Embers

 I have been thinking about Jesus....In fact wondering about Jesus happens a lot with me these days as well. I feel love and warmth when I bring Him up in my heart. I feel comfort, truth, and  connection. I feel He is present in all that is good; all that is lovely in my life. I do not feel, however, like so many of my Christian friends feel about Him. All these years of reading scripture; of praying; of asking God to lead me in paths of truth have often lead me to crave the word and essence of Christ but not to see Him as the apex of truth or the only portal by which I can reach my God. That has never worked for me.

Once my brother and I sat at his kitchen table talking and he demonstrated his view of who he believed is Jesus....He said that God is the purest, most powerful force...in fact too pure for us to even conceive.  He is an unapproachable force trying to approach us. Haha....what a conundrum...He went on....taking a tissue he draped it down from one hand, about a foot above the table, showing that we could grasp the tissue, and that it could then be grasped on the other end by God.

"It is like the sun", says my smart brother, "To powerful; too hot to touch...." 

Jesus is that tissue, he suggested..... Jesus is that conduit.. allowing us to approach our unapproachable God......an apt comparison since my brother is an electrician, and terribly smart. He has this remarkably engineering-wired brain with a spark plug for a heart and a hunger for God like I have never known in another person. 

I'd like to argue that point with him a little, from the perspective of my currently broken heart.

Why the hell would a perfect being make us, then be so damned unapproachable? Reminds me of the stupid claw arm in the glass case full of stuffed animals. It looks like it should grab one up, but alas......

 Miranda Lambert has a softer view of the sun......

Dear Old Sun

Well, you melt the snow

And you grow the roses

And you dry the tears

And you freckle noses

Our little world

Revolves around

You coming up and going down

Maybe Jesus is just an ember....a glowing promise; a nudge of possibility. Better for cooking, warming toes, curing, comforting. A place where you can sit and feel safe in a circle of others; a campfire. Reachable, touchable...if you are of a mind to try. Maybe He was more about warming our backsides than blazing us up to heaven.  

                                                                                    

Embers invite us; they ask to be fed, stirred, whispered over with a breath, before they burst forth into a fire. as if to say....

"Stir me and see what you get"

I could imagine Jesus saying that.

I guess I don't like the idea of exclusive clubs....never liked the idea that Jesus was saying we had to join the "special group" and that others without a membership card would be locked out and denied God's LOVE.

I don't think Jesus is like that...

I don't think God is like that, 

And come to think of it,  I don't think love is like that.

I rather like the idea of Jesus trying to explain to us, as he drew circles in the dirt with a stick, eyes twinkling with mirth at his own joy of talking in riddles.....maybe like this:

I am a glowing,

vibrant,

chemically charged chunk of the sun....

stir me,

put your hands close and feel the warmth,

 cook with me,

 sit by me,

 and notice how I bring you solace.  

Now,  pass it along to your friend.                                                                            

  

Not a gate-keeper as much as a scientist....

Not a judge as much as a snug blanket.....

Not a sacrifice as much as a demonstration....

A sweet, warm chunk of a living God......

Just about the right size and temperature

 for a foolish person to cup in her hands......

And I do....

.

Grasshopper

     "Remember, you come into this world in the middle of the movie,

 and you leave in the middle,

 and so do the people you love.

 Love never dies and Spirit knows no loss." 

                                                                                     Louise Haye

Good Morning my Grasshopper,

As I read and write, a tiny grasshopper has found me. He is lime green, thin as a tiny piece of colored wire, bent into an angular jumping machine. He has a black racing stripe from head to thorax. He is no bigger than a large fly. 

He crawled from the wicker elephant table top onto my offered finger, then up and down each digit- slowly-my old lady knuckles as mountains and leathery skin as a runway. Across each finger and onto my daily devotional book of grief. He made his way all the way to the dog-eared cover page and used it to launch onto my journal, landing in the middle of my blue ink scribble about John 1:1:

In the beginning was the Word.....

