The Roses are Remembered: Land Songs

June 25^th marked a year since Douglas and I moved from our house in the woods to High Valley  The last time I posted here, I wrote about feeling overwhelmed with our responsibilities and with other complications regarding this legacy. Many people reached out to me in response to that post, and I have also felt encouraged to ask for help. Thank you, everyone! 

I have also fallen more and more in love with the gardens, and the plants have become my companions and teachers.  This is the first year I have observed closely all the myriad flowerings, beginning in late February with snowdrops and aconites; then came daffodils, tulips, periwinkles, and phlox followed by poppies, allium, and iris, and a yellow flower whose name I still don’t know with small five-pointed cups that bloom all up and down the stalk. (No, it's not mullein). Now is the season of lilies, bee balm, and daisies. 

Most mornings I am outside a little after six. I still go to the far side of the pond (where I have been breakfasting on blackcaps) to do chi gung on the dock. On my way back to the house I visit all the gardens, watering and weeding where necessary, but mostly just greeting everything, praising everything, feeling so grateful for the abundance of life and beauty.  

(Note: High Valley now has a retreat room for guests that includes use of a kitchen and the freedom to enjoy the land, gardens, pond, and trails. Get in touch with me through the website, if you would like to make a retreat.) 

My friend Tom Cowan encouraged me to sing the songs of the land that I hear. Inspired by Tom’s friend the poet JK McDowell who read at High Valley from his collection of ghazal,  Night, Mystery, and Light, I gathered some of these songs and put them in that form.  (12 syllables per line, 3 lines per stanza, 6 stanzas, each one able to stand by itself). I offer the result with gratitude to everyone and to this land. 

…the roses are remembered: land songs

here is the place where human and wild interlace

what is planted, what plants itself, what is tended

what unintended yet more perfect than your plan

the wild wood takes care of its own in its own time

windstorm, wildfire, flood shift its shape, take and give life

what humans make—then abandon—becomes ruin

year by year you grow more deeply rooted, your leaves

may fall or fly, you may wish you could go with them

but you stay here, storm-shaken or still, one more year

in the eyesore, weedy sandbox framed by cement,

you planted ornamental grass and columbine

I gave bladderwort, succulents, German onion

along the pond the frogs sing my song, note by note,

the redwings know their part; robins hear the song of worms

what is silent also sings, listen, your part waits

the one before you planted roses, then forgot

the way she planted everything then turned it loose

now back from near death, the roses are remembered.

PS: All you lovers of Maeve. She is still with me. She is with you. She gets around. From what I hear, the electronic version of the novels will soon be available.

I am in the midst of writing a mystery novel, also historical—set in 1960. Having fun with the characters, trusting the detective dimension will work.  I do like a challenge. Between garden plots and mystery plotting, I may not be posting here very frequently. Maeve and I do post on FaceBook and Twitter more frequently.

Elizabeth: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Elizabeth-Cunningham/137518912968862?ref=ts

Maeve:  http://www.facebook.com/maeve.rhuad?ref=ts

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/EliznMaeve

Do keep in touch. How your gardens, literal or figurative, growing?

The Wild Edge: Pondering Succession

The sun has moved far enough to the north that early light now finds the far end of the pond. In early Fall, I’d left this spot for warm sunny places closer to the house and gardens. Now the first Spring flowers are gone, and the weeds are asserting themselves, as is the lawn, still mangy-looking from being replanted after the septic system was moved. It is hard not to look at the yard as I imagine guests might see it now that we are entering the busy season. As I do my standing meditation, I keep stopping to pull weeds. And if I manage to keep my body still, my mind is worse, writing do-to lists and shopping lists and wondering if the stink the squirrels left over in the attic over the gathering rooms will ever air out.

I haven’t yet learned how to manage living where I work—a beautiful, overgrown, under-endowed, falling-down place where my tasks include housekeeping, yard work, hospitality, program direction and facilitation in addition to my chosen professions of writing and counseling. At best, I am able to approach High Valley as a Zen Koan. Much better than thinking of it as a business with potential (how I am coming to loathe the word “potential”), a legacy I must save, or a burden I must bear. At worst, I just keep working compulsively till I drop—which I did the other day. I can’t quite bring myself to have a complete nervous breakdown, but my body will periodically arrange for me to be so sick I have to spend a day in bed.

