Poem: "One Day"

Photo courtesy of Pixabay. In the public domain.

One Day

One day, before the earth grew old

and mostly bald and full of stink,

one day I woke to music, to a chirrup

in the trees that rose and fell

like exhalations of the earth itself―

a gargling of the morning air

in bright polyphony, in crisp staccato.

And I knew the birds were prophesying―

knew I heard the voice of God,

sweeter than the earth itself,

rising like a counterpoint, an arching,

aching tremolo―

heard the wild of Him that we have tamed

come bursting forth in feathers

and arpeggios and yearnings inexpressible,

too large and small for syllables that slip

into our narrow ears;

and so I stood and listened to the world

as He described it, listened to the reveling,

and knew that I was born for this―knew

that doves, that sparrows sing epiphany

at dawn each day, and breathe

the earth’s core in and out, and feather

all that breathes and flies and sings,

and I must sing, must sing, must sing,

and this is my arpeggio, my only syllable.

Amen.

© Judith Deem Dupree 2017

                        

A Marked People

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

The epoch we live in is the Time of God. A time like no other since time began on planet earth. An "overblown" statement? Well, in one sense, yes—these words may be said of any period in the long thread of history. Each era of earth and humanity has/has had its distinct season in the great mosaic of earthlife. Every "time" falls within those margins.

    

But . . . but there is something intangible, and crucially, overwhelmingly tangible about This Day we inhabit. The "what" of it is both simple—and overwhelmingly complex. Starkly put, dwelling on planet earth is becoming increasingly and alarmingly difficult and dangerous. And sad. The complexities—both diverse and similar—are an endless overlap of human and environmental crises. Our home in the universe is under attacks both "extraterrestrial" and people-driven.     

The Time of God? Again, there is no earth-moment that is not eternal in some indefinable sense. But it is becoming ever more obvious that something untamable and yes, largely unnamable is happening, in ways both inter-related and disparate. We are faced with crises that have sprung from uncommon roots—from nature . . . and our untamed nature

We are specifically here, deeply planted and often pruned and hoping to be "productive"—maybe not as much as we wish we were, in the ways we want to be, but in a way that prepares us to encounter and respond to life as it unfolds. We are called to live apace with the Son of God. We are ordained to persevere with Him today in a world that is in turmoil and spinning out of control.

We are inherently here simply because we have a Lodestar within, and if we know that—really, deep-down believe that—it draws us where He wants us to be at a given moment, for His purposes. The magi knew a Lodestar when they saw one, and it led them to a most unpretentious spot that kings and rabbis never knew of.

The Christ-within dwells in small places and enlarges them. He comes to us in our poverty and enriches us. He measures all things by His omnipotent seeing, and steps among us when and where we least expect it.

And so I believe we are indeed called people, and that if we choose, we can be called at any Given moment to step out of our cave, like Elijah (1 Kings 19:11-13), and hear that still, small Voice that called forth creation.

Yes—the world is indeed in turmoil. This is no time to mess around, to spin our wheels, to major in the minors, to waste our lives and our substance on things irrelevant or even peripheral. The very fact of our existing right now is a greater Gift than any of us is prepared for—or even wants. But it is ours, because we said YES to Him. We are here in this struggling world to offer a way through life as opposed to a way out of life.

I am not persuaded that everything I do and touch and want and dream of is eschatological and prophetic and ordained. But this week, a simple thought struck me, powerfully and with immediacy.

This is what I “heard:” “You are a marked people.”

Because we have “heard” and responded to His Call, we who live in this day, by the Grace and Call of God, are a “marked people.” His bloodstain is truly upon us. We are sealed by that stigmata for something quite immediate and pivotal. We are led into His green pastures in order to be prepared for the desert. We are led into the desert in order to discover, to recognize, to evoke the green pastures.

The desert is a step beyond our door. It may even have crept over our own doorsill. We are called to stand intact, broken and mended, in the midst of the world’s, and perhaps our own, rack and ruin, and to become more than solitary soldiers fending off the unseen enemy. We are, all of us, wherever we find ourselves—alone or crowded in or simply connected—called to become a Congregation.