I got still, offering only to push the page over a bit to let him jump-he did-then continued along the page, through words that were smeared with tears and coffee; the thoughts and feelings and horrifying recollections of loosing you, Ian. Coming near my thumb as I held the page still for him, he startled very slightly, then continued to explore my thumb with one long green antennae (the other being broken off). I could see his tiny head move a little like a praying mantis. I didn't know grasshoppers could do that.

Choosing my finger again, he began to make his way up my left arm all the way to my shoulder as I held still and made room for the moment we were having. I wanted him to go where he wanted to go. Then there was a bold leap....from my shoulder to my reading glasses....I don't know why.

Even though he was too close for me to focus, I could see his little form moving across the ridge of the glasses, pausing on my nose piece, perching as if he were my third eye. Out of my field of vision but almost a part of me you were so close. So close. Then a hop to the top of my head, little legs crawling through my hair and off my back. Launched and gone.

These are so many little encounters with these visitors. I see a living thing do things that make no sense. They are too close; they defy good bug behavior, and that seems to be the point of it, to get my attention. I feel you are here every time it happens,  moving the little thing closer to me.... Maybe it really is how you connect with me.  Of course I will never know if these moments are real or imagined;  whether your love for me can move those "spring-loaded" green legs to jump onto my face like that...my heart says YES every time and Paula's words ring in my ears:

"Try to feel him and open yourself up to him and he WILL send you a sign-an unmistakable sign. You may think it is a coincidence, but they are ANYTHING BUT a coincidence. He is very excited that I am telling you this right now."

I believe you do these things,

I believe you sent me the little green visitor today.

For every moment of your 23 years, 

You honored the smallest creatures in this  vast world. 

You were their ambassador, in fact.

If you can reach across this divide,

Even if just to give me some small comfort,  

I know it would be in this way.

I believe I came into this movie in the middle as did you. I am stuck in this world and you no longer are, but Ian...we are not of this world. Your love is the catalyst for all these delightful little encounters, such as my bit part in the grasshopper movie today. I also believe John was right (Ian is Gaelic for John, after all), in the beginning was the word...and that was the beginning of our movie, Ian- and I believe love never dies.

I love you, grasshopper boy.

Mom

Stopping Time

Stopping Time

Schneider

 (Change Your Mind)

"What's so funny is nobody's laughing at this change of heart you're having.

What's so funny is I'm filled up with thunder, but I can't seem to get out from under,

 all these stones you tied to my chest.

and what's so funny is the birds are singing, sun shining, 

and bells are ringing 

and I'm thinking,

 'what happened here?'

What's so funny is the way things go down.

 Like when a star dies it doesn't make a single sound.

 It's just gone, you can't find it when you look into the sky.

and I can't change your mind.

And I can't change your mind.

And I can't change your mind.

And I can't change your mind." 

Darling Son,

               

I stop time.

Turn it back entirely
I move the
Hands of the clock
Slowly backwards 
With the finger touch

Of my anguish.

Each moment 
Each memory 
A single frame 
In your life movie.

 I watch it
Over and over, Baby.

Seems these days I keep grabbing at the ribbon of time, gripping so hard to hold things still. 

Tis a strange cord 

That knits and holds all this mess together, 

This life of ours

That was.

A picture,
A story, a note,
A baseball hat,
A voice in my head,
The face of a girl you loved that still looks so sad when we talk together and remember your days. 

All these bind  time

For a minute.  I can still breath. 

Tomorrow I will be a day older, Hudson will be sitting up soon, Chris will turn 30;  Kenzie will have another baby. They will grow older and lines will dance around their eyes, but your eyes will stay young forever.

Girls you once loved will marry other boys. 

My dogs will eventually leave me and fly on to you

More people I love will come and go from my life and I cannot stop it.

You will always be 23. Your hands will be young and smooth, unmarked by time and wear.

 Age will not fade your youth or bend your back. 

How do I accept the burden of time passing? Most days I feel all this will never come to any good end; 

Maybe the ancients were right and the world is flat......

Most days I want to simply sail to the edge and tip over into nothing. 

Only the loves I still have on this sweet Earth make me want to turn back and come home to the truth of life, tough as it is.

And so it goes,

I am still here.

Time will not stay her course

Even for you and me, baby.

