When the River Meets the Sea - Re-Vitalizing the Voices of Teenagers and Transforming the Parent Relationship

The river flows to the sea and becomes part of something greater. Without the rivers, the sea would be diminished, thirsty, without revitalization and the ecosystems would suffer and die as a result of imbalance. As parents, we are connected by our experience of parenting with all its joy, all its mystery, and the times we are fearful and uncertain. Our children are their own beings, with souls that are being colored and carved by their experiences. We are their shepherds; we are their beacons, but they are not us and they do not belong to us. As their parents, we are charged with being witnesses of our teenagers’ journeys to becoming part of the consciousness of the world, the participants in shaping their cultures according to their vision and values. When we let go, if we can let go, we cannot predict the course. On some level we know they must determine that for themselves; to engage their imaginations, their resourcefulness and their voices. But how will they learn to use their voices if their predecessors do not teach them to speak in whatever language expresses them best whether it is through spoken language, the language of art, music, dance, writing or another of the imagination’s vehicles?

Transforming the Parent Relationship – From Knower to Witness

Witnessing is different than protecting, advising, teaching or telling. For the parent of a teenager perched on the edge of the nest ready to take the first test flight, witnessing is an act of refraining. To refrain from speaking, warning, teaching, advising or telling is to open space for the voices of our teenagers. To refrain from filling the empty space with our opinions and admonishments while they search for the right words is to trust that they will find them. Too often, we extinguish and silence voices that need a quiet host and we fail to act as curious guests in the imaginations of young minds and hearts. As M. Scott Peck wrote in his 1988 book “The Road Less Traveled, “Our job is not to prepare the path of life for our children, but to prepare our children for the path.” 

How Our Culture Affects Teens

Teenagers are weighted with cultural expectations for maturity juxtaposed against the realities of their emotional capacity. Teenagers try to match what the culture expects often at the cost of their self-esteem and inner peace. Many teens struggle with body image, sexuality, economic disadvantages, depression and learning problems, and many cannot imagine talking about these issues will provide relief or resolution. Those who cannot withstand the pressure from peers, parents, the schools and the culture often drop out of school, use substances to cope with emotional pain, join gangs or they decide suicide is the only way to end their suffering.

American boys are required by law to register for the draft when they reach the age of eighteen. When a war is going on, registering for the draft and contemplating possible death in a country thousands of miles away has the potential to be terrifying, yet our culture does not address all the implications of this requirement, selecting only to valorize voluntary military service as a means of achieving success or increasing self-esteem or guaranteeing a college education, if a soldier makes it home again. Many arrive home in pieces, their tender psyches reeling to return to the place left far behind on the threshold between childhood and adulthood.

Teenagers struggle to discern their values and expectations with those of the culture, schools, and parents in trying to create the paths they will take as adults. For teens who leave the school system or who drift after graduating high school with no clear plan for the future and few resources, the world can seem overwhelming and inhospitable. There is little time to dream, imagine and to retreat, perhaps cocooning into a chrysalis for a time to let the lessons sink in. There is only the experience of harshness, rigidity of the systems they are caught up in and our culture’s frenzied pace to know more, be more and do more. Despite the rumbling in their stomachs, their aching heads and emptied hearts, they press on keeping pace with a speeding conveyor belt with no “off” button within reach. American teenagers are a silenced population. They are given no clear role or voice during their most critical developmental years in shaping the world they will inherit. They are rarely offered a voice in decisions that will impact them as adults.

We are a nation of fearful consumers and ravenous competitors, our eyes turned outward for food that never satisfies the deepening starvation for connection with each other. Our children receive the anxiety like radio waves, and they respond to the frenzied pace with the language available to them, usually behavior such as bullying or withdrawing into the darker realms. We diagnose it rather than paying attention to what it says about the state of our culture. We identify them as the patients rather than examine ourselves and the world we have brought them into.

The Children Left Behind

According to Angela Diaz, M.D. MPD, director of the Mt. Sinai Adolescent health Center in New York, the population of teenagers between sixteen and twenty four is the most underserved in the United States in terms of health care, preventative care, mental health services and dental care.  They are legally adults at the age of eighteen, but unless they are in college, the likelihood is that they will get jobs that pay little more than minimum wage, inadequate to live on with no medical benefits. The mental health system has coined the term “transitional age youth” to describe the population of young adults who are suspended in the nether-region between being teenagers who have more access to social services and those 18 and older who are cut off from services or who cannot get into college and become stuck in survival mode of minimum wage jobs. These are just a few of the barriers that millions of teenagers who will inherit our country are up against.

Our educational system has put its resources and focus on preparing students to pass aptitude tests and less on developing imagination, creativity and the ability to navigate the complex problems of living in this competitive culture beyond high school which for many does not include college. Our children fear failure because they are not permitted to fail and then retrieve success from its fallout by accessing their own resilience.

For teens with emotional problems stemming from lack of access to stable caregiving, economic stability and medical care and who have experienced trauma as children, the legal system becomes the de facto parent. Children who break school rules or the law due to violent behavior, drug use or truancy are placed either in foster care or juvenile detention. Many cycle through these systems over and over again until they reach the age of eighteen. Without experiences of loving, caring stable homes, or parents with whom they can speak honestly, these children are released from the juvenile justice system at the age of eighteen and are expected to go out in the world and live according to the laws and expectations of a culture they are unfamiliar with. Some will make it into college or vocational programs against all odds, but most do not. These are the young adults this society fails to recognize and offer resources for healthcare, social support and life skills education in a supportive, safe and nurturing environment.

