Spiritual Journey Thursdays

Things old and new: Spiritual Journey

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

The first Thursday of the month rolls around, meaning it’s time for my band of Spiritual Journey writers to gather and share. The theme for May, offered by Chris Margocs, is beginnings and endings. As Chris points out, May is always a major time of transition for those of us who are teachers; we are in the throes of wrapping up another school year.

The month also happens to hold some significant beginnings and endings for me.

I was born in May.

My grandfather died in May.

Chris referenced Isaiah 43:18-19 in her invitation: Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

What God is saying to his exiled people here, through the prophet Isaiah, is to not live in the past but to recognize his miraculous provision and his ongoing exodus-like deliverance. It is all about reliance on him for the journey… says one of my study notes: “Where there is no clear path forward, God creates one.”

It could summarize my life.

I often write of the past, of time spent with my grandparents. I do so from a place of profound gratitude. They were the joy of my childhood. They lived to be in their nineties and got to see me grown with children of my own. I know that God is faithful to those who love him, from one generation to the next (Deuteronomy 7:9; Psalm 119:90; Psalm 103:17). The legacy of faith is priceless to me. It has framed and defined my entire existence. It is all God’s doing. It is the greatest thing I have to pass down.

But today I will not write of the past.

Today I consider the “new thing” springing forth.

A different granddaughter, a different grandfather…a different path.

*******

One afternoon
while I am at work
our son stops by the house
to see his dad

He brings our granddaughter
who asks Grandpa
if she can watch Bluey
and can she have
a popsicle, please

Grandpa (as always) says
Yes
of course
my little angel

Perched on the couch
legs swinging
beneath the TV tray
mouth stained red and blue
she pulls out the popsicle
long enough to whisper
to Grandpa:

I want
to stay here
forever

He says
I know, honey
I want you to

Then she says

Grandpa—
I don’t want
to die

And he tells her

Honey, you don’t
have to worry
about that.
Jesus
will take care
of you

(the same thing
his mother told him
when he was twelve,
after his daddy died)

Despite thirty-eight years
in the ministry
officiating hundreds
of funerals

when he tells me
what our granddaughter said
he breaks
into uncontrolled sobs

She is only four

She does not know
how damaged
his heart is—

stented, patched,
burned, stitched
more than once
by medicine
and mercy

And although he often quips
about living on borrowed time
and being a member of
the Lazarus Club
I watch him pausing
to catch his breath

He does not mind
the going
whenever Jesus
should come for him

but he cannot bear
the thought
of hers

my little angel

What can I do
except hold them close

every chance I get
for as long
as I can

(thank you, Lord,
for every day
for every minute

and Your every
promise.

Amen.)

Spiritual journey: A word

/ Fran Haley / 12 Comments

I have reached a gray season.

Not in terms of this January morning, with its oyster sky and neutral-colored doves settling into the birdbath under the naked crape myrtle as I write. Not the frenzied darksilver squirrels darting about with their elegant question-mark tails. Nor the grass, which isn’t gray, just seemingly unable to decide if it wants to be brown or green, dead or alive.

Gray, but not the concrete driveway or my husband’s secondhand silver car…replacing the trusty car we had for almost fifteen years, totaled at summer’s end. A driver ran a stop sign at the crossroads nearby. My husband was driving our old car. He wasn’t injured. He is a survivor of so many things that it would take a book to tell it all.

Survival. A word worthy of contemplation. But it’s not the word I have in mind this morning, nor is the word gray, really. I am just describing what I see through my own window. The way things are in this moment. My now.

When I say I have reached a gray season, I mean an in-between point, like when the holidays and their glittering festivities are over (although my Christmas tree is still up; my husband likes the lights on these long winter evenings). A point when another year has gone and a new one is unfolding with who knows what hidden in its folds for us all. A taking-stock season. A reevaluation of priorities through the lens of what I am able—and not able—to do now. Not what I will do tomorrow, next week, this summer…or in the indeterminate days or years of life remaining to me, when youth is gone and aging gets to write the rest of the story.

