~thankful thursday~ hallowed

Posted on November 26, 2020 by marybethrew

11/19/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 19

I am grateful my husband gives me assignments when he knows I am feeling blue, to go outside with my camera. Otherwise, I may never have noticed that spiders build webs in clothespins. I am grateful for date night takeout and not having to cook dinner. I am grateful for the reflections shimmering on the bay, the moon slipping out from behind its veil as it followed us, and the surprising coating of hail around one curve of the bay road. It’s easy to feel grateful on Thursdays.

11/20/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 20

I am grateful for hope.

11/21/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 21

Today I am grateful that my husband bought me a heated shirt, and that he reminded me it might be a good day to wear it at farmer’s market. He bought it back when I used to spend hours at a time in a 2 degree C cold room siphoning carefully around Arctic cod embryos, and it was a game changer in my life on the same level as the sun ball. (Cold/dark are not my happy places have we talked about this?) I was so happy to push the power button on my shirt after the initial hustle to get the booth set up was over and it was time to stand in one place where I’d need my extremities to continue to function in order to punch calculator buttons. Continue to function they did! Also, the sun was especially shiny today and I am grateful for that excellent light, in addition to warmth.

11/22/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

It has been eight years and eleven months since Rich first talked to me about watching the sunrise while out in the forest cutting firewood… and today we celebrated by taking a drive out to the forest to cut firewood! I didn’t lift a finger, but instead hiked around the surrounding area with my camera, finding fungus in all colors and sizes, and admiring the stumps of the original old growth trees that once presided over the area. These stumps had seen fire long ago, and the moss and lichen layers now knit variegated green tapestries across the charred black canvas. My favorite aspect of the fantastically gigantic stumps was that they each had some sort of window or archway or dome built into them, and each one now housed a hollowed out center – or maybe more accurately, a hallowed space. I peeked through the windows, positioning myself where I could gaze upward through them at the stained glass effect made by the trees and sky, but I did not enter each cathedral, fearing I’d drop down into some underground root system catacomb never to be heard from again. As I circumnavigated each stump, I would inevitably end up on my knees, photographing the tiny mushrooms juxtaposed against such immensity, marveling at the poetry of the whole thing. Rich watched a half dozen elk glide through the ravine from his vantage point, and when he was done filling the truck, he met me down by the stream that coursed for stretches out in the open, then snuck underneath the spongy moss-covered layers of old decomposing timber. Eight years and eleven months ago, Rich and I concluded that we have the same idea of how to go to church on Sunday, and I am grateful we got to spend our morning doing just that together.

11/23/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 23

So much to be grateful for, like a brother phone call, a super quick and friendly grocery pickup (I had my book with me…), a kitty perched sideways on his tower, a pastel rainbow halo around the moon as its reflection in the swamp water looked like a shiny egg in a nest of twig shadows, then hovered in just the perfect pocket between tree limb silhouettes on a bayou walk, in the periwinkle sky as our after work walks inch closer to dusk. Scattering more seeds in the gratitude garden.

11/24/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 24

I am belatedly posting a Tuesday post again, because between actually having lab work to do again, and the third session of my writing workshop, I ran out of both time and words. It’s funny because with how I am fairly stewed in words by the end of a workshop session, I simply cannot form sentences. Then this morning my brain woke up at 4:40 with words, but they were for the workshop piece, not the gratitude post! I joked today that I will dedicate my first book to the sun ball which is 100% responsible for me being a born again morning person. I am grateful both for work and workshops, and that my gainful employment brings me up close to creatures such as cod #9436, pictured here looking out from the swim tunnel (think fish treadmill). Of all the years to have been learning so much about respiration, a year characterized by so many horrific examples of struggling to breathe. I am learning all kinds of things about how cold water fish like #9436 breathe, and how they struggle to breathe in water that is too warm. I am grateful to use my dimensional analysis skills hard won in freshman Chemistry class, to still keep trying to save the planet.

11/25/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 25

Today I am grateful that on my way to put my fish through its paces, I arrived on the scene of a rainbow shining brightly over the ocean.

~summer shorts~ mystical

Posted on September 1, 2020 by marybethrew

With no great vacation prospects on the horizon, I used some of my paid time off in anticipation of changing contracts by consulting my tide chart. I picked a Monday with a negative tide at 7am, and my husband decided to take that day off, too. Suddenly it was almost like a real vacation!

Though the remainder of our day filled itself with comfortable, uneventful puttering, we headed out the door at 6 AM for the beach. We rounded the first headland shrouded in mist and a bald eagle appeared to emerge from it, perched on a large rock surveying the tidal flats.

We wandered along, closing the distance. The eagle was in no rush, but eventually decided to move north and took flight. We headed north more slowly, picking our way over the slick seaweed rainbow covering the rocky shore.

We climbed up the next headland, hoping to glimpse the eagle once more, and sure enough, it had landed in the lone tree on the next headland farther north, where its mate was also perched. A double date with eagles.

Rich turned out to be a lot more into tidepooling than I had expected, and we covered a lot of area that I don’t always manage to visit during my solo excursions. I think I’ll hang onto this adventure buddy of mine. Later that evening, reflecting on our morning in the revelatory fog, he decided the best word for it was mystical.

The dictionary definition of mystical talks of the contemplation of divine truths that are beyond the intellect, of surrendering to the absolute, which feels right for wandering off into the fog on the edge of everything and communing with eagles. It’s common knowledge to everyone who knows us that Rich and I go to church by walking around in nature. We go to nature to know the unknowable, we breathe in the electric salt air to better connect to the source, we peer into the briny crevices to saturate ourselves in wonder.

Jessie Van Eerden wrote, “The way I see it, a mystic takes a peek at God and then does her best to show the rest of us what she saw. She’ll use image-language, not discourse. Giving an image is the giving of gold, the biggest thing she’s got. Mysticism suggests direct union, divine revelation, taking a stab at the Unknown with images, cryptic or plain, sensible or sensory. A mystic casts out for an image in whatever is at her disposal and within reach like a practiced cook who can concoct a stew from the remaining carrots and a bruised potato, or like a musician improvising with buckets and wooden spoons. She does not circumvent; she hammers a line drive. A mystic is a kid finding kingdom in an ash heap.”

I hung on every word of this definition as I read the essay I am quoting from, then burst out laughing when I got to the kid finding kingdom in an ash heap. It recalls to mind the oft-told tale of my older brother and I spreading the contents of the ash buckets lined up in the cellar way from the wood furnace that heated our home, then padding up to our nine-months-pregnant mother with our sooty 2T clothes in our hands asking for our swimsuits, because, “we made a beach!”

nudibranch sighting 2020; i’ll leave this here beside the naked nudie story…

I may have always had a streak of mysticism, as well as a tendency to seek out the divine on a beach.

~rainbow mondays~ providence

Posted on October 7, 2013 by marybethrew

red: spent the weekend on a road trip with this handsome fellow. we did not intentionally both pack our red shirts to wear on sunday, it just happened. we got to hear live music together (gary clark jr!) and then spend a day with the pancakes. this photo was taken while apple foraging on our way home through the land of free apples.

orange: this tree is more of a rainbow all of its own, but i particularly liked the orange leaves.

yellow: we found our own personal patch of chanterelle mushrooms and threw them in the gravy for salisbury steak.

green: stag making an appearance.

blue: and also hawk, on a blue backdrop we are starting to see less and less of.

purple: the abundance of the fall harvest, as we store up food for the winter. i have to attribute this 20 pound box of (purple! i told them to give me whatever kind was cheap) onions to providence, i ended up getting it for next to nothing, at a time when i was not really sure how i would pay for it. i just knew we’d need them, so i ordered them. not that i think of this as brilliant financial policy, overall, but i do think there is a lot to trusting that what is needed will be provided.

may this week bring you much abundance!

