Embers

When I was a little girl long, long ago (In the 50's. Gosh I'm old), we used to have wall calendars supplied by the local drugstore.  They were just chock-full of little tid-bits: lots of ads for St. Joseph baby aspirin, if I recall correctly, and little pictures of pharmacists in white jackets looking wise and fatherly.  And almost every day's square had something interesting.  If they couldn't find SOME sort of holiday, there would be a reminder of something you might want to put on your shopping list, but there were WAAAY more holidays than in the calendars I use now.

And several times a year, there would be a notation: Ember Day.  That sounded so interesting and mysterious; I often wondered what it meant.  I don't know if I asked my parents or just kept wondering.  No Google back then, of course, and it wasn't in the dictionary, so I just stayed ignorant.  I may have thought that the ones in the fall had something to do with burning leaves, but the other ones made no sense.  Somewhere along the way someone must have indicated it had some sort of religious overtone to it, but it remained hidden in mystery -- until today!

One of my friends kindly shared a link (which I am now sharing here) and now I know!!

Forsythia

I walked by a forsythia bush beginning to bloom this afternoon.  It was already raining and the wind was SO cold and then I walked by those little sketches of yellow against a fence and I thought, OK, we're finally beginning spring.  Do you have those personal signposts for the seasons?  A friend of mine says she believes it's spring when she hears (or sees) the first tree swallows.  For me, it's the forsythia -- though the daffodils I saw just a block away were pretty convincing, too!  (It's one thing to see a bunch of daffodils for sale at Safeway -- and yes I DID buy them -- but another when they're actually emerging from the dirt in my own neighborhood!)

I remembered playing Sarah in the play J.B. a kajillion years ago, and after all that "curse God and die" business I got to come back at the end of the play and show Job that the forsythia is blooming again -- a little redemption.  And I also thought about e.e. cummings' wonderful poem "O sweet spontaneous / earth" (found here).  Even in the midst of the drear and rain and cold, it's such a relief to see spring emerging once again.

Whether you wake up to rain or snow or stillness, may you experience spring tomorrow.

Right and Wrong

A friend sent me a link to a video of Kathryn Schulz talking about being wrong -- and I do recommend you watch it (yes, 17 minutes; if I can stretch my tiny attention span, so can you!).

She makes some wonderful points -- like, when you are being wrong, you still FEEL like you're right, since we all live in our self-referential heads.  To me this also connects with a recent AP article on the tricky nature of presidential/national apologies.  We are just SO BAD in our society about admitting we might be wrong, have been wrong, have even hurt others through our words and deeds.  Why else have we never even apologized for slavery?  Why, in that tiny moment after seeing any mistake, does our mind race with it's-not-my-fault-I-didn't-do-it-It-must-have-been-somebody-ANYbody-else?

Are our egos so fragile that we must trumpet our alleged "rightness" till everyone else rolls over belly-up?  (Am I doing the same right now so you'll think I'm wise?)  I don't know, but I think I'll keep chewing on the questions. . . .

Da Boids

Yes, I'm a bird nerd.  Not a particularly savvy one, not someone who can ID a sparrow at 100 yards, but a lover of critters.  I admit, I don't quite understand it when I mention birding and I see someone's eyes start to glaze over.  But then I realize that, years ago, I didn't even NOTICE them myself.

What knocks me out about birding -- or spotting other critters of the natural world -- is that most of the time we walk around lost in our heads and in our very human-focused universe.  He-said, she-said, what task comes next, look at how that fool drives, etc. -- but there's a whole world of activity around us almost everywhere and we are missing it -- and it's a busy, fascinating world.

Yesterday I was taking advantage of a sunny moment to pull a few of the "easy" weeds in the yard, walking around with a weed bucket and scanning the ground for that one kind of awful weed that, if I let it go a few more weeks, will mature enough to start spitting its seeds everywhere.  I had my head down as I walked next to our Persian ironwood tree when -- PRRRRRT!!! -- a burst of wingbuzz right next to my ear told me that I'd gotten too close to where a goldfinch was perching.  Yowzah!  I practically collided with the bird and I hadn't even been aware of its presence.