And I think of Leonard Cohen

And I wonder at the prickles of knowing that run up my neck

As his words tome......

"If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn,

I will bind you with love 

That is precious

 and green

 as a stem." 

                                                                                           Love, 

                                                                                                                Mom

Kings and Dirt

       

 I love dirt

        And dirt don't hurt,

        Only if there's stickers in it.

                                         

Ian Ray

5 years

I read this week that ancient people had a word for the living, breathing, sentient Earth, and her name is "Gaia". She feels, she evolves, she regenerates, she suffers and she speaks.  I have always known this about her. It soothes and grounds me to walk barefoot on her, to put my skin against hers; to remove the barriers that disconnect. 

You knew this too, Ian....didn't you?  You reveled in dirt and were happiest when you were elbow-deep in the stuff, because you KNEW that is where the magic things are. It was your kingdom and you the KING. Lift a rock, dig a few inches, and life found you.  

Found you it always did, in all its wriggling, scurrying, colorful, mysterious forms.....centipede, scorpion, grub.....fossil, rock, leaf....the living cells of our living Mother. You knew you couldn't expect them to find you, you had to look for them. You liked the smell of dirt, the patterns and shapes and colors of it. You would even taste it as a little boy.

When you were 7, and we had to dig a deep hole in our yard to bury sweet Bailey dog. When he was covered and prayers were said, you laid across the warm soil, arms stretched  in a little boy's embrace and cried into the arms of Gaia....cried and held her as she held you. Grief and longing spilled from you into her.  Each time you found a dead creature, or we lost a pet, your small man hands dug a hole tenderly gave her back to you.  My deep boy, I think you might know a little more her workings and her realm than many do. Her rhythms and ways came naturally and you recognized the patterns and the ways of her. Like your Grandma Kaufhold,  you found God in her. 

My young King of the dirt. Prince of lizards, grubs, and earth worms.   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

But it is not always neat and tidy being a King. You're not measured by goodness, kindness, or overall stellar behavior, it seems.  You were just a little more powerful, like 220 volts instead of 110? Kind of like Thor or Hera or the Hulk; pounding and "hulking" your way through this place.....I saw that in you....not a peaceable soul....in fact a thunderbolt of a person.

Knocking over chairs

Offending

Affecting

Capturing hearts

Demanding attention.....

Rescuing maidens

Loving Dogs

Oh....loving those dogs

But never quite fitting in; never quite getting this deal of living with people who insist on wearing shoes. Grabbing up experiences, bossing people around (after all,  you ARE the King for Christ sake, people are supposed to obey...) Acting and living beyond the world's rules. No interest in fitting in (except a deep desire to be loved for who you are)

Middle finger to the the minions, the ones asleep.

Born to rule, an advanced soul, a King.....from the royalty of dirt......Tossed or placed, or choosing to come down here and be a bull in a china closet.  Born to stand apart, how incredibly frustrating and remarkably made you are, Biggun.

"El Rey" indeed. Named Ian which is Scots-Irish for "John", like the two eccentrics in the Bible, one standing apart, eating locus and honey and heralding the coming of Christ until his head gets lopped off...and the other a mystic, a lover of light and a gentle companion.... "My beloved one" of Christ.

I don't know why you were sent here....was it an experiment? You lived among people and did find your Earth family.

They "got" you and knew you to be unique. They describe you to me as different and irreplaceable.....they miss you Biggun.... yet they all say how frustrating, infuriating, and impossible you could be. The few people who got you are so dear to me. 

We remember your  kingly ways, 

and your feet of clay. 

We remember your royal ego and temper, too. 

You could not suffer fools.

Maybe it wasn't ego after all, but the 220-volted spirit that Kings seem to have. We saw that, our little tribe of Gaia.  When I sink my hands into to deep, rich, life-giving body of the Mother, I feel you there. 

Stillness

God's voice has softened below even a whisper, to a tiny inaudible hum. I wonder Why god doesn't speak louder during dark times? Why does He become so still? He is like that coldest moment, just before dawn when I have been sleeping in a tent or on the bow of a boat with nothing between me and the world but a frosted breath and a blanket, the moment every creature of the wild knows each day. That coldest moment, do you know it?


