The Curious Promise of Limited Time

AND The Total Eclipse Of The Sub -20% April Discount for Supporting Subscriber Subscriptions.

Photo by Ilja Tulit on Unsplash

Perhaps the reason I didn’t feel sad about the onset of fall when I was younger is only that I was younger, with my whole life still ahead. In those days my only worry was that my real life, the one I would choose for myself and live on my own terms, was taking too long to arrive. Now I understand that every day I’m given is as real as life will ever get. Now I understand that we are guaranteed nothing, that our days have always been running out. And so I greet this season with a quiet and a stillness I never felt when I was younger,” Margret Renkl (The Comfort of Crows)

Picture a sincere young woman with a guitar, singing from the corner of a late night dive bar somewhere in Indianapolis. She’s wearing shoulder pads and sporting 1980’s Stevie Nicks hair. She’s singing The Beatles song “When I’m Sixty-Four”. She thinks its such a cute and quaint song -I mean knitting and Sunday morning drives. Most everyone in the bar is watching the TV that is positioned directly behind her, but this particular song pulls in the crowd and people begin to nod and sing along with “Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more -will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four”.

That young woman would be past Carrie. Future Carrie is experiencing sixty-four as something already in the rear view mirror. And even though my life does not look like the couple in the Beatles song, future Carrie actually does knit on airplanes and sometimes next to the fire on winter evenings, and she digs in the garden and still is very in love with her long-time partner in life - who incidentally does know how to fix a blown fuse.

As a female entertainer I’m not supposed to announce my age, but rather hide it and dutifully filter all my photos. I remember a radio interviewer asking me how it felt to be such an “older” woman performer. I’d just turned 40 at the time. But heck, all that and more is completely wikipedia public, so I will not be going the way of my grandmother Sarah, who no one actually knew her age because she would randomly shave off or add years according to that particular day’s needs, and since the hospital where she was born burned down with all records of her birth, who was to correct her with any assurance of who was right.  

It is odd to be officially an older woman and not sure what to do with that title beyond shake my head and feel gratitude for whatever grace has allowed me to be still kicking around on this planet I love, when I know full well that living into elder-hood is not a guarantee.  I’ve had many whom I known and loved who passed into the next mystery through accident or illness.  There were hearts that could no longer keep up with the demands of the body, those who succumbed to cancer, that terrible invasive species that is so prevalent in our forever chemical laden world. There were the little ones who where barely here, shining with newness before they were gone, leaving a trail of sparkling light in their tiny wake. The young man that survived the Vietnam war, but not agent orange.   And yes, I have also known others who have ripened into the winter versions of themselves, my husband’s mamaw who loved to play harmonica and taught me to make homemade noodles when her arms were getting too tired for the task, my artist mentor Richard who in his late 80’s, after having lost a good deal of his short term memory, still continued to move his hands like he was holding a brush until his final perfect placement of invisible color.  But I have no illusions that I will be like my father, who is hale and hearty and playing 12 below par for his golfing age group at 95 years old, going to concerts, theater, reading and learning and still vibrantly participating in about 9000 church functions each month.  Such gifts of time and health are rare, and I assume that I will most likely be more average. I know that I am in the third act of a three part play, and I want to live into it with awareness and presence, not in a mindless rush of days. I want to be here, while I’m here.

So this past weekend, on Sunday when I would normally spend time working on accounting, catching up on a bit of e-mail, or do many of the things a responsible grown up is expected to do. I thought to myself - what if this were my last springtime, how would I honor or embrace it? I put away my laptop and stepped out into the clear clean early Spring air. I raked the leaves out of gardens, removed the leftover dried bee balm and black-eyed susan stems. I put up meal worms for the blue birds, suet for the nuthatches, titmice and woodpeckers, thistle seed for the finches and a mixture of sunflower seed for all the others. It will be nesting time soon, and they will need a little extra help, as they do on the coldest winter days. 

Then I cleared the path from the pond up the ridge to the grove of beech trees with markings on their trunks like almond shaped eyes.  I cleared the sticks and branches that fell during the autumn rains and winter snows.  I raked the tan leaves that look like hundreds and hundreds of golden coins.  I tidied the area around the log where I like to sit across from the tallest beech tree where many years ago I put a spoonful of my dear friend’s ashes, the place where I come to think and meditate and pray, and have so many times laid my cheek against that sturdy trunk and whispered secrets that at the time I could barely tell myself, let alone another person. 

After all of that —I straighten up, rubbed my back where I knew it would be sore. Enjoying how afternoon I’d felt so present with every pull of the rake. I watched the sun begin to slip behind the ridge line, catching the last glowing moments of light reflected in the darkening pond. I noticed the sent of damp earth and a beautiful light wind. I grinned at the sound of spring peepers, those joyous announcers of a warming earth and the arrival of a world of new born things. I felt grateful to have postponed what was expected and went ahead and did what was right. I looked around and marveled at the beauty of that little patch of Indiana woodland, breathed into the last glorious moments of the last day of March, grateful to have learned to be grateful, grateful to have learned to be compassionate—even to myself, grateful for one more day to be here and right here, on a journey that is still unfolding.

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Practice

Take a break from whatever you are doing. Step out into the springtime or open a window. Close your eyes and feel the freshness of the air and the way the sunlight feels soft and gracious in the early spring. Breathe in this singular moment in this unfolding spring time. Love the way all things start again and become new in April. Open your eyes, and carry that awe and appreciation through the day.

Question

What do you love about springtime in your part of the country or where ever you live in the world?

I’ll start….I loooove the color of the redbuds when they bloom, often right next to the light spring green of newly opened leaves.

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The Point of Arrival

Here is a song I wrote about how every ending is a beginning. It seems appropriate for springtime when nature begins again, sometimes growing out of the seeds and leaves that needed to fall last autumn.

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The Total Eclipse Of The Sub -20% April Discount for Supporting Subscriber Subscriptions.

For the month of April I’m offering 20% off annual Supporting Subscriber Subscriptions. Substack works a bit like NPR that a few members help keep the station available. This allows artists to share new works and create a safer online community…no shadowy algorithms , no targeted ads, no amplification of the most extreme and destructive voices.

I’m so grateful to everyone who supports The Gathering of Spirits, this thoughtful, welcoming online community and the new art, music, poetry and other offerings here. A deep bow my friends.

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Upcoming Shows & Retreats

For more info about my upcoming concerts and retreats visit my website tour page HERE

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One Inch Photos

Photos From The Green House this week! Baby newborn plants getting ready for the garden!

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Celestial Events…..

Tomorrow, April 8th, my home will be on the direct path of the full solar eclipse, and I intend to treat it with awe and reverence, like the celestial event it is. I’ll let you know how it goes :-)