Talking about Suicide

            Although none of this information may apply to you and your teenager (s), the possibilities for any teenager to fall through the cracks and land in the juvenile justice system, on the streets, or drug involved is everyone’s concern. It is critically important for adults and teenagers to speak openly about the fears and challenges of growing up and out of the family and into the world. Statistically, male teenagers complete suicide more than female teenagers and the reasons for suicide remain the same as they were ten years ago. Boys often feel they must have certainty about their life path by the time they reach the age of 18; the benchmark we have set determining their ability to be independent.   And although there has been progress in cultivating openness about fear of growing up, boys are typically not as willing as girls to express such feelings. The CDC cites depression as the main cause for suicide and that suicide is the third leading cause of death for teenagers between the ages of 12 and 19 after accidental deaths and homicide. Among the leading causes for teen depression is discord, violence or abuse in the family, inability to feel a connection with parents or caregivers, pressure and anxiety associated with school, and isolation or being ostracized by peers. Statistics evaluating depression among teens show that if there is just one person, not necessarily a parent, but a coach or a teacher or an extended family member, with whom they can speak openly and feel safe and who can offer them support and unconditional love and care, it often makes the difference between rebounding from depression or not.

The Transparent Parent

The river is allowed to make its way to the sea meandering over the land, carving its way around obstacles, bumping over stones and crashing in great waterfalls to the valleys below. To watch it and witness its journey is a miracle, a marvel for all the senses to experience. To stop it by force is to starve it from creating its own path severing it from its ultimate destination which is to join with its greater ancestor, the sea. Learning to let go of old ways of being “the parent,” the knower or the authority is perhaps our greatest and most terrifying challenge. Transforming the parent relationship means learning to hold space for the most frightening conversations including depression and thoughts of suicide. Trusting ourselves in the action of refraining requires relentless faith that simply listening and holding space goes a long way, perhaps even preventing the desperation and depression from eating our children alive. An undefended and open heart is always an invitation even for the most reluctant visitor. The changing role of parenting as our children open their wings is an opportunity to show our humanity and fallibility and to choose humility rather than hubris, to hold sacred the role of being the one they want to come to first when life seems overwhelming.

 

The Everest Challenge

Lessons from the Tarahumara

Jon and I listened to the audiobook version of Born to Run on the way to Bishop. I've wanted to read it for several years, but always told myself I should be working on my dissertation instead. If you haven't read it, I recommend it not just because of the storytelling; it has wisdom we can all use and apply especially about love and compassion in sport. Joe Vigil, the renowned coach for Adams State College studied the native Mexican Tarahumara tribesmen running the Leadville 100 and wanted to discover how they could run for miles and miles in their sandals and flowing white capes with smiles on their faces the entire time. They flowed over the roughest terrain as if their feet were winged creatures. Dr. Vigil concluded that the "secret" was simply love of running. The understanding they have of their connection with Gaia (earth) and Nature as the ultimate source. There was nothing cavalier, ego-centric or competitive about running and racing; just the love for being connected and at one with each footfall, each stone and creek, each nuance of the earth beneath them.

 

 

I thought about the 38 years that I have been running and more recently cycling. I recall my mother-in-law condemning my daily ritual as being selfish and silly, a waste of precious time when I could be working. What she didn't understand was how learning to run saved me from self-destructing. It was the soul-medicine I needed after the death of my mother just after my 16th birthday and soon thereafter, my father's choice to move away with his girlfriend without me. I was alone, without any firm sense of identity, an amputated daughter, a wandering orphan looking for a place to be or soemone to show me the way. My boyfriend at the time took me for my first run straight up a mountain trail. Upon reaching the end, I collapsed in tears and cried rivers and rivers of tears never cried before. Tears I didn't know I kept dammed up behind a safe wall of toughness and Amazonian resolve to survive without needing anyone. And when the tears finally slowed to a few sniffles, I realized I felt one with the ground I wept on. I wanted more because I love the feeling of my breath and the rhythm of my feet touching the ground. I loved engaging all of my senses in my surroundings, the sounds, the smells and the taste of water from the streams. I began racing because a coach at Sierra College told me I ought to. But I hated it at first. It made me anxious and nervous and I could never sleep the night before. I grew to love it when I learned to love myself and to transform the mind's chatter about how much better I should be than so and so, or how much better, thinner, more muscular so and so is than me into more loving self-talk. But my mind has its way of being a persistent and annoying pest when it wants to be so it is a daily practice of gently telling it to be quiet so that I can hear the voice of compassion instead.

 

The outdoors has been medicine, Mother, Father and serenity, a time of silence and solitude away from the noise of the world. I run and cycle alone because I love the solitude more and more as I age. Although I enjoy my friends and the occasional gathering, I find myself more introverted than I used to be. I often imagine myself a Crone in the woods, rocking on the front porch with her Crone husband and feeding the animals as they wander into the clearing in front of our hut.

 

So what does all this have to do with the Everest Challenge, a two-day 203 mile bike race with 29,029 feet of climbing in the eastern Sierra Nevada?

 

If anything will test one's ability to go deep within and draw from the heart's capacity to divine a way through the difficult hours, this event will do just that. The surroundings are magnificent, climbing through the primal canyons of Mother Earth with the aspen leaves turning on the flanks of the towering peaks. All but one of the roads are quiet and narrow with minimal traffic so the only sounds are my breath and the water in the creeks. The smells of desert mingle with the alpine flora and the hot breath of desert wind shifts to cooling breezes from the peaks as I climb higher and higher.

