Snowdrops

A little snow last night but the snowdrops have been up for weeks. Beauty everywhere if you look...

Abandon All Hope of Fruition

I have hundreds of pictures of my garden in most of its stages of bloom. I have documented the tender shoots of early spring when snowdrops bow their graceful white heads and hollyhock leaves push up through the earth and debris of winter. I have photos of crocus and lilac blossoms, bleeding hearts and well, all of the plants in their full color and beauty. However, that is only part of my garden's story. Until this morning when I decided to drag my camera into the garden to document the hydrangea finally dropping its leaves, the last few monkshood faded blossoms and the few russet leave left on the red maple, I've had no photos of my garden in late Autumn.

As winter is over a month away and the sun shines brightly through newly bare trees, I yearn for spring and summer. I lament the faded colors, lack of flowers; I look for summer where it cannot be. This is at once a metaphor for how I live all of life and how I resist the cooler seasons.

A week or so ago, I found myself in a similar situation in several relationships in my life with a particularly telling twist. There are times when others let you down and you are dissatisfied with them. Other times, a friend or friends let you know in no uncertain terms that you've let them down. However, in this particular moment, I was rich in dissatisfactions moving in both directions! I was in a delicious state of dis-ease and mindfulness. It was ridiculous and real and inevitable. I remembered the days of my youth when I was sure that I would respond in loving, sensitive ways to those I held dear when they were most in need. I reviewed many of those moments; deaths, illnesses, divorces, crises... So many opportunities and so few moments when I responded as I would have imagined. Really. How can it be so hard? My group of friends and I had put a good amount of space between ourselves and our difficult families and created our own 'chosen family.' We created rituals and traditions, laughed, feasted, vacationed and yet... when the shit hit the fan, we often let each other down. OK, I let others down. Sometimes they let me down. Not always but so much more often than any of us would ever have imagined.

In this balance of dissatisfaction with others, and others' dissatisfaction with me, it dawned on me, again and as if for the first time 'we are all doing our best.' Simple but radical. It is not lack of heart or good intention that causes these failures; it is simply the human condition. In life's most difficult moments, we are afraid, distracted, hurt, and unsure. It is not personal and while we are still alive, there are limitless opportunities to try again and again and again.

So, I whipped off a note to a friend whom I've been less than present for. I let go of the frustration I'd been holding tightly in my fist. I forgave myself and others as much as I could and I took a few deep breaths. This week, I've felt a little freer and I've been able to reach out to a few loved ones in need. Not as many as I should probably, but many more than I usually do. I'm doing what I can knowing that it won't be enough. Knowing that what I hope to communicate may not be received in the way I intended.

In the garden sparrows have been nibbling on grass seed (I don't weed much) and sitting on the Buddha's shoulders. The sun is bright through those naked branches. Holly berries have turned red and the bird feeders are busy. Winter is coming. It will be cold and my body will ache more. There will be beauty and darkness. Candles, if I light them, will warm and brighten my evenings. There is nothing I can do about it but if I let go of the resistance, I may find treasures there. And the spring will come. It is inevitable.

Joni Mitchell-Urge for Going

... I'd like to call back summertime and have her stay for just another month or so. But she's got the urge for going and I guess she'll have to go...

This weekend summer decided to turn around and stay for a while longer. I am grateful and so are the flowers in my garden. The dahlias and nasturtium are in full lusty bloom while the monkshood are still waiting cooler weather. The warriors of winter will be here soon enough but for now, an extended taste of summer.

Heaven on Earth

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is this Sunday. I remember that day like it was yesterday. A perfect September morning. Blue skies, dry air, and the news as I drove into work. One of our colleagues worked with a five year old girl who filled the office with giggles as the rest of us huddled around a radio, tried to get the ancient television to work, jaws slightly ajar and heads shaking in disbelief as the morning's events unfolded. I have that same slack jawed, head shaking reaction today when I hear stories about victims and survivors of that terrible day.

Sitting on my patio this morning just as light trickled into the sky, I listened to the rush of water in our usually quiet brook and thought of folks in Vermont, flooded; land and homes in Texas, on fire; folks in the Middle East, in turmoil and war. The cliche 'you just never know' takes on meaning in light of life's specifics. A friend's cancer diagnosis, the car accident on the corner because there was no power to the stop lights. What can we do, we who have so little power to prevent these tragedies?

I think what we can and must do is to recognize all the ways of heaven on earth. Not that distant, ethereal heaven of Sunday school, though if it exists, I suspect they are intimately related. I mean all the ways that this earth is our heaven. A spouse warm and peaceful still in bed, breathing that sweet deep breath of sleep. The smell of our old dog as he wags his tail in morning greeting. The crickets still chirping at dawn. The flattened jungle of my front yard garden, still fragrant and full of color despite the hurricane and recent flooding rains. The hummingbird guarding his feeder through the storm... (Can you see him on the perch?) These are my heaven right here in my unearned but so appreciated piece of earth. I don't know if it will transform the world, but it will transform the pain of all of those 'you never know' tragedies that we in fact know will come.

