Nature of Words

Light of the World

Deborah Carr — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 20:32:59 +0000

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

~John 8:12~

The sun casts its late afternoon light upon the tops of the birch trees behind my home as I sit here, mulling over words that seem reluctant to show me their shape. This is the way with words...I must simply begin with faith, to find out what needs to be said. It is 3:30pm on Christmas Eve...about -5°C, the ground white with frozen snow left from last week's storm. The vegetables are prepared for tomorrow, homemade eggnog is chilling in the refrigerator, the turkey is 'brine-ing', gifts are delivered, others are scattered beneath the tree. All is well and solid in my world. My heart has been searching for the precious, sublime moments cast quietly amidst the rush of this season...straining for a glimmer of light amidst the despair...despair felt both with people whom I love, and with grieving strangers beyond our borders.

And my willing heart has found a treasure trove ... the cold glitter of moonlight, the pungent drift of wood smoke, gentle flakes dancing, the haunting strains of a violin, friendship that needs no words, shadows cast by flickering candlelight, an aged sanctuary bathed in light, an impromptu trio of voices…the music of the ages.

This is the lovely little St. Mary's Anglican Church in Hillsborough, NB, a tiny architectural treasure built in 1887. Unlike many churches, you won’t find this one boldly centered on the village’s Main Street.

No, St. Mary’s is unobtrusive; almost shy. The humble little structure with windows stained with glass, cedar shakes and a practical chimney instead of a steeple, is tucked away on a back street, amid century-old trees and leaning tombstones. Like its members, it does not strain to call attention to itself, yet those who stumble upon it quite by accident feel as if they have inadvertently touched upon a secret longing. St. Mary’s has a small, but faithful congregation, less than 30, really. Oh, but the care that you will find here. Most all participate in the ritual of service. While Sarah plays the violin on Sundays, her daughter solemnly crawls about at her feet. The ladies knit and sew and bake to raise funds. They gather materials for medical kits, and stitch dresses and shorts for children in other countries. They check on each other when one is missing for a few Sundays in a row. They gather regularly for meals in the evening, or tea and cookies after the morning service. They epitomize Christ's love, one for another. Two weeks ago, some of the men clambered over the steep pitches in biting cold to string Christmas lights along the peaks. Outside, the gleam of white lights now sparkles modestly against chilled darkness. Inside, reverence reigns in a warm sanctuary where hand-knit afghans and cushions soften stiff, narrow pews. High wooden ceilings, arched and ribbed like the hull of a ship, resonate with rhyme and ritual, hymn and harmony.

We came here, for a silent vigil, several days after Newtown, finding comfort in the worn wood infused by countless liturgies and prayers. The following Friday morning, one of the members made a special trip to open the church. Inside, he grasped the thick hemp rope attached to the iron bell lodged high in the belfry outside the peak, braced himself part way down the aisle and began pulling on the chord, ringing out a solemn tribute into the winter air…28 times in remembrance of the dead. We may be separated by miles and borders, but are joined by the nature of our small town souls. We returned this weekend, to light the manger scene and put out cookies and hot chocolate for those seeking a quiet interlude with God. Candlelight flickered as visitors were warmly welcomed to come in a sit for a spell in the silence. A few came, anxious to spend a moment pausing silently in remembrance of One who is the source of our longing...the One who also did not draw attention to himself, but came quietly and unobtrusively on a darkened street in a small unremarkable village, an unexpected Light in the Darkness. Tonight, more will gather just shy of midnight, candles lit, voices rising. To all my friends, near and far, I bid you a sweet finale to 2012 and a tender Christmas season. Watch for those single precious moments and capture them firmly in your grasp. There is something there for you, a treasure, a glimmer of light and longing that has much to tell you. I am so grateful for your many words of encouragement, your thoughtful comments, your friendship and wisdom offered. Heartfelt love from my heart to yours, God Bless and Merry Christmas, Deborah

Being pissed is no fun

Deborah Carr — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:40:00 +0000

I’m pissed. Something I love is being threatened. My ancestors were among the first to settle this land. I am at home here and when I walk these crisped leaf-laden paths, the souls of my feet grind the skins of these trees into soil that’s alive with my heritage. Strength and fortitude has nourished this soil, these trees, those rivers...all of them as much a part of me as the genes that live on in my cells.