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

there will be no way to fail

Posted on August 29, 2013 by marybethrew

i got me the end-of-summer, don’t-know-how-i’m-gonna-pay-my-phone-bill, wish-i-could-trade-in-my-coparent blues. i’m also jumping for joy because i get to be the field science group activity leader at quinn’s school in exchange for his part time tuition for this fall. still, i know i need to do some self care to get the funk out. the other day i drew some cards out of my two card decks of divining/encouragement cards; one set came as a gift from mary and one i bought from pixie, and both have messages that hit home for me whenever i take a minute to draw one.

rich

first i held in mind my love, my incredible man, and our incredible relationship, which for whatever reason i still manage to feel insecure about every now and then, because how could anyone possibly love all of me, through all the complicated twists and turns my life seems to take? i got these two cards:

you are delightful with a picture of a chipmunk on the front. i laughed out loud when i drew it! the squirrels and chipmunks have been rich’s entertainment/power animals out in the yard as he has been building us a shed and doing his own squirreling away for winter in the form of firewood. the message on the back added to the perfection: “a reminder that you get to just be… just be everything you are, even if it is messy or distasteful to others… and you are still delightful. your shadow and light, your beauty and ugliness, your joy and sorrow, all combines to the exact, full perfectness of you. consider offering yourself unconditional friendship.”

one of rich’s buddies

that was just the message my insecure little heart needed, and it helped me hear the same message coming ever so steadily from the guy i was holding in mind. imagine giving myself friendship as unconditional as the friendship he offers me.

then i drew the fox card from pixie’s deck, entitled change. “fox is graceful change. she begins her process by opening up to new patterns she may not have considered before. fox changes herself to bring about a desired situation, not unlike shapeshifting. she may use camouflage or invisibility to burrow under and blend in if necessary, in order to find out how she fits in. she listens carefully, creates comfort all around her, and tunes into her instincts. her keen perception serves her well when the time comes to make a decision. fox cozies up and protects herself before she trots off into her new adventure- expecting the unexpected, willing to be guided.”

“change” and “willing to be guided” jumped out at me. i think there is always a point in a relationship where it graduates from being brand new to something more broken in. and while broken in is by far a more comfortable place to inhabit, there is change that goes along with all that, and we all know change can be uncomfortable. i feel like rich and i have set an amazing foundation in our first year and a half together, and i see our path stretching way out in front of us, so when i say insecure, it is really more like “does he still think i’m pretty?” not “will we stay together?” in terms of the level of doubts that cross my mind. just to be clear. and while he doesn’t give me long to consider those petty questions about “does he still…?” before he shows me in both word and action just exactly how he still does, i am a girl and sometimes a girl brain seems to go there, strong and fierce and feminist as she might be. the phrase “willing to be guided” stands out especially because i see a lot about my man that reminds me of my dad. i was not what you would call willing to be guided, when it came to my dad, and i’m sure he and my mom are getting a good chuckle reading this understatement. and sometimes when i list my “twenty reasons i am most likely going to fail at life” to rich out loud and he pulls me into a long hug and tells me, “you need to stop worrying. don’t force it. just let it come to you. relax.” or something along those lines that basically is his way of saying, “everything is okay, everything will be okay, or at the very least i powerfully want everything to be okay,” it reminds me of my dad saying the exact same thing to my mom. and somehow it makes me more able to open up to that type of guidance from rich and be able to relax into it, and open more and stress a little less.

also “creating comfort all around her” is a nice way to think of oneself as a mother/nanny/partner/friend who is busy, like the squirrels, tending children, storing food, and participating in family get togethers. i hope to embody fox in her comfort-creating ways.

quinn

just as amazing as the squirrel was the card i drew from mary’s deck for quinn; by which i meant that i held in mind my relationship with quinn and upcoming decisions involving quinn’s schooling. i promise i shuffled the deck! i drew, once again, castles in the sky. “our daydreams are how the unconscious tells us of our deepest yearnings… but just like dreams they are not always literal. (fantasizing really points to what our heart is missing.)”

my recent post hashing out my thoughts about schooling, yet again, took a little bit of courage to post, as it is for some reason a vulnerable spot for me, as well as a topic that right now contains some stuff i’m still holding close and working on. something about continuing to draw that card makes me feel like i have permission to keep having these ridiculously high hopes concerning quinn’s education.

it also, of course, makes me think of quinn himself, little dreamer that he is. he actually informed me one night, in explanation of why he wouldn’t be able to get himself dressed the following morning before peach picking, that, “i’m just a dreamy guy.” i did my best to validate him on that extremely accurate self-knowledge while still requesting his help with getting dressed to go peach picking. he did end up helping, and funnily enough, my friend’s daughter who came along for the all-day peach/blueberry/raspberry-a-thon is cut from the same cloth, and the two of them frolicked happily together. you may say quinn’s a dreamer, but he’s not the only one. i can’t help being reminded of quinn long ago misquoting kermit the frog’s rainbow connection: ”the lovers, the streamers and me!”

next i drew quinn’s card from pixie: stag. “stag wears the antlers that connect him to spirit and offer the gift of enhanced perceptions, tuning into the old teachings like marvelous antennae. he is able to detect most subtle shifts in energy and this provides him with the intuitive guidance he needs to navigate the enchanted forests of life. gently, softly and sometimes even quietly, stag communes with the earth and the sky. this is a reminder to take excellent care of oneself, to gently love ourselves and those around us, and to honor the deep connections that welcome us home from our adventures in the wild.”

take care of oneself… that’s just what i set out to do when i pulled out the cards. reconnecting with the spirit world is always a good idea for me when i am feeling run down and unsure.

the thing i like about these card decks, is there is magic to it, and it really is what you make of it. it’s not a yes or no answer to a straightforward question. it doesn’t mean quinn and i are stags or that either of us has all of what the card says going on inside, but there is always some gem that resonates with exactly where i am in the moment.

vulnerable

i think both quinn and i have been tuned into some higher frequencies lately, and we have had some very poignant discussions, launched by pointed questions from the lad. he seems to be chipping away at the effort of piecing together his life narrative in a way that has him asking some very hard questions about topics i would not have brought up with my six year old if he hadn’t asked. i assume he is doing this so he can best navigate the enchanted forests of life, as it were, but i am also having to tap into the old teachings, the intuition, in order to come to this place of understanding how much to say, how to say it, and to understand why he needs to hear it, and help him reflect on and understand why, himself. we had one very emotional discussion (that may be euphemistic) in which i definitely had to tune my antlers in really well to a) not react/stifle/shut him down and b) get what he was really feeling, and reflect it back to him, even though he didn’t have the words to say what his real feelings were.

quinn, all resistance and fury regarding a transition: “i don’t want to go back and forth and i don’t like it and i’m NOT going to go EVER AGAIN.”

mama, trying to be a container for that rage, and to help interpret: ”do you wish for us to be all together in one house so you wouldn’t have to go back and forth? does it make you sad to always miss either dada or me?”

quinn: “yeah!” (crying and softening into a puddle in my lap in the driver’s seat of the parked car, moments before leaving my lap to go with his dad.)

