Slightly Haunted

It was 3:20 a.m. I had been reading and had fallen back into a deep sleep. In my dream, there were old people with haunted eyes and limited faculties walking around. Geez, I thought, I hope this isn't Death!

Then I became aware that my bed was haunted. It was vibrating and the blankets were being riffled. Horrified, I was trying to tell my sister in my dream what was happening, but no words would come out. Both horror and haunting intensified. There was a lot of "whuffing" going on, and movement. The blankets took sail a foot above me. like Aladdin's carpet.

Aaaaaaagh!

I jolted awake to find Jasmine jumping against the side of my bed and pawing at the blankets, to tell me she wanted Out. Immediately. Pup was pacing up and down the hall, whuffing importantly.

Argh! Stumbling half-asleep along the side of the road in the dark, being dragged by one, then the other dog, I wasn't sure what felt worse, dream or waking. :)

Almost Christmas

[Lukey and Jasmine in the snow. Look at Jasmine's eyes~she is thinking Lukey got
something to eat and she didn't. No fair! My foody girl, who has been on a diet forever.]

In childhood,
it felt like Christmas.
Crunching across
the frozen snow,
you could almost see
the Star of Bethlehem
in the black winter sky.
You could feel the cows
waiting in their stalls.
The manger seemed
very near.
The air was
so cold
it caught
in your nostrils
and froze there,
as you walked
to Church
in the dark
early mornings
before school.
You sang hymns.
You felt the magic
as the days
counted down
even though the reality
defied the expectation.

Now you are grown up,
past sixty,
an age
you never thought
you'd see,
and you put up
a small tree.
You enjoy the lights.
You buy the gifts
but it doesn't
feel the same.
There is no snow,
for one thing.
It is as mild as autumn out,
as if last week's
snowfall
was a fleeting dream,
and it seems like
a huge buying frenzy
by and for people
who already have
too much,
while you think
of people
dying in the Sudan
and how they would view
this spectacle,
these glittery store aisles
jammed with people
frantically clutching Things,
heaping their baskets
to obscene heights
with plastic junk.
How would they compute
this gigantic imbalance,
TV commercials extolling
dvd players and
laptops for children
while their own lap tops
beg only a bowl of rice
to make them full?

What stays the same:
the pleasure of giving,
not receiving.
The gathering of the clan,
the food, the laughter,
especially the laughter,
and the shy, pleased eyes
of the children,
new puppies to love.

This is your life now,
and so you live it,
peaceful evenings
in the glow of
the tree lights,
peaceful mornings
when the world
feels like
it is waiting
for something
dimly remembered
that has
so long
been lost.
Could it be
wonder?

There is a new generation,
now,
to make a Christmas for.
For them,
there is magic,
and anticipation.
So you don't tell them
that it is different, now,
for you.
You'd rather be
tending AIDS babies
in Africa,
or feeding street people
in a shelter
for the homeless.
And you decide:
Next year!
that's what you'll do.
All year long
you'll save
warm gloves
and socks
and hats and
woolly scarves.
Next year
you'll walk
the streets
to give your gifts.

Then maybe
Christmas
will feel
like Christmas
once again.

A long highway runs
between those
long ago
Christmases
and this one.
It all passed by
so fast,
yet it feels like
a hundred years;
each one
of those
Christmases,
unknowingly,
a journey,
not a destination.

Why We Are Here

[image from louisbeam.com]

In 1999, some of my friends were at the Battle in Seattle, protesting the World Trade Organization gathering of leaders set in the old ways of doing business at the expense of the planet and its poor. I was glued to the tv watching with horror as peaceful protestors came up against Swat teams in full riot gear. I did not approve the small number of protestors whose frustration turned to breaking windows and open defiance. I believe in peaceful protest. However, I could feel their frustration and fear and anger at being treated so harshly,  like criminals, when they were making a statement on behalf of the earth and its impoverished.

The other day I found this statement among my papers and it took me back to those days, when the world turned down a path of globalization in the interests of profit, at the expense of all of the rest of us.

Why We Are Here
written for the WTO Ministerial Summit in Seattle in 1999
by David Brower
It can be found, with other writings, at http://www.ecologyofthespirit.com/

Why We Are Here:
Because the world
we had imagined,
the one
we had always
counted on,
is disappearing.
Because the sun
has become cancerous
and the planet
is getting hotter.
Because children
are starving
in the shadows
of yachts and economic summits.
Because there are already
too many planes in the sky.

This is a manufactured world
you have come here
to codify and expedite.
We have come to tell you
there is something else
we want to buy.

What we want
money no longer
recognizes
like the vitality of nature,
the integrity of work.
We don't want
cheaper wood,
we want living trees.
We don't want
engineered fruit,
we want to see and smell
the food growing
in our neighbourhoods.

We are here because
a voice inside us,
a memory in our blood,
tells us
you are not just
a trade body,
you are the blind tip
of a dark wave
which has forgotten
its source.
We are here
to defend and honour
what is real, natural, human
and basic
against this rising tide
of greed.

