Wild Parsnip

We’ll know by tomorrow whether the back of Linda’s legs---or her face god forbid---blister and turn rash-purple.  24 to 48 hours after contact.  Not only painful but unprofessional:  what client wants to see their psychologist disfigured so?  They did last year:  sickly purple patches behind her knee.  Lasted for 3 months.  

You’d think she be safe, so high on the seat of her old beloved John Deere 2510.  And the MX6---our John Deere radial mower capable of chopping up an 8’ tall boxelder tree---whirs noisily and mightily far behind her.  Yet, when she finished the deed yesterday and returned to the tractor shed,  clumps of grassy debris coated the rear of the tractor, as if she’d backed into a hay mound and out again.   At least we hoped it was just grass.  But why would it be?  She’d just sweated the last 10 hours mowing 4 acres of the dreaded wild parsnip.

She’s hopeful this year.  In spite of a 110 degree heat index and a furnace-hot engine in front of her, she wore long pants.  Last year she figures the tallest parsnip bent beneath the tractor’s front axle then snapped upright as she drove by, slapping behind her knee.  Revenge of the wild parsnip! 

Wild only because no one plants it.  It's good old garden-variety parsnip, Pastinaca sativa, long escaped from cultivation, now readily seeding itself on its jolly northward expansion.  Rampant in and around the Land, it hasn’t managed to reach the Twin Cities.  Not yet.  But it will.  I spied the familiar yellow flowers in a Lakeville ditch along I-35 this year.   Whether cut with a mower or by machete, parsnip lives on.   We only hope to prevent it from making more children.  Birth control, not genocide.

Unlike Linda, I suffer no serious threat from wild parsnip’s phytophotodermatitis, meaning if you get the leaf or stem juice on your skin then add sunlight, hey presto! blisters and rash.   I cover everything, head to toe, except for my face.  See, I’m machete man.  My assignment:  seek and destroy the parsnip thousands slipping through our tractor perimeter.  Armed with a 24” blade in each leather-gloved hand, I whirl and whack at the invading forces like some hybrid cross between a ninja warrior and John Boy.  The worst wounds I’ll take are heat, exhaustion and perhaps some sore shoulders.  Except this year.

This year the gnats (or midges or no-see-ums or whatever dreaded name you give these smaller-than-a-pinhead fly devils) were the worst.  Whether months of rain or Satan himself are to blame the results are the same:  a nerve-wracking cloud swarming overhead, buzzing deep into my ears, crawling down my neck, sticking in my eyelashes , choking me as I breathed.  It was to be a contest between me and the swarming forces of evil.

To beat the heat I slogged into the dew-soaked grass at 5AM, when it was only 81 degrees.  The gnats must have spied out my plan in advance, waiting for me, pouncing the moment I crossed Calico Hill Road.  “Ha!  I can handle anything you little biters can dish out,” I said to myself as I felled a few practice parsnip on my way across the pasture. 

I returned to the cabin at 7:30.  Gnats 1--Mike 0.   Desperate, I did what I hadn’t done in years:  bathed my hat, shirt color and ears in max strength Muskol, pretty much 100% Deet.  Returning to the scene of the battle, I fought the good fight---hacking and felling parsnip by the hundreds---but not good enough.  In shame I retreated, screaming in gnat-induced madness, back to the cabin.  It was only 10AM.  Gnats 2--Mike 0.  

When Linda returned for lunch after a successful morning of parsnip mowing, my shame turned to anger, rekindling my battle spirit.  I washed the stinging repellent out my eyes and vowed to try one more time, life-sucking afternoon heat or no. 

From my days canoeing the Boundary Water Wilderness---where all manner of biters rule the sky day and night---I recalled a defense I’d seen.  I’d always laughed then, such a ridiculous look.  But a desperate man does desperate things.  As I searched the closet, Linda probably hoped I’d fail to find it:  my old blue Boundary Waters bandana.    “Aha!" I cried.  She’d have to deal with her embarrassment. 

Bandana in one hand, filthy cap in the other, I pondered their marriage.    With a resigned shrug, I draped the bandana over my head so that one pointy end touched the top of my nose. Completing the look I donned the cap, tucked the pointy end under the brim and swallowed my pride.  With a bandana draped over my neck, topped by a farmer hat, I felt like John Boy meets Lawrence of Arabia. 

But it worked!  Swarming, the gnats buzzed in frustration as they failed to penetrate my defenses.  Up and down the prairie I marched.  Whack! Whack!  Down came the parsnip.  Reinvigorated, I recalled my yoga training:  side-body long, shoulder blades back, tailbone scooped.  My feet rooted, I felt the power of the earth pulsing up through my legs, shining out through my arms and blade as they rose with joyful focus and fell with flower-head splitting precision.  Finally---having hacked my way across the entire half- mile northern border of our emerging prairie---I swung for, hit and felled the easternmost parsnip. 