The day I return to the wilder edge for my sunrise practice, I feel a huge sense of release. There is nothing here that needs my attention. There is everything here that rewards my attention. Here I am just another living thing, a transitory living thing. (How I am coming to love the word “transitory.”) Instead of composing to-do lists in my mind, I find myself pondering—an appropriate thing to do next to a pond.

Today I ponder succession, understanding at a new level how obsessed rulers, institutional leaders, family farmers, business tycoons or anyone with a corporate enterprise must be. Who will keep the empire, the church, the farm, the firm going? My husband and I are perhaps not very successful successors to my mother in-law’s small, vast realm. She had her own vision and vocation. But she did not concern herself with succession and left us with some very dicey situations to sort out (not something I can write about). For many years while she was still here, I kept her not-for-profit going with an eclectic Center that evolved its own rituals and culture. But I never made any move to institutionalize what we do here. I never so much as formed a committee. The Center at High Valley, which has hosted many beautiful, meaningful moments and events, is by its nature transitory. I don’t, in any sense, know what (or who) will succeed.

When I am at the wilder edge, I feel more at peace with my lack of success and succession. The natural world has its own succession. As a species, we have interfered with that order yet we are still borne along by forces beyond our control. As a transitory being I find that thought oddly soothing, a bit like a day of enforced bed rest.

Do you see yourself as being and/or having a successor? What is your definition of success? I welcome your ponderings. I also appreciate suggestions of topics for Maeve to address. Her turn next.

Since it is poem-in-a-pocket day, I will close with a couple of tanka (5-7-5-7-7)

buildings falling down
too many people, too few
gardens overgrown
a land vessel going down
us, hapless crew, sinking too

there are these moments
sunlight on worn hardwood floor
they could be enough
bloodroot blooming amidst stone
heron unfolding blue wings

Jezebel and Me--and You: A post by Maeve

The infamous Jezebel, a Phoenician princess who married King Ahab of Israel, lived more than 800 years before my time, so we never got a chance to hang out. If we had, we might have been friends. We have a lot in common.

Neither of us ever converted to our husbands’ maniacally monotheistic religion. But Jezebel went me one better: she did convert her husband to the worship of Baal and Asherah. He even built them a temple. I never attempted to convert my husband. (That said, he did spend many an ecstatic night with me at Temple Magdalen, my holy whorehouse, before and after our unexpected wedding. He was also the catalyst for my apotheosis, however brief, as Isis.)

Jezebel did things on a grander scale. She is said to have fed 450 priests of Baal and 400 priests of Asherah at her table. She is also accused of killing off the priests of Yahweh. Her alleged persecutions drew the attention of the prophet Elijah who mounted a contest between Baal and Yahweh. (Winner: the first to cause a sacrificial bull to spontaneously combust. Prize: status as top dog, I mean god.) When Yahweh prevailed, Elijah slaughtered all Jezebel’s priests. Enraged but not intimidated, Jezebel scared the bejeezus out of Elijah and he turned tail and ran for his life.

The most underhanded thing Jezebel is supposed to have done is to procure Naboth’s vineyard for her whiny husband by illicit means. When Naboth refused to sell to the king, Ahab went off his feed. So Jezebel had Naboth framed for blasphemy for which he and his heirs were promptly stoned. “Got your vineyard for you,” she says to her husband. Meanwhile Elijah comes out of hiding to prophesy some very nasty, gory doom for Ahab, Jezebel and their descendants.

Whether Jezebel did the wicked deed ascribed to her, I don’t know. As Janet Howe Gaines points out in her excellent article “How Bad was Jezebel?” she herself might have been set up. The bias of the biblical writer is clear: Jezebel stands for everything that is abhorrent (and a threat) to the cult of Yahweh. She has to go down. And not only that, be eaten by dogs! But before her grisly end, she shows her metal, painting her eyes with kohl and arranging her hair, then gazing out the window till the latest usurper comes near enough for her to insult him.

