I wrote this Sunday morning at Thatcher. Communing in nature has become one of my spiritual practices :

Koan #7

Frozen River

Silence in the glen
Winter stillness
The rare peep of an unseen bird
Clumps of snow drip
from bare gray branches,
soft thuds onto the ground.
Blue glitter,
a million prisms of light
bless the banks, decay of logs
the ground sculpted into rounds and slopes
by hours of wind and river tongue lashings.
The DesPlaines has frozen –
Time in hibernation,
Spring arrested and Summer’s bubbly frolic
soothed into a cold lullaby
beneath blankets of fleecy white powder.
Delicious hush, how healing you are!

I want to show my son
the land the way it really is,
naked beauty, precious pale sunlight,
the deep sacred silences
no hand-made temple or church can surpass –
this is the open sky, the vault of heaven
the original cathedral.
Too many cars drive past,
one every minute,
speeding to brunches or Sunday services,
rushing on the frozen crunch of road.
But I don’t mind –
more silence for me,
unashamed of my greed,
drinking beauty like a dying woman
as the feathered tips of treetops
brush the morning chill.

Koan # 8

Hint of egret wingspan flapping
behind the tangled jumble
of gray winter branches.

Koan #9

Rush

I hate the rush of days,
man-made hours,
boxes I am trapped inside.
I push against the walls
only to break through
to another box.
Schedules, deadlines,
start times, end times,
school bells, radio alarms,
buzzers, timers, beepers,
cell phones, online bids –
Enough!

Where is the deep time?
The sun moving westward in the sky?
Shadows of trees growing longer?
The moment suspended,
like a dust mote hanging in sunlight,
the slow growing of grass seedlings?
The halted flow of river
beneath the ice?

Where is the joy
of climbing snow heaps
falling, rolling, tumbling
until the laughter and ice streak
your face and there is nothing left
but the pleasure of returning
inside to a hot mug of cocoa
and damp socks drying on the radiator?

I rail against the boxes
we have made
and claw the pages of every schedule
and run, a free woman, to the frozen Palos hills
where time is kept in drips and ice crystals
forming in the winter sun.

- M.G.B.

No. Last weekend was our annual time for girlfriends, a time when we gather at our friend Joy de Vivre’s house. A time for talking, and bonding and laughing, yes. And also a time for rejuvenating our spirits amidst the trees, sitting on the beach as ladybugs used us as warming stations, gulping down the pure silences like we’re dying of thirst.

It’s good to see the stars at night.

It’s good to taste how clean the air can be…and to feel the eyes of a hawk upon me.

It’s good to unplug (even though I love to tweet and Fb and work on my laptop and Skype and all the technological wizardry that comes with this age).

It’s good to just be.

Thanks to Joy…to Lucky the Ladybug Magnet…and to Cool Blue.

~ MGB

Back in the day, and by this I mean of course my obsession with the sixteenth century, there were Filipinas who were found resting on the limbs of trees, on thick branches of the balete trees. These trees were massive, roots stuck in the ground at estuaries, where the salt sea meets freshwater and boughs stretched forward in complicated intertwinings as the tree reached for sunlight. These women were found overcome by visions. They were in the process of being called to serve as healers of their communities; they had undergone trials in the spirit world and, if they survived, they had the ability to go back and forth between the mundane world and the realms beyond to guide their people. In various Philippine dialects, these women were called babaylanes, bailanes. But my favorite term for them is Visayan: Daitan, the Befriended Ones.

If you, like me, were raised in a largely Judeo-Christian environment, you might find indigenous spirituality shocking at first. So we’ll have to peel back the layers of time, take off the Western lenses through which we see things, and try and uncover, accept an older kind of spirituality. Two things amaze me about my ancestors’ indigenous Philippine religions back in the day: * The leaders were women. * And living nature figured prominently in their rituals and ceremonies.

Certain trees were revered as dwellings of gods. You did not simply chop a tree down and sell it for lumber. There were forest spirits from whom they asked permission and gave offerings, special times of harvest and rest. Nature provided herbs for healing. The balete trees which cradled the priestesses were part of their rite of passage in becoming healers and, from the time they were found having visions in their boughs, the daitan had a special relationship with their particular tree (but they did not “own” the tree as property).

Recently, in my small corner of Chicagoland, I’ve noticed that congregations have been finding ways to incorporate nature into their prayer life. One Jewish synagogue holds seasonal prayers in the prairies. There are Buddhist mindful meditation walks. Some Christian-based churches do forest and river clean-ups taking up stewardship of the Earth as another way to practice their faith. Certain relatives of my own generation, who are jaded by their experiences within organized religion, talk to me about their awe of Nature (with a capital N), of being swept up by its tides and swells or amazed at the beautiful mechanics and physics and improbability of life on this planet. Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Green Party, my friends of all political persuasions seem to really find something in nature to connect with.

And so, today, in my thwarted state, I’m wondering about the connection between nature and spirituality. When the forests and the rivers are thought to be the home of the gods and goddesses, why would we mistreat such sacred places? If the trees and animals are part of the same Cosmos, if we manifest the same mysticism as other sentient Beings, then it is a joy and delight to take care of them.

We people, we two-legged seem to have a really hard time finding common-ground. And yet perhaps the ancient Filipina babaylanes knew the answers all along — our common-ground is literal. It is the Earth.