elastic pre-memory of cocoons and wings; caves and stars. 

A small river rises in the East, a surging Baptism, 

and the West wonders at stars and signs and a virgin birth.  

The Christ-Child delivered by, in, from Love moves in a soul-journey so unwise to us who weigh all things by gain and direction. 

For this journey is small and circular with elastic pre-memory of angels and glory.

This journey is neonate and fragile, yet robustly rich in the persistence of Life. 

This journey is barn-common, yet singular, unique as a snowflake or the footprint of an imploding star. 

Grace is born to us; 

Gift and Glory in a tiny journey of eternal proportions. '

Greetings in this Holy Season from Fox Song Farm

 Faith Richardson, Christmas 2020