Meet My Ancestors

Tonight is Samhain. It is All Hallows Eve. It is a night where the walls between this world and the next are thin. This is the night where the dead bleed through and if you wish to connect with them, you can listen to them, you can sense when they're present, and you can entice them to come. You can also make simple offerings to honor their place and presence in your life.

Because They Were...You Are.

I pour water in the glass cup on my Ancestor Altar. I light a candle in the fossil candle holder. It is the lighthouse guiding their way to me. I light more candles for specific prayers. I take in a breath and as I exhale I open my heart. I open myself to spirit world. I am not the lighthouse.

I am the light.  

I open to my Grandparents:  

Richard James Riddle & Donna MacDonald, my beloved dead
*

Mark Dutcher Eaton, my beloved dead, & Ruth Emma Ruston
*

Patricia Ann Art
~*~
~*~

I open to my Great-Grandparents:

Harold Riddle & Elsie Elizabeth Durant, my beloved dead
*

Robert Joseph Art & Margaret Loretta Burke
*

Frank William Ruston & Minnie Estelle Wicker
*

Royal Levant Eaton & Hattie Eva Smith
~*~
~*~

I open to my Great-Great-Grandparents:

Frances & Lafayette are in the center, front.

Lafayette Riddle & Frances Ann Gillette
*

George Frances Durant & Emma Louise Burnah
*

George Art & Katherine Pils
*

Frank Burke & Eliza Conners
*

Ruth & Charles are in the center back.

Charles Evan Ruston & Ruth Ireland [both from England]
*

Hiram & Emma are the center couple.

Hiram King Wicker & Emma Angeline Whitcher 
*

Bennett Eaton & Theresa Cordelia Tenney
*

Silas Parker Smith & Hattie Eva Dutcher
~*~
~*~

I open to my Great-Great-Great-Grandparents:

Marquise DeLafayette Riddle & Sarah Clickner
*

Levi & Jane are seated in the second row.

Levi Gillette & Jane Berry
*

Albert Durant & Rosella LaValley [both from Quebec]
*

Samuel Burnah [from Quebec] & Mary Fortin
*

Adam Art & Catherine Blume [both from Germany]
*

John Pils & Mary Burzee [both from Germany]
*

Thomas Burke & Ellen
*

David Conners & Mary Dowd [both from Ireland]
*

Richard Ruston & Anna Richardson [both from England]
*

William Ireland & Phoebe Lenton [both from England]
*

Thaddeus Rice Wicker & Cynthia Lusk
*

Bailey Harrison Whitcher & Ordelia de Lozier
*

Solomon Gould Eaton & Hannah Ann Treadwell
*

Philetus Tenny & Malvina H. Targee
*

Ammi Smith & Sophia Sears
*

Reuben Feagles Dutcher & Eliza Marsh Bird
~*~
~*~
I open to my Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandparents:

Joshua Eaton & Lucy Gould
*
Solomon P. Treadwell & Fermicy Peters
*
Hiram Tenney & Esther Sally Tillotson
*
Thomas Targee & Eleanor Smith
*
David Smith & Betsey
*
Heman Sears & Clarissa Dubois
*
Martin Dutcher & Cynthia Ann Feagles
*
Manly Bird & Irene Pond Marsh
*
Edward Ruston & Jane Brooks
*
Thomas Richardson & wife
*
John Ireland & wife
*
John Lenton & Mary Wilson
*
Pliny Wicker & Chloe Morgan
*
Elizur Lusk & Mary A.
*
Simeon Whitcher & Dorcas Kittredge
*

Peter de Lozier P.O.W. & Lucy Raymond
*
Freeborn Moulton Riddle & Abigail Chaffee
*
Wilhemus C. Clickner & Anna Maria Hayner
*
Ezra Wheeler Gillette & Mary Ann Boots
*
Francis Berry & Elizabeth Ann Hill
*
George Durant & Safrona (from PQ)
*
Francois Xavier Paquet Lavallee & Rosella LaRoche (from PQ)
*
George Arth & Wilhemina Wernersbach (both from Germany)
*
Heinrich Blum & Margaretha Hesse (both from Germany)
*

John Burke & Ann Scott (from Ireland)
*
Barney Dowd (from Ireland)

I open to my ancestors, known and unknown. I open the front door. The air is cold and tinged with winter. I invite all who wish us no ill to enter and celebrate the night.

I ask my Ancestors to welcome in the spirits of the Recent Dead, of my beloved college friend Dave Bova. I ask them to watch over our community friends Sue Curewitz Arthen, James Johnson, Lorna Tibbetts, and Janet Rae McKee Banks. And may her family welcome my great-aunt Donna Riddle Mauri back into their embrace.

Leave offerings of food and liquor, of earthly things that smell strong and potent, of tobacco and candies. Leave them fresh, filtered water. Listen to the whisperings of the shadows. Feel peace fill your heart.