Not a bless-me club, not a holier than thou society. A congregate of stalwart, pliable, tenderized, stubborn souls who have found Truth, and express it by the context of our lives—by the sum total, the momentum and minutia of our days and ways.

We may never see each other, never know each other upon this earth, but we are nonetheless a congregate of marked souls . . . a steady stream of pilgrims, magi, refugees from the dregs of life, following our Lodestar, finding the Rock-firm place where He dwells. If we have found it and lived it well, beyond the cave of our indifference, our fear, our endless distress and distractions, others will come seeking. And live  alongside us. 

~Judith Deem Dupree

The Journey to the Journal

Sky Mesa Journal by Judith Deem Dupree, published by Resource Publications, an imprint of Wipf and Stock

It began with an invitation to house-sit. A chance to get away, break loose from the "ordinary," the expected, and, let's be honest, the grief that had backed up inside. A time to shed some hard soul-grit that I'd carefully swept into the corners and closets of my life . . . lest anyone suspect I harbored such detritus. The unseemly and, I always hoped, unseen.

A proverbial "empty-nester" by now, I was lost. Not that I mourned for our three young ones all that much or often—they had left comfortably, in stages, by ages, for school and promising new lives, new livelihood—still near enough to show up when the dinner menu tugged. My husband was absorbed in a job that fit, that filled any empty spaces between us. It wasn't him I couldn't tote into any equation of tomorrow. I had simply lost tomorrow.

And so, yeah, I'd be glad to hang out a while on a funky old ranch. I grew up in the foothills of Colorado, and bunkhouses were no anomaly. It would be kind of like back-pedaling to a less mean and more lean time, when inevitable complications were manageable and I had the stamina to fix  whatever I thought needed righting. Yes, I realized that three months was a long commitment, but she'd agreed to only half of each week on site. I could see doing that. In fact, I could hardly wait . . . .

Sometimes adventure simply means a sidestep from despair.

And so I set myself up for a nice little trio of days into weeks into months. It sounded a tad scary, but shiver-scary, not trauma-scary.

Sometimes unknown is better than an endless known.

~*~*~*~*~

So I showed up, out there beyond the trappings of our busy world, where the brazen hills bulge up and down in anonymity. Sky Mesa Ranch: A bit or more down at the heels, redolent and raw with nature, left behind in a bright new age of tech. A paradigm and homely parable. I found there, to my surprise, an evolving link with the history of our lost beginnings—of my lost beginnings and unwieldy endings. And yes, our-my lost belonging, in this risky edge of life we have all begun to mourn. It was like stepping onto a bridge between Alice's rabbit hole and Gulliver's infamous Lilliput.

This journal is a strangeling, an unpremeditated tour into timeless Premises, both meanings. A book of hours. Time to learn and relearn reflection, to measure earth's shadows against the unexpected Light. Time to wander and to wonder. To tenderize—to begin at last to hear, with new-opened ears, the weary heartbeat of a struggling world.

The Journey is yours too, for the taking. Join me there. 

To purchase a copy of Sky Mesa Journal, please visit the Amazon link in the sidebar or click here: Sky Mesa Journal available now on Kindle and in paperback. 

We would be most grateful for Amazon and Goodreads reviews. Thank you.  

Finding Our Way in a Complex World: Blue upon Blue

Blue Sky photo in the public domain

A reprint from the Ruminate Magazine blog

See Original Post from January 27, 2015, HERE.

The day is brilliant―a wash of purity across the often-muddy sky, an opulent blue so intense it defies the concept of endless space. Surely it is a fascia that cups and covers the earth and floods our dowdy souls with its unnameable azure-cerulean-cobalt. 

In this moment’s proclaiming, even the word “blue” defies definition. It begs language we do not have for color we do not see with eyes alone. 

Once in a while, by our earth-heavy standards, we can see beyond vision. One blink, and suddenly our corneas are washed in that same purity, and world and sky and space shunt aside for a flicker of a moment. Long enough to know a hint―a tint―of Heaven, if we crave it so. We need it so―twice in a while. Once to convince us, once to remind us to imprint the unnameable upon our dull blue-seeing.

