The Pure Truth December 11th 2020 by Sidney Barthell

 

  The Pure Truth December 11th 2020

My days of perfection have come to an end

Which is not to say I have become perfected

Rather,

The days of perfecting have ended

And now I am as I am.

There is a time for purification

You follow the prescriptions as well as you can

But then there is the moment of truth

God says to you,

"If you are not pure by this time...."

And you say to God

"I am as is."

The honest moment

When you trust, and God adores.

Modron Sept 23 2017

 Work from the ground, Modron

That is where you begin

The ground

From which everything else rises in its time.

Rise, this is the way of things

Rise to the light

As many times as we fall to the ground

In our ruins.

A Time for Remembrance. 10.13.2020

 October is the month of the Ancestors.

We confine them to a few days at the end of the month, but really, October belongs to them in its entirety.  

I've been haunted for the last several weeks by grief.  Loss, which can never be assuaged, because, well, like the children of Rachel, they are not.  

Memories of how things were, for good and for ill, and now there is no more.  

So I have cleaned and re-arranged my low table altar with pictures - and thank God for pictures.  Pictures of my mother, my two grandmothers, and my great grandmother Florence.  The grandfathers will be added soon.  Also there, a fine horse, a white horse who I miss most purely and grieve for most deeply.

There are other ancestors I know nothing about. Christina Lutz Barthell, holding her rosary.  My dad said his dad told him "She was Jewish, but don't tell."  A host of others, faces frozen in pose, nameless, their stories held in secret.

They all came here, to America.

From the 1600's onward, many of my ancestors made their way to this New World, leaving boundary wars, destruction, starvation, leaving persecution, leaving hopelessness, and also families, languages, customs, ancestral lands, and governments.  Tragically, they mostly were unable to identify with the indigenous people of the land here, but I am sure that my lineage must include some of the indigenous of this land.  

I can't identify much more than broad brush strokes in my lineage; From the pictures and the correspondence, Western Europe. England, Alsace Lorraine. Probably Ireland, maybe Denmark, perhaps France; Belgium? Luxumburg? Switzerland?   And America, populated before any of the others came from the Old World.  But I can't tell. 

When trying to decipher what land I belong to, it is apparent that it is this Turtle Island;  Its colors, trees, hills, mountains, grasslands and coastlines.  The Old World calls me sometimes, I long for its beauty of land and timelessness of stone; but I would be alien there.  The language is gone. The culture is not familiar.  It's mythic to me.

Half dog, half wolf, then.  Here I was born, here raised, and half wild at that, at any rate, as wild as a modern Child could be, filled with myth and memory, and migration. 

The candles are lit on the low table altar, illuminating the photos and the memories, and the deep deep feelings.  I have looked long into those other women's eyes, at their hope, and resignation,  their beauty, their happiness, their uncertainty, their fierceness; experiencing dangers, persecutions, disease, abandonment, loss.  Some of them rose above and maintained themselves creatively, and others abandoned creativity for other things like security, and who knows the costs these ancestors endured.  It helps me to look at their faces.  We all bear the stigma and the glory of being female.

I am certain of only my mother, and my grandmothers. That's enough.  Beyond that, although there are books and genealogies, and some photos, I cannot fathom it.

Here is this body: a continent filled with a river of blood that flows back to the Beginning,  the blood of a long march of life, and it flows without my control or my will even.  It carries me along like a leaf on a stream. 

Here is the myth: There is always a hunger for home, that covers this whole wide earth, and we are always on the way there.  

Vigil for the Akitamekw Woman Thursday October 8th, 2020

                               Vigil for the Aketamekw Woman

Lead her by the hand, Great Spirit,                                                                                                                      You who have room for us all;                                                                                                                And bring many children and horses with You                                                                                        To honor her and requite her                                                                                                                  For the suffering she endured.

She crosses over

Meet her with "You shall never again wander bereft through your land.                                                 You shall feast with us, we who love you                                                                                         I who know every fiber of your being                                                                                                  And declared you good on the day you were born."

Let her also see all the descendants she didn't know she had.

Lead her to all her relatives,                                                                                                       Who have prepared a place of peace for her.

May she then rest in the great arms and deep fellowship                                                                 Of this company                                                                                                                                 And may we also be comforted

And may the Land also, and all it contains                                                                                       Be comforted                     

For the loss of its Akitamekw Woman.

Symphonies June 14th 2020

The swallows are playing symphonies in the key of Air
Among the tops of the fir trees,
Their many movements orchestrated with rolls and crescendoing spins
As they follow some unseen score.

There are two tiny bright blue dragon flies conducting my door,
Waiting for the right moment to land, to tap and flick their wings
Waiting for things to settle.  They have my attention.

And the great green sea of my garden
Which has lately been bowing under the steady staccato of rain
Is also rising, rising to the great light ordering their clefs and times;
Poised, to my eye, for their music is a slow harmonic drone under the swallows,
But still moving always toward the Solstice and the fulfillment of their stanzas.


Sidney Barthell

Photo Credit: Lazlo Gyorsok

On My Dad's Birthday June 12th 2020

I wish you a Happy Birthday.  You have seen so much in your life! And your steady presence encourages me in these unsteady times.

