Author Archives: Myke Johnson

Listening for Spirit

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Dawn colors and clouds, pink and blue over trees and shadow of a house

Our house isn’t best situated for seeing the beauty of sunrise or sunset. Too many trees and buildings. But the other morning, when I opened the blinds in my room, I saw this outside my window. Dawn magic.

Yesterday I was so sleepy and almost napping on the couch when I happened upon a documentary on PBS about Howard Thurman, Backs Against the Wall. I knew of Dr. Thurman but I don’t remember if I knew so much about him as was shared in this film. African American theologian, author, and teacher, he was deeply spiritual, became dedicated to nonviolent activism, and was the mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders. The film stirred something in my soul.

First of all, I found myself feeling a bit of envy–my old sin. I always wanted to “be somebody.” You know, one of those people you heard about, a saint, a well-loved thinker and author, an influential leader, recognized by the world. And I wasn’t that, except, to be fair, in the most local context. I was, for a while, a local spiritual leader. I saw something in Dr. Thurman that reminded me of myself, except writ large.

Most importantly, he reminded me of my own mysticism, my own deep connection to spirit. And I asked myself, am I listening to the voice of the spirit within me, am I paying attention to what the spirit is telling me right now, in this time? The truth is, illness dampens the energy of the body, but it also dampens the energy of the soul. It has been harder to hear the voice of spirit since my retirement due to chronic illness. I remember at first, spirit said, Rest and Joy, let that be your guide. And I did rest, and chose activities that linked to joy in me.

But I still wrestle with questions all the time. What is this chapter of my life all about? What can I do in the face of the brokenness of our world, in the face of war and oppression? If I can’t resist by marching in the streets, how can I resist such evils as the genocide in Gaza, the rising hatred toward immigrants in our own country, the demonization of trans and queer people by those coming into power?

At different times in my life, I was guided by an evolving sense of purpose. When I was in college, my friends and I would ask, “How would Jesus live in our times?” A few years later, I found the Catholic Worker movement, and to live and serve in houses of hospitality for people without homes–that felt like the embodiment of that purpose. When I woke up to the oppression of women in the church and in society, when I began to form community with other women waking up, I voiced this desire, this intention: “We mean to incarnate the goddess!” When I came out as a lesbian, I felt a deep sense of purpose in loving and affirming all of our beauty as women, as lesbians, to find the goddess in ourselves and each other.

There was always this pattern for me, listening and following the spirit as I was led into new understandings and new ways of living a purpose in the world. Following the distant voice of my ancestors into solidarity work with Indigenous peoples. Finding a home in Unitarian Universalist ministry, and serving in congregations as I was called, bringing together wider understandings of spirituality, and commitment to the work of justice activism in community. Coming to a deeper understanding of interconnection with all of life, and permaculture gardening, and a spiritual journey into earth community.

I see how lucky I have been, to be able to follow an inner stirring, to live and work from a sense of calling and purpose. Whether known or unknown. But I am still wrestling with questions now. What is my calling now? Can I hear the voice of spirit to guide me now? Here is something Dr. Thurman wrote about all this:

“How good it is to center down!
To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences,
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still
moment and the resting lull.…
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?—
what are the motives that order our days?
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go?…
Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment.
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes
of our turbulence, there is a sound of another kind—
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart
makes clear.
It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are
answered,
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of
our daily round
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down!”

I guess that is what I am trying to do, even now, to center down, to hear the deeper note. To let the questions come into that stillness. Even when it feels empty and dark, before the dawn has come.

Sustenance

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Today I saw this gray goldfinch on a gray seed-head of evening primrose! Both the bird and the flower have let go of their bright yellow plumage as we enter the dark season. But still so beautiful in their subdued and subtle way. We haven’t cut down the “dead” plants because they are still such a source of sustenance and life to our little friends.

It is these small beauties that are sustaining me during these anxious days in the United States election season. It is terrifying to me that there is a close race between a mentally-unstable fascist who spreads hate wherever he goes, and a very qualified woman with whom I disagree on certain policies, but who will be president of all the people, and uphold the basic principles of democracy. My partner and I dropped off our absentee ballots last Monday, and gave Kamala Harris our votes.

It breaks my heart that some people I love seem to have been taken in by the lies of the MAGA propaganda machine. I don’t know how to ease that pain, except to pray that the fascists don’t win.

I haven’t forgotten the genocide that is being perpetrated by the Israeli government in Gaza, and expanding to Lebanon. I will continue to protest that killing in whatever ways that I can, small though they may be, every day. I have heard that some folks say they can’t vote for Harris because of her association with the Biden administration’s participation in the genocide. I don’t know what might happen under a Harris administration. But I know that the other side will be much worse, and would accelerate the destruction.