Yet that was merely the northern border, only 100 yards wide perhaps.  I gazed south, where Linda mowed on through dense yellow swathes of parsnip alongside the cattail pond.  I heard a buzz.  Annoying.  Disturbing.  Not just the gnats.  Not just the distant tractor.  This buzz came from the inside.  A dizziness or perhaps a warning.  Stop!  Stop before you overheat.  I swung, swooned, shrugged.  By some sense given to couples, Linda raised her eyes off her work and looked my way as I signaled my intention with my machete. 

As I dragged my feet up the hill, I took a few perfunctory parsnip whacks, then stopped swinging altogether.  The sun beat on.  Heat 1--Mike 0.

But just you wait, parsnip!  Wait until next year when we’re living on the Land.  Full time.  I’ll start whacking on 4^th of July morn and everyday thereafter until the deed is done.  Not that parsnip cares.  He’ll be back, flinging in his seeds.  We’re a prairie island amidst a sea of weedy parsnip fields.

And that’s OK.  Healing the Land, this 41 acre prairie, is a thousand year project.  And we’re just coaxing it along, tipping the balance toward its true self. 

Rah-dur!

Neighbors

3 short weeks to go.  In exactly 21 days, on Monday, 1 August, our home of 25 years will no longer be.  Oh, I suppose it’s theoretically possible for something to fall through---the plain of life is strafed with unseen badlands and glacial fissures---but the likely future owners just cleared their final “known” crack:

“What will you miss most?” my friend, Dave, asked.

Intrigued by what could be gained by decluttering their own home, Linda and I were giving Dave and Kate a 4140 Harriet “showing” .  Well, not the white bathroom towel, lights on, 100% staged look.  But we’d managed most of the old checklist:  papers quickly stuffed into the handy leather box, cat-towels off the rented furniture, noisy basement dehumidifier turned off.  

“Not the house,” I shrugged in answer to Dave.  “It’s not mine anymore.”  No doubt that all the grueling work we did paid off;  one day on market for goodness sake.  But we hadn’t foreseen our realtor’s  slickest trick:  detaching our hearts from our house.    Each morning we awake inside the same dream:  a Better Homes and Gardens virtual tour.  Breathtakingly beautiful.   Laughingly perfect.  Unrecognizable.  Twilight-zone trapped, I nervously reach above the stove.  Open the cupboard.  Poof!  The fog lifts.  My fingers curl around the familiar handle of my tea-stained Gunflint Trail mug.

“Not you!  Not my friends,” I thought privately.  Though I’m moving a hundred miles away,  I refuse to believe I’m losing my dearest friends in any way.  After all, this blog’s banner proclaims my final intention: ‘maintain what matters’.  How would I ever dare journey the cracked plain of life without holding hands with my good friend denial? 

As we walked out onto the deck,  my mind wandered into the dappled light under the river birch, slipped around the clematis-draped trellis  to rest in the layered shade of Chris and Alby’s pagoda dogwood upon their patio. 

 My next-door neighbors, though still friends, will cease being neighbors 1 August, 1PM.  What a loss!  Aren’t neighbors the secret source of manna? 

Just yesterday Linda and I were sitting on the deck, post-church hungry,  wishing for some soft Star Thrower Farm sheep cheese or something, when presto! here comes Chris out his back door, both hands hefting bread-shaped aluminum foil. 

“It’s too hot for you guys to turn on your oven,” he offers, graciously allowing us to set aside some of our guilt.  We’d each gobbled a warm slice of chocolate-chip, coconut banana bread before Chris stepped back into his air-conditioned comfort.   Raising mischievous eyebrows, we licked our chocolaty fingers and sliced another.  After 15 years of over-the-fence hello’s, I can’t tell you how I’ll miss Chris and Alby. 

And tonight is our good-bye dinner with Jack and Nancy.  I suppose their daughter Micaela is too busy with her own home to join us on their deck.  She was a scrawny four when we moved next door: dancing, whirling, in the backyard as she gleefully introduced her next guest on her own Carol Burnett Show. 

I’m not sure if Dave grew impatient waiting for my answer, or if I’d stepped out of time, above the fountain of Jack and Nancy’s elm and drifted with the popcorn clouds down to the Land. 

