Back to School--Year Three

Whew.....

I will admit it; I've been going through a kind of rough patch.

For a couple of reasons....or maybe three.

One is that it has been what I think is a weird summer for tourists to the UP.  Wet summer, a few warm days but not many.  Lots of the familiar gloomy days. Business has been slow, for me, anyway. Bob is busy enough that he is feeling a little stressed about being too busy.  Funny that I am stressed about the opposite thing.

I also get stressed about having the dogs with me every day in the shop.  We decided right away that we could not bear to leave them at home every day, especially if they had to be in their kennels, so they are our traveling buddies as we drive back and forth from Paynesville to Ontonagon every day.

The puppies...and they still are puppies at 8 and a half months...are perfect when it comes to house-training, and they really want to please us in so many ways. When people come into the shop, Atlas and Theia know to run into their kennels so as to not escape the area I have them restricted to.  Still, Atlas wants to alert me when people come in.  Some people he really seems more likely to bark at, for whatever reason....they talk too loudly, they are aggressive towards him, they smell like dogs/cats/ various livestock, they are interesting looking little children that he wants to love up.  I have had a couple of people walk out because he barks at them for a little bit before he settles down, and I think a few more people have felt the need to hurry through their shopping. Makes me stressed to lose sales.  I know eventually the dogs will be fine....they are ALMOST fine now, but the season for business is passing and I don't want to turn people off.

Anyway, yesterday was a day when I vented a lot to Bob about my stress about the above stuff. And like the perfect knight in shining armor that he is, he was ready to talk about it a lot and try to brainstorm as many ways as possible to fix the situations that are causing me stress.

And then, THIS happened: http://livingtheupdream.blogspot.com/2016/08/back-to-schoolturning-away.html.  Facebook reminded me of the blog post I had written a year ago. So I read the story again of why this time of year makes me feel stressful.

Huh.

It's like (maybe it IS) PTSD.  Late summer willies.  Right before school starts willies.  Not spending enough time in the forest willies.

Anyway, reading that post from last year helped me a lot.  Because I realize that I no longer feel like any second someone is going to expect me to attend a teachers meeting, or back-to-school open house.  I don't have to write lesson plans or put up bulletin boards.  I don't have to think about those first day jitters, when the middle school kids are just as jittery as I am, and they come into my classroom and look to me to both put them at ease and excite them about the school year to come. 180 days worth of excitement...that's a lot for any one person to need to create for a few hundreds of kids.

Like I said...whew....

In spite of the fact that I can get my head around the idea that I no longer have to worry about any of that stuff ever again, I still can feel those emotions.  Fortunately, I know some things I can do about it.  One is to look at my shop, and all the lovely stuff here. More people are coming by all the time to add their own creative items for sale here. And I have a backlog in my brain of other lovelies I want to make....seems like that well never runs dry. So I need to get busy and enjoy the wonderful sense of FLOW that I feel when I am working and creating.

 Another thing I can do is to kiss my sweet doggies and remember how much unconditional love they give me every day.   I can work harder to train them to know what I want them to do to be the perfect shop doggies.  If I think about it, they are getting better every day.  They no longer want to eat the mailman, for one. :) They just stare at him with big silent eyes when he comes in with the mail each day.

Another thing I must do more of is to kiss my sweetest husband and make sure he knows that he really does FIX things for me, and make my life so good.

And then...I can take a day off and drive deep into the forest

spirit of the forest

and pick blackberries

not blackberries

and hear some birds and get stared at by the deep brown eyes of some spotted fawns and their mamas.

 I can photograph the late summer flowers and their friendly pollinators, so that I can look at them later during the long winter that seems like it might be right around the corner.

 During those months when I am NOT teaching.

Whew....

How Can We Heal the World?

The world is breaking.  I can feel it. Small cracks becoming larger every day.  And by this, I don't mean the physical world, our planet.  I think old Earth is tough...tough enough to withstand whatever we humans throw at it, adapting, changing according to its own unknowable cycles.  If we as humans get too big for our britches and do real damage, it will be US who pay for that; Earth can and will survive us, I'm afraid.

I think the real damage that's being done is by us, to us.

Labels....I've talked about them before.  We label people. We label ourselves.  We need, so badly, to belong to something bigger than ourselves, that we seek out and become part of larger labeled groups.

I guess it's all about safety in numbers. It's difficult to just be ourselves, alone.  Because we are unique, and every individual perceives themselves as so different...not quite a perfect fit anywhere. So we clump together, label our groups,  and sometimes, unfortunately become something LESS than ourselves.

I could tell you all the labels that come to mind.  But I would end up insulting someone in some group somewhere who has decided that their group is somehow BEST, or most RIGHT of anyone else in the world, either geographically, or politically, religiously, or even in terms of something very much smaller, like in terms of economic status or even appearance.

I don't belong to any groups.  In part because I don't know of any group that really wants me as a member.  Sometimes, very briefly, that makes me a little sad. But it's okay.

Because, every day, I can see myself as part of something much bigger.  In fact, the group I belong to is so much bigger than the groups you are thinking of.

I am part of the breath and of the very fabric of this earth, and of this universe.

And so are you, for that matter. Being so is much more difficult than being part of those smaller groups.  In fact, mostly, I don't know what to do about it. I feel very small sometimes.  But I know that the smallest ripple can effect even a very big lake.

So I guess it's my responsibility to work on my ripples.

I am going to stop labeling people and try to see them as something bigger than they even know themselves to be.  One just never knows what kind of ripples they are sending out there, or even more, how they are affected by one's actions.

I want my ripples in this big universal pond to be happy ones.  Kind ones. Creative and nurturing ones.  I want something that I do to effect a change, for the better, in someone's day, and maybe. ultimately, in someone's life.  Even if it's just to create a smile, a moment of happiness, and (and this is my dream) a glimpse of what lies beyond. See, I think the absolute and utter beauty of this earth is nothing in comparison to what lies beyond.  Our perception of Earth is merely a glimpse of the diverse wonder that even those who study it all their lives can just barely begin to grasp.  So how much MORE can the next world be?  I hope to know.

I hope you can see what I mean.  Please look at the sky tonight, and tomorrow night, and all nights. Please look into the heart of a flower,

or into the eyes of one of God's creatures.

And see yourself reflected there.  You and your ripple.

Please be kind.  Your kindness is one small band-aid to this breaking world.  You know that enough of them can fix it, fix US.

I want to.





Amen.