Let the candles burn low. Pay attention to your dreamings. The dead have things they wish to say.

Blessed Samhain. Happy Halloween.

An Evolution of Spirit

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” ~ Nelson Mandela

I talk pretty on my blog about kindness and compassion. My words are honest and I work every day to live by them. But I wasn’t always this person. We are born with open hearts, and then the world happens and shapes us and we spend the rest of our lives fighting to get back to that original place of faith in humanity. Every year I get closer. But I like people to know how different I was, to understand how much I have changed. Because if they do not perceive my change, how can they believe themselves capable of the same transformation?

“Loving ourselves through the process of owning our story is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” ~Brené Brown

I used to be an anger ball. By that I mean I was very quick to anger. I was angry at the violence I had suffered. Angry at the people around me who found relief by taking out their pain and insecurity on others. I was angry at the hardness of a world I did not seem to belong in. I was no better. I curled in or lashed out, always one of two extremes, as a way of taking what I needed from the world to survive it.

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” ~Mark Twain

I didn’t know there was another way. I was a heavenly body on the inside of the circuit, the sun that the solar system revolved around. I didn’t see that the world was smothering me because I put myself at the center of it. All I saw was that I was suffocating. And I couldn’t see a way out.

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.” ~Buddha

I was at a crossroads, my own personal Equinox. I was disconnected from myself, from the earth beneath me, from the sky above me. I could see the forest of trees but not the roots of them entwining and holding each other up. I didn’t know how to bend. I didn’t know how to flow. Everything was fire and lava. I wasn’t living in the world, I was burning my way through it.

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

When we feel lonely we push out at the world, keeping it further at bay. I pushed everyone away before they could leave me, before they could hurt me. I thought pain was inevitable and that was the face I gave.

“Listen—are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” ~Mary Oliver

It wasn’t what I wanted. I was at a crossroads and I made a choice. I turned away from chaos and insanity, from trying to fit in and struggling to breathe. I let go of the anger that was eating me from the inside out. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just released it in small breaths. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I gave it up to the universe. I rediscovered faith and turned my attention to finding a path that felt firm beneath my feet. I took the time to get to know myself.

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” ~Danielle LaPorte

I had defined myself for so long by what I didn’t like, what I didn’t want, and what I thought I was supposed to want, that I found I didn’t know what it was I did want. What did I like? Who was I? I first heard an answer in a ritual in the dark in the mountains. Deep in the core of you, what are you? I quieted my soul and listened, and the word that came from my mouth surprised me.

“Light,” I said, with tears in my throat. And later, the overwhelming answer I found was kindness, goodness, compassion, and joy. When I removed the protective layers from my heart, I discovered the brightness I had been searching for all along within me.

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” ~Brené Brown

The world I live in is a better place for having me in it. I believe that. I feed it my hope and my optimism and my compassion. It does not mean I am perfect. It does not mean my heart is not weighed down by the violence and evil that men do. It does not mean that I do not cry in the quiet nights within the safety of my walls. But I cry because I am connected now. I feel part of the earth beneath me and the sky above me. I feel part of the roots connecting the trees beneath the surface.

“Softness is not weakness. It takes courage to stay delicate in a world this cruel.” ~Beau Taplin

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ~Iain S. Thomas

Do not be ashamed of the ways the world has tested you. Do not be ashamed of the times you have fallen, of the times you have failed to get it right. What matters is that you picked your head up. What matters is that you picked yourself up and you kept going, even though you did not have faith that what lay ahead was better. It is not our perfect moments that define who we are. It is the moments we are imperfect that shows the spirit that lies beneath the flesh and bone. It is how we carry ourselves through those moments that reveal the soul of us.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha

We are meant to follow our own paths. It is never too late to change tracks and find your way back to you. Our original state is harmony and peace. The world is hard but there are others in it, lighting candles in their hearts against the dark, struggling to grow despite the resistance. Every action is a choice. When you stand at the crossroad, open yourself to compassion and hope. You just might be surprised where you find it.

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Occelli


[Originally posted September 24, 2014.]

Have Gratitude for the Day

I stood in the warm spring sunshine of the morning, cleaning out the garbage pail. The most current tenants across the way played something they probably called music on their phone at a volume that rivaled any boom box of my youth. Another neighbor walks her dogs, spilling gossip and unrealized hate from behind a white face mask. The kitty-corner renters, an elderly mother and daughter argue over whose turn it is to run to the gas station for cigarettes. And yet another neighbor smiles and me and waves good morning.

Her smile is enough to make me blind to the garbage littering the street. This is where I live. This is my life.

And it is good. It is heartfelt. It is honest. And that is enough to make me smile.

My thoughts turn to spring planting and the coming summer months and scheduling and before I know it, I am already mapping out October again. And I have to stop myself. And turn my face to the sun. It’s a balm, even though my eyes are hidden behind wrap-around glasses.

