An ending…and a beginning

Posted on June 21, 2016 by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

After seven years, I am drawing This Lively Earth to a close. I have started a new blog called Nature :: Spirit, where I will continue some nature spirituality threads begun here and introduce others. The first post explains why the new blog.

Nature :: Spirit will be a place to try out the possibility that matter and spirit are not as split as Western societies like to think—that reality is more unified than most modern people give it credit for.

Please come join me at Nature :: Spirit. Your subscription from This Lively Earth will not carry over, so if you’d like to receive posts in your inbox, please sign up here.

See you at Nature :: Spirit!

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Finding gratitude before breakfast

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD
Sandia Mountain close to my home in Placitas, NM. It's easy to offer gratitude for beauty like this.

Sandia Mountain close to my new home in Placitas, NM. It’s easy to offer gratitude for beauty like this.

The Earth has completed a full turn around the sun since, inspired by the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, I set the intention to offer gratitude to everyone in the natural world every day, first thing in the morning, for a year.

So how did it go? Pretty good, all told. I rarely skipped a day, though far too often thanking other creatures got put off until after breakfast. Even now I procrastinate, even though I know from experience that being grateful to them first thing out of bed helps the day wear a different face—more gentle, more good—and helps me see that goodness with wider-open eyes.

It’s those benefits that keep me coming back, morning after morning, to stand gazing at trees, at birds and clouds, at rain or sun or snow, and now at Sandia Mountain—the mountain I recently left Santa Fe to live next to—and open my heart to everyone I see.

Really open it.

Open it so wide I can feel gratitude gushing through it toward all my neighbors—rocks and trees and animals and microorganisms, all of them kin, looking after us like aunties and uncles, providing everything we need to live. I thank them for being generous—for their gifts of color and light, of blood and sinew, of flowing breeze and the awe of flight, gifts of medicine and companionship, and of course gifts of the ground we walk on and the air we breathe. We are “utterly dependent on the lives of others,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer, “the inherently generous, more-than-human persons with whom we share the planet.”

I thank them also for being dependable—for remembering how to do in every moment, 24/7, the thing they were meant to do. Unlike us humans, who forget how to be ourselves—how to release our gifts into the world and especially how to live in balance with our neighbors—other creatures never forget their purpose. Trees always photosynthesize; hawks never shrink from diving through the air after songbirds; worms always burrow; flowers always wear their particular shade of red or gold. Ecologists call it filling a niche, a job that every shrub and creeping thing accomplishes with what looks to me like great ease compared to all the mindfulness humans must conjure if we are to remember how to be ourselves—how to take what we need without excess, how to give back in equal measure, how to be happy with each day.

Yet there are other gifts, deeper ones, harder to articulate, that come from finding gratitude before breakfast. So early this morning, as I watched the dependable spin of this generous earth bring about the daily miracle of sunrise, I pondered how to talk about those subtler gifts. The light was diffusing slowly upward from the horizon, the stars and then the bright planets fading out, one by one, in the swelling dawn. These early morning hours—and their counterparts at twilight—have always brought me closer to the deep stillness at the heart of things, especially during winter. On December mornings no birds are rushing to sing in the day; only the furnace whirring through the house penetrates the silence.

This morning my mind was distracted by reading in the local paper yesterday about a new oil well about to be fracked some miles away. How unfathomable that we humans can repeat this evil in an age of poisoned waters and superheated climate! Today, reaching gratitude seemed impossible.

But I tried anyway, sticking to my usual pattern, beginning at the center of the Earth and moving outward, thanking each part of the family for whatever occurs to me in the moment to thank them for.

Thank you, unbelievably dense core of the Earth, for holding us together. For keeping our atmosphere in place and the moon dancing around us.

Thank you, fiery seas of magma on which we ride, for moving continents and creating change. For providing heat and fire to those who live above.

Thank you, waters below the earth, for your eons-long drip, drip, drip, gathering liquid life in aquifers, bursting out in springs.