When my soul is weary, I head to the shelter of the forest, to the gentle slope of my mountain, to the places where the tide caresses the shore.

I am there now, watching the tide ebb and flow over the frozen marsh. Pausing over the fresh snow where fox paws cross my path, or where coyote and I strode the same space, each of us feeling the frost in solitude. Can anyone blame me for loving and caring for the continuity of place? This is my land, my birthright. It sustains me in the same ways it sustained my grandparents, great-grandparents and all the generations before. Albert County is in the blood and bone of me.

And now, the gas and oil companies have moved in. Oh, they’ve been here awhile, drilling away in the distant hills, and I have been as guilty as others of complacency. Of being too busy to take notice. But I notice now. Because my blessed Albert County sits on top of a goldmine of oil and shale gas and my neighbourhood is being threatened by the poisonous process and greed of hydraulic fracking. And my government's ears are deafened; its vision obstructed by dollar signs. If you share a corner of the world that is coveted by the industry, then you know that fracking involves mixing huge volumes of fresh water with toxic chemical and sand, then pumping it into the ground with ferocious velocity to shatter the bedrock. You know that it endangers groundwater and aquifers, spews noxious fumes into the air, involves noise and truck traffic and diminishes property values. It destroys the land. It fractures communities. You also know it poisons fresh water and segments the landscape, stripping trees and vegetation, interrupting wilderness pathways and migration routes, gouging quarries for sand, stripping forest highways for pipelines. You know there is a rising tide of opposition throughout North America and Europe. You know that people and animals are getting sick from the downstream effects of the industry. Entire countries, provinces, municipalities have enacted bans or moratoriums. Yet the lure of profit is pushing governments to ignore health, lifestyle and environmental dangers to 'improve economy and create jobs'. You know that the prosperity is for the companies and shareholders, not the landowners left with the lingering mess. The past months, I’ve been wallowing in the research, pulling myself out of the toxicity of each new study I read in order to grab a lungful of fresh air and re-energize myself. We have started our own opposition group (Water and Environmental Protection for Albert County), developed a website, circulated petitions, organized community meetings, joined a larger alliance of others who share our concerns (so excuse me for my absence from blogging!). We protested at the Legislature. Meanwhile, our government is ignoring the voice of its people and plunging its head in the sand, spewing out platitudes and unfounded figures of wealth and prosperity that are built on a foundation as tenuous and shifting as the sand pile its buried in. Our news media is owned by the oil industry, so the mass of opposition is understated and largely unreported. It’s demoralizing, discouraging work. But if you’re going to fight, you have to understand what you are fighting....and what you are fighting for.

Our lives begin to end The day we become silent About things that matter

~Martin Luther King, Jr

Autumn in Albert County

Deborah Carr — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 23:19:02 +0000

I want to cling to fall; to hang, clasped tight, onto every blessed minute of it. My eyes have not yet opened wide enough to take in the kaleidoscope of colour bursting over the hills and valleys, cold waters rushing over granite, the mist drifting with the morning light, or the harvest and hunter’s moons heaving themselves over the horizon.

If you pause to listen, you will hear a conversation with the light, and slopes that rustle with bittersweet knowing...alas this is a fleeting thing. Like a twilight that lingers, echoing with the song of a distant coyote. But perhaps beneath the howl, beneath the sorrow of leaving lies the sharpest kind of living joy.

I live in hill country, where hardwood slopes erupt into a stained glass mosaic for a few short weeks. The sun bends low in the scarcity of these days, peering up the skirts of the maples approving them with inner light. And, then one day, as if they cannot sustain this glory for long, the brilliance tarnishes into a tawny blush as they drop their skirts, crinolines crinkling and gathering in the shadows at their feet.

