Giving thanks...

It feels like forever and a day since I have posted anything here. This morning, as I was looking for a document on my Mac (and not finding it), I stumbled across some words I wrote back in 2014 around Thanksgiving. I'm not sure if I ever did anything with them, but they felt poignant to me, especially as I come up on a big birthday in a couple of weeks. They are words it will be good to revisit often and add to from time to time. These words, like a letter I wrote to myself five years ago:

I think about nature, always, and the beauty and grace and infinite wisdom I find in her. I think of the miracle that is my body, which - even oft abused - ever heals and supports my consciousness along the way. I think of the suffering in my life that has honed my eye for beauty in such a way that only a heart broken wide open so many times can let in the love and light in such spectacular ways.

Too, I think of the disenfranchised among us - those who are adrift in a world too busy to notice, and those who have shut themselves off from others in their desperate self-punishment for not measuring up to expectations they have assumed.

I think of those who cannot recognize the beauty and blessings in their lives - whose eyes are so shrouded by need, fear and grief, say nothing of those trapped in war zones.

I think of parents grieving their children and lonely old ladies. Of children so spoiled with riches they know nothing of value.

Each year into my life, I feel less and less want for things, for possessions, for stuff. Each year into my life, I feel more grateful for beauty, for grace, for fresh air and clean water (harder and harder to find, as the world is polluted more and more with pesticides and pollution).

Each year into my life I find more depth and meaning in the fewer friendships that really stick around for the duration.

Each day into my life I am grateful to the bottom of my being for the earth kissing my feet, the sky inviting me to stand tall, the waters offering to cleanse my spirit, the sun warming my heart. I am ever grateful for the beauty that graces all of it so long as my vision is clear. I am grateful for the grace of time, containing all possibilities at once, leaving nothing out. I am thankful for the moon and stars, who tell us about our ancestors and guide us home, for trees who have always listened to me and offered steady embrace. I am thankful for the winged ones who effortlessly shift my perspective to the clouds and back down, the furry critters who call me home even though they see all of me. I am grateful for the deep, authentic connections I call gravity between myself and all that is.

This last Thanksgiving, 2019, I was blessed to spend a full day on my favorite wild and scenic river, in slow time of nature. Arriving at the river, Grandmother Beech gifted us with a shower of gold.



In thinking on love this morning, I realize that the only authentic love is the one that is all pervasive. I cannot truly love without realizing that I, too, contain these disparate factions within me and until I can embrace them fully, my love is incomplete.

What is LOVE? It is not a relationship, though in our culture we tend to equate the two. It is not need or obligation. It is not a showering of affection or a calling one home. It is a feeling no, the reality of sharing ONE consciousness. When I am awake to this ONE consciousness and all that is, there can be nothing but love. And then it is what we call unconditional love. But then what we forget is that there can not be unconditional love that is exclusive for only one being. If we can indeed experience authentic, conscious love, then we are in effect IN UNCONDITIONAL LOVE WITH THE ONE CONSCIOUSNESS WE COMPRISE. It is a FIELD we all exist in and love is the sensation of the field, when felt with our body/mind. It is resonance with the ONENESS. Then there was a whole world of learning about love from my feathered friend this last summer. I have still not been able to sit down and write about that gift. I hope I will be able to get some things down while I can still access them.

Of us and "others"

You'll have to forgive me. This is neither finished nor polished. This last few months I really haven't had the luxury of time to write, as I've been busy relocating my business, catching up on clients and, well, learning about another species. Anyway, I jotted down a few things the other day...

In this culture, we have a problem with cowardly racism, laziness and greed. And there’s an unfortunate sense of dominion that somehow got implanted a long time ago - dominion over other creatures deemed lesser, dominion over “other” humans deemed lesser. There is apparently a sense that if someone or something seems inconvenient then it should be removed away, or removed by killing if deemed necessary by someone who decides such things.

Weeds, insects, rodents, indigenous peoples and so on. It doesn’t even seem to matter to the perpetrators of poisoning or displacing the unwelcome visitors that they poison their own wells make their own homes toxic, grow crops with insecticide built in (carcinogenic to humans in food) destroy our only life support system we call earth. Leaving an impossible equation for their - our - grandchildren. “They” are us. There is no other. Search your self, seek out all the ways you are lazy, take advantage of situations that make things easier in order to indulge a complacent and self entitled laziness. We call it “convenience,” “fast food,” “conventional and factory farming,” “the help,” “out of sight, out of mind.”