Thank you, surface waters, for life. Thank you, rivers, for being the arteries and bloodstream of a living Earth. Thank you, seas, for nourishing life, all life.

Thank you, microorganisms, archaea, bacteria, and fungi, for making the soil. For digesting all that drops to earth. For being the intelligent highways of deep nutrients. For stimulating seeds to pop and plants to grow.

Thank you, rocks and minerals, for building the foundations of this Earth. For being the oldest ones. For giving us beauty and deep music.

Thank you, creepy crawly ones, for your marvelous weirdness. For keeping us on our toes. For being so different from us, and so ancient.

Thank you, plants, for providing food and medicines. Thank you for the joy bursting out of each seed into the visible world. Thank you for your colors.

Thank you, animals of the seas and animals of land, for being. We’re glad you’re here, and we hope you always will be. Thank you for your varied intelligences. For providing food. For your companionship. For your variegated beauty. For working out the problems of survival in such hugely different and creative ways.

Thank you, trees, for your shade. For providing shelter for birds. For making oxygen so that we can breathe. For making it possible for us to be here.

Thank you, birds, for lifting our hearts with your twitterings. Thank you for the magic of flying. Thank you for singing.

Thank you, winds and clouds, for bringing change. For moving in harmony with what is. For rain and snow. For bringing surprises.

Thank you, moon, for your pearl-lit beauty. For guiding us in the night. For pulling the tides of Earth.

Thank you, sun—dear sun!—for life. For providing all the energy we need to live on Earth. For not forgetting how to burn.

Thank you, planets and stars, for the dance of the cosmos. For moving continually throughout time. For inspiring us with grandeur.

Thank you, Creator, great mystery, Life and Death, for flowing within and behind all things.

By the end, a magic had stolen over me. I was thinking a lot more about how magnificent each of these companions are than I was about the mere evil of a new oil well. To be sure, each new well, each act of poisoning air and water and land, increases the threat that we will destroy life on Earth as we know it, including ourselves.

But the life that brought us into existence is far greater than the destruction humans can do. We may be able to blast the tops off mountains, but we can’t touch the Earth-deep fire that explodes upward to create new mountains. We can harness the power of the atom, but we can’t even comprehend the intricacies of the nucleus, much less bring it into being. We can measure light-years to distant galaxies, but we can’t direct the cosmic dance whirling every day and night across our sky. We can destroy life on Earth as we know it, including ourselves—and we are speeding toward that end by burning dinosaur-aged fossil beds—but we can’t stop Life from trying new experiments and evolving different delights on an Earth as far removed from ours as the modern Earth is from the Jurassic.

The power of nature lies beyond anything we can touch. And this is the deeper magic of finding gratitude before breakfast—it keeps me focused on what humans can’t do instead of what we can. Like gazing at the boundless ocean, saying thank-you shrinks human power down to size. It helps me remember that the forces of Life and Death are infinitely larger than anything humans can accomplish. This knowledge is a comfort; it brings joy.

So, as I sit at dawn giving thanks to each of my kin, it occurs to me that at a moment like this, when humans are destroying the world that gave us birth, the best possible way to respond is to stay rooted in the awe-inspiring beauty and mystery of nature’s power. To absorb the world’s joy. To revel in the quirks and genius of every life form, including ours. To dwell in the goodness of the dance, performed fresh every morning, between the whirling Earth and the rising sun. To keep the awareness this big.

For only in this way will we have the juice that we need to address the current crisis. Being mesmerized by evil will sap our attention from the very power we need to meet it in the most effective possible way. To address a warming climate and poisoned waters and lands, we need first to dwell in the joy of birds flying and trees photosynthesizing and babies being born and yes, even the mystery of a Cooper’s hawk snatching a junco from my feeder at sunrise. For only by staying rooted in these unfathomable mysteries can we begin to absorb their power, can we begin to share their joy. And a spirit of joy is essential for finding truly creative solutions at this time.

I think I’ll keep on saying thank-you to all my relations every morning—as often as I can, before breakfast.

