Cairns #56
End of the Long Nights, 2009
The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth,
back upstream so that Earth’s evolving consciousness may explore the
headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E.
is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that
inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.
Last week on Tuesday I heard the wild clamoring of sandhill cranes and ran out of the classroom to try and seeing them. My students followed. Within ten minutes, three classes were outside watching a fifteen-minute succession of flocks heading north. Then on Friday, the swallows were back. Tree Swallows were a-twitter with spring energy. Then Friday afternoon a former student called, saying that the things she learned in our class together are the most important things in the world but people don’t realize it and she feels this increasing calling to somehow use her life to help people experience these important things. Then on Sunday during a rain walk I saw my first Shooting Stars of the year. A good week.
An eighth grade
history lesson you won’t find in a textbook
In
(My students are trying to get to a thousand hits with this video so they would love it if you recommended it to others and give it 5 star ratings. The audio is not the best but still a good lesson.)
Documenting Plays
The rains are finally coming, allowing me to make a play that I discovered in October but could not make until I had runoff to guide my trowel.
It’s hard to describe the fascination I find in making plays. But this particular play has so much interesting potential that I thought I might be able to convey “plays” through an accumulating series of photos showing change over time. So I’ve added a new section to my webpage where you access these images and my text. I plan on adding other plays with time.
Election
I am both delighted and humbled to acknowledge that I was wrong with my fears for how the Bush administration would end. The world is constantly giving us feedback about the match between our thoughts and reality and it is wise to fully acknowledge when one’s thoughts are wrong so one can let them go to be replaced by something more accurate.
What Faith Feels
Like
Back in my twenties, I floated solo down a thousand miles
of the
I track my progress on my maps. I’m getting close to
Circle. I’ll stop there to send some postcards and buy something exotic like a
chocolate bar. I notice the
bordering slopes receding further from the river. I know Circle will be on the
left bank. I can’t see it yet when I look downriver so I continue along out in
the main channel. Suddenly, without any warning to my naïve mind, the
So I enter the Flats. I didn’t understand what the Flats
were but I started learning. The Flats are like an inland delta or a low relief
alluvial fan extending a couple of hundred miles. Here for the first time on its
journey, the
I had absolutely no idea of where I was. But I had faith that any channel that had a current that could carry me into it had to maintain a current that would eventually carry me out of it. The channel might shallow to where I had to get out and pull my boat through the thin section for a hundred feet but I had faith that the current could not carry me into a dead-end channel. I remember the place and time where I entered fully into this faith. I was off on some small channel, far to the left of where the main channel must lie. This particular area was well-colonized by willow, so green bushes rose ten feet above me. I’m floating along and come to a four-way intersection. It was such a perfect right angle intersection of slow currents that I felt I had floated dream-like into some engineered Venetian wilderness civilization. The default choice was straight across the intersection, continuing on down my current. I’m in the middle of the intersection when some serendipity sprite in my spirit paddles me with a “what the heck” into the channel heading left even further from the main current. Making that turn marked my complete surrender to trying to exert my will on shaping my path and a complete opening to faith in the current. I floated all over the who-knows-where place along channels big and small until the channels gathered together a few days later into one river again that carried me to the Haul Road bridge where I got out and said good-by to the river.
Both my editors drew a distinction between faith and scientific confidence. I agree with the distinction and changed the end of this essay because of that. But the Yukon Flats were faith, not scientific confidence.
Sharpen the Saw –
for Art and Mickki
Sharpen the saw is a phrase Stephen Covey uses in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to capture the idea of taking time to maintain one’s health and fitness.
I wrote in Cairns 54 how worn down I’d been from carrying the burden of Chrysalis’s facilities challenge, and about a summer of hiking and standing out in the rising tide. School started in late August. As the year progressed, I became increasingly aware of how debilitated I had become. Though the summer was nice, I was still drained. I felt empathy for those suffering post-traumatic stress. It was hard to stay focused and maintain momentum. Too easy to slide off into reading news and playing games and watching movies and avoiding bringing my abilities to the work at hand. I sat around a lot, feeling my strength and vitality ebbing away, aware of how this ebbing then reinforced itself by undermining my confidence to initiate anything that required effort, stamina, or sustained concentration.
My thoughts darkened. This darkening feeling was familiar; several times in my life I’ve had dark nights of the soul. Every time I have passed through them into a new phase of my life that I could never have foreseen. Looking back, the dark night was just a part of the transition so I no longer fear or avoid this feeling. But what concerned me this time was my complacent acceptance of it all. I was willing to just sit there, feeling life energy ebb away, avoiding all responsibility while waiting for something outside myself to come onstage and save me.
In the meantime, Alysia, while on her annual, ten days alone on the beach, refill at the end of the school year, had decided she needed to make a major life change if she wanted to preserve her health. So she got a gym membership and started working out. She liked the way it made her feel and suggested I do it with her. That I had no stomach for. I wanted the vigor and strength that comes from long days of roaming and exploring the world. That is what I wanted, not a room of people watching TV while sweating on unmoving machines which do no work with the energy expended. I was happy for Alysia and supportive of her resolve in making a life change but the gym was not a path I could follow with her. So I continued to sit. Occasionally I would work in a day of roaming and it would feel so right but I could only work it in every month or two. My energy continued to decline. I’m approaching my sixties so part of me starts wondering, “how much of this is lack of exercise and how much of it is just the inevitable progression of age?” and that gives me more dark thoughts with which to sit and stew in. And Alysia, worrying about me, keeps suggesting the gym and I can’t explain to her how that is not an option for me because it feels too artificial, not on the path I want to stride along. I look forward to the rainy season leading me out on rain walks but Christmas vacation comes and still no rains. Aargh!
However, I do get a call from Art, a Cairns reader, asking if he and Mickki can stop by to talk about flow and other meta-concepts. We meet in the evening and have a good, wide-ranging discussion. However, as the evening progresses, I become uncomfortably aware that I have become a shadow of my self. They ask me questions, seeking wisdom. I reply but wisdom lies not only in the formulation of words but the stirring in of foundational rootedness, a certain strength, humble yet centered, and that I don’t have. My eyes are not dancing. I don’t speak from my center. Eventually I have to simply apologize. I explain how I have been worn down. My spirit’s exhausted and I’m sorry I can’t be as present for you as I truly want to be. They are gracious and grateful for the time we’ve shared and we part after a nice evening together.
A couple of days later I tell Alysia I will try out the gym. I’ve been going for a month and a half now and I really like the difference. I’d prefer striding over the landscape to working out on a machine but I also definitely prefer the feeling after a workout to the feeling of sitting doing nothing. During the day I am more active with the kids. I accomplish more in my work. Have more adventures on the weekend. Feel better. And the dark stagnation has receded.
Upon reflection, I believe my apology to Art and Mickki was the turning point. One of my life goals has been the acquisition of wisdom that would help me live a good life; one of my fantasies has been to be seen by others as wise and able to plant seeds of truth that help others grow. This visit from the two of them was a fulfillment of that fantasy and I wasn’t able to sustain it. That really bothered me. I couldn’t ignore the discrepancy between what I wanted to give them and what I was actually able to give them. I had to acknowledge this. The acknowledging to others of the inner darkness, the confession of the weakness within lances the boil and allows the cleansing and healing. So thank you, Art and Mickki, you gave me more than you realized. And thank you, Alysia, for being my bowrope.
© 2009, Paul Krafel, 18080 Brincat Manor, Cottonwood, CA 96022-0609