We finally moved into town on a wooded lot overlooking a lake. Imagine our surprise and delight when one night in the light from our windows, we saw a pair of raccoons, of possums, of armadillos, and even two very small red foxes all eating peaceably together under the bird feeders. It was like a scene from a Disney movie. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I don’t think I would have believed it. The next Spring, three momma raccoons each brought three babies at the same time every day to picnic under the feeders and drink from the birdbath. The babies were just cuddly balls of fur with masks and couldn’t climb into the birdbath at first. For about six weeks they came each day to tumble and climb, and eat in safety. The moms brought them out in the daytime because they were small and vulnerable, and large male raccoons are often dangerously aggressive toward babies. But the male raccoons come out only at night. I guess as nocturnal animals this is the raccoon moms’ equivalent to new human moms being awake at night taking care of their newborns. Sometimes adult raccoons would climb out a limb and grab hold of the wire attached to a feeder and walk the feeder back to where a branch came out of the trunk. There, comfortably ensconced in the notch, they would happily stuff themselves. One time they even managed to get the wire loose from the limb and drag the whole feeder off into the woods. Meanwhile beavers helped themselves to trees at the edge of the lake to build condominiums in the bank. The lake also attracted migratory ducks and geese, a blue heron, and finally even an eagle began to call it home. A pair of red tailed hawks got our attention by building a large nest that could be seen from our screened porch. The year before we planned to sell the house and downsize to an apartment, we began to replace the large sections of screening on the porch. But before we could finish this, a hawk swooped down to grab a bird at the feeder. He missed the bird, but went at high speed right through part of the old screen into the porch. At first we thought he was dead because he was lying completely still on his back with this feet and talons in the air. But when my husband opened the door to the porch to check on him, the hawk came to life, so my husband beat a hasty retreat. Even though the hawk began to move around the porch, it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to get out the tear he had made. This porch was my playpen for small grandchildren, so the only door opened into the kitchen area. There was no way for the hawk to get out. The porch was high off the ground that sloped down steeply from the house. So my husband climbed a ladder and as the hawk watched him closely, used a rake to tear more screen loose. Once he tore a fairly large hole, he decided to let the hawk figure the rest out for himself. Which fortunately, it did.
Next: Wildlife Encounters Part 6 Apartment Wildlife
Category Archives: fear
Controlling Conditioned Responses
Okay, This probably will be an equal opportunity offender, but sometimes you just have to tell it like it is!
When my co-feminists have said things like, “Men’s brains are in their genitals,” I took offense for men. This was certainly a sexist statement. But recently, I have begun to rethink this issue.
As a little old lady, I’ve made an interesting discovery relating to the differences between conditioned responses and mind over body controls. Little old ladies have little old bladders with diminished early warning systems. So it’s sort of touch and go, or rather see and go, to make it not only into the bathroom, but specifically to the commode. I have discovered that we can maintain control by giving our bladder verbal commands and encouragement. Seeing the commode evokes a primal level conditioned physical response. But language is a higher human ability and engages our minds to respond to the challenge. While it is a matter of mind over body, it seems to require at least mental verbal expression.
Perhaps counting or doing math problems would work. I haven’t tried those. I know that our male counterparts can at least slow down other conditioned physical responses in similar ways. So, I’m assuming, that at least when reasonably sober, they should be able to engage their minds by counting possible negative consequences when their bodies react with a conditioned response to physical temptation.
I think I’ll begin testing this theory at the sight of jelly doughnuts.
My Good Friday God
What kind of God are you, dying like that?
I want a real God, a “fix it “ God,
not one that gets himself crucified.
You’re just as helpless as the rest of us.
Here we are dying together.
What a weird way to save a world!
Such sorrow pierced your mother.
Yet, she didn’t run away.
She stayed there suffering too.
Was she filled with a mother’s self doubt?
“Could she have done anything?
Would it have made a difference?”