The people of the Land:  our neighbors up on Calico Hill road.  Since our first meeting seven years ago, Lonny and Sandy Dietz showered us with warm greetings and veggies from their organic Whitewater Gardens farm.   We are truly different (and I’d like to think better) people because of them.  And whatever would we have done without Kim Drath and her family across the road from the campsite?  For one thing there’d be no Savannah the Wonder Dog in our life!   Tumors spreading, our sweet old girl’s days are few now.  Via the brief words of text, Linda and I share our grief and compassion with Kim.

Yes, we do and will have wonderful neighbors at the Land, but not next-door neighbors.  It’s 1600 feet down our narrow gravel driveway, then another 900 feet south on Calico Hill Rd to the cat-slung porch of Lonny and Sandy Dietz.  Even further to Kim’s.  Unless I walk the buzzing prairie to the pasture gate, cut steeply down through juniper and oak, round the cattail pond, over the mowed dike and climb her wooded horse trail.  Then it might be a little closer.

Poor Dave.  I could only hope that all these heart-tugging memories flashed speedily before me like a Lt. Commander Data file search.  I finally answered him.

“I’ll miss my neighbors,” I said with a pained smile.

“I can imagine,” he said.  So can I.

Hey!  Look!  There out the sunroom windows.  It’s Millie minding her grandson as he plays with his John Deere truck in our lawn beneath our Edina Realty Sold sign.    Gotta go!

Rah-dur!

P.S.  Micaela came!!!!

Welcome

“So,” Lynn innocently asked me.  “What are you most afraid of?”

Our House the Land Built presentation finally over, we’d opened it up for a few questions.  What could go wrong?  Linda and I were among friends after all (a family picnic in Heather’s house since its still pouring buckets outside).  Problem is, friends ask questions never asked at our two previous, more public, presentations on our journey to build our new ‘values-engaging’ home.     And these friends had just seen me naked.   Normally so protective, I finally dared expose what really, really matters to me.  A glimpse of my tap-rooted values.  My soul-dreams.  So tender.  So precious.   It was one thing to stand before a sheet-draped wall in Heather’s living room clicking through PowerPoints of our bleeding-edge home plans (off-grid-solar-rainwater-harvest-masonry-heater-composting-toilet).  Quite another to reveal why any of this really matters to me---why I’d leave my high-paying job and Minneapolis home---other than billboard-taglines like ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’.

“Ho my!” I gulped as I considered my answer to Lynn.  How much more skin did I want to bare?   Then I recalled the Annie Dillard quote on Linda’s final slide:

Cliff-jumping time.  “I’m afraid people will think I’m totally weird,” I confessed.  “Especially my new community.  Elba.  Altura.  St. Charles.  Plainview.  All the hard-working farmers.  My neighbors on Calico Hill Road.   Our entire home was designed upon only two-values and the first of these is ‘welcoming’.   Our new home should be anything but a hermit’s hideaway.   How welcoming is a home occupied by weirdo’s?  I mean, look at our toilet.”

That darned composting toilet.  Nothing in this House the Land Built presentation (or the previous two) garnered more attention (and more horrified gasps).  Sure, everyone’s aware of its theoretical greenness.  But where’s my comforting porcelain ‘plunk’?  My familiar all-is-done ‘floosh’?    And when they saw pictures of our composting toilet, heard how it worked, their suspicions rose like outhouse odors.  

“A 5 gallon bucket?”

“You haul it where when its full?”

“And who actually hauls it?”

I mean couldn’t we have made our friend’s ‘business’ a little less transparent?    How much do they really want to know about their pooh?  Don’t  get me wrong. Our friends were very polite as we explained our personal experiences with commercial composting toilets (which at least look a little more tidy and toilet like): nose-wrinkling escapes, fan-induced breezes on the behind.

“You’ll need to post instructions for use,” suggested a wide-eyed Joe.

“Really?” Linda shrugged.  “There’s only one rule:  cover your stuff.”  A scoop (or two) of herb-scented sawdust from the urn.  Into the bucket, that is.  For the compost heap, a pitchfork (or two) of covering straw does the job. 

That job is masking offensive odor.  “I was skeptical,” said Linda.  “So we installed a sawdust toilet in our shed’s hayloft.”    Nothing.  No odor whatsoever, save the sawdust itself.  “Cottonwood is a little sour smelling.  We won’t use that again.” 

I faced a tense test  when Heather’s hubby Kevin arrived late.  “Look at that quote,” Heather pointed to the slide on the sheet-draped wall. 



