Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

On By ednafroeseIn Choices, Generosity, Gratitude, reflectionLeave a comment
Photo of a bed, with books piled on the headboard.

Now I lay me down to sleep,

    I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

   I pray the Lord my soul to take.

                        Anonymous

            Back in December of 2024, in “A Gift for Christmas,” I wrote about my intention to begin a gratitude journal in 2025; I wanted to counter the daily news with something worthwhile and encouraging. Call it self-care, if you wish. So far, almost every day I have written down something for which I am grateful. The practice has made me pay attention all through the day, seeing things that I otherwise might not have noticed.

 From the beginning, I wasn’t looking for astonishing events that would change my life: no equivalents of lottery wins (for the record, I never buy tickets), no miraculous cures (although I believe that they do sometimes happen), no fabulous expensive vacations. I wanted to recognize astonishment in the midst of the ordinary.  

Some days that was easy: the smell of bread fresh from the oven; the taste of a simple meal lovingly prepared with healthy ingredients; the addition of a yoga pose to my regular routine that I had not been able to do for almost two years; an hour with a friend in a favourite local coffee shop; the texture of a scrap of satin found in the bottom of my sewing cupboard; the completion of a necessary yet unpleasant task; the unexpected joy of planting a garden with friends; the happy face of a purple pansy smiling into our kitchen window.

Photo to pots full of pansies, taken out of a kitchen window.

            There were also days when I stared mutinously at my little journal by the bedside. The sheer volume of grim news in the world and the persistence of emotional fatigue from sources I care not to name here opened the door to discouragement with despair close behind. Those forerunners of depression were all too familiar to me. Be grateful? Screw it, I thought, and stared longingly at my pillow, wanting only to seek oblivion.

 And then the obvious declared itself: the comfort and security of a good bed itself was a magnificent reason for unending gratitude. I had a good mattress, a warm duvet, and clean sheets, not to mention a new pillow. Surely it was not trivial to be grateful for that, not in light of the misery in the Middle East and Ukraine, and many other places on our earth (including our own city) where houseless people walk the streets looking for a place to lie down that might be warm enough and safe enough for them to stay alive until morning.  

I, on the other hand, can say the old prayer—“Now I lay me down to sleep . . . ”—with the reasonable assurance that I will indeed wake up again. In my neighbourhood, bombs do not go off, nor is it at all likely that gunfire will echo through the house. I’m also reasonably healthy. We’re far from forests or grasslands at risk of burning, and the South Saskatchewan River, should it flood, will not damage much of the city.

In the whole of my life I have spent exactly two nights trying to sleep in a car. Both occasions were the result of rain plus a tent malfunction. In other words, we were on vacation, a privilege in itself. And while our decision to spend our vacations camping was at first made because of a modest budget, it remained our choice long after other options became possible. In fact, we dismissed those other options in favour of getting a better tent and better sleeping bags! We had become lifelong campers.

Photo of a tent, a kitchen shelter, and a car in a campground near Jasper, Alberta.

            “Now I lay me down to sleep,” is, I now realize, a statement of privilege. It is a blessed state of mind to be able to recite it confidently, knowing that I do have a place to “lay me down.” A very comfortable place. That the child’s prayer also includes a reminder of mortality simply intensifies my gratitude.    

What shall I do with my gratitude? Can I turn it into some concrete actions for the sake of the people of my city who have no beds and no houses to put them in if they owned any beds?

 At the least, I could donate money or blankets or . . . . .  but my mind has shifted from beds to gratitude itself. Why should being thankful provoke any change whatsoever? Because gratitude is a tacit acknowledgement that I needed something and it was given to me by someone else or by some confluence of circumstances. Genuine gratitude is felt by those who know that they cannot control everything in their lives, who know that they need other people, and who know that they have done nothing to deserve all the goodness that has been given them.

 Gratitude is characteristic of a worldview that is not transactional, that does not see the Other as someone to be manipulated or used or destroyed. Being human is not a zero-sum game. Being human requires vulnerability and cooperation. That is the culture that grows thankfulness and thankfulness grows wholeness and joy.

 I should add to the “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer. Something along the lines of “Thank you for my bed and my pillow and my life. / Thank you for all those others / wittingly and unwittingly / who have made me who I am.”

Eight Things I Want Politicians to Say – and Mean

On By ednafroeseIn Humility, politics, responsibility, Wisdom, WordsLeave a comment
A quiet scene in late fall when the leaves have fallen. A shallow lake with a mossy shore line.

            Writing blog posts has not been at the top of my agenda lately. It’s been difficult to see beauty around me, although I know that it is there – always. However, when worry about the implosion of democracy in our southern neighbour is so intense, I feel more like throwing stones than being quiet enough to listen to them. It does not help that we Canadians are in the midst of a federal election (more political speeches!).

So between the campaign here in our country, and constant news bulletins from elsewhere, I began focusing less on issues and more on language. What are they all saying? What am I hearing and what am I not hearing? It was the latter category that caught my attention. In the whirlwind of words designed to create an impression rather than inform, some vital things are not being said – by anyone.

            Herewith eight sentences that I would like to hear our leaders say out loud and honestly: the first four are my own wish-list, and begin as ideas or emotions that I tried to translate into specific sentences, and the second four are the simple sentences that Chief Inspector Gamache of Louise Penny’s justly famous murder mysteries offers to his new recruits.

    • Some deep awareness of, and even kinship with, the natural world. Gardening would count but even better is a willingness to spend time alone in the woods (without a cell phone). Maybe “I am nourished by other kinds of life on Planet Earth.”
    • A recognition of mortality and a willingness to admit that death will come, often after increasing vulnerability and physical limitations. Perhaps, “After my death, I want the good that I have done to matter.”
    • A capacity to experience genuine gratitude when a personal need has been met by someone else. “Thank you. I needed that.”
    • An awareness of a higher power, a spiritual dimension in human existence that shows itself in a free admission of human powerlessness. Perhaps “I am not in control.”