People tell me I do not age. My body tells me otherwise. Minor aches and pains are the telltale signs of Time. I am incrementally slower than I used to be. More deliberate and careful. Not to mention presently shaking off mild bronchitis. I have a friend who stayed physically active and kept working hard because, in her words, “I refuse to get old.” But she did, she is, and dementia has taken control. So much for living nearly a century. I have lived well over half of one and feel the weight of it. Paradoxically, people ask when I plan to retire. Fun question. Most retirees I know are still working. Staying alive is expensive.

So I come to a plateau of asking: What is truly worth my time, my energy, my money? What is necessary? What is not? What is wise? A shedding-place, you might say. Born of a desire to get rid of material things I do not need as well as thoughts, perspectives, ideas, failures, vanities, even (shocking my own self with this) memories and losses that I am tired of carrying.

If I strip all this away (envisioning long strips of bark peeling off the crape myrtle as it grows), what do I find?

My spirit, ageless and weightless, eternally longing for God who breathed it in the first place. The Author of everything I ever truly loved in my whole life’s journey, the Giver of every good and perfect gift, miraculously drawing me along. God who sustained me to this point. God who will see me through the rest of the journey, ever how weary and unable I become. God whose sovereignty is absolute, even when I cannot see it or sense it.

As I write—not making this up, honest—the sun pierces the grayness outside my window.

Let me reveal the word I had in mind when I began this post.

Amen.

Technically it means so be it or truly. It is a word signifying acceptance.

It just so happens to be the word on a silver necklace one of my sons gave me for Christmas.

It comes at a time when day-to-day plans take a backseat to my husband’s ongoing health issues and my own limitations. A letting go, to keep on going. A not quite here-nor-there-time. A time of finding freedom within the very constraints of Time. I’ve even decided—again surprising myself—to let my gray hair grow out because I am tired of fighting the inevitable.

So, yes, literally a gray season, in so many ways.

My now. I am learning to embrace it.

Amen.

with thanks to Margaret Simon for kicking off the 2026 Spiritual Journey gatherings on the first Thursday of each month, and for this new logo, which I love. I am posting two days late, on Saturday, as it took me awhile to get to this. So be it (Amen).

Sparkles in the shards

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

If ever I were to write a spiritual journey memoir, I might begin with this, one of my earliest memories…

She tells me to sit here on the braided rug. She places a wheel of colors on the floor in front of the silver tree, decorated with red and blue glass ornaments.

Watch, she says. Watch. She plugs in the color wheel’s cord and switches off the overhead light.

We are plunged into darkness. I shiver. There’s a small click and suddenly the room is ablaze with amber light. The tree before me is no longer silver but gold, glittering as if lit with thousands of tiny candles. The color wheel hums. Gold gives way to green, red, blue. The tree deepens to shimmering emerald, glows like redhot fireplace embers, descends into sapphire glimmers bluer than flames of the gas stove burners.

Everything is transformed by the light. The ornaments on the tree go dark, throwing sparks in the colors that touch them. Over by Granddaddy’s black recliner, the ashtray on its thin pole makes a long, flickering shadow. Its curved brass handle, a little leaping ram, gleams like pure gold. The moving colors make the ram seem a living thing. The knotty pine walls watch it all with a hundred unblinking eyes. The polished wood organ, with legs curved like a deer’s, reflects the whole scene…and nothing is as radiant as my grandmother’s smiling face, bending down to mine…

I can’t remember what she said, exactly, but her expression was one of joy. I would see it many times over in my life, most often connected with stories of my birth or upon seeing spotted fawns by the roadside or when receiving a gift from someone in the family. And always with snow and Christmas. She came into the world the day after Christmas of 1915 and left it the day before Christmas Eve, 2006. She never lost her childlike joy of the season.

