encouragement

Bird’s head

/ Fran Haley / 21 Comments

The morning of January 28. Almost seven o’clock. Driving to work in the lowest spirits I’ve had in a long time.

Several factors contribute to this. Usually I can find ways to redirect my thinking, but this morning I cannot. Tired, melancholy, self-worth ebbing…I don’t have strength to face the workday.

Driving past barren fields, icy ponds, old tobacco barns, and rural homes with white smoke rising from chimneys, I say aloud, “God, I could really use encouragement today.”

Rounding the next bend, I see a lone tree in the otherwise empty field. In the naked branches of the tree sits an enormous buzzard, its back to me.

I amost pay it no mind, except to think That’s a really big bird.

Just as I am passing, the bird turns its head in my direction…oh, what I’d have missed if I hadn’t been looking!

Stunned, I begin to cry.

Sometime later I capture the moment in a double etheree:

Bird’s Head

My
prayer
is for strength
as I drive round
the bend in the road
where a lone, lifeless tree
stands stripped in a barren field.
Perched there in those gnarled old branches
is a huge buzzard. It turns its head
just as I pass…a white head, shining like
fresh snow in sunlight, brilliant to blinding
…a bald eagle, enduring winter,
keeping watch high above the earth.
Jolted by this fierce response
I drive onward, sobbing
for the provision,
newfound courage
singing wild
in my
veins.

An old eagle sketch of mine

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the March Slice of Life Story Challenge

Note: The eagle was still in the tree that afternoon and over the next couple of days. I’ve learned that eagles do this in winter, to conserve energy. Its presence was exactly the energizing spark I needed to rise above: “Courage, dear heart…”

Heron

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

a triolet

with thanks to the heron

Every morning, at the corner of the pond
when I see the huddled heron
it calls my hunkered heart to respond.
Every morning, at the corner of the pond
with a wave of nature’s reflective wand
my muddled spirit is less bleak, less barren…
every morning, at the corner of the pond
when I see the huddled heron.

Grey Heron. PapaPiper. CC BY-ND 2.0.

A heron is, in short, a symbol that all shall be well

The duality of slow

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

In my recent reading
I have encountered
the duality
of slow…

educators know
DEVOLSON:

Dark
Evil
Vortex
Of
Late
September
October
November

a mysterious force
an epicenter
impacting
gravity,
functionality

(=dark matter:
a nonluminous material
causing several effects
in space)

yet in my reading
I also stumble
across the word
Slowvember:

an admonishment
an acknowledgement
that one cannot possibly
do all the things
well

so one might as well
choose to act
vs. being acted upon

a recognition
a submission
a slowing of the pace
even at the edge
of holidays
brimming
glimmering

they are,
after all,
celebrations
of light
(=holy-days)

allow me
an antidote
in an anagram
or two:

DEVOLSON…
Solved? No.
Do novels.

Carve the time
vs. letting it
carve you

nourish
your inner light

it is only flickering
not snuffed
enough is enough

-evil? No.
A divine pull
to the gift
of slow.

slow down, slow down, slow… Victor Bezrukov. CC BY-NC 2.0.

with thanks to Chris Margocs for the DEVOLSON inspiration

Man and dog

/ Fran Haley / 1 Comment

On my drive to work
at the stop sign
where the grassy green field
borders the rail-fence pasture
where two horses graze
beside the goat pen
where fat little
brown-and-white goats
rest atop their knees
beside the still waters
of the glassy pond
with rising mist

I see a man
walking his old, old dog
(its body is black
but its face as white
as snow)

as I pass
they walk and walk
in the autumn-chill
of another new day
against a backdrop
of brilliant red-orange-gold
and moody sky

the dog’s amber eyes gleam
as it it chugs along
despite weary bones

somehow
this continuity
this reliability
this faithfulness
every morning
is a tonic
to my soul

a shot of goodness
an understanding
that in the far, quiet reaches
something is right
so right
with the world

Cornfield Man. h.koppdelaney. CC BY-ND 2.0.