    And here are the four statements that Inspector Gamache insists will bring wisdom:

    • “I don’t know. “
    • “I need help.”
    • “I’m sorry.”
    • “I was wrong.”

    I cannot remember hearing a politician speak any of those second four statements. I would be deeply impressed if I did, because it would indicate that that individual could take responsibility for messes made and did not have grandiose ideas of his/her own importance. Furthermore, such utterances would demonstrate considerable courage, not to mention humility.

    I could vote for such an individual, and then pray often that she/he could survive the trials of holding office.

    A single wooden bench and a weathered sign post by a trail in the woods in fall.

             

    “There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them?’
    She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin.
    “They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean.” Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. “I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong’.” (Louise Penny in Still Life)

    Declaring Our Givens

    On By ednafroeseIn assumptions, Beauty, efficiency, politics, WordsLeave a comment
    Photo of large rock in foreground with the brown colors of autumn in the background.

                My Stones and flowers blog was never intended to be overtly political, although I should have known that the love of beauty is not separate from the rest of human life. Furthermore, the care of our earth has always been political, albeit not in the current sense of partisan warfare and competition for public approval. Politics in its basic meaning is “the art of managing the affairs of people who live in proximity and share resources”; or “the art and science of government.” In terms of such broad definitions, almost everything we do is political, since we do not live in isolation.

     That being said, I do think that the language of politics these days has become toxic enough that it is past time to examine carefully some of the assumptions that lie beneath our unquestioned positions. If we want to survive the coming weeks in North America with at least some integrity and sanity remaining, we could begin by declaring openly what we take for granted.  

                Assumption 1: government is bad, while business (of all sorts) is good, hence, the more government regulations we have, the worse off we’ll be.

    Those who subscribe to this belief that government is inherently bad often preface the word “government” with “intrusive.”  I live in a province where this belief is widespread; agricultural communities, with their typical stance of self-sufficiency and determined independence, often (sometimes for good reasons) deride government officials as interfering and annoying.

    There is much to admire in that rural pride and creative problem-solving, especially since farming communities can be astonishingly generous in their assistance of one another. Yet something bothers me about an automatic dismissal of government as bad.

    Since government is run by human beings and businesses are also run by human beings, there is no reason whatsoever to suppose that one is inevitably corrupt and the other trustworthy—whichever way you choose to apply those attributes. Government offices (at all levels) are often populated by good and decent people who strive to do what is best for as many people as possible; the same can be said of places of business. Both spheres can also inflict much suffering and injustice, and we don’t need to look far to find examples. To make a general statement about either is illogical and unrealistic.

    Besides, governments change; businesses change ownership. In a democracy, we have more direct influence in government changes but we can also influence some changes in businesses through our buying choices. Thus it is far better to pay attention to specific actions and consequences than to simply apply automatic labels. In fact, pay a great deal of attention and make sure that both governments and businesses are strictly regulated and independently monitored. Make it as hard as possible to get away with corruption of all sorts in both systems.

                Assumption 2: Because government is by nature always inefficient, private businesses should be contracted to meet as many human needs as absolutely possible. About the only institution that government should provide is military defence, and even that can (and should?) be privatized as much as possible.  

     Before I comment on this assumption, I want to point out that there’s yet another assumption underlying this one that really needs to be examined.

                Assumption 3: Efficiency is an ultimate good and should be sought after without question. Waste of time, waste of money, waste of resources—all criminal (metaphorically at least if not actually).

     Since the efficiency of any action or policy is measured in relation to the goals of actions and policies, we have to return to that second assumption and ask questions about the purpose of government and the purpose of business.

    Businesses, from massive corporations to small family farms and craft markets, can be made more efficient because their primary purpose is to make money. They have additional purposes, of course, such as meeting the needs of their immediate communities, developing and using the skills of the owners and workers, paying for the resources required by the creativity of owners and workers, taking care of the environment, etc. Add in what delightful goals you wish. Some profits will have to be made, though, in order to achieve those additional goals. Interestingly, too zealous a focus on money and/or efficiency is likely to sabotage those goals.

      The purpose of government, however, is entirely different. Its only goal should be to take care of its people, all of its people. If that sounds startling and ridiculously idealistic, let’s take a step back. The purpose of government is to create enough order and predictability to make it possible for people to take care of themselves, beginning with the basic needs of survival. Whatever form of government you imagine, from feudal landlords and monarchies to modern dictatorships, and including various forms of cooperation and/or democracy, the purpose of government is to establish and keep enough order to provide what people need to flourish.

    If that still sounds idealistic—we know very well that plenty of governments of all sorts have not taken and are not taking care of their people—it helps to remember that even the worst, most brutally selfish dictator or drug lord will be better off in the long run with satisfied, happily productive people than with angry, starving people, even if only in terms of personal security. At a very basic level, people want their governments to defend them from outside threats, establish predictable and dependable ownership of property, and make it possible for them to earn their living. As soon as the goal of government becomes making money, whether for an aristocratic class. or for a single individual, or for a clutch of oligarchs, it has become corrupt and no longer fulfills its only rightful purpose.

    Efficiency has nothing whatever to do with the act of caring for people. Anyone who has ever been a parent or looked after small children knows that being efficient is impossible. Anyone who has cared for elderly parents understands that beyond slight changes here and there, efficiency isn’t the point. In fact, a focus on being efficient puts some other goal in place of the compassion and patience required to give care.

    Is all of the above over-simplified? Yes, definitely. Both business and government are far more complex than what I’ve suggested here. However, we need to start somewhere in our thinking, if we choose not to just yell insults. Paying attention to assumptions is a place to start, both our own assumptions and the assumptions of all those others we have derided as fools for thinking differently than we do.

                A second step, which is related, is to pay attention to the words used to talk about those crucial assumptions. As George Orwell so astutely noted in his famous essay, “Politics and the English Language,” a misuse of language indicates either fuzzy thinking or nefarious intentions or, more likely, both. To take one egregious example: a “Department of Government Efficiency” is by its very title and supposed purpose revealed as illegitimate. Subsequent information about the performance of said new department indicates that efficiency was never actually the point, but merely a distraction, a mask. It’s worth asking just what the purpose was.