he has also asked me for a very detailed account of how and why we left portland when he was one, the circumstances behind why i left his dad, and how that all happened. i told him pretty much everything. when i was done i asked if he had gotten the answers he was looking for (he had) and whether i had told him more than he wanted to know (i hadn’t- it was exactly the right amount) and let him know he could always come to me with any questions or with anything he ever wanted to tell me or talk about. he moved on to something else in such a flash it was almost disconcerting to me. i myself continued to mull it all over for quite a while afterwards. i concluded yet again that children are incredible. i am so happy he asked because he seemed to be lighter and freer and just plain happier, just knowing some more of his own back story- even though that segment wasn’t a particularly pretty one.

lightness of being

what remains (photo of beach finds: a feather, half a seabird’s egg shell, bits of a crab’s shell leftover after it had been devoured.) “after loss or transition, what are we left with? in terms of your own past, what places are still there and what do you carry with you? inquiry into what you hold on to may lead to acceptance and then release.” transitions, huh?

taking a leaf out of quinn’s book, i guess maybe i can also examine my narrative in places where it isn’t so pretty, just to know it, and then walk on with more lightness in my step.

very big ideas

and finally, go wild believing, a painting of buffalo by pixie. “this colorful painting was made in the spirit of trusting the imagination- the idea that if we put our ideas together with our strength, there will be no way to fail. buffalo never forces, but gently uncovers the tender green grass beneath the snow. she teaches us to keep moving ahead, muscling the way toward our very big ideas. “

it goes on, “buffalo brings teachings that help us stay on the path that is leading in the direction toward authenticity and reverence. she carries medicine for higher visions and hope for peace among peoples. buffalo teaches us how to walk like a living prayer, at one with ourselves, spirit, open to give and to receive. buffalo is sacred gratitude for all lessons that come and trust that the winters will be survived. she teaches us how to live just the way we want to, to honor ourselves and the planet simultaneously. buffalo offers the assurance that when we walk our authentic path, we are honoring all life.”

i got choked up at “there will be no way to fail” and then really lost it at “trust that the winters will be survived.” this final card really drove it all home.

i have the opportunity to lead field science group activities at ols in trade for tuition for quinn for this coming school year. quinn’s teacher feels we are going to be a perfect team, because she feels strong in classroom science, which is where i have the least experience. there is the inevitable last hurdle of appealing to my coparent’s better nature and the seemingly impossible task of getting him on board. i am really trusting that by putting this big idea of mine together with my strength, as buffalo teaches, that there will be no way to fail.

magic and wonder

Posted on December 5, 2012 by marybethrew

you get to me like old time religion did

in my heart when i was a kid

you’re sweet gospel music to my ears

know how to ease all my fears

from my heart to yours all i can say is

hey baby hey baby hey baby hey

~greg brown

i was reading an article on yoga therapy by sandra anderson who was interviewing gary kraftsow in the may 2002 issue of yoga international i found when i decided to clean out under rich’s coffee table this weekend. (do you love that he has yoga magazines from before i ever practiced yoga? i do.) this part struck me:

in the tradition in which i was trained, the foundation for practice for most adults is to create stability at every level – structural stability, physiological stability (which could be equated to immunity, perhaps), and psycho-emotional stability, which is essential given the volatile nature of the external world. the next goal is to help them to awaken slowly and appropriately to a deeper dimension in life – the spiritual dimension – and then help them find a way of linking to that dimension through their heart in a way that’s not counterfeit. you must find an authentic link, something that inspires them. for example, i might ask somebody, “do you remember what inspired you when you were five or six? did you go to church? do you remember the joy?” the point is to reconnect to something they felt in childhood, and to go back to that. help them return to something deeper inside themselves that gave meaning to their life. (gary kraftsow was speaking here.)

first, it brought to mind the greg brown song, and i have always loved that particular line about his honey getting to him “like old time religion did in my heart when i was a kid,” a sentiment i can relate to from both the adult and child perspectives. secondly, it was of interest to me because i have always considered the early part of my yoga practice to have been a crucial part of my recovery from depression, and therefore, it was therapy. this is all making a lot of sense to me as i have sort of come around after a decade or so of being unsure what to make of the old time religion of my childhood, to a place of holding onto the baby while being able to part with what, for me, is the bathwater. which all seems seasonally appropriate as well, as we are approaching the holidays, which i notice often bring up issues for those of us who may have diverged a bit from the religious traditions we were brought up in.

it’s no mistake that quinn’s advent calendar is predominantly made up of woodland animals and plants, hidden behind doors number 1 through 24. and we routinely switch between calling our tree a “solstice tree” and a “christmas tree” each year. finding our own path to being able to embrace this time of year has been important. it’s a great time of year, and i have always been rather elfish, planning projects and decorating and baking and generally loving up on my people. i love to just revel in the feeling of magic, as we helped friends today decorating their mom’s house, and the three of us mamas sang harmony to oh holy night and silent night while we thumb tacked garland around the living room. it brought back a flood of love and giddiness as i recalled last year hanging the same garland around the same living room, and chatting about a certain gentleman i was planning to ask out on a date with these same sister-friends.

he gets to me like old time religion did in my heart when i was a kid.

one of the artifacts of sharing custody of quinn with his dad is that rich and i now have every other weekend to ourselves, and while i will never be able to say i appreciate the time away from quinn, i do love having one on one time with my man. we got to go out both friday and saturday and catch up on some local theater performances, and then sunday took a nice hike around the property line, getting cold and soaking wet along the way. as we approached one very large spruce tree, i could feel a palpable mischief absolutely emanating from him, and knew as soon as he walked around the tree ahead of me that he was planning on seeing how long i’d follow him around in a circle. i doubled back and caught him with a grin on his face, and made him stand still and have his picture taken. then we drank hot cocoa (with a little bit of kahlua to be festive) and played uno while we thawed out. popcorn, a movie, and a quiet night together.

it is that dark part of the year when all photos come out with that blurry, dreamlike quality. and the days seem to take on some of that hazy dreaminess as well.

i taught my yoga class last night, and lately when i teach and it’s a day i have quinn, i have been bringing quinn for the ride and then sending him back home with rich, who attends the class before the one i teach. as quinn and i sat in the entryway listening to the class do their final relaxation (“what’s shanti, mama?” was one of the many whispered questions as he sat and loudly cleared his throat…) he lit up when i explained that shanti means “peace” and he also enjoyed practicing bowing and saying “namaste” with me while we waited for rich. i think quinn will have a very different experience from mine as he grows up, and sometimes i wonder if he will have an equivalent to the “old time religion” feeling to look back upon. but i realize that our lives are very richly spiritual. as with everything else in his unschooling journey, i think quinn will be exposed to quite a range of beliefs and traditions and faiths, and be able to absorb what works for him along the way, and leave behind what doesn’t. i see him having no trouble picking up the baby along the way, while not troubling himself hauling any of the bathwater around. there is divinity in everyone we know, in every story that is told, and being able to recognize that magic all around us is what, i think, this season is all about. that sense of awe and wonder, whether it is found in a candlelit church or in a candlelit household or outside in a moonlit forest, is what awakens in us all this time of year.

when i got home i found them like this, deeply engrossed in a pretend scenario in which they were golden knights. “actually no, mama, we’re not golden knights, but we are knights and all the stuff we wear is made of gold.” all i know is, i have two of the most amazing knights in shining golden armor to love, and feel like i am the luckiest lady in the land.