And oh, when the surprise on Kevin’s face turned to an understanding smile,  I felt welcomed.    As if rubbed with Charmin, the room’s mood continued to soften when I explained how we weren’t just dumping the buckets in any old compost bin.  “It’s a Humanure Hacienda!”  Three five foot bins.  A roofed middle bin for straw flanked by open bins of layered compost.   You could have heard the sigh a block away when they discovered you never had to turn ‘your stuff’.     “Joseph Jenkin’s research is all there in his Humanure Handbook.”  I'm not sure this convinced them.

 “But I made Mike dump the first bucket,” Linda exclaimed.  “And I backed far, far away.”

Very well, our friends finally knew what the what was, but why?  Why endure the buckets of our own bestial biology? 

“The connection,” Linda explained.   “In addition to welcoming, our new home needs to enable the Connection.”    That’s Connection with a capital ‘C’.  Our connection to the Land.  Our connection to our greater community.  Our connection to the divine.   While it might not be welcoming, it’s hard to get more connecting than our composting toilet.  There it is!  Before your very eyes.  The divine circle:  life, death, resurrection.  Life consuming life creating life.  Light from night from light.  Impossible, yet undeniable from the seat of the sawdust toilet.   Completely invisible atop the porcelain.  Does anyone know where porcelain pooh goes?

Flash!  From the front porch, this just in from my wicker writing chair:  an eagle.  A bald eagle, white head and tail, slowly soaring in high circles.  I can’t recall ever seeing an eagle from my Minneapolis home.  And it’s the 4^th of July!  God has to hit me over the head sometimes before I wake up and pay attention.  The Connection!  The divine Connection!

My better self knows that my friend Missy was right.  “I don’t believe toilets create welcomeness (or non-welcomeness).  It is an object…relationship and connection breed welcomeness.” 

 So please.  Come.  You are all welcome to the House the Land Built.   We won’t break ground until the end of July.  We won’t move in until December.  Still, there is the Land.  And there, in the hayloft of our barnwood-clad shed, the toilet the Land Built already awaits you.

Rah-dur!

Light of Hope

Do you remember the taste of strawberries?

Sprawled upon the ash-strewn rubble of Mt. Doom, choking with thirst, Frodo’s unremitting companion Sam tried to awaken his spirits with this question.  Earlier, in the dark of Shelob’s lair, the voice of Galadriel had reminded Frodo, ‘there is a light when all other lights go out.”  Then Frodo reached for and found her gift, the phial, the light of the star of Earendil, saving him from the encroaching 8-legged terror.   But on the slopes of Mt. Doom, where the Evil Lord birthed the One Ring, all other powers were subdued, even the starglass.   Never quitting, Sam offered, in his simple question, what light he had.  Not only the light of enduring friendship, but the light of hope.  Of home.   But this time Frodo was too far gone.  The One Ring had taken him.  “No Sam.  I cannot recall the sound of water.  Or the touch of grass.  I’m naked in the dark.  There is no veil between me and wheel of fire.”

This week I was offered the same light Sam offered Frodo on Mt. Doom.  I may not have been choking with thirst or hunted by a house-sized spider, but I was falling under the spell of the One Ring, sometimes losing my better self.   On April 29 I voluntarily walked away from the security of a well-paid job at Medtronic.    Harder yet, I walked away from the smiling faces of my amazing, engaging colleagues.  For three months I toiled---scraping and stripping glue, painting trim and walls, renting alien furniture ---prepping our house for sale.  And all under a relentless gray sky.   Three months of April rain.

Suddenly that seemed done.

Now what? 

“Let’s pick strawberries!” Linda said to me. 

Unlike Frodo, I was not too far gone.  “OK,” I muttered knowing full well the effort ahead:  36 hours of red-stained hands, sinks, countertops and cookie sheets.    Yet when we arrived at Silkey Gardens and my knees fell upon the straw between the green rows, I felt life return.  Without asking it to, my hand brushed aside leaf and vine.    A flash of red excited my eyes.  Then my middle and index fingers knew exactly what to do.  Slipping behind  the fleshy shoulders, one finger on each side of the stem, they gently squeezed.  Snap!

There it was, green-hatted-strawberry, gleaming red in the sun.   Yes, the sun had returned!   But now was not the time for such savoring.  Pop!  Into my mouth.  For a moment I could not even comprehend, could not contain all the juicy, chin-dripping joy.  Then Ho!  My!  Gosh! 

Sunlight.  I was tasting sunlight.  So warm.  So uplifting. So much energy pulsing down my arms.  My hands, still weary from house prep.  My picking fingers.  Soon, the white box between my knees brimmed with little Early Glows, seemingly filling itself as I got drunk on the strawberry smell.  As always, we returned with more than the thirty pounds we’d intended.  I mean those big Brunswicks so easily fill a box; you felt sorry for the failing Mesabi vines, and then there’s sweeter-than-sweet Sparkle! Linda’s favorite.  Heaven made manifest on a vine. 

