Daily Archives: July 11, 2013

Faith and Spirituality, Health

Good Enough

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Summer                                                            First Harvest Moon

Last time the Woollies gathered at Woodfire Grill we got on the topic of Alzheimers.  Warren said many people, around two years in, gain a sense of peace about it.  “I don’t want to gain peace.” one of us said.  That interchange stayed with me, bouncing around, providing background when I read these two quotes recently.

The first one is from a blog I’ve referenced.  A link to it is on the right and in the quote. The second is from an NYT’s book review.

“In the last month or two, some of that special feeling—my ability to live in the present, my sense that my life is worthwhile even if I can’t accomplish that much, my sense of joy in living—has been diluted, and I’ve wondered why.  Had I slipped back into old patterns, lost the new sense of emotional richness?”   Watching the Lights Go Out  July 6, 2013

“Like Freud, Mr. Grosz is fond of literary allusions, and he’s nimble at excavating the psychological subtext of literary classics. He reads Dickens’s “Christmas Carol” as “a story about an extraordinary psychological transformation.” One of the lessons it teaches, he argues, is that “Scrooge can’t redo his past, nor can he be certain of the future. Waking on Christmas morning, thinking in a new way, he can change his present — change can only take place in the here and now.”   NYT book review of the Examined Life by Stephen Grosz

No, I’m not going to be here now.  Not that.  I’m sensing in these two quotes and in the conversation at the Woollies a profound realization, the one behind the Zen insistence on the now and, I think, these two observations as well.  It’s remarked on most clearly in the first quote.  “my sense…my life is worthwhile even if I can’t accomplish that much…”  There it is.  Right under our nose.

The key to inner peace is not so much living in the present, although that has obvious psychodynamic benefits, but in grasping our true place in the cosmos.  Our achievements do not define us.  Our capacity to do and act does not define us.  Our existence, our very ordinary existence, is sufficient.  Enough.  Adequate.  Good enough.  That’s what the author of the Watching the Lights Go Out discovers, that’s what Grosz suggests when in his reading of the Christmas Carol.  It was not Scrooge’s skills as a money lender and miser that he needed, but the simple acts of human kindness that he could engage in Christmas morning.  He only had to be Scrooge, not a role, bad or good.

And, in the end, if we get to this realization through Zen, knowing ourselves, psychoanalysis or Alzheimer’s, is the quality any different?

 

Great Work, Memories, Our Land and Home

Pruning the Woods

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Summer                                                              First Harvest Moon

Felled an oak today, about 8 inches thick.  It was too close to other oaks, competing with them.  As I build up our firewood supply, I also think about pruning the forest, trying to put into practice advice given to me years ago by a member of the DNR’s forestry team.  It has taken about 18 years to get started; I don’t like to rush into things.

Every time I use a chainsaw it takes me back to the not-so Peaceable Kingdom.  That was my first and most all-in back to the land moment.  I gave up urban life, a good job and seminary to move onto the 80 acre farm Judy and I bought.  You know the story, she leaves for good shortly after I get there.

That left with me a woodburning stove for heating and one for cooking, so I had to have firewood.  On our 80 there was a small forest, larger than the one out here with plenty of firewood ready for harvest.  I’d put my Jonsered in the bed of my green International Harvester pick-up, drive into the woods, cut down a tree or two, cut them up, toss them in  the truck, then head back to the house.

I stacked the wood there, unless it was dry already.  If it was dry, I’d start splitting it for use right away.  The stuff that wasn’t dry waited until deep winter when the cold would do some of the work.

The wood cutting and using the wood stoves were highlights of that time, a modest form of self-sufficiency, off the grid as far as fuel oil went.

The muscle memory lingers and pops into play every time I yank the starter cord.  Good memories.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Writing

Whole

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Summer                                                                   First Harvest Moon

Without the Latin I’ve had considerable time to focus on revising Missing.  I’m finding the rhythm of garden work and writing very satisfying.  I can work outside in the earlier morning, then revise until lunch, and pick up the revising again after lunch and until I work out.  This means a steady pace, one that leaves me feeling whole at the end of the day.

Feeling whole means that I’ve kept up with my commitments.

There’s a part of me that feels bad about letting the Latin lie, I’ve put so much energy into it up to now, but the feeling of wholeness I’m gaining suggests I had spread myself too thin.  It may be that I’ll work on the Latin only after garden work falls away sometime in September, then drop it again in May.  I like to adjust my life to the seasons and that would be another way to do it.