We are here
by the insistence
of spirit
and by the authority
of nature.
If you doubt for one minute
the power of truth
or the primacy of nature
try not breathing
for that length of time.

Now you know the pressure
of our desire.
We are not here to tinker
with your laws.
We are here to change you
from the inside out.
This is not
a political protest.
It is an uprising
of the soul.

[Sadly, it is still business as usual at the ministerial summits
and we have made zero progress. SBS]

A Word from the Dalai Lama

[image from guardian.co.uk]

If you have

fifteen diamond rings,

still only

ten fingers.

                                            

A Message from Little Grandmother

This video of beautiful earth and wildlife images brought me to tears this morning, as Keisha Crowther, "Little Grandmother", shares her message of love and hope for Mother Earth, images of its wild creatures flying and moving about behind her. It is so beautiful and I want to share it so badly that I am about to enter the terrifying terrain of How to Post a Video on my site:)

Here goes......Woo-hoo, I think I did it - but it is huge. No matter! Enjoy!

A Gift For You

[image from fromdamascustoemmaus.com]

[This is my fictionalized account of an event that really happened. I read about it somewhere, in a magazine where a mother had written a letter to the editor, and I decided to turn it into a story.]

She was sitting, at two p.m. on that Thursday afternoon, in the high-backed dusty blue armchair, looking out the picture window at the March rain lashing down. The trees were whipping back and forth, the sound of the gale battering against the roof. Branches were crashing to the ground. The lawn was littered with short lengths of pine and fir.

She was a small woman,  hunched dismally in rumpled pajamas she had not changed for days. Her short hair, which she had always kept curled neatly, was straight and lank, sticking out at odd angles, from tossing and turning in bed all night. She felt utterly bleak and hopeless, without the strength or motivation to even shower. Her eyes and nose were red and swollen. She could not stop crying, sniffling endlessly, the tears running down her face in tandem with the raindrops pouring in rivulets down the windowpane. Wadded up tissues were heaped on the end table, beside the Kleenex box proferring fresh replacements. Since her sixteen year old son Luke's death from a brain tumor six months ago, the light had gone out of the world. There wasn't any point, really, in getting up in the morning, in dressing, in going through all the old routines which had had purpose when she was joyously watching her son growing, living his life. And then, her purpose had been to see him through his illness and, unbelievably, his death.  Without him, the house - and her life - was too empty to be borne. At first she had waited, expecting at some point her grief would lessen, things would improve. But it hadn't gotten any better. She didn't see how it ever could.

Luke had been a tall, lanky, laughing boy with messy blonde hair, smiling blue eyes, all knees and elbows, flushed cheeks  and happy grins, until he got sick. When he burst in the door after school with his friends, the house had come alive with rough, shoving, tumbling boys on colt-like legs, scooping up great handfuls of cookies on their way downstairs to the family room.

Now the house was lifeless; it was empty space. Her heart, too, felt dead inside her body. There was no point, there was no point in continuing to wake up each morning. She had been here to be Luke's mother, and Luke was gone.

She turned her eyes from the window and the storm, absently shaking ther pill bottle in her left hand. She assessed its contents. It was two-thirds full. There should be enough pills to do the job. She just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up, to be out of the pain of this existence and with her son, wherever he was.

She stood up with purpose and moved to the kitchen. Standing at the sink, she drew a tall glass of cold water, setting it on the counter while she removed the lid from the pill bottle.

Suddenly the bottle flew from her hand as if it had been slapped out, the pills scattering all over the floor.

Distinctly, she felt her son's presence, she heard his voice inside her head. It was chiding, admonishing, yet full of love. "Mom, no! It's not your time. You have to keep on. And, Mom. My life was meant as a gift for you."

Then he was gone.

She stood in shock, trying to process what had just happened. She had been drawing the water, readying the pills. She had not dropped the bottle, it had been slapped out of her hand. The voice came from within her. Not her thoughts, his voice inside her head, as clearly as if he stood beside her. Strong, explaining with conviction, trying to make her understand. So Luke was still around, he was nearby, still concerned about her. He must have been worrying about her these past months, must have seen the depth of her suffering, the times she couldn't get out of bed, the turning away from life, from people, reclusive in her misery. It must have been hard on him.

"My life was meant as a gift for you, a gift for you....."

A gift. A gift given, then taken away. That pain was unbearable. But......a gift nevertheless. To have never had sixteen years with Luke at all? A small shift occurred inside her, a small window of understanding beginning to open.

She had been focussing on his death, his absence, rather than celebrating the incredible blessing his sixteen years had been in her life. And now she knew that, while he was no longer physically present, still his spirit was near, close enough that she could talk to him. This gave her great comfort and, finally, hope.

Slowly, she knelt down and began to gather the pills. She returned them to the bottle, decisively snapped the lid back on and threw it in the garbage.

"Thank you, Luke," she murmured. "I'm sorry. I'll.....I'll do better now."

L'il Timbit

Great-grandson Damian, all geared up. He'll soon be joining

the Timbits hockey team. Only in Canada, eh?

So cute!