I let myself think of summer. I have to prepare myself for the coming days of compression garments and heat. I am still recovering and the road I am on is long. But there is sweetness in the distant promise of fresh strawberries. The bright red berry pops into my head and I think of my Great-Grandma Elsie, and the summers she spent with us.

Strawberries were a delight for her.

And in that moment, she is standing with me, face to the sun, in the small patch of yard in front of the apartment we rent. I was taller than her when she died. A lot of people were taller than her. But I see her ghostlight shimmering below my chin and I can feel Elsie take my hand. Even in death hers is always cool to the touch. She squeezes gently with all of the wisdom of her old age.

This time is a gift. Enjoy each moment. Have gratitude for the day. For right now. For what you have. For where you are. Count your blessings.

You were always one of mine.  

I totally cried in my front yard, unabashedly. She died when I was seventeen and my heart still yearns for her. Elsie loved summer. And I loved Elsie.

I turn my face to the sun, grateful for its heat and the warming winds. I know in my bones that those who came before me had the same moment of gratitude, over and over each spring. They were all New Englanders. We are connected in this gratitude. It transcends time within me.

And surely every creature who has survived a darkness, has that moment of knowing the worst of it has passed and a reprieve has come. And they turn themselves to the light.

Have gratitude for the day. For right now. For what you have. For where you are. Count your blessings.

The Gift the Dead Give When They're Donors

A man saved my life. I do not know his name.

He died a year ago (2015). Maybe yesterday. Maybe the day before. But he was dead by today. I do not know his name but I know he was a big guy. I know he was over 6’ tall and he died in a motorcycle accident. I know he was a biker. I know he had tattoos. I know his body ended up at Upstate Hospital in Syracuse. And I know that he donated his skin after his death. I know that because there was enough of his skin to cover my burns so that my vascular system had time to regenerate. His skin wrapped around me, literally shielding my wounds and protecting them from further trauma. I know that the cadaver skin meant they could go longer without doing dressing changes.

I know his death bought me the time I needed to survive.

He will have a place of honor at my dumb supper. I will wish his family and loved ones dreams that tell them his death made him a hero. I want them to know that I may not know his name, but I will never forget him. Whatever kind of man he was in life, goodness came from it after his death. I owe every step I take to him.

My heart prays with every breath I take. It runs like a ticker tape through my body, a gentle thrum of gratitude. The sun rises and sets and I am grateful. My heart whispers, thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you, even though it will never be enough.

A man saved my life. I do not know his name.

Beauty in Grief

Grief. It welcomes itself into your life in multiple occasions of loss: jobs, homes, health, pets, loved ones.

I feel it now, even though the sun is shining outside of my office window. I am sitting in my chair typing, resting my damaged legs after a half hour of standing still. I could feel grief over the change in my health, and I do. But staring at the sun, my heart is sore because I miss my Grandpa.

He died right after the spring equinox. He was a bright light in my heart and the loss of him still hurts. But not as much. Not as sharply, which is normal. It's been over a decade now. It hardly seems possible.

It was gloomy the day he died, and cold still. But you could feel the change of season in the air. The day we buried him, the sun was bright and warm. He would have loved it. I didn't feel that way at the time, but I see that now. Then, I was grieving.

Grief is dark. It's smothering and it eats the oxygen from the air. It manipulates gravity until every push and pull of your muscles is a battle you don't want to win.

Grief is a tool of change and transition. It serves a purpose. Something in our lives has altered incredibly and will never be the same. Grief steals in and colors our world to better sharpen the contrast between what has changed and what remains the same. It reminds us so that our brains can't lie to us. Otherwise it would.

So when I look at the sun on a warming spring day, and my heart hurts, it is a reminder that my Grandpa isn't here to see that sun. But then I think about him. About him. Not the loss of him, but about the life he lived and the people he loved and those who loved him in return.

I tell his stories, about how he used to tell us he made dessert, and even boxed it up special, just for us. For years I thought he made the best coffee cakes, and just put them in Sara Lee boxes. I really did. And he almost had me until he said he grew a cantaloupe in one day... and the whole family thought I had known all along that he was joking about his baking skills.

I tell his stories, and they make me smile. Grief blankets the heartbreak so that it's bearable. And on the other side of it, the light becomes a welcome sight again. Green shoots poke their way out of the warming earth. Flowers bloom and birds return. So do the memories.

What is remembered, lives.

The Ancestry of My Computer

Written September 14, 2015:

My computer is dying. His motherboard is failing. I call him Frankenstein, as he is cobbled together from bits of new and old and scavenged parts. He’s one in a long line of computer-helpers I have had that were passed down to me.

Well over a decade ago, I was gifted a hand-me-down computer by friends. And when that one crashed and burned three years later, I was gifted another tower by another friend. That one got me another three years.

When that one puttered out, it was in spurts, clearly warning me the end was coming. Another friend of mine found me a tower, the same day, that was being recycled from a small business, for $100. So I pilfered the money I had saved up to fix my sewing machine and bought the new computer.