For me, voting is strategic. I have protested in some way every administration of our country–but there are better and worse administrations. For all of my adult life, I have been part of the movements to expand equality and democracy–to women, to people of color, to queer folks, to disabled people. I have protested the wars of empire and supported the raising of our awareness of the interconnected web of life, and the challenges of climate destruction. We keep pushing toward the hopes, and resisting those who would take all of that away in favor of hierarchical despotism.

In this season when the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living is thin, I think of my uncle Jim, who fought fascists in World War Two, and then grew marvelous gardens when I knew him. I think of my uncle Richard, whom I never knew because he died in that fight. May their spirits help us now. May all the spirits who cherish peace and liberation help us now.

Peach Cobbler

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This year, our peaches were extra fragile as they ripened, so we picked them and cut them up and froze them before they could go bad. The upside to this turn of events is that I discovered the joy of peach cobbler. I created/adapted a gluten-free recipe that we love. It also works for raspberries. I’ve turned into an obsessive cobbler baker for the cool fall days.

Gluten-Free Peach Cobbler

Preheat over to 375 degrees. Grease a 9 x 9 glass pan. Fill it about half full with frozen cut peaches, and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon.

Mix together 1 cup oat flour (made by blending gluten-free rolled oats), 1 cup almond flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Set aside.

Mix together 1 egg, 1/2 cup yogurt (we use whole milk organic greek yogurt), 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 tablespoon honey, and 2 tablespoons soft butter. Beat together with a fork, and then add to dry ingredients, scraping the sides with a spatula to get it all. Mix together.

Then use the spatula to put the dough in clumps on top of the peaches, and gently spread out over the top of the peaches. Bake at 375 for 30-35 minutes. The cobbler should be golden brown, and the peaches bubbling; add some more minutes if it’s not quite brown enough. I’m not an expert, but as far as I can figure, with 9 servings, each serving has about 7 grams of protein and 14 grams of carbs.

I find that it actually tastes better after cooling off, because the juice from the peaches is absorbed into the cobbler. [If I make it with raspberries, I add 1/8 cup sugar to the raspberries to make them a little less tart.] It also tastes great with Greek yogurt on top, or ice cream.

The Lost Words

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I haven’t had many words this autumn. Now, here we are in mid October. Leaves changing color, lovely cool days and cooler nights.

On the autumn equinox, we had a ritual with a few friends around our fire outside. I had gathered some acorns and we passed around a basket of them and each took out one acorn to express our thanks for some aspect of our lives, and then one for a wish or intention that we wanted for the next darker season. My intention was to bring back more music into my life. For whatever reason, I hadn’t been singing or playing my guitar for ages–I mean, years. So I put on new strings, and tuned the guitar, and then started singing a song here and there.

I found this hauntingly lovely song, Lost Words Blessing, originally shared by a colleague in a worship ritual. The song was inspired by a book The Lost Words created by by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. “The book began as a response to the removal of everyday nature words – among them “acorn”, “bluebell”, “kingfisher” and “wren” – from a widely used children’s dictionary, because those words were not being used enough by children to merit inclusion. But The Lost Words then grew to become a much broader protest at the loss of the natural world around us, as well as a celebration of the creatures and plants with which we share our lives, in all their wonderful, characterful glory.” [You can find out more about it on their website, and order books and albums there as well.]

One of my favorite things to do with songs is to figure out how I can sing and play them, and so I did with this one. And then, I found myself thinking about Passamaquoddy/Wolastoqey words, and how the language is in a fragile place, with original speakers growing older, and newer speakers trying to find their way into the language after long years thinking in English. How many of those words have been lost, or almost lost?

It has been a powerful gift for me to be learning the language with Roger Paul, via the University of Southern Maine during the last six years. Roger told us that the elders had given permission to share the language with outsiders, so that others might wake up to the world view hidden within. But I am always conscious that the language is filled with triggers of pain for all that was lost and taken by the violence of colonization.

There was something about the language that resonated for me with the song “The Lost Words Blessing.” So I decided to try to translate the song into Passamaquoddy–which I quickly found out isn’t really possible. It isn’t possible in part because the structure of English poetry is based on filling the lines with many words to evoke an experience, while the structure of Passamaquoddy, as well as I can understand it, is to use words that themselves are full of descriptive action. I learned a lot about how different the two languages are, by trying to create a version of the song in Passamaquoddy.