39.3 pounds.  Two hours to pick.  Ten hours to wash, core, dry, semi-freeze on cookie sheets, and freezer bag.    And all along their journey to our upright basement freezer, they sustained us.  Grazing strawberries while we pick (how else do you know the good ones?).  Spoon-smushed strawberries in my roasted sunflower seed snack.  Sitting on the deck, we toast the next-door-Pride-party with our dazzlingly red strawberry margaritas.  And finally, the salad.  Red upon green, lettuce and fennel and mint fresh from our Rock Springs Farm CSA box.

When Sam offered Frodo the opportunity to remember the taste of strawberries, he was indeed offering a light, every bit as magical and powerful as the phial of Galadriel.   So Linda did for me. The light of hope rekindled within my mind.  The life-giving light of the sun, harvested by strawberry leaves and pumped like sugary blood into the berries (and into me).  The light of the first massive stars---who in their supernova death throes created all the elements heavier than iron---still twinkles in the palm of my hand, putting the sparkle in Sparkle. 

And the light of welcoming community:  Wise farmer Paul, his jam-jarring mom Grace, all the berry-stained ‘hired hands’,  even little Carson buzzing like a bee as we bounced together in the back of the golf cart shuttle. 

House no longer ours on Aug 1, we’ve rented a one room cabin from our dear neighbor Kim right across the road from the Land. Though only 20x20 we’ve allocated a goodly amount of the precious space to a our old chest freezer.  One purpose.

Come February, snow leaning on the north side our cabin, how better to invite summer inside than a strawberry smoothie?  Engage new life. Maintain what matters.

In the glory of my final days, when all other lights seem to fade, may I be invited, coaxed by my dearest ones,  to remember the taste of strawberries.  There is a light when all other lights go out.

Rah-dur!

Wake

  

The week-old $310K offer on our house---initially a stack of twelve or so Edina Realty documents signed by the buyer and us (the seller)---morphed somehow into a bloated, yet ravenous creature, capable of seeking, finding and gnawing the raw ends of my emotions, exposing the  bones of my lesser self.    While I must remain aware at all times since he’s still out there ready to pounce, I can’t help but wonder from whence he comes.  What exhumed corpse?  What House of Frankenstein? 

The story’s getting ahead of itself.  Who is this monster?  First, let me tell you who he isn’t. 

He is not our broken furnace.  Yes, our boiler broke this week.   (Ahhh!!!   There, that felt belter).  You should have smelled my indignation when our buyer’s inspector suggested that our boiler might be unsafe.  You should have seen my widening eyes when I called Centerpoint Gas Company’s service line and they told me to get out of the house while they paratroop in their SWAT team.  You should have felt my terror turn to humiliation turn to anger when they tied the red sticker of death upon our carbon monoxide-leaking boiler.

“How much is a new boiler?,” I finally squeaked out.
“$5000,” he shrugged.
Turns out it could go as high as $7K.   When we’d already spent $15K plus 3 brutal months of our own blood, sweat and tears prepping our house for market, let’s just say that Friday was a bad day for Mike and leave it that.   Yet, still not monstrous.

He is not negotiation: that terrifying, aggravating, even thrilling game of tractor chicken (play Holding Out for a Hero here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA1wrvqDRNw  ).    The buyers asked for $2000 to cover their cost of problems discovered in their inspection.  We countered, not only saying no to the $2000 but that they needed to pay the entire cost of the furnace.  I felt so smug, thinking I had them since we were willing to stay on the tractor and let the entire deal die if they didn’t go for it.  Now they plan to withdraw their $2000 request, leaving us no legal opening to ask for anything.  I actually laughed when I first heard it:  outwitted by a technicality.  Now they get a new furnace at their original offer price of $310K.  Irritated as I am, this is still not the monster of which I speak.

So who is this creature?  I’m talking about the monster of opaqueness, crawled from the murky swamp of anonymity.  

You see, we’ve never met these buyers.  Nor their realtor.   Never heard their voices.   Only once, from afar, did we spy them leaving our house, getting into their car.  We’ve seen an MLS photo of their St. Louis Park house (hmmm…can they really afford ours?).  So Bill Minge, our exacting and tireless Edina Realty realtor, becomes their talking head:  the voice of the other side. 

Ho my gosh, what atrocities are possible when you do not know someone?   Understand someone?  Recognize their children?  What of road rage?  What of the studied and brutal nature of children on the internet compared to live interaction with their peers. 

