Sunday, May 27, 2018

In Sickness and in Health

Having pets can give you practice for having relationships with people. We have three pets. We did the thing that veterinarians tell you not to do: they are all about the same age. Two are rescues. Two are pets that became part of my life through marriage.

The Menagerie

Invader Zim, the beagle, is a running-away dog. Good thing he's cute! He needed a lot of remedial training to just have the dog basics. I'm reminded of the judgmental thoughts I had about an acquaintance who had a beagle. I quickly grew tired of her calling her dog, over and over. "Derby, come! Derrrrrbyyyyyyy COME! DERBY Come!" became a bit of a joke... But it turns out that this is pretty common with beagles. They can't hear you when the nose is engaged. And the nose is OFTEN engaged! Other than filling in the holes under the fence, chasing him down the block, and bailing him out of doggie jail, he's been a soft-eared delight to live with.
Annie Cat joined our household about 5 years ago and she does an excellent job job: being soft. She helped me heal during chemotherapy by snuggling on my lap during the day and by my side at night. She will lay in wait on the foot-board of the bed, then reach out and put her paws around your neck as you pass so that you'll pick her up for a cuddle. (In the photo to the left, you see that Annie likes soft things. She found the comforter that was on its way from the dryer to the bed and decided it made a good cat bed.)

Isabella Dona Pugellini, the pug, is super smart, and is very much an elder dog. My spouse enjoyed teaching her lots of tricks and showing off her obedience and agility skills. Now she's stone deaf and nearly blind. We are very grateful that knows hand signs so we can still communicate with her a bit. She is bossy, inquisitive, and spreads garbage around the house if it isn't locked down. Our household shared custody of her until the last couple years so I never really developed a relationship with her, but she's a member of the family, so she gets my loving care just like the others.

Clean Floors

They are aging. Slowly we've been adjusting our living around their needs. Getting garbage pails with lids and putting bricks at the bottom edge of the fencing worked when they were younger. Now our geriatric pets need more accommodations. Baby gates prevent accidents in areas of the house that are hard to clean up. The mop is kept handy. We have invested in doggie diapers and specialty enzyme cleansers. Ironically, the floors are cleaner now than ever because they get mopped sometimes twice a day. They are let out into the back yard frequently, and the pug needs to be rescued when she gets lost around a corner. The already inattentive beagle has started to go deaf so he has to be watched carefully or hooked to a line. Medication refills keep them moving and a special ramp helps the pug get in the house.

Aurgh

Sometimes I am frustrated. Sometimes I hear the voice inside that is at its wits end saying: "when they die we won't have to be embarrassed to have people over, we won't be cleaning so often, we won't be spending so much on meds..." When that happens I know I'm moving too quickly. The beings we commit to (whether they are furry family or human family) deserve our care through both health and sickness. They did their job, and paid into their "social security." It will be our responsibility to help our pets move out of life when it is time, and we'll be faced with the impossible responsibility to determine when that time is. Until then, it is our responsibility to give them a safe life, free from want.

Everything I learned

Just like pets, people come with hardships and messiness and complications. We don't get to shop for the perfect family members, but we can learn how to deal with that messiness by looking at how we deal with our pets.

Our pets, our children, and all our loved ones depend on us. The relationship between dogs and humans evolved many thousands of years ago and now we rely on them as they rely on us. This is also true not only with families but in society. The fact that we have the ability to care for them, and that they cannot survive without us, morally obligates us to pay attention to how we care for them. All of them! We, as a community, are responsible for the strays and the lost, those who have been displaced or abused, and those who are neglected or broken.

Facebook and Youtube videos of kindness to animals - wild animals and pets, injured animals, homeless animals, and disabled animals - abound. They get shared and "liked" and they seem to make people feel good. It is good to be reminded that we humans can act on compassion.

We can learn from them.

We can learn that displaced human children deserve just as much compassion as a baby squirrel.

We can learn that disabled people deserve just as much compassion and accessibility as a cat.

We can learn that we can feel good about saving the life of a person living on the street just like we can feel good about saving the life of a dog that has gotten into danger.

Having pets can give you practice for having relationships with people. It feels really good to make a difference in another life. May we each find the lives that we will bless. We have much to give, and there is much need out there.

Sunday, May 13, 2018

Spiritual Growth through "Moon Forest Bone"


Moon*Forest*Bone Wisdom- for healers, givers, and change-makers. who are adrift and yearning to conspire with divine love to learn and live your gifts.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/
goddard/lro-earthrise-2015

Moon

Our Spiritual Development emerges from our relationship with the celestial, because the tides affect us all, the majesty of the Sun and Moon and Stars inspire us and the mystery of the universe gives us humility and wisdom. Deities move between, among, around and through us.

by @OregonGirlRebecca

Forest

Our Spiritual Development emerges from our relationship with the place we occupy because we are each a tree, drawing nourishment from the earth and giving the fruit of our living, our gifts. Because the forest we are in forms us and supports us and is our tribe. The wisdom of the land we are rooted in fills us and the wisdom of the people around us creates us. Indeed, your relationship with the place where you are planted is sacred.

Bone

Our Spiritual Development emerges from our relationship with our identity because we have wisdom in our bones and bodies, wisdom that comes from our biological heritage, our family, our ancestors of body, culture and and spirit. We grow from the wisdom passed down to use from teachers of many traditions.

Saturday, May 05, 2018

Lusty May

Lusty May

On the calendar the lusty month of May begins with May Day, In Slavic countries it begins with Green Week. Astronomically the midpoint between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice is around May 5. And all around the world May begins with International Worker's day.

