Thoughts On Fathers

me&daddyAny man can be a father, it takes a special gift to be a dad.

“On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her their father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her their father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.”

Walt Whitman

 

Rites Of Passage And Adventure

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Life never comes to a closure; life is process, even mystery.  Life is
known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with
change and the unknown.  Given the nature of life, there may be
no security, but only adventure.”    Rachel Naomi Remen

There were two rites of passage this past weekend.  Both marked a passage in my life. They were both ritual events that marked transition from one status to another. Rites of passage are celebrated by all cultures, nations, and religions. It can be a coming of age, a sacrament, a life change. Passages celebrated in community are the best. Our need to be part of or share an emotional connection is overwhelming. It’s where we learn the heart habits of tolerance, charity, and trust. They are life altering on this worldly path.

The first was for my friend Paul who died on April 26th. It was a combination Native American Church/Buddhist ceremony, celebrated with and by those who loved him. Prayers, singing and drumming were offered up for a safe passage, the fire lit at his death was extinguished, the reading of The Bardo finished. A time for reflection on our own lives and to remember Paul’s words to us.  Our adventure continues.

“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure “     Joseph Campbell

The second passage was my granddaughter’s First Holy Communion. The sharing in the divine nature given through the grace of Christ bears a certain likeness to the origin, development, and nourishing of natural life. The faithful is born anew by Baptism, strengthened by the sacrament of Confirmation, and receive in the Eucharist the food of eternal life. By means of these sacraments of Christian initiation, they thus receive in increasing measure the treasures of the divine life and advance toward the perfection of charity.”

“Jesus, what made You so small? LOVE!”
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 1153)

It is an act of love and sets her on her adventure to experience and share that love.

As with many rites there are gifts for the participants.

From Paul, a picture with his favourite word, written in his ashes.

Paul Dimitoff

 

For Giorgia, an ornament as a gift for our sharing in her passage and remembrance of our LOVE!

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Farewell Friend ~ Farewell Advice

My loving friend Paul has started a new journey. Freed from his earthly home, he is now free to wander the cosmos, delighting in all the things he knows are there for him. I cherish his last will and testament and remember his wishes for us.

Rev. Dr. Pavel Dimitoff“Before death, life is a seeker.
After death, the same life becomes a dreamer.
Before death, life struggles and strives for Perfection.
After death, the same life rests
and enjoys the divine Bliss with the soul.
Before death, life is God’s Promise.
After death, life is God’s inner Assurance.
This Assurance of God’s we notice while we fulfil God in our future incarnation.”

Last Will & TestamentHe did not simply visit this world.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world

– Mary Oliver

 

Poetry Is The Evidence of Life

It’s the Spice.

“Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.”

Hannah Arendt

A German Jewish philosopher, certainly not without controversy. A product of Germany during WWII striving to understand evil. I haven’t thought about her in over 40 years. I first studied her in a university class.  A CBC Radio show on the drive home brought her back.  I am not sure if I really understand her work but, I heard the above quote and it really stuck.

It’s interesting to look at great thinkers and philosophers positions on  “poetry”

“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.”

  – Plato

“Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.”

– Aristotle

Or to look at an existential poet from Germany.

“For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke

Leonard_Cohen

Or to look at the poet “lover” from my teenage years. He was never far from my side.

From Spice Box of Earth (still kept in my bedside table)

Spice Box of Earth

Summer Haiku

Silence

and a deeper silence

when the crickets

hesitate

I can’t imagine my life without  the ability to experience emotion through poetry, to feel my experiences through poetry and to find the truth in history through poetry.

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Will.

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“Nature teaches beasts to know their friends”.

William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

Celebrating “Mighty Girls”

I blogged on my art project with the Grade Six girls at a local school in March. I called it mentoring. My involvement started with the school through my Rotary Club and our goal of literacy in our community. We sponsored the school with a $10,000 matching grant and offered the opportunity to club members to volunteer at the school on a regular basis, with any project.

mighty-girls

We finished my project last week,amazed at not only how the girls paintings evolved but their insightful words on what made them a Mighty Girl. Each participant came to the project with their own talents. Some had never painted before. Some had no doubt about themselves or how mighty they were, others had never experienced  looking at all their good qualities, strengths and beauty. Some knew love,some hoped for love. Each brought their uniqueness every week. There was laughter, tears, start overs and some never finishes. We all learned more about each other and how our struggles are all the same. Watching them encourage each other and grow made my heart beat a little happier.

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I was not there as a teacher or instructor, I was only there as a caring adult to give them the opportunity to grow through this introspective project. It wasn’t about painting or learning a new skill. I grew and they grew. That’s it.

We celebrated with a party of pizza, pop and cupcakes.

Thank you to Rotary for your commitment to “literacy” and  Mighty Girl for their inspiration, and to the girls of Grade Six.

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Well done “Mighty Girls”!! Thank You!

 

Relationships

B-MOM

When it’s the anniversary of the loss of a loved one I can feel quite melancholy. There always seems to be something that reminds me whether it is a date, a season, a quick memory of good times. This weekend was the second year anniversary of one of my dogs deaths. Noel, was a wonderful dog who lived a very good and happy life. She wasn’t my first loss or is my last. I have written frequently on my dogs and other animals and my relationships with them.

A good friend has just gone into hospice. His time left here is measured  in days.  I will support him with love on his journey. I will miss him from my life. But, I ask myself why it is I miss my animals more?

John Berger, in About Looking, wrote: “With their parallel lives, animals offer man a companionship different from any offered by human exchange. Different because it is a companionship offered to the loneliness of man as a species.”

