“May I create plain fields by collecting clouds and bedeck them with arching rainbows.”― Suman Pokhrel
“Patience is power.
Patience is not an absence of action;
rather it is “timing”
it waits on the right time to act,
for the right principles
and in the right way.”― Fulton J. Sheen
When I let go of their leashes, the girls running full speed into the open, unbound and free.
Not too far out, they stop, turning back to see where I am at.
Never out of sight but out of reach.
Waiting for me to catch up to join them in frolic and play, ball throwing, field pouncing.
Moving on ahead when I catch up, but not too far again.
Just enough and still close.
Wide open fields.
Big horizons.
Deep blue sky.
Waiting, wandering, joy-seeking and finding.
All available to us each day.
I’ll meet you in the field.
And wait.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”― Rumi
“No one is so advanced in prayer that they do not have to return to the beginning.— St. Teresa of Avila
“the only way to survive the storms of the world is to shed all that is not essential, …the only way to survive inner storms is to let everything through.” – Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity
Some will run.
Some will stay.
Some will wait.
Some will not.
No rules or regulations.
No counting or keeping track.
Gratitude and reverence for those who remain, reside, wait.
The journey is individual first.
Communal and universal next.
No map, signposts, or markers, nothing exact, predictable or precise.
One step at a time journey, each day new.
Grief is not a “fun” topic but each will go through it many times in a lifetime.
Called to be here now.
Awake and aware.
Writing and sharing is a vulnerable space.
Honesty is my only response.
Perhaps, it could be a gift, a foretelling, an invitation to communion, community, belonging.
Be present to the gifts that you are steeped in right now.
Life is both slow and fast.
Before to after in a beat.
Shed the nonessential.
Grief does not reside alone though.
Laughter, memories, tears, wonder, joy all woven through.
No shortcuts or bypasses, right up the middle.
Unfolding a step at a time.
Underlayment, grounded in hope, love and grace.
Cast light, especially now, when it means even more.
Unlacing and weaving something new.
In due time, a step at a time too.
“The great moments of living reside, not in banishing what goes wrong, but in unlacing trouble and weaving tapestries with the laces.” – Mark Nepo, Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity
“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”― G.K. Chesterton
“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” – Henri Nouwen
This past week, I’ve been running on sheer adrenaline. Last night, I felt the weight of the week fully and was both exhausted and so grateful. Gratitude and grief co-exist. We don’t get one or the other. There’s a menu of emotions we carry and walk with everyday in this life. There is not one simple answer or right way to do life other than to walk it out and do the very best you can with what you have in the moment.
A few reflections on the past few days of Mom’s wake and funeral.
We are loved, so was/is Mom.
Family and friends, old and new, came to witness and walk Mom home with us.
I will miss Mom and am grateful for the long life she shared with all of us.
She loved every single one of us. No one more but certainly all differently. She loved with specificity, not a broad brush. Never saying a bad word about anyone. We are all different and we have different relationships with each other. That’s good. It’s not a contest. It’s just love. Mom did that without measure or counting.
Let stuff go, quickly, don’t let it get a foothold.
Forgive and forget, learn the lesson, forget the experience.
Go to funerals and wakes.
Be present to witness, hold, laugh, cry.
Each one of us can be ministers to souls by simply showing up.
No words necessary, simple presence.
A long embrace.
Thank you deeply to all who did that for us this week.
Be optimistic, hopeful and light.
Love without condition or counting.
Anything less is not love.
A few things I wanted to say about Mom but didn’t when rushed and flustered by a different format than I expected at the wake:
Mom grew up on the east side of St. Paul with her brothers Don and Stan, mom Laura and Dad Jim. My Mom was 10 years old when her Mom died. She carried that cross every single day of her life. Through the years, Mom spoke often of going to Aunt Helen’s farm on Sundays. I imagine the first time that Aunt Helen told her to pick a chicken, Mom probably thought she was befriending an animal. Little did she know that “Henry” would soon be chicken and dumplings after Aunt Helen, who weighed 80 pounds wet, took an ax and outran the chicken. One night, her Aunt Rose heard a noise in the chicken coop. Rose picked up a rifle and headed into the dark to check it out.
Strong tough farm women. Raising Mom because her Mom was gone way too early. Tender steel. Mom carried those characteristics forward along with Aunt Helen’s Chicken and Dumplings recipe minus the chicken chase and ax, taking the shortcut picking up the chicken at Country Club or Red Owl.
So many times at funerals, we say, “I didn’t know that about (insert dead person).” So the final reflection that I will carry forward as I/we carry on without Mom at the table – listen, learn, get to know the people around you. Don’t assume the worst or judge. Love well and reach out. We are on this journey together. You never know what someone else is going through and the way you can find out is to ask, listen with your heart and merely love. Mom did that so very well. I will try my best to do that to carry her forward into my days ahead. Tender steel indeed.
“Where there is love there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers
Thank you for indulging very personal posts this week as we prepare to walk my Mom home for ourselves. All writing is personal, it’s special when it’s universal so I am hoping my ramblings can bring some form of hope, laughter and light. That is the only reason that I write Cast Light, to create meaning and generate a bit of optimism if possible. If one person doesn’t feel alone, finds some light and laughter, it is more than enough.