Though there is no account of Jezebel doing anything but doting on her sniveling husband, she is also accused of harlotries—and sorceries. Idolatry and adultery were then (and sometimes still are) synonymous. Think of the biblical phrase: whoring after other gods. If a woman has power (or even if she is merely outspoken like me) she must be a whore, a witch—and in my case demon-possessed. Personally, I have no patience with exalting or demonizing women. As Aretha sings, "A woman's only human." We, too, are caught up in the glorious, disastrous mess of incarnation. Why shouldn't we make tragic mistakes, just as men do, and even commit crimes?

The name Jezebel, like the epithet whore, has long been used to intimidate women. We feel we must defend ourselves, protest our virtue. Well, next time someone calls you: Jezebel, whore, witch, go back to painting your eyes with kohl, finish brushing your hair, then turn and calmly gaze. Say, “Yes? And your point?”

For more about Jezebel and me see Bright Dark Madonna, Chapter 16: "Brawl" where the church fathers call me a Jezebel and threaten me with the same fate—all because I ran away to give birth to my daughter in a notorious and holy whorehouse.

Enough about Jezebel and me. What about you? Have you ever been called a Jezebel? Tell us your story.

Blessings of the Night

I have written here before about my love affair with dawn, my tracking of sunrise as it rolls along the horizon from north to south and now back again, almost midway on its journey to summer solstice. I have also written about the construction noise (now on two sides) that goes on for almost twelve hours every day. I have borrowed good headphones and spend much of the day listening random shuffle and ocean waves.

Yesterday the noise was so loud I wore the headphones on a walk in the woods. Very strange not to be listening to wind and birds. I also walked the labyrinth and in the center (where I listen for messages) Maria Muldaur sang an old field holler. Here are some of the words that stayed with me: “It’s a blessing just to call my savior’s name. It’s a blessing just to be alive. It’s a blessing to be on the land. If my heart is breaking, I take it as my portion. It’s a blessing just to call my savior’s name.”

Random shuffle, ocean waves and earphones have been a blessing. And I have found another blessing: stepping outside every night on the fire escape near my bedroom. If the night is particularly warm and inviting, I might go down the stairs and find a place to sit. But even a few moments of night’s stillness and the sounds in that stillness restore me. The construction noise has ceased. Traffic is less frequent and farther away. The last two nights I’ve heard spring peepers.

Spring has come unseasonably early this year after a negligible winter. The aconites have already gone by, and the daffodils are about to bloom. Yesterday I asked a client if she’d like to walk during our session as we sometimes do when the weather is warm. “It’s nice out,” she said, “but it’s creepy nice. It’s not supposed to be this warm yet.” In addition, though it was almost sunset, the machines were still going full tilt. So we stayed in.

Though there are still people in denial, sadly some of them with disproportionate political and economic power, most of us know that we are experiencing what I call global weirdness, because overall global warming doesn’t always mean it’s warmer in any one location. Last winter, for example, we had more snow than usual. More heat means more storms, as witness the recent devastation by tornados in the South and Midwest.

Last night the waning moon hadn’t risen yet. The stars were huge and bright. I felt keenly the blessing of being able to gaze at stars shining beyond the weirdness we have made for ourselves. I felt the blessing of being on land that is at least quiet in the night, something I know not to take for granted. My heart breaks over many things, some personal, some not. But every now and then I remember, it’s a blessing just to be alive.

Maeve's Mothers on Birth Control

In the current political climate (perhaps another manifestation of global weirdness) when birth control has (astoundingly) become a subject of debate, we thought Maeve’s mothers should lend their wisdom. Only two of the eight mothers are represented here, and the passage has been edited for brevity, but we believe their advice offers a much needed corrective. The passage concludes with a clarion call to all women. Enjoy! –Maeve and Elizabeth

For the unabridged version see Magdalen Rising, chapter 14: “What Your Mothers Never Told You.”

"What do you think, Boann?" said Fand. "Given our Maeve's impetuous nature, perhaps we ought to have a little talk with her. It occurs to me that her knowledge of relations between the sexes may be more theoretical than practical."

"Maybe we'd better start by finding out how much she does know," suggested Boann. "Maeve, do you know what Fand and I were doing last night?"

"You were offering King Bran the friendship of your thighs," I answered, proving that their tales of Queen Maeve of Connacht had not been lost on me.

