Father

Today is father's day and I'm thinking of my dad, who passed on many years ago. How I remember him is his silent groundedness. He could converse with people and was quite adept at it, but I could tell even as a child, it wasn't his preference. We could sit in a car for hours on end, just he and I, without saying much of anything at all, because really, there was no need. We both knew we loved the other, and that was enough, just to spend time together.

There is one story I've heard that comes to mind this Father's Day. Another couple was staying with my parents, and it might have been around the time when my mother was pregnant with me. The woman got her period during their stay and someone needed to go to the store to get feminine napkins for her. My mother, in her advanced stage, wasn't going. The woman herself wasn't going. So it was left to the two men. The woman's husband pitched a fit about it, because this was the 1960's when "real men" didn't go to the grocery store to buy ladies products. It bothered him to no end to have to do this, and he made sure that they all knew how wrong this whole idea was.

There's a thing about my father's silence. I understand it because I do have that same thing myself at times. People mistake it for a lack of intelligence, passivity or disinterest. Really, what it is is that we're thinking...

My father said that he'd go with him, so he wouldn't be alone in this venture into shame and masculine downfall, and together they went into the store. The man was so nervous, he wouldn't take the box off the shelf, and didn't want to go to the counter with it. My father, being the ever-supportive friend, told him not to worry, he'd take care of everything.

They walked to the check out and my father handed the woman the box. She looked up at him in surprise as he handed her the money.

"Oh, they're not for me," he explained, motioning to his friend. "They're for him. Hemorrhoids."

Yes, my father took care of everything, all right.

And Devious Thoughts Shall Accompany Me...

While my sister packs her wide angle lens to get a good shot of my butt as I haul said butt up the vertical plane, I've had my own encounter with planning ahead for a good time. Suffice to say, the world ought to keep somebody like me VERY BUSY, since a little time on my hands can go a long way.

What happened was that a fellow bucker of the rules inspired me in a recent conversation. He pointed out that Dirt Barbie ought not to be reserved merely for rock, camping and outdoors activities. And how right he is! It's definitely a transferable skill, this ability to throw caution to the wind and be my bad ass self.

The thing that makes Dirt Barbie work is the idea that nothing really influences you much so long as you know your skills and have the right equipment. I have a veritable windfall of skills insofar as being devious is concerned. And baby, you've got to know I've got the right equipment to do the job right!

So wish me well in Utah, because some amazing things are going to be happening while I'm there!

I Remember

Tonight I am remembering this one particular moment. I was up at Lac Courte Orielle and we needed to gather cedar. It was in the middle of winter, and cold as all get out, so I had my Army coat on. It was a WWII heavy wool coat that went all the way down to my feet, and I didn't care that I looked a bit odd, because it was really warm. So Maryellen says we're going out for cedar, and it's just her and me. I'm expecting that we'll be deep in woods looking for it, but no. She pulls into a residential area and talks with the property owner, who agrees to allow us to gather cedar. The only trouble is, the only cedar to be had was about 9 feet up, next to a rez car with no wheels, only some boxes.

We made a plan together, that I'd need to get up there on that engine block and gather the cedar and hand it down to her. Just before I climbed up, she takes a look at me and says:

"You know, people are going to be staring out their windows, looking at you."

I did believe she was entirely right. It's not often somebody wearing a WWII trench coat is climbing up on an engine block and gathering cedar in the middle of a residential area.

I remember thinking about it, and saying:

"Well, if they're looking at me, it'll remind me of just how special I am."

Other memories come flowing through. How I loved the north woods so much, gathering cedar where we did deeper in the woods. I decided if I got lost there and died, I'd be content because I was where something mattered.

Sometimes we've got to go where something matters.

And yet...

There are essential elements of life and living it in a good way, that transcend where ever you go, and make things matter.

I've been blessed by knowing a lot of strong, good traditional people throughout my life who've taught me a lot. They taught me a lot more than just what to do with medicines or how to do things a particular way.

A lot of it was about how to live a good life.

Heading West

Portals of Hell still raging over my head. Better there than in my heart.

I was talking with one of my elders this week, and he told me, "You've got to have the right tools, if you're going to do the job." He was referring to my upcoming trip to real rock, but really, it applies to most situations.

There's one thing that nobody knows about me. That is that I've got a lot more tools at my disposal than I actually let on. I've got tools that haven't seen the light of day for years, and only come out when it's important. Every one of them comes with teachings I've received over the years on my own journey. It's not that I've forgotten them, or what they're for. I just reserve them for when it counts. Because, I agree with my elder, that you've got to have the right tools if you're going to do the job.