I watched my mother die by inches.
Her dignity destroyed
by fourteen years of Alzheimer’s.
I’ve seen my children make choices
that would cost them for years.
I could only ask, “Am I to blame?”
I listened to my friend whose mind
had become her enemy.
I heard her pain, yet could not help.
I hate being helpless, not good enough
or smart enough to help
even the ones I love the most.
Not long ago, you did miracles
even in my own small life.
Now I just see our brokenness.
You are a Good Friday God.
I think about the expectations
you gave your Apostles.
Only Judas got the picture.
How disillusioned he became.
He must have felt that you
were betraying them all.
Sometimes I’m just like Judas,
recognizing that we
are all sheep being shorne.
I’m even as cowardly
as Peter in asking
more or less, “Jesus who?”
But I know as well as John did
that your love is perfect.
That we need nothing more.
Even though like doubting Thomas
I fear a hard ending,
you are my Lord and my God,
my only God.
So I ask for grace to follow
though through the cross you call,
my Good Friday God.
True Confessions of a LOL Kind
Don’t get hopeful. LOL here means “Little Old Lady.”
I belong to a LOL group in a small church. Last week at our meeting, several LOL’s expressed concerns for the welfare or a growing homeless population in our small rural town. Our church doesn’t have much money and the women who don’t work are mostly between seventy and ninety-three. So, I offered to research the problem to find out the main places the homeless were gathering and what groups were already helping them to see if there was a way for us to contribute to one of those in some small way. The next day I was preparing for my turn to lead part of Sunday’s service by reading the Lectionary Scriptures for that Sunday. All of them were focused on helping the poor, including the Gospel story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the beggar at his gate. This is a “Come to Jesus and Get with the Program” scripture, plain and simple. So, I gave one of my tiny sermonettes (I call them sermons from the molehill as opposed to on the mount or from the pulpit). And I ended it with,”The question Jesus is asking us today is, ‘Who is the beggar at YOUR gate?”
I had left my purse at the far end of the pew near the door, but when turning the pulpit over to our minister, I sat down at the other end of the pew. Usually my husband is with me, but he was out of town on a family emergency. A few minutes later, an elderly woman came in the door and sat down right behind my purse. She looked shabby enough to be homeless. I happened to have a rare hundred dollar bill that I had been saving for a couple of months in my purse. My first concern, I’m ashamed to confess, was that the woman would steal my hundred dollars. I didn’t want to be obvious about this by scooting across the empty pew and grabbing my purse. About then I noticed that she was crying. Instead of concern, I saw this as a chance to slide down and give her some kleenex out of my purse and then just sit there hanging on to my money. Another LOL saw her crying and came over to console her and find out what was wrong. It turned out she was being evicted from a room she rented, because she was behind in her rent. Well, I sat there thinking “beggar at my gate!” So, I finally got my hundred dollar bill out and handed it to her. Instead of being happy about doing that, I just consoled myself that she hadn’t gotten my credit card. Talk about your LOLC…(That’s Little Old Lady Curmudgeon.)
Any way, one of our Deacons went with her after church and paid her rent and a couple from the neighborhood took her to the grocery and bought her food. Well I’m sure she thought Christmas had come early, because she insisted that she wanted to keep coming to our church if someone would give her a ride on Sundays. I’ll be honest, we’re a liberal church and it’s much more natural for us to take care of people’s physical needs than spiritual. Though preferably at a moderate distance. And liberal though we are, she looked pretty flea bitten. So far nobody, including yours truly, has offered to pick her up. My first thought was we’d better find a bus, because when she went back with the “good news,” the rest of the almost homeless people living where she did were going to want to come too.