Of such is the Kingdom we sense just beyond the next rise. We need to head there, transplanted out of the blue that we know beneath a sudden altar above.

Yes, because earthbound we are!―tiptoeing or galumphing into a new year, dragging our baggage and bearing our gifts. Still trying to find a fit in this second millennium Anno Domini, here on this small outpost. Shaving everything down to a size we can handle, can tuck into the cerebellum―or perhaps, dump in the back bedroom where our unknowns and leftovers and last year’s wannabes often end up.

We are reluctant or we are determined . . . even hopeful: We are yearning for life as normal―a continuity, a grounding beyond our wanderlust.

Perhaps it is Wonderlust that will save us.

It becomes harder today, rowing into tomorrow. The “knowns” that we once lived by―or thought we did, paid heed to, woke up to every morning―are shifting rather suddenly, perhaps inexorably. Only a cosmic blink ago, we were huddled in caves and crannies at the brink of flickering campfires.

Today we homosapiens are sown across the face of earth, but oh, so precariously. Too often now we see, or become, victims of ravage―man’s worst nature or nature’s harsh rebellion. The “unknowns” have swept upon us, swept us off our souls’ narrow peninsulas like flotsam and jetsam. We are, we oh-so-modern pilgrms, drifting off on dinghies that have lost their mooring.

Physically, or not, we are adrift.

We circle the globe on silver wings beneath an endless sky, and see little more than the smog that blocks the busyness below. An apt metaphor for the way our civilization has evolved. We “see” what we have trained our eyes to witness. So it has always been, but never with so much of a muchness to flail and filter through.

Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase. – Daniel 12:4      

The Word of God says it, and noted writer Alvin Toffler saw it coming:

Future Shock is a book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970. In the book, Toffler defines the term “future shock” as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies. His shortest definition for the term is a personal perception of ‘too much change in too short a period of time.’ Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a ‘super-industrial society’. This change overwhelms people, he believed, the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving people disconnected and suffering from ‘shattering stress and disorientation’—future shocked. –Wikipedia    

Adrift beneath that sudden bluebeyondblue. Rowing through a sky full of our debris. Chasing something less than rainbows.

It was ever thus, both this propensity toward rushing forward and the heart’s innate resistance. We simply have tools in our hands and behind our brows that have taken us further, faster, from familiar shores.

We are “loster” than our grampas―intricately wrapped, engulfed in our strange new circuitries, mastering the invisible forces and illogical logics of an unseen universe. Twittering through the rocks and rills, through mountains, past ancient borders drawn by man to guard what now we know is never really, fully ours. Wanderlust.

“Hier stehe Ich! Ich kann nicht anders.” Martin Luther said it―said it well.

Here I stand. I can do no other.

There is a way to stand guard over what must not be lost, and finding it is a life-theme: Learning to grasp it when it suddenly takes shape “within.” Gripping what we discover cell-deep when we are tempted to equivocate or hunker. It is a bulwark―a hedge against the harshness or great moral laxity around us. When we “stand,” we row back against the tidal wave of all the atrocities and apostacies. It often comes to us, this new perception, when we are most down and dependent . . . lost in that sea of angst that has no shores.

Suddenly we have oars. And direction.

Today, the world stood still―right here before me―for an instant. For a lifetime. I offer you this gift of blue upon blue within blue beyond our ken . . . beyond our broken hearts, beyond our fixing. Look up. It is well; all is well with your soul.

Weeping with the Elephants...

Photo by Heidi McKinley

As a conclusion to the four-part series "The Elephants in Our Living Room," I post this photo by Heidi McKinley. 

It is common knowledge that elephants weep...mourn for their slain herd-mates...over the destruction of their habitat.... 

Elephants are emotional "beings."

We are called to weep for them....

