Tag Archives: Thomas Merton

January 28, 2015 · 8:45 pm

Birdsong

trumpeter_swan

Sometimes it is all you can do to keep your head above water. When this happens, I know to take a long walk in the woods. Or, since moving to the country, hang around home and clear brush and fallen branches. And then there’s another tactic: get away.

Even if where you live is off the coast of Northern Washington, over the border with Canada in the outer reaches of an archipelago of islands in the Salish Sea, one may still feel the need to get away.

So my friend and I volunteered to count swans on Shaw Island last weekend for the Washington Department of Fish and Game, under the umbrella of Preservation Trust. Shaw is but a short ferry ride from San Juan Island, but in its way, worlds away.

You have to remember that an island is always a place apart.

My friend and her husband have been living in a trailer on site while building a custom home. This makes our remodel look like a walk in the park—although we did live on a boat for a few months. Boat, trailer, much the same. Small.

On a moored boat one may have to fend off otter. Into a trailer, mice will creep. And as much as she hates to do it, my friend sets mouse traps. When she catches one she puts on gloves, picks it up by its tail, walks down to the edge of Egg Lake and places the little mouse on a stump over the water. An offering to the eagles.

We live on a land of waters, and where there is water there will be birds. Salt water birds stay all winter, like us. And like us, they are easier to track.

But on this morning we were looking to report on the migratory pattern of swan upon Shaw Island. Dressed in outdoor gear, bearing binoculars, notebook and pen, we left in the dark to catch the first morning ferry. The irony was that at sunrise my friend’s lake, Egg Lake, would be full of swan. Trumpeter swan. But others would be responsible for the count on San Juan Island that morning. We were off to Shaw Island.

Our jeep drove down every open road on island—all 7.7 sq. m.–through heavily wooded forests searching for ponds, coves, inlets, anywhere swan might be found. Light green lichen dangled from branches like chandeliers. Out my side window I became mesmerized with the pattern of fences. Split-rail fences in every state of standing and collapsing, covered in emerald green moss.

We stopped in all the public places on Shaw—all three—to inquire. The grocery store was closed. A librarian opened the library for us. The postmaster inquired of his customers, and no, no one had seen swan on island for perhaps a year.

With no swan to report to the Department of Fish and Game and a couple hours before the next ferry, we turned our jeep into Our Lady of the Rock, a Benedictine Monastery for women. Here traditional habit-dressed, Gregorian-chanting cloistered nuns are “living out the liturgy through prayer, praise and contemplation” upon 300 acres of forest and farmland.

We didn’t see any nuns either.

Final Count

swans: 0

nuns: none

But we introduced ourselves to the Cotswols Sheep, Highland Cattle, Ilamas and alpacas, poultry and Jersey dairy cows. Said a prayer in the chapel and purchased infused vinegars. Got home and wished we had purchased herbs, mustard, and teas, as well as their famed “Monastery Cheese.”

I’ll be back, perhaps as a guest.

 

“This is my life and I don’t pretend to understand it.” Thomas Merton from his journals in solitary hermitage

 

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January 29, 2014 · 8:50 pm

Between Acts

Everest Range

So I was reading from Thomas Merton’s journals this week and came upon this: “It is really illogical that I should get temptations to run off to another monastery and to another Order of monks.” Oh my God, was he this way too? Restless and wondering whether life would be better in that monastery over there instead? I nearly fell out of my chair. For here I go again, looking to reinvent my life.

For years, change was almost scripted for us. Due to job transfers and job changes our family hopped around, West Coast, East Coast, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest. That which moved us also settled us in some pretty spectacular places. And I indulged in a nearly promiscuous love affair with houses and starting over.

Today we are more settled having been in this home, and in this city, longer than any other. But all our cards are in the air as my husband has left his position of fifteen years. And where did he go, the hardest working man I had ever known? He went trekking in the Himalayas….

Always believe it when you hear that climbing the Himalayas is life-changing.

Whatever Paul does next has to be entirely new and challenging. He needs mountains. So we’re giving our imaginations free reign and looking at everything, from other offers, to consulting, to living abroad—it’s now or never, he says—to living in a high-rise downtown, to moving to the San Juan Islands and living near the boat. In Panama this might be called “living off the grid.” I’m not suggesting anything like that, but definitely taking stress down a few notches. I hate to say it, but we could grow old there.

I am learning to shop in my own closet. Whatever path we chose, we have too much stuff. How simple it would have been for Thomas Merton!

I’m happy for Paul to have this time off, and treasure the time together. Long walks pondering what to do with the rest of our lives…. Don’t know what we’ll do, but change is in the wind. My folks are alive and well and would like us to come east. Our daughters live in San Francisco.

We are betwixt and between and maybe, just maybe, entirely free.

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January 9, 2014 · 8:55 pm

Saddle Up

H Pic-1

Forget twelve-step programs, it’s three-steps for me just to get out of bed and “take on the day.” Let me explain.

Step 1. Morning Pages. I’ve been faithfully practicing this since I started, say fifteen years ago. The program as taught by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way is a spiritual life-saver. Can’t recommend it enough.

Step 2. Simple Abundance, by Sarah Ban Breathnach. Daily meditations and the keeping of a gratitude journal start each day off on the right foot (i.e. attitude).

Step 3. A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals. This is a new one for me. I’ve added these gems from his journals because, like Anne LaMott, I find Thomas Merton “an incredible source of light and comfort and humor.” And although neither Anne nor I are particularly Catholic, I’m sure that she, like me, is pleased as punch with Pope Francis. And so on January 1, 2014 I added Thomas Merton’s meditations as the third step in getting out of bed, and haven’t missed a day yet.

When so many New Year’s Resolutions go down the drain, maybe we have been calling them by the wrong name. What if we thought instead of having aspirations? Let’s look for something desired, rather than the medicinal taste “resolution” leaves in our mouths. I mean, who even uses that word anymore? And we’ve all been around enough to know that, year after year, a resolution is never really resolved. Cynicism becomes us.

What if, instead, we were to be gentle with ourselves and grow what is working? Expand on what we are doing well. Do more of it. Piggyback complementary habits to it. I’m just thinking this might make all the difference in the world.

I had the first two steps going, and all I had to do was add the third. This is what I mean by piggybacking. Habits are learned through practice, and the best way I’ve found is to strap a new one onto a trusty old saddle. And let them go riding out together…

But please don’t call it “resolution” or you’ll never get anywhere. Call it desire, yearning or longing. Call it aspiration, leaning, longing. Call it something you would want. Then maybe on this second week in January we would not only remember what it was we had vowed to do, but we  could be practicing it.

Just know that in my case, it’s taking half the morning to get out the door to, you know, take on the day.

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