Sunday, September 28
Martin Shaw closed out this week’s House of Beasts and Vines essay A Thousand Fires by saying:
So here’s to all of us, traveling or stationary, finding a little luminous ground. I don’t mean grandiose especially, just something radiating a low note of soul from it. We get to know the pressure points, the resting-places, the – in Moriarty’s words – seal-holes that are particular to our creative nature. To speak from that is to speak from our love-spot (this is a thing of delight in old Irish stories), and in such appropriate focus, wonderful things can still happen in this world.
Luminous ground. Anywhere can be luminous ground. What a hopeful way to look at the world around us. As summer blurs into autumn, the light has softened. It’s sfumato, what Dan Silva’s character Gabriel says is “like smoke losing itself on the air” (220) in An Inside Job. A book about a stolen Leonard DaVinci painting and financial corruption at the Vatican. He explains how Leonardo DaVinci showed how there were no hard lines, how there is a sort of fading to eternity, a kind of mixing between this world and the next. I’ve read the ancients were very aware of how heaven and earth co mingle but we have robbed ourselves of the enchantment with our materialist, scientific explanations. I find myself stopping to look out over the fields that are being stripped of their soybeans, and now there is a patchwork of different browns and tans, along with unharvested corn and the green strip of the newly installed pipeline. I’m taken by the beauty and am reminded of the Psalmist’s words:
For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice: the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord” (Ps 33: 4 – 5).
I see that love as I look over the gently rolling fields and distant woods. The trees are dropping their leaves and black walnuts. Mrs. Horse is eating her hay. This is what’s real. Not what shows up on the screen. Not the outrage. This. Full of the steadfast love of the Lord.
Mrs. Horse had pushed the big barn door over the wooden stump that was supposed to prop it shut. What an ugly sight full of the question: What if she wrecks that door? I walked out and pulled it along the rails, until it clanged back in place. I tossed her hay.
I walk a mile on two roads that T into each other, where I have a choice to walk–into the sun or alongside it. I walked a mile on the road a mile in off the main road, when I needed to walk out my prayers. Often I walked long after dark. Maybe my body remembers that length from childhood, that walk to the fork in the road and back, the prayers said.
Today, Omalola, chose to walk into the sun, so I followed. She was especially interested in the  new wood chuck holes had been dug since yesterday and were good for a sniff. The road noise was quieter than usual.
I had considered blowing off the luncheon with the horse ladies, because I want to play around with my memoir/essay collection, work I’ve avoided working on since Covid. Because the material is so vulnerable, I’ve been afraid to look. The resistance has been like a boar, heavy, grunting, dangerous. Maybe the house blessing took a knife to its throat, maybe the pup’s arrival. The fat pig, the block is not sacked out, bloated in my office. I’m using a literary publisher’s deadline to motivate my work and I have found a spirit of play. Since one of the most vulnerable essays, “How I Shucked Who People Thought I Was, or A Virgin and the Writers Workshop” was a finalist in that Best Emerging Authors of 2025 contest, I’ve gotten a good kick to play around with the manuscript. It feels more like obedience to do the work because I’m not sure anyone will want to read it.
 I only knew one person who would be at luncheon, but  since I said I’d go and the restaurant was nearby, I found myself in some lovely, honest conversations. Well, one thing lead to another. It came up that Sue Mayborne, a local Aussie and Border Collie breeder is retiring and disbursing her dogs. Tracy who worked for her, showed me a video of two pups, a blue merle boy and a red tri girl. She gave me Sue’s number. I’ve known Sue for over thirty years and was surprised to hear she was retiring but I get it. These dogs were among the last she had to disburse. I’d been vaguely thinking about getting another dog to keep Omalola company.
I rushed home and asked Bruce, “Please? Pretty please?” “All right,” he muttered. Or something like that. I called her and went to my training class. Allison offered some wise negatives like it would be hard to deal with two dogs at a dog show. What’s more we have a small car, not an SUV or minivan capable of hauling two dogs. It is paid off and we don’t want to buy a new car. A six month old puppy that hadn’t been socialized is a lot of work and chaos.
The next day I took Oma along to meet him. Our crate took up most of the back seat, so Oma only had a small square to sit in. Aiden was a lanky blue merle, with big ears properly folded over. Oma touched noses but then ignored him, with a ho hum expression. He wasn’t her friend Dolly. All the while I was signing his paperwork, I wondered what have I done? What am I doing? Am I betraying Omalola who is my dog, my friend?
But I put the six-month-old blue merle in the crate, Oma next to him and drove home.
Every morning since then, I’ve awakened with the words: What have I done? Have I betrayed Omalola by dividing my attention between them? What an imposition on Bruce, this crazy young dog. I have definitely betrayed Mrs Horse, who stares at me through the fence, with an evil eye, though I haven’t spent much time with her because of my work of writing, friends, and household stuff.
I named him Aiden, which I guess means little fire though I am having a dickens of a time remembering his name when I call him. Khalid, Hayden, Dillybop come up. His registered name is Shoreland Weight of Glory. He’s a remarkable beast, considering he was a kennel dog. Sweet, confident, in a whole new place with strangers. He floats when he trots. But shadows scare him. Even the crescent moon carved into our outhouse, catches his attention and hackles. Bruce and I and Oma have our patience set out for us. Omalola works hard to put him in his place. So do we.
