Wellspring: inspiration and guidance for a spiritual journey

Things I learned from an old dog, by Tina Simson

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post for our blog. To say that I’ve been busy doesn’t do justice to my life. I have a job. I’m on the Board of Trustees at church, a member of two very active committees, and I’m in seminary. In the next few weeks I’ll have oral exams, write a 10-page paper on my spiritual journey (which I think I can do justice to in a paragraph), attend a weeklong intensive for which I have 70 questions due on the World's religions and my son leaves for his second duty in Iraq. This trumps everything.

So this morning, faced with these struggles, all I want is to go for a walk with my very old dog, Marty. He is my spiritual guide, extraordinaire so I thought I’d share some of his early morning lessons with you.

Walking the same path can be full of excitement. Everyday is a new journey.

If you get tired on this journey all you need to do is sit down and the neighbors will come over to see how you’re doing.

Going slow and steady is an honorable pace.

Walking right through the mud makes the whole trip worthwhile.

If you get too excited and your bottom-half falls out from under you, you don’t have to stop wagging your tail.

There are always enough crows to complain about and surprisingly they don’t care.

There’s no need for instant messaging, texting or e-mail…when you get out and about you see real people.

When you get home there’s no need to apologize for taking a morning nap, or an afternoon nap or napping all day long.

When you nap, your dreams remind you of all the other glorious walks you’ve ever taken.

After your nap, there’s enough time to figure out how to open the ‘lazy Susan’ pull out the confectioner’s sugar, rip it open and drag it around the house for a while before your people come home.

If you’re too tired at night, to climb the stairs to your comfortable chair in the bedroom, all you need to do is whine just a little bit. Someone will pick you up and carry you.

So, I think I’ll be napping today, dreaming of rain for my garden. I’ll call my son to see how he’s doing and wait for my friends to pick me up and carry me.

Love to you all.

Spring, finally, by Libby Moore

 

It has felt like a long, hard winter in Rochester. Not dreadful, no massive blizzards, no crippling ice storms, just cold and never-ending. The delicate touches of spring we're finally seeing are even that much more welcome because it's taken so long for them to arrive. The robins got here a little early and had to scrabble in the snow for a while, but now they're looking for nesting places and pecking around on the grass for worms. The hyacinths near the warm front wall of the house have been poking up for more than a week now, and we've found the few scattered crocuses that the voles didn't eat. The snowdrops back in the woods are a mass of drooping white bells, and the forsythia are in that delicious state of impending bloom – hints of yellow along the long, willowy branches. One or two more warm days and the world will be awash with color.

Spring's arrival was a big part of our last Wellspring session, which was about the theology of joy. We added this new topic to complement the more difficult subjects of how we UU's deal with crisis and evil, but I don't think we'd intentionally planned to have the discussion just as people were starting to feel the joys of emerging warmer weather. It's so much easier to feel joy when the sky is blue and we can shed some of the layers of sweaters and boots that have encased us over the winter.

For the discussion on joy, we asked participants to read the introduction to Roger Housden's collection of poems called Dancing with Joy. He helps us think about why we often feel that our spiritual lives are fed by pain and sadness but feel guilty about giving in to the transforming power of joy. Another part of the assignment was bringing poems that expressed joy for us. I loved the variety of writings that my group offered, as individual as the members themselves – about the sea, and nature, and Hafiz, and fig trees, and connection. The very act of hearing one another read our favorites made for a joyful session.

It was hard for me to choose just one poem for my contribution, since there are so many that bring me joy. After some thought, I read one that I've loved for years, an e.e. cummings poem about spring:

 

in Just-

spring       when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

 

whistles       far       and wee

 

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

 

when the world is puddle-wonderful

 

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far       and       wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

 

 from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

 

it's

spring

and

     the

 

             goat-footed

 

balloonMan       whistles

far

and

wee

 

May spring fill our souls with joy and wonder.