Possibly the reason nobody knows what they are or that I have them stems from the fact that I'm usually alone when these situations find their way to my door. Or, in this case, above my head. I envision a day in the future when it will not be this way, and I will be with another to share that aspect of my life. I've determined it's not happened because there's not yet one strong enough to face off with what I am willing to join into battle.

People will turn away from the challenge, turn their backs on their fellow man and a blind eye to injustice. It occurs most frequently when they feel powerless, and in an effort not to allow something to overtake them, they'll run from it, motivated purely on the adrenaline of fear. That's when that which they fear becoming most creeps into their hearts, and therein Hell resides.

I don't much believe in Hell, or even think that it exists. Hell is the choices we make, and no other place. Every day the Creator hands us an opportunity to recognize our blessings and gifts, and we make the choice of whether or not to recognize that.

So I'm heading West soon, see you when that journey is complete.

Inshallah

My student from Afghanistan often says "Inshallah" meaning "God Willing." I've been thinking a lot tonight about what God's willing to do for me. He's done so much already, I feel bad asking for anything else.

A very wise woman once said that the Creator sends you what you need. You ask for what you want, but you're given what you need. We think we need what it is we want, and that's where the trouble starts.

So I'm trying to take it from the Creator's perspective. Does He feel I need some added loss and suffering in my life? And, do I? No, I think that's not it. I don't think of my Creator as being that way. Maybe He feels I need to cry more. I don't really do it much, except recently. Maybe He's sick of watching me stoically and cynically glide through life. There's a certain irreverence that comes in the package deal of me, and perhaps that's been grating on his last nerve, too.

In my storyline for Ogoun on Michigan Avenue (SPOILER WARNING) I follow up on a line in The Summer of Pomba Gira. It's where Jonah and Evaline are talking and she gives him a gift but asks him not to open it while she's there, because whole worlds fall apart when she cries, she tells him. I'm not looking at the book as I write this, but that's the gist of it. In the sequel, we discover that in fact, it's true.

The thought came to me, because often that's how I feel when I cry, that my world is falling apart. So I just don't give into it, because I'm a firm believer in keeping my world together.

Lately, however, many of my worlds have fallen apart. Some so irrepairably, that it's beyond my comprehension how it could have happened. I've gotten so shocked and numbed by it, that tears are the only release, and the peace they bring after.

An Owl once told me, get ready, be prepared, you're going to find yourself crying all the time soon! Really, he's a man who's an owl, but I try not to hold that against him.

I think I'm mourning my former ability to co-create goodness in this world. Somehow, I seem to have lost that gift. I'm pretty sure I didn't misplace it. The thing about co-creating goodness in the world is that I've relied on other people to maintain their relationship with me, and work toward the same vision. At this point, I think it's just me and the Creator left in my crashed apart worlds.

I'm not quite sure if He wants me to pick some pieces up and rebuild, or just walk away and start over completely. I'm not sure I understand all of it, or any of it.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the contest is still happening. It's about the choices I make. Hold devestation in my heart, or embrace love? This is why I know that the Creator selected a champion for the cause based on attributes and experience for this particular contest. He knows more than anyone the devestation I've seen. He knows that I gravitate toward the good, toward the positive. Takes me some time, but eventually I get there.

Meanwhile, there's the question of what to do in the here and now? I'm kind of shocked and numb by the sheer collateral damage around me. Like, what just happened? I didn't expect to be here. But I must be here for a reason. There are at least three reasons for everything that happens, and I don't have to know what the reasons are. But I certainly didn't expect to be here, in my present here and now.

So I'm thinking that the Creator has a plan. I don't have a clue as to what it is, but I'm signing up for the ride. Maybe all of this collateral damage around me isn't necessarily about me and what I need to learn on my journey. Maybe it's about other folks journeys and what they need to learn. But it hurts so damned much, even if it's not about my journey, when mine is intertwined with theirs. Really, it's the untwining that gets me every time.

The loss and letting go, and that's what I mourn for as well. I don't think I'd go to the place of asking the Creator why this is happening, because I don't ask the question unless I really want to know the answer. But I find myself asking these days, if all is beyond me, and all is beyond repair, and it's just you and me, Creator, standing amidst the rubble, can you tell me why it's always the ones I love the most that are taken from me in the cruelest of ways? So that in my mourning, I am always, invariably alone, just me and the Creator? Any why, while I'm asking, is it that I'm always so busy that I have little time to be able to mourn the loss?

I am willing to be your champion, Creator, to go to battle as you wish, but inshallah, can you provide for me just one person along for the ride this time round? One that has suffered and is growth oriented, and sees the battle as an adventure?

