This Winter Night

[Editor's Note: Earlier this week during one of my nightly jaunts to do some chores outside, I was captivated by my surroundings in a way I hadn't felt before. It's been a long time since I wrote -- and shared so quickly -- poetry. I hope it can deliver a sense of what I experienced.]

The cold –
piercing shiver of solitude
Riding the back of the bitter wind
it impales with feelings of frailty

The night –
enveloping velvet black simplicity
Swift softness of its caressing touch
so quick to calm this burdened brow

The stars –
cascading cosmic hailstorm of divine light
Holes to the heavens give the spirit glimpses
into that which unites us with All

Lay with me. Cover me. Deliver me back to my true Self.

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Five Surefire Ways to NOT Help Your Community Thrive

[Editor's Note: This post originally appeared in the Tiverton/Little Compton Rhode Island Patch, where I've started blogging on redefining the suburban experience as a way to help drive dialogue in my community on issues that I believe are important to our vitality and resilience. Given that you could easily replace Tiverton and Little Compton with your own community, I thought I would share it with everyone. Feel free to view the original and read the ensuing comments.]

Communities are living, breathing entities. Thinking, feeling things guided by a collective conscience and general moral compass. A whole that in many ways is the sum of its parts.

The laws of nature also apply to communities: There is life, there is passing; there is the constant of change that weaves its way through all the moments in-between; there is internal and external growth and evolution sparked by day-to-day experiences.

Amidst the challenges and struggles, successes and accomplishments, communities thrive on. How might you ask? Remember those “parts” from a few paragraphs before? Those are you and me; our families and our neighbors. Everyone coming together not only for the benefit of each other but the collective whole. Community living is all about the give and take; a real live stone soup of sorts, where everyone has something to contribute to make it the best it can be.

But alas, we continue to live in polarized times fraught with pointing fingers, blaring bullhorns, and internet anonymity that makes it okay to belittle and degrade your neighbors; economic, social and environmental tensions that unfortunately only seem to drive the wedge deeper instead of inspiring innovation, collaboration and good old fashion ingenuity.

I haven’t spent much time on The Patch, but from what I’ve observed and partaken in terms of “dialogue” has been far from uplifting. Given that, I’ve taken the liberty of capturing a list of five surefire ways to take the “unity” out of community, snuff out resiliency and not help it thrive: Read More

2011: The Rearview Mirror Edition

In a few short days, 2011 will come to a close and the new year will begin. Naturally, there is reflection. Passing time is like a rearview mirror of sorts; a window back into our lives that is cast wide open when we want it to be.

With each passing year, time feels to move quicker. I wonder why that is. Perhaps it is because we find ourselves trying to live amidst a world in warp-drive. Or maybe the journey out of childhood dulls the senses and clouds our ability to get lost in the innocence of the moment.

Regardless, I wanted to share a few things that I’ve reflected on these past few weeks:

Know-How

At the start of the year, I set out to learn a few things intentionally. Building out my self-sufficiency “tool kit” is important in my eyes — and believe me, I have a long way to go!

• Seed Saving — This was high on my to-do list. Learning to save the seeds from what we’re growing in the garden is a win-win on so many fronts. From saving money to becoming more self-reliant, learning how to propagate what you’ve already invested in is a throw-back skill worth reviving. A busy summer of Little League Baseball (I coached three teams) didn’t allow me as much time to devote to this as I would have liked, but I did manage to harvest and prepare seeds for some melon, sugar snap peas, asparagus, and even a hosta for one of our flower beds. The book I learned from is Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Gardeners (not an affiliate link).
• Preparing Foods from Scratch — Most of this came out of our two-week 125-mile local food challenge. Preparing certain kinds of food from scratch (as opposed to buying them already made in the store) allowed us to know exactly what went into it and gave us the opportunity to learn a few more self-sufficiency skills. It didn’t hurt that with a little investment of time, you saved some money in the process. Here are some recipes we used: yogurt, ghee, bagels.

Insights

For me, insights represent more internalized learning than external. They stem from a particular in-the-moment experience and leave a meaningful imprint on your being.

• Living in the NOW does not mean that all your life’s work must also happen NOW. Plans need time to unfold and come to fruition.
• Learning to look at life through another person’s eyes gives you an important perspective on any experience. This is particularly true in parenting.
• Nature is the lens through which we can observe simple perfection in action. It is the true mirror of what the human experience should reflect.
• Bad habits cannot be allowed to continually define you. You cannot hang the proverbial coat of your being on them. They must be broken and buried, especially when very important people are counting on it.
• Only the empty vessel can be filled; interference will block signals from coming through; baggage will keep you from traveling light and free. (Various metaphors for the need to shed what is unnecessary in our lives in order for more important, more fulfilling things to carry us.)

Favorite Finds

I love how new “discoveries” happen. You’re searching for one thing (or not searching at all) and there it is — something or someone who opens your senses a bit more to the world around you. Here are a few that you might want to check out too.