Though he is a cause for much jealousy on Mrs. Horse’s part. Now that we’re in some kind of routine with the pup, I need to work her into my routine. (Mrs. Horse is more pet. My vet reassures me that’s not all bad. But she stands at the fence, ears up, the question: When will you spend time with me?)
I almost lost both dogs when they were running hard on the flexi leads with Bruce in between. If I hadn’t let go, he would have been thrown over the lines. Oma and Aiden chased each other towards the road. And it was a rare rush hour of truck after truck done with their jobs and heading out. I shrieked my recall. They turned and ran back to me. I shook. Bruce helped me gather them up and we finished our walk. Did an angel stand between them and the road and send them back?
My trainer showed me how to make them walk together quietly. Since then, I’ve worked out my routine. First thing they walk separately. Later I can walk them together on short leashes and won’t let them rile up. If Aiden needs to circle at a trot or gallop in a circle, I take him back out separately.
Monday, September 29, 2025
Mrs. Horse knows things have shifted. She sees it when I take two dogs out to walk. She comes to the paddock and stares through the rails. The other day Aiden pulled the flexi out of my hand and ran into the paddock. She went after him, kicking up her heels. He ran out and came back to me and Oma. Well I went out today, Monday, to lunge her. It’s so warm, it’s not even pleasant for me to be outside—and Morgen’s winter coat has come in.
Cement trucks were running down our driveway, one right after the other, because they are pumping slurry into the old pipeline to close it off. A few of their vehicles were parked at the T where the road I walk into the sun joins our road. I just wanted to spend time with her, walk her for a half hour. Every so often, she’d turn and face me so I lead her off in the opposite direction. It’s best that I make that decision, but I didn’t feel like it. I turned on a recording from a class I’m taking with Martin Shaw, where he told the story “Bearskin”, about a man grieving on his return from war and the work he needed to do to heal. Like many war fighters, he was rejected by his village and told to wander. He meets an old man who tells him he needs to wear a bearskin for seven years, to let his hair grow, and not wipe his tears. Would there were bearskins for our warfighters, and the charge to grieve.
Walking Mrs Horse in circles, is the kind of thing that lends itself to getting caught up on my listening. How can I tell she’s jealous, that she knows things have changed in my face, and heart? Because she took off, with a kick and buck, that could have injured me if she’d landed it on my back. Her back sock flew off. I’ve never seen her thrash out like that. When she has protested before she has tucked her hips in.
A wondering has come up, that might be time to be done with her. It might be time to find her another home. We are 70. A person thinks about age and injury at our age. I’m not as brave as I was. I’m not sure I want to wait for her to die or our health to fail so badly, we’d be forced to sell. But wisdom says take a breath on this, wait with the idea, see what plays out.
Since we had our house blessed, a resistance, a laziness, acedia has dissipated. I don’t have to push through layers of weariness or heaviness or doors that seem too heavy to open. It’s pure gift to feel quiet, that is not being numb, to receive the simple goodness of each day, without dread and guilt looming. I’ve been able by God’s grace to get up, get both dogs walked, and do chores without stopping for long, nose buried in my phone.
By the grace of God, Bruce and I have driven Mrs. Horse around the fields, several times. We even crossed the harvested bean field to walk up to the tree, where I thanked her and told her she was famous, lots of people around the world love her. I’ve made sure to curry Mrs.Horse’s spine because like Bruce, she likes her back scratched. I’m satisfied I’m doing as right by her as I can. That boar, dodging and feinting, keeping me away from my spiritual warhorse has become bacon (metaphorically speaking).
A quiet joy has set in. I suspect the house blessing cleared a draining presence. I suspect you, my readers’ prayers have dropped a shield. My friend Deb reminded me that in the Orthodox church, there is an exorcism, the priest spitting on Satan when a person is baptized. I suspect my words: “Lord rebuke you,” are more powerful than mere words. I suspect the power of my baptism, marking me as Christ’s own. And yes I suspect bringing Aiden into our home was truly about choosing life, even though he’s brought a measure of chaos. He’s also brought focus, an awareness of how fragile and precious my attention is, how I don’t need to let the internet tell me what to think.
Today is Michelmas, the day the western church remembers Michael the Archangel, the one who does battle with the serpent. Here’s the reading:
7 Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. 10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. 11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. 12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” (Rev. 12: 7 – 12, ESV).
Remember even this earth, with a pissed off devil, is still full of the steadfast love of the Lord. And that love has overcome the world. We’ve been told, “Greater is He who is in you, than he who is in the world.” We’ve been told salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of Christ has come. The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down. Remember the story from Zechariah, where the Lord rebuked the accuser of the brethren, and the angel of the Lord, removed Joshua, the high priest’s filthy garments and clothed him with pure vestments. (Zec 3: 1 – 5). This is our story too. We have been clothed with the pure vestments of Christ himself. Go in peace. Go in joy.