The Elephants in Our Living Room, Part 4

African Elephants -- Public Domain (AnimalGalleries.org)

Part Four of a Four-Part Post

Awww, who are we to say "NO!"? And who would listen? Not the shadowy purveyors of shark fins or elephant tusks and rhino horns. Not the oil-soaked barons with their winsome promises and frankenfrack realities, or the tinkerers of witches' brews that foul our soils and bodies. Not legislators who feed at the trough of power.

And, of course, not because of a few cranky voices; no NO is loud enough in itself to be heard and reckoned. "They" have smirked a thousand times at NO.

But "NO!" is the only force, the single word we have. The MLK "NO!". The Gandhi "NO!". The NO that is fixed and immutable. Ground-swell NO. Finger-pointing NO. NO that stalks with constant footage and solid rhythm and irrefutable evidence. That notes  the sullied by their bloodied hands.

If. If we care enough to do this kind of "NO!", to do this "STOP!"

Most of us, as I said, are consumed by life's demands. But many of us are also blinded by our toys―and yes, our ploys. Oblivious to or paralyzed by the dying of a natural world once rich and ripe―teeming with irreplaceable, unimaginable, breathtaking diversity: immune to the magic of all things winged and finned and limbed―and the incredible variety of flora that sustains them.

In this world grown pinched and crowded, every tiger leaves his perfect pelt stretched upon each wall. Every doodad carved of ivory gathers dust upon our shelves―totems of the devil's delight for our triviamania. Every lithe sea creature slicked and sickened by oil, or dragged from the waves for senseless slaughter, ends up in our boat . . . . All  this will rebound upon us all.

For this is the final seduction: The shameless buying and selling and reshaping of the human soul. The trinketing of earth that feeds our vanities.

Enough is not enough for us. Never. Not in the board rooms, nor the sullied halls of congress. Not across the sweep of our society, no―not when bigger-smaller, newer-sleeker-better is parked across the street. Or in our pocket. Or wedged into our living room, where it fits so nicely and defines us so well, and matches the carpeting . . .

Or did, until the elephants came, in single file, a dreg of rumpled ghosts.

We must make room for them, these iconic creatures. Here in my home, and yours. We must weep for them, with them; cry out, call out, trumpet in their singular voice, tell the dawdling world of their distress, their demise . . . and make sacred space for them, safe in their own milieu. Before the last of them lies butchered on the bloodied soil.

Or it won't be long now.

Will we ride into history on the back of our beloved "mastodon," the gentle beast-nonpareil-progenitor on this Ark that is earth? Will we even know what we have forfeited? Noah is not waiting with a gangplank and an open door. The boat is pulling away emptied.

Open your door. 

List of Information and Statistics relevant to above:

*According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, 96 African elephants are killed per day for their ivory tusks. This is called poaching and is one of the primary reasons for their population decrease. The other major component to their population decline is the loss of their habitat due to human encroachment and deforestation. Nin Ninety-six elephants are killed every day in

Statistic: "More than 100,00 elephants were poached in Africa between 2010-2012. (National Geographic Society)

Although it's technically illegal to buy and sell ivory from freshly killed elephants, the sale of older ivory is still perfectly legal in much of the U.S. -- including California.

And since it's so difficult to distinguish between new and old ivory, the state's ivory market, the second largest in the U.S., has continued to skyrocket. In fact, the proportion of ivory offered for sale in California that is likely illegal has doubled in the last eight years. (NRDC)

---------------------------------------------

"Tiger numbers in the wild are thought to have plunged from 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century to between 1,500 and 3,500 today." (http://bigcatrescue.org/tiger-facts/)

-----------------------

Bees are a 'keystone species', and honey bees especially, are regarded as ‘canaries in the mine’ – an indicator of wider environmental damage and problems – a warning that action needs to be taken to rectify a dire situation, one that potentially affects not only honey bees but also other insects and creatures up the food chain.

Honeybees are dying at astronomical rates in the United States, Canada, and Europe, a phenomenon which could potentially have dire effects on the world economy and agricultural ecosystem.

http://www.bees-and-beekeeping.com/honey-bee-deaths.html

The Elephants in Our Living Room, Part 3

Elephant Odyssey at the San Diego Zoo

Part Three of a Four-Part Post

A world without bees and butterflies, dancing flower to flower? It's happening.