All will be provided in due time.

Job Goes to the Desert

If you have a morbid fascination with disaster, dear blog readers, read on!

So lately, Job from the bible comes to my mind. He was a good guy, really. Just that he was needed to prove a point in a contest. Happens all the time, only most of us aren't fully aware of it.

I was put on a medication that makes my head spin, as if the pace of my the events of my life these days simply wasn't enough. Even on it, I can see the signs when a contest is afoot, so that's something. If I believed in "shoulds" I should have seen it coming when I opened the bible one day not long ago to a passage from Job. Put me in a hotel room with not much else to do, and you'll find I'll open up the most extraordinary things. The passage was Job 29:25:

"I chose the way for them and sat as their chief; I dwelt as a king among his troops; I was like one who comforts mourners."

It seemed important enough at the time to write it down, and so I did. It's often hard to understand the meaning of things when they're taken out of context. However, I believe the whole of holy books, each word a word of the Creator. So, perhaps there's a meaning for me. We'll get to that later.

So, in the span of a week, a lot has awakened me to the fact that a contest is at hand. I've lost people dear to me. As if that wasn't quite enough, I was served with rebuttal papers shortly before this Job heads off into the desert.

Then, this morning, I discover that my bid for freedom is causing me to hemorrhage $1000.00 per month, much higher than expected. I'm guessing that a cocaine habit or Maserati payment would cost about as much. Either of those, I imagine, would provide a bit of a good time, in comparison to what my bid for freedom is providing me. Still and all, one can't overlook the small joys in life of paying someone to be able to swear around them as much as one needs to. Frankly, if I have to sell my own blood at a blood bank to pay for the cost of my freedom, I'll do it.

As if the medication side effects, loss of family, and cost of my freedom wasn't enough to buy me a clue as to what's going on, a spiritual lady told me yesterday that I've got something bad coming after me. I think my visualization based on what she described was that the gates of Hell had opened up directly over me. She certainly wasn't talking about anything pleasant.

It was probably a bad idea for me to challenge it, thinking:

"Yeah, you and what army?"

Because shortly after that, my son looked up to the skies and said "It looks like an army's building up."

And this is when the words of yet another friend who isn't talking to me these days ring through my head. He'd said something about that God's won the war, and we're just soldiers in the battle. Man knows what he's talking about, I think.

Of course, this all comes shortly before I go west, to the arid regions of Utah. There's a thing about going west, I recall. That the old Cherokee traditionalists didn't want to be removed west during the Trail Where They Cried, because the west was associated with where we go when we die, the Darkening Land.

I don't fear death. For those who've read my take on fears in the last post, they all stem from things that have happened to you in the past and that you don't want a repeat of in your present. And I don't fear the gates of Hell opening up over me either, with the army of Mignon's chasing after my sorry self, if that's got to come to pass, too. The spiritual lady said if there's someone that I trust completely with spiritual stuff, I ought to call that person. I sat there and thought on it, laughed to myself. Yep, you guessed it, that person isn't talking to me either these days.

The thing I didn't have the heart to tell that spiritual lady was that this isn't the first time stuff like this has happened, and it probably won't be the last. I told someone once that I'm like a lightening rod for extremely random potentially dangerous experiences. I wasn't quite thinking of this scenario when I said it, but I'll cut myself some slack for overlooking it on my top 10 list.

Today was a fasting day for me, so I had a lot of time to think on it, and still don't have a plan, but I'm good with it. The two thoughts that came to mind were that may help. One is that I'm descended from some really strong people, and their blood runs through my veins. The other is that when a contest is at hand, you've just got to be clear on what side you're on, and let the Creator take care of the rest.

During my fast, I made a lot of jokes with the Creator about what was going on, many of which have found their way into this blog. I know the Creator's got a great sense of humor, otherwise I'd be living in Hell instead of just having the gates of its portal opening up over my head. We all would, for that matter.

I don't think a lot of people realize what a great sense of humor the Creator has. They miss it as much as they miss the small blessings in their lives, overlooked by the dark clouds that loom over their heads. I don't miss the humor, and I don't miss the blessings, just because an army's after me. They'd have to distract me from the reason I'm here at all, and that's because the Creator made me. They'd have to get me to fear, or to hope, and neither one of those is happening because I've reoriented to the here and now. Best place to be, really, when you're in a battle.

There's an association people have to the Creator, or God, and that God is hope. So when they hear me dismissing hope out of turn, they assume I've turned from God. This is not the case. In my mind, hope is an illusion and the Creator is a fact. If we believed the authenticity of the Creator in all things as fact, a lot of the animosity in the world would simply cease to be. A lot of hearts would be turned from the coldness of their ways.

