Digging through clay caked soil to plant something somewhere in my yard I usually hear that familiar clang. It’s my shovel hitting rock. I work it loose, sometimes easily freeing it, sometimes needing other tools or adjusting my approach. Soon after I often hear another clang or scrape and then another, and usually more — depending on the size of hole needed. Some rocks are larger, some smaller, some pebble size like the tiny annoyances in a day.
I work around colossal rocks, accepting that the tree I wanted in that particular spot is not going to thrive in that particular spot. I move on. Shift my focus to another area, a solution.
Usually, about half-way through clearing rocks, I’m chuckling at Nature’s metaphor for life’s challenges.
Living consciously — paying attention and appreciating what is around me — feels like living in sync with the Universe. More easily I see, understand, and feel grateful for what comes my way. It’s not luxurious, expensive gifts that make my heart smile, it’s the little things.
Just this week…
I looked into the veggie garden to see a colorful garden spinner turning in the wind. While it’s actually a tuxedo cat riding a bicycle with a cardinal in a flower pot, it’s black/white form and silliness reminds me of my border collie Bess and gives my heart a lift. Each time I look out the window, I smile because it feels like Bess is still there.
While digging holes to transplant mums, I discovered several dozen bulbs. I forgot about these beauties, so it was a gratifying surprise because they obviously needed dividing too. The bulbs, what sweet treasure like finding rubies in my garden.
Chuckling to myself I thanked the Universe for both of these small but meaningful gifts that bring the greatest joys.
I’ve read about gratitude at various times and in various ways. It all seems true…
Gratuity for Gratitude
The more I am the grateful, the more I will have to be grateful for.
When gratitude becomes an essential foundation in our lives, miracles start to appear everywhere.” Emmanuel Dalgher
“The struggle ends when gratitude begins.” Neale Donald Walsch
“Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude.” Deepak Chopra
“Gratitude, like faith, is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it grows, and the more power you have to use it on your behalf. If you do not practice gratefulness, its benefaction will go unnoticed, and your capacity to draw on its gifts will be diminished. To be grateful is to find blessings in everything. This is the most powerful attitude to adopt, for there are blessings in everything.” Alan Cohen
What are the seemingly small joys in your life? What does gratitude mean to you?
This summer of exhaustive change whirled like a tornado snatching dear ones from my path. In three months I’ve experienced rapid and complete loss from news of 14 deaths — nine of them close to me. Barely catching my breath, we’ve also just lost the healing space where we’ve hand drummed for over 15 years.
I admit, change often feels like a blustery, cold wind in my life rather than a soothing, summer breeze. Raised in a dysfunctional home, I became an ACOA and HSP — frazzled by chaos and discord, and craving stability and harmony.
If I continually resist change, though, the Universe sweeps in, eliminating any more chances or choices to get on board. Suddenly, (at least it feels that way, even if I’ve dilly-dallied for ages) I’m hurled with hurricane force into new situations — whether desired or not, whether I like it or not, and whether I feel courageous or not. So, instead of latching on tightly and refusing to let go, I’m more inclined now to accept and release. Note: it’s not always immediate and it doesn’t mean I always like it.
Change is welcomed when we are the ones initiating it.
But, when it’s thrown upon us, our response is often quite different.
The calendar indicates when I can reasonably expect to see leaves falling, snow flying, buds blooming. Even if it isn’t exactly on schedule, I feel comfortable knowing that the next season is around the corner, hence, what to expect next. It’s the unanticipated adversity — like tornadoes, Nor’easters (and precipitous deaths) that jolt me.
Photo by Frank Winkler on Pixabay
Still, I’m learning like everyone else on this journey called life. My headstrong adolescence pressed through storms, and my unguided young adulthood blindly maneuvered rocky, melodramatic situations. In mid-adulthood, the fog began lifting, offering clearer, smoother sailing — but only through a widened perspective and attitude of enhanced acceptance.
My Five Stages of Acceptance
By that I mean growing out of questioning, “Why me, or us or this?” to lamenting disappointment, to bemoaning perplexity, to the sighing resignation of “It is what it is,” to realizing the changing nature of the seasons is the flow of life. Change is the perfectly natural progression. For it to be anything otherwise equals stagnation and death.