good morning, spirit helpers

Posted on April 6, 2012 by marybethrew

good morning, spirit helpers (elk)

the day i brought quinn home after our 3 weeks and a day apart, we happened upon our local elk herd, grazing peacefully beside the road. this has happened to us about 20 times in the past 3 months, as well as everyone else with the same commute, so that doesn’t necessarily mean we have elk medicine, right? yet somehow all those mamas and their gangly teenagers and young children and pregnant friends felt like kindreds to me that day more than any other. yesterday we caught them as they were crossing the road and got to see the whole herd up close again, watching us as intently as we were observing them, and as usual a little voice in the backseat greeted them, “good morning, spirit helpers!”

as with all borrowed spiritual ideas, “spirit helpers” has been a concept we have had to try on, and break in, and feel our way through understanding and applying it to our own lives, or choosing not to, if it didn’t fit. it turns out, it does fit. and i know there are folks who think borrowing from native traditions is a no-no, but i am this way with my whole spiritual path. very little of it is my own original thought. after all, religion, as joseph campbell pointed out, is about “linking back” or connecting ourselves back to something bigger, something before (campbell used the latin religio to define it thus). and so for my own personal journey, i feel like borrowing and trying on is ok. it is the only means i have of making a connection back to so many of the world’s spiritual ideas, but i want to embrace whatever tools and concepts can enrich or lives, whether or not i was born with some sort of entitlement to them. (does anyone really have a claim on the natural world, the source of all of these spirit helpers, anyway?)

so what is an elk spirit helper all about? i like to think of spirit helpers as friends on the journey who remind us of who we are and why we’re here, to help remind us of traits we strive for, and help us celebrate ones we already embody. watching this herd of mother elk banded together, i am brought right back to here and now, where i am doing the hard work of mothering in the face of many threats, but not alone- i have many other mamas on my side. for the elk, spring is birthing time, and the elk mamas support each other, just as we might bring a pot of salmon chowder over to our human friend who has just given birth. mothering, at its best, is non competitive. it’s a cooperative effort- it takes a village, a community of friends, reminding each others’ children to speak with kindness towards their mama, or take their muddy boots off when they come inside the house. our children thrive from hearing from the chorus of women’s’ voices rather than one lone mama singing solo. and we mamas, we elk women, are a force to be reckoned with when threatened. don’t let our peaceful grazing and child rearing fool you. there is incredible strength, stamina and nobility behind all that soft, fleshy, motherness. we mamas got each others’ backs.

we’re also tapped into the spirit realm. though the bull elk are the ones with the big antlers, the mamas are also sensitive to the energy out there, able to pick it up on our receivers, though they might not be as big or obvious. there is nothing like a mama’s intuition to guide her through the tough times.

good afternoon, spirit helpers (hawk)

driving along the willamette valley to get to and from track meets, i have been spotting hawks like crazy by the sides of the road. i’ve always had a pretty good eye for wildlife, but with the hawks it has gotten kind of disproportionate, to the point where they are blatantly obvious to me, even though no one else in the car, even self-proclaimed hawk people, are missing some of them. as though they are there just for me. which they just might be… there has been a huge focusing of the collective consciousness around quinn and my coparenting/custody situation in the past few months, taking many forms such as prayer of all varieties. over a span of years i have been attempting to sift through the aspects of christianity (the religious tradition that i was born into) that work for me, vs those that do not, in an honest attempt to not throw out the baby with the bathwater. my own spirituality is its own unique blend of things that work for me, collected from everywhere and from within my own self (and i would submit that for all of us this is true…). while rejecting the whole of christianity (baby and bathwater) felt right for a time, i am no longer in that place (for me, there’s still lots and lots of bathwater. i am still in that place). i gotta say, some christians take prayer seriously, folks. and i like that about them. i like prayer. it has taken me a long time to arrive at a place where i can say that, but here i am. whether you are sending it out through a smoke ring released from a sacred pipe, or kneeling at an altar, or simply focusing your consciousness while you’re doing whatever you’re doing, i have come to the conclusion for myself that prayer is a powerful act. when all those people all around the country (christian, buddhist, pagan, and too many others to be named) all pray with one purpose in mind, it is a pretty profound thing. and sometimes the answers we receive come in the form of fleets of hawks, their sheer numbers overwhelming us with the power of it all. they circle around the sky, carrying prayers upward and outward and cycling back again with the comforting message that i am not alone in all of this.

hawks have keen long range vision and they soar above it all, or perch high above in a tall tree, soaking in the big picture perspective. insights flow so much more freely from that vantage point. and while it’s no good to always be zoomed way out in a wide-angle view like that- there are plenty of little details that require a mama to zoom in on them each day- the ability to take a step back from a particular event or emotion or reaction is often quite quite useful. thank you for that wisdom, hawk.

sometimes taking the long view of things means we put our reactiveness on hold while we prioritize the more important lesson to our children. rather than telling my son what i think about something his dad has said to him about me, and making sure to point out his wrong and making sure to get my side of the story in edgewise, the lesson i am really trying to impart here is think for yourself. not listen to dad, nor listen to me, just… listen to you. please, my son, never lose track of the you in there, the person inside, your compass bearing of true north can never come from any of us, even if we are your parents. you are the guy who has got to find truth for you. hawk helps me to hold onto that larger need, that overarching goal for my son, and let go of the pettiness and the need to vilify my coparent or boost myself up in my son’s eyes.

just as elk share safety in numbers, hawk is independent, hawk’s insights are its own. although hawk is soaring above it all, she trusts her intuition and before looking outward, seeks her own answers from within. soaring full circle, spiralling inward, outward, upward.

good evening, spirit helpers (owl)

as hawk is to daytime, owl is to the darkness. owl sees in ways that other beings cannot, through the black night. owl is still a mysterious spirit helper to me, though i have been aware of it as part of my make-up for a while now. owl is stealth, flying on silent wings, going silently and subtly. without a fuss, without reactiveness. coming home a couple weeks ago after dark, an owl swooped low directly along the center line of my car, scaring me “half to death” (interesting how owl is the totem associated with death), and flashing a blaze of feathers at my windshield before veering off just as suddenly into the dark void. (i’m scratching my head as to why i am driving every time i encounter my friends lately- obviously i am driving too much!) my sleeping son in the backseat did not get to say good evening to this spirit helper, but i have been aware of owl ever so much more in my life since quinn came into it (if a mama can presume to be aware of her child’s spirit helpers). thinking of the death aspect of owl can be especially scary given that owl flies close to my son, but as with every aspect of spirit helpers, there is a flip side to each trait. owl also reigns over rebirth, renewal, healing. there is deep healing in owl’s silent wings. and nothing else about mothering has been more central to the experience than how closely birth and death are intermingled, starting from day one when my son was whisked into a nicu ward. being a mama is being given a gift so huge, and yet being vulnerable to lose in ways that devastate beyond comprehension. the magic of the owl’s realm of night time remains a mystery to me, in spite of having owl for a friend.

as a mama there are so many thoughts (like ones about mortality) running around like squirrels and being generally unhelpful. it’s a good thing i have owl on the path with me to keep down the squirrel population in my head… 😉

simple poems

Posted on January 12, 2012 by marybethrew

mama, addressing sick boy while administering herbal remedies of some sort: “blah blah blah blah blah to help you heal.”

sniffly boy: “i like the word heal.”

10-30-11

“what is fire?”

10-30-11

“the letter E has 3 crossbars and 2 canoe cracks!”