It is a stunning land, come October...a land that teaches us of the ephemeral, and the everlasting, rhythm of nature’s seasons. I have basked in 52 autumns here and a part of me that sleeps all year, comes alive with the damp chill rising, with the applause of the birch and the tremulous flicker of the wheaten aspen, the ripples of marsh grass, tamped and swirled as a yellow dog’s mane.

I welcome this time of gathering...of geese and ducks, of mushrooms and winter’s wood, of community suppers and pumpkins, of warm soups and apples, of seeds and nuts and dusk, even as I bemoan its passing. A time of celebrating the golden wishes that came to rest and the approaching quiet that blankets it all.

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Isa. 55:12

Love beyond words

Deborah Carr — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:33:56 +0000

“Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing--sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death--can take that love away.”

~Henri Nouwen

I am feeling particularly loved today. And so, particularly joyful. One of the most cherished gifts I have received was when my dearest girlfriend looked me in the eye and said, "I will always love you. No matter what. There is nothing you can ever do or say that will diminish this love. Nothing." What freedom she unleashed in our friendship with those words. With them, she gave me permission to be myself always with her, no pretense, no holding back. Twenty-four years ago today, my heart-mate and I promised each other essentially the same thing in front of a sanctuary of witnesses:

"Today I give you my heart, as you have given me yours. I will love you and cherish you in the future, as I have done in the past. I will rejoice with you when you are happy; I will comfort you when you are sad. I will share my thoughts openly and honestly with you. I will always respect and honour who you are."

How could I know on that day, as I whispered these forever words, of the many moments of joy and the sorrow and the stretching and growing and deepening that would come with them? Back then, I was anxious to please, needy for reassurance. That striving is gone now, no longer necessary.We now move comfortably...with and around each other. I need no sound to know he is in the house. I need no touch to know he stands alongside me. We've moved past the need to hear the words and reached the place where the love resides in the tiny gestures; the quiet hollows; the absences, as much as the presences. We have laughed and cried, and laughed until we cried. We have traveled, climbed mountains, shimmied down gullies run long distances and danced in the rain. We have wallpapered, cleared brush, raised a dog, built a home from scratch, and squared off over how to create a garden waterfall. We have picked up after each other, cooked for each other and scrubbed each other's back. We've lost friends and buried loved ones. We've suffered and celebrated together. He has quietly loved me through my nasty turmoils, my selfish outbursts, my dismal failures and my childish tantrums. He has honoured my requests, even when he didn't understand them. I love that he is a wise and fine and honourable man. I love his honesty, his independence, his loyalty, his thoughtful nature, his generosity with friends and strangers alike, his humour, his stubborness, his brilliance with making things work, his bow-legged swagger, the endearing part between his teeth. He sees and feels me, even when we are apart. He knows exactly when I most need his tenderness or his strength...as well as he the times when I need my space. He has held me and lifted me from my knees, calmed my fears, defended me, rescued me, taught me, and pushed me out the door when I need to stand on my own. He has been my best friend, my comforter, my confidante, my protector, my provider, my teacher. And so today, for all that he has helped me to become, I love him beyond words.

To my Friend

"I love you not only for what you are, when for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish and frivolous and weak things that you can't help dimly seeing there, and or drawing into the light all the beautiful and radiant belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find....You have done it without a touch, without a word, without a sign.

You have done it first by being yourself."

~ Anonymous

Let me tell you something about passion

Deborah Carr — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:18:09 +0000

Haiti is still very much on my mind. It drifts in and out at the oddest times, as if looking for its proper place to settle in the landscape of my life. Memories tend to do this...they wiggle into some crack, sandwiched between this and that, making themselves at home until, obscured by the vibrant new experiences that each day brings, they blend into the background. Then something - a word, a song, a smell, a touch - lifts them like the nondescript shrub that suddenly bursts forth with bloom and fragrance and meaning. I was in my garden lugging mulch in the heat, watering and cutting back parched plants, sweat stinging my eyes, weary, grunting and complaining a bit to myself, when suddenly Josette Chery's face floated across my mind.