Day One:

I am used to riding alone so the tightly bunched Peloton is a bit unnerving. Neutral start until we turned up to South Lake after which we could race. But the pace was sooooo slow! I was going nuts being caught in this tight pack of women who didn’t seem interested in going fast. I told myself to be patient and just wait but really, it went against my desire to break free. So I went into the lead when I couldn’t stand it anymore and of course, the group sat on my wheel until I decided to move left and see if someone else would take it. Anyway, we went at the speed of drool until we were only about 6 miles from the turnaround. So with about 4 miles to go, Kathryn Donovan decides she’s finally going to go faster (she won last year by about an hour). I knew that pace was too hard so I kept my own pace and was glad to be out of the craziness of a pack. I then found that I could attune to the sounds around me instead of being vigilant about watching other people's bike wheels to avoid a crash. But even if I'd stayed with the pack, I get left behind on downhills because the heavier women can really power and on the flats, they get me every time. So there I was, flying down 168 at 47 MPH but still getting way behind!

Descending back down to the desert and into the rising heat, the second climb through Pine Creek Canyon was a leveler. Several women who had gone out hard with the leaders were suffering in the 90+ degree heat and no wind in the canyon. And the beginning of the final climb, a 22 mile ascent from 5,000 feet to 10,000 feet would be hotter at the beginning and very challenging at the end. I really gained a lot of what I’d lost going so slow going up the final climb from Paradise up to Tom’s Place and then up Rock Creek Lake Road to Mosquito Flat. But the early part of that climb was hot! And I felt myself feeling discouraged, telling myself it was perfectly okay to just stay within myself and realize that this was just a low point where I needed to be gentle with myself and just keep going. Don't force the uphills, just turn the pedals over and be patient. I heard the voice of my heart telling my brain to shut up. My heart said, "You're fine. Just trust yourself and rememeber, this is impermanent, the heat will not last forever." My brain said, "See? I told you this was a dumb idea. Who do you think you are you silly old crone! You should have gone with them when they broke away. Now look at you...drooling along like a snail." Although I'd gone painfully slow at the start thinking I should stay with the pack, I was still within three minutes of last year's time. When I finished, I was feeling woozy and nauseous and a little uncertain of what to do with myself. Should I obey the impulse to lie down right in the middle of the road? Throw up? Keep walking around in circles? Jon was working on a woman who had crashed in the Pine Creek Canyon climb but somehow pulled herself out of the sagebrush, banged up and bleeding, to finish the remaining 30 miles of grueling climbing.

After suffering through the climb out of the desert on Old Sherwin Grade, I felt stronger especially knowing the Jon left an ice cold Pepsi in a cooler at Tom’s Place for me and that was the fuel I needed. Before each endurance event, I drink about 20 ounces of Chia seeds soaked in water (another tarahumara tool). I learned this trick from my children's father who presented me with my first jug of Chia seeds back in 1978 when we were first going out. It had the consistency of snot and looked just as the author of Born to Run described it: "Like a science experiment from a swamp." But those little seeds pack a lot of nutrition and they hold about ten times there size in water so amazing hydration. So I finished strong, powering up the last 10 miles feeling fresh and powerful. So my heart was right...again...It was cooler and my nausea was impermanent!
I'd ridden back down to Bishop (another 33 miles or so) back to our motel while Jon provided massage for people up at Mosquito Flat. I went swimming and sat in a bathtub full of ice water, I chatted with three girls, age 17, 15 and 13 all of whom were riders in the race. Their father was the chief coach and support along with their mother and their 11 year-old sister who would enter her first Everest Challenge when she turned 13. What a delightful experience to see these young girls enjoying a potentially life-changing event such as this.

That night, I ate huge amounts of Mexican food from a little hole in the wall in Bishop where the Mama makes all the food herself.  And Jon gave me a massage.

 

Day Two:

Waking up was so painful. Never before have I longed to just go back to sleep so much. Oh wait...I felt this way last year on Day Two of this race. I told myself I would not be riding in the pack today. I would just do my own thing. They would mow me down but that would be fine with me. I would get mowed down either way. I'd just hoped some would come back to me later on. The first climb takes you from about 3,900 feet up to 7,800 in about nine miles. I didn't really wake up until I was about half way through this climb and then, thankfully, the Chia and coffee kicked in. I began to pass a few women who had gone out hard. I have made it a practice to say a little prayer for us all, wishing us all a safe ride with no mishaps. No ill will. The second climb, Waucoba Canyon was longer than it was last year by about four miles. So much for monitoring my time in order to try to make up any time lost from yesterday on this day. Good. Now I can go back to focusing on what's happening in my body instead of what's happening on my bike computer. Last climb, 22 miles from 3,900 up to 10,100 feet at Bristlecone Forest. Hot hot HOT in the first six miles! I was moving slow and once again focusing on impermanence. I can make it through another half hour, I told myself. It's fine to just turn the pedals over and not force it. No sense in dying out here in the desert and being eaten by vultures. At the aid station at 6,000 feet, I asked them to dump ice down my jersey to cool my core temperature. That did it. The wind changed from hot breath to cool alpine breeze and I felt fantastic. The final 15km is a showcase of the entire eastern Sierra showcased against a flawless blue sky. Although I kept my eyes focused on what was right in front of me most of the time, I could glance up and feel like I was flying above the earth. The pain of the 20% climbs seemed more a product of my judgement about them more than anything else. "Omigosh, I am going SO slow! I might as well be going backwards!" said my mind. "Well duh...it's 20%. And you've gone what...195 miles so far in the past 36 hours? Of COURSE you're going to be just getting the pedals around and hoping you don't tip over! Relax!It's all good!" said my heart.

 

I pushed hard over the last 5km, going deeply within myself and focusing only on the rhythm of my breath. I was thankful for being able to finish and even more thankful for all those volunteers at each aid station who took an entire weekend to stand in the heat and make sure we were all watered and fed. This event is always an experience in faith, a lesson in gratitude and a return to the essence of why we find ways of testing the reaches of our phsyical and emotional endurance. For me, there are no greater lessons available than what I learn by shutting everything out and going within.