As my perspective changes, so does my life.
Photo by Ishant Mishra on Unsplash
So now, when immense change occurs, I endeavor to exchange fear or disappointment with faith and acceptance that everything is working out exactly as it’s meant to be. While intellectually understanding death as transformation eases the loss, it doesn’t completely erase my feelings. For other changes, I remind myself that space is being created for something better…and that the gift may not always appear how I envision it — another reason for due diligence in living consciously and welcoming doors of opportunity.
Each of us processes life and change differently, and at different times in our life.
While still feeling an emptiness from losing Bess and other friends this summer, my heart slowly mends by shifting focus from loss to fulfillment. Having more leeway to be away from home now I’ve planned two bucket list journeys for 2020 — Turks & CaicosandCotswolds, England.
A close friend processed her loss quite differently when her dog suddenly died this summer. (He was panting at 7PM and dead by 10PM.) Feeling so distraught, she brought home brother and sister puppies a week later. While they are adorable, she forgot how much work they are and is now so tied to home, she cannot leave even for day trips. Change comes in all sizes, just like pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters…
How do you process change? Has it been the same throughout your life, or evolved one way or the other? Do you welcome change or close your eyes and shut the door on it, only to have it forced open later?
“It was a beautiful, bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.” — Diana Gabaldon, Outlander
Oh so true. I took this photo of the endless blue sky and Perthshire Mountains on my recent visit to Scotland…
…and this one too, of the Star Pyramid, pointing to Scotland’s heavens. Also known as the Martyrs Monument, it stands just beyond the southeast side of Stirling Castle near the Valley Cemetery.
Two large grey ashlar sandstone spheres are carved with lines of latitude and longitude and flank a set of steps leading up the hill to the monument. Each side of the structure is aligned 33 degrees off a perfect north south alignment. A large bronze eagle was part of the sculpture until it disappeared in the 1970’s.
Erected in 1863 as a memorial to all who suffered martyrdom for civil and religious liberty in Scotland, the monument was commissioned by nurseryman William Drummond who was obsessed with religion.
Each side of the Star Pyramid contains a white marble crown, thistle, rosette, and an open bible. Each of these items is one-third the distance from each other which some suggest are masonic connections particularly since masonic symbolism uses the pyramid to represent stability and endurance, and the rosette for love, joy, and silence. A different sunken relief text with reference to verses from the Psalms appears on each side: Union Banner, Rock of Ages, Covenant Rest, Thrown of Right.
As it neared completion, William Drummond supposedly sealed in the monument’s hollow confines a Bible and a Confession of Faith to recall the principles of the Scottish Reformation. Eternal blue skies often feel like Heavens’ embrace to me and no doubt to William Drummond too.
Well, they may not be very mannerly — inviting themselves along — but they can be cheery company.
I didn’t plant tomatoes this year and had no intentions of doing so — either before or after my early June trip to Scotland. My gardening enthusiasm this season was lost with Bess, knowing she would no longer be with me. For the last 14 years, we cherished our outdoor turf together — she bringing her Frisbee to me while I tended the gardens. Being outside now felt too empty without her.
Bess’ Frisbees in the garden
Bess waiting at the flower garden for Frisbee
Bess at the end of season garden
Bess’ Frisbee in the tomato patch
Bess always waiting for more Frisbee
But, Mother Nature had other ideas. When I returned to discover tomato seedlings all over the asparagus patch — undoubtedly from seeds hiding in the compost, those unsought tomato plants beckoned me. After replanting the strongest ones in their own section I thought That’s it. If they can thrive on their own they will. I’m not going to spend much more time out here this summer…
Soon though, I mixed up Epsom salt fertilizer for a few weekly treatments and let Nature take its course. Sufficient summer rainfall eliminated my need for watering every day. As the plants grew taller and taller, I got the stakes and ties out. In a few more weeks, the green fruit gladdened a little part of me. Basil went in next as a companion plant and also for the makings of bruschetta, caprese salad, and a tasty pasta dish (although I’d cut way down on carbs, at least before Scotland).
This week’s tomato harvest…and there’s still more.
