The Pairings There part ii

My listening is attentive to voices talking story. Tales come from friends of many years in finely tuned narratives, arriving like rivers, landing in my head after a journey along banks that bend and rebound and then morph into chronicles of the heart. These chronicles of the heart grow from

the pairings there and . . .

it’s just like last year, when a magnetic north of the heart drew me back into numerous and important pairings: grandkids and kids, water and fire, people and animals, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, hopes and dreams, memories and experiences, time and attention, kids and water in lakes, rivers, ponds, creeks, pools, sprinklers, music and singing – dancing – generations, and ancestors.

I’d forgotten that rain and fog go together, too, a pairing I’ve not experienced in a long time. It was weird to crawl out the eastern door of my tent on all fours, emerging groggy like a bear after a big sleep.

Uneven and unsteady, chilled and sore, I stood and scanned the foggy haze appearing in the west where Pluto’s shadowy breath obscured my vision. A few steps into the fog and a building appeared like a dream along with rows of ugly RVs and highway worker trucks.

Forward through the mist . . . somnambulating in light footsteps on packed gravel, the human experience propelled me toward a campground bathroom, a most dreary place of concrete and square chunks of cold air.

At that watery campground on the Chocolay River in Upper Michigan, the foggy dew rang in my head. It was a song I played with my Irish band. Fog and dewy lyrics in my head took me to Ireland, and it seemed like 1916 where I sat down by the Glenside listening for the dread tattoo. It would have meant, on that Monday’s Easter Rising near Dublin, that Britannia’s big guns were sailing up the Liffey River and I would join my rag-tag brothers in arms to defend the city.

Pairings and attendant emotions come in waves these days, both when I’m awake and when sleeping. At night, the tides move everything and shape the dark hours like mystical love letters from the planet.

In the fog, by the river, a dream came like a wave, provoking my unconscious and turning me upside down with an image, hopeful and strongly charged emotion, of things left undone . . . along with hope and gratitude.

Lucky I am, having received invitations into homes and celebrations, into conversations around the lives and deaths of friends and family, into the struggle of daily life with its rough and tumble. By circumstances undefined, unplanned, and mystical, I found myself in Michigan’s foggy dew hearing the whispers of ancestors.

There’s surprise in pairings, and good ones seem to be widely palatable, like grandparents and grandchildren. Other pairings, a couple most dear and wise, their lives a glimpse into generativity and inclusion, their invitation is a window into intelligence and charisma. And there is more too, much more.

People I know are doing what they need to do and working to keep the world a good place. The pairings keep on keepin’ on: new lives and new loves, new days and new hopes, poems and readings, music and memories, recollections of life well lived and well-loved spoken of with sacred stories, elements, ancestors, water, island, fire, sage, and story-talk.

But mostly, I remember the wisdom of making decisions only after considering their effects on the next 7 generations. This is the heart of care and the best vision for the planet and people. Ojibwe University at Lac Courte Oreilles teaches this, and the Potawatomi Tribal Community’s aquaponics farm, in the town of Blackwell, Wisconsin demonstrates this. Its vision made real in 126 tillable acres, its vision made hearable in word: Bodwewadmi Ktegan.

It is a generative task to think deeply about how we do what we do – and don’t do – on this Earth. We must continue to learn and change so that there will be another 7 generations.

And yet can we, or are we too selfish to learn, to grow, to change? I fear the answer, and it vexes me when I see the carnage we (the human animal) are doing on this planet. And at that, I bring myself to a final pairing for now, pairings that live in me – in many ways.

First, a vexing most abominable and hopeless. We do suffer greatly from our greed and pride along with the other five deadlies, and when these deadlies interfere with natural pairings (Romeo and Juliet), not even a redo of the play with bluegrass music can change the bitter outcome. Verona, Kentucky and bluegrass music still ends at the cemetery with weeping, wailing, and a too tardy metanoia and regret.