 

TAKING ANTI-DEPRESSANTS-And Other Precious Rituals - by Kimball C. Pier

The March winds brought rain and then the quiet came. Snow began to fall, each flake heavy with moisture. They fell like tired doves onto the tree branches. The snow, welcome snow will feed the lakes and rivers. The house is so quiet and I can’t hear the trains on the distant tracks anymore. The fire crackles and I worry about the man I saw walking in the snow with his head down. My feet are warm in my fleece socks. His are not.

Then I think about how heavy the snow is and whether we will be able to get out tomorrow because I long to ski out on the trails where I hear nothing but my own breath. The man found shelter from the rain in the medical building but he smelled so foul that he was asked to leave. I wonder whether it would be possible to ski with the snow so deep. I am truly shallow.

In the morning, we went outside to survey the driveway. We discovered one of our Aspen trees had fallen during the night and it lay across the driveway with its branches stiff with ice and snow. I wanted to lift it up and make it not dead. But its roots had pulled out of the ground and when we tried to lift the tree, it wouldn’t move. We had to amputate all of its branches. The Skilsaw screamed through each branch and I dragged them one by one to the side of the house by the neighbor’s SeaDoo which I hated. We’d have to haul the pile of limbs away at some point. They all had buds on them because it seemed like it might be springtime there for a while. There was nothing left except the trunk now and we had to cut it into pieces so we could move it. I went in the garage and found a pushbroom and I began to knock all the snow and ice off of the other trees in our yard. They were weeping under the weight of it all. I wanted to save them from death and with each swing of my pushbroom, more ice and snow feel and the tree’s began to reach their arms upward again. A chunk of ice landed smack in my eye and scratched my cornea. I wondered if I would be able to ski with a scratched cornea. I am truly silly.

Then we discovered that a trip of Aspens had fallen by the mailbox, their bodies lying halfway across the road. Jon thought perhaps we could lift them up and brace them with boulders so they could live. I briefly thought about how much work that would be and by the time we were finished, there would be no parking left up at the Nordic ski center. Then I felt ashamed and began to help Jon lift the trees. They were too heavy for us even after we knocked the branches clear of snow and ice. And we surrendered. They had to be cut up and moved back with the other cut up tree. I felt like a murderess. If I were really devoted to saving the trees, I would have gotten the neighbors to help us but I really wanted to go skiing. I thought we could just go and buy new trees which is so typically American. Just throw it away and buy a new one. The other day, I saw the ragged, smelly man looking in the trash for cans and other things he could use or sell.

At dinner, Jon said he felt “off” all day and wasn’t quite sure what was wrong with him. I felt a little agitated too but I thought it might have been my usual Saturday mood. I was always anxious to go out and play and my mind raced like a Border Collie who had been cooped up for too long. He noticed that the snow was falling again and I suddenly felt very anxious about the trees. He’d spent about hour going around the yard knocking snow and ice off the trees as high as he could reach. “I got most of them except for the pine tree. He’s still pretty upset,” he said when he came inside with snow caked on his eyebrows. We looked at each other. “It’s the trees,” we said in unison. That’s why we felt off all day. “We didn’t try that hard to save them, did we?” he said. “No.” I said. They were so beautiful in the summer. They gave so much; the least we could have done was try to resuscitate them. Aspens grow prolifically even in conditions they don’t normally grow in such as by our mailbox where the ground is hard and dry. I wish I didn’t have such tender feelings about trees and rivers and animals and the oceans; I wish I didn’t care about everyone being well fed and housed because it hurts too much. I find joy in so many things, but I feel so much pain about so many things. Meditation, yoga, coffee, wine, anti-depressants, skiing, my bicycle rides…all precious little rituals to aid my journey through this life.

When did I recognize that the ocean breathes? When did I know and hold in my tender heart that raging forest fires are a consequence of human behavior? What moment was it that I reconciled what I knew deep within me and what I heard from my teachers that it was truth that granite rocks held soul and for certain that mountains speak? When did I know the frantic feeling inside me was Gaia’s grief? Such a painful moment of acute awareness. I could not contain it very well and felt I needed to cry or scream or laugh or vomit. What to do with this knowing that erupted into awareness?

An Urgent Prayer from Yahweh and Gaia (Mother Earth)

Dear humans-
Please repeat after me:
“Wisdom”…(“Yud” in Hebrew )
Now breathe out...until you are empty…Haaayy (“Behold” in Hebrew)
And breathe in….”Vav” (“The Great Connector” in Hebrew)
And breathe out..”Haaayy”
Breathe in…I am (Yud)
Dry. So dry…now breathe out Haaay
Behold Breathe in….vav “The Great Connector”
Breathe out….hayyy...
Yud-hay-vav-hay
Yahweh…

Now Gaia asks us,
“Remember your breath as you read this and breathe with me….”

My floor crunches when you step on me
all these thirsty pine needles…
I breathe wind that cools on summer evenings.
Creatures sleep in the shade of the swaying trees
so kind to lend their shade.
Parched.
My rivers only weep a little
my streams no longer whisper.
Something has shifted
and I no longer rest beneath the haven snow.
Thirsty. So thirsty.
I beckon the rain but it does not hear as it has before.
My lakes disappear
leaving naked flesh.
And I pray the mood will shift.
Sons and daughters:
Please care for me as I have mothered you.