Things I love about you:

First, I am grateful for the relationship between us, which has expanded my joy and my appreciation of you as my father.

Second, many of your lessons, which are in fact sinking in!  Such as:
   
     Handle paperwork only once.
     Think first:  Do you want it? Do you need it?  Can you afford it?  Can you possibly do without it?
     (needs three affirmatives which can be over-ruled by a final affirmative.)
     Weigh risks against payoff
     "Now cut this side just like I cut the first and don't cut off your finger."
     "Ask me anything; I've made every mistake possible."
     "Every person has their own demons."
      Who's your boss?  What's your job?  And how are you doing in your job?
   
Third, your love of nature, especially birds and lush landscapes.

Fourth, your congeniality

Fifth, your really corny sense of humor

Sixth, watching you develop as a writer

Seventh, your desire to create objects of beauty (and function) that bring joy to humans

Eighth, your success (and perseverance) with gardens

Ninth, your basic belief in the ability of people to improve and succeed

Tenth, your willingness to help

Eleventh, your PATIENCE as a teacher

Twelfth, your belief in peace

Love, Sidney

Time Flow. May 2008

Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. 
It all flows from one thing to another. 
A month ago, the path was large and the plants were small. 
Now the plants are large and the path is small.
The bridge is disappearing under clumps of grass and leafy arches, 
All the bones of the woods are being fleshed out in green... 
And now the nettles are sprouting their little necklace flowers 
And the comfry plants are gangly 
And their buds are uncurling from their little clumpy clusters, 
Showing red violet against the velvet. 
Yesterday the warm warm weather started a chain reaction up in the mountains, 
And today the ditches are running with opaque blue-gray snowmelt, 
And the cows are heading for the corner of the field 
Where they can bed down in the shade.

Silver Tues July 23 2019

It is a warm day today.
The clouds cover us and their humid breath Gives silver to the air just above us. The wind has been combing the trees For silver, The birches and poplars magnificent in billows, Petticoats of leaves revealing silver slips Along with the brambles and artemisias and all their relatives Wild on the Land. It is a living silver; the lively finery of the elements.

I drive down the road drunk in Spirit Breathing in the silvery breath, seeing what I hadn’t recognized before There! A line of Poplars in finest silver! And again, I am encouraged to see there is beauty all around us Breathing;
Breathing in the silvery Breath..

Inextricable Awe. March 1st 2020

Clean white houses with light flooding in, how I wish I had your spare, simple, brilliant space.

Rarified air of the Virgin Mary permeates this house-- My friend and her recently deceased house mate were sister nuns for a time -- a long time ago -- and, becoming so disenchanted with the institutional church, discharged their veils and turned to teaching.

I gave some comfort massage through Hospice to one, and we had a quick rapport, as I identified with the disenchantment, and she put her trust in me.  I didn't get to see her through the full allotment of visits, but on impulse the second (and last time)  her I took a bouquet of Cedar, Sage and Lavender.  She wasn't lucid, or was sleeping deeply.  I left it on her chest.

Now I'm in their house, which is a clear shrine to the Virgin.  I see photos.  D____ driving, with a straw cowboy hat on.  D____ grinning down her nose at the camera with a gravid mischief.  And there is artwork.  Paintings, and some, with her signature.

Her room is beautiful and undisturbed, like a chapel of rest.  Her workbench in the garage has a banjo on it.  Overhead, a warning sign -- My Shop My Rules.  I quicken to that!  Here is a woman fully engaged with life and owner of her self.

These two women love bells and chimes, which are everywhere responding to wind and time.  Also, they love order and space.  I remember that one takes vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty; Shed of all but the most meaningful icons, there is room for clarity, for expansion.

D____ died last year some time.  I remember her clearly, which is not true of all my Hospice contacts. She had a spirit with weight behind it. It impressed me with a communion.  Now I see she was also an artist with a deep soul, and a craftsman who knew her bench.

D____ and L____ had two little dogs.  One has recently died; and now it is just one woman and one little dog.  They've each lost their companions.  Here is a profound sadness.

Selah..

Linda is off with Leslie to San Francisco, and coming home tomorrow late.  Leslie is a pure beam of light shining through crystal eyes and red hair.  No better traveling pilgrim than Leslie!  Fragile but almost indomitable, she sparkles like a brook.  One bathes in the humor and fine grit of another deep soul.

We are admonished in scripture to take suffering with a measure of good will, for chance and time happen to all.  And most of what we bear is common to all people.  Yes, unless you die very young, you will taste bereavement.  The sun of that former life sets, and we enter a season of darkness.

The common advice these days is "don't do anything for a year," to forestall rash behavior.  Well, it seems to take a year to ford the river of details following the death of a family member anyway.  Somewhere during that year, however, the little pleasures begin to re-assert themselves.  Patterns of light and shadow on the rug.  The holy chiming of the quarters and the sonorous tolling of the hours.  The birds busy in the bushes.  Horse running in the field.

The magnificent sweep of sky.  The great theater of the clouds, all the veils, streaks, piles of cumulonimbus like majestic water schooners; shades of blue and shale against softest, clearest white.  Rainbows.  Shafts of sunlight streaming through to the land like the very angels from the forehead of God.  How shall we encompass this?  God is still talking to us, and we can't help gasping.