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Listening to Nature as Source

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

Rocky Mountain penstemonWe just passed the longest day of the year and are now into summer. Happy Solstice! In my Santa Fe yard the Rocky Mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus) of late spring is giving way to the firewheel (Gaillardia aristata) of summertime. Pine tree tips hang thick with pollen.

Summer is a great time for going on adventures in nature—communing with forest or seashore, hiking or camping or kayaking. Yet while most of us enjoy nature, it’s all too common to experience our spiritual lives as rather different from relaxing in nature. As if nature is one thing and spirit is something else. Or as if the visible world is over here, the invisible world is over there, and never the twain shall meet.

In nature spirituality, it’s all the same Great Nature

A path of nature spirituality (or a shamanic path) brings these sometimes separated parts of life together. Nature and Source can be experienced as one. While the Great Mystery (or Great Nature or Living Spirit or Source) is invisible—greater than and beyond the physical world—one gets to know it by watching and listening to the physical world, to nature. firewheel3And the bird, animal, rock, water, fire, or other part of nature we meet as a Helper during a meditative journey is like the ordinary being we encounter in nature, but more so. The spirit bear or tanager or flower is recognizable as itself, bringing all the wisdom of its particular species, but because it is appearing in spirit, it may do things that the everyday bears or tanagers or flowers can’t do.

My primary Helper, Bear, in a meditative journey recently shared about this: “Going into physical nature and communing with a tree or going on a spirit-journey and communing with a tree in spirit”—Bear waved a paw—“it’s all the same thing.” Great Nature is the one reality we meet, both in the sensory world of nature and on a meditative journey. It’s all about relationship, getting to know nature in one form or another. The same Source comes to support us through both visible and invisible means.

Walking with Helpers

Who are the Helpers? They are the unseen, or spirit, forms of the creatures we glimpse in the woods or land or river. Helpers convey the tremendous wisdom and love of the Source, the Living Spirit. They walk with people as unseen friends.

Think of your closest friend, available at a moment’s notice by tapping a few keys. Now imagine you didn’t need to use the phone, and instead of signing off at night, your friend was available 24/7 with unfailing caring and support. And then suppose that your friend knew you perfectly, wanted only what is best for you, and always helped you see a bigger picture.

Finding a friend like this is life changing. Touching such caring gives people a different stance in life. My partner, Tim, will tell you that I’m happier and more peaceful since I got to know my Helper.

Finding your Helper

pine pollenHow do you find your Helper? It means taking time for reflection, time for being with the quiet of your heart. Spiritual or shamanic journeys are best for this—going into quiet meditation and tracking images or feelings as they arise. Once you have met your Helper, simply spending time with them on a regular basis in meditative journeys brings about a rich and joyous experience of living. (If you would like help in finding and developing a relationship with your Helper, I am available to provide support. Feel free to contact me using the contact form in the sidebar.)

Great Nature

“Great Nature has another thing to do / To you and me,” wrote the poet Theodore Roethke, “so take the lively air, / And, lovely, learn by going where to go.”

Here’s to learning by going!

Wishing you many summer adventures in Great Nature.

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20 million cheatgrass seeds

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

It’s cheatgrass time in Santa Fe, and beside every street those foot-tall seas of delicate green seed heads are waving in the May breezes.

cheatgrass sea

Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) is bad news. Or it is thought to be. Called the “scourge“ of the American West, cheatgrass is deplored by ecologists, botanists, wheat farmers, native plant advocates, and ranchers alike for “infesting” American lands. That’s why a year ago, before reseeding our yard with native grasses and wildflowers, I spent a lot of time pulling it. Getting rid of cheatgrass is the first step in any successful restoration with native plants.

Given that each stem can produce up to 1000 seeds, and given the sheer mass of it—filling a 90-gallon trash bin twice—I figure I removed some 20 million seeds from this yard.

It worked. This year, cheatgrass is down by more than half. A few more years of careful weeding, and cheatgrass would be gone from this yard, all archived seed in the ground removed.