Just a vague sense of light about to come, easily mistakable as the morning, but it is not. Everything at full stop and it is the last moments of deepest sleep for the daytime creatures: the birds, the bugs, deer, rabbits, humans. Even the wind has ceased. You can hear your own heart and breath but nothing else. So cold and still...


But not like death.


No, death is not what I feel in this cold place, I feel that hush just before an inhale when the lungs are empty and I have to want to draw air back in-but just not yet. Every breath is a choice, I empty my lungs and decide whether I want to have another go at it. It is that pause. That is what God is like right now. Full stop...and only memory tells me that there is still life, waiting for God to enlist another inhale from my body; for the sun to rise and the world to open up crusty eyes and want to look for breakfast.










I don't know much anymore. My faith and understanding of life has been rattled so badly I don't know where I will land, but I am sure of this. I don't think God is mean. God is love, or something very near it....Maybe God can only be fueled by Love. Maybe we are the respiratory system of a living God. He may require us as we require Him?

In my current still, chilly twilight I can still sense a soft of love of some sort still there-I feel it in the love I have for Chris, Kenzie and Hudson. He is starting to smile and coo....Oh Lord, that stirs in me the desire to breath again, just for a moment.I feel it in Mariana's soft tears, texts from Jenny and Marion, the colored ribbons you send me almost daily in a sunset, moth, or eerie cry of a hawk.

And in the memories of how well you and I loved each other. No one who loved as well as you could be anywhere but bathed in love, and I believe you are. As my rainbow interpretation told me...you are "Luminous awareness and Bliss", and that is the gift you have always given your Momma.

Coots

Good Morning Sweet Son,

This morning at Dorothy's I woke up happy- read for a long time about the history of the exploration of the Devil's river and I felt a deep urge to kayak. For the first time since you left  I felt a desire for something. I could almost imagine life again, maybe bigger and more bold, like my grief for you is making me want to jump off a cliff (figuratively speaking) and fly. Am I too old to live large? Is this a flash-in-the-pan kind of feeling  like has happened to me before?

I went outside with our dogs and binocs  to watch the dawn on the lake, and I sat at the water's edge and coots were about....they were 200 yards away in the cat tail rushes, feeding and moving about on the glass-still water. A singular coot began to move toward where I sat in a very deliberate way, straight at me.


 I mean, straight at me at a rapid clip, making a wake, if you can imagine it.

 He moved to within 40 feet of me and hesitated, came closer, then waited as a friend joined him, and they both came in to within 20 feet. Even with our two dogs pacing the bank, these wild birds just keep coming closer. Coots do not do this, they are NOT ducks, begging for a cracker. I raised my arms to the heavens, opened my heart and welcomed the notion that it was, again, YOU.

I have been told you are always around me. Sometimes I feel you-as I did the moment the coot came towards me. I smiled, hesitated and then welcomed the moment and it felt good. I have been told that these thing will happen-they are NOT accident, in fact they are "anything but" accident. My heart welcomes and embraces them but my mind resists. I have also been told you are excited  to communicate with me in this way. Well, ok.

Now, logically I think there must be science and some logic involved. So you are now "luminous awareness and bliss", pure love, pure energy devoid of any human negatives. You can move here and there-not confined to our laws of physics. God, how beautiful that must feel to someone who yearned for freedom from limits as much as you did? I am wondering about my many Ian occurrences..spectacular sunsets and sunrises? Animals that move close to me? electric  anomalies? Wind bursts?

If you move freely, maybe you can influence an animal's behavior in subtle ways. Buzzards already kettling  could be "shooed" closer to where I ran the other morning, like a feather you can blow and make it float a bit higher? That coot had no reason to approach me at all-none-did you murmur into his little bird brain and make him more curious of me? Could you still his fear of my dogs and urge him closer? Can you push a cloud?

Does your love for me remain?

Does it act as a force of energy that you can wield?

Does my love draw you in when I get quiet and listen or feel you?

Is this what remains as a our only bridge?