This memory of her aluminum Christmas tree and color wheel is from the late 1960s, when my grandparents lived in an apartment near mine. Probably the Christmas I was three.

I did not know about separations then. Or loss. I did not know all that my grandmother had already suffered in her life, from deprivation to death. Neither of us could know the shatterings that lay ahead of us.

But in these shards of memory I see great love reflected. Something pure and bright despite the brokenness. My grandmother believed in Jesus and heaven. She tried to live it. She prayed, and even when her prayers seemed unanswered, even when she grappled with not understanding, her faith held fast. Try as it might, darkness could not overcome her bright spirit. It could not extinguish the flame of her inner joy. She sang hymns. She spoke of angels. She never would have thought of herself as a warrior angel, but she served as mine as long as she lived. She loved me fiercely.

God loves us fiercely. That is the story of Christmas. That is the song of the stars. That is the light I find reflecting in the sharpest shards of life. It is the holiness that remains in the unholy fragments. We catch glimmers of it. We desire this light, but then we want to bend it. We would color it our own way and to our own purposes. That’s the story of humankind. We want to be our own authority, not to submit, and then to play victim. Our vision of truth and justice is skewed. We want to judge without being judged. We don’t want to love everybody; we nurture our hatred of one another. We fail to see our self-worship and idolatry (except for when we deliberately choose it). We fall farther and farther away. We have lost direction and think we can find it on our own, despite the darkness of our hearts.

Yet…

I loved you at your darkest is my favorite paraphrase of Romans 5:8.

Thoughout life, iridescent sparks are sent to guide us beyond the brokenness. Like my grandmother and countless others who are imperfect but real conduits of God’s love, ever drawing us back to the awe and worship we were meant for.

Therein lies the real spiritual journey.

******

with thanks to my fellow Spiritual Journey Thursday witers and Jone Rush MacCulloch for hosting us in December.

Light and joy to you all on your journey.

Compassion: a spiritual journey

/ Fran Haley / 9 Comments

My friend Kim Johnson chose the Spiritual Journey Thursday theme for October.

Kim is in the process of grieving her father. As she puts it: “I’m in the anger stage of grief, and along with everything else going on the world, I’m feeling the word COMPASSION calling to me as this month’s topic. I need to have more of it as I work my way toward acceptance.”

Compassion literally means to suffer together. The distress of another person sparks within us an intense desire to alleviate it. It is one of the purest facets of our humanity. Not mere emotion. Compassion is complex: I see your suffering. I am wiling to enter it, to help you.

There’s also a thing called compassion fatigue. It comes from prolonged exposure to traumatic events or being overwhelmed by the suffering of others, ultimately leading to physical, mental, and spiritual depletion. Our wellspring of compassion dries up. We find ourselves numb, in a desert devoid of hope, crushed beneath a boulder of distrust, breathing an atmosphere deprived of positivity. What is the point of it all, anymore?

The point is that we all need help. We want to get rid of the pain and anxiety eating us alive. We would heal ourselves, were it in our own power—even as our souls rage and wage war. Our fiery reaction, our fierce retaliation, is a temporary outlet that cannot bring true satisfaction, because it can never bring the peace we crave. How can we find peace when we are so unable to live peaceably? The fight is a wounded animal’s, a defense mechanism when existence is threatened. For…being alive… the innermost part of us is crying out against the knowledge that we will die.

I will speak now of the snake.

A week ago my granddaughter, almost four years old, asked: “Franna, do you like snakes?” She is asking all sorts of intriguing questions: Why is this your house? Why are you my Dad’s mother? She is forming her understanding of the world and affirming her place in it.

I answered as honestly I could. I do not want her to be afraid, like I was, for most of my life: “Do I like snakes? Not especially. But they can be helpful.”