Since then, another friend of mine has been the guardian angel of my writing and is my go-to computer guy. When the machine blinks or burps or blips I call him. We have replaced the sound card, wiped viruses, uninstalled and reinstalled operating systems, and dealt with hard drive issues to keep it going. After one call to him about strange noises in the fan and pages loading weird, my beloved Frankenstein was given a death sentence. We didn’t know when and we didn’t know how, but he was slowly shutting down. His motherboard was draining power from the other organs of his insides and piece by piece, they stopped working.

So I watched what I demanded of him. I didn’t download or upload any heavy programs. And he chugged along for a couple more years.

Last week his poor little brain started spazzing out, trying to perform at 100 CPU even though nothing was running. And today his exhaust fan stopped working. Tomorrow his meat gets a brain transplant and a new skin. It’s not a big upgrade, but it’s a similar brain with far fewer miles on it, another machine that had been destined for recycling.

Someone else’s upgrade was an answered miracle for me today.

I get attached to the pens and machines I use to create my stories. And even though it will still be my computer’s hard drives in a new box, I am sad to see big, clunky, noisy Frank go.

His new, temporary home is a small, sleek white cereal box of an tower. I have already started calling her Leia, for the dark patches on either side of her white face. And then I was reminded that Frank had another life before me, just a peon worker in some small office somewhere. It seems fitting somehow that Frankenstein has come full circle, finding a new home with Leia’s motherboard, another tower whose previous life was with a small business.

That thought, of his life before me, prompted by a friend, lead me to contemplate his life before that office space, when he was just separate pieces- a motherboard, exhaust fan, disk drive, sound card, video card, hard drives, etc. He was bits and pieces built separately, sent to some factory and assembled together. Before that he was bits of wire and metal and plastic and tungsten, cut, soldered, and cobbled together to form working pieces. And before he was bits and baubles, he was precious minerals mined from the earth- gold, platinum, palladium, copper, aluminum, steel, oil and tungsten.

I can’t help but think, with gratitude, at how far these precious resources travelled and evolved to be built into a machine that was sold to a business and then second-hand to me. I hate my reliance on technology I can’t afford to keep up with. But I am grateful for Frank, my Frankenstein, who is becoming FrankenLeia. He was gifted to me as a tool to start writing my stories. He is the vehicle I use to search for submissions and send out my work. He is what makes my weekly blog that people are now reading possible.

My gratitude is boundless.

The Notion of Home

My childhood home.

It’s a bittersweet thing, to have the means and ability to travel on borrowed wings (and buses) to visit with people I love. It’s bittersweet to fill up with deep moments of words and stillness, of hugs and held hands, to have all of that and then to move on, leaving it behind. It’s bittersweet because it aches as much as it heals.

I think about the history we have on our ancestors, knowing that they lived in small groups in cities until someone was the first to leave their family behind, and start over somewhere new. And I know how it feels to move away and not have that support next door, or across the city. How must it have been before the automobile? Before the train, when five hundred miles meant a greater distance from one house to another?

Life is a series of flights, of migrations away from love while still moving towards it. We are always moving forward in spiraling circles, and when the love runs deep, we find ourselves returning to it to visit, even as we move away from it. Springs, coils, spirals. I am blessed to have left bits of my heart in so many beautiful places.

I am on my way home, on a bus, writing these words in a small notebook I carry with me. I was visiting home and I am on my way home. People get confused when I use that word for my destinations. When camping, I often call my cabin, tent or site home as well. Who does that? The truth is, I am home in me. Home is me. Home is where I am and who I love. I am on my way home and I am leaving home behind me, all at the same time.

When both things are true, when you accept that both things are true, the deeper notion of truth opens up worlds in your universe. I can be right without it having to mean that you are wrong. I can remember that what is known was once unknown and I can stare into the voids without fear, but with wonder and curiosity.

Across this threshold, possibility becomes hope and hope becomes the light I chase as it traverses the sky. Wherever I am, wherever we are, whatever home I inhabit, I mark time by the rising and setting of the sun. And yet, I know there is more to life than what I can see in my daily experiences. I can’t see it, I don’t see it, but I know it.

The light I watch makes a full revolution as the earth turns around the sun. Even when I can’t see it, I know it is still there, on the other side of the darkness. On the other side of the globe, someone else is watching that light when I am not. I don’t know them but I know they’re there. They also call it hope.

What else don’t we know? What else, and how much, lies beyond what we know?

“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”

~Yoda, Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back

Our flesh is what’s known to us, binding what we call spirit in the edges of our skin. We spend our lives exploring them, discovering their purpose. And when we are satisfied with the flesh, we wonder at all that lays beyond it.

We gaze at the stars and we dream of their seemingly boundless space. And as our thoughts drift into the void, we find their reflection pulling us deeper within ourselves to our center, our original self… our origin story. There is so much life there, so much promise lies within us. No matter how far we find ourselves from our path, we can always touch it again and open the way.