• Favorite New Blogger — Hands down, this is Ben Hewitt. He’s an author, blogger, activist, off-the-grid-living family man who I heard speak at this year’s Bioneers by the Bay Connecting for Change Conference. Ben’s writing is simple and powerful, fueled by perspective and experiences that challenge the status-quo at every turn.
• Favorite New Author — I mostly read non-fiction and admittedly have a tough time making it all the way to the end of a book because I read so slowly. But not the case for author Daniel Pinchbeck. While he’s written for the likes of Esquire, The New York Times Magazine and Rolling Stone, it’s his book-length writing that captured me. I recently wrapped up 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl — his amazing exploration of the various prophesies, scientific research and cultural exploits around what many feel is a forthcoming evolutionary step in consciousness. His writing is deep yet hip all at the same time.
• Favorite New Music – A few months ago, we discovered Spotify, a (free and legal) music service that completely rocks. There hasn’t been an genre, artist or album we haven’t been able to listen to. My two new favorites: This Will Destroy You (amazing acoustic/electric instrumentals) and William Fitzsimmons (ranks up there with Ray LaMontagne for song writing). Because of Spotify, I’ve begun a new round of CD purging. Why keep them?

What’s next? I am thinking through what is in store for 2012 — on the home front, here at The New Pursuit, with my other writing, in our community, etc. After nearly two years here, I feel it’s time for a facelift of sorts. I would love any feedback you have on the site and my writing. Feel free to leave a comment below or send me a note. Thanks for your candor and continued support.

Wishing you well in the New Year,
Bill

[image: collette v]

Star Struck

“Hitch your wagon to a star.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most nights, after the kids have nestled into bed and the kitchen is cleaned from dinner, I undertake an almost daily ritual. Grabbing the compost bucket from under the counter and donning my headlamp, I venture outside into the night to do some chores.

It’s a quick walk to the edge of the backyard — past the raised beds of the garden to the edge of the woods where our chicken coop and compost piles sit. Every once in while the shimmer of eyes in the beam of my light will catch my gaze or the rustle of brush and leaves will cut through the stillness. I’m reminded that I share this space with others.

I’ll toss the content of our compost bucket into one of the piles, grab a handful of straw to cap it with, and then top off the water and feed buckets in the coop (the kids have already grabbed the eggs).

It is then that I look up and behold the most amazing of sights: the night sky.

Since childhood, I’ve been awed and humbled by this celestial envelope that wraps around us; those pin-pricks of light taking shape and form to tell the stories of ancient conquest and love and wisdom; the lunar illuminations shining down to create subtle shadows of black and grey hues.

As I’ve gotten older, awe and humility have been joined by a reverence of sorts. A reverence for what lays beyond that relatively thin veil of atmosphere separating us from the rest of the great and unfathomable vastness of the – no, our – universe. For it is indeed our universe – ours to behold, to contemplate, to connect with and through to that which is greater than us. Read More

Remember: It’s Only Temporary

Our youngest child, a boy, is smack-dab in the middle of his Terrible Twos. Over the past month or so, he has come into his own quite nicely in this regard. Why is it that the third child is so unlike the first two? Granted, there are four years in-between he and his sister (our middle child) and time has that unique way of helping you forget life’s day-to-day memories, but my goodness, I NEVER remember the other two being like this.

He oscillates like a sine wave on a steroids between smiles and screaming, happy dancing and hitting, and “I wuv you”s and “I fwustrated”s. His attachment to mom and dad (especially mom) seems to be exponentially increasing rather than waning. Just when we think we might have a quiet night to ourselves, he decides to burn the midnight oil and hang out with us. Even his brother and sister are at their wits end with all the craziness his two-and-a-half-year-old self is mustering.

But as we work to cope with all of this, I’ve taken great care (and a few sessions of counting to ten) to remind myself that this behavior is only temporary — a fleeting period in our family’s life that before we know it will pass like a summer thunderstorm. He will not be this way forever. Our frustrations will undoubtedly provide us with quite a bit of comic relief at some point in the years to come.

The idea that so much in our lives is temporary has really stuck with me though. And to think that so many of us (myself included) attach such great angst or anger or worry or fear to such fleeting things should give us pause. We are draining ourselves emotionally, socially and financially for stuff that will not be with us for our entire lives, hung from our necks like the Ancient Mariner’s dead albatross. How much more living could we embrace by letting go of these things?

With that, I sketched out a small list of other temporary things we would be grateful for remembering as such. Many of these reflect my own personal experiences.

Read More

Thanksgiving Wishes for You and Yours

As we drawer closer to the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to take a brief moment to wish everyone a happy, healthy and safe day with friends and family. I continue to be so very thankful for your readership, comments and sharing. It is truly humbling.

In a world so full of hustle and bustle, I hope you can find time to pause and reflect on all those simple things which make each day worth living. To help, I wanted to share one of my favorite poems by Gary Snyder, Prayer for the Great Family, from his book, Turtle Island:

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day—
and to her soil: rich, rare and sweet
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing, light-changing leaf
and fine root-hairs; standing still through wind
and rain; their dance is in the flowering spiral grain
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and silent
Owl at dawn. Breath of our song
clear spirit breeze
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,
freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;
self-complete, brave and aware
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
holding or releasing; streaming through all
our bodies salty seas
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through
trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where
bears and snakes sleep— he who wakes us—
in our minds so be it.

Gratitude to the Great Sky
who holds billions of stars— and goes yet beyond that—
beyond all powers, and thoughts
and yet is within us—
Grandfather Space.
The Mind is his Wife.
so be it.

after a Mohawk prayer

Be well,
Bill

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