Someday I will tell her how my Granddaddy taught me never to kill black snakes because they eat rats and mice. I may never tell her how he hacked copperheads to death with his hoe, or that when he became too elderly to manage the hoe, he shot them with his shotgun. It wasn’t that he didn’t like snakes. He was protecting his grandchildren and great-grandchildren from potential harm. Out of his love for us.

Note here how the spiritual journey employs foreshadowing. A thing is encountered; give it time. It is soon to reappear with greater significance. A portent.

The week after the snake question, I was at school, walking students down the sidewalk at dismissal, when I saw it, there on the cement by the edge of the grass: A little gray snake. Dead. Its body twisted, white belly frozen in an upward arch.

My first thought: It died painfully, in the act of writhing.

Second thought: Why aren’t the kids flipping out?

Not a one of them noticed the snake lying there.

Not that day, nor the next, or the next.

But I saw it, and it flooded me with…compassion.

For a snake, a creature I recently confessed to not especially liking.

It was alone. Abandoned. Not seen.

It was little. Not venomous (an earth snake). Not harmful.

And it was dead, with no one to acknowledge its existence or to mourn its passing.

I actually mourned it. I am sorry that it suffered, spiraling on itself in great pain as it died.

I am sorry we all have to suffer and die.

Every time I passed the snake the words mortal coil came to mind. Hamlet: When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…

I suppose that is the whole of the spiritual journey, is it not? Shuffling off this mortal coil. Someday shedding this battered body, being freed of the suffering.

Freedom from suffering is the very meaning behind the caduceus, symbol of the medical field. Snakes coiled around a staff. Odd. It just so happens if you research “symbols of compassion,” the caduecus appears. We do not think of it as representing compassion, but healing.

It is also linked to peace.

Many myths are behind the symbol, notably one in which the Greek messenger god, Hermes (Mercury in Roman mythology) saw two snakes fighting and cast his wand between them. The snakes gave up the battle and entertwined themselves peacefully around the wand.

In the Bible, God tells Moses to cast a bronze serpent and place it on a wooden pole as a cure for poisonous snakebite, a direct consequence of the people’s continued rebellion. God, out of his great compassion, provided a cure: Anyone bitten by a snake was healed of its venom by looking at the serpent on the staff, “high and lifted up.”

Herein lies THE point. Is there an antidote to the suffering we experience from the beginning of our existence, all the physical pain, mental anguish, and the thing we fear most—loss? Is it fighting venom with venom, or is it the active decision to stop battling each another, to cease provoking, retaliating, mocking, belittling, degrading, and causing more harm, until we seal our own destruction in utter carnage? Or is it a matter of realizing we’re all snakebit, and in the act of trying to alleviate another’s suffering, we ease our own? Can desperately-needed relief come in the very midst of our pain by desiring to help another….in compassion, “suffering together?” Not pulling others into our pain, but pulling ourselves into theirs?

Is this not THE point of Christ’s ministry and mission? He saw the suffering of people around him, out of compassion. He healed out of compassion. He wept at death for the ugly, unnatural thing it is, out of compassion. He was tortured and gave up his own life for broken humanity, out of compassion.

Compassion is born of love. Selfless love. Sacrifical love. As long as we have such love…we have hope.

Lest I sound too idealistic…today is my father’s birthday. A week ago today marked the twenty-third anniversary of his sudden death and the implosion of our family. It might as well have been dismemberment. Pain sliced us apart like a mighty warrior’s well-honed sword.

It isn’t supposed to be this way.

Someday, someday, we will shuffle off our heavy mortal coil and discover how great God’s compassion truly is…as well as his power to reverse and restore.

Until then, let us keep trusting. Let us wrap our wounds and our arms around each other. The pain will not disappear, not yet; but we can help each other through it.

That’s what the journey is for.

with special thanks to Kim — I hold you in my heart and prayers each day —
and to the SJT band of writers, for so often inspiring me to rise above.

