Walking, wrinkles and a little lavender bliss

Hiking in Grandview State Park, Grandview, WV

     There's something I love about a walk in the woods, particularly in autumn with the leaves thick beneath my feet and the air chilly and sharp around me.  Shining through the high branches, the sunlight is softer, more forgiving of imperfections. My steps are slow but steady and I can feel the rush and stress of everyday falling away.  I notice fungus on a tree, quick rustles up high, rich green ferns tucked behind gray rocks. It is quiet here, but alive with small things - ants, brown chipmunks, butterflies - and more rarely with larger ones - a deer startled from the rhododendron and  a hawk launched from a cliff.   The earth is rich and pungent and somehow smells more like home than any other place I know. I am present and centered without even trying.  This walking becomes my meditation, my best prayer of the day.

AF

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     "Botox could really help that 11 between your eyebrows." So said a lady at the salon to me the other day. I'm sure she's right, and I didn't need her to tell me that those two little lines are getting deeper with each passing year. It's no mystery why it's happening either. My brow gets a lot of work in a day, moving to varying degrees to show that I am confused, angry, sad, compassionate, worried. Now in my mid 30s, I'm also developing "parentheses" around my mouth from smiling, and "laugh lines" at the corners of my eyes. A few injections could take care of all that, I suppose, and help me look years younger. But here's the thing -- I don't want to lose any of that. Those lines on my face are evidence of a life lived and deeply felt. My emotions have always been an easy read, since I have no "poker face." With Botox or plastic surgery, I could get one. In my 20s, I used to fantasize about liposuction, rhinoplasty, cheek implants, but not anymore. Now I just want to be healthy, to take care of what I have and make the most of it, with no needles or scalpels involved. This is my face, and one of the gifts of getting older is that I've finally grown to love every line, freckle, mole, and blemish because they are mine. If I ever have daughters, I hope I can help them get to that place of self-acceptance much earlier. It's taken me 35 years to realize that I don't want to look like anyone but me.

SS

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Lavender Bliss

     Not to miss an opportunity, a coworker and I tagged on a few days to a work conference in San Francisco to see the sights of Mill and Sonoma valleys.  We particularly enjoyed touring Benzinger winery, which takes an environmental ‘biodynamic’ approach to its farming. Part of that involves elaborate gardens or insectaries or bug cities as they are called, chocked full of plants pleasing to healthful insects and birds. We meandered through the pathways, ducking at the darting hummingbirds, their whir of wings creating a throaty purring. 

     We watched the sun set on the rolling farmlands as we drove back, reliving our repeat visit to the restaurant ‘the girl and the fig,’ where we feasted on three types of goat cheese, one drizzled in lavender honey, a taste sensation I can only describe as decadently delightful. We sucked down lavender creme brulees that were too good to split. As we headed back to the city and neared the Golden Gate Bridge, the traffic slowed to a crawl. We noticed how people here rarely honk their horns. They are polite drivers, respectful of pedestrians. What is it about a region that creates such a culture? 

     All I can figure is all the Innovative taste sensations keep everyone sated. Though stuck in traffic, I can't even work up a good ill temper. It's as if the rich textures of the land and sun-baked hills of the valley run in my veins like wine.  What are a few backed up cars when you've had the likes of lavender honey?

DB

First Week of Advent - Hope

This week, we light the candle of hope for Advent.  I find myself hoping a lot these days. I hope for the economy to improve.  I hope I can run, walk, or crawl far enough to finish a half marathon in January.  I hope my daughter gets into the grad school of her dreams.  I hope my son-in-law finds a job after he graduates from law school in May.  I hope my friend’s baby arrives safe and healthy.  I hope....

One of the earliest lessons I learned about counseling has been one of the most universal and most enduring.  I had just started my year long internship as a counselor at the mental health center in Morganton, NC and was working with everyone - children and adults, individuals and families.  It was a year of learning and practice, of happy successes and miserable failures.  As I was beginning to see my first clients, my supervisor told me,  “The first thing you have to do is give them hope.  No matter what the problem - big or small, simple or complicated  - you have to start with hope.  If they can believe things will get better, it will happen.  You have to help them see the light in the darkness.”

Hope does that.  It shines light into the darkest corners.  It’s the first step out of depression or family chaos.  Hope gets us out of bed in the morning and moves us forward.  Hope gives us the courage to try again or to start over one more time.  Hope says “Take my hand. We can do this.”   Hope is transformative, bringing new ideas and energy for healing and recovery.

As the poet, Lisel Mueller writes in her poem entitled Hope from
Alive Together: New and Selected Poems:

“It is the singular gift

we cannot destroy in ourselves, 

the argument that refutes death,

the genius that invents the future

and all we know of God.”

Or,  as Andy tells Red in a letter of encouragement in the 1994 movie The Shawshank Redemption,  “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

and so... I hope...

AF

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Ah, for the life of my cat Sylvester, who can relax in any position imaginable.

Upside down. Half on, half off a chair. Hanging on the slender ledge of a window sill. In a 360-degree corkscrew.

I think there's much to be learned from pets about how to live life. One of my favorite books on living in the present moment is Eckhart Tolle's Guardians of Being that explores the fascinating lessons that pets have for us.

During this season of Advent, I have decided to carve out periods of stillness, of utter relaxation and just "being." It's a tough goal. Deadlines and holiday frenzy squeeze in. But I have my cat as a meditative symbol, as a reminder that sometimes just being is enough. Or maybe what I need more than added holiday shopping is a simple cat nap.

DB

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On a recent commercial -- one of many aimed at getting me to spend way too much money on gifts or decorations or food -- I heard the tagline, "The holidays are all about family."  That can be difficult to hear if you are, like me, a singleton with no spouse or children (yet), and living hundreds of miles away from anyone biologically related to you. That is the situation more and more people find themselves in here in 21st century America, though advertisers would still have us pine for that Norman Rockwell family Christmas, and spend any amount necessary to get it.  Above is one of my holiday family photos.  I do not share DNA with anyone in it.  They are my friends, fellow church members, mentors, encouragers, or blood relatives of those who are.  Last Thursday, when I was between two night shifts at work and unable to travel to my parents' home in KY, they were my Thanksgiving family.  We shared an afternoon, a prayer, a meal, conversation, a game of touch football, and an abundance of laughter.  It was a wonderful holiday, one of many when I have been blessed with non-traditional family. 

The first time I spent a holiday away from my parents, brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins was Thanksgiving of 1998, when I was an exchange student in Angers, France.