~ A Joy Warrior's Journey
The only tale the woods can tell is the moment’s truth.
There’s no pretense here. No fabrication.
No memory or longing.
Just the sheer isness of forest and snow:
Sunlight on tree bark, the punctuation of animal tracks
and long shadows, the call of a crow accentuating
the silence.
All of it breathing the shimmering Yes.
The week seems to have flown past, but I had a chance to relax over a cup of coffee this morning with my 80-some year old neighbor, Bob. He’s a colorful old codger who has worked as a farmer, mill electrician, and long-haul trucker. He’s a ham radio enthusiast and often tells me about flying his plane to Alaska one year to see if he could find a cousin’s grave..
He recently had a pacemaker installed and it’s taken him a few days to get his bearings. But today he was feeling great and was full of tales about his truck driving capabilities.
He told me about the time he asked Tom, the owner of a bridge painting company, why this big piece of equipment was sitting in the yard. “It’s too big to fit into the garage,” Tom told him. “Nobody can get it in.”
Bob looked at it and at the garage door, and back at the equipment. “Sure it can fit,” Bob said. “I’ll back it in there for you.” Tom said they had measured the thing. At its widest point, it was only two inches smaller than the door.
To everybody’s amazement, Bob hooked it up to his pick-up and backed it in, slick as a whistle. He grinned ear to ear as he told me the story, proud as he could be.
“Well,” I said, “You know what Henry Ford said, don’t you? ‘If you believe you can—or if you believe you can’t—you’re probably right.’”
Bob took that in and laughed, slapping his knees. “I never heard that one before! That’s pretty good.”
Have you ever accomplished something you weren’t quite sure you could do, but thought maybe you could if you tried? If you have, you understand Bob’s big grin. It’s a great feeling to have your faith in yourself validated, to stretch beyond what you know you can do into the untried and then succeed.
We all too often let fear of the unfamiliar get in our way. We worry about how we’ll look to others if we try something new and it doesn’t work out. But every effort is a learning experience; you gain knowledge about what works and what doesn’t. You expand your horizons. You build new skills; you learn how to work around limitations. Always, you can feel good about yourself for overcoming your doubt and hesitation, for trying something new.
And in most cases, if you really flub up, at least you have a good story to tell and, often, a chance to laugh at the mess you made of things.
We don’t often think of our daily challenges as requiring courage, but courage is exactly what you’re using when you dare to try something new. And as with any strength, you build it by using it. You gain confidence in yourself. You find yourself saying, “Sure I can!” or “I don’t know, but I’ll give it a try.” You start acting like “The Little Engine that Could,” chanting “I think I can; I think I can,” and making it all the way to the top of the big hill.
Thinking you can is the key. As old Henry Ford said, whether you believe that you can, or can’t, you’re probably right. The next time you’re facing a challenge, give it a try.
Wishing you a week brimming with confidence and success.
Warmly,
Susan
Image by Miriam Müller from Pixabay
All at once, a breather, a moment of respite
from the cold. Temperatures that in summer
would have chilled me feel so balmy to me now
that I go hatless and leave my mittens behind.
It won’t last. February snow is no surprise.
But today the sun is shining and I remember
the taste of spring, its sounds and fragrances.
The creek wears a layer of water over its ice.
And on its banks, even the trees are dancing.
Before they even slip into
their golden-yoked shells,
before their bodies even begin
to form bones and beaks and brains,
the spirits of birds dream of flying.
That is why they come here.
They come pushed by dreams
of sky rushing through feathers,
of gliding through air, of darting
among the branches of trees.
They dream of swooping and falling
and climbing again on strong wings,
of racing with clouds and drifting
on breezes. It will take effort,
this dream. But they hold to it
until it turns true and they find
themselves soaring and free.
The days have been dark with heavy skies.
Today, for most of the day, it rained.
But as I crossed the bridge from one side
of the river to the other, I noticed
that, beyond the fog, the clouds
were parting, a new light shining through.
And how alive the world seemed,
as if it were filled with newborn joy.
For as long as the lake could remember
the air had been cold. Day or night, whether
it danced as a breeze or blew with the force
of a gale, cold was its unrelenting story.