Write more

/ Fran Haley / 39 Comments

I started this blog in March of 2016 because I knew I needed to write more. At the time I was leading writing workshop training for elementary teachers and teaching writing lessons across grade levels; I would go on to co-design workshops for teachers as writers. Although I’ve loved the craft all my life, I wasn’t always an active writer; if I was going to encourage others to write, that needed to change. One must walk the walk… I came across the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Story Challenge too late that year, but I’ve been participating every year thereafter. I didn’t stop writing with the daily March challenge. I kept going on SOLSC Tuesdays. I found other online groups and wrote with them, too… and I kept going when my district moved away from the writing workshop model and stopped providing opportunities for teacher-writers. I kept on going when life took sharp turns. I kept writing because memories started flowing and I didn’t want to turn them off. I kept writing as a means of choosing hope over despair and because I kept coming across interesting things to try. I began recording ideas and dreams in notebooks, all the time thinking about what I might write next…for there’s so much more to write. So many more stories to tell. I love every minute, even when the writing is hardest. I have learned that just beyond that concrete wall is a garden of plenty, if I can just find the hidden door…

I don’t think I would have kept going if I hadn’t been part of a writing community that uplifts, encourages, and inspires one another.

You are the key.

I owe a debt of gratitude to all at Two Writing Teachers.

Fellow Slicers… don’t quit now.

Write more.

When you need a challenge
write more
When challenges are too much
write more
When you need silence
write more
When silence is too much
write more
When you need to know yourself
write more
When knowing yourself is too much
write more
When you need to remember
write more
When remembering is too much
write more
When your heart is full
write more
When your heart is empty
write more
When you are grateful
write more
for you cannot be too grateful
When you are out of ideas
write more
and more ideas will come
When endings come
write more
and find beginnings

My pencil pouch

*******

Thus concludes the daily Slice of Life Story Writing Challenge with Two Writing Teachers. Thank you for thirty-one days of joy.

Tomorrow is the first day of National Poetry Month; I’ll write more in VerseLove at Ethical ELA.

Suddenly sunflowers

/ Fran Haley / 25 Comments

Where I live
rolling fields
of soybeans, tobacco,
and occasionally cotton
are the familiar.
I imagine
it all looks like
a patchwork quilt
of various textures
and patterns,
from the sky.
Driving by
the pastures
where the pair of old mules
lived and died,
on my way back to school
at summer’s end,
I see something
unexpected.
Sunflowers.
Tall and tangled,
bordering a garden.
Light-seeking sentinels
with open faces
and inner resources
as myriad
as seeds.
At sight of these
yellow-petaled suns
my heart leaps
a little.
Is this what they’re mostly for,
sunflowers?
Beyond seed, oil, fiber,
beyond cleansing the soil
and waters
of nuclear radiation,
burning with their own
silent, mysterious fire
just to inspire?
I realize as I drive
backroads I’ve not driven
in a while
that they are everywhere.
All around me.
Whole fields of them
where I’ve never seen them
before.
They buoy my spirit.
Whatever task
lies before me,
I am up to it.
I stop at a store
to buy sunflower seeds
for my workday lunch salads,
as if channeling
the power of the sun
while remembering
what Van Gogh said,
as he painted:
The sunflower is mine,
in a way.

*******

My first encounter with sunflowers was in childhood summers spent deep in the countryside. My grandmother’s brother, who suffered trauma at birth and who lived alone in the old homeplace with his siblings looking after him, planted sunflowers in his garden. I marveled at their towering height and how their faces always followed the sun. Fields of sunflowers have indeed been planted to remove toxins from the soil after nuclear radiation. They are cleansing, healing, and surprisingly buoyant: their stems were used as filler for the first life jackets.

There could hardly be a more encouraging motif as the new school year gets underway.

Thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the space and invitation to share these noticings in the weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge.

Take heart

/ Fran Haley / 19 Comments

For Spiritual Journey Thursday

As it’s February, the word heart came to mind when I prepared to write for Spiritual Journey Thursday (the first Thursday of each month).