Shhh..now…I hear the snap of gunfire (yud…I am)
the moan of tires…(haayy…so disappointed)
the whine of engines in the reaches…
A careless hand drops
an emptied can. (when you say Budweiser, you’ve said it all.)
And then a careless wave
sends a white hot match which gave
a single little thirsty tree
at first, a playful flame
which then became
a raging angry fire (Yud…)
blistering into a funeral pyre.

Death (hayyy)
so near, yet you do not hear.
It calls—it laughs and loves the game
of hubris.
Just keep driving, driving, driving
and buying
to fill the space between
you and me
until I say….
The End.

Yud-haay
vav-hayy….yud…..haayy….vav………..haaayyy

More conversations with Mother Nature about winter

"Did you see Mark Nadell's photo album on Facebook, "A Tale of Two Winters?" I asked Mother Nature this question as I was making coffee this morning and wondering if I could just do several up/down trips at Tahoe Donner, maybe Andromeda.

"I don't need a computer to get inside Mark Nadell's mind," she scoffed, "I'm in there all the time and I know what he's thinking." She fingered the wilting fern plant on the kitchen window sill. "Too much sun," she remarked.

"You can say THAT again." I said. "Listen Mother, I have been really committed to seeing you as the ultimate authority on what is best for this planet, that it's a bit ridiculous for us to be worrying about when it will snow and getting frustrated and angry when we see pictures of yellow balls instead of clouds and snowflakes on the Accuweather website," I said. "And I still really believe that you know best. However, I do get a little downhearted when I try to skate-ski on icy trails and my toes cramp from trying to cling to something secure. And my knees hurt from my skis sliding out from under me when I push off."

She rolled her eyes and beckoned for her black raven to perch on her shoulder. He'd found his way to the kitchen garbage and was feasting on old coffee grounds and rancid sunflower seeds.

"Didn't you hear what Tav Streit told you as you limped across the parking lot at Royal Gorge on Saturday?" she asked impatiently. "You're supposed to find balance right over you feet and pay very close attention to riding a flat ski even though it goes against all your instincts. I saw you out there trying to find security by clinging to the snow...butt sticking out...snowplowing...legs straight as matchsticks. You should know by now that there is no such thing as security so why spend so much energy trying to have it? Just let go and trust your balance and your strength instead of clinging all the time. Honestly, all those books you read about Buddhism and you still get all worked up about things you have no control over...like for example my decisions about whether it should snow."

"I'm not that worked up!" I said defensively. "I just find other things to do. I went for a 50 mile bike ride yesterday down at Foresthill didn't I?"

"Yes and when you hit snow on the road before the 25 mile turnaround, you obsessed about how you were going to get in an honest 50 so you added on three miles at the end. And then you worried about what would happen to your upper body strength if you couldn't cross-country ski and you thought about how much you hate swimming in pools and how much you dislike lifting weights. You thought about a pulley system that would be like Nordic skiing and that you could get rich if you invented something."

I was deeply humiliated that she'd been spying on me and even worse that she was inside my head. There should be a sign on my forehead saying, "DANGER-DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM THE OWNER."

"Do you have any flies around here," she asked looking on all the windowsills. "I need a snack."

"Well you'd think there would be with all this SUN.." I said indignantly.

"Ahem...look outside dear. It is snowing this morning." I saw one or two flakes outside the window.

She went on..."You know all that yoga you practice. When you ski on the ice, why not just apply those principles of being grounded, finding balance and stability, bringing attention into your feet and trusting the innate wisdom of your body?"

"Are you taking yoga classes too?"

"Honey, whom do you think yoga was intended to celebrate and honor? What you do in yoga is exactly what I do all day every day. I bring balance, beauty, love...I bring the darkness and I bring the light...I bring storms and I bring the calm afterward. It's all about balance. There can be no light without darkness and no wisdom without working through hardship. And perhaps the hardest lesson of all, no life without death. Humans are really resistant to death of any kind. Death of giving up ego wishes, death of old ways that do not work to make way for the new and different."

I sat down and realized how fortunate I am that some days my most challenging decision is what I will do for play...ski, bike or run.

I looked at her as she stroked her raven's smooth black feathers.

"You're right," I said. "I always have choice even in the worst of circumstances. I can always choose how I will respond."

"Now you're getting it!" she said. And then she was gone in a swirling skirt of snowflakes.

A Conversation with Mother Nature by Kimball C. Pier

I didn’t start really craving a three foot snowstorm until my knee started to bother me from running a few days ago. Up until then, I was happy to roller ski and run remembering that it was only six months ago that I was whining about too much snow and how it was hindering my summer activities, like running and cycling.

While my husband obsessively studies the weather maps and practically becomes hysterical when he sees a cloud, I just shake my head marveling at the folly of it all. All the beseeching, lamentations, cursing and bouts of uncontrollable sobbing when the sun is out yet again…Don’t they know that Mother Nature has supreme wisdom? She is unconcerned about the economic impact on ski reports and all the employees so desperate to begin earning money.

“It wasn’t MY idea to cut holes in the forest and put chairlifts in so people could ride up and slide down all day. If this silly idea of skiing were mine, I would have told them to walk up and ski around all the trees. It’s good exercise. People have become too fat and under-active anyway, they could use it.”

“But what about all the poor employees who need to earn money?” I argued trying to engage her empathetic side.

“When in the 53 years that you’ve know me have I ever been predictable?” I became defensive about how our technology captures her moods fairly accurately. “We can predict your moods pretty accurately,” I said almost with a tinge of haughtiness.

“I let you people do that for a while just until you get over confident and full of yourselves and then I usually become contrary and sometimes downright violent just to teach you not to get complacent. Remember last year?”

“You mean all those times when we thought it was going to be summer soon and then it was winter again?”