11-4-11

“i’ve got tiger spirit helpers, sabre-toothed tiger spirit helpers, woolly mammoth spirit helpers, bear spirit helpers, and wolf spirit helpers.”

mama, thoroughly humbled: “wow! tell me more!”

more of the list: “owl, crab, sea lion, lingcod, salmon, greenling, and shark. squid and shrimp. deer and elk. mountain lion. porcupine. hawk and eagle and osprey and turkey vulture.”

mama: “any plants?”

quinn: “no.”

mama: “insects?”

quinn: “sure! spider, grasshopper, centipede, ladybug, earthworm, silkworm, glowworm, praying mantis, and rooster and chicken and ‘peasant’ and goblin friends.”

mama: “trees?”

quinn:”no.”

mama: “flowers?”

quinn: “no. but i’ve got cloud men spirit helpers….”

11-8-11

“what is marrying?”

mama: (some sort of answer i couldn’t possibly repeat since i had a hard enough time answering the first time around)

“oh… well, would you want to marry me then?”

11-12-11

“it’s just that the earth that we live on keeps turning round and round like a big bus wheel.”

11-17-11

(“reading” to me from creatures of the woods book) “the east american white-heiny’d elk lives in africa, 150 million miles away…

…the italian squirrel climbs up enormous trees all the way to the top and eats acorns!”

12-7-11

bioluminescence

Posted on March 5, 2011 by marybethrew

"hey, baby"

a portrait of the artist as a ctenophore

i have been fascinated by bioluminescence since long before i knew it by that name. one of the best things about growing up in the northeastern united states on a farm with big grassy meadows was the abundance of fireflies- a nightly summer sight that will always top my list of things i miss most about the east coast. as an undergraduate, i learned that unlike the handful of terrestrial species (such as fireflies) that glow at night, the marine environment is home to thousands of species that produce their own light. mind blowing! more important than the facts i learned, however, were the many experiences i was fortunate to have involving some of those creatures. again, i managed to matriculate in an area (long island’s east end) where fairly often, there was low enough ambient light and high enough concentrations of bioluminescent critters in the sand that night time walks on the beach (taken with great frequency by procrastinating college students) were often a dance workout, wherein groups of us would drag our feet and hands along the wet sand on the edge of the ocean in order to watch the streaks of glowing light.

as a SEAmester student, i was immersed in bioluminescent experiences figuratively (almost nightly our schooner created a glowing bow wake, just from sailing through the water and disturbing the dinoflagellates swimming there, causing them to emit their glow) and literally (we took a swim in a bioluminescent bay in la parguerra, puerto rico, and got to watch our own bodies glowing head to toe from the plankton adhered like dot-to-dots along our skin and swimsuits). one of my favorite visions of all time is watching dolphins race along beside the boat, the night too dark to actually see them, but knowing their presence from the way the water was streaked with light and the sound of their exhalations each time they’d surface. i continued my love affair with bioluminescence later on when i was employed as a professional mariner (doesn’t that sound more awesome than “deckhand” or “schooner bum”?) and have been known to jump in the water at night, right off the side of the ship in port, even in places (filled with ctenophores) as unlikely as new jersey.

glowing ctenophore in watercolor, tweaked in photoshop

shine your light

“the question of why so many animals are bioluminescent still does not have a satisfactory answer.” – S. Haddock (et al.) bioluminescence in the sea (annu. rev. mar. sci. 2010 2:443-93.) (gotta love the open access movement in the scientific literature… you, too, can read this review- all 50 pages! i know you’re as excited as i was!)

translation: “we dunno.” -me

what do the leading scientists in the field mean, they don’t know?! let’s break it down. we are talking about generating light on a cellular level. light, radiating not from the sun, not from electrical current…. but from reactions that take place within the very cells of the organism. light from within living beings. and get this, according to wikipedia, “all cells produce some form of bioluminescence within the electromagnetic spectrum, but most are neither visible nor noticeable to the naked eye. every organism’s bioluminescence is unique in wavelength, duration, timing and regularity of flashes.” all cells! that includes mine, and yours, and everyone else’s! we all have the ability to generate light from within, and illuminate the darkness surrounding us. now if that’s not a sacred truth brought straight to you by the natural world, i don’t know what is.

so it turns out, science can unlock all sorts of mysteries of how the chemistry and physics and biology behind this phenomenon work, what enzymes catalyze which reactions, and so on. but science isn’t satisfied with the explanations of why these things even happen (though science assumes it will someday know…) for me, the question itself is where i find satisfaction, i am just as happy as a bioluminescent bivalve that these mysteries exist and even happier that yes, it is possible that some questions will never be answered by science. i think it is important, as scientists, as human beings, to hold that space for the possibility of mystery.

but before i get carried away with the spiritual aspects of bioluminescence,

a few definitions

bioluminescence, simply put, is the emission of light by living organisms, and it also refers to “the light so produced”. either way, what we have here is a noun. creatures are said to be bioluminescent (adj.) if they are capable of pulling off this amazing feat. as mentioned, we are all bioluminescent- it’s just that the particular wavelength we emit may not always fall within the visible-to-us portion of the spectrum.

not to be confused with some related phenomena:

fluorescence: light produced when external energy is absorbed by the organism, and then emitted again by it immediately.

phosphorescence: a form of fluorescence where the energy is absorbed, stored and slowly re-emitted (in this case, we’re still getting energy from an external source. think glow-in-the-dark star stickers on your ceiling- they need to be charged up by having light shined on them.) the term phosphorescence was in vogue for a long time, and often used interchangeably to refer to what we now understand to be bioluminescence.

“PHOSPHORESCENCE. Now there’s a word to lift your hat to…to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that’s the genius behind poetry.” ~ Emily Dickinson

noctiluca scintillans, a bioluminescent dinoflagellate (roughly 1 mm in size)

bioluminescence, on the other hand, is light actually produced from within the organism. no external energy source! ok, technically we’re all solar powered either directly through photosynthesis, or indirectly through eating photosynthetic beings, but the light in this case is not just re-emitted sunlight, it is generated by a chemical reaction within the cells of the organism.

light, in general, is produced when an electron absorbs energy, is excited (moved) to a higher orbit, and releases a photon (packet of energy) as it falls back to its home orbit. in bioluminescence, that excitation happens due to a chemical reaction. luciferins are the chemicals involved in making light. luciferases are enzymes that catalyze the oxidation reactions that produce the light (via the oxidation of the luciferins).

in many cases, the organism does not produce its own luciferins, but obtains them through “trophic interactions,” in other words, they have to eat the right thing to be able to shine. (can you relate?) because, get this: some luciferins are related to chlorophyll- some of them only require the rearrangement of a few metal ions in order to switch from chlorophyll to luciferin. scientists speculate that the organisms at the bottom of the food web who are capable of making this compound may actually convert back and forth between the two on a diel basis (opting for chlorophyll during daylight hours when the absorption of sunlight is key, and switching to luciferin after dark when it’s time to emit light instead). wow, neat!

shine on you crazy diamond

now i am going to attempt to think across disciplines and touch on the spiritual significance of these crazy light makers. filling our heads with a bunch of data is all well and good, but what about tapping into some of that dinoflagellate and firefly medicine? what can we learn about our own souls by dwelling on the attributes of ctenophores and cephalopods? spirit guides (or in quinn’s recent terminology “spirit guys” as he announced of the dinosaurs he was drawing the other night) are our animal and plant brothers and sisters, to whom we can look for information about how we process the world around us. there is a lot of wisdom in nature, waiting there for us to just open our eyes and receive it. traditionally, a lot of literature on spirit helpers (also known as totem animals) focus mainly on vertebrates (birds, mammals, perhaps a reptile or two, occasionally a fish) and rarely you can even read about spirit guidance from the plant people, and even more rarely, from invertebrate animals, such as spiders or dragonflies, for instance. as we all know, however, most of nature is not made up of vertebrates, so i believe it is important to look far beyond the charismatic megafauna for the truths nature holds for us. i will be the first to admit that i go for the charismatic megafauna types, don’t get me wrong: dolphins are my numero uno totem, but i like to look to the sea urchins and the kelp for their wisdom too. the bioluminescent beings seem to have their own special brand of wisdom to gift us with. small though they might be, they are responsible for most of the light produced in the majority of the ocean’s volume! i am only going to go into detail on a small handful of light producing critters and their medicine, just to give you an idea of some of the endless possible ways you can use the spiritual truths found in nature to enhance your own spiritual walk.

