Winter: a time for reflection

It's been a week of good news -- bad news. The good news is the tractor, the one the wouldn't turn over earlier this week, started today. I cancelled the order for a battery charger. The bad news is, with 6" to 10" of snow in the forecast, the brand new Husqvarna ST224 P snow blower is in the shop because all the cables on the right hand side ceased functioning. No auger! I'm hoping the good news is the local hardware store where I bought it gets everything working and calls me before much of the forecast is on the ground.

soon, the view through the picture window may look like this

Photo by J. Harrington

In order to get the snow blower back to the dealer, I had to get my trailer from the Son-In-Laws. He and the Daughter Person had borrowed it some time ago and, with a new snow blower and functioning tractor, I hadn't seen a reason to ask for it back, until today.

Several months ago I restarted a program of doing morning meditations, including reading the Tao Te Ching and a number of spiritually oriented poems and essays. I don't want to think about what I'd be like today if I hadn't been trying to calm down and chill out. It has to do, I read, with whether I want to be a person who reacts to everything, or someone who acts appropriately under almost all circumstances. I've concluded that for too long, I've been focused too much on what's wrong in the world and not enough on what I can do to share kindness and consideration with those around me.

With luck, persistence, and a modicum of being on the receiving end of kindness and consideration from others, I may make it through this storm and the rest of Winter. The Better Half was kind enough to bring up the recycling and trash barrels while I was out retrieving a trailer. I didn't even have to ask. I 'm learning to appreciate small moments of moments of joy and pleasure created by things going better than expected. May each of you find what you need in life. It's a journey that is full of rough spots and pot holes.

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye - 1952-

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Spring is a new beginning

Mid day. Sun shining. Outside temperatures in negative single digits. Tomorrow's forecast is for 7" to 10" of snow. Pretty typical mid January for the North Country. The Better Half's [BH] window sill orchids don't do much to improve the situation since there's usually at least a couple of them in bloom year round. On the other hand, BH, a couple of weeks ago, bought two pots of "Spring bulbs." The pot with the sunshine-colored tulips is now coming into bloom. The amaryllis have grown to be about a foot tall but snow no signs of blossoms yet. I suspect some time will be spent this weekend staring at signs of a living, growing, blooming world that, in reality, is several months away. By late March though it should be time to look for skunk cabbage emerging in the nearby wetlands.

why are there green leaves on a beach plum in January?

Photo by J. Harrington

Meanwhile, I remain surprised to the point of astonishment that two of the beach plum plants continue to hold green leaves. The other two plum plants show no signs of life at all. We keep checking to see if their indoor location is encouraging any signs of early bud burst.

how long until we look for this sign of Spring?

Photo by J. Harrington

All of the preceding could be considered grasping at straws but, in fact, it's preferable to posting about the time I've been spending repairing several years worth of file, book and magazine "infrastructure neglect." Progress is being made, slowly. If I use the sight of forced blooms to encourage completion of the filing and organizing and tax prep chores during the cold snowy days, it helps. Else I could end up sitting around, grumbling, and feeling sorry for myself, and that's not like me at all ; >) heh, heh.

On an even brighter side, this morning I rediscovered on of my favorite "systems" authors, Margaret Wheatley. She has a relatively new book that may offer me more hope than seems reasonable these days. I started rereading her first book, a simpler way, this morning. That prompted an internet check during which I discovered Who Do We Choose To Be? (the link is to a brief pdf of the book's table of contents). It appears to fit all too well with my perception of today's world and may help, I hope, me reduce my excessive cynicism. Spring is a new beginning, after all, but first we have to get there.

Of History and Hope

By Miller Williams

We have memorized America,

how it was born and who we have been and where.

In ceremonies and silence we say the words,

telling the stories, singing the old songs.

We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

The great and all the anonymous dead are there.

We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.

The rich taste of it is on our tongues.

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?

The disenfranchised dead want to know.

We mean to be the people we meant to be,

to keep on going where we meant to go.

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how

except in the minds of those who will call it Now?

The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?

With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row—

and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

Who were many people coming together

cannot become one people falling apart.

Who dreamed for every child an even chance

cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.

Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head

cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.

Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child

cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.

We know what we have done and what we have said,

and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,

believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—

just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

All this in the hands of children, eyes already set

on a land we never can visit—it isn’t there yet—

but looking through their eyes, we can see

what our long gift to them may come to be.

If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.