Susan Minarik – Page 117 – Notes from the Woods

Day 16 – Realigning with Joy, Part 2

I woke remembering my intention to exchange my complaints for appreciation.. That in itself made me happy and I began the day with an easy smile.

The sun was out, a somewhat rare occurrence of late, and the temperature had risen above freezing. It was a perfect day for grabbing some photos. But I’d better go now. The forecast said clouds would be moving in by afternoon.

That’s when I discovered what, precisely, it is that I don’t like about winter. Everybody who knows me at all well has heard my annual statements about the season. I tell them, year after year, that we are part bear and should be hibernating now until the berries are ripe in the spring.

I don’t like being cold, I tell them. But today I realize that it’s not the sharpness of cold against my skin. As long as my body feels warm, I am okay with cold air. Sure, there are extremes to avoid, But you can be exposed to surprisingly cold air without sustaining damage. So it wasn’t the cold that I didn’t like.

I complained (as I am wont to do) about the season’s lack of color. But this year I am reminded how much I appreciate its hues. So I couldn’t blame that either.

I was thinking about this as I pulled on my boots and laced them and tied a double bow so the laces wouldn’t come undone and trip me. I put on the fuzzy hat with the wonderful ear flaps and tied it under my chin. I slid into the puffy winter jacket and zipped it up and snapped the snaps, and then I pulled on my gloves.

“Good grief,” some little voice inside me sighed, sounding impatient. “Can we go now?”

I could only laugh. That was why I didn’t like winter! You had to go through this huge, long ritual before you could go out and play. In summer, you could just run out the door.

I felt like the voice belonged to the five-year-old inside me who was chafing at the bit to get outside. I imagined taking her hand and walking with her to the creek, and showing her how to notice the feel of the air on her face and how the sun slightly warmed it. We listened to the winter birds and to the trees’ bare branches clicking in the gentle wind. Then there was the creek and we carefully climbed down the steep bank to its edges and wondered at its colors and dance and song.

As I peeled off my hat and gloves and jacket and boots when I got back home, I smiled at what I had experienced. That’s what its like when you trade your complaints for appreciation. The joy-beams get through.

Day 15 – Realigning with Joy

“I am too full of complaints,” I say to myself, complaining about my complaining.

Admitting that allows me to see it as another learning opportunity. Complaints block the the joy-beams’ glow, after all. I need to call up the janitors to sweep them away.

I laugh as I hear the words “Your next assignment, should you choose to accept it” echo from some hallway of my mind.

I accept the challenge and begin by asking myself what attitude I would like to install in place of complaining. (Once you decide to do something, you may as well begin.) How about appreciation? Yeah. That would be cool. I make up a game. (Call if an exercise or a practice if you will.) Here it is:

Every time I notice myself complaining, I will choose to identify three things in my immediate vicinity that I appreciate.

First, I will say “Thank you,” to the part of me that called the complaint to my notice.
Then I will say “I’m sorry; please forgive me” because I fell into the trap of complaining.
Then I will say “I love you” because the world is stuffed with things that offer joy.
After that I’ll identify the three things, just for the delight of it.

And that’s the game.

We’ll see how it goes.

The Revelations of the Trees

Almost everybody is entranced by flowers I suppose. I know I am. All they have to do is appear and I’m hooked. But trees are something else.

I think we take them for granted for the most part, forgetting that they are as alive as we are, and quite wondrous. We can walk right past them and give them no more heed than we do a sign post or light pole.

I’ve come to know some of them fairly well, having lived in close proximity with them for a few decades. They’re like a lot of living things in that if you give them your respectful attention, they will reveal much of their nature to you and fill you with interesting imaginings.

For the past couple of years, as winter began to give way to spring, I’ve noticed that I don’t want to say goodbye to the winter trees. It’s not that they go away or anything. But in springtime the flowers will return and I dance off with them, forgetting about the trees altogether.

They don’t mind. That’s one of the things I appreciate about them. They get pretty busy themselves for the green part of the year, and then there’s the autumn display. It’s winter when they draw my attention to them again, and they in turn reveal their gifts.