dinoflagellates

these are single celled marine algae that make up a huge part of the base of the food web in the ocean. some are photosynthetic (over half), some heterotrophic (that means they engulf/eat other organisms), some are endosymbiotic zooxanthellae (meaning they live inside other creatures, for example corals, in a symbiotic mutualistic relationship) and still others parasitic. shall we say, they’re adaptable? always a nice trait to embody. so wait a minute, are they plants or are they….? yep, as heterotrophic photosynthetizers, dinoflagellates blur the lines between plant and animal, which makes me love them all the more. i think it’s important to realize that classification (taxonomy) is always a best guess/approximation and that nothing is ever truly black and white. i love organisms that defy our dualistic paradigms.

pyrocystis fusiformis dinoflagellate (~1mm)

dinoflagellates bioluminesce only upon disturbance. now there’s a spiritual tool for you- to learn how to glow your brightest when life sends you disturbances. they are responsible in large part for the glowing bow wakes, dolphin trails, and sparkling beach sand: if you drive your boat into them, they glow. again, we do not know exactly why they glow, but some speculate that they glow when a predator arrives to munch them, perhaps as a distraction; others think they do it to attract yet larger predators to the scene to take care of their predators. all i know is there is a lot to be learned from these 1-mm small beings. small is mighty! indeed, dinoflagellates are the organisms responsible for harmful algal blooms known as red tides- they are powerful indeed and not to be trifled with!

ctenophores:

off the top of my head, some of the attributes of comb jellies or ctenophores, who belong to their very own phylum (ctenophora) are: symmetry, simplicity, efficiency, flow, buoyancy, transparency… yet for all their grace and slow, quiet, twinkliness, they are voracious carnivores, again capable of achieving devastating results when too many of them bloom in one place. they waste no energy, producing nothing but light (no heat) from their glow, which in the case of ctenophores is again, maybe a defensive response, kind of a fake-out smoke-screen strategy.

they’ve got rhythm- their cilia (the “combs” of comb jellies) beat in a coordinated, sequential way- think of doing “the wave” at a baseball stadium. something else they can do is incorporate the stinging nematocysts of the prey they consume into their own tentacles- another one of those handy skills to be packing.

fireflies:

fireflies are a type of beetle (not flies, after all) making up the family lampyridae. all the eggs and larvae, and many of the adults of the various firefly species can luminesce. the larvae (who eat slugs- now there’s a trait i like in a totem animal, preying upon my gardening nemesis!) are presumed to be broadcasting that “we don’t taste good” through their use of bioluminescence, while the adults (who light up their abdomens in flash dialogues) are thought to primarily use light in mate attraction. they are tricky, though, and in some cases fireflies have been observed to lure in members of other firefly species by mimicking that species’ flash type, then gobbling them up when they unsuspectingly land hoping to mate. fireflies may also use light as a defensive mechanism- making light is useful, and not at all reserved for just one strategy.

again, the reaction going on in fireflies to create the light gives off almost no heat; compare this nearly 100% efficiency to that of an electric light bulb, which loses 90% to heat and turns only 10% of the energy into light. how do they turn their love light on (and off?) well, the “exact mechanism has yet to be worked out.” translation: “we dunno.” (sounding familiar?)

the author begs your forgiveness for the scientific inaccuracy of these quick sketches- not intended for any kind of official use, just eye candy for my post!

dragonfish

i could not leave out dragonfish; though i did very little reading on them, other than in quinn’s copy of one nighttime sea, i couldn’t help but see the parallel between these dragons of the sea, and my dragons of the air, about which i posted a similar science-geek-spirit-helper-fest a few months back. these crazy deep-sea fish can produce light in both the blue-green portion of the spectrum, and the red. this red light is especially unique in the deep ocean, where it cannot be seen without special tricky adaptations, and points to a truth about light and vision- that not only does the organism have to have the equipment to produce the light, it also must be able to see it. in the deep sea, almost nobody retains the ability to see red, but these dragonfish are true visionaries, and they can use this special red light to all kinds of advantage in the darkest of dark environments. more little dragons doing awesome things.

choose your own glowing totem

many, many other species display bioluminescence- this is only a very tiny sampling. in fact, according to the review i quoted above, it is estimated that bioluminescence evolved over 40 times, independently, just in the marine environment. but if it’s so darn useful, why doesn’t every marine (or freshwater, or terrestrial) organism produce visible light? you guessed it- we dunno. there are hardly any cases of bioluminescence observed in freshwater- such a striking contrast with the glowing ocean. i highly recommend reading up on more of these fascinating organisms, and incorporating them as your very own glowy spirit helpers.

light up your life

“we rode back to the ship on a carpet of stars and comets and streaks of lightning- some of the most amazing bioluminescence i’ve ever seen. i leaned over the rail of the boat, watching the moon and the glowing feeding frenzy alternately” ~me, 3-17-01, mexico

want to go dancing on the stars, and swimming in sparkly water? it’s something i plan my vacation time around, and you can, too. a little internet searching can let you know what your best bet is for landing in a field of fireflies, or showing up on a beach at the most auspicious time for sparkling sand encounters. here on the oregon coast, i haven’t had any opportunities (yet!) to encounter bioluminescence, but now that quinn is a bit older, i plan to make it a priority for this summer to go walk on the beach under new moon darkness. summer is when nutrients and sunlight are more readily available to nourish plankton and also when we will be least likely to freeze our heinies off on the beach at night! happy coincidence. we hope to make an east coast pilgrimage in the warmer months, for a firefly encounter (oh yeah and to see family- just kidding, family is actually the priority but the fireflies will be a bonus!) i am also slated to be on a research cruise at the end of june, and am hopeful to see some bioluminescence while i’m out to sea.

here are some resources, if you want to do more reading:

the bioluminescence web page (full of illuminating info! including ways you can grow bioluminescent plankton at home– care to light up your homeschooling/unschooling science scene anyone?)

got older kids who want to see the (glowing) world? semesters at sea for high school and college students

here’s where i got some of my firefly info.

while you’re learning about bioluminescence, another aspect that is great to cover is conservation. like any other insect, fireflies are sensitive to the pesticides used so heavily in our current agricultural scheme. ocean health and plankton health are certainly sensitive to many anthropogenic disturbances as well. there are many rabbit holes to go down on this topic, but i’m refraining from mentioning too many depressing ones in this post- this one, i just wanted to let shine. 😉

here be dragonflies

Posted on December 10, 2010 by marybethrew

when i moved to the oregon coast i was completely unaware of the fact that it is a migratory corridor for dragonflies. i hadn’t even known dragonflies were migratory. apparently, there are both resident and migratory forms of dragonflies among the many dragonfly species, and seasonal north/south migrations happen all across north america. this phenomenon happens on every continent sans antarctica. incredible.

get this. the ones that are born in the north and migrate to the south, are thought to be a different generation than the ones who are born in the south (offspring of the ones who originated in the north) and migrate northward. neato! this is similar to what happens in some butterfly species, but it is mind blowing, to say the least. i dare you to wrap your mind around how this can possibly work!

