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 

Taglines as therapeutic touchstones

 

Medicine stones painted by Andrea Pratt, artist

Taglines as therapeutic touchstones

Taglines have become an expected element of our economic landscape, but can be valuable in therapeutic work, too. In this era of business branding, developing an effective tagline is a necessary step in marketing strategy. I have learned, however, that creating a personal tagline that speaks to your own essence and mission or life purpose can be a powerful therapeutic tool, especially useful during times of transition. There is something about a simple, clear statement that reminds others—and yourself—about what is important to you and what you bring to the world that can provide sudden clarity on a dark day. Personal taglines can act as touchstones when life tumbles around us like a chaotic whirlwind.

So, what is a tagline? A tagline is in effect a punch line: the zinger! It is that little statement following a business name that provides a quick understanding of the company’s personality and mission. Big ones we have heard umpteen zillion times are:

Verizon: “Can you hear me now?”

Microsoft: Be what’s next.

Apple: Think different.

Nike: Just do it.

McDonald's: I’m loving it.

The skillful use of taglines are that they often shift over time and size of the company. When the company is small and new, taglines are designed more to answer the question of what a company does, or why we need them, or how they intend to improve their customers’ lives. Over time and multiple uses, the company grows and gets more known and the tagline evolves to a simple snapshot of the company—one that conveys an emotion, aspiration, or the one-two punch that captures the companies essence in a tiny package of three to five words.

The tagline for Kindle Health, my ecotherapy practice, is: I help people rekindle their joy. That, in a nutshell, is what I aspire to do in my health and wellness counseling, coaching, and writing. The tagline for Fox Song Farm, the site and context of my ecotherapy and equine-guided work is, Come home to your herd. I like this tagline as it completely describes the calm welcome that the horses as a herd offer to clients. It also holds true of the goat family and chicken flock. All seem to have a notably kind curiosity toward visitors! And, I love hearing that contended sigh as clients look around and settle, leaning against a fence or sitting in a chair on the deck overlooking the field, watching the horses and goats.

I often work with student nurses who are nearing graduation and still concerned about how they answer questions of medical colleagues, patients, and even family and friends about who they are and what they do as a nurse. Yes, even in 2020 nurses still find it difficult to explain what makes them distinct from physicians and why they have chosen nursing rather than medicine. I find that having students write 2-minute elevator speeches help student nurses begin to truly define their distinctively unique nursing perspective. Often what comes out of the elevator speech is a lovely, succinct tagline that they can use to quickly sum up who they are as a person and what they bring to the nursing or healthcare table. I love to see their shoulders straighten and drop and that sparkle in their eyes when they launch those words that just feel right. Taglines can truly flash a picture of who we are and communicate our essentials to others. They are kind of a mental business card, I suppose! I’ve heard from students how their tagline provides them with a quick touchstone response when they are overwhelmed in a situation or feeling intimidated by those around them.

As I was idly watching the horses while cleaning the barn today, I realized that I have more than enough material to write taglines for each of the equine characters living on Fox Song Farm:

               Puck: “I help people question their fears.”

               Tivio: “Hay, I’m here. For you.”

               Arael: “I see you.”

               Penelope: “Size is a mental construct.”

Puck’s tagline came almost immediately. Puck has a huge, athletic body and is in constant motion. He loves to get close to people and connects graciously, but his big size can be intimidating. Puck does tend to push boundaries and cause people to confront fear and trust. Tivio, my puppy dog quarter horse, loves hugs and his food, and yes, often in that order. Enough said!  Beautiful Arael generally appears to be in the background, which is deceptive as she is the lead mare of the Fox Song herd. She notices everything, and I value her reactions to situations and people. I learn most from watching Arael with a new client. Penelope is our miniature appaloosa. Although she is physically the youngest and smallest horse in the herd, she has an old soul and I often call her my wise woman. When doing therapy work, Penelope is decisive and determined. When Penelope ‘speaks,’ we all listen.