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

~George MacDonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood

No matter how far we find ourselves from our path, we are never far from ourselves. Both things are true. We are the only home we will ever need. We carry it with us.

The earth rotates around the sun, the light in the sky I call hope. Be your own sun and shine. Share your light. Tell the people you love that they are your family. Breathe in. Let love be your greatest legacy. Let kindness be the only calling card you need. Every breath counts. Every choice matters. Every moment becomes part of your history. What story will you write?

Ancestor-Walking Beneath the Stars

Photo of the labyrinth I walked by Amy, 2015.

The best thing about a labyrinth is that it’s a physical meditation of your body in motion as you journey internally. You can walk the same labyrinth every day and feel like each day is a new journey. Sometimes I use the labyrinth as a means to petition my ancestors, and the seven-circuit labyrinth is my favorite.

I recently attended a candle-lit labyrinth on the beach, beneath a starry sky, organized by a woman I have had the great pleasure to study with and work with, Tracy Andryc, a Veriditas Certified Labyrinth Facilitator. I emerged from the woods after leading an Evening Devotional in the Ancestor Shrine and travelled across the sand, bringing my ancestors with me. I stepped into the labyrinth with a purpose.

As I put each foot in front of the other in the first circuit, I allowed myself to sink deeper into the earth. I sank down through the layer we trod on, through the layer the burrowing animals and insects live in, through the layer where the bones and ashes of our dead are buried. At this layer, I began to call to them.

In the second track I called to my grandparents, to the four who have crossed over, two of whom I knew, beloved to me. I thought they would live forever. Specifically, I called on my father’s father. I have one solid memory of him before his death when I was seven. And I called on my father’s mother, who died when he was a young boy. I focused my thoughts on them, and the other Rustons and Eatons in their lines.

In the third track I opened to my eight great-grandparents, to the Rustons and the Wickers, the Eatons and the Smiths.

Then I reached out to my sixteen 2x great-grandparents on the fourth turn, those who saw the Civil War and the beginning of the new century, the Rustons and Irelands, Wickers and Whitchers, the Eatons and Tenneys, Smiths and Dutchers.

In the shortest track of the labyrinth I called in my thirty-two 3x great-grandparents, those who forged new wildernesses in a newer land, the Rustons and Richardsons, Irelands and Lentons, Wickers and Lusks, Whitchers and Loziers, the Eatons and Treadwells, Tenneys and Targees, Smiths and Sears, Dutchers and Birds.

In the sixth circuit, I felt my sixty-four 4x great-grandparents join me, the spirit door wide open. The Rustons, Richardsons, Irelands, Lentons and Wilsons, Wickers and Morgans, Lusks, Whitchers/Whittiers and Kittredges, DeLoziers and Raymonds, the Eatons and Goulds, Treadwells, Tenneys, Targees and Smiths, Sears and Dubois’, Dutchers and Feagles, Birds and Marshes… and those lines unknown.

On the last path, I opened to all one-hundred and twenty-five of my 5x great-grandparents. The Rustons, Richardsons, Irelands, Lentons and Wrights, Wilsons, Wickers and Parkers, Morgans, Lusks, Whittiers and Dows, Kittredges and Baileys, DeLoziers and Erkells, Raymonds and Richmonds, the Eatons and Skiffs, Goulds and Arnolds, Treadwells, Tenneys and Darbys, Targees and Tourgees, Smiths, Sears and Andrews, Dubois’, Dutchers and Palmers, Feagles, Birds and Colemans, Marshes… and those lines unknown.

I was at a threshold, crossing over with two-hundred and fifty-four ancestors beside and behind me, the collective spirits of the first seven generations of my family tree. I made two hundred and fifty-five. I walked in ancestral fire. At the center there was a door. I am the door. In the center and called my father’s parents into the center of labyrinth.

They came immediately, young together in my vision, holding a baby made of light. I had meant to petition them to be with the family, to watch over my uncle, their son. I was prepared to sweat through the work and will them in from the ether, and I laughed to find them waiting. They were already holding him, watching over him, encircling him in love and healing light.

Ruth looked at me. Ruth, the grandmother whose line I take after genetically, the grandmother I never knew. Her face was warm and full of love and gratitude. Her eyes smiled. I saw myself, and my sister, my father and my uncle dancing in her face.

But when she smiled at me, I saw her. Only her. In the center of the labyrinth I felt the love of a woman I couldn’t know. Death is not the end.

Mark and Ruth smiled at me. The baby in their arms clapped his hands in something akin to original joy. I knew he was being watched over and I felt overwhelming peace and love fill my heart. I stepped out of the center and stared up into the sky, at the stars in the mountains, dusted across the black expanse and I cried, tears of joy and tears of release.

I walked out of the labyrinth lighter, crossing paths with other journeyers. With each step I took I thanked my ancestors for walking with me. And I know they are with me in all the moments of my life.