My friend, the LOL Deacon, has started planning on gathering help from some of our more prominent citizens to find a building to house the homeless, hire a director, and get grants to underwrite it’s upkeep. I confess that right now that sounds like a totally overwhelming project to me, but I am trying to be open to the grace to at least pick up our new friend, Wanda, and bring her to church on Sunday. Feel free to pray for all concerned. When I was a new Christian, I was so idealistic and impractical, I ended up getting literally robbed by people I helped and my children harmed even by people in Christian ministry that I took into my home. So, now I’m trying to “be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Mt.10:16 Funny thing, the name of our church’s women’s group is “The Doves.”
Eileen, the reluctant Christian
“Warning! It’s Monday. Pity Party Ahead
And then comes the morning, yesterday’s sorrows behind? Maybe, maybe not.
I thought my faith would grow stronger and it would be easier in old age with less needs, children grown, more wisdom. Well, it ain’t necessarily so. Many days it’s a struggle to just stay physically functional. Wisdom seems to have only come about seeing how I screwed up in the past. Too soon old, too late smart sums it up. Grown children have troubles I can’t fix and that I worry that I caused somehow. I have more dead friends than alive ones and the ones I still have are also struggling. I find myself facing the probability of living alone for the first time in my seventy-nine years of life. I love my grandchildren more than life itself, but have no say about what happens to them. And physically can’t do things for and with them like I used to enjoy so much. And people, that I have grown to love, leave and don’t look back. And while I know these are necessary losses and part of my journey with God, on the days when I can’t see His footprints, it’s a struggle to stay emotionally functional. I quit crying some seventeen or eighteen years ago, when dealing with heartbreak over grandchildren born facing incredibly hard problems, because I thought if I ever let myself cry, I’d never stop. I was right. I’ve cried so much lately, I should be dehydrated.
I never was very good at persevering through things. I usually was good at finding a way around or out of them. About thirty years ago, I felt that God was challenging me by giving me a new name, “Perseverance.” I did realize even then, that this wasn’t necessarily good news about my future years. But, I have learned with grace, to persevere. I have even learned to laugh while gritting my teeth. (Not easy on any level 🙂 ) But sometimes, I just don’t want to. Today is one of those times
But, I will. I will grit my teeth, hang on with my fingernails, and be thankful for all the beauty, love, and joy God has given me in my life. And with Her grace, I will dig for that damn pony in all this manure. 🙂
Addendum added four hours later:
OKay, in an attempt to look on the brighter side of things today: Getting into pain from vacuuming means I can only manage one room’s floor before sitting down a while to get out of pain. This is good not only because a rest does get me out of pain, it also gives me a time out to go on-line.
And in my time spent today preparing for my women’s scripture class tomorrow, I read the funny little story about Jesus needing two tries to heal the blind man, because after Jesus tried once by putting saliva on his eyes, the man still couldn’t see other people as being like himself. It helps to know that people who don’t have natural empathy for others, may eventually be healed and acquire it. But, I haven’t figured out the significance of using saliva yet! Unless it means that spitting in someone’s eye doesn’t do much good. 🙂
So, this Monday has had goodies to balance the baddies. Thanks be to God!!!
Hiding Places and Safe Places
Grown ups have hiding places,
ones where we hide
from ourselves.
The bottom of a bottle
is a traditional favorite.
Toxic relationships are another.
In those, we can just focus
on the “other.”
Conformity is a camouflage
of many different colors:
a club, a church, a cause.
But most popular are
roles or titles:
mother, teacher, CEO,
postman, criminal,
priest or “ho,”
even being gay.
You see, sometime long ago,
we hid our patchwork
selves away.
But a hiding place and a safe place
are not the same.
Safety only comes when we have
nothing left to lose,
are not clinging to any idols,
or hiding behind an image.
Only then, when all else fails,
do we finally explore
the darkness
within.
And coming face to face
with our real selves,
we find God
and peace.