Pas de croix, pas de couronne - No crown without the cross

While gathered with friends a few years ago, conversation turned to a discussion about the closing of a local photo processing facility. The group lamented about losing a local business but one remarked that it was better for the workers. Her logic went something like this; 'those workers are harming their own health by working there and have made a bad choice by working with all those chemicals.' I fumed. We had all entrusted our treasured memories to the hands of those workers. We had all benefited from the labor performed in what probably was not the healthiest of environments. None of us had decided to take fewer photos to protect the health of the workers or of the earth for that matter. I noted such to my friends. People choose jobs because of location, pay, their skills, or lack of skills, availability of transportation and often out of family loyalty and tradition. In this area, people still speak proudly of their work in the Velvet Mill or making guitars for Guild. Our houses are populated with luxuries and necessities created by the hands of people we will never meet. I told the group that I was from a family of farmers and mill workers. "Mill workers?" came back the group exclamation. Yes. Mill workers and damn proud of it. So to celebrate my heritage of Franco-American farmers and mill workers, a little history thanks to William Moran's book The Belles of New England.   

"The French Canadians who migrated to New England came mostly from rural Quebec. They answered the call of the textile mills that needed new workers, first in the mid-nineteenth century and through the decades until the massive mill closings in the 1950s. People in the Richelieu Valley migrated to the mills of Woonsocket, and it became the most Franco-American city in America. 
Between 1860 and 1900 about six hundred thousand people, one-quarter of Quebec's population, migrated to New England and accounted for 10 percent of the population in the six states. So many left the village of St. Hilaire that the local baker closed his shop, followed his neighbors to Lowell, and opened a new bakery. 

The mill managers welcomed the child workers.  "There is such a thing as too much education for working people sometimes," said Thomas Livermore, agent at the Amoskeag Milles.  "I have seen cases where young people were spoiled for labor by being educated to a little too much refinement."  The Fall River school board agreed.  "An exclusively bookish education," the board said, "has created in the minds of many of the [mill children] a radically wrong attitude toward life which would make the child look upon working at cotton manufacturing" as something to avoid.

Revered parish priests were the sturdiest guides leading the Franco-Americans through the pitfalls of American life... They were spiritual advisers, they were symbols of stability in times of great social adjustment and they were builders. They built schools, hospitals, colleges and universities, homes for unwed mothers, and orphanages at a time when young parents often died of lung diseases associated with mill work.

The priests taught the people that hard work was their destiny, that they were born to suffer in this life, but that they should not blames society for their condition.

The Irish-American bishops and priests who dominated the Catholic church in New England preached that immigrants must become part of society by speaking English and studying American history... In Rhode Island there was trouble when Bishop William Hickey launched a fundraiser drive in 1922 to build a bilingual high school in Woonsocket. Franco-Americans protested because they feared the dilution of their native language; they boycotted the drive. The bishop imposed the most severe punishment possible for a devout Catholic; he excommunicated sixty-two leaders of the uprising. He also suspended Frano-American priests who supported the boycott. The standoff ended only when the protesters gave in to the bishop and formally repented. 

Conditions in the mills spurred campaigns to unionize the workforce.  This created pressures for Franco-Americans who traditionally did not like unions, especially unions led by radical agitators from Europe.  When union leaders called for work stoppages, coworkers demanded that the Franc ro-Americans join in the protests, but their priests and community leaders told them that strikes were wrong.... 

In Woonsocket, Rhode Island, there was a notable exception to the generalization that Franco-Americans were passive in their dealings with management.  During the Great Depression of the 1930s French-speaking weavers from Belgium founded teh Independent Textile Workers, which affiliated with the national Congre3ss of Industrial Organizations, the CIO.  The goal was to enlist all the mill workers in the city, unskilled laborers as well as accomplished craftsmen into one big union.  The concept had rarely been accepted in the textile industry.  Well-paid skilled workers could not often be persuaded that they had common cause with those who earned the lowest wages.  But Woonsocket became a symbol of labor unity.  Even workers not associated with the mills joined the union, including barbers, electricians, retail clerks, and public employees.  Membership grew to eighteen thousand in the small city."

from The Belles of New England by William Moran


I am so proud of my Woonsocket ancestors!  May we continue to be proud to work hard. And may our work lay the foundation for spiritual, economic and intellectual freedom for all.

Valley of Tears

I've been having fun exploring you tube videos lately. Here is a discovery this morning. Enjoy!

Abundance

"Like the rest of the natural world, human beings go through seasons. At one point, we are in the full bloom of summer, harvesting, committed, in abundance. Then, naturally, there is an autumnal time of falling away, disillusionment, stagnation, a shedding of what has been used up. Then must come the fallowness and dormancy of winter, death, rest. Eventually, there is a great melting into muck and mud, which, if one can persevere, opens naturally into an abundant yellow-green time, when everything is possible and horizons open. from "I will not lead an unlived life" by Dawna Markova