I can never touch you as my grief keeps telling me, day by day, minute by minute, second buy second. It obscures my journey to understand and keep my mind open to the bridge that you and I can still have. I feel this morning that I am trying to learn to suspend my longing for you...the bitter and constant MISSING YOU so that I can touch you in this new way.

Thank you for trying to pull me into this new world of loving without physically touching. I am not very good at it yet., but I am going to try, Ian.

You know, since the moment I first became your Momma, you have been a special challenge. You demanded more patience, more energy, more understanding, more open-mindedness than I had ever needed before. You and I had kinship and I was your champion and and touch-stone. I feel bad for many things, but NOT for loving you so damned much, because maybe our fierce love for each other was the the training for the time that is now before us.

Love,
Momma

Twilight

Good Morning Bright One,

Thank you for the lovely sunsets lately (I almost said SONSETS, haha); yesterday's popcorn cloud sunrise, the random doe with a red collar, kettling turkey vultures, and daily serenading of our red shouldered hawks that have taken post around the house.Thank you for sending Mariana sunsets too, and for teasing Eugene with random windshield wiper salutes and electronic door tricks. Thank you most especially for our sweet Michaela, the best gift you ever gave me.




Thank you for speaking through my wind chimes and for the squirrel posing on the head of my gargoyle.

Tiny, random moments when I feel you, baby. It is not enough (are you surprised). I want more and I am going to keep asking for more, but thank you anyway.

I read a little in my bible this morning for the first time since you left, and stumbled across one of my favorite verse from Psalms 34:18:

"When someone is hurting or brokenhearted, the Eternal moves in and revives her of her pain."

This, then reminded me of another favorite line I need to track down:

"Heart-shattered lives ready for love don't for one moment escape God's attention."

I found that one in a tiny devotional given to me after the divorce when you were 5 years old. Seed planted, it made me reach to God, take you guys to church, and latch onto God, like a baby at the breast. Jan Booth says you were a little scholar in sunday school (who knew?) and that you loved to sing hymns and color maps of the Holy land. You were her favorite, and she gave you a pocket cross that I recently found in a tiny raku goblet made by your Aunt Jeanne that I kept my Holy oil in so that I could anoint you in your sleep. The yarn of these connections keep winding through my mind like colored ribbons. Yes, colored ribbons indeed, that daily lead me out of the darkness of each long day.






What's up with God? His voice has softened below even a whisper, to a tiny, almost inaudible hum. I wonder why God doesn't speak louder during dark times? Why does He become so still? He is like that coldest moment, just before dawn; you know it, right? Just a vague sense of light, easily mistakable as the moon. Everything has stopped and is in the last moments of deepest sleep- bugs, birds, deer, rabbits, humans and even the wind do not move. You can hear your own heart beating and your breath. So cold, and still, but not lifeless.

Death is not what I feel then. I feel that hush just before an inhale when the lungs are empty and I have to really want to bring some air into them again....but not just yet. There is a pause. God is quiet too in the winding down of the moment. Everything appears at "FULL STOP" and only memory and hope tells me that there is still life.

It is where I am now, in the twilight waiting for God to make me inhale again, for the sun to rise, and the world and all creatures in it to open up crusty eyes and look for breakfast.

I don't know much anymore. My faith and understandings of life have been shaken and rattled so fiercely that don't know up from down.I am only sure of this and I cannot even tell you why.





































God is not mean.

God is love, or something very near it.

Maybe God is fueled by love?

So in my current chilly twilight I do sense a soft love of some sort still there-I feel it in the love I have for Chris, Kenzie and Hudson, my darling little man. He is just about to start smiling and cooing...proof enough that life is not ending. Oh Lord, thank you. I feel it in Mariana's tears, worried texts from Jenny Pearson and Marion, the post card you send me at sunset that send me charging out of my house and into my neighbor's yard for a look, and the memories of our love.


You and I loved each other well.No one who loved as well as you could be anywhere but bathed in love. I believe you are. If we have a collective unconscious; if everything we have seen and felt and experienced becomes a tapestry that cloaks us and prepares us for days ahead, then I think you here in full color. 

Love,

Your Momma