I don't think I am nearly as good a person as Job was, but what I lack in those areas, I make up in others. The Creator knows this, otherwise this battle wouldn't be going into play.

So I'm off to the deserts of the west and we'll see where this goes next.

Something Dramatically New

Following up on the last blog, I've been thinking of my life without an escape plan and no ability to downclimb, metaphorically or otherwise...

What I love most about climbing is the here and now experience of it. I don't climb often, but when I do, the reality of the here and now in the moment on real rock is a beautiful thing. There's never a moment for me of "can I do it?" It's just doing it. Nothing else matters.

I was talking with friends today about the illusion of hope and its dangers. At first they thought me morbid, because I decided to "unfriend" hope. Perhaps they still think me morbid. I didn't mean it in that sense, but in the sense that when I have hope for something, it resides in the future, which isn't here yet. The shadow side of hope for some is despair, and for me is that that which I'd hoped for and perhaps even had, will disappear. It strikes me that those feelings relate to fear, and all fear is based in the past.

I need to repeat this, for myself as well as my blog readers:

ALL FEAR IS IN THE PAST

Everything we fear isn't based upon the newness of an experience we might face, but an experience in our past when something failed, or we had a bad time of it. The idea of even trying something new or different is terrifying for some (including me), because we've got something anchoring us to a time in the past when it didn't work out as we'd have liked it to.

So, here's my issue with hope and its shadow: Hope is all about the future, its shadow is all about the past and when I get hooked into feeling hope, I find myself in a dance with the past and future. I suspect that on some level, we all do. So where is the here and now moment? It's not the hope, it's not the shadow, and it's not the dance itself. There is no time or space for the here and now moment.

Why do we so fear the here and now? What could we do with the reality of it? When I'm on real rock, I know it intimately. There's really no choice in the matter, if I'm going to climb. All instincts are honed toward what is immediately before me. Choices are made though experimentation, experience and and what works.

When I'm living in the here and now moments away from rock climbing, magic can happen. Miracles are seen with new eyes, because my mind's not racing toward some illusion destination, or caught up in some strange, bad place in my past.

Ironically, in my post 8 days ago, I talked about how I don't cry, and found myself uncontrollably weeping these past few days. That's the part that makes the here and now difficult, because you've got to deal with the raw emotion as it comes. I can't schedule it or put it off, because doing such things will kill you in the end. My weeping had nothing to do with regret, and everything to do with being truly sad.

I stayed in my here and now moment then with the tears, and presently I am feeling some wonderous sense of peace. I'd told my friends if I "unfriended hope" that perhaps peace would find me and it did. It's not that I have any resolution whatsoever with what's going on in my life or around me. That's a chaotic swirl still. It's more that I found the peace within my soul beyond the darkness I had to walk through to get to it. Some might call that God's grace, others serenity.

I don't want to label the gift the Creator gave me, define it or put it in a box. I don't want to hold onto it with both hands, fearful that it will go away. I only want to acknowledge the beauty of it, and in my prayers, send it along to all others who are suffering and struggling through their darkness. Because to hold onto any one thing too tightly with both hands demonstrates a lack of faith that it will return again when needed. It also doesn't afford me the opportunity to reach out to others, or to real rock, as the case may be.

And that is something dramatically new.

And Morbid Thoughts Shall Accompany Me

Hello Dearest Blog Followers,

I'm getting ready for my crack climbing in a few weeks, and as you might recall from an earlier post, this rock climbing trip is a metaphor for facing fears.

Well, just when I get to the place of the trip coming up, I suddenly discover a new one! How very exciting!

In my blog on Climbing as a Metaphor, I talk about how I metaphorically downclimbed to safety in a crisis situation, and that I'm standing at the base of the rock, wondering how I'll ever get to climbing again.

This trip, I've selected crack climbing, which uses hand and toe jams into crevices, a very different experience. My adventurous self is up for the challenge, until it occurs to me that I have no idea of how to self-rescue or down climb from a crack climb. This is accompanied by visions of the belayer beneath me dying of a heart attack, or me happily climbing along, until the rope above me snaps and I watch it sailing down past me as I hang there.

Sometimes having an active imagination decidedly does NOT serve me well.

So I'll put it back to the metaphor from which this whole adventure originates. Yes, I'm used to climbing, but I'm used to and know more traditional routes. I suspect that my morbid fears are the result of my taking the unfamiliar course. And really, it's not what I know about climbing, it's what I know about myself that matters.