I love pulling cheatgrass—those tiny roots, slipping so easily from the soil! Those furry lavender stems, so soft! Sometimes I pull it just for fun, because it’s the easiest invasive to pull, and weeding it is quiet and meditative, giving me time to listen to rustle and twitter of birds in the yard.

And yet.

Every time I bend to the ground hunting cheatgrass, there’s a little nagging voice in my mind. It sounds something like this:

Do you really know cheatgrass?

Of course I do! I argue back with all the conventional wisdom I know:

Cheatgrass starves out native plants. It germinates in the fall (not the spring), and overwinters in the form of tiny dormant but green shoots, continuing to grow its root system all winter long. So when spring does come it has a head start on everyone else. It springs into action first, “cheating” other grasses and plants of their moisture and their nitrogen. It spreads so early and so fast that others can’t get a foothold.

When cheatgrass moves in, native animals move out. This story reports on a decline in golden eagles in Utah’s western desert because cheatgrass crowded out the sagebrush. Without sagebrush, jackrabbits had no place to hide. Without rabbits in the area, eagles had no reason to visit or nest there.

Cheatgrass lengthens wildfire season. Cheatgrass sprouts early and matures early, so by June it is already dry and brown. It is flammable 1–2 months before other plants and stays flammable 1–2 months after, according to this widely quoted BLM research paper by Mike Pellant.

Cheatgrass increases wildfires and vice versa. Cheatgrass has a special relationship with fire. It moves into burned zones more quickly than most plants, transforming each new region into a cheatgrass monoculture, which in turn is more likely to burn. Some ecologists say that the fire cycle in sagebrush lands has shortened from a 40- to 100-year cycle before cheatgrass to a 5-year cycle since it arrived. And with each fire, cheatgrass grows stronger. Pellant reports that after a wildfire cheatgrass changes its pollinating strategy. Under normal conditions it is a self-pollinator, but after a fire cheatgrass cross-pollinates, becoming even more vigorous and adaptable.

Cheatgrass warms the soil. According to Pellant, the soil in grasslands is about 18 degrees F warmer than in sagebrush lands. So when cheatgrass turns a region into grasslands, the area warms, favoring the cheatgrass even more. Bad news for a changing climate as well.

cheatgrass awnsGrazing animals don’t eat it. Cheatgrass seeds have long awns, the needle-sharp bristles at the ends of every seed casing. The conventional wisdom says that animals may browse on the plant when it is green, but they avoid it as soon as it puts out seed because the sharp awns hurt their mouths. So the vast rangelands of the American West are being blanketed by a crop that, it is thought, feeds no one or, at best, is undependable. Moreover, cheatgrass shortens the grazing season because once it takes over, there are no more late-season plants to eat.

I knew cheatgrass was bad news. I had fun getting it out of my yard.

And yet . . .

. . . there was that pesky little voice inside asking its bothersome questions:

What is the big picture here? What about a hundred years down the road?

Which led to the peskiest question of all:

Does cheatgrass perhaps know something you don’t?

When I hear contrarian questions like this, I try to pay attention. Especially because I am on the spiritual path of listening to Nature-Source, I try to listen for subtler voices. Even when they challenge all the conventional wisdom. Even when I don’t want to hear them, which is way more often than I care to admit.

I’m all too aware that what looks like disaster from a current human perspective can point to a deeper, longer-range wisdom about living sustainably and joyfully on Earth. Like the bark beetle “catastrophe.” From another perspective—say, that of the forest, the same forest that looks to human eyes like it’s being decimated—a bark beetle epidemic might just be the very thing that saves the forest.

So for a year I’ve been living with these nagging questions about cheatgrass. They have sent me searching for a deeper story. I’ve been digging in scientific literature, interviewing USDA researchers, and hunting down whatever I can find about the history of cheatgrass.

The most surprising thing I’ve learned is how little attention is being paid to cheatgrass itself. Almost no one writes about one very basic, scientific question: What ecological niche does cheatgrass fill? What services does provide to its surroundings? Or, to ask it in terms of relationships: How does cheatgrass fit into the larger give-and-take of its eco-community? The voices arrayed against cheatgrass and the urge to eliminate it are so overwhelming that almost nothing can be found about, say, what cheatgrass might know that we don’t.