No doubt Valentine’s Day conjured the word. Still feels a bit early for that, although I saw grocery shelves being stocked for it back before Christmas.

I began thinking more along the lines of taking heart. As in courage, which derives from Latin cor, meaning heart, and encourage, from Old French encoragier, to make strong, or to hearten.

One of my favorite images of courage and being encouraged is a scene from the Chronicles of Narnia. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, young Prince Caspian’s ship has sailed into a mysterious, enchanted darkness where nightmares come true. Lucy prays to Aslan, the Narnian lion-god: “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us, send us help now.” The darkness doesn’t change but Lucy senses an inner change. She sees a speck of white materializing above. It comes closer and closer. An albatross, which whispers in her ear as it sweeps past: “Courage, Dear Heart.” And it leads the vessel through the infernal, terrifying darkness to the light just ahead.

We are nearing the year mark of nightmarish things come true. The COVID-19 pandemic rages on. Numbers are still high. New and more virulent strains are developing before vaccines can be obtained. Schools closed last spring and are still in various stages of reopening. There’s been turbulence in the streets, at the Capitol, a heavy toll taken on people’s lives, livelihoods, psyches, and souls…a long, long darkness.

Yet there is faith. And prayer.

Even when it seems eternal
Night cannot last forever.
Courage, dear hearts
One guides you onward
Until the morning comes.
Remember you are never
Alone.
God Himself walks alongside you
Every step of the way.

While the darkness may not have lifted, we can always sense the light.

There are, after all, the children.

They are unique encouragers. At the end of some of my remote learning sessions, students have signed off by holding up “heart hands.” My own heart lightens as I give heart hands back. While our church was closed, kids mailed handmade cards covered with crayoned hearts to my husband and me: “Pastor Bill and Miss Fran, we miss you!” Years ago, long before I entered the education profession, my oldest son, around the age of five, spent his own money to buy me a little piece of artwork bearing this quote on encouragement: A teacher in wisdom and kindness helps children learn to do exactly what they thought could not be done.

That is true. For it is exactly what the Teacher did for His students, otherwise known as the disciples, just before the the darkest days they’d ever experience. They could hardly have imagined the light ahead. Nor, I imagine, can we. But the heart, it senses. And clings to that hope.

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. —John 16:33

Spiritual Journey Friends, please click here to leave your link ❤

Don’t ‘should’ on yourself

/ Fran Haley / 15 Comments

Years ago, as I was lamenting things I wish I’d done differently as a literacy coach, my mentor leaned over and put her hand on my arm. Shaking her head, she uttered this unforgettable phrase:

“Don’t should on yourself.”

I wrote it on the cover of my coaching notebook. I would tell it to teachers. We laughed and something was released. The work would still be work, endless and immense, but one felt a bit lighter approaching it.

There are some foundational, common-sense shoulds. One should bathe regularly. One should wear clothes in public. But many shoulds serve as self-imposed bars to remind us we aren’t measuring up, somehow. That we are less. I always loved to write but was trapped for years by the exhortation: “A writer must set a regular writing schedule.” Period. Oh, I’d think, that’s what I should do. That’s what real writers do. If I don’t, I’m not really a writer. Except that my life isn’t ever arranged in such neat compartments of time. Schedules have to change too much. Then: “Writers write every day.” —I should do that! I want to do that! When I didn’t, a niggling sense of failure tugged at my spirit. Cobwebs of despair wound round my heart. The inner critic gloated: “Toldja. You don’t have what it takes.” Scraping should off myself took a long, long time—it likes to fossilize, layer by layer. Its armor is self-guilt. Its color, regret. Should doesn’t need the sharp spear of fear; it is the deadweight of an anvil, iron forming in the soul, shard by shard.