Still waters

/ Fran Haley / 15 Comments

It’s been a while since I wrote a post, dear Reader and Writer Friends. Life keeps happening. The spiritual journey presses on, across craggy, unforgiving mountains with paths cut too near the edge; down through the valleys steeped in shadows and heavy rainfall; alongside the sea, where sun and salt pull at the wings of the soul longing to be free; and by the shady garden path where one can sometimes find an unoccupied bench to sit awhile, inhaling dewy flower-fragrances. —What is the spiritual journey, if not metaphor?

The beach is always the first summer getaway for my husband and me. Now that the children are grown and married, it’s just us…except for the new puppy, Jesse, now five months old (could this be a reason I haven’t written much of late? Indeed.). And so we headed east with our Jesse in tow.

We needed the break. There are a thousand reasons why. You have the same, yourselves. It so happens that this particular destination is in the quietest community we have ever experienced. New, colorful beach homes with impeccably manicured lawns, rustling palms, rippling birdsong on the ever-present stiff breeze —the ocean, making its nearby presence known. Human voices are almost entirely absent here. We marvel at it. Almost eerie but for the incredible sense of peace and intense sunlight that lasts longer than a summer day ought. Outside with Jesse, soaking up the radiant light, the silence, the rejuventating breeze, the word paradise comes to mind over and over. As does a longing for it to never end.

After dinner one evening my husband and I take a drive. I am the driver now; the loss of his eye and his heart condition make him nervous about driving the new car. This is how it is, now. This is how it will be, as long as our journey continues. On this particular evening, we travel to a beach our children enjoyed when they were small. The road meanders through marsh and lakes. As I am the driver, I can’t look at everything. I catch glimpses of big white birds sailing over the water. Egrets. Elegant. White as snow, poetry come to life. We round a bend and I see a whole colony of them, roosting in a tree by at the waterside.

I could not get a picture…even if I had, it would not do justice to the reality, the breathtaking beauty of that colony of big white birds in the deep, dark green tree by the still waters. Again, the word paradise returns to mind, with a fleeting recollection of being a little child in a bathtub singing a song I made up for myself: Bird of paradise, bird of paradise, you’re so pretty and nice…I don’t know what inspired me. Maybe I’d just learned the term “bird of paradise” and loved it for its lyrical feel.

How quickly time passes. One day a child splashing in a tub singing made-up songs, to—poof!—forty years married, splashing in the sunset chapters of life…still savoring the beautiful, all along the journey.

For it is there, it is there, if we but take time to see.

Thank God for the moments of awe and rest that only He can provide.

AI-generated image of egrets roosting in a tree by the water…does not do justice to the real sight.

*******

With thanks to Karen Eastlund for July’s Spiritual Journey “still waters” theme, and to my fellow SJT writers, who are such good company.

Spiritual Journey: Blossoming

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

On the first day of May, Carol Varsalona offered the theme of “blossoming” to our group of Spiritual Journey Thursday writers. Carol’s husband passed away at the beginning of April. She writes in her post: “When I signed up to host the Spiritual Journey, I felt blossoming would be an appropriate theme for May since it connotes a renewal, a new beginning, and personal growth. I did not think that I would face the sudden death of my husband and go through a period of grief.” She dedicates this month’s post to his memory, along with a beautiful poem about him; you can read about her spiritual journey here.

Carol is one of the people who aways inspires me to see and savor the beauty of nature. Whenever I read her blog, it’s like taking a rest stop in a flower-filled garden, where one can breathe the fragrance deep and be strengthened for the journey. In her present loss, she writes of May flowers coming along to remind us of renewal and resilience.