My research is continuing. I will report on it soon. (And if you know something about the ecological niche question, please share it with us in the comments.)

In keeping with my spiritual path of listening to Nature-Source, I’m going to consult with cheatgrass itself. Or at least try opening my mind enough to make it possible. I have to say, this one is stretching me. The conventional wisdom is so strong, and I’m such a native plant enthusiast, that it’s taking me some time to seriously open to learning from cheatgrass.

But now that my mind is opening, there is the other half of the relationship to consider: After those 20 million seeds, why would cheatgrass want to talk to me?

Stay tuned for the rest of this story.

Update: Six months after this post, the New York Times published “Researcher Finds Way to Fight Cheatgrass, a Western Scourge,” by Christopher Solomon.

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It’s all a gift

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

A gift of life in apricot budsHere in Santa Fe the pink apricot buds are swelling, and finches are nibbling hungrily at the fresh buds. Spring is coming! Though with more frost on the way we may not see ripe apricots this year, at the moment the birds are gobbling up their fresh bounty.

The bounty of the Earth is something to treasure every day. I recall watching a mouse in my patio garden some years ago, poking around for breakfast among crisp autumn leaves. I grabbed binoculars for a closer look. The mouse nosed here and there and then suddenly pounced, seizing a newly dead yellow jacket. It stopped for a moment to nibble on the carcass then, as if it couldn’t contain itself, picked up its treasure and scurried a foot or two away and nibbled some more. Then just as excitedly it scampered to yet another spot for more feasting. The mouse looked for all the world like Bodhi with a fresh bone—so thrilled he can’t settle down in one place.

The mouse came to mind this week while on a meditative or shamanic journey with Bear, my Spirit Helper. Bear was reminding me of the great bounty of the Earth, how it provides moment to moment for each creature. “It’s all a gift,” Bear said, and then used a word I don’t hear very often. “It’s all mercy.” Bear suggested that a good way to live is to be as humble as that small mouse, who knows that every moment is a gift because at any moment one could be snatched for food.

In truth, Bear went on, every one of us is as vulnerable as that mouse. All creatures, from birds to mice to humans to bears, rely on the gifts that become available moment to moment. Humans beings, though, mask our utter dependence on Earth by amassing possessions, by saving and insuring, and by taking credit for our successes—as if they were due to our efforts.

But in fact every moment is a gift. In every moment we are utterly dependent on the gifts of others—gifts of food, gifts of beauty, and of course the gift of life itself, which lies far beyond our ability to comprehend. Every moment we live is a gift handed to us by a bountiful universe.

The truth of the matter is that living on Earth is an exercise in entrusting oneself, moment to moment, to the great gift that is Life.

This means that taking credit for successes makes no sense, and neither does passing judgment for failures. The only truthful way to live, Bear suggested, is with a simple, open heart. Showing mercy to self and others. Being grateful for the gift of each moment. Because only in this way is it possible to see how utterly we rely on the great mercy of the Universe, and only by seeing this great mercy can we enjoy it fully. Opening to the gift makes it possible to feel a complete delight in living.

“It’s all a gift,” Bear repeated. “It’s all mercy.”

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Healing from Bell’s palsy

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

The facial paralysis arrived overnight and crept away stealthily. Though my case was quite severe—nearly complete paralysis on the left side—in only two and a half weeks my face had healed to the point of a normal smile; the impairment was invisible. (Full healing took some weeks longer.)

Since Bell’s palsy is so common—and mysterious—and since my bout of it was so short compared to many, I want to let others know a few things that helped.

Let me preface it by saying that I did not take either steroids or antivirals, the medications that are often prescribed. I wanted to avoid both, so I did.