"Well, yes." They smirked again, embarrassed but clearly enjoying themselves. "Now, do you know exactly what that means?"

"I've seen pigs and sheep." I did my best to sound bored. "I know which parts go together."

"Er, quite," said Fand, a little nonplused. "But did you know that people often -- not always, mind you, but often -- do it face to face? It adds a certain... je ne sais quoi."

"Most animals can't do it face to face," said Boann thoughtfully. "Comes of having four legs, I suppose. Think of trying to do it frontally with hooves."

"Well now, Boann, I have to say, I don't think it's just the number of legs." Fand gave her agile mind to the conundrum. "It's just that other animals don't walk upright. Therefore, the head in relation to the legs makes it difficult to embrace frontally. Don't you see?"

I knew from experience that any two or more of my mothers were capable of pursuing a bizarre tangent indefinitely. Now that we were on the subject -- you might say the subject -- I realized there might be more I did want to know.

"Okay. So people do it face to face," I broke in.

"With either partner on top," added Fand.

"Or both on their sides, don't forget," said Boann.

"Or standing. And remember the rear entry position is an option."

"Fand, I just thought of a great one." Boann was getting into to it. "Hanging upside down from a tree branch. Have you ever tried that?"

"I have, but I don't recommend it for beginners or for people with back problems."

"I disagree. I think it's an excellent position for people with back problems. It puts all the strain on the thighs."

"How old do you have to be?" I got right to the point, the one that mattered most to me. "When can I do it?"

Fand and Boann stared at each other, looking pretty dumb for a couple of shrewd witches. They had stumbled right into the pitfall especially reserved for enlightened parents. They prided themselves on their ability to impart information, but they couldn't make the leap to application. Talk about a gap between the theoretical and the practical.

"Well, Maeve, that all depends."

"On what?"

"Why, on whether or not you're ready." Boann sounded vague.

"And we don't think you are," Fand hastened to add. "You have to be mature, responsible...."

"Fand, I think we better get down to brass tacks. We don't have much time left. We can't have her getting pregnant."

"She can always say no. Abstinence is the better part of valor."

Valor?

"Ha!" snorted Boann. "Believe it! Listen, Maeve, let's get one thing straight. If you get pregnant -- you do know how that happens, don't you? That's what we've been talking about -- you might have to leave college. King Bran told us that the druids are admitting women for the first time this year. It's being regarded as an experiment by the druids and by the priestesses of Holy Isle."

"What happens if I do get pregnant?" I was careful to keep my voice neutral. I didn't want them to guess that I might not mind having twenty years of schooling cut short.

"That's just it. We don't know. Boann, we must have a conference with the priestesses before we go. They must have some sort of contingency plan. And surely they're planning to teach the girls how to protect themselves."

"Yes, but we can't leave sex education to the schools, Fand!"

"So educate me, already!"

I wasn't interested in the druid's open admission policy and the repercussions of pregnancy. I wanted something I could apply to myself -- and Esus.

"All right. Now, Maeve, you know about the moon?"

"The moon?" It took me a moment to sort out this apparent non sequetor.

"Yes. The moon goes through phases like a woman. Or a woman goes through phases like the moon. At the dark we bleed, and at the full --"

"We're horny as hell," broke in Boann. "Here's the catch, Maeve. At the full moon, you're most likely to get pregnant. But it's also the time you're most likely to get laid. Or to want to, anyway. "

"Don't mislead her, Boann. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. You see, Maeve, on Tir na mBan we're eight witches cycling together. Just us and the animals, and the moon and the tides. Very low stress. Nothing to break the rhythm. But you are young, away from home for the first time, and you're excitable -- to put it mildly. Anything could throw off your courses. You can't count on counting."

"Still," Boann insisted, "she ought to understand the theory. Even when she's out of sync with the sky, she ought to learn to know when her own moon is full. Do you know the signs, Maeve?"

I nodded. "It's as if you're an egg cracked open. You're all runny with egg white."

"You have to admit, our Maeve can turn a phrase." Boann beamed at me.

"If you know that much, then you better know not to go frying any cracked eggs in the bushes," admonished Fand freely mixing metaphors and euphemisms.

"But, Fand, that's just when she's most likely to lose her head."