To me the blossoming flowers are a metaphor for faith itself. The beauty of the earth pointing us back to the Creator, in a world that buffets us with fear, uncertainty, sadness, brokenness, rage, and loss. The peace and healing our human hearts desperately long for will never be found on this path. “All the world’s a rage,” to put a twist on a Shakespearean line. An ever-maturing faith is able to cut a path through anxiety, blame, and fear with which the world deliberately keeps distracting and demeaning us, where some of the worst pain is inflicted by those we care about most. As the saying goes: Hurt people hurt people. Faith does not retaliate. It withstands. It endures. It continues to bloom, and its fragrance beckons others to carve a better path through the the world’s dense, thorn-filled forest, to the inner garden. It is there, in our hearts. It has always been there…if we choose to see it.

In her poem, Carol wrote of her husband collecting a bouquet for her. I am reminded that one day, our faith will be made sight. We will BE the bouquet, the Lord’s very own, gathered unto him not as cut flowers but ones that shall bloom eternally in his presence, in that promised place where there will be no more tears, no more death, or sorrow, or crying, or pain (Revelation 21:4).

When I am still, I can feel the warmth of the sun on those flowers of peace; they open up, releasing their perfume in the soft breeze that infuses my soul.

Beyond this world’s brambles
Lies a garden of faith-flowers—
Opening, ever-opening to
Sunlight—yes, the
Son’s light.
Our hearts are filled there
Mind-rambles stilled there
In the hush of His garden
Nurtured by the Gardener’s
Grace.

Spiritual Journey: Lament

/ Fran Haley / 6 Comments

For Spiritual Journey Thursday (the first Thursday of each month), a fellow writer offers a topic for our group to reflect on individually. Then we write and share.

Today Ruth Hersey offers this: The topic I chose today, given that we’re in the second half of Lent, is Lament. The world has plenty to lament right now, and I suggest writing a Psalm of Lament…Aaron Niequist say[s] that a third of the Psalms in the Bible are about lament, whereas zero percent of modern worship songs are. 

I’m not sure I’ve ever written a lament.

Biblically speaking, they follow a general pattern:

  1. An address to God
  2. A complaint
  3. A request for help
  4. Expressing trust in God

And so I started with the following. I almost deleted it, but am choosing to leave it as a record of my thinking and my heart:

Oh Lord, my God
Creator of all
you have always been there

before the beginning
and never-ending

you have aways been there

in my joy
in my pain
in my sorrow
in my rage

you were there

before I knew You
when I forgot You
when I ran from you

and when I ran to you

you were there…

I know these things to be true; however, I am losing the point of a lament, which is to be an expression of deep sorrow or grief, yet not without hope, and not without seeking the Lord and ultimately trusting. I think I struggle with laments because their anguished cries to God can sound somewhat accusatory. That is not the tone I want. It feels like misplaced blame.

And so I turned to Psalm 13. It is the model for my second lament attempt, here…

How long, Lord, will I forget that You are here in the midst?
    How long will I try to carry my burdens alone?
How long will I grieve the ways of the world
     with human judgment clouding my heart?
 How long will my own flawed perspective blind me?

Look on me with mercy, oh Lord my God.
    Give me Your light, that I might see
Your ways, Your workings, unaffected by humanity
    which makes of itself an enemy.

Only in You do I wholly trust
    for only holy You never fail.
Grant me wisdom, strength, and grace all my days
    to live each one remembering and honoring You.

…it is still a work in progress, as are we all, thanks be to God, whose mercies endure forever.

Psalm 139 is my favorite of the psalms; I close here with its final verses as part of my daily prayer.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Whole

/ Fran Haley / 20 Comments

On the first Thursday of each month, a group of us gather online to write to a theme. We call this Spiritual Journey Thursday.

I’ve been out of the loop awhile. Today I take up the invitation again. Denise Krebs is hosting, and she has offered us the topic of wholeness:

What does it mean to be whole, on our spiritual journey?

I feel like my reponse could take a whole book.

Maybe that’s because I understand brokenness.