*

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”  ~Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

For more on Tracy Andryc's work, visit One Path Labyrinth here!

Every Day is Earth Day

Earth Day is every day. It’s not just a sentiment. It’s true. Despite what Western convention would have you believe, land does not belong to anyone. We belong to the land. We were born from it. We evolved out of it. And from the moment of our birth, we are charged as caretakers of the Earth. We are all Stewards of the Land.

Believe it. Own it. Live it. How will you rise to meet your birthright?

Let’s Talk Trash for Earth Day. I know the trash you see on the streets and in the parks does not belong to you. You didn’t put it there. That doesn’t mean you can’t pick it up. Just yesterday I picked up three knotted plastic bags of dog shit left behind in various yards. I don’t have a dog. But the owners of those dogs were obviously not going to do it.

I am especially offended by all the broken bits of plastic littered about that most people don’t see, all the bottle caps and bits of food packaging containers. Have you seen the video about the birds that die with bellies full of plastic? They mistake it for food and it kills them from the inside. Who will defend their right to life free from harm if not us?

Maybe you don’t have it in you to pick up all the trash you see. The best way you CAN help is to not add to it. We create the world we want to live in by the choices we make. Do not ever throw a thing to the ground because you don’t know what to do with it. Adopt a practice of Carry In, Carry Out.

And then take it a step further with the Earth Week Challenge. It doesn’t have to be earth week when you do it, but challenge yourself to spend a week not using garbage cans or waste baskets. Carry a reusable shopping bag with you (one you can wash afterwards) and throw personal refuse you would normally put in the garbage in your reusable bag- unless it’s actual food waste, because that can be unsanitary. But collect everything else. At the end of the week you will see the waste you produced, just from your day-to-day routine. You may not be able to apply this to work-related refuse, but that candy bar you ate at on break should go in your reusable bag.

Then reflect on ways you can pare down on the unnecessary garbage and maybe keep the challenge going for a month. What choices can you make when you’re shopping to both get a good price AND cut down on the amount of wasteful packaging? How much can you reduce your garbage output and increase your recyclables output over time? It makes me feel good that every week I put out one small garbage bag and two very full recycling bins. Someday, when we can have a composting bin on our property, even that minimal garbage output will go down.

If you have a mind to face the truth, if you can stomach it, read writings by Derrick Jensen. It’s hard to face the legacy of the effects our pursuit of industry and progress have had on the Earth. My firm belief is that if we cannot do it cleanly, we have no business doing it. We cannot afford to forego the effects of what we do for the sake of progress. And yet big business does just that. How can we care if we don’t know? Check back in the next few weeks for my thoughts on the essay “What We Leave Behind” from The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution. Even my hometown is not immune to the aftereffects of industry, made known in a new film by Tanya Stadelmann, called “This Creek.”

I don’t blame you if it’s too much to hear, too much to know, or too much to handle. But we all spend enough time with our heads in the sand, like ostriches, trying to protect our human hearts. But while we do that, who is protecting the heart of the Earth?

We’re slowly learning. People and groups are making changes, but the time has come for more sweeping global changes. The best way to move forward is to follow by positive examples. The country of Sweden recycles all that can be recycled and what little garbage remains, less than one percent, is turned into an energy source. Other countries are now paying Sweden to import the garbage they do not have room for.

Did you know there are giant swirling masses of plastic covering our oceans and separating the underwater life from sunlight? There are five main masses, totaling millions of tons of weight (of plastic, which weighs next to nothing. See what this group is doing to help clean up the oceans. Do you want to eat fish that has been eating plastic?

In Paraguay, people have seen beauty and possibility in the trash piled up around them. Imagine beautiful musical instruments for underprivileged kids made of recycled materials pulled from dumps. Seriously. Watch the video. Listen to the music. One man's waste is another man's treasure. Literally.

These problems are human ones. Humans created this waste. Not the Earth. It can’t be the Earth’s problem. Sometimes we need a reminder that when we let nature be what she was meant to be, beautiful things happen. Humans once trapped wolves to near-extinction, and the land changed because of it. These changes are not irreversible. Watch the magic that happened when wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone.

Every day is Earth Day. We are born from it. We evolved out of it. And from the moment of our birth, we are charged as caretakers of the Earth. Believe it. Own it. Live it. How will you rise to meet your birthright?

Talking Trash for Earth Day

“The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.”

~Paulo Coelho

I take daily walks around my neighborhood, often playing Lisa Gerrard’s “Sacrifice” or Deva Premal’s “Gaté Gaté” low in my ear buds as I wove through the neighborhood. I keep the volume just high enough to drown out the street traffic, but not so loud as to drown out the natural birdsong. The ice and snow have melted in my residential area, unveiling the layers of litter, clothing, red Solo cups, broken bottles, and pieces of furniture long gone to the curb.