Should isn’t battled with mere acceptance. That’s dangerous ground. I did have to accept that I couldn’t write on the same schedule, every day, but I couldn’t stop there or I would never write. The secret weapon, for me anyway, was reimagining. What do I really want to accomplish? What does success look like for me, within the pattern of my days? I wanted to write more and to write better. I had stories to tell. Eventually they led to this blog. The blog led to wanting to uplift others—there’s already plenty in the world pulling us down. I found myself uplifted in the process. I write several times a week, some weeks more than others. I write whenever I can carve out the precious pockets of time…and for the record, thinking about writing is writing, which I do in the background of my mind all day, every day. A hasty note capturing a fragile new idea before it sprouts wings and flies away is writing. On a Post-It, in the margins of my planner, in notes on my phone, eventually transferring to a notebook… whenever the idea appears, I stop for a second to see it, translucent, barely formed, and catch it. To me that’s the most important thing a writer does. One cannot spin without a thread of silk. And so I had to reimagine what writing looks like, what it really is. I shook off should and carried on with far more productivity on my own terms—without feeling guilty for stopping to rest whenever I need to.

When Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog encouraged writing as a way to “shed your shoulds,” I was reminded, once again, that should is too often an unnecessary, subconscious burden…

Shed your shoulds
like leaves in woods
Trees shorn of fragility
preserve their ability
to survive.

Hear should rustling: ‘Don’t forget’
like leaves curling with regret
Spiraling, sigh by sigh
piling inside, dead and dry
cluttering today.

Beware should’s false measure
robbing Now of its pleasure
Shed those shoulds
like autumn woods
composting for tomorrow.

The moral of the story, Friends: Don’t should on yourself.

Scrape that mess off and use it for fertilizer.

*******

I’ve joined an open community of writers over at Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog. If you write (or want to write) just for the magic of it, consider this your invitation to join, too.

A passing prayer

/ Fran Haley / 3 Comments

Heard today that a friend and former colleague passed away.

We worked together for a few short years as paraprofessionals, until I switched schools to complete student teaching, the final step in my university degree. It was an unexpected door that opened later in life for me.

My colleague encouraged me. She was an interesting, eclectic person who celebrated individuality and embraced life even as she absorbed some of its severest blows. I remember one sunny conversation we had about the word “eviscerated” — the gleam in her steely blue eyes never dimmed, whether burning with impassioned convictions or shining with compassionate discernment. She loved to laugh, to comfort, to speak of spiritual things.

One day she surprised me with a handmade card bearing a mysterious drawing on the front: “This is my prayer for you,” she said with a smile and those unwavering, bright eyes.

I kept it all these years, long after we lost touch. Long after I heard that her compromised, declining health rendered her unable to work.

I found the card again this week during my incessant pandemic purge. With the TV in the background broadcasting the rise of coronavirus deaths at a local nursing home, I reread the card, marveled anew at its artistry and sentiment, thought of her, wondered what became of her.

Today I learned she’s numbered among those dead.

—How many messages do we miss in life, because we aren’t “still” enough to receive them. How many moments do we miss because we don’t make time. How many gifts go unacknowledged because we can’t see them while looking through the lens of unfairness.

My friend didn’t miss. She understood. Far better than most.

She reminded me once, long ago.

She reminds me, still.

It’s a choice.

Just now, seize the day
Offer your own gifts in return
You’ll find joy for the taking

Seize Heaven now, joyful old friend.

Rest in sweet peace.

Bocelli: Amazing grace

/ Fran Haley / 3 Comments

Last night a concert by tenor Andrea Bocelli was televised. He wanted to offer a message of hope to the world; his own country has been ravaged by COVID-19. And so he was recorded with only an organist on Easter Sunday in the Duomo di Milan, resplendent and empty … when he walked outside, alone, to sing “Amazing Grace” on the cathedral porch, the screen displayed the empty streets of major cities around the world.

Listening, watching, I thought this is one of the most abiding images of our time.

A golden shovel today, in honor of Bocelli, his gift, the wounded world-in-waiting, the healing power of music, prayer, and hope:

How amazing
this lone figure of grace
standing on the church steps singing of how
prayer and hope turn bitter times sweet
while in the deserted streets his angel-voice is the
only sound.

Photo: Andrea Bocelli. laurentius87. CC BY-SA. Edited with Cartoona Sketch.