    It may feel like trying to nail porridge to the wall, but let’s keep asking questions about assumptions and keep insisting that words be clear and consistent.      

                  Language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. (George Orwell)

    close-up photo of a single coral rose

    The Weight of a Name

    On By ednafroeseIn Names, reflection, Respect, Silence, SolitudeLeave a comment
    close-up photo of mountain rocks and tiny alpine flowers, mostly moss campion.

                The language of stones is silence. Flowers likewise keep their own counsel. There are exceptions: dried flowers rustle in the wind; live flowers attract choruses of bees happy in their pursuit of nectar. Stones can raise a mighty ruckus if gravity moves them. No one who has watched a rock avalanche in the Rockies (as we have) can forget the almighty roar of stones tumbling down hundreds of feet in search of a level surface on which to take up a new habitation.

    A view of Mt. Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park, just as an avalanche is finishing.
    Mountain buttercups against a dark background.

     These days I’m lonely for both stones and flowers, the landscape where I live being covered in feet of snow—which is also silent, unless hurled forward by wind, in which case it is the wind we hear, not the snow, or unless the temperature is low enough that snow squeaks beneath our boots.  

                Public discourse, by definition never silent (exceptions there also, of course, for sign language and body language), has taken on an edge in the last years that makes me long for hours spent outdoors, in silence, never mind the weather (and as I write, the wind chill on the other side of the window is – 47 C). So much could be said about how the public square functions these days. To be briefly facetious here, it’s not really a public square anymore at all but private glowing rectangles on which the shouting happens. I am not qualified—as if that matters much these days—to weigh in on momentous policy decisions; I will leave that to those with a higher pay grade and preferably some expertise.

     All I want to draw attention to is one seemingly insignificant, yet dismayingly common, tactic of signifying disapproval of an opponent: the twisting of names. That phrasing is actually too kind a label for the practice of using names as weapons. The intent is not actually to signify disapproval but to humiliate and destroy. What is actually signalled is the self-claimed superiority of the one who renames.

    Nicknames, we used to call those miserable refusals to use a child’s given name. Who has not heard the horrible epithets created by playground bullies? Fatso, Lard Guts, Skinny, Rat Face, Four Eyes, Stinky. The insults are legion, almost always focused on what the hapless victim cannot change – race, appearance, disabilities. Memories of verbal bullying are hard to erase, as I can testify. 

     Nicknames can also be affectionate, within families, among close friends, between lovers. Pet names we call those tender labels. Which seems revealing on its own. There’s just a hint of ownership implied by “pet.” The act of naming is an act of power, a dynamic that becomes evident when the wearer of the nickname chooses to resist it. For a child who is growing up and wishes to leave the “pet name” behind, the continued usage of the name begins to feel like an insult. The line between affection and aggression can be thin.

                Human beings seem always to have known that naming is somewhat akin to magic. The Book of Genesis includes as part of the creation accounts the story of Adam naming all the animals, having been asked by God to do so. It seems a clear indication of greater intelligence in humans and thus also the responsibility of caretaking, a relationship that can be abused. Parents name their children, sensing at some level that they are conferring on this new little human an individuality, a personhood. That is most often a gracious naming, which in some cultures is also a powerful recognition of ancestors, a continuation of family traditions, even an accolade for some valuable characteristic.

     Colonialism was less gracious: over and over again, conquerors have renamed landscape features in an act of appropriation, declaring their ownership. Sometimes the original people, now without power, have also been renamed, sometimes to spare the conquerors the trouble of learning names in an unfamiliar language, sometimes as a deliberate effort to obliterate old traditions and familial ties. Brian Friel, an Irish playwright, in Translations, depicts the English practice of renaming and mapping Irish land as an act of dominance.  One of the characters eventually asks the obvious question: if all the place names are changed into another language, will the villagers still know where they are? Indeed, will they know who they are? Names matter.

     Given that long human history of naming as a weapon of power, we should probably not be surprised that the current political scene has been corrupted by childish nicknames. Whatever one may say about President Donald Trump (and I have little desire to begin a larger conversation), he has had frightening success in demeaning opponents through his bullying tactic of creating mean nicknames. I will spare my readers the pain of having to read a long list of such nicknames. If you follow the news at all, you will already know them. None of those names should live on, whether they were hurled at worthy men and women or at former “friends” of Trump’s as complicit in criminality as he is. I am particularly troubled by the seeming increase of a similar use of demeaning names in Canadian political conversations.

                From hereon, my voting decisions will be strongly influenced by political candidates’ use of names, and slogans, as a weapon. Never having held membership in any political party, I have made my choices primarily on the basis of individual candidates’ qualifications for office, with some consideration given to their party leaders. The character of the individual who will represent me in parliament matters as much as the policies advocated. If someone is willing to use demeaning labels against an opponent, I will interpret that as a serious character blemish, a disqualifying one. That is a failure to show respect to another human being.

     It is not a coincidence that the world’s main religions all call for respect to all human beings, and include some version of the Golden Rule, which asks us simply to offer all others the same dignity that we would wish to receive ourselves. One measure of that equalizing respect is to call each individual by his/her chosen name, or earned title. While such a courtesy would not, all by itself, undo extreme and unkind partisanship, it would be a step toward greater civility and hopefully also a movement toward more reasoned discussion of policy rather than a competition of personal attacks against opponents.

                I return to the stones and flowers that enrich my world. Their silence and their beauty soothe my spirit.

    Could we perhaps improve the governance of our various countries by making it an inflexible rule that all would-be leaders spend 4 weeks in some lonely, isolated place outdoors?

    Photo taken in Alberta Badlands, in Dinosaur Provincial Park.