Here are some things that helped in my healing process, in no particular order:

1. A soothing atmosphere. Early on, a friend with experience in treating nerve damage recommended that I go toward anything soothing or relaxing. I found that I did need more peace and quiet than usual, in part because the facial nerve feeds a small bone in the inner ear that modulates loud sharp sounds. When that bone was out of commission every loud sound, even low ones, came across as a high shriek that stabbed like a knife. I work from home so didn’t have to battle traffic noise except while taking Bodhi for his afternoon walks, and then I often wore earplugs. And stayed happier!

2. Massage. Upper-body massages felt soothing and relaxing, plus they loosened muscles in neck and shoulders that had tightened against the injury. I got a professional massage once a week, plus I massaged and manipulated the face muscles many times each day. Gently, of course. Just to give them some enjoyable motion and help them remember how to move. My massage therapist suggested that the full benefits of a massage may only show up a day or two afterward. I noticed that about forty-eight hours after each professional massage, face and lip muscles took a big jump forward toward healing. Oh, and I gave myself full head and foot massages every day. Just because it felt good.

3. Breathing. When a part of the body is impaired, we tense up against it, which means we tighten muscles against the free flow of rejuvenating blood. I found it extremely hard to keep breathing normally through the headaches and eye pain and impaired vision that came with Bell’s palsy. I took ibuprofen a couple of times when the headaches were at their worst, but more often I stopped to breathe deeply. Anything that opens the breath will aid physical healing, since being able to fully breathe bathes each part of the body in fresh, life-giving nutrients. I took many time-outs each day to take a few extra deep breaths.

4. Easy breath-based exercise, especially cross-side movements. During the nerve injury I needed to modify my yoga practice. Head-down positions caused an instant congestion in the skull that felt like the opposite of healing, so I temporarily stopped all upside-down positions, even quick downward dogs. Instead, I focused on easy breath-based motions. My favorite was a modified abdominal crunch, which I’d just learned in a yoga class a month or so before:

Lying on the back, knees bent, feet flat on the floor, interlace the fingers behind the neck or head. Breathe in and allow the back area at the waist to lift off the floor as you do. Inhale fully with the spine arched. Then breathe out and allow the spine to roll gently to the floor while the head and shoulders rise gently up. Keep up an easy rhythm, focusing on a full, slow inhale and a full, slow exhale while the spine area near the kidneys rolls gently up off the floor and down again.

And here’s the cross-side or easy-twist variation:

Breathe in while the spine area at the waist rises off the floor. Breathe out, leaving the left elbow resting lightly on the floor. Raise the head, shoulders, and right elbow, and touch the right elbow to the left knee. Exhale completely. Breathe in, returning head and shoulders to the floor and lifting the spine in an arch. Breathe out, raising the left elbow to the right knee.

Easy twists and cross-side motions of all kinds felt helpful, especially when done slowly, soothingly, in time with the breath. Nothing else left me quite so refreshed. (They felt much more refreshing during Bell’s palsy than they usually do.)

5. A healing mind-set. With Bell’s palsy I became hypersensitive to disharmony and needed peaceful surroundings. Two mind-sets were particularly helpful to healing: joy and gentleness.

Joy. “Laughter is the best medicine” is not just folk wisdom. Research supports the healing power of joyfulness. I find that joy lives at the heart of nature, so during Bell’s palsy I kept going by meditating on nature. Every day I visited favorite nature places in memory and soaked up some of their magic. I love the healing power of the desert where I live, but it’s austere, and during this bout with a damaged nerve I found that landscapes bursting with green life-force felt more rejuvenating. I revisited damp hiking trails winding through thickly teeming tropical forests on Maui; I renewed my love for two enormous mossy coastal oaks on spring-green hills near Mt. Tamalpais. I visited in memory every favorite place I could think of, and then I thought of some more places and visited them too. Each scene imparted a feeling of happiness, and every moment of happiness opened the breath and worked some revitalizing magic. If joy is the wellspring of healing, then I drank deep. Every day.