In the preparations of the burial, mass, luncheon, we are gathering memorabilia and photos. How do you sum up 86 years accurately or completely? These last months of caregiving in particular were challenging and narrowed our view to the daily duties and obligations. I am learning a lot about anticipatory grief and now the “it’s here and real” grief. Caregiving narrowed. Funeral planning is pulling us out from mouse view to eagle view, to see the whole story, to reflect on all of the chapters not a few pages of them.
Looking at old photos, there’s a joy, ease and innocence. A presence and lightness. The place we were fully before social media, punch out polarizing angry politics, 24-hour 800 station news informing us by the minute that the world is falling apart, melting into the sea, social unrest and angst, a 3 year pandemic, othering and judgment, making money off of misery, divisiveness and division. That is not the whole story. Too narrow and small. Eagle view needed.
“A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.” – Charles R. Swindoll
I am not looking for the “good old days” but I will take some aspects of it. The lightness and laughter, the ease. I see it in my great nephews smiles now and on our faces in photos back then. More of that. That’s what I am longing for and inviting in. Laughter from bowling, playing boot hockey in the alley, ding dong ditch, a 49 cent whoopie cushion (might be a dollar now).
The world has stopped now for a bit and it will never go back to before. We live in the thresholds and afters and too often stuck in befores. We must live in the present, awake and aware, open and inviting the innocence of children who are around us and who remain in us if we would welcome them home.
Don’t wait for a funeral to look at pictures, sit on a whoopie cushion and reflect on the entirety of your life. And if there are things you don’t like and can change them, do it. Today, this day, no matter what is happening, is available to each of us to make something of it. Lighten up, exercise your laughter muscles and if possible go hang out with some kids and of course dogs, same sage teachers. Embrace that ease, lightness of laughter of that kid you were before the world told you different. The world is wrong. Play may be the real work of childhood but it should also be a required master class for adults.
“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’”- Matthew 19:14
“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” – Desmond Tutu
“Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes.”—Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark
“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.”― Henri J.M. Nouwen
We reduce.
Summarize.
Bucket.
Simplify.
Order.
Judge.
Assume.
Other.
Distill.
Life is richer, more complicated, and complex than a bumper sticker, a platitude, a paragraph, a snapshot.
Allow, invite and embrace the mystery, unknowing, intricacies, story, nuance, shadows, shapes and always light, always hope, always resurrection.
A beautiful mess, joy woven through all of it.
Always resurrection.
Easter and spring at the end of the story, with glimpses on each page.
“Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that’s not how it works. A human life is a beautiful mess.”― Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere
“If a branch is too rigid, it will break. Resist, and you will perish. Know how to yield, and you will survive.”― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
“Awareness is not a state you force. There is little effort involved, though persistence is key. It’s something you actively allow to happen. It is a presence with, and acceptance of, what is happening in the eternal now.”― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Day begins with heavy snow.
Shoveling wet cement.
Cloudy skies as winter lingers.
Days end, the clouds part for a moment.
Sun beams through.
Blue sky shows off like she always does.
In the autopilot, the daily “to dos,” transactions and tasks, pause, yield, stop, look up.
Blue sky breaking.
Take it in.
Sponge in water.
Thirst quenched.
Beauty woven in the ordinary.
Wonder in the unknowing.
Look up.
“The magic is not in the analyzing or the understanding. The magic lives in the wonder of what we do not know.”― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
“And the Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.” ― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems
“The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached; a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines.”― David Whyte
A poem.
A prayer.
A song.
A dance.
An exclamation point!
Pause to praise, to delight, to kneel at the altars of ordinary days.
Allow and invite awe to do its work in you.
Pass it on.
Embody the elements and essence of spring.
May you find many exclamation points woven through this day.
And respond accordingly.
!!!
“That is one good thing about this world…there are always sure to be more springs.”― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
“Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.”― Huang Po, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind
“The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?”― Confucius
May you see the door rather than a wall.
And pass through.
Spring hiding in winter.
The mountains from the bottom and top.
Captured by beauty.
Held in color.
Commas rather than periods.
A softening ground beneath your feet.
The sun hanging out with the clouds and blue.
Expanding rather than contracting.
Inviting, allowing, crossing thresholds to wide open spaces.
Bridges to joy, wonder and delight.
Motionless as wood or stone to see what is present.
“Despite the forecast, live like it’s spring.”― Lilly Pulitzer
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain
“No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.” – Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith
An adjustment.
A slight shift.
A new angle.
To get your imagination out of atrophy, revived and pumping.
To see the same in a different way.
Merging of the sacred and secular.
Finding the red X beneath our feet.
Standing in awe, wonder and gratitude.
May you experience even an ounce of this today.
And be changed.
“What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”— Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith
“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”― John Muir, The Wilderness World of John Muir
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.”― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Suddenly, a red burst landed on the barren branch.
Blue sky backdrop pops too.
In the lull of winter, a kiss of spring.
An embrace of color.
A dance of delight.
Signs, wonders, awe abound in each day.
Awaiting the sharpening of our senses.
The awakening of our hope.
Not quite here yet, but spring is preparing and planning its arrival.
An invitation to joy.
Say “YES!”
“Come with me into the woods where spring is
advancing, as it does, no matter what,
not being singular or particular, but one
of the forever gifts, and certainly visible.”― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs: Poems
“Everything can be taken from a man or woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frankl
“Cast Light” is an invitation to release your inner light, your authentic self every day. Choose light and cast it to the world.
Featured Quotes
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”― Mary Oliver
“I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” — Anne Lamott