From this blog post I read today about the relationship of a man with his pigs it offers a beautiful reflection of companionship.

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I think Mary Oliver sums it up in this poem from Dog Songs.

How It Is With Us, And How It Is With Them

We become religious,

then we turn from it,

then we are in need and maybe we turn back.

We turn to making money,

then we turn to the moral life,

then we think about money again.

We meet wonderful people, but lose them

in our busyness.

We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.

Steadfastness, it seems,

is more about dogs than about us.

One of the reasons we love them so much.

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Sakura

Cherry Blossoms“when cherry blossoms
scatter…
no regrets”

 Issa

 

Art courtesy of Kay Bingham Elementary School

When we listen to the Vancouver news and events on tv now, it is all about cherry blossoms. I miss them, the predictor of spring on the west coast. There is even a Haiku Invitational Contest.

In Japan they watch the ‘cherry blossom” front that moves from the south (Okinawa) starting in January and reaches Tokyo in late March. It’s like a weather report.

Cherry blossoms are richly symbolic with words like ephemeral, transient, metaphorical: blossom, beauty, death.  Cherry blossoms are the subject of so many poems.  My favourite is haiku.

“in my province

grass blooms too…

cherry blossoms”

(Issa)

No better way for children to be introduced to poetry. A new book this year by one of my favourite children’s authors, Jon Muth. An Easter present for my grandson.

Hi, Koo

A Bunch of the Boys

A bunch of the boys

Had the whooping-cough  at the Puppy Dog Saloon

The kid that handled the music box

Was playing his Sunday School tune.

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If you are a fan of Robert W. Service you will see this as somewhat of a mashup of The Shooting of Dan McGrew. My dad knew loads of poetry and was very willing to share with us as kids. He liked to switch it up when we were little. He mesmerized us with voice tone, action and antics. This is how children learn and how they acquire a love for the spoken word. A trip to Yukon is definitely on my bucket list! I still have my kids copies of The Shooting of Dan McGrew and the Cremation of Sam McGee illustrated by artist Ted Harrison and will read them to my grandchildren.

As I got older I found a well-worn copy of Songs of the Sourdough on the bookshelf and to this day I can pretty much recite every single poem in it. My favourite is My Madonna.

My dad loved to read. His favourite author was Thomas Hardy. I still enjoy him today as well. When my dad was in a really good mood, probably after a drink or two, he would quote this poem below.  Said he learned it from his father. My mom would get all flustered; telling him not to be teaching us things like that. I had forgotten all about it until I found a copy in her things . I tried to google it and couldn’t find it anywhere. Funny how as a kid I only remember the prayer and miracle part and I’ve never been afraid of hermits!

Moral is read to kids, read with passion.

Don’t think  reading this one to the grand kids will be an option.

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The Hermit

A hermit once lived in a beautiful dell
There’s no legend or moral in the story I tell
For our Squire’s son said he knew him quite well
The hermit

He lived all alone in a cave by the lake
Libations of herbs for his health he would take
And nothing but fish would this good man partake
On Fridays

To inquisitive mortals his portals he closed
Once a year he bathed his body and clothes
How the lake ever stood it the Lord only knows
And he would not tell

One day as he arose all dripping and wet
To his horrified vision two fair maidens he met
And as not being a hardened sinner as yet
He blushed

He grabbed for his hat, which lay on the beach
To cover up all its wide brim would reach
And he yelled to the girls with a horrified screech
Go away

But the girls only laughed at his pitiful plight
And begged him to show them the wonderful sight
But he held to the hat with all of his might
To hide it

Just then along came a wandering gnat
Which made him forget just what he was at
He hit at the insect and let go of the hat
Oh horrors

And now I come to the thread of my tale
The hermit turned red and then he turned pale
He offered a prayer for prayers never fail
So it’s said

Of the truth of this story there’s no doubt at all
The Lord heard his prayer and he answered his call
Though he let go of the hat, the hat did not fall
That’s the miracle

Anonymous

Puffins

puffin-3Keeping with the poetry theme, I tried to think of poems I knew by heart. One of my favourites is There Once Was a Puffin. As a single mom one of my careers was selling World Book Encyclopedia door to door. Part of the training introduced me to how important it was to read to children, even babies.

I bought Chidcraft when my daughter was still a toddler. One of the best investments I ever made. It was here that she gained her love for language, creativity and learning.The first one we read was Poems & Stories. We read this one a lot. I googled it to make sure I still knew it word for word. My google search took me to Puffinpalooza. Who knew there was a whole blog about puffins. Check it out, very cool.  Under this poem was a comment from a reader of the blog.

and I quote:

“I love it! My 93-year-old mother who has dementia also is able to recite the entire poem from memory. She has had a passion for both poetry and puffins her whole life.”

I guess if I make it to 93 and can still remember this poem, I will be just fine.

There Once Was a Puffin

Oh, there once was a Puffin
Just the shape of a muffin,
And he lived on an island
In the

     bright

                      blue sea!

He ate little fishes,
That were most delicious,
And he had them for supper
And he

     had them

          for tea.

But this poor little Puffin,
He couldn’t play nothin’,
For he hadn’t anybody
To play

     with

          at all.

So he sat on his island,
And he cried for a while, and
He felt very lonely,
And he

     felt

                       very small.

Then along came the fishes,
And they said, “If you wishes,
You can have us for playmates,
Instead

     of

                   for tea!”

So they now play together,
In all sorts of weather,
And the Puffin eats pancakes,
Like you

           and

                     like me.

by Florence Page Jaques

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