Here are the words she penned in a writing workshop in Mombin Crochu....

I work in a field. I reflect on the life of women who pass through misery in order to live. Women who work under the hot sun to live. Who work Hauling rocks. Hauling sand. Hauling water. So that other people can build a house. Washing people's clothes, Working in other women's houses, where they are cursed at, In order to send their children to school.

This is truly a misery for women.

I still see her standing determined in her prim black mourning suit; tiny, strong and sure against the bright lime walls of the community center where we had gathered. I feel, again, the sheer force of the words she unleashed with raw passion -- not the kind of giddy enthusiasm that we employ here in North America to define our purposefulness, or to spur ourselves and others on to some great and essentially fleeting thing...

...but the pained, gritty, gut passion that is birthed in suffering. Passion that demands response. Josette Chery, in that lime green room in the mountains of Haiti, redefined the word for me. She exposed the superficiality of my own self-indulgence. I thought of passion as an ingredient of a purposeful life. That it was about infusing our days with meaningful activity for the sake of fulfillment. She made me question the motivations and worthiness of my own pursuits. Indeed, how many times had I spoken to groups about living life with passion? I suddenly realized I had no idea what that meant. In his essay on Passion, Henri Nouwen reminds us that this was the word used to describe Christ being 'handed over' in Gethsemane and it meant giving control over to others, then of suffering and waiting. He writes, "Passion is a kind of waiting - waiting for what other people are going to do...It is supremely a waiting love, a love that does not seek control." "It is the agony of a God who depends on us to decide how to live out his divine presence amongst us." Oh, what a patient God he must be...waiting for such a thing. Josette Clery, too, has patience as she cries for the women she has lost and the women she works alongside - women who give birth in the dirt of the fields and sacrifice all for their families. Patience, as she waits for deliverance from the suffering. Meanwhile, I muddle through my own feeble discomforts, trying to listen and hear and understand how I might live this one blessed life I've been given with an inner fire for something that really matters.

Write in Community

Deborah Carr — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 10:00:53 +0000

Want to Write? Need Inspiration? Join a weekly creative writing group! Maybe you want to write, but are not sure how to start. Or perhaps you’ve been writing, but want to deepen the experience and explore new techniques. Join a casual weekly writing group in Albert County and experience the inspiration of writing in community with others. We are meeting on Tuesdays, from 6:00-8:00 PM at the W. H. Steeves House Museum, 40 Mill Street, Hillsborough, NB. Newcomers welcome. Cost: $10/session. Bring a pen/paper. Email info@natureofwords.com for additional information.

On leaving

Deborah Carr — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 13:18:18 +0000

A number of people in my life are experiencing profound life-changes. A few have lost people they love; some without warning, while others bear witness to the slow agonizing process of letting go. Some have left places -- and pieces of their heart -- behind. Still others have lost jobs or ended relationships or felt family units scatter. Some have watched plans or dreams or health disintegrate. A few have been tossed in the eye of the storm. All involve loss of control. Letting go of the familiar and safe -- our solid, known ground -- and leaping a chasm, hoping to find something to cling to on the other side. Then scrambling for a new grip. A new acceptance and shape...a way of standing alone or being in the company of others. None of it is easy. Months ago, when I was leaping this chasm myself, a friend who knows something about finding peace in the leaving sent me this poem inspired by the gentle teaching of a hummingbird. I'd like to share her graceful words with you. In particular, they are for all those who are navigating the leaving...in one way or another.

I like to watch leaving leave with gladness as it so often does

on the slender-sloped back of the broadtail,

glistening with suddenly at the edge of goodbye.

There aren’t many things here we can hold on to because the truth of it is everything was made for leaving. But...

we can close our eyes like a net around what we love and we can remember.