Gentleness. My Bell’s palsy took place during the darkest time of year, so I went with the flow of the season and cultivated gentleness. I treated myself like an infant, regarding my injury with tender kindness. I took naps when needed. I made friends with the quiet I needed for healing, remembering how much, as a child, I loved to simply sit quietly and look at things or listen to the gentle sound of breeze through tree leaves. I found a piece of music that took my mind to that sweet, gentle place, and I listened to it over and over. Other people might need upbeat music for healing, but for me this time, gentleness was the ticket.

6. Healing supplements. Research shows that omega-3 fatty acids support nerve regeneration, so I took 2 tablespoons of fish oil every day for a couple of weeks. I don’t have any results to report except that the emulsified, fruit-flavored kinds taste yummy.

7. Eye pillow. Bell’s palsy often prevents the affected eye from closing completely, leading to dry eye and pain and possibly impaired vision. I slept on my back and placed an eye pillow over my eyes. It added just enough pressure to keep the left eye closed during the night. Keeping the eye moist during the day was a different challenge, one I never figured out.

8. Enjoying myself as I am. We often call it “self-acceptance,” but I discovered that the truly healing mind-set is more active than that. Healing resides not just in accepting oneself but in enjoying oneself. Enjoying the “how” of oneself. Enjoying how one is. Enjoying how one goes through life.

I made peace with my lopsided face when, during the first week of paralysis, full of trepidation, I decided to go to the nature center anyway and cover my usual shift behind the counter. Visitors came and went—a record number that day—and though I could feel my ragged mouth hanging open when I laughed and talked with them, no one seemed to notice. If they did, they were kind enough not to register it.

But Bell’s palsy offered a chance to make peace with the self at deeper levels too, and for me this had something to do with claiming solitude. Other people may find that conversation and company rejuvenate them best, but for me at this time, solitude and silence were key. And as I slipped finally into enjoying them, solitude and silence brought a new reality to life. At the end of several weeks I felt like a door had been knocked open inside me to a finished basement I didn’t know I had, and that deep refuge of silence was warmly welcoming. Claiming and enjoying “how you are” in life, however you are, works magic.

So how am I now? All healed up, as far as I can tell. The healing began during the first week with a few tiny muscle twitches in one part of my lip and then, the following day, a millimeter of movement in that same spot. During the second week my face was raging with muscle tics—in the lip, in the eyebrow or eyelid, in the cheek—and after each one came a piece of restored movement. Two and a half weeks after onset, my smile was again normal and the nerve injury was invisible.

Now, about six weeks after onset, I find a tiny muscle twitch still happens here or there, and I welcome it, knowing that a final millimeter or two of micromuscle is coming back to life. My hearing is normal again too. I am grateful beyond words for how quick this trip was to the underworld of injury and illness.

Like many trips to the underworld, this one brought its gifts. I loved the deep inner silence that became available while I was sick. I’ve had a lot more trouble finding my way back to it since I am well. I forget to visit the joyful places too when my daily need is not so great. But I feel lucky to be well again.

Healing is a gift. Healing is always a gift. We don’t make it happen, we don’t manifest it, we don’t manufacture it. The world is not a machine that we can regulate with our acts.

But we can make the space for healing to happen. Doing things to promote healing is like cleaning out the rooms and rearranging the furniture so healing can move in. Without some freshly empty space, healing might be tempted to just walk on by. And though making space doesn’t guarantee a cure, it does ensure that your life will be more spacious, with more room for something new.

Wishing you healing in body and spaciousness in spirit during this new year.

My face on Dec 4, 2014, four days after onset of Bell's palsy

My face on Dec 4, 2014, four days after onset of Bell’s palsy

My face today, Jan 12, 2015, six weeks after onset and fully healed

My face today, Jan 12, 2015, six weeks after onset and fully healed

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With tender hands: A solstice musing

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Priscilla Stuckey, PhD

Steve Babb, “Cradled,” Flickr (cropped & tinted)

This month, recovering from Bell’s palsy, I remembered how to live gently. (Am happy to say my face is good as new again—what a gift!)

Being sick can take a person to that tender place, where comfort foods and soothing sounds are a must. A single bark from my dog pierced with earsplitting pain. I often felt like an infant who needed tons of sleep and quiet.