People walk by it every day and don’t see it. It happens. The garbage becomes part of the background, or maybe people get depressed by it and they stop seeing it. Where I live, it’s a mixed bag. One block to the west of us is made up of quiet residential homes and the streets are nearly cleaned up post-snow melt after just a couple of weeks.

One block to the east of us is mostly rental apartments. The difference in the condition of the yards and streets is tangible. There is a sense of “I didn’t put that garbage there. It’s not my garbage. It’s not my yard. It’s not my job.”

Just a quick walk around the corner this morning revealed an old sweatshirt, a small plastic child’s pennywhistle, chunks of broken liquor bottles, a rusty metal bedframe in pieces, old plastic bags with soupy dog shit, candy wrappers, a warped phone book, a car gas tank cover, three empty dime bags, a baby shoe, a row of abandoned plastic cups, a plethora of cigarette butts of varying ages, and a deflated basketball. I picked up the garbage, wearing a pair of kitchen gloves, and put it to the curb with my trash.

Side note: As a general rule, I only pick up trash between the sidewalk and the curb, or from vacant and abandoned houses. I don’t go into people’s yards without their permission. I did learn, while walking around and snapping pictures, that other people may not see or want to pick up their own trash, but they sure get persnickety when they realized that I saw it and was documenting it. I guess blinding yourself to something sad only works if everyone is in silent agreement to do the same. I have also learned that most people are more than willing to let me pick up the trash in their yards. Only a few get suspicious that I have ulterior motives… that there might be treasure in their trash that I am lying about. I couldn’t possibly just be doing it because it needs to be done.

I rent. I don’t own my apartment. I don’t own my house. I don’t own my yard. I don’t own my street. But I care what the yard looks like. I care what my home looks like, and what that message says to others when they come to visit. I think the way people live is a reflection of what they think they deserve. I may not have the money to move into a nicer neighborhood, but I can keep my home clean. I can steward myself to the earth that holds me. I can care for it. I can do that much.

It doesn’t matter if it is my trash or not. It doesn’t matter if I was the one who threw the garbage to the ground or not. It doesn’t matter if I own the yard or not. The Earth belongs to everyone and I am a part of it, walking with my eyes open. The garbage is there. Someone has to clean it up.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

~Mahatma Gandhi

I don’t want to live in a home full of trash. I don’t want to come home to a yard full of trash. I don’t want to park my car on a street covered in trash. It makes me sad to see the spring crocuses and daylilies choking beneath so much garbage. We all need a little breathing room. 

Thoughts on Crafting a Eulogy

When my Grandpa died, I couldn’t have known that I would later regret not speaking at his funeral. I had so many wonderful stories of him I could have told, if I could have conveyed them in my grief. I couldn’t have. I am often at a loss for words in the moment, too caught up in the ‘feels’…which, as a writer, I find wryly amusing.

I wouldn’t have been able to do my thoughts and feelings for him justice, but the idea of speaking of and for the dead has become important over the years to the ancestral work that I do. It’s about being in service to something greater than my grief. It’s about being in service to love.

Love is where we find the courage to stand in our grief, to put words to the truth of how the world is now, without our loved ones. How we dispose of the bodies of our beloved dead is about honoring both their memory and the physical temple they inhabited, as well as honoring their wishes for its end.

The funerals we hold for the dead are often designed with them in mind. If they had a specific practice, it will likely be a service of their spirituality or religion, and we the living are welcome to share in that space. It’s where those who are left without the dead are allowed to remember them. It’s part of our process of accepting the transition of death as it applies to our own lives. And I believe that it’s meant to serve the living more than it’s meant to honor the dead.

I have thought back often to my Grandpa’s service, and the poor retired minister who fumbled through every Old Testament story in the Bible and couldn’t remember the dead man’s name. What would my Grandpa have wanted to say? What would he have wanted people to take away from the last time they would gather in his honor?

How would he have wanted to be remembered? How should he have been remembered? How could I have been to bridge to convey that? How can I do that in the future?

But here’s my, this-should-be-common-sense disclaimer: I say that the service, the memorial, the wake… those are all things for those of us left behind. But it is still sacred space. It is still a place of honor and truth and love. The eulogy is not space to air dirty laundry.

You have to be compassionate for the grief of everyone who gathers. But keep it real. Don’t pretend you were close if you weren’t. But, for example, when my good friend lost his father suddenly, it was bittersweet. They had been estranged for some time. After years of being close, his father developed an issue with his sexual orientation, spiritual practices, and food preferences. I sat at that funeral to support him as he stood to speak, the only son of the deceased man.

He was beautiful. He was honest that he and his father had not been on good terms when he died. And then he brought up the good times with his father, the memories he would cherish from his formative years. And I watched him express grief that they had lost the chance to find their way back to being father and son. It was honest and sweet and I know his pragmatic father would have nodded his head and thought it was truly and fairly shared. I have never been more proud of him, or that friendship.