Ho my gosh what healing ever occurred from afar, without a commitment to build relationship? My dear friend Missy and I reminisced over that very thing over eggs at Gigi’s this week.   At Medtronic, we helped other's jobs go better, easier.  The solutions often appeared mystically technical. 
“When did we ever accomplish anything without investing in improving relationships?” I asked her.
“Never!”
“What happened if we didn’t invest in relationships?”
“Nothing or it fell apart after we left.”

At a moment of negotiation frustration, I told Bill Minge my Medtronic experience, then added, “This house selling process completely lacks relationship building.  No wonder we don’t trust each other.  It’s amazing it works at all.”  From across our breakfast nook table, he quietly sipped his tea and shrugged, “That’s the way the process is.”

Indeed!  Problem is, sparing Herculean emotional effort on my part, it’s easy to imagine these buyers as evil.  Greedy.  Out to get us.  And boy oh boy do they deserve whatever I can dish out.  There!  I’m pushing out the close date.  I don’t care if you and your snotty little children have to move twice.  Take that!  I’m not fixing the gasping hole in the window.  Contract doesn’t say so, so I’m not.

As the monster of opaqueness gnaws my better self, I look around at the world I live in.  How many “transactions” occur without transparency, without knowing who I’m working with?  Products and services, even for the care of my mind and body, flow through increasingly anonymous streams of delivery, arriving packaged and purchased at my feet.  I’ve sacrificed relationship on the altar of convenience.  Without relationship, where is my better self?  Where are you?  Where is the divine?

Lately on Facebook, it’s been a joy to read and see all the conversation and photos about relationships, divine consciousness even.  Not once do I recall anyone ever saying they experience relationship or post a connecting photo about an anonymous product stream. 

While the ever-growing monster of opaqueness gnaws our better selves, how hard will it be to make real and lasting change. What hope exists for this world’s great leap forward when our fundamental systems deliver without transparency, without a foundation of relationship?    Good grief, look how hard it is just to sell a house to a complete stranger.  Imagine peace with nations who don’t know each other.  As Michael Pollan said in his breakthrough Omnivore's Dilemna, "If there's any new right we need to establish maybe this is the one: the right, I mean, to look."

Fortunately, I live in a world of boundless hope, at least from 5 to 6:30AM each morning as I write my story.  In the Corridor, the fenced in world within our world, Ruth, Amelan and the other Members live according to a principle essentially unknown in our world:  tend your wake.    The story opens with a conflict. 

“I am the Mender,” says Amelan.  “I am called to solve problems by applying the five bridges of mending.”

“My dear Amelan,” says momming Ruth.  “If you fly from one problem to the next, from baby Baara’s infection to the leaking oven, you cannot tend your wake, the unintended consequences of your behavior.   Without committing to really knowing Baara or the oven, how will you ever learn what could go wrong if you tamper with them?  Without committing yourself to a long term relationship, how will you take accountability for what does go wrong?  Something always does after all.”

“Were we not created to experiment?” Amelan asks.

“Of course!  And along with that great gift comes the responsibility to attend our wake.  We alone among all creation, have the power to create and destroy so easily and unintentionally.  I am sorry Amelan, but Mending is experimentation without transparency.”

So every morning, I get to observe how the Members of the Corridor confront the monster of opaqueness as he grows and threatens their very existence.    They remind me to do all I can to step away from opaque transactions.  When I’m stuck in one, like selling my house, they remind me to take the Herculean effort:  at least try to imagine the humanity of the buyers.    Or perhaps even take a bold step out of the system, breath out my monster-induced anger, breath in the divine. 

Maybe then I’ll even invite the buyers to our 4100 Harriet July block party.

Rah-dur!

Mending

We accepted an offer on our house, Saturday,  second day on the market, within 5% of our aggressive asking price, with our preferred Aug 1 closing date.  We’re impossibly fortunate in this slumping market.   We’ll receive more than enough to cover the costs of building our new home (The House the Land Built) and still achieve our “no debt” goal, enabling us to engage the new life.   

Then why do I feel so broken?  

As David Bromberg sang, ‘I must have someone else’s blues.  I swear I don’t know why.’  Shouldn’t I feel like clinking glasses with friends and neighbors. “Yippee!  It’s over!”? 