major directional flights reportedly follow the passage of cold fronts, and trace topographic leading lines… like our coastline, for example. some people apparently attach radio transmitter devices to individual dragonflies, to find out this sort of thing. with a combination of eyelash adhesive and super glue. you have to read the primary literature to learn those tricks of the trade…. according to these authors, attaching such equipment to a tiny creature is rationalized by the fact that they mate on the wing, and that they routinely carry prey larger than themselves. (however, are they going to successfully mate, and capture prey larger than themselves while hauling a radio transmitter?! hmmmm, something tells me that’s not the question being asked… it always bugs me when research critters are deemed “expendable,” as long as the research is “sound” and that goes for the research going on in my own lab!)

loosely related to this topic, i have just finished reading wendell berry’s life is a miracle, and have been challenging myself to really try to exercise all the different ways of knowing, and allow those ways to have conversations across disciplines in my head. what i mean by that is, you can take a subject (say, dragonflies) and look at it through the lens of science, or spirituality, or art… there are many different ways of knowing that complement each other, and yet the way i was trained in public school and university was very much to keep each discipline in its own separate little box. that includes the “multidisciplinary” department i belonged to in graduate school- i have to say that my education there was almost entirely accomplished within the scientific mode, and did not really do much to stretch me to cross disciplines. berry has a lot to say on this, and is far more eloquent than me, so i’ll leave it at that and continue with my own attempt at seeing all sides of the dragonfly…

at an earlier stage in my life, dragonflies were somewhat of a totem animal or spirit helper for me. only now looking back is it obvious how their movement, speed, and dynamic lifestyle were so fitting for that transient time of my life. attributes of dragonflies as spirit helpers (and ways they help) include:

finding true vision; visualizing and manifesting positive outcomes

tuning into deeply felt, but ignored, emotions

maneuverability and movement, propulsion into new ways of being and doing

transformations (they spend up to a couple of years in the mud as nymphs before they emerge and fly away! boy can i relate! and boy am i glad there are spirit helpers for this! transformation is intense!)

seeing around things from different angles; seeing color and light

“coming to understand who you truly are” really? that seems a tall order for such diminutive creatures to help with… still, they are miniature dragons, who better to help us slay (or befriend?) our inner ones…

hey, is it me? or do dragonflies sound highly qualified for the role of law-of-attraction mascot?

for a few years i saw not many of them… they’re baaaaack.

here’s my account of witnessing a recent mass dragonfly migration.

one of the things i do for myself is to occasionally spend my lunch hour on the beach. it’s part of the whole point of living here, after all. on september 24, 2010, i went to south beach state park and as i walked along the beach towards my “spot”, i noticed one or two dragonflies whiz by me, looking rather purposeful in their flight. after a few more, i realized i was smack in the middle of the southward annual migration (thankfully i had heard of it and knew what i was looking at!) when i got to my spot, i sat as hundreds of them flew past me in ones, twos, threes, and fours… not 30 seconds would pass in between a sighting. it was incredible! yet so subtle, that i am pretty sure the 20 or so other people out enjoying the sunshine on the beach did not even notice more than one or two of them, nor detect their unidirectional flight pattern. a truly awe inspiring half hour.

i took 25 pictures with my phone and magically happened to catch a few. i like these shots not because they are particularly picturesque, but because they show these little determined beasts in motion. (you can click on each thumbnail to enlarge and play “where’s waldo?” for fun.)

hello old friend, i am excited to learn so much more about you now.

when i first tried to draw one years ago, it turned out like a pressed dead flower (berry talks about “photographing the corpse” and how it doesn’t capture the essence of a thing, to know it scientifically in that way- the sum of all knowledge about a thing, does not equal the thing itself.) a few times in the past few months i have finally sat down to draw them again; but how to capture their movement on paper?

you can’t get a good look and really observe them until they stand still… or show up dead on the sidewalk on the bayfront. (yes i collect dead bugs…)

i’ve recently been exploring the idea of having a sense of place in the world, and how to craft a narrative of the life forged in that place. among the things i ponder are why i moved across the country, why some people never leave the town they were born in, and how a transplanted person such as myself could come to feel so at home in a new home, that they’d passionately want to save it from destruction. i feel this place has begun to take possession of me in that way, and me of it. the central oregon coast blows me away on a daily basis, and i fall farther and deeper in love with it. wendell berry has much to say (in not only this one book) about the importance of place and the importance of having a passion for a particular place, in our lives .

berry says of conversations with a scientist friend of his, “our conversation is always striving to be local and particular. it is full of proper nouns, names of places and people.” reading the dragonfly observations of the yaquina birders and naturalists, our local naturalists’ group, i read lots of that kind of language, and even recognized several familiar names of local folks. the narrative of place has been a topic on my mind quite a bit recently, and how we come to craft it- it seems to me berry has hit on something crucial here, with the local language thing. and aside from one’s personal narrative, people finding their way to loving a place wholeheartedly in this particular way is what saves a place, an environment, a habitat. science can study it all day long and can even tell us we “should” conserve, but at the end of the day, a place will be preserved only if someone loves it fiercely. i am with wendell on that one.

with regard to my dragonfly migration experience, one major thing stood for me from the ybn field notes: in 1994 it was noted that “previous Major Directed Flights have occurred only during the narrow 8/30-9/14 window.” i presume they meant that they have only been recorded then, rather than they had only occurred then. still, i felt kind of cool adding a new datum to the dataset, since my observation took place later, on 9/24. (i haven’t contacted ybn yet but plan to!) ybn only had field notes on the internet through 2003, so perhaps someone has already made a similar observation; also, from the notes, it is clear i am not the only local keeping an eye out for the wee dragons! for those who are interested, our local migratory dragons seem to be mostly of the species Sympetrum corruptum. the variegated meadowhawk, in the common tongue.

i find them to be very pretty, deep red and brown. i feel kind of defiant as a scientist, saying that. i guess i’m not “supposed” to think about whether they are pretty. but i do… and i want them to keep coming back here to visit me every year! it causes me to lay awake at night worrying about pesticides…

on 10/29/10 i had the chance to photograph a dragonfly up close, at seal rock state park. it wasn’t engaged in major directional flight, and was not S. corruptum, but i do not yet feel confident in its identification. but i do know there are people around here i can ask! people with names and faces and knowledge of obscure facts about insects.

as life is a miracle draws to a close, berry shifts from verbally bludgeoning e.o. wilson (yeah, you have to kind of look past that to find the good stuff), to a very personal glimpse of himself and his own family, particularly the lineage of fathers before him, and his son and grandson, all of whom have participated in farming for generations in the same place in kentucky. as one who has left the place of my birth, also a farm, and settled far away on a distant shore, i want to believe that i can nurture the same level of love for this land that i now inhabit, that i could have had if i had stayed put in rural central new york. i am not sure how that will go, but i am going for it, and i can already say that i love this place more than i could have imagined. at any rate, i am heartened by the little dragons of the air, who are born far away from where their parents were, and yet somehow know exactly where they are going and what to do. i am thinking that my inner dragons needed to grow some wings and take to the air… and i think somehow, i am going to know what i am supposed to do.

who is mb today?