“Indeed. And don’t forget about earthquakes, tsunamis and Hurricane Katrina.”

“So how is a ski resort supposed to operate profitably when we can’t predict winter? Does it entertain you to watch all the corporate executives wringing their hands and drinking too many martinis?”

She took a long look at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Well actually it IS rather entertaining. Look, as I said, people do all kinds of silly things in order to make money. Ski resorts depend on me to provide them with the means to make money and I do not make weather to suit people who run around in expensive ski sweaters. I make weather to do what is best for the trees and rivers and lakes. Even though you people think you’re in charge of what’s best for the planet, you’re not. Remember, there are fish and birds who have survived for millions of years without polluting themselves out of existence. Humans have managed to destroy entire continents and pollute oceans in less than a hundred years. You’ve even wiped out members of your own species who knew better than you how to live with me not in opposition to me. Remember what Carl Jung said almost sixty years ago?

“But our progressiveness,though it may result in a great many delighted wish fulfillments, piles up an equally gigantic Promethean debt which has to be paid off from time to time in the form of hideous catastrophes" (CW 9.1,PAR 276).

“Hideous catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina and wildfires and tsunamis?” I inquired.

“Precisely,” said Mother Nature shooing a swarm of bees from beneath her skirts.

“So maybe we should trust that you know what’s best not only for the planet but for us too? And when people are unemployed because there’s now snow, perhaps we should be innovative in thinking of other kinds of fun, healthy activities that people can engage in so that people will come up to visit our resorts even when there isn’t snow?”

“Now you’re getting it!” she said.

“If it were up to me, I’d plan to offer mountain biking or hiking or having big yoga workshops or meditation training…or even cooking and winemaking classes!” I said.

“Imagine how good it would be if people actually slowed down, got out of their cars and explored this area more with their own two feet,” she said patting one of her most precious Juniper trees.

“I’m actually giving you the extended summer and fall that you wanted last June,” she reminded me.

And we walked together for hours smelling the pine and watching the river flow through its frost-covered banks.

THE WELCOME HOME SHELTER OF TRUCKEE

By Kimball C. Pier
Does Anybody Want to Donate a House?

I have a dream that in the town of Truckee and in the surrounding communities, nobody wanders the streets looking for a nook or corner where the cold isn’t so biting to settle in for the night, that nobody is hungry, and that nobody dies alone with nothing but pavement to hold them as they draw a final breath. I envision a community that wraps its arms around anyone who is alone during the holiday season to ensure they are fed, warm and welcomed, that nobody is left holding a cardboard sign asking for help as the last car leaves the grocery store parking lot at night.
At this time, we have no emergency shelter which means that there will be people wandering the streets looking for protection against the bitter cold. In my dream, those who own commercial buildings and homes that sit empty and dark week after week welcome those who have no place to be. Hearts open wide and all the reasons why not just go away because the time to give is now upon us and we may not have another chance to experience the joy of a heart opening to grace.
In Seattle or New York, when winter comes and shelters are full, the warmth of subway grates to sleep on or doorways offer some protection from the elements. Seattle has tent cities, a coalition between churches to host the tent cities throughout the year. Encampments move from the inner city out into the suburbs and neighborhoods of Seattle and although people were reticent at first, surveys indicate that for the most part, the homeless people who live in their midst for a month or so each year are friendly, cooperative and thankful. They clean up the litter along the streets and mind the rules of the encampment which includes no drugs and alcohol and no violence.

But those are cities, what about small towns and ski resorts?

In Truckee, poverty has never fit in well with the persona of a resort community. Like the unwanted kid on the playground, poverty is not invited into the circle to be a part of the community. Truckee, like many ski resort towns, has a rather dark history of colonization by white opportunists who dislocated Native American people or exterminated them. In resort communities such as ours, the history lurks under the clean sidewalks and renovated buildings; poverty is made invisible, shoved underneath the layers of faux quaintness. Worried residents and merchants wish the ragged ones would just go back to where they came from instead of haunting places like Truckee where it’s supposed to look nice and be a fun place to recreate. After all, we say, Truckee is not the place to be if you’re homeless. But really, there is no place in this country with its extraordinary albeit disproportionate wealth, where anybody should be without a home. In our communities, thousands of second homes sit empty month after month and many buildings sit vacant awaiting purchase or rental. In our country, extraordinary wealth abounds among the top 1% who make 40% of the nation’s income. (www.npr.org/2011/04/16/135472478/study-americas-wealth). And according to one survey, in the strata between 1-10%, Americans make over $1 million per year. (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph). In Truckee and the surrounding communities, there is evidence of extraordinary wealth and extreme poverty, yet we have only one organization, Project MANA which feeds the hungry families and individuals from Truckee to the North Lake Tahoe communities. We have very little in the way of accessible medical and dental care for those who do not meet criteria for MediCal or county medical assistance or who have no insurance or money to pay for healthcare, and we have no services for the homeless at all.
But guess what? Aspen and Vail have homeless shelters. There are multiple services for those who need a warm place to stay and food to eat. The Aspen Homeless Shelter and related services are a supported by Aspen Valley medical Foundation, a group of doctors and medical professionals who developed this organization to fund services for people without the basics, shelter, food and medical care. (http://www.avmfaspen.org/communityInit/AHshelter.html). Imagine…Aspen and Vail, places where I can’t afford to breathe the air having a place for people who are without a home and services to help them get on their feet again.