The Shorebirds of Mary’s Point

Deborah Carr — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:24:33 +0000

Excerpt from Sanctuary: The Story of Naturalist Mary Majka by Deborah Carr The tide is on its ebb flow. At water’s edge, a woman lies on her back, arms outstretched, palms skyward, feet pointed to the sea. Mud pillows her head and shoulders as the water swirls around her, lifting strands of her hair, tickling the shadowed crannies of her ears. Sunlight warms her tanned and lined face, gravity smoothing its creases. Her body wavers with the rhythm of the tide, arms and legs briefly buoyant. Suspended between the elements, she is a creature of both, carrying the solidity of land and the fluidity of sea. She is in and of the world, in communion with the bay, imagining cones of light penetrating her skin, reflecting as rays filter through water. She feels the familiar cadence of the tide as if it had been there all along, rocking in her soul. From birth, she’d always found comfort in water. She has been shaped by many places, but she belongs here at Mary's Point. There are those who assume the point was named after her, and this pleases her, but the scythe-shaped hook of land jutting into the Bay of Fundy was named for a different Mary: an Acadian Mi’kmaq outcast who bridged cultures and danced to her own music. A woman who, long ago, found sanctuary at Mary's Point and then death on the Fundy tides.

As the tide pulls back from the shore, the woman is left behind, like a piece of driftwood. The breeze cools her skin, drying the warm, briny water to a fine residue. She lies motionless, eyes closed, giving herself to sensation and sound. Presently, her hearing sharpens, perceiving murmurs of life. Exposed mud crackles as millions of minute mud shrimp the size of a fingernail clipping emerge from flooded burrows to feed on algae left behind by the retreating tide. She feels the subtle movement of their activity beneath her resting fingertips. She lies quiet . . . waiting, anticipating. Within moments, sound rolls over her like a wave and she is surrounded.

Tens of thousands of migratory sandpipers and plovers flood the glistening flats, long beaks bobbing up and down, collecting the tiny shrimp. The large flocks had been resting on the sand and pebbled beach throughout high tide, waiting. Their gentle peeps and the patter of so many tri-pronged feet slapping the silt swells to a crescendo. She slowly turns her face sideways, opening her eyes to watch. Everything in the world suddenly funnels down into the perfection and intensity of this moment. There is only the woman, the mud, the tide; the tiny shrimp beneath her fingertips, the sandpipers close enough to touch. Tears form at the outer corners of her eyes and overflow, rolling past her ears, down the curve of her neck, to drop onto the mud, mingling with the salty puddles left behind by the tide.

It's the shorebird migration on the Bay of Fundy. Come watch.

You can’t change your feet

Deborah Carr — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 17:18:07 +0000

When I was little, I loved to balance on the hump in the back of the car (before seat belt laws and child-seats), lean over the seat between my parents, and biff out songs at the top of my skinny voice, imagining myself on the radio someday. Unfortunately, my pitch was as wobbly as a dug-out on the open sea. But I didn't know that. So I kept singing. I joined the choir in church. I even sang with a trio (shudder). I can only imagine my parents, cringing and enduring the sympathetic, indulgent smiles sliding across the pews as blithely, I warbled on. I was 12 when I realized my dreams of stardom would be an elusive thing and regretfully donned shin-high white plastic boots to become a go-go dancer for the neighbourhood garage band (cardboard gee-tars, box drums, sandpaper blocks and a cowbell). I'm not sure I did any better with the dance thing. Later I stumbled through a few dance lessons, before my clumsy feet mortified me into quitting. A friend of mine is a professional ballet instructor and she tells me that there are many talented ballerinas; dancers who give themselves entirely to this disciplined life, but if they do not have the right feet and body type, they will never quite make it to the top. You can't change your feet, no matter how hard you try. (Believe me, if I could have, I would have. My feet and I have not enjoyed a loving relationship. They were infamous in high school. Ask my friends.) I see so many people in single-minded pursuit of a dream; and some of them always battling some obstacle or roadblock. Sometimes I watch other elements of their life dwindle away because of their commitment to This Dream. It causes me to think about the nature of the dreams we carry with us. I've never been a really big dreamer, but have had many small dreams through my life...skills or talents or achievements or material things I longed for with all of my heart, but that no amount of wishing or learning or working or manipulating would bring to reality. Perhaps I gave up too easily, but often these pursuits were heartbreaking, discouraging, demoralizing, and I carried those failures forward with me. I wonder if dreams are meant to be so heavy.