    A desert would do, so would a backwoods spot in the mountains, even a northern forested island. No aides allowed, no party officials, no team of caterers, no cell phones or laptops, no more than one book, preferably a blank journal, no trappings of power. Just one Indigenous elder who knows the land well whose periodic visits would make sure that actual starvation or major illness didn’t occur. At the very least, such a measure would open up space for undisturbed contemplation of the responsibilities of the desired governmental position and would remind our would-be dictators that they are, in the larger scheme of things, actually quite small and dependent.

    Lone figure on a hill in Cyprus National Park, Saskatchewan
    Solitary figure on high rock silhouetted against the sky in the Canadian Rockies.

    Prolonged silence and solitude has a way of leading us inward. There is no name for that.

    A Gift for Christmas

    On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, Christmas, gifts, Gratitude, snow, winter2 Comments
    Photo of cross-country skiing park with hoar frost on the trees and evergreens.

    What gift shall I give my readers for Christmas this year? It hasn’t been an easy year, this 2024. Not for any one except the ultra rich perhaps, and then only if you calculate “ease” in terms of dollars or rubles or pesos or whatever currency you will. What with political tensions, economic uncertainties, and storms of all sorts with all sorts of consequences for those who got in the way, the year has been a challenge, indeed.

    I do not want to offer a wordy post. The world has heard more than enough words already, not many of which offered hope or even kindness.

    Photo of hoar frost on trees, with a little library in the foregrounds.

    What I want to offer is the gift of beauty. The kind of beauty that is free, if we have eyes to see. The city of Saskatoon, where I live, has been granted at least two good snow storms even before the official first day of winter. The world here is overlaid with white. In the last two days, weather conditions were perfect for the forming of hoar frost. All is white now, even the thinnest blade of grass and forgotten mitten in the backyard.

    Close-up photo of shrub with all branches covered in frost
    Close-up of evergreen branches heavy with snow and frost.

    If I may, I would also like to offer just a tiny bit of inspiration for the New Year. Resolutions have never been my schtick; I think good habits are formed slowly, with repetition and as a result of both careful thought and growing need, not at the behest of the calendar. However, this year I intend to begin a gratitude journal, a simple exercise of beginning the day (or the afternoon!) with a brief naming of something for which I am grateful. If it brings me all of a few minutes of gladness of heart, then that is already a gift.

    May your Christmas be beautiful. Thank you to all my readers.

    A tall elm tree with a huge canopy of branches, all white against a blue sky.

    Hand-made and Heart-felt: my companion coffee mug

    On By ednafroeseIn Connection, gifts, reflection, writingLeave a comment

                The gift was given so long ago that I cannot name the day or the occasion. I do remember the giver and something about the maker. I was in my early 20s. The giver was my brother, and the maker was a friend of his, an older woman. She was a kindly potter who understood many things—that I learned later through hearsay, for I remember meeting her only once, in her studio. Perhaps, though, I have only imagined that meeting.

    photo of the mug, a small plate with a muffin, a magazine, a linen napkin, and reading glasses.

                The mug was not notable for its beauty, for it was squat and brownish. In those days, had it been left to my choice, I’d have picked something more elegant, like a Blue Mountain pottery piece, then much in vogue and now found only in thrift shops and on collectors’ shelves. What I did notice at once was how the mug felt in my hands. It belonged there – completely. Something about the shape suited my hands, fit the pattern of my holding. I soon discovered that its shape also kept the coffee hot longer, something that mattered to me then already. My coffee addiction developed early.

     In the first years we had together, my mug and I spent many hours in university classrooms. I remember plunking the empty mug in the bottom of my capacious book bag which I schlepped to campus day after day. The mug came with me because I had been inducted, in my second undergraduate year, into the pleasure of long seminar classes. My first one (on Shakespeare) always began with the professor’s ritual of plugging in an electric kettle to begin the process of making coffee, then asking a few “questions to boil water by.” (Yes, it was instant coffee, brand now forgotten – I was addicted to coffee but not yet choosy about what kind.)  Once the coffee had been made, we settled down to work on the serious questions for the day.

     No doubt, the mug was used often in later years, post-university, when babies came to complete our family and transform us from carefree twenty-somethings into responsible thirty-somethings, preoccupied with the weight of parenting and church involvement and bills and house-owning. I have no clear visual memories of the mug during those years, although I am certain that I would have used it regularly. It had been a comfortable (and comforting) companion from the beginning of its days with me. That would not have changed regardless of how busy and distracted I might have been.

     Then came the days of teaching, with an interlude of further graduate studies, and then teaching again – until eventual retirement. My first “offices” on campus were miniscule and temporary. Embedded in my memory are long days of solitude in a tiny carrel in the library, cherished because it had a door and a lock. That meant that I could leave books there, of course, but more importantly, my typewriter (remember those??) and my coffee mug. To this day, sentences flow more easily when my favourite mug sits at hand.

                After I gained a more permanent office in the gracious spaces of St. Thomas More College, where I taught for 19 years, my warm brown mug lived in my office.

    photo of my office in STM College. The mug is visible on the desk, and in the background are many books on shelves and a computer monitor.

    It came with me to the various classrooms I taught in. Often the coffee was barely lukewarm by the end of the class, and little of it had actually been consumed. What mattered was that I had it in my hand or nearby on the desk. I was convinced that I was then more relaxed and that my students participated more readily in the kinds of discussion on good literature that gave me the “teaching highs” I valued so much.  Perhaps even now, more than 12 years since my retirement, former students remember me with coffee mug in hand. I rather hope so.

    These days, that mug, now over 50 years old, lives only in our home. I guard it carefully when we have houseguests, lest it find itself in strange hands. Silly, isn’t it? Surely a mug knows nothing of whose hands fit around its inviting shape. And a washed mug is always ready for the next use by whoever picks it up. But we have a relationship, I insist. It’s so close a tie that even my liking for a particular travel mug that I have now used for some 15 years doesn’t rival it.  

      Its particular virtues? I think the circumstances of its making, in a small pottery studio in a garage of a suburban home in Edmonton, are important. The potter was a gentle woman, an artist, aware of the aches of living, aware of the frequent unfairnesses that hide in the best of places. She did her work with love, that’s certain. Each mug, each piece of pottery was made for its unique self. In the words of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, my mug had its unique, living character, had its “inscape” from the beginning, and all the various stages of life that it has shared with me have only deepened that “inscape.”  