Posted on November 1, 2009 by marybethrew

(this is my response to a question from a friend from high school who recently got in touch on facebook, who asked, “So, I’m curious to know how you are. You were a very conservative and religious young lady when we were together – are you still? Tell me more about mb and what she has come to be today!”

~~~~~

i have not been avoiding your “who is mb today” question…. but it has taken me a while to formulate my response. especially with respect to religion, which you are obviously picking up on a “different” me these days…. i am laughing at myself here, i actually tried to “take notes” on how i would answer this, and there are so many lines and arrows and scribbles it is kind of intimidating to sort it out into words. hold on, this might be long.

as you mentioned, i used to be quite born again, fundamentalist, etc. i think it’s hard to write out where i am now and how i got here because of how drastically far away from that i feel now. hard to go back and relate to my old self. interestingly, life is throwing me some interesting lessons currently, like a new friend who i swear could be me if i had never changed my mind about some things… talk about relating to the old me. and it’s really making me work hard to articulate what i believe NOW and why, just like this message. ha. i guess that is what the universe has in store for me right now.

so, i’m taking on the challenge…

1996 went off to college, still pretty much the same girl you knew. determined my faith would not be swayed by life out there in the big world. kinda makes me chuckle to think of that. oh, the pendulum has swung.

1998 went on semester at sea, sailed to exotic islands with crazy fun-loving people, met so many people and saw so many places… really started realizing that the concept of the world i had been handed did not really “work” across the board. examples- became friends with a gay guy, such a nice person. realized i was raised to have no respect for this person, and to view his whole entire existence as “sinful”. it really did not sit well with me. really struggled with the idea that i wanted to be an accepting person, of all people and all their freakish ways, and that the way i was raised did not have that inclusivity. wasn’t sure how to make it all fit…. realized that i had a lot of trouble back in grade/high school with being so judgmental of other people, made it hard to make friends… as you know, i did have friends, but i think i also alienated a lot of people with religion. didn’t want to be this way anymore… i had made some very good friends at school, none of whom were christians, and i just needed a new way of thinking about the whole darn thing. i also really saw so much of the world and nature, and also terrible crimes against nature (islands in the caribbean littered for miles with garbage washed up from probably the US, etc.) i was realizing that i didn’t align well with some of the “man’s dominion over nature” aspects of christianity (or at least some interpretations).

1999 met mike, who i ended up in a fairly long term relationship with, he had a different view of things than i did, but i sure loved him and sometimes i could kind of understand the points he was making about religion, how that is a different thing than spirituality. that distinction helped me a lot. i think at that time, though, i was still looking for someone who felt more drawn to christianity, and we had a hard time meeting in the middle somewhere on that topic. he was a poet/artist and VERY articulate, and me, not so articulate. both very stubborn, all of that got in the way of me being open to new ideas. but i still think he helped me start to open up my mind a bit, even though i don’t think i took it very far at the time. example- he talked a lot about his own concepts of religion having been developed reading a lot of joseph campbell, and i seriously had issues with campbell from a philosophy class i had taken in college- of course, i had issues because he did not believe christianity was the be all end all, and i did not realize how close minded i was about it, until later. now i am a huge fan of campbell.

2000 met a new friend jim, who asked me point blank if i was a feminist, and when i said no, challenged me to look into that, and when i did, i realized i actually am very much a feminist. but was afraid of the negative reputation. from then on, i admitted to being a feminist with pride. usually when nobody is asking me, ha.

2001 mike and i went separate ways, i moved to berkeley, was working in a lab and was fairly lonely, so i started attending a presbyterian church near my home there. it was a SUPER-liberal church, i found out once i started attending, and it really was nice to realize that the general vibe there aligned really well with where i was at at that time, both with spirituality and politics. (still wanting religion/christianity, but not feeling comfortable with a lot of the things done in the name of religion….to women, homosexuals, other nations, the environment) that was an inclusive church- welcomed LGBT clergy, etc. that fit well for me. i took a really cool class there on evolution and it was cool to find a way to value both science and religion and not have to find them mutually exclusive since i valued both ways of viewing the world… i also got to travel to an apache native american reservation with the youth group there (as an “advisor”) and while that was an amazing trip, it also stirred up some more confusion for me- it was labeled a “mission trip” and i had been having issues with the way christians assume their religion is for everyone. we were not really doing any preaching or anything just doing humanitarian work, but i wished it had not been called a “mission”. i spent all my time there, trying to absorb as much of the native american spirituality as i could, trying to look at it more as a reverse mission so to speak. also very misguided, i feel now, but it was the best i could do at the time.

2003 that old friend jim came back into my life, we ended up in a relationship (he is quinn’s dad, fyi), he really expanded my mind on religion and spirituality and lots of things. whereas mike had been really academic about it, and i think i had felt intimidated by his knowledge of the subject, jim was much more layman’s terms about it, and fed it to me in chunks i could actually digest. he broke it down for me that i did not actually have to buy into the concept of sin, for example. that was a biggie. it really freed me to decide, no i do not believe in this concept. wow! you can do that? cool. blows open the whole heaven/hell idea, and makes it much more possible to have a mystic perspective on things. he re-introduced me to joseph campbell, again in more edible bites, he had some interviews of campbell with bill moyers on tape that blew me away and really got me thinking. one of my favorite things is something he quoted from the Indian Rg Veda, “truth is one. the sages speak of it by many names.” and really, the more i looked into things, all the religions all seemed to really be talking about the same thing. i read a great national geographic article around this time about the abrahamic religions, from which i learned a lot of the connections between the various religions, how they are all of the same roots. all stuff i was probably taught in high school but wasn’t paying good enough attention to mr. pilato back in global 1….. 🙂

if you had asked me at that time what i believed, it would have been hard for me to articulate it- and it’s still hard now, but i do feel it is timely that you are asking me this, because it really has been on my mind.

2007 birth of quinn. i really think birth and parenting has had as much to do with forming my belief system than anything else along the way, i think i have grown so much as a person since then, more than i could have guessed. i am sure you can relate. i already had a profound respect for nature (that goes back to my childhood, i’m sure) but something about birth. well, it’s just the most powerful thing in the whole world. as you know. i think it helped me to embrace some more of the feminine sides of spirituality that i had not really looked at fully. (also reject a bit more, the paternalistic side of christianity). in addition, there is something about parenting, that really makes you face your mortality, and makes you really want to do your best, and makes you really want to be able to tell someone (like, say, your child) what you believe and why…. and parenting itself brings up all sorts of things- how i was raised, what things i want to do the same and what things differently, just the concept of a child as an actual little person, that i get to practice all my unconditional love on…. great teacher of patience…… etc. i feel that birth was not just his but also my own. very different from “born again” though.

2008 met a friend who is Buddhist. i continue to learn a lot from her. she taught me the word “mystic” actually. basically a spirituality of the here and now, not living for some eternity i may never see. we chat about this stuff quite a bit, she is very anti-“hero”. we’ve decided we don’t need a savior, if we need saving we’ll save ourselves.

today. i think my current spirituality is sort of a mixed breed. i take what i like of all the different traditions and incorporate it, and i leave out what i don’t like. i am still very attuned to a “higher power” of some sort, but do not attribute to it gender or race or know if it is one or many… i guess i am sort of a nature-goddess-buddhist-taoist-yoga-native american-mother earth-present moment sort of person now. hahaha. if that exists. with a little of the teachings of christ still thrown in, for good measure. he wasn’t a bad guy. (i like the gnostic gospels actually- “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” and so on.) i have a crazy looking altar at home- shells, stones, feathers, goddess pictures. any object i find to be sacred for whatever reason. i try to meditate. i do yoga. i sit by the ocean whenever i can.

to me it is all about unconditional love, acceptance, tuning into the universe, being in the present moment, and being ok with not knowing.

mb

magic & bioluminescence

Tag Archives: spirituality