My friends would laugh and tell me that they've never known me to take a familiar route and speculate that perhaps I'm allergic to them. They may well be right. I've got this believe that if some challenge is thrown my way, some insurmountable odds, then there's also a gift that comes in the form of overcoming it, if I'm open enough to it to see it.

Essentially, the question then becomes - Am I?

Where does the courage and will to move forward despite all of the odds come from, if not from my openness to the experience of something dramatically new?

One of my cousins sent me today a letter that was erroneously ascribed to a famous Latin American writer, but was, in fact, written by an obscure ventriloquist about his puppet. Despite the lack of fame, the ventriloquist wrote something quite beautiful. The part that sticks out in my mind was:

"I have learned that everybody wants to live at the top of the mountain without realizing that true happiness lies in the way we climb the slope." (Johnny Welch)

It makes me wonder if the way in which I've climbed the slope all of these years has been to always have an escape from disaster plan in the back of my head, and that the reason I've been more open to new experiences has been because I'm good at anticipating how to escape said experience should "new" suddenly be replaced with "dangerous."

Perhaps I am not The Gambler after all, but Houdini.

Now, there's a lot to be said for figuring out how to safely extract oneself from danger. But if that's become the course I take, then safety has replaced true happiness in my climb up the slope. So I've found another goal for myself this trip, it seems...

What We Don't Know...

I've returned now from my short trip, and have been talking with female friends who've seen a picture of me with the fire that I built. I was quite happy with building my own fire, and surprised by the number of women who told me that they never had, but always wanted to do it.

It got me to thinking about the ways in which we don't do what we've always wanted to do and the reasons for that. I hadn't built a fire on my own before, because somebody always stepped in, thinking they had a better way or knew more or just wanted to do it themselves. I think at my core, I like to be a peacekeeper. I'm laid back enough to compromise when something means more to someone else. I'd rather not get into a fight about something inconsequential.

What we don't know is that letting things slide like that, over time, can erode ones soul. We don't realize the number of things we let slide, for whatever reason, until they pile up into a crisis or resentment. What would happen if we just did what we felt called to do, and embraced the beauty of our own world of self-discoveries?

I've had a rule in my life, that I try to live my life without regrets.

When I wrote that, I meant to say that I don't feel very sorry about things that have happened in the past, so I make my decisions in the present regarding the future according to the philosophy that my future will someday be my past, and I don't want to feel bad that I elected not to do something I'd said I always wanted to do.

However, I took a look in the dictionary, and the Old Norse origins of the word "regret" mean "to weep." The first listing of the meaning of regret is "to mourn the loss or death of...to miss very much." That gave me pause, because I don't cry very much. Yet the number of things I've had to mourn in my life is significant. I feel the pain, like a raw wound that's almost healed when another wound comes to replace it. Yet, I don't weep for it.

Instead, I take my mourning out into the battlefield of life. I become an activist because of it, or an advocate for myself. I realized this week, that a part of my hawk-like nature informs me "hawks don't fly backwards." So too, when there is something bad that's happened, the survival of my soul calls for me to move forward.

This, in turn, goes back to that philosophy of my trying to live my life without regrets. I would most greatly mourn having given up and retreated, than I would the whole of the tragedies of my life combined.

What we don't know is that we can...we can build a fire on our own, we can take a stand on what we want to learn, we can go off into the deep woods and not only survive, but thrive. It takes planning and preparation, but those shouldn't end up as excuses of why we can't do a thing.

What we don't know is that we can trust the Creator and this world, and many of the people in it. I think it's easy to judge, based on our experiences, precisely who or what we can trust and under what conditions. But really, what it comes down to is being able to trust myself and my instincts. How many of us really don't know ourselves? We don't know what we're capable of until we've proven ourselves capable, and how many have not tried? When you know yourself, deeply and intimately, you know what you can do and what you cannot.

I know, for instance, I can crack climb, although I've never done it, because I know I can climb, so it's just a matter of adaptation and I know I'm good at that. I know I can go to the Yukon, because while I've never been there, I'm good with traveling to places I've never been and keeping myself safe. I know I can't hike a mile up a steep hill or I'll have an asthma attack, so I don't. Yet, the other things I'm called to do are far more adventurous than hiking up a steep hill, so why limit myself and think I can't do them, just because I've not done them before?

Each time I reach a bit beyond the scope of what I've done before, I find an opportunity to learn and grow.

FB friends: In what ways are you challenging the preconceived notions you have of yourself right now? What have you done in your life that you didn't think you could do that happily surprised you when you learned you could?