Big Chem brews the dark magic that kills the weeds that kill the soil that kills the blooms that feed these tiny grace-notes. This is the house that Chem built.

Chemicals and escalating diseases and pests―and God knows what else―are the death of them.

There is no compensation for the demise of the honeybee. Or the Monarch, our king of butterflies, whose milkweed staple has been largely eradicated. Or, indeed, the great striped cat, pattern-perfect in its timeless life-rhythm. Or . . . in a lovely-strange, impossible sense, the elegant "caprice" that is a dolphin―so peculiarly akin to the lumbering grace of its brother, elephant. Immutable diversity, not a bone alike. But ah, such amazing tenderness; such wisdom . . . such humanness.

So unbelievably akin to us. Our shadow selves.

A frenzy of bees gone insane? A shark drowning in its own life-home-waters, fins hacked off for a few bowls of soup? The horns of a rhino ground for a useless tonic? This is a real insanity, a malignancy that metastasizes daily. The list goes on and on, swells and feeds and breeds. Different rationales, varying methods, one over-arcing mindset: Gain. Prospering. At any cost to environment and ultimately, life on earth.

Most of us, in our once-blessed LaLaLand, are not directly guilty. But by neglect we harbor the unconscionable among us―say, ivory dealers who, with virtual impunity (through native poachers) are steadily slaughtering earth's timeless herds―nearly a hundred a day, official estimate!* And what of those within our nation's boundaries who willfully trade with or provide transport for certain foreign fishing industries―despite their well-known brutality. Supporting the agonizing deaths of great fish―to stoke frivolous appetites far beyond our shores! Where is the anger at such desecration?

A forfeiture that too often comes with nothing more than a "Tsk!" or a woeful shake of head. The world is dying of Tsk!.

All this, and more―infinitely more―is transacted daily from our shores with our implied "consent." With our consent―us, enlightened America? The land of the free and the brave?

Where are the brave hiding out? God bless the burgeoning movements, the NGO's and enviro-activists, and others who carry their placards and call out our spineless ways. But they are too few, spread thin among the battlefields of this age's travesties.

We in the background of this legacy of death-based greed go on with our undeniably busy lives with little thought for such atrocities . . . offering little-to-no demand for reproach and restriction. It simply doesn't fit into the needs, the mindsets of our already complicated state of being. But by this unawareness, or passivity, or disengagement, we allow evil to triumph. And yes, our earth's historic die-off is largely that. A historic betrayal indeed.

Why the disconnect? Because we do not care enough to see enough to do enough? To say "STOP!"?         

To find a way to do "STOP!"?

to be continued...

The Elephants in Our Living Room, Part 2

Photo in the Public Domain from The Dodo.com

Part Two of a Four-Part Post

A couple of years back, late summer, Southern California in unending drought:

The bees searched my shriveling yard day after day for fresh blossoms. Not speaking bee, I couldn't explain this dearth to them. Finally, one-overheated morning, and with an undeniably overheated heart, I fed them―from shallow pans laid out across the patio. Each container was dribbled with thin tides of sweet-water brew, dotted and criss-crossed with small rocks and gnarly twigs for landing.

They came, these sleekly shaggy little refugees. A few, and more. And more. Day after day they met me at the back door, waiting. Learning me, knowing. They circled me in a halo, walked my skin, tangled in my hair, sometimes nibbled me―a slight tickle, perhaps to see if I were made of sugar. They never "bit the hand that fed them." And around the rims of each pan they clustered and waited. Waited for life.

For more than a few days, it was like this―calm enough, and almost routine. Something of a fairy tale, a small and intimate cross-species undertaking-understanding. One bee hovered on the tip of my finger, and I whispered to it, consoled it, watched its tiny  mandibles twitch, as if wringing its hands in telling of its hunger.

Somehow, strangely, I was mama, and these, my diminutive family. And a shared grief.