"And her maidenhead."

"We should have thought of this." Boann was rueful. "We could have given her a supply of those seeds. You know, what-do-ya-call-ems. But it's not seed time now, even if we could find them. Still, maybe the priestesses have a store of them."

"There's stones," suggested Fand. "Listen, Maeve, as soon as you can, find a smooth flat stone, preferably from the beach. Before you do anything --and as I said I really don't think you ought to -- put it inside you as far up as you can."

I stared at her unbelieving. I could not connect stone with the glimmering I had of "it" as something hot, live, melting.

"It blocks the seed from reaching fertile ground," Boann explained. "Which is to say, your womb. Certain kinds of dried seaweed also work."

"Oh, I wish we had time to show you," fretted Fand. "I wish we had thought of this on Tir na mBan. We could have given you lessons, demonstrations. When I think of all the time we wasted on sword play and spear casting."

"Well, not wasted entirely," put in Boann. "It did improve her hand-eye coordination. But it’s no use moaning over missed opportunity. We've got to tell her as much as we can right now. There's one thing we haven't mentioned yet, and it's the most important of all."

"I can't think what we haven't thought of."

"Sovereignty," said Boann solemnly.

"Oh, yes, of course, sovereignty."

Sovereignty! I pricked up my ears. For the sake of her sovereignty, Queen Maeve of Connacht had fought to win the brown bull. "Fight for our sovereignty," she had urged me.

"Pay attention, Maeve," said Fand. "Never go with a man -- or a woman, come to that -- unless you want to."

"Not to please. Not to placate," Boann chimed in.

"Never on any terms but your own."

"Should we tell her about love?" wondered Fand.

"Doesn't love complicate matters unnecessarily?" Boann was dubious. "I've heard it sometimes results in temporary insanity."

"And what about marriage?" persisted Fand. "I confess I've never fully understood its purpose, but Queen Maeve of Connacht seems to have managed to have one on her own terms, though there was that unfortunate mix-up over the bulls. I believe marriage often leads to cattle wars."

(a chunk taken out for brevity)

"Tir na mBan stands for the sovereignty of women," concluded Fand. "If it exists nowhere else in the world, it exists there. Remember that, Maeve. Sovereignty is your birthright and your inheritance. Next to sovereignty, gold torques and brooches are mere trinkets. Never surrender your sovereignty, Maeve. Carry it with you wherever you go."

Their words were stirring but abstract. Then an image rose in my mind of myself as a sort of floating island, shining, a sovereign vessel on a vast and dangerous sea.

BIFF: A Message from Both of Us

Maeve Rhuad:

The completion of The Maeve Chronicles has been quite an adjustment for both Eliz and me after working together and living in each other’s imaginations for so many years.

Of course, I still live in Eliz’s imagination. I am, as someone once described me (with uncalled for condescension), her imaginary friend, forever. Make that her best imaginary friend forever. In current parlance, I suppose that would be BIFF. Who do you think she talks to when she wakes up in the middle of the night?

Who do you talk to?

Feel free to talk to me. I am quite real now, as real as anyone who ever lived. I have always been a time traveler. How else could I be speaking to you in the twenty-first century? Now, thanks to you, I also travel across the earth, way beyond my extensive travels in the first century. I’ve gone to New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Mexico, Turkey, Canada , and all over the United States. Who knows where I might go next?

Because I am alive and well in the greatest of all nations, the Imagi-nation! Your imagination. And I am grateful beyond words. (Really after four volumes, haven’t I said enough? Though as you can see I am still nattering on.) Anyway, thank you from my heart!

Many people have asked when my story will be translated to film. I wish I knew the answer. From your lips to the deities’ ears is all I can say at the moment. BTW I am told the kindle versions of all four books are in the works. Eliz and I will let you know when they are available. We’ll tweet and post on Facebook. That sort of thing. (Neither of us understands linked in, though Eliz is linked; nor do we fathom google+)

People have also asked Eliz to write another book or books about my daughter and granddaughters. I will let her speak to you about what’s next for her. Enough from me. I will see you in your dreams or in your waking. Talk to me! Lo, I am with you...whenever you like. (Don’t want to steal my beloved’s best line.)