     Some day, one of our children will have to decide what becomes of that mug. Having survived so many years already, still uncracked and unchipped, despite an occasional fall to the floor, it is unlikely that it will ever be broken, certainly not by me.  

    As I ponder its long life—and it is now so imbued with coffee flavors that it cannot be used for tea or hot chocolate or water—I recognize that it has given me one other pleasure: a lifelong appreciation for good pottery. When we travel, we are apt to find small galleries and craft markets (both indoors and outdoors) where we peruse the handmade items, and think about the love with which the items have been made. We have a small collection of handmade pottery mugs now, so that we can share our pleasure with family and guests.

                This Christmas I will once again dunk my homemade peppernuts into my coffee, served always in the perfect mug.  It was made in love, given in love, received gratefully with love.

    Photo of the same kitchen table, with the mug now more prominent. Beside is a small bowl full of peppernut cookies,, a napkin, and teapot.
    That is a teapot, yes, indeed. It happens to be more photogenic than any coffee pot that I own. Believe me, there is no tea in the beloved mug.

    Grounded

    On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, Life, reflection, Solitude, spiritualityLeave a comment

    “It turns out that groundedness requires actual ground.” (Jenny Odell)

                The words startled me. “Being grounded” is such a common phrase, often used vaguely with feel-good associations, although it still means generally good sense and balance. Odell’s abrupt return to literalness jolted that worn out metaphor straight back to its original earthiness, which then prompted me to consider what kind of ground I personally required for being “grounded.”

    Two kinds of ground, I concluded: one was dirt itself, dirt on my hands, on my knees, underneath my fingernails, as I tended the plants I loved. That dirtiness I shall return to sometime in another posting. The other ground is less immediate – quite distant, in fact. It depends on sight rather than touch. I need to see a long, long way, toward the far horizon, where the earth gently touches sky. Then my very self is reduced to smallness even as I stand anchored on the ground beneath my feet.  

    View of the ocean in Victoria, BC. Overcast sky with late afternoon colors.

    The connection to the first kind of grounding—dirt—I have long understood as vital to my well-being. I am a gardener and gardening is not optional. The second kind of grounding—a move into mystery through infinite expansion of view—I have also always loved but not understood as being, simultaneously, a solidness of footing, as much emotional as physical. The first is a function of doing, which lures the soul into forgetfulness through the simple and absorbing tasks of touching. The second is a function of being, in which the self disappears into pure perception.

     There are landscapes that feel like home, and landscapes that are foreign. Born and raised on the prairies, I am not naturally akin to the ocean. I own cross-country skis and hiking boots, not the accoutrements of living next to water (canoes, boats, sails, life jackets, anchors). While I have canoed, a little, and ridden in the occasional boat and on a ferry, I remain a tourist by the sea, not a native. Walking on a beach feels exotic. It’s an adventure, not a home-coming.

    Yet the distant horizon slows my breath and steadies me. It is beautiful – that insubstantial meeting of air and water. I cannot gauge distance. Who I am matters nothing; I am infinitely small. Except that I remain the still point of perspective. My feet stand on ground, sand, rock. The foundation is there, and from that foundation all human endeavour is exposed as temporal, conditional, while both rock and sand – and water – are forever.

    Mostly sky with brown prairie hills.

                Fortunately for me, the actual ground required for emotional and spiritual grounding does not have to be at the edge of a body of water. Prairie landscapes, in which I am at home, also offer magnificent distance, a forever postponed horizon. Accompanied so often by equally endless wind that blows trivial concerns out of mind and heart, the untouched prairie offers a different kind of solidity that pays no heed to individual ego. I am small here as well, and perhaps even more vulnerable. There’s no place to hide. But then also no need to hide. Blessedly, my various identities and loyalties matter little against an overwhelming awareness of Otherness.

    More than ever, I know that I belong to Earth. I am human, I am fallible. Though I stand alone in the moment, I know that I am not alone. My smallness is not demeaning; it is humbling and comforting all at the same time. 

    Harney Peak in South Dakota. Many smaller mountains in the distance, in a bluish haze.

                There is a third landscape through which expanded horizons foster inner balance. It does require a definite physical commitment and an immediate experience of several kinds of literal ground along the way. Truth be told, this is the one that speaks most intimately to my heart. To stand at the top of a mountain pass, from which the eye can see across miles and miles of rock and soil, is to know oneself insignificant yet joyfully exultant in that diminishment. The very air one breathes is thin, and the line between the earthly and the heavenly no longer discernible.

                [Can pettiness and cruelty and selfishness stand against so much beauty? I wonder, could we require all politicians seeking office to spend two weeks living on actual ground and surviving on limited rations? Two weeks is probably not nearly enough but it could be a beginning. And I’m not sure if those two weeks should be spent in complete solitude or accompanied by an appropriate guide. Perhaps two weeks of each? Repeated regularly throughout the term of office?]

     Lest you be tempted to think that the view of the ocean from the penthouse suite would do just as well and require little effort or that the view of the mountains can be achieved from an airplane window or an abominable skywalk thrusting itself where it has no business to be, let me clarify: the ground beneath your feet is not optional.

    Trail on Mt. Revelstoke in BC. The slope is rocky and a lone figure stands on the trail silhouetted against the sky, with more mountains in the distance.

     The power of the seascape is strengthened by the pebbles your fingers caress after your bum has wriggled into a comfy place on the sand. The vast prairie sky demands also the prickly grass underfoot and the whirring grasshoppers that fling themselves against your legs. Any soul-ish benefit the vista of the mountains might offer happens only after your boots first found balance on many rocks and tree roots. Let there be no glass and brick between you and the scents of the scene. If you would be grounded, the majesty of far-seeing cannot be turned into a saleable “view.”

    Another photo of the beach in Victoria, BC. This time more of the beach is visible with plenty of driftwood.