And the lake believed it and knew itself
to be ice, stretching from shore to shore,
strong enough to hold the weight of a deer
or of a man. Then, one January day,
the rays of the sun, warm as spring,
fell on its surface, gleaming with truth.
At first, the ice resisted. “I am ice,” it said.
But the light of the sun kept burning
with love, insisting, “You are more.
You are ice, but you are more.” And the lake
began melting and rippling with joy,
and at last it knew that it was liquid
and free.
You think of her with her dazzle on,
the shimmering heaps of powdery snow
flashing in the sunlight, sparkling
beneath a full moon, the etched branches
and frosted boughs, the glittering ice.
Nothing can compare.
But most days, she shuffles through the hours
unadorned, and unless you have the wisdom
to peer past the surface, you might mistake
her for some plain Jane, too ordinary
to warrant your attention. Only those
who truly look can truly see her beauty–
or deserve to.
For one more day, the snow held, more falling
during the night and into the morning
until every branch and twig was clothed
in its powdery light.
The sight was almost too much to bear,
and you could walk in it only slowly,
mindful and silent lest you disturb
something holy,
even while your spirit
leapt and shouted with joy.
We are, I found myself thinking, all wounded warriors struggling toward a Great Promise of some kind, feeling its pull in our hearts, the truth and reality of its call. We give it different names and have a wondrous assortment of interpretations of it. It doesn’t matter. It’s far larger than any of us understands and better than all of us together could imagine.
The fulfillment of that Great Promise feels so far away sometimes. But sometimes, more and more often, we get a sense that it’s just ahead. We expect to see it any minute now. We just have to make it through this one last stretch of tight darkness and there it will be, opening its welcome to us.
Meanwhile, there’s today. Based on past experience, we suppose it will go more or less as we expect it to go. It will have its usual rhythm of tasks and demands, its moments of rest and interruption, its flickers of of surprise and of appreciation, To have an ordinary day is a blessing you know.
A wise novelist whose name escapes me at the moment said we should greet every day as if it’s our first, or our last. Try one of those on for size. See how the world looks from there. I’ve been looking at them as if each one is my last, myself, cherishing the make-up of my Now. Nevertheless, especially when I’m lucky enough to be around infants, I let myself try to remember or imagine how the world looks when you see it for the very fist time.
But as I was saying, here we are, smack-dab in the middle of today, free to do with it as we choose. Thanks for choosing to spend some of your moments with me, by the way. That makes me smile. In exchange, I’ll tell you a story.
Dr. T was telling her colleague and friend Dr. P how frustrated she was that she hadn’t mastered this new skill she was working on. “And you started practicing this when?” he asked.
She said she had begun a week ago last Tuesday, and he smiled at her and said, “Maybe you’re exactly where someone should be who’s been practicing for less than two weeks.”
She got the point, and laughed. She immediately let go of the impossible expectation she had raised for herself.
We don’t get to our goals in the blink of an eye. They require us to hone our skills, to sharpen and polish them, to repeatedly practice doing the things that will move us nearer our target, over and over. That’s what a practice is. It’s building a routine with the aim of getting better and better at it all the time, giving it greater attention, getting more insight, expanding our understanding.
When you practice routinely, the distance to the goal doesn’t matter. The whole purpose of seeking mastery is to spur continuous improvement. All that matters is that today you will practice intentionally. No matter what you did yesterday or how many days have passed when you didn’t practice at all, or whether you think you’re any good at it or not, today you can decide to do your practicing.
At the end of his conversation with Dr. T, Dr. P said his grandmother once asked him how long he’d had his practice. “Over 25 years,” he told her.
“Well son,” she said, “You know, we’re always practicing.”
Nice that we get to choose what our practices will be, isn’t it?
As for me, I plan to continue being a Joy Warrior for a while. Feels worthwhile.
May all your practices bring you contentment and peace.
Warmly,
Susan
Even now I see, as I gaze at these spent asters
fallen on the new snow, their grace remains,
their delicate song echos still and enchants
so that it is suddenly late summer in my mind
and the hillside is strewn with their purple petals
as they waltz with the goldenrod in the warm air.
It was a fine dream, and I thanked them,
awed that they could hold such power, even now.