I Was Lost But Now I’m Found

For several weeks we’ve been hosting a stray cat in our back bedroom. Last night we transferred Sam, a sweet shorthaired black tomcat, to his lovely new home with our dear friend Mike.  Sam was the most recent in a long line of homeless felines who were initially attracted to the raccoon chow on the front porch but who, sooner or later, settled down enough to be rescued.  Some of them took more than a year to tame, while others -- like Sam – essentially fell into our arms after a very short courtship.  One characteristic common to all of the strays is that  after days or months of being afraid and silent,  a day comes when they suddenly decide that we’re safe.  We always know that day has arrived when the stray starts to talk to us – never just a few words – speech pours out of them like a water over a waterfall – words, sentences, and paragraphs describing what’s in their hearts and their loneliness and their joy at having found friends to care for them.  Little Sam will be very happy with Mike – he hadn’t been in Mike’s house for 10 minutes and he was already going to Mike for head skritches and comfort.

The good news is that we get as much from our animals as they get from us.   Creatures teach us to love, to live in the moment, to have compassion, to live without guile.  Two excellent very short and very funny books that express this truth from different places on the theological/philosophical spectrum are “Guardians of Being” by Eckhart Tolle and Patrick McDonnel and “God and Dog” by Wendy Francisco. 

Today’s front yard critter count:

Deer: 0

Raccoons: 0

Towhees:  lots

Small Victories and What Autumn Teaches

After months of successfully uploading photos to this blog, today I was stupendously unable to do so.  The little upload circle just keep spinning and spinning around, as did the circle of increasingly hot steam over my head. I’ve never had to fix technology problems by myself due to Stu’s skills and patience (“Here Stu, fix this….”) but Stu is in Alaska helping to stop the damned Pebble Mine (see the latest issue of National Geographic magazine for more on this particular abomination).  So I was thrown back onto my own devices.  As you can see, I successfully tracked down the answer and solved the problem.

Snow is predicted for the weekend here in the Pacific Northwest, which will put paid to autumn.  Autumn is probably my favorite season – I love the subtle palette of colors, the return to warm winter nests, fires in the fireplace, woolly afghans on the sofa, and permission to sit inside and read a book.  It can be a melancholy time though, as the wheel of the year turns, as leaves fall and as life becomes more fragile, or ceases.  This autumn has been harder that its predecessors in this regard -- it seems like every day brings news of another friend facing loss. 

So how do we harmonize our deep and abiding love for this sweet earth and its creatures, with our certainty that all we see, all we love, is temporary?   I’m convinced that the struggle to hold both things in our hearts – at one and the same time embracing in love and letting go – is a central task of becoming fully human. I think the paradox must be squarely faced, eyes wide open, without taking premature refuge in philosophical or theological answers.  (Note well the word “premature.”) 

As I've thought about these things this autumn, here is what brought a measure of illumination (from, as usual, my hero Mary Oliver):

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends
into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume. 
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be? 
I don’t say
it’s easy,
but what else will do
if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?  
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

Today’s front yard critter count:
Raccoons: 2 (a couple of last year’s babies)
Stellar jays: 2 (eating left-over raccoon food)