Still, I kept at it, not “translating” but pulling out words and sentences that created a similar experience in me, and also fit the phrasing of the music. While I am only an intermediate learner, I have learned how to research using the pmportal.org, to try to identify patterns and options and vocabulary. I couldn’t do it without that aid, and likely I made mistakes. I still don’t know if or when it might be respectful for me to sing this song. Can I, as a white woman, bring the language into this particular experience? When might it be appropriate to enter deeply into the language such that I can create a song with it? But to learn the language is, in a way, to fall in love with it. I want to honor Roger’s teaching by speaking as well as I can. Whether I ever sing the song for anyone but myself, I have learned so much by trying to create it.

Here is a sample, the first verse, with the original English, the Passamaquoddy, and then a more literal rendering of the Passamaquoddy into English. [Note: edited Dec 2024 with updated draft]

  • Enter the wild with care, my love
  • Kuli-nutahan elomahkiwik
  • In a good way, go out to the wilderness
  • And speak the things you see
  • on ktitomon keq nemihtuwon
  • and say what you see
  • Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
  • Piliwihtomun on kminuwiwihtomon
  • Name it/them newly and name it/them repeatedly
  • And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river  
  • Peci-te pihcehkomon nit sip weceyawiyin
  • Even when you go far from the river where you are from
  • May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter
  • Ansa pokomkehsis sipuhsis seskahtuweht
  • Like the little fisher make the stream sparkle brightly
  • May you enter now as otter without falter into water
  • Ansa kiwonik cupotomhat, kini-cupotomha
  • Like the otter slides into water, boldly slide into water

Sunflowers & Pond Lilies

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This is the view outside our back windows. We didn’t plant these sunflowers, they came up on their own, with help from squirrels and the bird feeder. These are the ones that goldfinches and bees love so much. Even a photo can’t capture the brightness of the flowers. They glow! They make me so happy each time I see them. I also always think of a dear friend who loves sunflowers, and that makes me happy too.

Another source of joy are the pond lilies, that have also multiplied. In other years, we’ve had many one bloom the whole summer, or maybe one bloom at a time. So in the morning, I see these sunflowers out my window. Then I take a little walk back to the pond, and see the blooms, and the little frogs. I hope they will bring a smile to you as well.

Food for Wildlife

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Three goldfinches were perched on this volunteer sunflower!

We haven’t been that successful in growing food for ourselves in the garden. (Yes, the experiment with the kale worked well. And we harvested blueberries and raspberries.) But right now the peaches are getting mold on them just as they ripen. Another fungal issue. I’ve started harvesting some that are not yet quite ripe, and just cutting them up to put in the freezer. But in the meantime, the squirrels and a groundhog are happily coming to the tree each morning to eat a peach. The squirrel climbs up the branches to pick her own, but the groundhog takes one that has dropped off.

The squirrels are always fairly bold, but the groundhog is shy and runs away as soon as she sees us on the back porch. So this photo was from a back window.

The more I try to garden, the more I realize what I don’t know. But it makes me happy that critters feel at home with us here. Unfortunately, the groundhog has dug a few holes to get under our garage–we don’t want her to feel that at home, such that she undermines the foundation. So I refill the holes any time I see them, and then pour some human urine on the area, hoping it will discourage her from more digging. Marking our territory, so to speak. We’ll see if that keeps working.

Meanwhile, the birds are relishing the volunteer sunflowers and evening primroses that are blooming and going to seed in lots of places. Also the elderberry bush. They seem to like everything about our yard. That makes me really happy.

Three new little frogs

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We’ve had a string of very hot weather and then lots of rain, and I hadn’t seen our three bullfrogs in the pond for a while. I wondered what that might indicate? Today, I went out and a pond lily was blooming, and there were three new tiny green frogs sitting on lily pads. Who knows where they came from?

I woke this morning feeling heavy and sad with all the problems in the world, with isolation, with a lack of direction or purpose. So I brought myself outside and this little surprise happened and it lifted my spirits. I am grateful for that.

What the garden does with us

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Monarch caterpillar on milkweed

While on my morning walk, I suddenly saw a monarch caterpillar on a milkweed that had planted itself in our roadside strip. The next day (today), I saw three more. All we did with the milkweed was let it keep growing where it showed up on its own. There are two plants by the road, and three or four more in a patch out back near the pond. But the monarchs found them all the same.

I have been feeling discouraged lately about my ability to garden. First of all there is the challenge of chronic fatigue that limits my energy such that even one small project outside in the morning can wipe me out for the rest of the day. But then there is the limitation of my own knowledge about the green growing beings. Right now, it is the cherry trees that are struggling with some disease. I am thankful to Aaron Parker of Edgewood Nursery who suggested, after seeing photos, that they are most likely dealing with Cherry Leaf Spot.