                Groundedness requires actual ground – always.

    A Gardener’s Lament – and Praise

    On By ednafroeseIn flowers, gardening, Loss, MeaningLeave a comment

                A year of neglect is all it takes, I now know, for a garden to lose its joy. Growth will continue, of course, Grow is what gardens do. Unchecked, unweeded, unpruned growth, however, is not the kind of beauty that gardeners aim for.

    I had been looking forward to this summer, rejoicing in restored health, anticipating a summer of reclamation: joy in fresh veggies that I could once again harvest myself, pleasure in picking berries, and deep satisfaction in rejuvenating a run-wild perennial flower garden.

    Photo of our front yard with brick patio and two diverging paths. Lots of green foliage and not much in the way of flowers. One shrub has almost covered a window.

                That all happened, for sure, but so did a succession of unexpected losses.   

                The first was among the lilies. Decades ago, even before we turned our once boring lawn-only front yard into mostly garden, I had begun growing lilies. Previous owners had bequeathed me some tough, grow-everywhere tiger lilies. I added more lilies, plenty of them. One of my favorites was “Lilium – University of Saskatchewan,” bred for university’s centennial in 2007, proudly bearing the colors of white, gold and green. Altogether the lilies had formed a stand-up chorus around our bird bath in our front yard and a more subdued pink border in the shade of our back yard.  

    Photo of many white lilies and some orange ones.

     I vaguely remember hearing about an infestation of the red lily beetle, but paid little attention. This spring, a friend noticed the invading red lily beetles in my front yard lilies, and explained that to deal with the voracious little pests (also part of the natural world, I admit), I would have to find all the eggs and grubs and squish them. And find all the beetles, so adept at dropping to the ground upside-down and making themselves invisible. Applying poison was also an option but I’m not a fan of spreading chemicals to control whatever isn’t perfect or pleasant.

     In my mind, a scorched-earth policy seemed easier. I astonished myself with my quick decision to dig up absolutely all of the lilies, every single one of them with its bulb and any baby bulbs, bag them and toss them into the garbage. Sending them to the city compost facility would likely just spread the problem. Over the summer, I noted that some gardeners had been diligent enough to save their lilies. I had not been able to find the will to attempt it.  

    I told myself that I had enjoyed their beauty for many years. Now it was time to say good-bye. The dirt was barely shaken off the spade before I was thinking about what I could plant to fill the newly opened spaces.

    Photo of front yard, without any lilies by the bird bath.

                A similarly impulsive purge of hollyhocks happened later. Those had been planted more recently, partly in memory of a friend and colleague, also a gardener, who determined that he would live long enough with his cancer to see one flowering of hollyhocks (they bloom only in their second year). There had been a time when I despised hollyhocks as the kind of thing that grew in back alleys and wherever householders were unwilling to put in much effort. They seemed untidy, even aggressive. Yet after seeing a thriving stand of black hollyhocks, I determined that I would grow a combination of pink and black hollyhocks alongside our back fence, so they could delight us as well as passing pedestrians. I thought they would be easy.

     They weren’t. New baby plants grew where I hadn’t wanted them; mature plants didn’t always bloom well for me. I became frustrated, especially when only the pink ones survived the winters. This spring, once again, the leaves turned yellowish and spotted, leaving the plants stunted, unproductive, and frankly ugly. Hollyhocks seem prone to a fungus (or rust) that’s not easy to get rid of. In a fit of pique and resentment, fuelled partly by my growing awareness that I was not going to catch up on gardening in one summer, the hollyhocks were condemned to follow the lilies into the garbage bag, every single one of them, wee ones and all. Another loss.

                A third loss for which I hold Mother Nature responsible is still partial. The final word has not yet been spoken regarding our sour cherry tree. Trees have come and gone in our yard before. Indeed, this Carmine Jewel sour cherry tree was relatively young, had only come into its fruiting prime in the last couple of years. This year’s crop was so abundant that we anticipated many ice cream pails full of fruit.

    Photo of sour cherry tree, heavy with fruit.

    Then the grim discovery. Almost every cherry came with a wee white worm – the larvae of the cherry fruit fly. We had little choice but to pick every single cherry and collect every dropped cherry on the ground and send the lot to the city’s composting facility. The loss here—if we decide to keep the tree and see what next summer brings—consists of delicious cherry pies, cherry coffee cakes, muffins, scones, and excellent jam. That is a loss we can sustain without genuine hardship. Indeed, the loss of the lilies and the hollyhocks also caused no real hardship, but then gardening for us had not been about survival, but about beauty and taste, a different kind of necessity.

                            What I have been pondering during this summer of loss—and I am refusing to discuss at this point our greatest loss, that of Jasper, AB, which we thought of as our second home—is the integral relationship between loss and growth.

    Photo of Lac Beauvert with Jasper Park Lodge barely visible in background. The reflection in the lake is perfect.

    The trivial loss of lilies and hollyhocks and sour cherries has made way for new flowers and perhaps another tree or just more space for veggies. Anyone who gardens much at all knows that nothing stays static in a garden. It is the nature of things for some plants to reach their end stage while others begin anew. At least one neglected yard in our neighbourhood has made clear to us that unchecked growth just becomes a tangled mess; the lack of diligent pruning and adequate spacing simply means that the entire garden destroys itself.

     Just as Canadian National Parks officials are learning to listen to the wisdom of Indigenous peoples who have always understood that fires are necessary periodically to open up space for new growth, so the urban gardener needs to work with the natural processes of growth, death, and new growth. Without loss there is no growth.

    Without loss, there is no growth.

                Can I take that natural lesson into my heart and face other, deeper, losses with greater equanimity? It seems hard, even somehow disloyal. Surely it can’t be right to insist that losing something might be necessary in order that something good might develop.

    Yet the universe once again dropped the right book into my hands at the right time. I just “happened” to pick up Rabbi Wolpe’s Making Loss Matter from my library. In his foreword to the book, Mitch Albom writes, “all of life is a series of losses, which, if woven correctly from the sadness, can stitch a richer emotional fabric of our days.”