In our community, the homeless survey of 2010 turned up 66 homeless people, which did not include those living in trailers or dwellings without sources of heat, water or light. Each winter, hundreds of youth aged 18-28 who come here for resort jobs struggle to keep fed, sheltered and clothed while they work for our resorts without access to healthcare. We do not consider them to be part of the poverty culture, yet they are. The statistics on youth in this age category living on the edge of homelessness and disease are staggering. So when the resorts decide suddenly to fire thirty to fifty workers making $9.00 per hour, many cannot afford to continue paying rent, buy food or a ticket back to wherever they came from. A business decision like that is made without much consideration for the human consequences, with the priority being placed on profitability of a business. With respect to the fiscal health of ski resorts, I argue that there must be consideration given to how people are treated and a balance struck between good business and sudden termination of employees without consideration of the impact not only on the individuals but on our community resources. An emergency shelter would have given these youth an option other than sleeping in their cars or couch surfing or sleeping outdoors.

I ask myself how I am participating in perpetuating this problem of passing the buck and excusing the problem of hunger and homelessness here. I find myself wanting to stop and give the little I have to everyone who holds a sign outside of Safeway, but I often don’t. I tell myself that I can’t help everyone, that they might use it to buy alcohol and then I’d be creating more of a problem, or that they might be in need of something more than just money and then what would I do? I can’t bring them all home.
A few weeks ago, I was faced with this issue. On a cold, rainy day a woman appeared at my office, wet, cold and crying. She’d been put out by a relative who was understandably fed up with her drinking. She wasn’t drunk; she drank intermittently as many recovering alcoholics do. However, the discovery that she’d been drinking was just too much for her family who had endured many bouts of relapse interspersed with sobriety. As she sat shivering in my office rocking back and forth sobbing with fear and remorse, I scrambled to find her someplace to go. It was 4:30PM and I set about calling every single treatment program I could find in Placer and Nevada Counties. None were able to accept clients without insurance or financial resources, the funding for such clients having dried up over the past few years. There was no way I was going to allow her to sleep outdoors so I resolved the problem by putting her up in a hotel and getting her some food which bought me some time to find a shelter down in Roseville or Sacramento. And I could sleep knowing she would be warm and safe. Still, part of me felt really guilty that I didn’t just bring her home with me. If I were really a person with the heart of Buddha, I would have, but I’m just plain old me who likes her home to be a refuge.

Another woman, young and disabled wanders from place to place every day. She’s hard to pin down and teeters on homelessness. Her nightly bed depends upon what mood her mother is in. Again, I wonder if I could bring her home with me and whether she would even be comfortable if I did. She seems to need her routine and the small bit of structure she has created for herself amidst the chaos of her life. So I meet her where she is and we do the same dance over and over again. She agrees to get signed up for disability, medical services and food assistance and we schedule appointments she rarely shows up for. One day, I picked her up hitch hiking and noticed her shoes were literally worn right off her feet so we went to the shoe store. I worry now that it’s so cold that she’ll give up and wander into the cold and freeze to death just like the man who was found dead of exposure in Truckee the other morning when the temperatures dropped to 12 degrees.

The Welcome Home ShelterI have a dream that what I would do when someone shows up at my door wet, cold and hungry and needs a place to feel welcome, a place where eyes don’t turn away and the tea kettle sings is make a quick phone call to my imagined Welcome Home Shelter in Truckee. I would discover that indeed there was a space for the person holding the cardboard sign whose shoes were worn right off his feet. It wouldn’t matter how he got here or why, it would only matter that he felt welcome and cared for. I would ask him to get in my car so I could bring him to Truckee’s Welcome Home shelter.
“Can I bring my dog?” I look at the thin, ragged dog wagging her tail and looking at me with her hopeful, amber eyes.
“Of course you can bring your dog!” I exclaim. The Welcome Home shelter has a yard and volunteers who care for pets. And I discover as I chat with him on the way to the Welcome Home shelter that he once was a lot like me. He has two children and he had a wife. But he lost his job and his home. Then he began to unravel and his wife left. He searched for work elsewhere but found none. He became ill and had no money for healthcare, so he drifted from place to place until depression and hopelessness were constant companions. Drinking is a problem but he'd like to quit since it’s making him sicker. He ended up here because he thought he might work at a ski resort but he realizes he looks so bad and with an illness like his, it’s pretty hard to function some days. As he tells his story, I see more and more of myself and I realize once again that none of us are separate and we must care for one another as we care for ourselves.

I have a dream that The Welcome Home shelter is donated by a family who was having a hard time paying for a second home now that the bottom has dropped out of the economy. They just figured it was the right thing to do for a town they’d been visiting for a long time and that it was time to give something back, to contribute to the well-being of those less fortunate. Or even more far-fetched, I have a dream that the Bank of America or Wells Fargo just donated a couple of houses in foreclosure because they felt it was time to stop being so greedy and opportunistic. The CEO’s just came to our Truckee Homeless Coalition meeting and said they felt it was their karma to donate the houses for a Welcome Home shelter. And then I woke up from my dream for a minute…What about “NIMBY?” Oh yes…that. Who would want a shelter in their neighborhood? Who wants the crowd of alcoholic, drug-addicted people who might be dangerous in their neighborhood? And then I think about how many people with severe alcoholism, violent behavior, drug addiction and mental health challenges already live in our (your) neighborhoods. The only difference is they have a place to live and it’s harder to see. The bars are full at night and when they close, the people who have had too much to drink get in their cars and try to drive home. How dangerous is that? Most homeless folks don’t have cars so at least they aren’t killing people or themselves by driving drunk. And sex offenders are everywhere too, some disguised as coaches and Boy Scout leaders and teachers or pastors that you trust. At least if an individuals are clearly unkempt and perhaps homeless rather than woven into our sanitized culture as coaches, pastors or Boy Scout leaders, they stand out and you can protect yourself and your children. It’s when they look like you that they’re dangerous and most sex offenders do look just like you.

