Hello all,
I started singing this song last night.  There are times when I "go on watch" -- and I am holding the spirits of two beloved friends, one on the other side of the veil since mid February, one on this side whose life persists in finding the beauty in everything she sees, even in the midst of catastrophic illness.

It is from the Navajo tradition. It's been adapted into a hymn and often sung as a round.

Now I walk in beauty.

Beauty is before me.

Beauty is behind me

Above and below me.

 Since my previous owners -- I mean cats -- who used to write here many years ago have now crossed the rainbow bridge these many years....
Two new cats have entered our lives.
Allow me to introduce Miss Willow and Miss Jillian.

 The dinosaur is trying to update the blog design and layout! Everyone run!
I have to blame Sue Vincent, who I'm also trying to link in to this thing. Her lyric upbeat poetic posts in the face of difficult-to-overstate challenges is a truly inspiring kick in the rear. After several floundering tries and the input of two cats, I have managed to add her to the lists on the right hand side of this page. 

All About That Hat

There is this hat, you see....

It's a green felt hat with a blue band. Ye Othere Halfe gave it to me a couple of years ago and it grew on me.  It is the only hat I've felt comfortable wearing, and it appears to have Made an Impression on everyone who sees it. Just the hat, mind you.  The wearer could be anyone. It's really not about me, at all.

I have been joking about giving The Hat its own Facebook page as it gains in notoriety.  It has since occurred to me that I could tweak this blog and accomplish the same thing.

Hello!

Bringing this blog back from the dead on January 19, 2018.
Stay tuned.

The Oldest Trees

We went for a walk in Lacamas Lake Park today. The weekend had been warm but overcast, and I spent a lot of it dealing with a cold and resultant lack of sleep from having to prop up, but once outside and walking in forest and meadow, I perked up.

All the different shades of May green were there. Fir trees, alders, oak, holly, and a carpet of ferns, wild berries and wildflowers spilled at their feet; green lake water smooth as glass, interrupted by colorful canoes tracing delicate wake lines on its mirror. Happy families having picnics at the feet of the lake. Birds everywhere.

Up the hill, where the Camas lilies bloom, the lilies were forming seed pods amid the stony ground and the moss. Oaks in various states of disarray and snags stood boasting their age among the living trees.

Snags

Bounty in barrenness
In summer sun’s gold,
Crone trees with hollow hearts
Reach out, embrace, enfold.
Surrounded by the living green
Of tree and fern and moss,
They stand, their lives given to
The care of creatures lost.

Woodpeckers send messages
Tapping on their bones,
Squirrels store food and scold the jays
In autumn wind’s moans.
Harvest moon and starlight cold
The perfect light for owls
For whom the soft hollows are
Luxurious feasting halls.

The spring wind will sing through them
When forest flowers grow,
New life they will shelter
In the time of melting snow.
And after the winter fells them,
Or when fire leaves its trace,
The living earth will comfort them
In her loving green embrace.

© 2008 Darcy J. Scholts

Insanely eclectic, or was that the other way around?

Let me throw something at all two of my readers just for fun. This week happens to include the Jewish festival of Purim. Purim is about celebrating Queen Esther, a Jewish woman who married the King of Persia. The short short version of her story follows: She was "in the closet" about her Jewishness until one of the princes in the king's court began to persecute her people and order them killed. She ended up revealing her ethnic/religious "otherness" and wound up turning the tables on the prince, by revealing his plots. The appealing theme is defense of an alternative ethnicity and religion from government (royal) persecution. Purim is partly about reversal of the normal scheme of things, and as I understand it (again a short simplistic version), part of its celebration is feasting, revelry and pranks including costumes and taking on the role of opposites. Intersect my occupation as a contract provider for a local government whose dysfunctional leadership blurred the lines between church and state by insisting on placing "In God We Trust" prominently on the back wall of the council chamber where government business is done and pretending it's because it's the U.S. motto rather than the overt Christian/JudeoChristian God's presence in what is supposed to be a secular milieu. Add my partly Jewish lineage and my freewheeling eclectic Paganism along with my Christian practice in a convoluted timeline. Stir and you get a crazed woman with an urge to come out as a Pagan in response to establishment imposition of religious overtones which deliberately do not recognize religious and spiritual diversity, as inspired by a Jewish heroine from the Old Testament. Notice that said crazed woman has a multitude of spiritual threads woven into her soul in much the same way as the cartoon character Linus from "Peanuts" who is able to recite Scripture at will in class (back in the 60s strips) and then happily evangelize the undoubtedly Pagan Great Pumpkin! Have I managed to confuse everyone yet? Happy Purim, all...!