Elizabeth:

I am noticing that I am resistant to speaking as myself. I have given up on the idea of a memoir for now. I completed the writing of Red-Robed Priestess last December, and for a year I could not fathom what fiction might come next. I can’t live well or happily without inhabiting a fictional world. So at last a story has come. At this point I am simply listening to the voices of the characters, writing their back stories. I never say much more than that until a story has quickened and I am sure it will come to term.

Will I ever write a book or books about Sarah, Lithben and Gwen? I don’t know yet. A glimmering of an idea came the other day, and I will let that tiny spark live in the fertile dark for now. I only know it is not yet time to write about Maeve’s descendants. I need to let go, not of Maeve herself, but of that way of defining myself and my life. If I turn to Sarah, Lithben, and Gwen, I want it to be on fresh terms, on their terms, not because I miss Maeve.

I join Maeve in saying thank you to all of you who have given Maeve life by welcoming her into your lives. Thank you also for spreading the word about The Maeve Chronicles. May Maeve be your BIFF!

Getting #Married: an interview with Meredith Gould (@MeredithGould)

I am honored to be interviewing the SWGOTU (Supreme Word Goddess of the Universe), SMQ (social media queen), prolific author, Abbess of @Virtual_Abbey and newlywed Meredith Gould about her latest book Getting #Married: Using Social Media to Celebrate the Sacred.

Unlike thousands of her Twitter followers, I did not meet Meredith (@MeredithGould) through social media but via 20th century technology, email, when she wrote me about Maeve. I quickly became a subscriber to her thoughtful and witty blog More Meredith Gould. When I finally ventured into Twitterworld and Bloglandia, Meredith was welcoming and generous with practical help and advice.

Meredith and her husband The Reverend Canon Dan Webster shared their journey to the altar with friends and followers in several forms of social media culminating in the live streaming of their joyous wedding to which we were all invited. You better believe I was there, dabbing my eyes and joining others in sending heartfelt tweets that are now part of Dan and Meredith’s recorded history.

Hot off the press, Getting #Married is a thoughtful, informative guide for couples who might want to incorporate social media in both the preparation and celebration of their own weddings. Welcome, Meredith!

1) Sometimes social media strikes me more like parallel play, as when two toddlers play side-by- side but have limited interaction. You are actively involved in a number long-term, close-knit of communities. Can you tell us about your experience of building community and friendship through social media?

Building community and friendship is essentially the same online as in “real life” (IRL). It takes willingness, ability, and commitment to generate and then continue communication. In my case, I also bring a seemingly endless ability to multi-task and write short copy!

As a sociologist I was fascinated by the role social media could play in creating and sustaining community. I started out on Twitter by following church communications folks because The Word Made Fresh had just been published. But because I also create healthcare content, I got involved with the #hcsm (healthcare social media) and #hpm (hospice and palliative medicine) communities.

I can now say without (my usual) exaggeration that many of my dearest friends and most of my valued colleagues have come into my life via Twitter. LinkedIn is a close second. I use Facebook to stay in touch with high school friends. My favorite social media tool is Twitter, which I experience as an ongoing dinner party with smart, clever people. It’s also my go-to resource for news and information…and prayer.

2) One of the online communities I find most accessible is @Virtual_Abbey where Compline is prayed in tweets (140 characters). You have referred to this open, ecumenical community as “church beyond church-the-building.” Could you speak about the significance of this church and how relates to your wedding and weddings in general?

I believe @Virtual_Abbey demonstrates how the Body of Christ (aka, church) need not be limited to a physical space. A review of the RTs (re-tweets) on any given evening reveals attendance by people all over the world. Many of the “regulars” chat in between times of prayer and reach out to one another via back channels (e.g., direct messages, email) to request and receive support.

My experience with this community is, in large part, what prompted me to use social media to make our wedding more accessible. As I note in Getting #Married, web-based tools make it possible to restore the sacrament of marriage to its status as a public celebration.

As it turned out, most of our current prayer team attended our wedding IRL, with Virtual Abbey founder, Raima Larter, serving as a chalicist and our virtual Music Director, Rob Passow, serving as Cantor. Even more delightful? Most were meeting one another IRL for the first time and years of shared prayer made that happen seamlessly.