Wildlife Encounters Part Five: City Cousins
You Are Loved, But You Can Bet Your Sweet Bippy, Bad Choices Still Have Bad Consequences
Just because God loves you, doesn’t mean that whatever God is won’t let you suffer the consequences of bad choices. And I would put money on the reality that God is not a Wizard of Oz with a carrot and a stick. Consequences to choices are simply built in. And, if you keep on ignoring consequences, you can bet your sweet bippy, they will become worse until you learn. Life is about learning to love. And love may not mean having to say you’re sorry, but it sure means you better be sorry enough to change, when your actions hurt others. And unfair as it may seem if you are now, were, or ever will be parents…..the way you treat other people will come back to bite you even through and on your children and your children’s children. I have seen this and suffered it. It’s a law of nature. It’s built into the system. It’s Universal. Smart/Inspired Hebrews figured that out and tried to pass that information on down. Unfortunately, we are too soon old and too late smart. Even though genes may in some way be related to patterns of behavior, that is not a “get out of consequences free” card. It simply means most of us have either inherited or chosen new ways to try to escape the normal pain of living, instead of going through it and learning from it. This is addiction! And it has to be overcome. The sooner the better, because addictions quickly acquire their own pain on top of what we used them to dull temporarily. This is the core course in the school of life. Learn it or weep, cause nobody’s sure there’s a do over.
Wildlife Encounters: Part 2 The Scary Kind
Once we had some young college age kids who were part of a Christian Ministry stay with us. They were mostly from places like Los Angeles and New York. So we tried to give them a taste of country living by bringing them down in our jeep to a nice sandy spot where branches of the creek came together at the far end of our valley. We gathered branches and built a fire to cook hot dogs and marshmallows. One of them played a guitar and we all sang soft sweet songs as the woods disappeared into darkness. It was picture perfect until we heard our local Bobcat scream near-by. That was a little too country for the New Yorkers, so we gathered up quickly. But it took two jeep trips to get us all back to the house. I waited with the last two city kids. They helped me make sure the fire was completely buried while we waited for my husband to come back for us. We had flashlights and we didn’t hear any more from the Bobcat, but those two big eyed kids kept looking over their shoulders until we got all the way back into the house. (And maybe I was just a tad nervous myself.)
But for me the creepiest wildlife experience was the time I was home alone, but fortunately talking on the phone, as a long line of about fifty wild turkeys started coming slowly our of the woods single file. It was like a funeral procession that eventually looped around the house. I told my friend if I disappeared or died, the turkeys did it!
Wildlife Encounters: Part 3 The Sad and Challenging Kind
Grace Comes in our Helplessness and in the Present Moment
For me who naturally lives in the ideal land of possibilities, it takes both faith and perseverance to find grace when facing the harsh limits of human reality. I can only stand up to my inner Greek Chorus, that keeps me frighteningly aware of my frailties, by focusing on God who simply says over and over, “I love you.”
Some twenty-five years ago by the end of my mother’s fourteen years of dying by inches from Alzheimer’s, I really wasn’t strong enough to devote myself to holding her hand and sitting helplessly with her at the foot of her cross. It was partly because of my own emotional weakness, some because of selfishness, but ultimately because her suffering shook my faith in God.
Now, I’m being challenged once again to seek grace to live that out as my husband’s Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis progresses. Some personalities are naturally reasonably good at accepting reality, however harsh it may be. But I’ve always been a change agent, a problem solver, a person that is good at finding alternative solutions.
Now, I know that there comes a time when that is not what we are able or even called to do, no matter how naturally good we are at it.
We are called to find grace in our weakness. But that is terrifying and only done by staying aware that though we are not good at this, God is and God is with us.
And grace comes only in the present moment. That is where God meets us. And learning to live in the present moment is a whole new way of being in the world for many of us. Some of us live in the past, while others focus on the future. I’ve always focused on the future with its infinite possibilities. So my first challenge is to only ask where is God in this moment and reach for His hand. My second challenge is to accept that God isn’t asking me to solve anything, but to trust and stay with Him in the circumstances, like Mary at the foot of the cross of those we love most.
