1. Morning walks. This is probably my favorite season for morning walks, as it’s cooler but not super cold, we leave in the dark but get to see the full sunrise, and the sunrise because of the cold and moisture in the clouds can be a particular kind of magic.
One morning this week, we got to the trail head and heard a noise I couldn’t place. I looked around but didn’t see anything at first. Then, my headlamp reflected in the green of some animal’s eyes. We see a lot of deer there but these eyes were too close to the ground and it’s head moved different. I was starting to think it might be a bobcat when I put on my glasses so I could see more clearly and realized it was a deer, with a large heavy rack of antlers and head hovered low to the ground eating apples which he’d earlier knocked off the tree using the same antlers, explaining the strange noise we’d heard.
Image by EricImage by EricImage by EricRingo and our friend Big Red
2. My brother and his tiny family. He has become the “head of the family” hard and fast, and does such a good job of it. And as Papa 2.0, he’s a much gentler, kinder, easier going version than we had growing up. Three sweet things about him this week: I found out that the apples Mom is always eating when he sends a picture are because he brings her one special when he goes to visit her. Also, even though he’s the one who typically does most of the shopping and all the shipping for my birthday and Christmas presents, he always makes sure to have his WHOLE family, both girls and both grandkids, sign my card. And finally, another sweet story about where some of Mom and Dad’s furniture that we don’t want is ending up — this time it’s a small loveseat that is going to a woman that is building a “tiny house” for her dogs!!! He knew I’d like that one. Even though the last two years have been especially hard for us, we are closer than ever, and I am grateful for that.
Chris, me, and Mom at Disneyland
3. Seeing the Northern Lights from our front porch. Even more fun was sharing the pictures with everyone who wasn’t there to see them and seeing all the pictures other local people took.
4. Practice. Yoga at Red Sage plus one puppy, Friday morning writing sangha, writing and reading in the morning, and meditating in the quiet of my practice room.
5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I’m really looking forward to when Eric doesn’t have to work so hard, and to celebrating Ringo’s 12th birthday next week — the oldest dog I’ve ever had by a whole year and a half!
I got the neighbor’s new baby her very own blue heeler. 💙
Bonus joy: seeing our friend Mary Ellen on our walk, visiting our friend Theresa at her fitness studio every week on our walk, all my dogs — here and gone, texting with Chris and Chloe’ and Shellie and Kari, sharing books with people, book club, getting the laundry done, grocery shopping, hanging out with Ringo all day, good TV, new music, listening to podcasts, slippers, breakfast burritos, other people’s dogs and kids, stickers, citrus, fry sauce, plantain chips, grapefruit Bubly, down blankets and pillows and coats, wool socks, gummies, making each other laugh, owls, finally a chance of snow in the forecast, remembering good people, Sesame Street, a warm shower, naps, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.
I’ve lived with this delusional idea that my personal faith in Jesus should drive me to the marginalized and the hurting, that it should move me to defend those who are alone and invisible and voiceless, that my Christlikeness alone was the mark of my faithfulness. I’d been led to believe that a life marked by goodness and gentleness and peace was the desired yield; the visible, proving fruit of my deepest spiritual convictions. Boy, did I get duped.
6. A Book That Changed My Life, “& John Green on seeing the unseen—and how one story helped me find my way back to the human story” on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.
9. The Love Poem Andrea Gibson Wrote for Their Widow … and for You on the Modern Love Podcast from The New York Times. (gift link) “Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley were two poets in love. In the wake of Gibson’s death, Falley is figuring out what that love looks like now.”
What is normal in the state of dementia, where connections are not being made, where tangle is all, objects take on a curious aspect, and where there is an unpleasant flavor to the hours? And where so much, so very much, seems impossible . . . It is difficult to speak with those who have dementia, to reason or remember with them, to reassure them, for of what could they be reassured. . . ? Our love cannot redeem them, it might even pain or confuse them. Mind can no longer guide or assist them, not theirs or yours, not anyone’s. They cannot be found anymore. Dementia is not a disease but a condition, a condition not exclusive to the human animal, though that is its preferred stage, upon which it can display its specialty, the inelegant final act. The curated self, and whatever reputations it affected, vanishes.
There are seasons when nothing seems to move forward, when projects stall, momentum hits pause, energy evaporates, when leaving my apartment can feel like an ordeal of epic proportions. I can push against it if you want. And this is what I know best. How to push, resist, fight, force. So I can force yourself to stay lit. But there’s a point where that insistence starts to feel like violence against myself.
This year, I’ve decided to stop pushing.
To stop performing aliveness and simply live. To stop talking when I have nothing to say. To stop mistaking productivity for proof of worth. To stop making big plans to alleviate the dread and let the falling happen.
I could no longer see a person when I looked at my grandma. I say now without shame for myself or judgment for others who have thought the same, that I wanted her to die. Because what I really wanted, and what I believe the majority of people who have had similar thoughts really want, is to wish them peace.
When death did come, it wasn’t really a relief, though I was suddenly free to remember her as she was without being confronted by who she had become.
23. How Men and Women Spend Their Daysfrom Flowing Data. “Estimates are based on data from the American Community Survey, which asks participants to log what they do during a 24-hour period. The survey runs throughout the year and data is released annually. This is data for 2022 through 2024.”
“It took seven days to create the world; it only took one to disrupt its balance,” says the tagline for an award-winning animation by a team of students in France. “Au 8ème Jour,” which translates to “On the 8th Day” in French, uses CG, or computer-generated animation techniques to create a three-dimensional world in a stop-motion style.
A multitude of vibrant animals and landscapes appear sewn from fabric in the film’s otherworldly realm, each tethered to a single piece of yarn that connects it to a kind of central energy force—a vibrant, tightly-wrapped skein in the sky. But when mysteriously dark tendrils of black fiber begin to leech into this idyllic world, families and herds must run for their lives.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 