In my dream, the Welcome Home Shelter (which is drug and alcohol free) has about six bedrooms, a playroom for kids (supervised), and a living room with a library and a television for movies. It has four bathrooms with tubs and showers, it has a huge kitchen for preparing community meals and a dining room where people eat together. It has an office where residents can meet with therapists or other community services workers, a computer for researching jobs or educational opportunities and it has lots of outdoor space for walking around and enjoying nature. Oh and a fenced yard for pets. And a garage for the van that brings people around to look for jobs or get to their healthcare providers. The van was donated by the people who make Hummers because those who consume the most should give back the most. I dream big, don’t I?
The Welcome Home Shelter would be funded by medical professionals and other individuals and grantors who want to participate in creating well-being accessible to all. It would be staffed by volunteers and a few paid staff from the community and by representatives from local agencies because everyone wants to be a part of this amazing gesture of love and compassion. Truckee wants to follow in Aspen and Vail’s footsteps in that way, wanting to be a model for other ski reports and small communities where poverty exists but is less obvious than in New York, Seattle or San Francisco. And residents of The Welcome Home Shelter would be expected to keep it clean, share the cooking and maintenance and to contribute to the community as well. We would have our artists to help them express their creative talent and musicians to come and sing and play because music is the voice of the soul.

The great thing is, since this home was donated by a family, we don’t have to worry about offending merchants. In my dream, the neighbors welcome having such a fine example of human generosity and kindness right in their midst. The house glows with love and warmth and the glow can be seen on dark nights from far away.

So does anyone want to donate a house?

Mother Earth re-arranges herself

" Not famine, not earthquakes, not cancer....but we are the great danger" (C.G. Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man)

I am a compassionate person, however, when I read the headline about the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami that followed the other day, I was not horrified, surprised or sad. Does that mean I am not compassionate? I also consider myself a participant in the folly of being a modern human. I expect to pay for my behavior as a participant in a culture that clearly has an addictive relationship to consumption of natural resources. I make miniscule efforts to reduce my carbon footprint, but not to the extent that it would cause me discomfort. I still drive a car; I still use paper cups for my espresso drinks; I use non eco-friendly two-ply toilet paper because it works better, and I take for granted that the sun will come out every day. If it hides behind clouds and makes me chilly, I will turn a little dial on my wall and use up some natural gas to get warm again.

I think I have more compassion for Mother Earth than I have for myself and my human brethren. As I saw the photos of Japan, replete with horrible scenes of wreckage and distraught citizens, and felt acutely humbled but not sad, I wondered if I would feel differently if the earthquake had occurred in Oakland, California where my daughter and other family members live. I remember the earthquake in 1986 that collapsed one freeway on top of the other in Oakland and which caused immense damage to homes and buildings in the San Francsico area in addition to the loss of human life. I wasn't particularly sad or horrified because, well...it IS San Francisco and earthquakes will occur. It is not a question of if, it is a question of when.

Then I thought about the oil spill that destroyed coastlines and entire eco-systems north of San Francisco back in 1971 when two oil tankers collided spilling 800,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil into the ocean. I still cry when I see photos of humans wading into the toxic surf to rescue birds who strained for air and whose wings were unable to open to lift them from the oily goo. This assault to our environment was entirely preventable, yet the prevailing attitude continues to be cavalier. There have been many more oils spills since, all followed by lame justifications and minimization of the violence and destruction. We seem to fail in making the behavior-consequence connection in our desire for everything in our world to be easier, faster and cheaper in the short run.

Humans choose to build cities on fault lines and in flood zones; they choose to take their chances and densely populate areas where Mother Nature tends to become restless from time to time. What continues to surprise me is how humans behave as though it is some sort of horrible accident when an earthquake destroys a city or a wildfire burns its way through an expensive suburb or the ocean, whose power exceeds everything and anything a human can create, decides to heave itself onto the land and level a coastline. Gregg Levoy, in his book "Callings" writes: "Toni Morrison once described how the Mississippi River, had been straightened out in places to make room for houses and livable acreage, and how occasionally the river will flood these places. 'Flood is the word thay use' she said,'but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.'"

We are living organisms whose phsyical bodies mirror all systems in Nature, yet we seem to continue to think of ourselves as separate, as we build our homes and cities in flood plains or upon the earths fault lines and tornado zones. It seems we have a rather unrealistic expectation that the Earth somehow should accomodate our every whim and fancy despite how out of sync our actions are with nature's powerful rhythms and systems. Carl Jung wrote, "But our progressiveness, though it may result in a great many delighted wish-fulfillments, piles up an equally gigantic Promethean debt which has to be paid off from time to time in the form of hideous catastrophes" (C.G. Jung, CW 9.1, Par 276). For the most part, humans' orientation to nature has been one of conquest, not sympatico. We continue to insist Nature conform to our manufactured reality and behave as though we have been wronged when Nature acts as Nature does. The New York Times (Sunday, March 13th, 2011) had a front page article describing a tribal culture in the Phillipines which has managed to escape modernization and annihilation of its traditions and practices which are notable in their harmonious and reverent relationship with Nature. Such cultures have all but disappeared save for the Aboriginal cultures and others hidden deep in the forests out of the reach of land developers and other industries that have little regard or foresight in evaluating the costs and consequences of changing Nature's eco-systems.

Perhaps the massive earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, wild fires and other expressions of Nature are reminders of who is really in charge. And I am brought around again to the question of whether I would be devastated if I lost one of my children or a loved one as a result of nature's coughs, hiccups or out and out slaps across the face of humanity for its blatant arrogance. Yes, of course I would be devastated.I would be leveled and very humbled. But not surprised or indignant.