The possible answer is to clean up all the infected leaves on the ground and on the tree, and use an organic probiotic “Monterey complete disease control.” But even so, it might not work. Another website suggests natural remedies such as neem oil, potassium bicarbonate, and copper fungicides, which can be used to manage fungal infections like leaf spot. This season, I hadn’t done any holistic sprays because the sprayer takes a lot of personal energy to use. So I feel sad about the cherry trees, and even though I ordered some of the Monterey remedy, I feel discouraged about how much more work I’ve made for myself. Will it even help?

But in the midst of this discouragement, the caterpillars showed up on their own. And meanwhile, a turkey mom and her three babies have wandered through the yard a few times. Here we see them scooting under our canopy where we sit outside in some shade.

Meanwhile, the front raised bed that we didn’t plant decided to grow evening primrose on its own, and today I saw a gold finch happily checking out the yellow flowers. He was too quick to get into the photo. So I guess as a wildlife habitat, we are doing okay!

Then I saw this quote on Facebook this morning, posted by a colleague, and it was a good reminder that it isn’t really about how well we can garden. Something more magical is going on, and I must remember that.

“There was one thing I suddenly knew with absolute certainty: magic is not just something you do or make, it is something the universe does with you. It is our relationship to the Divine. There is nothing more magical than the presence of the sacred in one’s life. It changes everything. … It isn’t something one does to the universe; it’s what a living universe does with us once we have awakened to its Divinity.” Phyllis Curott in Book of Shadows

And maybe, it’s what the garden does with us once we have awakened to its Divinity.

More dragonflies

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Yesterday, I went over to the pond in the morning, and saw nine or ten dragonfly nymphs who had climbed up onto leaves. I didn’t see them climbing, but they were holding on to the leaves, and slowly emerging from the husk of their nymph bodies. They were on the sweet flag, the blue flag iris, and the arrowhead plants. They say that nymphs live for two years in the water, so perhaps these were deposited as eggs in the pond two years ago and survived over winters, and now were coming of age all together. Sometimes, the leaf stalks they were clinging to would shake a little, not from the wind, but from the effort of their struggle. Is the photo from later exactly the same, or did it progress a little bit more? Truthfully, I can’t tell.

There was an adult dragonfly hovering around close by, it could have been the same one I had seen earlier in the summer. I wondered if it was watching over the nymphs protectively, or perhaps threatened by them, or interested in mating with them? It did stay close. A beautiful creature with black and white spots on its wings and a mostly gray body with black eyes.

I wasn’t able to watch all day, and then we had some rain in the evening. This morning, when I went back, it seemed like all of the creatures on the leaves were just husks of nymph bodies, and there was a new dragonfly at the pond. Turquoise eyes, mostly clear wings, white tail with a black end.

All of it felt quite magical, and also mysterious. An accident that I saw it at all, and yet amazing that I saw some of the process. In Passamaquoddy, the word for dragonfly is “apuciqaha.” According to my teacher, “apuci” means inside out, and “iqaha” refers to the way they fly in any direction. Seeing the adults emerge from inside of the bodies of the nymphs gave me a new sense of the meaning of “inside out.”

Once again, I see how the pond is home to all sorts of life that lives by its own rhythms, and what a privilege to witness some small aspect of that ongoing life.

Dragonflies

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Black and white dragonfly on green stalk of iris

I’ve seen dragonflies flying around the pond, mating above the pond, and dipping their tales into the water to lay eggs. I’ve seen dragonfly larvae in the pond swimming around. But until this week, I never knew if any of the larvae had lived long enough to transform into adult dragonflies. During the last few days I saw what I thought might be some sort of insect perched near the bottom of an iris stalk. But with a little research, I now realize that it is an empty husk from which a dragonfly larva has molted.

Dragonfly husk on a green iris stalk over pond.

The pond never ceases to delight with the cycles of life of so many creatures. This month also saw these toads clasped in their mating posture, the male on the back of the larger female. I don’t know if any of the tadpoles from before have survived–just because I don’t see them doesn’t mean that they aren’t hiding somewhere. But they are low on the food chain, eaten by frogs, and also by dragonfly larvae. However, with more eggs in long strings, maybe more tadpoles are on the way.

Male toad clasped to back of larger female toad, in murky pond water.

The heavy rains of the last several days have delighted the tree frogs who are singing in the night. I haven’t seen any of them in the pond this year. Each year it seems that different species choose to inhabit this little pool of water. Thankfully, even on days when I don’t have the energy to tend to the many plants in the garden that would love some attention, I can sit by the pond and appreciate all that it holds.