July 2015 – peerspirit.com

The doe and her two twin fawns are regular visitors in our yard this summer. The other day I had returned from kayaking and left the kayak in the back yard to dry off—not its usual resting place.

My kayak in the backyard

Ten minutes later I had changed clothes and gone into our office in the backyard to complete some work. Within minutes the two fawns came out of the shrubbery behind the kayak and literally stopped in their tracks.

the twin fawns

Cautiously the spotted pair walked up to the boat—taking a few steps, staring, lifting their noses into the air. Curious. Cautious. But mostly curious.

One of them stood near the bow of the boat. The other stepped near the cockpit, stared, and sniffed some more. Finally, the one near the bow of the boat lowered his head and began licking the water off the boat! Then the other one began doing the same thing.

Imagine, now I have a boat that has been licked by fawns!

The curiosity of young creatures is truly one of life’s great gifts. Watching them from inside the office about 10 feet away, our office manager, Debbie, and I also stopped in our tracks. Nothing mattered in the moment except our curiosity about what the fawns would do next.

Our little office is surrounded by nature: deer, hummingbirds, even an eagle came to sit in the Doug fir that towers over the yard. But I notice this is true for city-dwellers as well: helping mallards to find a safe pond, supporting peregrine falcons to nest on skyscrapers, carrying a spider outside in a paper cup. We love to be “interrupted” and called to our sense of wonder.

Berries from our garden—Summer blessings from my house to yours!

CB writes

White buck–local guy.

What a sweet local life I have. Waking with early light, I raise the shades to look at Puget Sound and the Olympic mountains. I make tea. I take time to write a bit in my journal. Sitting on what we call the facing bench, my partner and I watch Nature waking up around us. We talk about who is doing what on the list that accompanies our days. We talk about what is next, what we want to contribute in our island and global communities. Deer parade by.

The garden is erupting with greens, veggies, and fruits—salad for dinner every night. I’m home after leading a vision quest and two consulting jobs with long plane rides in June. Now, it’s summer and I want the world to stop being in trouble so I can relax. I want a compassion vacation, an engagement reprieve, and an awareness respite.

The mind that won’t leave me alone is my own! I am keenly aware of the delicate privilege of my life. Every day around the world, people wake to moments like mine: a sweet hello in morning light—and then life changes. Out of work. Out of money. Family crisis. Diagnosis. Death. Fire. Flood. Volcano. Earthquake. Violence. War.

Wenatchee, WA on fire.

Texas flooding

The world’s woes are stubborn and persistent.

“News” finds me—and it should. I want to know. I feel a responsibility to know. Events become part of our shared cultural experience, marker moments referenced in short-hand: “911,” “the Tsunami,” and now, “Charleston.” Most of these stories are depressing, but embedded even in horrific events is the uprising of human spirit. An extremist walks into a church, prays with a group of African-Americans… almost changes his mind, but ends up shooting 9 of them. This activates the racist polarities of our nation and words like white supremacy, Confederacy and its flag flood the Internet. And this outrage activates people’s determination to not be torn asunder, to cross the bridge together toward authentic racial understanding, to worship together, to walk side by side.

Whenever an act of hatred erupts, it is counter-balanced by acts of love, courage, and faithfulness. And in these past months with so much brutality, particularly the murders of African American men, making the news and the skin being torn off our white privilege, we have needed that counterbalance! Acts of kindness always happen: they are the uncounted on by-product of violence, the unintended consequence—waking up more and more of us, over and over. Do a Google search on “random acts of kindness following Charleston” and you will be reassured that this supposition is correct: good arrives to balance bad: love balances hate.

How sweet the sound

In this confidence, we may stand at the end of the eulogy, at the end of the service for nine faithful people shot while they prayed; we may stand with family and friends able to find forgiveness in their hearts before their beloveds are even buried, we may join the President of the United States in singing, “Amazing Grace…” and trust that, yes, despite anything—grace abides.