Thinking out loud

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

I can't remember a time in my life when I ever felt so alone and so connected simultaneously. It's strange, confusing, touching, moving, sad, sweet, and breathtakingly beautiful all jumbled up together. I know that I have had times when I was more alone - August 2006 when I sent my youngest to college and drove to the Eastern Shore of Virginia with a moving truck full of everything I owned, alone, and armed only with a heart full of hope. Or the long winter of 2010-2011, when I was hunkered down in a log cabin on top of a mountain with just my sweet dog Baby and my weirdo cat Buster for company, trying to make sense out of a wrecked life, a wrecked love, a wrecked dream. Or the summer of 2017, when I was still grieving my mother's death and my sweet Baby died, leaving me with a house too quiet to be stood, but no energy to go anywhere other than work because anything more was just too much for me to manage.

This pandemic and the need for social distancing (isolation) and the fear that comes with it, this aloneness is different, more heavy, more necessary, more important, but somehow much harder. It has been a long, long time since I have felt want of or desire for someone to share my day-to-day life and all the intimacy that entails. But that wanting is there. Is it the same for you others who live alone? I want a hand to hold. I want a shoulder to lean on. I want to curl my belly along the curve of someone's back and draw myself in close, listen to someone's dreaming as I fall asleep (or lie sleepless!), and feel the rise and fall of the breath of life moving in and out of someone's chest. I want to be driven crazy by someone's proximity! I want to cringe at the sound of someone chewing with mouth wide open! I want. It is as plain as that. I want.

I have come home to my music, at least. At last. In my music, I find a connection and an intimacy with my inner ....... what? Spirit? Being? Artist? Soul? God? "Yes" is my answer there. All of those things and something that doesn't have a word in any language that I know. I am so grateful to have crossed the many miles I had to travel to find my way back home to that part of me. I knew that I was missing it, but I didn't know I was missing myself for lack of it. But I was.

So in the midst of loss and grief and sorrow and solitude and confinement and longing, I find a deep wellspring of gratitude. I have always said that gratitude will save your life. I know that, many times now, it has saved mine. I am grateful for the joy and comfort I find in letting my fingers find their way along the next of my guitar - a way they know by heart. I am grateful for the beauty I see all over the world, in Facebook pictures and You Tube videos, of people coming together and opening their hearts. I am grateful for friends reaching out, touching base, reconnecting. I am grateful for dreams of touching another person one day, hugging tightly, kissing sweetly, laughing softly, resting my head against the chest of another and hearing the soft thumping of a heart in motion.

I am hopeful that I will survive this as will all of the people I love so dearly.

I am hopeful. And I am grateful to be home. However lonely it might feel, I am safe and I am well and I can keep singing, praying, hoping, and whispering "thank you" as the dawn breaks on another day.

Peace, y'all.

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Song Lyrics of the Week (or maybe the day)

I've been walking down a solitary road.

Looking for some open door, some comfort from this cold.

And I have been afraid I'd lose my hope

But now I know hope will survive.

I've been searching for a heart that is like mine.

A little taste of peacefulness is all I'd hope to find.

So I looked into the eyes of my child

And when he smiled, I could see it shine.

I do believe the dawn will follow the night fall

And I will not have to walk this road alone.

In the voices of my friends, I hear a light call

And the sweetness of that sound will lead me home.

Love is waiting there for me, it's in the pictures on my wall.

I hear it in my grandpa's clock ticking down my hall.

It's underneath the quilt my grammy sewed

And the sweet songs that I've know since I was a child.

I do believe that joy will come to find me.

And I'll know again how that pleasure feels.

And the scars that I bear are here to remind me

That I may love and lose but I will heal.

-----yours truly, Hope Will Survive

Gratitude Journal (a New Year's Resolution)

I am grateful for the many times that I have survived depression.
I am grateful for the memories I have of Morganton and our house there - the house where Jacob and Daniel and I grew up, and the many great times I had in that lovely space.
I am grateful for the red maple leaves blazing in my front yard and the few short weeks I have left to say, "Oh! look at that!" when I step out the front door.
I am grateful that I have learned to be alone and at peace with my own company.
I am grateful for the book of Job. One cannot feel sorry for one's self for very long whilst reading Job. And for that I am quite grateful, as I'm feeling sorry for myself today.
I am grateful for the opportunity I had to play music with Scott and Ken and Mary. Our group was a wonderful thing.
I am grateful for patience.
I am grateful for my nephew Matt and for the man he became in his recovery. I am grateful for the relationship that we've developed and the love that we share.
I am grateful for the sound of my father's voice - the way it echoes still.
I am grateful for dreams of the mountains.
I am grateful that I knew a part of Scott that was good and true before all the other stuff happened. It gives me the place to start forgiving and letting go.
I am grateful for my friends Jon, Lorna, and Bruce.
I am grateful for the week I had to sit by the ocean and listen to that ancient, pounding sound.
I am grateful for friendships that span miles and years.
I am grateful for giggling! You should hear my sisters and my little brother and my sons and me - we all giggle the same!
I am grateful for love that came later in life, even though it would not stay here with me and even though it broke my heart. I am still grateful that I knew it and it knew me.
I am grateful for my music and the way it saves me.
I am grateful for tears.
I am grateful for the voices of my sisters. They sound so much like my own, it surprises me everytime!
I am grateful for the way my kids hug me - with love and intention, warmth and honesty.
I am grateful for the beautiful, warm day yesterday (2/8/09) and the opportunity to sit out in the sun with my dad.
I am constantly touched and amazed and humbled by the courage of others. Thank you for that. Thank you to the young man who waited on our table down in Chapel Hill. Your courage inspires my own!