3) Your guide to available media goes beyond Twitter and Facebook to YouTube, various programs for sharing slides and photos, tools and websites to make planning more efficient. And you note that most these services are of low or no cost and you can do much your planning while wearing fluffy slippers and sipping tea! Do you have any special words of encouragement and comfort for those who are interested but (like me) technologically timid?

Get friendly with twelve year olds? Six year olds? I hope it’s of some consolation that I wasn’t always gung-ho about this stuff and slow to adopt computers. I had to get over my fear of irreparably breaking something. I was not keen on the ego-deflating experience of feeling stupid. Learning the difference between hardware and software helped, as did seeking help. 

I encourage the techno-timid to watch online tutorials, then read and follow instructions. If that feels overwhelming, then I recommend finding (or hiring) a tutor. Years ago, I was blessed to have a dear, tech-savvy friend talk me through setting up my blog. One of the first things she taught me was how to “un-do” what I feared were fatal bloopers. Very comforting.

Trite but true advice: Just do it, don’t worry about breaking anything, view these tools ways to support creativity. Don’t let fear get in the way of fun.

4) You note that although your vows were public, Holy Communion felt too intimate to live stream. With this explosion of social media in our culture, the distinctions between public and private space and interaction are being redefined and sometimes just plain lost. Could you tell us a little about your discernment process?

Relative to sacred and secular matters, my discernment process always involves asking, “Will this enhance my relationship with God or will this distract me from my relationship with God?”

Although we are called as a community to the table of the Lord, I’ve always experienced Holy Communion as an intensely personal and somewhat private encounter, even when I’m the one distributing Eucharist.

Fortunately, Dan and I agreed about maintaining a zone of personal privacy within the public sacrament of Communion. As a practical matter, we couldn’t imagine online guests wanting to watch onsite guests receive Communion. Even more to the point was the fact that Holy Matrimony is what guests – online and onsite – were invited to witness, so we wanted to zoom in on that. 

Thank you so much, Meredith, for sharing so generously with so many. Readers, even if you are not getting married, Getting #Married is an excellent guide to social media and community building.  Congratulations, Meredith and right on, write on!

Six Months of Sunrise: Joyous Feasts of Light

Six months ago come Christmas Day my husband and I moved from our house in the woods in the fold of a stream valley to High Valley. Because of the pond (affectionately known as Lake Almosta) there is much more sky, much more places from which to observes the comings and goings of great celestial bodies. It has become my practice to go outside and greet the sun every morning, veiled in clouds or not. It has been thrilling to track the sun’s journey to the southeastern sky and my own corresponding trek around the pond to catch the first light. 

Winter cold has not been a deterrent, and I have discovered that no matter how unpromising the dawn looks from inside, outside it is always an event. The birds agree, and I always look to see which ones are gathered in the bare top of the tallest spruce, which accommodates hawks, crows, and sparrows by turns.

 Many people see dawn because they have to commute. All three of my jobs are right here, so I get to see the sunrise only because I want to. Sometimes I think it matters, that greeting the sun is one of our tasks as humans. The practice has changed my life and gotten me through a major depression, which now seems to be lifting. When I can, I watch the sunset, too.

 If I ran for president (or perhaps ruler of the world) my platform would be simple. Everyone stop everything at sunrise and sunset. Just be still and remember where you are: riding through bright dark unfathomable immensity on a whirling, circling, beautiful bit of dust.

I close with some December poems in the form of tanka (5-7-5-7-7 syllables)
Wishing you all joyous feasts of light as the year dawns!

night
 outside my window
the intricacy of trees
by winter revealed
black sinuous branches bared
leaf-bereft, ablaze with stars

grey  

whatever weather
all mornings are beautiful
when you are outside
this one: grey, soft as my cat
warm wind swirling clouds and trees 

moon and sun

across the dance floor
bright dim dawn and evening skies
the two dancers gaze
moon and sun in earth’s dark wings
bathed in their love light I spin 

ice 

winter made a rough draft
a sketchy sheet of thin ice
erased by warm rain
now back to the blank wet pond
with a cold determined wind

triple sunrise

first clearing earth’s rim
then one cloud and another
thrice I greet the sun
each time the brightest of stars
a match struck to light the world