Last Sunday I wrote a letter to my mother after learning of her death (the post Strewn with loss). We were estranged for almost twenty-three years. It’s a story of mental illness, compulsions, a family paying a price, and no reconcilation. The truth is that after such a shattering we can’t wish wholeness into being; we can only find something of beauty in the pieces. We must learn to treasure that. To be grateful for it. The letter to my mother is to thank her for the beautiful shards amidst the brokenness. There are many. She loved me, once. I loved her. I forgave her. She never knew. She is gone. I could not fix her or the relationship. I had to learn to be whole without her.

The truth is that we are all broken in some way, and sometimes, wholeness doesn’t look or feel like being whole. It’s not perfection. It’s not even peace. It’s more like a path.

If we choose to take it.

To me wholeness being productive, fulfilled, and able to love. Three things I rely on to get me there: Faith, nature, writing.

I’ll take them one at a time:

Faith. I believe God is sovereign. God is at work even when we cannot see it or feel it, and when we can’t seem to make any sense at all of what we are living through. He often does his best work through the least likely people and in impossible situations (for nothing is impossible with God, Luke 1:37). In my current rereading of the Bible, what stands out to me, over and over again, is God’s provision to those who love and obey him. If I am to be honest about my own spiritual journey…I fail at this miserably. But that is the point. I am broken like everything else in this world. The desire for relief from pain or a racing pulse or an anguished heart or a reeling mind is the very desire that pulls me toward God. I do not have to understand ungodly things. I have only to seek God’s help in rising above them all. He will make a way. He will provide. This requires that I know more about him and so I study. Again…wholeness is a path.

Nature. I won’t go into my many bird stories here. I will just say that having a sense of awe, as in understanding that you are part of something greater than yourself, brings purpose and wholeness. It also brings wisdom; King Solomon “spoke of beasts and of birds, and of reptiles and of fish” (1 Kings 4:33). Says my study Bible: “Careful observation of the natural world and how it works it one of the ‘normal’ ways in which people gain wisdom… Solomon was concerned with the natural world.” Nature opens your mind and your heart. It imparts awe in abundance. Trees can communicate with each other. They try to help each other. When grass is cut, it immediately begins to heal itself; that’s the fragrance you smell. That very same chemical is also warning other grass that danger is near. The networkings of mushrooms is mind-blowing. It’s called “The Wood Wide Web.” Not long ago, a first grader told me earthworms are so important that none of us would be here without them (!). Nature offers healing. If you haven’t read Something in the Woods Loves You by Jarod K. Anderson…give it a try. He is frank about his battles with depression and how nature helped pull him out of the abyss and into a better place.

He writes:

Kindness won’t make you rich, but it will make you whole. I know there is hurt in your life…These pains stick to us like burrs. They tell us to lash out, to stop feeling, to turn away and turn inward… But these impulses do not control us. They don’t write our stories, and each time you hear them and answer, “No, not today,” you have given a gift to the world…The world will give back to you in kind, but receiving those gifts can take a little practice… Nature is out there and she is in you. Meet her halfway.

I do this, every day. I meet nature. I look for birds. And more. Here’s the thing: Start looking, and they will come.

So might the feathers of wholeness that grow into wings.

Writing. I haven’t done as much writing this past year as in previous ones. I could say life gets in the way. That I don’t have a lot left to give at the end of the workday. That I am busy with my family, from my husband’s health issues to savoring any time I can get with my granddaughters…these things are true, but they’re not all. The “whole” truth is that I am tired. So, when the March Slice of Life Challenge rolled around again, I decided I would not take it on. Despite having loved it in the past, the idea of writing for thirty-one straight days and responding to others tired me even more. And then I woke up in the wee hours of March 1st and thought, why not write, you will feel deprived if you don’t. And so I got up and wrote. The following day, I wrote that letter to my mother…something I realized I really needed to do even though she will never know about it. That doesn’t matter; she’s free of her suffering in this world. And once again I realized the power of writing. Since I took on the daily challenge, I haven’t been as tired, strangely. I’ve felt stronger. More able. More clear-minded.

More whole.