I had the unexpected good fortune to raise a wild goose this spring and summer. No idea that raising a goose would be so much like raising a baby all the way to adolescence in a very short period time. Albeit one who produces more poop per pound than any human baby.

When I was young our family had a cabin on a lake, and I remember when the Canada geese arrived and decided it was a nice enough place in the world to stay and call home. My dad hated those geese because they pooped all over the dock. I reckon he didn’t realize that a bucket of water would so easily have removed the partially digested grasses. I can still hear my mother in the upstairs window barking like a little yippie dog to run them off. She really put a lot of gusto into that. No harm, no fowl.

At some point, I learned that a wild goose might require some kind of permit, and I began researching. Everywhere I looked to find out about how to have a permit to care for this creature, all I could find were permits for killing them. It seems people don’t like goose poop. And although these birds are protected federally, it seems that one can simply say they are a nuisance because of their (quite benign) feces, comprised of grass that easily melts away with water or rain. It is also said that they cause depredation of crops. And so permits are issued for culling these birds in fairly large numbers for four months out of the year, which happen to be during the breeding season, when many adult birds molt and so are also not flying. So, while I may be breaking the law caring for this wild animal that was orphaned when it fell out of the nest and drifted down a river, it would be easier for me to get a permit to kill “it” than to raise him.

But not being much of a rule breaker, and not knowing how to proceed with this unexpected endeavor, I recently delivered this goose to a licensed rescue and rehabilitation facility in a bordering state. Believe me, this was not going to be an easy thing no matter what. When he was physically assaulted and manhandled by the person receiving him, it was off to a bad start. Then he was placed in a small pen in a very hot place full with other birds - injured ducks, orphaned geese, a couple of peacocks, all on a dirt floor with no grass, no room to roam, no water to get into. The nearest small pen just 15 feet away held a pacing wolf, no doubt dreaming of a duck dinner.

Now surely these folks care about critters and are putting a lot of time and money and efforts into helping them. And yet this man treated this goose inappropriately, and the environment he was put into was actually not appropriate either.

I’m not an expert about anything. I watch the world around me, spending a fair amount of time in the woods, along the river. And during the last three months, raising this Goose, I’ve observed quite a lot during the countless hours of grazing, napping, preening and, yes, pooping. I had never heard the phrase “like poop through a goose” until recently, but I surely know what it means. In fact, I know a lot about goose poop now. I know about the dark and runny acrid morning poop (that I could smell from 30 feet away), and the watery poop with white film. I know about the grainy, tan poop from eating feed, and the quite beautiful pthalo blue-green poop from high quality weeds. And yes, I also know about the dark and runny poop that happens when there’s stress in the environment. Come to think of it, not so different from ours.

I know that the poop, so widely disliked by humans, if it’s coming from wild geese in their natural habitat, is mostly grass. That it is excellent fertilizer, and I hear it doesn’t need to be composted, because it does not burn when placed on a growing crop. I am guessing that this is because it has already fermented in the belly of the goose. I also imagine that crop depredation is not as common as implied.

Wild Canada geese do congregate in growing numbers, as their communities are comprised of extended family. And they do create quite a lot of noise at times. As long as I remember them being in the Southeast – seems like since the 80s – I have felt the general dislike of Canada geese in people. It is a nebulous thing, not grounded in any particular experience of them. I think maybe it’s even an unconscious response to a foreign population moving into a territory where it didn’t exist before, and this being a beautiful place in the world with a generally mild climate, they decided to stay. No different from many of us who have chosen this as our home. Why on earth would we want to go anywhere else? There is the most amazing and diverse natural beauty here, and a plethora of resource in the form of wild forests and clean, running waters, open spaces along a short chain of man-made lakes (made to create electricity for our convenience).

In other lands, the creatures make great garden helpers, pulling weeds with ultimate agility while effortlessly applying fertilizer. They take excellent care of their amazing and powerful bodies, preening an impressive collection of hundreds of feathers, using oil from a built-in gland to make them impervious to water, unzipping then zipping closed each and every feather until they are all perfectly in order, discarding worn feathers and debris as they go. Their feet are delicate, soft like fine Italian leather, and yet durable for navigating water and land, rock and soil, taking off and landing on a variety of terrains. We don’t consider (why would we?) the astounding proprioceptive abilities of birds, much less those who inhabit both water and air - and land, of course. Can you imagine flying 1500 miles in a day, or bodily reaching up to 9000 feet above the earth and being able to see where you are going from the air? Say nothing of navigating air and water currents in that body.