The two and a half weeks it took to recover were a reminder that living gently is actually a pretty sweet way to go through life. No tolerance for angry words or fearful tones, which ruled out listening to news or reading the paper (except comics, of course). No energy for conversation about inessentials, which cut out small talk. And little energy for any talk at all, which meant I sank into depths of inner quiet that I’d rarely visited in my life. Strong, nourishing quiet. Peaceful quiet.

The gentleness needed for healing reminded me of something I heard a few years ago at a Language of Spirit conference. One speaker leaned across the table, holding his hands reverently, palms up, in front of him, and said,

I recently held my hands open to receive my grandchild. In meditation, as in holding a baby, we hold our hands open. We hold this helpless God, the future, in our hands.

Healing has something to do with holding a baby. It needs the preciousness of the touch we give to a newborn.

I was moved by his words then, and now, after some weeks of treating myself gently like a newborn, I appreciate them even more. His words fit well in this darkest season of the year.

Today, on the Winter Solstice (in the north), we pass the threshold between long nights and the coming days of growing light. Today, by Earth’s calendar, we welcome the infant new year. It is a time of pregnant darkness and newborn wonder. It is a day of opening our hands gently to receive a helpless God, searching the brand-new face of a future we will come to know in time.

The threshold days of winter mark many comings and goings—more babies conceived this month (more births in August and September). More elders and others slipping away (highest death rate in early January). It is the season, in Christian tradition, of welcoming a newborn.

Christianity is not the only religion that adores an infant; Hindus welcome the baby Krishna once a year at a festival (in August–September). Preparing a Krishna figure for the temple, village women gently wash the infant and dress him in new robes. The everyday act of tenderly caring for a baby becomes a sacred ritual.

For Christians since the earliest centuries, the Winter Solstice has meant welcoming the baby Jesus. Apparently early Christians felt his conception took place on the Spring Equinox, March 25 (by their reckoning), and counting forward nine months placed his birth at the dark solstice, December 25. The threshold season.

This December, passing through a threshold of illness, I found a piece of Christmas music that transported me to that gentle place of receiving a newborn. I was on my way to the massage therapist (face and shoulder massages felt soothing, healing) when on the car radio I heard the most sublime piece of music ever. Why had I never sung it in all those long-ago years of choir practice? Because, it turns out, it was composed only twenty years ago, in 1994, shortly after I left off choral singing.

Here is “O Magnum Mysterium” by Morten Lauridsen, complete with sheet music. (It’s way better with a headset so you can hear the bass voices.)

It’s a piece about welcoming a child. It’s about how the new arrives in unexpected places—in this case, a rough animal shed. I love the touching story of a hugely pregnant young woman far away from home, her labor starting, forced to bed down in the straw and the soil. No comforting aunties or midwife to guide her birth; only the animals witness her pain and hear her cries and, when it is all over, watch her newborn placed gently in their food trough.

In Lauridsen’s piece the animals get top billing. Three times the choir sings ut animalia viderent, “the animals watch,” including at the highlight of the piece, the joyous swelling of voices in the last quarter. And at the end, hushed and reverent, we see the sleeping baby surrounded by animals who keep their vigil, watching.

Listening to this piece over the past two weeks became a healing practice. It ushered me straight into that gentle place of making peace with all that is, opening with tender hands to what will come. It helped me treat myself gently, savoring the peace and quiet that work their magic in restoring nerves and muscles. And, oh, my, its soothing alleluia at the end, taking listeners ever so quietly to that sweet place out of time where all struggle makes sense and all pain resolves into a deeper joy. Lauridsen’s music, as one composer said, “leaves the impression that all the questions have been answered.”

At this threshold of the turning Earth, may you feel cradled by the sweetness of the mystery. May you feel supported by the greater love that holds each of us, oh, so tenderly. May you feel the precious touch of others who welcome you with open arms. And may you receive whatever is being newly born in your life with open, tender hands.

I wish us all a season of healing.

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