This past week I noticed hugging trees and the exposed bones of two pines who lived long, long ago. May they gift you with interesting imaginings, too.

Day 13 – Gifts from J Frost

Escape from Ludicrous World

A friend told me about some high-performance electric car that had various running modes and one of them was named Ludicrous. I think that’s the mode we’re all stuck in right now. How many do you know, after all, whose views really makes any sense, given what you know and can see with your own eyes? Keen discernment is required to sort out the truth these days, my friend. Such a complex, noisy web surrounds it.

So he’s telling me about this car and how it will be updated via software downloads periodically, adding new features and capabilities. I think how that is like what the nano particles do–build the intraweb, enhance the circuitry, expand what you can do, what you can send and receive. And they fit how many in the needle of a syringe? Billions? Is that something like the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin?

See? What a ludicrous world it is in which we find ourselves–a surreal ever-changing sci-fi movie. Except it’s real. And we’re alive and smack-dab in the middle of it, hoping we tucked a flashlight of some kind in our back pocket. The more you think about it, the less you understand. It can be confusing. Disorienting. Painful.

Don’t let it get you down. These are trying times for us all. When things hurt, I repeat Tara Brach’s wise words: “This is suffering. Everybody suffers. May I be kind.”

That’s one the things I love the most about us human beings. Our capacity for kindness. What a loss it would be if that was reduced to a program, to a set of prescribed social rules and nothing more.

But to change the subject entirely (a routine practice in Ludicrous World), I wanted to share that I’m moving right along with my “Hundred Bottles of Hours” practice, where I take an hour every day to compose a love note, tuck it into today’s bottle, and send it, via my blog, downstream to wherever.

Yesterday was Day 12 and I posted views from my studio window over a two-day span. I enjoy doing series of things. I like the old rippled glass in the upper window’s center panes. It reminds me of the glass in my grandmother’s house. I like the way the snow plow looks like a Tonka toy way down there. I like the warmth and softness of the drapes at night, as the sun sets.

It’s letting yourself do what you really love doing that keeps you sane. Immerse yourself in it on some kind of regular basis. You deserve it. You need it. Follow your bliss, as the hippies used to say. That’s good advice. Get in touch with the pools of goodness inside you and let them remind you that, however ludicrous the world may seem, in the center of your being Truth resides. And its beautiful, and good.

It’s freeing to step out of the world’s craziness for a while. It’s always there, the jangling of a phone, a flicker of a screen away, waiting to pull you back. The trick is always to go back to it with an easy smile, seeing it for what it is, letting your heart guide you through its twisted maze. And don’t worry. If you weren’t needed, you wouldn’t still be here. At least they tell me that’s the way that it works. There’s always something more for you to learn and to do, to give and to receive.

That’s worth a smile.
Look somebody in the eye and pass it on.

Warmly,
Susan

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Day 12 – View from the Studio Window

Day 11 – The Season’s First Snow

Day 11 – View to the West

The trees lean to the north as if they are followers of the north star. Some of me supposes that it’s more a matter of reaching beyond the shade of the trees higher on the hill. They do this, the theory goes, in order to drink in more light. Same conclusion, either way.

It’s quite a balancing act, given how gravity is at play. Some, of course, lose the battle. In the end all of us do. Even mountains turn, eventually, to sand.

Still, wondrously, life goes on despite its changing forms. (Some things are forever.)

Watch, and let go, and be kind,

Let your heart know gladness.

Day 10 – Climbing the South Hill in Early Winter

I didn’t plan it. I was just staring at it through the window and it said, “C’mon up.” The whole hill said it at once. Who could resist?

I dress for it and sling my camera around my neck. I check out little corners here and there that I haven’t seen since spring. I study the colors of tree bark and notice the way fallen ferns, still green, decorate the beds of russet oak leaves. I listen to the wind.

Now and then I stop and look up. What I’ve felt the whole time I’ve been here I now see: I am standing in a cathedral.

Day 9 – Broken Ice Along the Road

Nobody ever told you that the road would always be straight and smooth now, did they?

Personally, I think I heard voices yelling “Buckle Up, Kiddo! Grab your shield! You’re in for some kind of a ride!”

When I really think about it, I suppose I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.