    Wolpe explores that series of losses in a roughly chronological order: home, dreams, self, love, faith, and life – the sequence of losses that we’re likely to sustain if we live a reasonable life span. Through tender stories and gentle wisdom, he evokes the pain of loss and points out, repeatedly, that without such losses, growth is impossible. Loss is meaningful, because it opens doors to wiser dreams, deeper love, stronger faith, and richer life.

    If I bear burdens
    they begin to be remembered
    as gifts, goods, a basket
    of bread that hurts
    my shoulders but closes me
    in fragrance. I can
    eat as I go.  (Denise Levertov, “Stepping Westward”)

                The losses of this summer aren’t over yet. Besides the annual replacement of summer’s fruit and flowers with the glorious colors of autumn’s many deaths, I will be choosing some particular endings. As our front yard becomes more of a shade garden with the steady expansion of our linden tree, the loss of sunshine space means the end of growing dahlias.

    They gave me much joy in summers past. Now those tubers will go the way of all organic entities, although some may be spared as gifts to friends. Ditto for the calla lilies I grew for a few short years. The labor of lifting bulbs and tubers and storing them over winter will be replaced with the happy purchase of brilliant annuals next spring. My body does not have many more summers of full-scale gardening left. Therefore, I shall seek as many brilliant colors as possible, and love them as long as they last.

    Photo of bird bath flanked by tall grasses behind it and by many bright yellow rudbekia in front.

    “Can You Make It Undead?”

    On By ednafroeseIn books, flowers, gardening, recovery, writingLeave a comment
    A forget-me-not border around our patio in a good year.

                That querulous question was once asked by an unhappy amateur gardener who called the University of Saskatchewan’s gardening help line to complain about a fruit tree that had not survived a harsh Saskatoon winter. I laughed when my friend told me that story. “Undead,” indeed!

                I was not laughing earlier this spring when I stared at the brown clumps of deadness that had been, only a year ago, a stunning border of forget-me-nots halfway around our front patio.

    The teensy bits of green in this photo are weeds.

    The flowers are tiny, yet such a gathering of unearthly blue is unforgettable. I had first met their alpine cousins in the high places of the Rocky Mountains where I feel closest to heaven. To grow a domestic cultivar here in the prairies had given me so much joy.    

    That they should be lifeless this spring was bitter heartache. I was not surprised that our erratic yo-yo winter of too warm, then nastily cold without adequate snow coverage, would result in some casualties, but the precious forget-me-nots? That was too cruel. After all, our rose bushes survived. So did some vulnerable new perennials planted last year. I grumbled at the unfairness of it all.

                Then out of the dead clumps that I hadn’t been able to make myself pull out, a few tiny leaves appeared, weeks after the plants should have greened up and bloomed. I have scarcely dared to rejoice for fear that recovery might still be elusive. Yet day after day, the defiant re-emergence of new life continues.      

    a photo of 4 tiny forget-me-not flowers in the midst of dry wood mulch.

                With a beautiful synchronicity, the resurrection of those beloved forget-me-nots occurs as two other recoveries, both also connected with gardening, occupy my thoughts.     

    Last year at this time, I was looking at the world from a mostly horizontal position and through eyes dulled by drugs and disappointment. June is normally a joyous month. It’s the month of gardeners’ delights: new seedlings up, trees and shrubs leafed out and blooming with abandon, first berries ripening. It’s the month of endings and beginnings: winter’s over, school’s almost over; vacations are planned and long, light-filled evenings encourage family picnics and grad parties. June has the summer solstice—the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Who wouldn’t be happy? Why not have dinners outdoors, with birds providing musical accompaniment?

     Last year, all those joys passed me by as I struggled to manage sciatic pain and accept a disabled, dependent state. As if in tune with my discontent, the weather was unseasonably hot and dry, and then became even more miserable because of persistent heavy smoke from out-of-control wildfires in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and even BC. 

    That was last year. This year, while I could complain (and have) about unseasonably cool temperatures, I spend my days upright, walking, cycling, working in the garden—simple pleasures, those.  For me, they feel like resurrection. I have recovered my mobility and my avocations. There’s even a camping trip in our future, planned for July. Hallelujah!

    My transformation was not instantaneous. It was slow, sometimes so slow that I was bitterly discouraged, and increasingly resentful of the frequent question “you’re still not better??” For the patience of my family and for the tender, persistent care of physiotherapist and doctor, I will be forever grateful. Recovery is a beautiful word; it holds within it an intimation of the power of life, of goodness. It tells me that “undead” is not laughably impossible, after all.

    A photo of the book cover of There Is A Season.

    With the quirky serendipity that our universe so often displays, free of charge, the right book once again fell off the shelf. Canadian poet Patrick Lane’s There Is a Season had been sitting on our bedside bookshelf for many years. I cannot even remember when I acquired the book or where; the penciled price inside the cover (a mere $2.50), indicates a second-hand book sale. Wherever it was, I got a magnificent bargain. Yet having bought the book, I neglected it. My initial perusal of the first chapter must have happened at the wrong time. I was actually on the verge of consigning the unread book to our little library when something led me to open the cover again.

                And I was immediately drawn into what writer Alice Munro called “a state of enchantment.” There Is a Season (published 2004) is a profound recovery narrative, a recovery so unlikely that I felt overwhelmed to witness the power of gardens to restore their gardener, of human love to accompany a lost soul, and of the strength of the human will to persist in spite of all obstacles.  

    Patrick Lane, renowned Canadian poet, wrote the book, his first prose publication, during his year of recovery from a lifetime of addiction to alcohol and cocaine. He and his partner, poet Lorna Crozier, lived on a half-acre on Vancouver Island, an excellent place for a life-long gardener. Working on his developing gardens, Lane gains the strength to face his memories of past family pain and trauma, which he shares with honesty and compassion. There is no blame laid here, nor is there any shrinking from the hardship and violence he experienced in his childhood and early adulthood.  This is a deeply vulnerable book that explores both great sadness and enduring love.