Most of that is due to you, my friends. Coming back to my writing communities is like coming home to a place of profound belonging.

What is wholeness? Being productive, fulfilled, and able to love. How to attain it? Through faith, nature, writing…

Thank you, my fellow travelers, for being such a vital part of my journey.

And my wholeness.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the March Slice of Life Story Challenge
and to the SJT writers
and to my friend Denise, for her invitation to “wholeness”


Three song

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

for my granddaughter

When I tell you your story
in all the years to come
you will remember
bits and pieces
on your own

because Three
records memory

I will tell you of these days
my own autumn
in which you paint
infinite points of opal-fire
against charcoal-ash sky

because Three
is alchemy

I will tell you how my heart sings
at sight of you running
as hard as you can
your little arms held out
to me, to me

because Three
is utter glee

And I will tell you how I listen
as still as I can be
when you sing snippets
of hymns…
oh, always, always abide with me

beautiful Three
ever holy

love you forever, Micahroni – Franna

*******

with thanks to Linda Mitchell for hosting Spiritual Journey Thursday writers with this invitation: “As we enter Native American Heritage Month I ask that you respond to Joy Harjo’s Fall Song in any way that makes your heart happy.”

Our two granddaughters make my heart and Grandpa’s as happy, and as awed, as they have ever been. We pray thanksgiving every day.

Changed and transformed

/ Fran Haley / 14 Comments

This week, my friends from across the country have reached out to see if my family and I are okay in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

We are. Here in central North Carolina we did not suffer damage like the western part of the state, where many people are dead and many more are still missing. East of us, a tornado flattened buildings in a city where my youngest son once served as a church worship leader.

Speaking of my son: He was in the North Carolina mountains when the storm struck. He and his bride spent the last day of their honeymoon without power, food, and water, trapped by downed trees on the only path to the main road. After someone eventually arrived with a chainsaw, my new daughter-in-law navigated their journey out by using her phone to pull up road closings.

They were fortunate to even have cell service. Thoughout the region, service failed just when it was needed most. It has yet to be restored in many places, meaning that families and friends still cannot communicate with loved ones.

Travel remains precarious. 300 roads are still closed, many of which are shattered with portions and bridges washed away. Mudslides added to the havoc of catastrophic flooding. The picturesque little village of Chimney Rock has been wiped out; “there’s nothing there,” says one eyewitness, except muddy brown water and debris choking swollen Lake Lure. A clogged sea of splintered wood and trash. A friend of mine was in Boone like my son during the deluge and saw a house carried off by the river; it floated away before her eyes. Asheville, a favorite destination and home to the famous Biltmore, is devastated. My husband and I watched the news unfolding and saw this beautiful city submerged. It looks wartorn. We no longer recognize the familiar streets where we love to walk. Recovery will extend well into next year, meaning that the major tourist season and local income is also destroyed.

We North Carolinians know that bodies are still being recovered (some from trees) and that the extent of the damage is not fully depicted in the news.

Words that keep recurring in the reports are transformed and changed. The mountain communities have been “utterly transformed and cut off from the outside world.” An artist with the River Arts District of Asheville, a hub of warehouses converted to thriving studios, galleries, music venues, and businesses, spoke to its ruination: “This changes everything.”

Loss does change everything. Life is forever categorized into before and after. Overcoming is a long, arduous journey, moment by moment, like breathing. Even though restoration may eventually diminish the pain of loss, soul-scars remain with us as long as we live. We are changed.

For those of you who pray, please do so for the victims of Helene. For those of you with means, please offer any help you can to organizations taking donations for those who have lost all. My school, my church, my community are doing so.

I think of the process of refining gold. I will not apply it to suffering and loss but to the effort of alleviating them. In this act, I believe, we are most transformed… in responding to the alchemy of the Spirit working in us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

It changes everything.

with thanks to all of you reached out to check on my family this week
and to my fellow Spiritual Journey writers