Well, that was fun! Want to write your own tagline for yourself, your business or career, or your own pets? Here are some tips:

1. Keep it simple and short. Taglines are stronger if they convey one idea that is understood easily. Don’t use more than 5-7 words at most.
2. One simple way to begin is to distill into a word or two what it is you do, what is most important to you, or your essential purpose. A simple phrase to begin this is the word, “I ….” For example, “I help …” or “I can …” or “I will …” can lead into several directions, but the focus is on YOU and what YOU DO.
3. If the first part of the tagline is about you and what you do, your essential purpose, the second half of the tagline is about what you do for others, community, clients, profession. This simple meaning can come from a phrase … “I can …,” “I provide …,” “I give …..” Or, for me, it was, “I help …” as in, “I help people rekindle their joy.”
4. Think about the ‘feel’ of the words you choose. What emotion do you want to convey, or to produce in someone on the receiving end? For example, the blend of emotions I wanted for ‘I help people rekindle their joy,’ was a remembering, or nostalgia, for recalling when we have experienced personal passion and joy in our lives. The choice of the word ‘rekindle’ had a two fold reason: to give the feeling of relighting a flame inside us, as well as a nod to my practice name, Kindle Health. For ‘Come home to your herd,’ the emotion was a warm, homey feeling of belonging. After you have the content of what you are all about, you can choose language that conveys the feeling you want others to experience. Although this emotional stuff feels like it would be unimportant, the funny thing is that this step often produces that quintessential bit that turns out to be the biggest contributor to your tagline. Frequently, people rewrite their tagline completely when they discover the right emotion they want to convey. By choosing the words that best portray the feeling often comes a stronger message!
5. Not sure where to start? Look for inspiration with power words that inspire you or move you in some way. Google a thesaurus and start word shopping! Write down the words that either feel like a match to your essential self, or that move you toward what you aspire to be or do. Then, with those self-identified power words, go back to tips two and three and begin to try these out in the short sentence linking who you are and what you bring to the world.

Elevator speeches and taglines can be powerful ways of bringing us back to the existential question of who am I? and what is my purpose, or mission on this earth? Especially during times of transition, deeply reflected upon phrases can be touchstones for us. They also can help remind us of why we do what we do, even when the world does not seem to notice our efforts.

For several years, I had to put my fiction writing on the back burner as I developed my nursing career and continued my education. Then, life happened, and bill-paying needed to take priority while we experienced medical challenges in the family. Through these years, I struggled often to understand a seemingly stymied life purpose. Many, many times I went back to the tagline that I had developed years earlier while working with Madeleine L’Engle as her teaching assistant in a creative writing course.

Although we didn’t call them elevator speeches or tag lines then, Madeleine had us all introduce ourselves with a short 'blurb' about who we were and what was important to us. I had just been accepted into nursing school and was struggling to understand this new path that, although felt right, would undoubtedly take me away from writing full time. I remember standing on the University lawn where we had assembled the class and clutching my brand-new stethoscope as a visual aid, giving my little talk and ending it with: “Although these two paths, writing and nursing seem unconnected, what I am realizing is that they are both about my intention to promote healing. I heal through my hands and my words.” That tagline truly has become my touchstone through the years, especially during times when I could not find time or energy to write fiction. The core of my essence, or life-mission, remained, healing; I was simply doing it a different way for a time. As well, I strove to have my academic writing be creative and inspiring and healing in its own way. I am sure that I haven’t always met my own bar for this, but the intention has been there, and my tagline-touchstone helped keep this in my line of sight.

This afternoon a big heavy box was delivered to our door. When I opened it up, I found copies of the newly published nursing reference text that was a three-year writing project. Although this academic writing project was not ‘fun’ in the same sense as writing stories and poems are stimulatingly mesmerizing for me, again, my tagline kept me on track. I kept my intention to heal through my words. In a very real way, this nursing text is a demonstration of healing with my hands and my words.

Taglines as touchstones. For me, they have for many years kept me joyfully moving on mission. Maybe for you, too?