But then the newbie's suddenly showed up. The word had spread. Wave after wave of bees, several varieties. It was bedlam. Oh, what was wrong with them? They fought, climbed savagely over each other, drowned in the sparse quarter-inch of brew, a tide of floating bodies―or jerked through the air and dropped to the pavement in a witless frenzy  . . .spinning, twitching until their lifeless little selves were spent.

They came to me in extremis. Beyond feeding. As suddenly as it began, it ended. It had to. I gathered up my pans and my pain.

Strangely, a year later, bees returned―as if their clan had been told the story. A few, at first, scoping the scene, I guess. Never many, and not for long, but they greeted me once more beyond the door, circled me . . . with hope and hunger. I stood in silence. And left, and left them hungry. A day or two of dwindling and it was over.

The ache in my guts and soul have never dimmed. I had become, in my well-meant ignorance, a part of their death-dance. Their plaint still echoes through me like a buzz-saw in an emptied room, describing absence.

And so I have a hive―oh, a wealth of flourishing hives!―back here behind my eyes, anchored in field after field of clover.

to be continued....

The Elephants in Our Living Room, Part 1

Photo Courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund

Part One of a Four-Part Post

They are here, shoving against the sofa, blocking the doorway, rattling the window shades. Keening. Grieving.

From my bedroom, huddled under blankets suddenly gone heavy, I hear them, feel them. Maybe one is sitting on me, like that nauseating commercial with its endless parade of elephant-exploitation. The breath of life in these mammals is fading fast.

My sister called from Northern California. The elephants have also found her; her heart is breaking too. She lives in a lovely senior residence--a labyrinth of small apartments stacked in five connected high-rise buildings, zig-zagged around a leafy commons. These behemoths can weave their way through any jungle, seeking shelter.

But . . . but they left their tusks in San Francisco: a lament that catches in our throats. In certain mazes of the nearby city, ivory is Big Business, ivory is King. Every elephant is Dumbo, a lumbering, floppy-eared source of trinkets and ornaments.

On my back deck, a tiger huddles under our large glass-topped table. Its muzzle is nearly visible, quivering silently beneath the fringe of a winter drape.

This kitty doesn't purr.

There are no lairs safe enough to nest in, on the pampas where the big cats once stalked freely, sinews taut with propulsion. These hunters long ago became the hunted. The haunted. Bred to be killed. Killed to be bled. Tigers are a rare prize now, a trophy that goads rigorous stalking by profit-crazed poachers. Their various parts are bought and sold avidly on the road to extinction. They are nearly at the end of the road.

"This land is your land, This land is my land...from California...to the Gulf Stream waters."

Off our Gulf Coast, some beaches and marshes and wetlands are still leached with a deep, dark fringe, like blackstrap molasses spilt. The odor is nauseating. The seas are noxious, half-or-more dead―and deadly―for endless stretches, permeated with toxic effluvia that erupted from beneath them. A sudden cataclysm.

There are dolphins in my bathtub, circling tightly. They are very quiet. They have nowhere to go.

No "alternate universe" lies conveniently at hand, no pristine waters around the next bend of beach. And now the seismic drumbeat of our search for sub-sea oil is set to become our heartbeat? Their death knell.

The losses there, and yes, off the coast of Alaska and elsewhere, are uncountable. Unaccountable―both in marine life and the once-viable communities dependent upon them. Irresolvable.

Woody Guthrie never lived to see what today's exponential greed-power-indifference would do to "this land." The great trifecta that has infected everything . . . everything.

This land is not our land at all. The exploiters have taken over.

This earth is no longer our earth (although it never really was, of course; we merely  have custody of it, which is the problem we face), and soon it will be no more an elephant/tiger/rhino/great-fish/you-name-it earth. The zoos and laboratories alone will keep them from extinction.

But the earth that bred them is their only habitat: Nothing can replace the irreplaceable.

And my home is haunted by the dwindling ghosts of these stricken animals, and the countless others falling off the chain of life. My heart can hold them all. Our hearts can.

to be continued....