    What amazed me was that his drive to write poetry, to explore the magic of words, began in his childhood. Never mind that he had to teach himself all he knew of literature and the poetic craft. He became a recognized poet, winner of several awards, teacher of creative writing in several universities, recipient of an honorary doctorate from McGill University in Montreal.

    There Is a Season offers some of the finest nature writing I have ever read. Every word feels lovingly chosen and deftly placed. Among the tributes printed on the back page are two particularly apt observations: “A brave and beautifully written account . . . . The sheer richness and beauty of the language is one of the great pleasures to be found in this book” (Edmonton Journal); “A tour de force that will break your heart and put it back together again” (Montreal Gazette).  

    For me, the book was, and is, a gift. I am almost as awed that I should have chosen, finally, to read this book, just as I was beginning to grasp that I was, after all, returning to “normal,” not some “new normal” that I had dreaded for so many months. Not that my recovery was anything at all like the recovery that Patrick Lane describes. I had had merely a few weeks of pain and then many weeks of minimal progress; Lane was learning an entirely new way of being.

                My forget-me-nots have become “undead.” It has taken time. More and more, I believe that the profoundest miracles are not instantaneous or even obviously miraculous. Both hope and its consummation are often subtle, always persistent.

    A cluster of forget-me-nots at the edge of our brick patio.

    ” No matter the dark hours when we ask that our burdens be lifted, ask instead that hope be how we live, our hands sure in the earth.” (Patrick Lane)

    Throw Something Away

    On By ednafroeseIn Choices, fragments, memories, reflectionLeave a comment

    My to-do lists and I have a complicated relationship. Sometimes for weeks on end, I write nothing down and simply choose tasks and activities according to impulse or urgency.  Then a sudden attack of ambition—or guilt—drives me to write down job after job in a frantic effort to make my days profitable and braggable, even if only to myself.

    Photo of a couple of lists.

    It’s not only hands-on tasks that are thus named and conquered. I have used to-do lists to bolster mental health and encourage good habits. For months during the pandemic, I began each day by writing down a reminder to be grateful for something, to talk to at least one person besides my husband, and to clean up something no matter how small or inconsequential. It was my bid for continuing sanity in the midst of a world that I didn’t recognize.  

                Now—yes, I am once again friends with to-do lists—I have chosen a new daily mantra: throw something away. This is not a new zeal for tidiness and/or efficiency. It is a growing awareness that our days in our beloved bungalow with its expansive yard designed for gardening and playing are probably numbered. Our bodies are aging, as everybody’s does. At some point, the maintenance of house and yard is going to become more work than we can manage safely and pleasurably.

    Photo of our home and front yard.

    Hence, my desire to steal a march on what might well become a frenzy of selling, giving away, and throwing away. I want to be able to take time for small sentimental objects, treasured jewelry, memory-laden clothing not likely ever to be worn again. I also need to confront the habit of saving all manner of things and strings in case they should be of use (inherited and absorbed from my parents whose adulthood was shaped by Depression-era necessity). I would rather not let it edge into the pathological.

    Photo of several ID cards, some jewelry, a couple of tiny keys, a brooch or two.
    Just how many outdated and irrelevant ID cards does one need to keep?

    My perspective here has most assuredly been influenced by several close encounters with hoarding disasters. I happened to be the sibling who managed the greatest portion of the disbursal and disposal of my parents’ worldly goods. (I shall say nothing here of what it means to manage the emotional goods that parents also leave for their children.) Repeatedly, I was aghast at what they had chosen to keep through three separate moves: cans of paint for buildings on the farm now owned by someone else; appliances designed for subsistence farming, not urban kitchens; food past its expiry date; sewing notions for garments not worn in decades; carpet samples from a previous house; left-over wood from finished and unfinished projects; empty prescription bottles; excerpts of ancient letters; addresses for long-deceased relatives; birthday cards received 50 years ago; a few old diaries; immigration documents. Alright, I could understand why a few of those items remained. How could one throw away the precious piece of paper that signalled freedom in a new country?  

    I could find no similar understanding for two neighbours who turned out to be hoarders of monumental proportions, making my parents look like minimalists. Watching the garbage collect in backyards, plants and shrubs grow unchecked into monstrous tangles, packages and parcels enter the front door in a never-ending march (until the front door was no longer accessible because of the stacks of unopened boxes, both inside the house and on the front steps)—oh, it was a sight to chill the soul. How could they have let mere stuff so dictate their lives? Indeed, allow that stuff to dictate the manner of their dying?

    Such memories haunt me. They have propelled me, every now and then, into cleaning binges. However, I can also appreciate the irony of where I now stand on stuff, so to speak. While I can easily discard some incidentals, the longer we live, the more the things around us are likely to have accrued sentimental value. Some of the paintings and photographs that grace our walls have been given us by grandchildren. Their artistic projects now bring smiles each time we see them. Some items we have gifted one another or have chosen together to commemorate a special occasion. It’s all that added value, that rich sum of all the living we’ve done, that makes parting with those items harder now.

    Our decisions about throwing stuff away are complicated as well by our awareness that what we’re actually doing is deciding how we wish to be remembered when we’re gone. The fragments of identity that we have shored up to remind ourselves who we are may not be necessary for us anymore, but will they matter to our children, who are likely still negotiating who they are and will become in relation to their past, which is inextricably connected to our past? I cannot forget that I gained self-awareness and more compassion as I learned more about my parents’ experiences. What bits of my “stuff”—the old letters, the photos, the sewing patterns, the published articles, the journal notes—are going to be important for children or grandchildren?

    I have no way of knowing that, of course. And perhaps, what should happen in this binge of throwing away stuff is also a throwing away of my anxious need to control more than is reasonable. After all, I would have fiercely resisted any last attempt by my parents to determine what I did and what I could know. Surely I can let go of any fantasy that I can shape what our descendants will do with their own histories. It has been labor enough for me to make friends with my own story.    

    We should probably all pause to confront our past from time to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter.

    Karen Armstrong