Be Joyful and Plant Seeds

I have been following an online conference on Rewiring the Brain. Yesterday, I happened upon a session with meditation teacher, Jack Kornfield.  It was just what I needed.  A boost to my spirits and a call to be joyful even in a scary and sad world. 

Here are some of the things that Jack said.

There is greed, hatred, fear, and ignorance everywhere.  The more of each of these, the more suffering…for everybody.  And these have their opposites.  The opposite of greed is generosity and connection and care. The opposite of ignorance is wisdom and clarity.  The source of all of these is the human heart.

He quoted the Buddha’s instructions.   Live in joy, in love even among those who hate.  Live in joy and health even among the afflicted. Live in health. Live in joy and peace even among the troubled. Be free of fears and confusion.

Jack read excerpts from a poem by Jack Gilbert, that I include here.

A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere.

If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving 
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.


But we enjoy our lives because that's what the Gods want.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine.

The Bengal tiger would not
 be fashioned so miraculously well.

The poor women
 at the fountain are laughing together between
 the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
 in the village is very sick.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
 we lessen the importance of their deprivation.


We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
 but not delight.

We must have
 the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
 furnace of this world.

To make injustice the only
 measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.


If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
 we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.


We must admit there will be music despite everything.

Jack continued…To bring the beauty of your spirit into this world and to use it to touch and care for others. This is part of the Boddhisatva path.

Jack told the story of his friendship with the Dagaaba people in West Afrcia. Jack explained that they believe that every child is born with a certain cargo. And the task of the child during their life is to deliver their cargo. Cargo refers to the gifts that they are born with and delivering them refers to offering these gifts to the world.

Jack went on… We are all born with certain gifts. One of the ways to be satisfied in life is to reach out your hand and mend the places that you can touch. You can plant a garden, raise a beautiful child, travel and help people, build a sustainable business. Our meaning and happiness comes from delivering our gifts. This is the West African version of the Bodhisattva path.

Jack said…We plant the seeds. The results are often not given to us. We get to plant the seeds…Seeds of love, connection, care. Eventually they bear fruit.  That is the way seeds work.

These words and Jack’s stories buoyed my flagging spirits and inspired me. I listened to him several times.

On Jack’s website I found a page on the Bodhisattva Path. On that page he includes a stanza from a poem entitled “School Prayer,” by poet Diane Ackerman. Jack writes that she has created a modern version of the bodhisattva vow with these lines in her poem

I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

I conclude with the invitation on Jacls’s website for each of us to compose our own Bodhisattva vow.

You can create your own Bodhisattva vow. Sit quietly for a time. Let your body and mind be at rest. Then, ask your heart, “If I were to make a vow, to set the compass of my heart, to give voice to my highest intention, what would it be?” And then listen for an answer. It need not be a poem. It might be as simple as “I vow to protect those in danger” or “I vow to be kind.” Your heart will instruct you.

As you quiet your mind and steady your heart, you can set your deepest intention. It will help you be strong for the long haul. Then get up and joyfully plant seeds for a more compassionate future. Educate yourself about social justice. Stand up against racism and hatred. Give voice, time, energy, care to alleviate suffering and tend our collective well being. Your freedom empowers you to contribute to the world. And your love will show you the way to do so.

Wage Peace

View from our house

These days in Vermont are beautiful. Snow covers the hills and many days are filled with bright sun and blue skies.  We are grateful to live in such a place with space and birds and snowy woods to walk and ski in.

I have been singing with the Middlebury Community Chorus and painting every week with the Middlebury Studio School and another group of four friends.  These activities give me joy and focus and ultimately, hopefully, bring joy to others.

It is a tough world out there right now, heartbreaking, uncertain, and frightening. At least it feels that way for many of us.

The beautiful natural world, the painting, and the singing help me live in the present and put beauty and presence first.  I have been thinking a lot about Kate Di Camillo and how she so often writes about her aspiration to cultivate children’s capacious hearts with the characters in her books. I wrote about Kate and her books here. Capacious means ample, able to hold a lot of things. A capacious heart is a big-hearted, roomy heart that can hold sadness and joy, grief and happiness, uncertainty and hope…all together.   

I do believe that is what we are called to do right now. 

Woods at Shelburne Farms

I have been returning to two readings…one, a poem by Judyth Hill that a friend sent me after 9/11.  The other is called a Dedication of Merit, also sent to us by a friend, often recited at the end of a Buddhist meditation.  The poem recalls the Buddhist practice called Tonglen where you breath in what is bleak, and sad, and horrible, and breath out peace, warmth, security, and love.

The Dedication of Merit is one type of Metta or Loving Kindness practice, wishing for and sending out goodwill and kindness to all creatures. Both the poem and the dedication help us. We hope that they might also help you.

Sending love and light to all of you,

Louise and Ashley

Wage peace with your breath

By Judyth Hill

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.

Dedication of Merit:

From One Earth Sangha

May all places be held sacred.

May all beings be cherished.

May all injustices of oppression and devaluation

     be fully righted, remedied, and healed.