For the last month I’ve been inundated with tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes. Grape tomatoes. Half dollar size tomatoes that I don’t recall planting in previous years. Some plum tomatoes and a few beefsteaks also appeared. I’ve given away baskets, bags and trays full and still have more on my counter, in the freezer, and on the vine. I never intended to grow tomatoes this season but they apparently intended to accompany me.
There’s something to be said for nature’s curative energy. Whether it’s the thrill of getting my hands in the dirt after the spring thaw, or the excitement of watching something grow, or the serene feeling of sunlight and fresh air, the only dialogue from bees and birds in the quiet of the day. In mourning Bess, I turned away from the solace of the gardens, disremembering it is their natural nurturing that made me a gardener in the first place. And when there’s a bountiful harvest? Well, the joy of giving brings about a smile — for the receiver and for me.
Wandering through Christianity, Buddhism, and Unity to my current interest of studying the Tao, I long ago exchanged organized religion for a more profoundspirituality. Structured religion gave me a moral and ethical compass for living life. Eastern philosophies expanded my understanding. But, my spirituality deepened after a life altering illness, decades of consciously working in the garden, and a burgeoning sense of gratitude.
“Religion…shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude…in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”
“…In order to usefully interpret the realm of common, shared experience and history, we must each make certain “over-beliefs” in things which, while they cannot be proven on the basis of experience, help us to live fuller and better lives.” — William James
Discovering this naturally created pulpit and pews on my visit to Scotland this summer was a curious surprise.
Scotland Outdoor Pulpit and Pews
View from an outdoor church in Scotland with natural made pulpit and pews
View of sky, mountains and water from natural outdoor church in Scotland grass in Scotland
I imagined listening to a sermon among these bluest of skies, lush green mountains and clear waters. The pastor wouldn’t have to speak a word.
Blessed with three good weather seasons, I’m most often in the garden — seeding, nurturing, harvesting — plants, but also my thoughts and spirit.
For me, attending church is gliding over morning dew glistened grass to the vegetable patch or flower garden…feeling the warming sun on my skin and a serene sky’s embrace. Hearing “the quiet.” At first. And then the hum of bees, chirping birds, and steady rhythm of high-pitched crickets uniting in choir. Sweet nature gloriously sings a sermon to my soul.
Gardening teaches me so much about living life. Besides providing quiet time to regenerate, and avoid constant interruptions of marketing ploys or messages that can wait, gardening offers opportunities to look more deeply into life.
Stepping into the tomato patch today, I notice some are ripened red, some still green, some are somewhere along the way. Brighter, faster, bigger, smaller, slower — each is on its own natural path. Some are still hanging on, some have fallen, others have reached their potential, or are late bloomers. Each embodies the same components — vine, skin, flesh, seeds, juice — but they are not exactly the same. I do not understand why current culture insists humans must have the same thoughts, feelings, sensitivities, and opinions, that to be one we cannot be unalike.
We are a universe of red, white, brown, tan, black, tall, short, thin, plump beings, with indigenous dialects and languages, who think diverse thoughts, eat different foods, live in disparate climates, etc., etc., etc. Yet the Thought Police want to neutralize our inherent differences, insisting we cannot think independently, that our beliefs, words and opinions must all conform. Consider this:
Photo by satynek from Pixabay
An unripened tomato is not the same as a ripened one, not in color, size, taste or maturity. Similarly, a beefsteak tomato is not a cocktail tomato or a plum tomato or cherry tomato or tomato of any other name. I cannot force it to be what it is not. Some are blemished, some appear perfect on the surface, some may be rotten inside but I accept and work with each as is.
Instead of denigrating others for being who they are, or demanding an unrealistic homegeneity, a more equitable approach is through mutual respect — something greatly overshadowed anymore by stratospheric sensitivities. Now I am an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) but I honor individuality. Can culture shift its caliginous restraints on our genuine differences?
Photo by jggrz from Pixabay
Over 15,000 varieties of tomatoes exist throughout our world in every shade of red, burgundy, pink, purple, orange, yellow, green, almost black, even streaked and striped. Numerous flavors range from tasty sweet to tart or well-balanced. I think it’s safe to say some prefer one type over another. There is nothing wrong with that. Each has its own comfort zone for thriving, and some are more versatile than others. Distinct qualities are refreshing. As with the human race. I don’t want to have just cherry tomatoes. Do you?