A day and a week of celebrating Spring, emerging growth, fertility, love and joy. And a day, throughout the world, of acknowledging the labor of the workers: International Worker's Day. A time to recommit to our community and our solidarity…to promote the legal establishment of safe and fair working conditions, and to act for a world of love and justice.

The worker day and the flower day, occur on the same date and even though they are different, we can celebrate them together: a celebration of the renewal of spring and a celebration of the work we all do, and the people who labor. We celebrate renewal of the self and soul so that we can enter into the work with new energy. We glorify our work, “whistle while we work,” let our lives be songs, and do the work that must be done.

Appreciating the work that the land does to create food and shelter and beauty to sustain all that lives need not be separate from appreciating the work that the people do to create food and shelter and beauty to care for the earth and the people on it.

My May Heritage

"Love has no Labels" credit Brian Emerson
In my pre-Christian Celtic, Norse, Gaulish, and Slovak cultures May Day was all about the joy of young love and human sensuality and sexuality. It is written that in Great Britain, France, and parts of the American colonies on the first day of May young men and women would go out into the fields to celebrate spring with acts of love and pleasure. In so doing, they would bless the crops, and be blessed with fertility by the land.

This tradition has continued in some areas as a sort of day-of-rule-breaking. That fits the tradition well. The immigrant Americans of the early 1600’s who celebrated with may dances and costumes were the hippies of their day. They wanted peace with their Native American neighbors, not war. And they weren’t interested in the uptight rules followed by their puritan neighbors. The most famous group settled in merrymount, which is quincy MA now. The stories of that settlement make great reading!

Morena and Vesna


Morena doll
In Slovakia girls of the village carry a straw effigy of the goddess of death and winter: Morena, to a local stream. To banish winter they set it on fire and throw it in a defrosting stream. This symbolises the end of winter and the arrival of spring, the end of the domain of the death Goddess and the beginning of the love goddess: Vesna.

Lots of cultures burn straw figures to banish something. I've personally attended many rituals that included burning slips of paper. We first would write something we wanted to get rid of on the piece of paper, and then we'd each throw our paper into the fire.

May was traditionally called the month of love in Slovakia. In this period, a maypole tree was the most important of all plants. The maypole was usually a spruce without bark, whose top the boys had decorated with coloured ribbons. On Mayday, people still erect maypoles, usually on the square or in the middle of the village. In the past young boys erected maypoles for young girls whom they wished to court, or all young boys erected a maypole in honour of all young girls in the village. Throughout Europe, the May Pole has been one common way to celebrate May Day for centuries.

In Scottish Gaelic, Latha Bealtainn (pronounced "laah Bahl-tinnuh”) or “Beltane” is celebrated at the beginning of the month of May. Bel-Tinne was a time for blessing livestock. Great bonfires were lit and the cattle were driven between them from the winter pasture to the freedom of the summer pastures.

Fire and Dancing


Slovak Green Week, Fire Leaping
Jumping over the fire is a custom that existed in all parts of Europe and its purpose was to ensure fertility as well as to protect people and cattle from evil forces. The fires, the maypole, Jack-in-the-Green parades, May Baskets and crowning of the May Queen are Beltane/May customs that survive today in the United Kingdom and have been embraced by many Neo-Pagans around the world; celebrating Spring, purifying and ensuring fertility.

These celebrations are snatching life out of the jaws of death. When we lose someone we want to hold those who we love even closer. When we come to the other side of pain or privation we want to dance and sing. Even when we are still just barely defrosting from hardship, fear or sadness, we want to light a fire, to remind us of what warm and joyful feels like! And always, we need community.

Slovak, Walking with the Copse/Queen
I went through this daily when I was a chaplain at a hospital. After a day of visiting with the sick and dying, fearful and despairing, I’d stop by the new babies window and smile at the sweetness of new life. Those babies cast a magic spell that conjured renewal so I could return and give again.

Slovakia has their own version of May Day baskets. It’s called Walking with the Queen. pine branches, twigs or even entire small trees– adorned with ribbons, handmade ornaments, egg shells or flowers – are carried from house to house. The copse is usually carried by girls, who walk from house to house, dance, sing and extend best wishes to the hosts. In this ritual they are casting a spell, or conjuring up blessings and relationships in the community.

These rituals announce the coming of spring, a time of joy and song, a time when the Earth bears new fruit. And they connect the community.

Lust as Thirst


The lust of May is a lust for life, a thirst for life, a love for life. This thirst to live fully and joyfully, and this love of living things, is what gets me up in the morning willing to do the work I must do.

The love we have for our own children, our friends, our pets, and the land where we live motivates us to care for them. We as humans, universally, feel responsibility for the whole web of life.

The workers in U.S. factories of the turn of the century reached across their different languages and cultures to fight together because they didn’t want their children, or their neighbors’ children to have to labor in dangerous factories.

International Workers Day, or Labor Day was initially called for at the international Socialist Congress in Amsterdam in 1904. They called for demonstrations to push for the legal establishment of the 8 hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace. and they instructed all workers to stop work on the first of May. - to take a holiday.

Let’s celebrate May Day


From MayWorks
One of the chants used by strikers and demonstrators of that time was “Give us bread AND Roses”. They wanted both bread (wages) and roses (time for the activities that nourished the mind and soul.) They knew that time for community, for story, for joy was just as important as the time for work.

Let us remember that, particularly now. Let us hold back the tide that is sweeping away the protections that so many worked so hard to get. We need one another to make it. We need renewal, community, joy, and roses.

Let's celebrate May Day by bringing one another bread AND roses.