May all who are captured by hatred be freed to the love that is our birthright.

May all who are bound by fear discover the safety of understanding.

May all who are weighed down by grief be given over to the joy of being.

May all who are lost in delusion find a home on the path of wisdom.

May all wounds to forests, rivers, deserts, oceans,

     all wounds to Mother Earth be lovingly restored to bountiful health.

May all beings everywhere delight in whale song, birdsong, and blue sky.

May all beings abide in peace and well-being, awaken, and be free.

Red-bellied Woodpecker, watercolor and dip pen, by Louise

Christmas Eve, 2024

Our little Christmas tree, treetop angel from my childhood

It seems that I have been traveling for weeks.  I visited both my sisters, one in Minneapolis and the other in Pennsylvania.  My sister in Minneapolis broke both hips, one after the other, and is now slowly recovering at home.  She is seventeen years older than I am. 

One of my favorite memories of the week was putting out her Christmas decorations with her.

Christmas angels at my sister Sally’s

I remember some of them because they are from the house that we grew up in in St. Louis, Missouri. Now, these special memories are spread far and wide, on Christmas trees in California, New Jersey, Vermont, and Massachusetts. 

I visited my grandchildren and children in Massachusetts and New Jersey and was lucky enough to make Christmas cookies with them with favoirte cookie cutters saved from my childhood and our house in St. Louis.

Christmas cookies made with grandchildren with treasured cookie cutters

Today I am listening to Kings College Choir singing carols, something I did as a young girl every Christmas alongside my mother.  The music, the shining angels on the tree, and my dear family, give me joy, comfort, and hope.  I am filled to overflowing with gratitude for my family…both my much older sisters, my brother who died in April of 2024, and my much younger grandchildren, and our sons and their partners. 

Last Sunday, at the community Messiah sing at The Congregational Church of Middlebury, I sang alto next to a stellar singer and friend. Three hundred people raising their voices and instruments singing,

And He, (or LOVE) shall reign forever and ever and ever.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

This is what I have faith in.  I have faith in love.  Forever and ever and ever. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Snow covers the landscape and it is a white, deep snow Christmas in Vermont.  I watch the cardinals and chickadees at the feeder at our backyard crab apple tree.  A friend sitting on the other side of me at the Messiah sing whispered…”We are so lucky.  We are so lucky.”

Ashley and I send all our best and warmest wishes to each of you this holiday season, and for the year to come.  May Love lead us and reign forever and ever and ever. Hallelujah.

Newest granddaughter, Liv Louise

Praise the Light of Late November

As we approach Thanksgiving, we are filled with gratitude for our lives full of love and family and friends and for the beauty of the earth.  We are especially thankful for the partnership and trust of the teachers and administrators in schools where we have worked, and for all of you out there who take the time to read our posts.  

We have been taking regular long walks around our town appreciating the various views and small touches that people leave to brighten the days of passersby.

We have watched this little free library grow from one stand to three.  Now one includes a collection of food goods to leave or to take. 

This house on a small alley that connects two parts of town always has something of beauty to behold as a gift for those who notice. 

In Community Chorus we are singing a piece entitled The Light of Late November.  It is a poem by Barbara Crooker composed as a choral piece in four parts by Dale Trumbore.  I include it here for your contemplation. 

Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there’s left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn’t cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it’s all we have, and it’s never enough.

We wish you all a heartwarming and blessed Thanksgiving,

Louise and Ashley

Color and Light

Bike Ride in Weybridge, VT, October, 2024

We recently returned to Vermont after two weeks away.  I was worried that we might miss the color, but as it turned out, we didn’t.  This has been a glorious, splendid, explosion of color kind of week.  I have felt uplifted, amazed, transported, and grateful to be surrounded by glowing light and an array of crimsons, oranges, yellows, golds, yellow greens and dark greens all around us. I can’t get myself to go inside. We have biked, hiked, worked outside in our garden, walked, gazed, cooked out at the fire pit and savored every moment.  From dawn to sunset of these blue sky, mild days we have forest bathed in the glory of fall in Vermont.

Hiking Philo Ridge, Charlotte, Vermont, October, 2024

There is an exhibit at the Middlebury College Museum of Art now curated by Katy Smith Abbott entitled An Invitation to Awe.  The Middlebury College Campus, the campus newspaper, describes the exhibit this way…

The exhibit showcases the various ways in which awe is experienced in people’s lives through the categorization and organization of the selected pieces. The awe of the natural world, awe through acts of humanity, and awe that is sacred or religious. This is how “An Invitation to Awe” invites its audience to consider the exhibit’s core questions of “where and how is awe most prolifically experienced?” Where and how do we find awe in our lives? What do we consider to be moments of awe?

Our neighbor’s front yard maple tree

Children naturally approach the world with curiosity, wonder, and awe. If we are lucky, we can accompany them, nurture those qualities in them and in us, and learn from them.

Granddaughter Delilah, age four, creating a nature journal at her request 

I have been filled with awe with every breath for a full week. I am full of gratitude to live in this place on earth and to return here.

When I am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

View from Mount Philo, October, 2024