I scarcely think that we humans consider the tip of a proverbial iceberg about a group of people or creatures we have not lived among enough to intimately understand their habits and character. We don’t ask ourselves what is beautiful and miraculous about them - what truly unique and necessary gifts they bring into the world. We shun them and bar the doors to our comfortable worlds. If they seem useful, we find a way to capitalize on their skills, but without incorporating them into our community - we point to an area we wouldn’t choose to inhabit and say, “there, look, there is a place you can have for your people, all just for you. Isn’t that nice?” A reservation. An up and coming neighborhood. Probably across the tracks on the south side of town.

About a year ago, I was watching the change of seasons and taking a notion from the trees up near a place called Rattlesnake Lodge, above the Blue Ridge Parkway. I learned a lot just thinking with those trees.

When the trees loose their leaves going in to winter, they do not fight with gravity. They dress up in their finest richly hued vestments and then scatter jewels all about. They make an offering of the most stunningly beautiful objects they can create, and then effortlessly let them go to the breeze, dancing their way to the ground with the gifts from all their neighbors where they’ll become a nourishing carpet to feed the roots of the neighborhood.

Just imagine that first letting go by the young tree. What did it think when it started losing its first foliage? And saw all its friends and family losing things? Did it think it would die? How many lettings go would it take to feel safe and confident going into winter’s season of harsh freezes and terrific winds - and threadbare? How many friends fell over in the ice storms? Maybe loss gets easier to bear over time. Some connections, though, seem so much more profound than others, and it seems they will not be bearable. And so I must pause and consider - how can i make the most beautiful offering to the universe at this juncture? What do I have to give to my surroundings in faith to the future nourishment of those around me?

Now I see a sign across the road that says: “God’s in control.” Two days ago I started the morning with a float and ended up lost, driving through hidden hills, towns called Luck and Trust, and up to the mountaintop of 360 degree views. Once I was clearly not on the road I intended to be on, not even going in the direction I intended to go in, I simply trusted the free falling and was led gently to a place I had been wanting to get to for a while but had no idea where it was. I had not consulted a map to see what direction I would have had to go in to get there. And now here I was, albeit ever farther from home than when I had set out toward my house. I had just lost a dear friend and was spending time in unexplored territory.

Now, I am just returned from a longer journey on which I lost another dear friend, quite unexpectedly and not in the best of circumstances. It is not for me to know all the hows and whys of this, yet I must decide how to walk forward along my own path, however invisible it may appear, and how to do this in a way that honors my friends who are gone, along with all the others, and the rest of the world I walk through. Perhaps if I were a tree it would be simpler - all my processes would be inherent and in concert with the movements of the celestial beings and in response to the terrestrial conditions. I wouldn’t have to think about where to go, what kind of work to do, how to interact with far away people and places. And yet, like the tree, fluids run by miraculous nature through my vessels and something animates me with the spark of life. In fact, if I think about it, that tree is as sentient as I am, even if it doesn’t communicate or travel in the ways that I do. I’ve had conversations with trees and learned profound truths. In spite of our disruption of their territories, trees communicate over great distances and have much to say. I remind myself often of how long they have been watching over me and I imagine how much they have seen, unable to look away. Our lives are inextricable from theirs. Were they not on the earth, we would not be breathing.

So as I prepare to embark on the next leg of my path ahead, taking me to new territories and peoples, I take another look at the trees about to drop their foliage. What do I really need to carry with me along the way? What process will support me where I am going? Best I polish all the gold I have and let it drop effortlessly away to dance in the currents about me, that I may be unencumbered to weather the next season. That I may carry in my heart of hearts those I hold dear, to walk with me; that I may learn to expand my heart space to learn with them how to travel the unseen worlds that are always right here with me.

And so perhaps today I can make this letting go a celebration by decorating and feeding the land around me with the treasures I have been holding onto. Perhaps I can celebrate my dear lost loved ones by polishing the gold they have left in my soul, as I am reminded by the golden falling leaves all around me.