So what would Amelan do?  After all, my novel’s 17 year old protagonist is the Mendering, claiming to mend anything broken by applying his 5 bridges of mending.  Now you may be wondering if I’ve leaped completely off sanity’s edge:  listening to a fictional character, and a 17 year old one at that?   Well, here it is then:  I vividly remember the day, the very scene where the characters took over my story.    Summer 2004, three months into the first of seven drafts,  timid Dr. Nancy Fobair---the story’s only character from ‘the world as we know it’ amongst the Members of the Corridor---dares to tell me, ‘that’s not what happened, let me tell you what did’.   From then on, writing was easy, if not a little unsettling.  In some ways Amelan Beaver Creek is more real to me than the staged sunroom I’m sitting in (if you want to gawk:  http://www.weichert.com/38133591/).   I feel a little awkward ‘channeling’ Amelan real time but here goes. 

“We begin, of course, at the First Bridge of Mending,” says Amelan.  “Name the Pain.”  Pain?  I feel like I just crawled out the window after a car wreck.   There’s no one pain.  First, my chest is gashed, heart bleeding: I’m going to miss so many people.  Alby, my next door neighbor of 15 years, just gave me a thumbs down from his front porch.  I rushed to the sunroom window. 

“What’s wrong?,” I asked.
 “That’s my sad face,” Alby said.
 “I know.” 

All of sudden its real.  August 1.  Gone.  Returning only as ‘friend’ but not ‘neighbor’.  I cannot describe the welcome, the connection,  I’ve experienced on this 4100 block of Harriet Avenue for 25 years.    Kicked out of my house Friday morning for a showing, I walked sidewalks.  Alleys.  So many trees, shrubs and flowers I’d planted.  The maples around our Judson Church, arching over the sidewalk:  I won’t prune them into lushness again.  My first prairie, 4117 Harriet---planted to heal the flotsam and jetsam that spewed from drilling a 200’ deep test well for the churches geo-thermal heat system---now overrun with the invasives of my neglect: thistles,  reed canary grass, ash trees.  The stout culver’s root in Al’s boulevard garden, the snowberry rambling over Ray’s back yard, both dug from our yard and replanted.  My neighborhood legacy will grow on without me.

There’s the stomach pain, the angst of uncertainty.  Would some other buyer give us more $$$ for our house, for our grueling efforts?  We’ll never know.  Unless the deal falls through due to buyer’s inspection or financing or failing to sell their home.  More stomach pain.

Mostly it’s my feet that hurt.  They love to dance with Linda.   Its magic, really, our relationship; each of us following our path in life, yet somehow finding a way forward together.  Really together, rarely settling for a compromising tit-for-tat.  Rather we each hold our dreams as we waltz together toward the light.   I wouldn’t be surprised if one day---when we have no use for our old bones---our feet simply float off the dance floor.  Luminous beings.   Just love.

Right now we’re not dancing.  Hard as leaving is for me, for Linda its more so.  After a good dinner at a  friend’s table, I’m always ready to leave before she is, winking, tugging on her sleeve like a 3 year old.  For good or for ill I live more in the future.  I so want to get down to our Land.  Walk amongst the white indigo’s.

 I couldn’t believe what I beheld from our Land driveway Saturday as dust billowed behind our 20’ U-Haul truck.  Acres, literally acres, of white indigos, Baptisia alba, blooming for the first time.  On this, the fourth spring since we planted our 40 acre prairie, they rose from the ashes of an April controlled burn and shone out their glory.  Its toward them I’m called.  Somehow, I know they are part of the story, the story of wild hope for humanity.  

So maybe this is the pain:  I’m torn in two.  I want to dance forward with Linda AND dance upon the hills in the green, green grass of June.   And this, perhaps, is enough know for now. I’ve crossed the first bridge of mending.  I’ve named the pain.  Once again I need to paddle the river of AND. 

Thank you, Amelan.  I’m not ready for your remaining bridges of mending.  To name the pain is enough.   I’m a lucky man, so much to love, so much love my way.  And, in spite of what the apostle Paul said, love hurts sometimes.  Its alive and beating after all.   Yet I’ve finally learned one thing:  ‘tis better to dance toward the light, no matter how painfully bright, than to hide in a hole in the night. 

Rah-dur!

AND

In that blur of final days  leading to my ‘refirement’ from Medtronic (and 31 years of Corporate engagement) I received  many gifts, none more memorable than the medallion ceremony.  Whether the chill mist hailed from the gray April sky or the thundering torrent of Minnehaha Falls, neither dampened our spirits.   I had so looked forward to that early morning,  presenting achievement medallions to three devoted (and loved if they knew it) mentees: Heather, Keyia and Kim.  Earlier, on the winding drive there down Minnehaha Creek, I rehearsed the words I had chosen to honor their achievement.  Something precious.  Something dangerous.  Advice!   Now, five weeks into my refirement, I still bite my tongue and refrain from asking what they’ve done with it.  Yet, this week, I realize that its I who need the very advice I gave.  Or at least the core.  One word.  A most powerful and freeing word.

