Category: Change & Transform

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Lessons of the Flood

Flooded Highway 36 in Lyons, CO
Flooded Highway 36 in Lyons, CO
September 12, 2013

I was one of the lucky ones; our house was on high ground and didn’t get damaged by the flooding in Lyons, Colorado.  But my family still had to evacuate and spend a month moving between various hotels in Longmont, CO. The entire town of Lyons lost sewer, water and gas service. And it still hasn’t been restored.

A few lessons I learned from the flood:

1. Mother Nature is in charge. We humans can fool ourselves for awhile, but when push comes to shove, nature rules.

2. People are amazingly kind-hearted. I saw so much compassion and caring in Lyons in the days and weeks after the flood. My heart continues to overflow with gratitude and joy for all the acts of kindness, both big and small that I witnessed.

3. Not having a place to go home to sucks.  Just this tiny taste of homelessness gave me huge compassion for people who spend months or years living in their cars or on the streets. Not having a home is truly nerve wracking.

4. I love Lyons, Colorado!  The town is still a complete mess, but I want to be part of this community.

5. Stress can literally kill you. Our 3 1/2 year old male cat Raja didn’t make it through a month of being away from home. Even though he was staying with an amazing friend, Raja got so stressed that he stopped eating.  Good bye, buddy! I hope you’re now hunting and sunning in cat heaven.

6. Flowing water can transform the landscape in a matter of minutes. The St Vrain river valley that I have loved and walked and photographed is now a different place.

After the Flood
After the Flood

Water does NOT submit to human control. We can dam it up, and try to stop it, but we should NEVER forget that water is born to flow. And it will continue to flow whether we humans like it or not!  Water will NOT be controlled.

7. Flow never stops; Each drop of water on planet earth is on a flowing journey that never ends. This visual of the ocean’s currents, gives us a hint of just how amazing water’s flowing journey truly is:

And my own journey continues; My husband and I spent days searching for a new place to roost without any results. Then, due to the kindness of my favorite realtor, Mark Webber, we rented a great house on the edge of Lyons. This one has a septic system and well (!)  AND a kick ass view:

Blue Mountain
Blue Mountain

Was this experience good? or bad?  Like the old Buddhist story goes, it’s still too soon to tell…

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Smoke and Stone

Smoke and Stone
Smoke and Stone

I sit

breathing out my worry

and my wonder

as I silently ask the Goddess

what exactly is compassion?

and can I offer it to myself?

I sit

breathing out my fear

am I brave enough

to love

like a Boddhisattva

without reason, without end?

I sit

watching the Goddess

smoke dances, we sit

suddenly, the stone of me cracks

there is nowhere to hide

I am love.

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Be Still

Stillness
Coot Lake by Nancy L

Keeping Quiet

by Pablo Neruda

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,
let’s not speak any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn’t be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I’ll go.

 

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Stillness

Still Pool
 

A huge thunderstorm brews just over the horizon as I take a wonder walk at Wonderland Lake.  Thunder rumbles on the ridge, yet the lake is still, perfectly still. Reflections of the foothills play on the surface of the water. The air is charged with magic potential.  My mind stills. I remember a passage from one of my favorite books: 

The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega.
It is God’s brooding over the face of the waters;
it is the blended note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings.”

~Annie Dillard, Teaching A Stone To Talk

☯

In the stillness before the storm, this space is alive with joy. Mother Nature shares her wisdom, whenever I remember to pause and listen.

Be Still.  
Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.  

~Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

☯

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Seek Wildness

The Path into the Woods
The Path into the Woods

“To learn to see, to learn to hear, you must…
Go into the wilderness alone.
For it is not I who teach you the ways of the Gods.
Such things are learned only in solitude.”

~Matsuwa, Huichol Shaman

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Dancing with Dad

My Dad in his 20's
My Dad in his 20’s

My dad passed away a month ago. He had struggled to hang on and stay here long past the point of misery, so his passing was a relief in many ways. But there are still days when I have images of him in my head all day, and I miss him a lot. And other days I don’t think of him at all. Grief is a strange beast.

This morning I remembered a time many years ago when my dad tried to teach me how to jitterbug. Tried is the operative word here – I never could hold my torso still and get my feet to do what his were doing so perfectly. In my defense, I am not known for my coordination. Besides, I had a glass of wine before the dance instruction began!

Dad loved to tell people the tale of how his Navy buddy taught him to jitterbug. I always loved that story;  Dad had joined the Navy at 18 and shipped out to California for basic training just as WWII ended.  He went from a tiny town in southern Illinois to suddenly being in the Navy on a ship with hundreds of other guys. I imagine that it was all quite a shock for a young geeky country boy. One of his older shipmates took my dad under his wing. He helped my dad settle in to life in the Navy. And he also taught Dad how to jitterbug so he could impress the ladies.

I love the image of my skinny 18 year old Dad with his baby face, dressed in baggy jeans and a work shirt, dancing the jitterbug with some big beefy guy in the tightly cramped quarters of a battleship! LOL  Life truly is stranger than fiction. The dance lessons definitely paid off  because  40 years later my dad was still an amazing jitterbugger.   🙂

I miss Dad. I wish I had danced with him more. This morning, as I flashed on images of the handful of times that we danced together,   I heard Dad’s voice in my ear. He said, “We’ll dance again.” And I suddenly saw an image of two energies dancing and flowing together and then apart, together and then apart. And as the energies danced, they morphed and changed shape, but I could tell that it was still the energy of Dad and I dancing together.

I think that image of my energy dance with Dad is actually a great lesson about the rhythm of life and death. We are energies that come together to dance on Earth, then part in death. Then we will come together again in a new place and dance a new dance. Over and over, we dance together in one form or another.

Later in the morning, I hike up one of my favorite trails, still thinking about my dad and missing him. I stop on a mesa to rest awhile. As I sit under the pines writing,  I am startled by a hawk’s cry above me. I look up and see two hawks soaring and spiraling just above my rocky perch. The hawks appear to be dancing together on the wind. It’s a beautiful dance,.

Another memory surfaces as I watch the hawks;  I flash on the image of my dad dancing with my mom.  In my memory, they are both in their late sixties and have been together for over 40 years. When they danced together, they were so closely in synch that it was like watching a single body move and flow to the music.

The hawks are gone when I next look up from my writing. But a pair of young deer soon stumble upon me. They freeze for a moment. But when they realize that I wont harm them, they relax and forage for food a few feet behind me.  Life dances on all around me.

I love you Dad. And I miss you. I miss your wide open country boy smile. I miss your stories. I just plain miss you!  But I know in my heart it was time for you to move on.  And I am ok –  I know that you and I will dance together again soon.