After putting this post together, I came across this rich post on the Brainpickings site. Now I will dive deeper into the secret life of trees in following the Brainpickings thread.

I am grateful for the many gifts of synchronicity.

New Website!

In the midst of my busiest season yet, I have been building a new website for my various offerings in the world. I hope you will enjoy checking it out at: www.honorwoodard.com. I am still in process with it, and will be adding more resources to the site in coming weeks, but I think it's coming along. Thanks for taking a look.

Recent Photographic Works on Display in June and July

Recent photographic works were on display during June and July at Noble Wine Cellar in downtown Clayton, GA. Big thanks to all those who came out and supported Noble Wine Cellar and enjoyed tasting Georgia grown wines and Georgia made craft beers! Thanks to Jabe and Barbara Hilson for welcoming me into their beautiful space, and special thanks to those who purchased photos! It was such a pleasure meeting and getting to know the lovely folks who came and made the show a success.

Love Wins

There seems to be a consensus among many that God is Love. And yet, I have never heard anyone say that Love is God. I was thinking last year about the term “in love with,” and what it really means. Of course it is a feeling, rather than a thinking, term. But for some reason I got to thinking about it one day. I was feeling that it’s not about a person, per se. Really, I began to feel a sense of it meaning “in God.” And yet of course it is, and if only we were to treat it as such and realize this fully, how different the world would be. In this case, to love someone is to God them - in other words, as I love you, I treat you as God does. I am not looking for what I can get from you or how I can patronize you or idolize you. I am simply embracing you in your wholeness which is simply you. I have no wish to take from you because I am here to simply allow you to be your most complete and compelling self. I am here to nurture your inspirations, to give wind to your sails so you can navigate the waters of your life. I am here to inspire you with the beauty that is naturally emerging.

And, too, I am here to hold space for your heartache and disappointment when they come ‘round. I am gentle and kind, yet stern when you must know where your edges are. I don’t set or create rules to govern your world, rather I reflect back to you those you have created for yourself. This can get confusing because as we project our own rules onto the world, the world adheres to them and sometimes we forget we have projected them first. Coming back to us these rules are not always fair, and yet they originated with us. In Love and in God, for you I must be Grace. If in fact I am being my best self, this is my job in regard to others - and ultimately to my self. And so if I find myself grasping and sliding into drama, I realize that a) I have lost my Grace of the moment and b) I have projected my small self onto you and am not recognizing the Grace of God in you as an expression of Love.

There are those people around whom we feel most “in God.” I just saw something on social media talking about how we “love people.” But I don’t think it’s that we love people as an act. We don’t. There are simply those people around whom our barriers to the love that we are tend to fall away or dissolve more readily. I am simply a unit of pure consciousness/God/Love walking around with a body. Over time, I have built up, shall we say, armor around my “self” - one mask for this, another for that, a whole costume for certain situations. And all these leave residue around my spark of existence, thus making me seem like a separate, more heavy, solid thing - like a crystal that has been coated with layers of clay and dirt and seems of a different quality due to the weight and heft, when in fact there is a clear, bright crystal inside. Sometimes, though, I can find myself around a group of people or a person, or in a place, that acts as a warm bath of water or vibration that causes the dirt and clay to fall away, melt or slough off of the crystalline structure, and then light shines through and reflects and beams.

To love, to truly love someone, is to treat them as God would/does treat them. And so a worthy exercise might be to come to awareness around how we behave toward those we love and are in love with. Am I acting as God in Loving you?

Never think your love is wasted. People may say your love was wasted on the wrong person, the wrong cause or the wrong whatever. It is not for us to know why or how our love is evoked. Forgetting for the moment that all creatures deserve to receive love, however wretched they may seem, try to remember that love is coming forth. What a gift to find ourselves expressing that which we are divinely tuned to transmit into the world via our humble flesh vehicles.

When I think about my biggest love (even sometimes unrequited) what I feel most clearly is the impulse to create, offer and share of myself in so many forms and ways. The impulse to transmit the beauty I find and see and make in response to the frequency of another, the impulse to share the breathtaking awe and excitement exactly as it arises - without even a thought - simply a pure impulse to share to one with whom I feel a sense of the kindred godness.