It’s stayed with me over the years. There is a way to be kind and truthful. There is a way to speak from your heart and paint a human picture, rather than the nondescript way the minister spoke of death at my Grandpa’s funeral. It was death that brought us there, yes. But it was our love of my Grandpa, and the fact that it was his death that made us come together.

In a file on my computer, I have started writing down thoughts about my beloved family and friends. I review them every year around Samhain, changing and adding stories as my relationships with them change, as I grow older and more reflective. I know some people will think my stating that I have been working on eulogies for my family members, who are nowhere near death, sounds morbid.

But it’s not. Sure, it reminds me of mortality. It also reminds me to love while I am alive and able to do so. Revisiting old stories reminds me what it is about my friends and family that I love.

Here are some of the prompts I used as I sat down to write. They were little bursts of inspiration that shaped the stories I decided to tell. These thoughts and prompts are meant to convey their character, as well as, in theory, allow me to heal by revisiting who they were to me- to me and everyone else who will grieve them. May it be many, many years before I have need of my words.

• At what point in your life did you meet the deceased?
• What was your first impression of them? How was that impression cemented? Or how was that impression proved false?
• How long have you known them?
• In what ways did they make your life better or brighter?
• What pieces of advice did they give you?
• What struggles did you see them overcome? What truths about their character did you learn about them?
• What is something you knew about them that other people did not?
• What are some good deeds they did?
• What basic principles did they believe in, that they would want you to convey?
• What important events in people’s lives did they step up to help out with?
• How can you pay what they taught you forward into the living world? How can all of you?
• What little stories can you share that illustrate any of these thoughts?

What has lived is remembered in our tales and what is remembered, lives on.

The Night Vigil

Zami (l), still kicking around, and Luna (r), about 2001. Photo by Rahdne Zola.

I don’t lay claim to a specific religion, but my spirituality is very important to me. Once upon a time, I didn’t know you could be spiritual without being religious, and thanks to my parents’ love of camping and my love of literature, I discovered that my spirituality resonates strongest when I connect to the natural world.

In a lot of ways, having pets is part of that for me, connecting in to another creature, learning to co-habitat, sharing trust. It’s almost been five years since the death of our petite tiger, Luna. My experience with her loss was the impetus for this blog. We’ve lost another cat since then, and gained a new one.

I was on my way to bed, just after midnight. Luna, our normal bedwarmer, was curled up on the couch, which was strange but not unusual. I might have kept going. I was tired, thinking about my schedule for the next day.

It was a singular moment, where I stopped and I looked at her and she looked at me without lifting her head. It wasn’t a brain moment. It wasn’t a heart moment. It was an intuitive moment. Like when your skin knows a storm is coming. When you know you eyes are watching you even though you can’t see anyone. When you know the house is too quiet and the children aren’t making a peep. In that moment, I knew in my body, in my gut, that something important was happening.

I sat on the couch, waiting for her to climb in my lap, but she just sighed. I scooped her up gingerly and slid her onto my lap, paying attention to her discomfort and distress. I thought I was hurting her more and I tried to put her down, but she grabbed my arm and whimpered. She didn’t want to be alone.

It took her a good twenty minutes to get comfortable and settle, draped in my lap, her head thrown over my wrist. When she finally stilled, so did I. I didn’t move again until dawn.

There’s something about a spirituality that asks you to immerse yourself in the living world that keeps you present in your body, in every minute that ticks by. Luna and I were connected. I could sense death sniffing around her. I was so afraid that she might pass at any moment that I remember every minute of that vigil.

Luna slept for five short chunks of time, touching my bare forearm. When she didn’t feel well, she liked to touch bare skin. It comforted her. As the night progressed I spoke softly to her, telling her we’d get her to the vet as soon as they opened, telling her we’d get her medicine. I tried to keep her calm. I sang to her. And I stayed. Luna didn’t like to be alone.

That last night with Luna was the last night we had together. It felt like such a helpless thing, sitting in stillness for hours, ignoring my own needs so she could sleep comfortably. Her coat was like rabbit fur and she had a mean left hook- and wasn’t afraid to use it if you tried to tell her no and she really didn’t want to hear it. She considered herself part of the family, not a pet.

That night when she lay weakly in my lap, I remembered the small kitten with big eyes and big ears who crawled up me at the open adoption day, digging her claws into my shoulder to keep above the throngs of grabby children, shaking. We learned a lot from each other in our ten years together and I learned a lot about myself that last night, too.

I learned I can set aside my fear for the care of someone else. I learned that I can make hard choices in the face of someone else’s suffering. I learned that it’s more important for me to face a hard truth than to hide from it.

In her last moments, she was curled like a bunny in the vet office, head low, quietly gazing up at us. We were waiting to find out what kind of medicine we needed for her, ignorant of the aggressive tumor that had swallowed up the vital organs in her abdomen. But she knew. Animals are more connected to that spiritual energy than we are. Luna knew. She was just waiting until we were ready to let her go.