Heather, Keyia and Kim might be shocked to learn of their mentor’s struggle (they always did put me on much too high a pedestal for my comfort).   As gloved hands raised our glasses of bubbly apple juice, Kim teased me by boomeranging  my favorite question, “What’s your Y?”.  In our profession’s jargon, the Y measures success.  “I’ve forgotten,” I embarrassingly admitted.   More than embarrassed, I recall feeling disturbed.  Even scared.  If I’ve forgotten how to measure success---what my refirement success really looks like---I’m apt to wander off course.  Miss the mark.  Refire without aim. 

So I begged.  And Kim (though she knew she shouldn’t) told me what I ‘d once told her over Pink Flower spring rolls.  “My Y is percent heart decisions.”    It all seemed so clear, so easy, back then.   I knew that if I let my mind make the big refirement decisions, I was doomed.  My mind is out to kill me.  Don’t feel bad little mind.  You’re great at the how, at assembling and executing a plan of action.  But when it comes to the what---envisioning possibilities and choosing the ones that really matter---my heart has made all the great decisions.    Too often, I’d overburdened little mind with questions he can’t answer.  Wasn’t made to answer.  But refirement was going to be different.   I wanted heart (and soul) to lead the way. 

I feel called to a conversation of hope with the world.  For the world.   How ridiculously impossible, says my mind.   Yet heart knows better.  ‘Seek ye first the kingdom’.   So that was my Y.  Percent heart decisions.  Plot it.  Monitor like with some kind of gas gauge.  

I’m not doing so well.  Below the red line.   Mind racing.  Running on heart fumes. 

Days.  Weeks.  Months now of prepping our old house for sale.   Little mind outpaces heart, creating project lists faster than heart can say, ‘Stop!  Wait!  What really matters right now?’  But little mind already has a plan for the day.  Deliverables (door painted, lawn mowed, bedrooms packed and staged, basement wall painted).  Items needed (two brushes, primer paint, wall paint, lawn mower).  And both lists are in ink, on Medtronic Lean Sigma note paper.  How can heart argue with such precision?

 Then why do I feel so tense?  Why do I snap so readily at Linda (“I threw the wrong box away, OK!”)?   Why do I wake before robin sings?  Oh robin!!!  Tell me!  My heart listens.

Ah, the deck at dawn!  First light on river birch, virgin leaves shimmering.  Dancing.  And silly loon, far off, crying for the beauty of another day.  And I’m writing.  Not this blog---connecting as it is---but my story of hope.  My calling, which I’d forsaken for the first time in seven years.  Oh little mind.  I understand you thought it right, best even, to focus all my energy on leaving the current house.  But heart begs me back  to my story.  To the Corridor.  And especially to 17 year old Amelan.

 I used to laugh at his myopic focus on mind.  Not that he’s out of touch with his feelings, but his mind always decides what to do with them.  Sorry Amelan!  I finally understand you.  Heck, I’ve become you.  Fiery Elli, his travelling companion and first time love interest, confuses him by insisting he follow his heart.  He tries.  Fails.  Blames her for expecting him to be someone he’s not. 

And that’s only the beginning of his challenge.  Along the Way to Dego’s Village he tries to heal the ailing Skye, forge his first love and escape his father’s demands.  Yet all these things, important as they are, continually distract him from his goal:  vie for Poet of the Corridor from atop the Poet’s Tower. 

But it’s Skye, his other travelling companion (and his grandmother were he to know it), who helps them both.  “Heart AND head”, she suggests.  This Amelan is willing to try.  He can be his heady self AND try to be so much more.  Not one or the other but both.  Fully human.  Fully engaged.  “Paddling the river of AND,” as he describes it.

 Heather, Keyia and Kim, it seems I’ve neglected to take the core of the advice I gave you.  The core of the advice Skye gave Amelan.  That one word.  That most powerful word.  AND. 

Head AND Heart.

Isn’t that the point to all this anyway?  Scraping glue off floors.  Stepping down as Medtronic mentor.  Midnight meetings with the new home architect.  Isn’t it all about engaging my new life?  Heeding my call?  Bringing a story of hope into the world?  Like Amelan seeking to vie for Poet of the Corridor, I must attend to  other things as well.  The challenge is keeping my eye on the prize: my call.  Or is that your job, heart?

Ho my!  I just noticed the first spiderwort bloom.  So blue here in the garden before sunrise.  I don’t know why but it makes me sad.  That darned heart.

% Heart decisions.   I’m above the red line.  At this turn in the river. 

Rah-dur!