where you are going....

Art by Everett Ruess, Desert Light.

"I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

 I found these lines while reading a book about writing for the Fall group that starts in September. I have had some solitude lately with my husband gone helping one of our sons.The time on the porch in the cool morning perched in a wicker chair is wonderful. I stop reading to feel the breeze on my cheeks and think there are no better moments than these.

The words at the beginning were written by the American icon, Henry David Thoreau. I visited his grave once on an autumn day in New England. The memory is a happy one.We, my husband and I, were tired from the drive and the dogs that kept us awake the night before.We slogged through the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, looking for Poets Hill and I was ready to give up. John, however, kept at it because he knew how much it meant to me. Finally, there was the Thoreau family plot. Holy ground.

I noticed something right away that touched me.The stones just had the first names of Henry and his siblings.These are old stones and grey. But unlike the others, Henry's stone was white on the top and I immediately knew why. Pilgrims like myself feel compelled to stroke the top of his stone, to connect, and thus it is rendered almost clean. In front of the stone someone had left a small bright orange pumpkin.A gift for a poet, a solitary, that has touched something deep in me.

Alone, in the quiet, is the only place that I can hear the Voice, the lover, comforter, guide, the one who encourages. In the stillness , face turned away from everything, pen in hand, yesterday I heard this. I offer it in love to all who may need to hear:

"Once you were lost, hanging by a thread.You remember those times of pain and shame.
See where you are now. All the things that hurt can be looked back on and forgotten.Where you are going, nothing like that exists, even in memory."

the legend of Jingwei

Across the room she stood looking so healthy, way beyond what I knew.I had heard about her deep faith and wanted to know this beautiful, blond young woman.We fell into an unexpected friendship.

The painting above depicts the Chinese tale of Namu, a young girl who is playing  in the Eastern Sea. She was unable to reach shore and drowned.She is then transformed into a bird called Jingwei. She lives on Departing Doves Mountain among the mulberry trees.Namu now resembles a crow with a patterned head, white beak and red feet She regularly carries twigs and stones to the sea in an effort to fill it up.The sea laughs at her and she answers that she will spend the next hundred million years filling up the sea, so no one else will share her fate. From this myth comes the Chinese chegyo idiom which means Jingwei tries to fill the sea or dogged determination and perseverance in the face of seemingly impossible odds.

My friend Michele was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005  when she returned from her honeymoon. The honey of that trip left her shortly thereafter. After treatments, she was doing well but in 2010 her cancer returned with a vengeance. At that time she was given 3-5 years .That was 8 years ago, She fights, she hopes, she endures.

In the midst of her journey, she has been led to produce beauty products specifically for cancer survivors whose skin has been affected by chemotherapy. She now goes to a retirement facility and gives facials weekly. But what she brings is her story. One that has touched me so deeply that I can't explain it. In the painting above, my sweet girl stands facing that dragon which is cancer. Through all of this, she has a heart filled with appreciation. Her most recent note says this: "I am so grateful to the Lord , especially for putting all these angels in my life.." Those are the white doves swirling about her speaking words of love as she faces her journey.