These little lives are being lived in our midst with great intensity.  And spring is a terrific time to start opening our eyes.  The male Anna's hummingbird that dominates our yard is making his courtship dives -- flies way up high, swoops down in a sort of "J" shape, and at the bottom of the loop his tail feathers do something that makes this loud squeak/chirp that's absolutely distinctive.  Look at me, ladies!  NOW!  A male lesser goldfinch, black-cap all fresh in new plumage, shares some food with a female, beak to beak.  At least two of the bushtits (adorable featherballs that love to surround the suet feeder until it's a bristly bouquet of tweets and tails) have separated from the flock and are grooving around together.  It's yummy.

Thursday, on the Springwater trail near Oaks Bottom, I stopped to listen to the gRawwky "pumpkin-EEEAT-er" calls of a whole bunch of red-winged blackbirds {a friend swears he once asked another friend, "so what's the name of those black birds with red wings?"}.  I never did see any of the blackbirds, but I glimpsed a movement in the trees -- and when I'd focused on it, I saw a pileated woodpecker, knocking around in the moss and bark!  Even shaded by the limbs around him, his scarlet comb gleamed a rich velvety color.  Wow, what a gift!

(The picture below is not mine; I rarely bring a camera on my bird walks, preferring to watch in the moment.  It's provided courtesy of the Interwebs in case you don't know what a pileated woodpecker looks like.  Amazing, huh?)

Laughing

If you know me at all -- heck, if you're in the same restaurant as me, or even anywhere in the VERY LARGE auditorium where a comedy is being presented -- you know I'm a laugher.  I enjoy myself mightily, but over the years, it's been a bit problematic.

My dear mother -- may she rest in peace with only angelic voices around her -- suffered agonies in every public place where my Dad and I would find something amusing.  She had a good sense of humor all her own, but faced with the potential of staring strangers, she'd whisper, "Paul! Linda! For goodness' sake..."  We, of course, were un-thoughtfully incorrigible and blithely reinforced our own delicious appreciation of life's silliness.  It would have been good if we could have stuck with discreet snickers, but I get my actor's voice from Dad, and when the punchlines came, we just let loose and guffawed; we roared, we slapped the table, we hee-hawed like any rube in the big city for the first time.

In church, too -- Oh, if I had a nickel for every time someone said to me (smiling, lovingly, to be sure) "I heard you in church today, Linda."  I used to worry that I was too loud, too un-genteel, too disruptive of someone's worship.  But after a few decades in the pews, I figure it's the least I can do.  Most preachers have worked hard to inject something light into their sermons, whether it's a quirky reflection or a canned Joke for Liturgical Occasion.  Why shouldn't I reward them for their efforts?  How will they know they've been successful if we all sit there stifling our delight?  Naah; I couldn't do it anyway, so why try?  Abraham laughed, Sarah laughed -- sheesh, David danced before the Lord!  They should just be grateful I never studied ballet.

Dreams

Some day soon I hope to get up and write immediately after awakening, because I'd love to have more than a vague wash of feeling-color remaining from my dream time.  Not that I want to practice Dream Psychology on myself for the readers' dubious entertainment, but that there are such rich images that my sweet brain comes up with when I'm not busy censoring and controlling.

I'm seeing a theme emerge in my life, which is the the awareness of my seemingly endless urge to control: control myself, my long-suffering spouse, other people's behavior, my interior life.  It doesn't want to stop.  I know perfectly well that such efforts are completely hopeless, and frequently the source of suffering for myself and others, but the grasping goes on.

Just as retirement is bringing me the option of a bit more sleep (and a few more dreams), I sense a faint relaxation -- or at least the prelude to it -- of my grip on the steering wheel of daily life.

My dream for myself is that I learn to open and accept a new way of receiving the grace that is all around, so full of un-forced goodness.

Let's Begin

Today I'll receive ashes on my forehead and hear that one day I'll return to dust.  Some folks find that depressing, but which of us can say it's not true?  Perhaps more important than that destination is -- what am I made of (and making) now?

My intention is to get back into the daily writing habit during Lent so that I can redevelop my writing muscles, sharing and listening along with you.  I may dustily fail this resolve at times, but you'll get to watch that too and perhaps notice our kinship in stumbling.  At any rate, this seems like it makes more sense than avoiding chocolate!

This week, as I walked the aisles of my local Fred Meyer store, I found myself observing how often my desires were activated by things -- primarily things I had no need of and had formed no intention of buying.  I had what I needed in my basket, but still I wandered.  The satisfaction, the delicious luxury of spending on things seemed to be calling to me at every turn.  Strange.  Strange to be observing it instead of just succumbing.  Not resisting, just observing.  But then it WAS a lovely walk home with only four items instead of ten.....