The beloved may or may not know of this impulse in me, may or may not seem to deserve such a sharing, may or may not feel anything remotely similar, and may or may not even feel the gifts arriving. And yet, here I am with the divine spark leaping forth in my heart. And here is the spark of life erupting from my hands, my mouth, my being. Now I can work with this.

I can work with it in the name of the Beloved, or in the name of the Divine, or in the name of a nameless, homeless, formless being of my choosing - I can work with it in the name of that which I rest within, the boundless field of the One Consciousness, which I both inhabit and contain. Which brings me to the place where I can release and receive and make offerings all at once. What I do to one I do to all, what I do for one I do for all, what I take from one I take from all, what I receive from one I receive from all and so on. And really what does it matter what or whom evokes this impulse in me?

For quite some time now, I have been seeing heart shapes in the most unexpected ways and places. I have begun documenting them with photographs. Now you must know that for many an artist, things like this are very off limits. In art school it felt drummed into us that as artists we are not to focus on the sappy sweet stuff of kitty cats and hearts and sparkles. It’s just not done. And yet here I am, a year or so into actually photographing all these hearts. There have been hearts in the water, hearts in the sky, hearts on trees and hearts on the pavement. Nowadays everywhere I cast my gaze, it seems I am to receive one of these hearts. I can hardly believe that I have shared countless of these images on social media. It is so highly unlikely. And yet here I am, sharing about the hearts. One of my favorites was two hearts conjoined at the base of a mature Beech tree - somehow part of the trunk leading to the roots had formed these “siamese hearts.” Or the heart shaped opening in the clouds as reflected on water that I was photographing to capture the rain circles - only in the reflection was it facing me so perfectly.



So a couple of days ago - the day after Christmas and the first day the sun shone after many days of many inches of rain - I went for a walk in the woods. I had a clear destination in mind (a couple miles each way) along the river - Otter Rock (another story for another time). This day was so warm and beautiful, though, and the river was so swollen from all the rain that I didn’t stop at Otter Rock. After days of inactivity, I just wanted to keep on moving and feel my body working this day.

And so I continued along the way, welcoming Nature to give me a message of guidance, as I often do. Many times this guidance comes from a critter of some kind - a snake or a deer or a spider, say, once a snake eating a toad - or some feature in the landscape. Along this particular walk, I was called by a small creek in one place, startled a deer to blow in another and witnessed a strange, small four-legged creature dive into the bushes by the trail ahead of me (I’m still not sure what it was). And now I was on a stretch of trail I’ve never been on before. I had already passed by a small waterfall that Laurence and I had picnicked on years ago. Now I was about 3.5 miles out and knowing there would soon be the place I am looking for to sit in silence for some moments before turning back.

Just before reaching the place where I would turn back, I came upon a tree with a very (loud and) clear message on it. It is a dead pine tree, succumbed to the southern pine beetle, of considerable heft. On it someone has painted a message in the most vivid cadmium hue, replete with heart shaped O, "LOVE WINS.”

Related previous posts: Let Everything Be Love and Sending Forth

Mitigation (a poem)

Mitigation

In sanguine chador,
with a hint of cerulean
sky on her brow,
here is a girl
whose horrific suffering
is offset by her reflection.
She models the grace
we all doubt but long for,
that we can dare to keep our innocence
in the presence of our tragic wounding;
that our courage could be so great
as to look ourselves
in the face of our deepest pain
and remain standing,
remain whole, with our compassion intact.
With the divine spark in us
still capable of igniting
our deepest hidden ambition
to incarnate uniquely
here in this place,
here in this time,
leaning into that which we cannot feel
any other way than by crashing into it.
And the poet, silently bearing witness
from an earth-colored bed,
catches in a glimpse,
that ephemeral spark
dancing its lightning-fast,
almost imperceptible jig
between the implicate
hidden urge to exist
and the quiet blooming of life
emerging as this being comes of age.


This poem comes from a recent dream. It feels very potent, poignant and important to share in the form of a poem that describes the image received in a dream contained in a poem. This gives me hope and added faith that by making art and poetry, we may somehow, by grace, mitigate even horrific suffering in the world while maintaining the innocence we must embody in order to keep seeing the world whole anew in spite of great challenges to our faith and in the presence of continuing tragedy. Perhaps an image will follow. In the meantime, I will include the image nearest to my body while dreaming all of this.


Bearing ©Honor Woodard 2006