But I pair these deadly ends with a stubborn and radical hope most eschatological and steady that guides me through the fog. A fertile pairing, as in the meditative wisdom of the East with Western ambition lives for me in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh.

“The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. The world is part of our own self, and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.”

It’s a hit, just like last year, when a magnetic north of the heart drew me back into numerous and important pairings: grandkids and kids, water and fire, people and animals, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, hopes and dreams, memories and experiences, time and attention, kids and lakes, rivers, ponds, creeks, pools, sprinklers, music and singing – dancing – generations, and ancestors.

I’d forgotten that rain and fog go together too, a pairing I’ve not experienced in a long time. It was weird to crawl out the eastern door of my tent on all fours, emerging groggy and unbalanced like a bear after a big sleep.

Uneven and unsteady, chilled and sore, I slowly stood and scanned the foggy haze appearing in the west where Pluto’s shadowy breath obscured my vision. A few steps into the fog a building appeared like a dream along with rows of ugly RVs and highway worker trucks.

Forward through the mist . . . somnambulating in light footsteps on packed gravel, the human experience propelled me toward a campground bathroom, a most dreary place of concrete and square blocks of cold air.

At that watery campground on the Chocolay River in Upper Michigan, the foggy dew rang in my head. It was a song I played with my Irish band. Fog and dewy lyrics in my head took me to Ireland, and it seemed like 1916 where I sat down by the glen and listened for the dread tattoo. It would have meant, on that Easter Rising near Dublin, that Britannia’s big guns were sailing up the Liffey River and it I would join my rag-tag brothers in arms to defend the city.

Pairings and attendant emotions come in waves these days, both when I’m awake and when sleeping.  At night, the tides move everything, shaping the dark hours like mystical love letters from the planet.

In the fog, by the river, a dream came like a wave, waking my unconscious and turning me upside down with an image, hopeful and strongly charged emotion of things left undone . . . along with hope and gratitude.

My listening now is tuned to voices talking story. The tales come from friends of many years, their finely tuned narratives arrive like rivers, landing in my head after a journey along banks that bend and rebound and then morph into chronicles of the heart.

Lucky I am, having received invitations into homes and celebrations, into conversations around the lives and deaths of friends and family, into the struggle of daily life with its rough and tumble. By circumstances undefined, unplanned, and mystical, I found myself on another plane in the foggy dew hearing the whispers of ancestors.

There’s surprise in pairings, and good ones seem to be widely palatable, like grandparents and grandchildren. Other pairings, a couple most dear and wise, their lives a glimpse into generativity and inclusion, their invitation is a window into intelligence and charisma. And there is more too, much more.

People I know are doing what they need to do and all of them are working to keep the world a good place, something that’s not so easy to do. The pairings keep on keepin’ on: new lives and new loves, new days and new hopes, poems and readings, music and memories, recollections of life well lived and well loved, delivered aloud in sacred stories, elements, ancestors, water, island, fire, sage, and story-talk.

But mostly, I remember the wisdom of making decisions only after considering their effects on the next 7 generations. This is the heart of care and the best vision for the planet and people. Ojibwe University at Lac Courte Oreilles teaches this, and the Potawatomi Tribal Community’s aquaponics farm, in the town of Blackwell, Wis demonstrates this. Its vision made real in 126 tillable acres, its vision made hearable in word: Bodwewadmi Ktegan.

It is a generative task to think deeply about how we do what we do – and don’t do – on this Earth. We must continue to learn and change so that there will be another 7 generations.

And yet can we, or are we too selfish to learn, to grow, to change? I fear the answer, and it vexes me when I see the carnage we (the human animal) are doing on this planet.  And at that, I bring myself to a final pairing for now that lives in me – in many ways.

First, a vexing most abominable and hopeless. We do suffer greatly from our greed and pride along with the other five deadliest, and when these deadlies interfere with natural pairings (Romeo and Juliet), not even a redo of the play with bluegrass music can change the bitter outcome.  Verona, Kentucky and bluegrass music still ends at the cemetery with weeping and wailing.