I Won't Always Be Here

Stephen Jenkinson asks, “Until your ability to see the flower is rooted in the fact that it won’t always be there, and neither will you, how much of the flower do you see?”

I hadn't gotten around to posting this photo of dinner the other night, a dinner where all but the almonds came straight from our garden to the stove to the table:

I remember thinking about how common and boring pictures of food can be. Maybe that's why I never made the effort to post the photo of dinner or the photo of just a few of the green beans I picked last weekend.

We had great vegetable gardens this year. Our soil was happy, and our plants were healthy. Until...

 Swiss Chard

...yesterday afternoon, a scary, windy, rainy, haily storm came through and pretty much annihilated the vegetable gardens, and stripped many trees of their foliage. Now, eighteen hours later, hail and strewn leaves still cover our yard.

Kale

If it hadn't been a hailstorm, it would have been frost or something. All things must end. Or continue on in another form. Or...

Every summer, I carry with me the fact that the plants in our garden are impermanent, that they will wear out by autumn, but I don't entertain the possibility that they could all be gone in some unsuspected moment, long before the first frost. I live that way in other areas of my life, too, thinking that everyone I love, including me, will naturally die in old age; there is always lots of time before I need to look at an ending. I put off living with the fact of impermanence until autumn approaches, until someone is in her 90s, until...

I won't always be here. I won't always be here. I won't always be here. This culture does not prepare us for, does not educate us in, that truth. Nature is offering it up to us all the time. I am trying to remember to listen.

What Really Matters III

when i try to find the answer
to the question
what really matters?
i 
get 
stressed

i 
run around
in circles
looking 
for something
i can't find.

maybe this is it!
but what if it isn't?
that over there
seems to matter more 
than this
but 
everyone says
THIS matters most

i get dizzy
fall down
look up
at the huge
              blue
                  sky
                     above 
                             me
grass tickles my skin

i fall again
in love
with this fresh nowness
and 
forget the question


Carol Barrow
August, 2018

What Really Matters II

The summer before I started second grade, we moved into a new home. Somehow, between our old house and the new one, my favorite stuffed, yellow kitty got lost. I loved that kitty. To me, she was as real and alive as anyone. She mattered, and I spent many, many nights looking up into the darkness and searching for an answer as to where she could be. I had failed as her caretaker, and I felt as though a piece of my heart had been yanked from my chest.

We moved again, to Colorado, when I was a young teen. Moving from a small, conservative town to a large city, I felt like I had just awakened from a long and boring dream. There was so much that mattered! I became aware of war protests, and suddenly the Vietnam War mattered. So did my new friends, bell-bottoms, make-up, and long hair. Boys mattered; especially the one who asked me to dance. Sometimes God mattered, and so did the huge pimple that showed up the morning before a date.

Now, fifty years later, I  still remember many of the things that once seemed important. Who I think I am is made up of those memories and many others; they have stuck to my True Self like frosting on a cake. So sweet.

I notice that my ideas of what matters come and go, many lasting a few minutes; some, several decades. But a ribbon of mattering has been woven throughout my life. It is made of air, food, water, sun, beauty, kindness, friendship, and love. These things have mattered throughout, even when I turned my attention to other matters.

But what happens when I die? Does mattering need a “someone” for it to matter to? Are there some things that REALLY matter, no matter what? I don’t know how to know. I don’t know if the Earth needs us, or if it matters to the sun that the planets encircle it. I don’t know if the universe cares what goes on within it or around it. Still, I have a sense that all of this does somehow matter. Like the dancer depends on floor and gravity, space and relationship, all that we are aware of depends on everything else. In the dance, all parts matter, and maybe that is true of the universe, of everything. Acknowledging this, it makes sense to me to be with each moment, each dance partner, each stuffed, yellow kitty as though they all matter, but to do so lightly, with the freedom to accept what comes next in these ever-changing appearances of life. 

Do all of these words matter? They did while I typed them. Now, I'm not sure. And that feels so right.

What Really Matters?

Just got the news.
A friend took his life.
What really matters?

He mattered
to me
to many others.
Did he not know?
Did it not matter?

Does mattering mean
that we are obliged
to suffer so others won't?
I would never put that on him
or anyone.

Does it matter that
the two friends I've
had who took their lives
were smart and
kind and
creative
and
we
needed
them more
than we need
the politicians
doing damage to
this precious, fragile
world? Who invented
this game, anyway? And why?

The ripples of
sorrow, they matter.
The guilt - I hadn't
reached out in some time - egoic
but a reminder again and again.
Love, love, love, love, love.
Please let us love this tender,
tender, hurting world and
all in it with our whole
being. We can't
afford to be
stingy
with
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love
love

What Really Matters... To Me

A woman on a bike with a kiddie trailer behind it pauses at the stop sign and asks her young son which way he wants to go to the library. He is on a bike so small you could step over it with no effort. He is on a bike that requires no balance, no pedals. He walk-rides his little bike with equally little legs. He wants to go this way. Mom suggests that way, but he wants to go this way, so she says Okay. Then they take off, mom turning the way her son wants to; her son taking off straight in a near collision with her. But then he turns, and they pass my house on their way to the library. That really matters to me.

My heart cracks at the adorability of the son finding his way in this world, balancing and falling and exploring, which will lead to... We don't know where he will go as he grows. That not knowing really matters to me.

And the sky is blue above the mom and son (and also on whomever it might be who rides along in the kiddie trailer behind), and there is peace in the air. Beautiful skies and peace really matter to me, and so does the library down the street that houses so much wonder, we would all explode if we tried to take it all in. That little boy will walk into the wonder and choose to let in just a bit. And that little bit might take him to other lands, to new learning, and wild imagination. Wonder and imagination really matter to me.

Even though my son and daughter are now old enough to be parents, their little legs are still just as real to me as the legs of that little boy walk-riding his bike down the street. As with that mother, the mothering within me is as alive as ever, though I now channel it many directions, because my son and daughter don't need the mothering of a child, though they do need as much mothering as everything else — the planet and everything on it. I smile because beings of all kinds —whether human, duck, finch, cow, you name it — mother our world, and that is beautiful, and that really matters to me.

This is not all that really matters to me. Honestly, when my heart is open, everything that shows itself really matters.
 

What Matters?

what matters?

     i don’t know.

     do you?

     if so,

     how did you find out?

          if you found out,

               did you find that it’s

what matters

            to you? Does

what matters,

     matter to me?

          your family?

               your friends?

                    your city?

                         your country?

                              the world?

     does this

          matter?

     does that

          matter? 

     nothing matters

     everything matters

what matters?

     what

          what

               what

                    matters

                         matters

                              matters

what was the question?

ah

     ah

          awe

Carol Barrow

July, 2018