Good Music

If you haven't heard these albums, have a listen. You'll be glad you did:

Jon Zachary, Turn on a Point ("The Ballad of the Piper Cub" is indeed a very very fine song and an artist rendering on forgiveness. Worth listening to about a thousand times or more.)

Mary Gordon Hall, Wine Glasses and Wooden Spoons (with Christmas coming, listen to "Babe Alone", incredibly beautiful song)

Danny Ellis, 800 Voices (listen to "800 Voices" or "Tommy Bonner" first and read the liner notes, this is powerful music and will heal you way down inside if you open yourself up and let it)

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, The Harrow & The Harvest ("Hard Times" is my current favorite song!)

Patty Griffin, Children Passing Through ("Up to the Mountain" is a song that I play and belt out when I think that I can't go on anymore.)

I could go on for days!!

My thoughts on finding pathways to peace

I have found that lavender candles or vanilla candles help. I light them when the sun goes down and I blow them out when I go to bed. Especially in the dark of the winter, that soft light soothes me and helps me feel centered. The vanilla reminds me of my grandmother's house when I was a little girl and the cookies, cakes, or pies she would bake when we came to visit. Lavender reminds me of the fields of summer and sitting on the edge of Linville Gorge watching the sun set. I never smelled lavender there but every time I smell it, I think of summer and the Gorge and the many days in my nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first years that I spent there.

It is often easy to set aside a hurt or an offense or a wrong doing that someone throws my way, intentionally or not. Most of us, I think, can set things aside, take a deep breath, control our tempers. The harder part is to leave it aside! To not allow ourselves to take it back up again and carry it around like some sort of blazing badge upon our chests. Letting go means leaving it behind. That's a hard task sometimes. I have found that taking things back up again or carrying them on and on and on significantly diminishes my peace potential. So how do I keep from picking things back up again? Injecting either humor or music into situations of conflict helps me a lot. i try to talk things out with someone I trust and I try to make it funny if I can. I love to tell a story and the funnier the better. I try to make big hurts into little hurts by breaking them up with humor. I also will send a little sound clip in most all the time. I have a constant, unending, soundtrack playing in my head. I have the remote to that soundtrack and I can switch stations whenever I want. There are particular songs that I play in my head that help me feel peaceful or calm or loving or generous or sensitive or, on the flip side, angry, combative, vengeful. You know what I mean? You have these too? Most of us do, I think. I use that music in my head. When I am tempted to fight, I flip a switch and turn on some internal music that either expresses that anger for me (here's an example - "No Bad News" by Patty Griffin. Awesome song. I turn that song up loud in my car on really really bad days when I feel like I might explode - and I explode into that song and wail it out!! and am much the better for it - without doing anybody harm!! 'cept maybe my poor ear drums!) or soothes that anger down (here's another example - "One Love" by Bob Marley, or from Playing for Change. "Let's get together and feel alright" or "Imagine" by John Lennon. "Imagine all the people living life in peace"). It might sound crazy. It might sound meaningless to you. But it works for me. Try it. Turn those songs on in your head and see what happens. If you don't have the right one, go looking for it. It's a powerful tool.

Gratitude has saved my life.

Service has saved my life. I wish that the Feds would give everybody a tax break for doing service work. Like you do some service work, you get a receipt from wherever or whomever, and you attach it to your income tax return and you get a 2% tax deduction or something like that. Plant trees around a local park, build trails on the Appalachian Trail, serve mashed potatoes at a local soup kitchen or bag groceries at a local food bank, write letters to an orphan in Somalia, volunteer to read to a kindergarten class, mow your elderly neighbors' lawn, clean cages for the Humane Society. There's a lot out there to be done. Big and small. Might be life changing. May just be something to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon. But helping others helps me. Helping others takes me out of my little solitary world and opens me up to the blessings that I have and puts my world into perspective.

Prayer is powerful. And it works. When I moved to the Eastern Shore in 2006, I rented this great big old farmhouse. It was beautiful and I loved it there. But the nights could be painfully long. The house made so many sounds and popped and creaked and groaned in the wind. I was sometimes quite spooked. And my peace seemed to run away and hide under the bed. Sleep was elusive. I found there were nights that I could not remember the 23rd Psalm, though I had learned it by heart when I was just a little thing. Sometimes I would simply say, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." Period. That was it. That's all my mind would let me remember. And so that became a mantra and a prayer and I would repeat it over and over. And peace would come stealin' over me, slowly, gently. And I would feel my heart slow down. And the popping and creaking and groaning of the house would fade into an ambient sound that did not startle me. And I would float on that prayer into a peaceful state where thoughts came clearly and my voice, the voice of my heart, would talk directly to my God. And my God would listen. I have to work at finding that place. It does not come easily to me. But I work at it and when I find that place of stillness, I find that talking to my God is as easy as talking to my own mother or my closest friend. And my prayers are a conversation that is left unended, to be continued. The peace that I find when I pray is a peace that stays with me as long as I am willing to acknowledge its presence. Because it is always there. I just only need to remember.

A dog, a cat, a horse, a cow, a bird. Study after study has shown what great benefit there is in having a pet: lower blood pressure, less pain, less chronic disease, higher self-esteem, lower rates of depression. I am a believer. I know it to be true in my own life and in my own house. Sitting quietly, listening to a book on tape, knitting or not knitting, with my dog curled up next to me, leaning against my legs. My vital signs stabilize and then mellow, my muscles relax, my heartaches ease, and everything feels alright. Just touching her soft furry head and listening to her sigh. Wow. What a simple thing.