"The passionate pursuit of dreams sets your soul soaring; expectations that measure the dream's success tie stones around your soul." Sarah Ban Breathnach

I'm not saying that dreams are not worth fighting for -- certainly the purpose of a dream is to pull us beyond our boundaries -- but maybe it's worth examining why This Dream is so damn important. I think sometimes you have to pick that old heavy rock of a Dream up, turn it over and look beneath to see what is really there. Is it money, recognition, status, power, ambition, security, envy? Or is it someone else's Dream? Maybe it's not even your own feet that want to dance. Or your voice that wants to sing. Maybe you just want to be seen or heard. Maybe - just maybe - it's the shape of the Dream that is all wrong. I was sitting on the sofa one evening, watching one of those musical performances that brings an ache to every cell in your body. My old feelings of singing-envy rose to the surface. "Why couldn't I have a voice like that?' I whispered as the soloist finished, tears brimming my eyes. My husband turned to me and, in one of those inspired moments when he found exactly the right words, he said, "You do," he said, "but your voice is on the page." At times such as this, my love for him becomes too big for words. I think that sometimes you just have to be brutally honest with yourself and admit...This Dream - as lovely as it is - is simply not what I was made for. I think most of us have laboured for such a Dream and spent so much energy trying to achieve it, swimming against the current that is our own internal rhythm and rhyme, determined to succeed, when hidden beneath that Dream is a need no achievement or acquisition or success can ever fill. And that in this Dream's dismantling -- in its shadow -- we may find the path to an incredible destiny that has lain dormant and wasted. A destiny that we are perfectly suited for, with all our inherent and learned talents and abilities, just waiting to be realized and recognized. I cannot change my feet - or my voice - but I can choose how I use them to dream.

"It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone." ~ Eph 1:11-12 The Message

Raspberry Claflouti

Deborah Carr — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 18:58:18 +0000

Must confess, I've become quite addicted to raspberries this season. It's been the best summer for them, with so much sunshine and heat. Like Forrest Gump's shrimp pal, Bubba, I've been making raspberry spinach salad, raspberry smoothies, raspberry yogurt, raspberry vinaigrette, raspberry crisp, flambéed raspberries (with rum) over ice cream, and raspberry sour cream pie (I've made two!). And then, of course, raspberries (and blueberries from my own property) have graced my cereal.... I've even started a Rumtopf for next Christmas. But for now, I've discovered what must be the perfect boost to my day: Raspberry Claflouti. Perhaps not typically thought of as the breakfast food of champions, it does have all the key ingredients: fruit, milk, eggs. And it's a snap to make. What's not to like? Spread 3 cups of fresh berries in a quiche pan, then in a separate bowl, whisked 3 large farm fresh eggs with 3 tablespoons melted butter, some lemon zest and 1/4 cup of milk (I used plain yogurt) until well blended. Then I blended in 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup sugar and a wee pit of salt until smooth and poured over the berries. You don't even need to make crust, just butter the pan well first. Bake 350° until set (about 30 minutes). Dust with icing sugar, if desired, then enjoy. Couldn't be easier. Sweet and talented Gina over at 513eats.com (who does a far better job than me with 'food styling') sent me a recipe for a Celebratory Clafouti, which would be decadent for dessert, as it uses whipped cream instead of milk and ground almonds instead of flour. Thanks Gina. Do you have a favourite raspberry recipe?