Sunday, March 8, 2026
The wind is brisk this morning. The sky so clear and clean I could see the faded gibbous moon off to the east. When the moon is like this at night, I get spooked. It’s lopsided, faded, fat. It doesn’t feel clean and joyous like the little crescent following the sun down to the horizon. Or the shouting full moon throwing shadows, glorious shadow. But today it was faded over the horizon a bit of a ways from setting.
Aiden wanted to chase the redwing blackbird that swooped in front of us, but he strained on ahead. He’s gotten better. His fault is with me, reinforcing when he wants to work, and letting him break off and go about his business. He was awful at dog class because I haven’t worked with him. But his circuits get blown too. And once he focuses on something like grabbing my treat bag, he won’t beg off, not matter what I do. “Leave it” the way the trainer tells us doesn’t register with me. I’ve worked with my dogs since I was a child, but Aiden is beyond me, too much dog, too joyous. And too often my regret for bringing him home, for betraying Omalola, as an only dog, shows up in my face.
Aiden behaves better with Bruce. He’s the first dog where Bruce is taking time to spend with him. Aiden will quiet around Bruce, lying in his crate or alongside it. He knows the living room. (My office is a fun house full of paper to tear.) And I’ve shrieked at him too many times. Aiden crashes into my space when I’m reading or writing and crashes into real irritation. When I push him away, I see it in his eyes—hurt, shutting down. I’ve broken the relationship for him to listen. Correcting him makes him more insistent. I told him the other day I should place him. He knows this. He sees my regret in my face, my body.
This happened with Mrs. Horse. She came to us as a coming yearling as a companion horse for Tessie. I kept saying to myself this horse could hurt me, until I realized she had not. I realized through an exercise from Ben Hart that no she wasn’t going to hurt me, that she could have and she had not. The look on my face and my body language changed. That’s when the fights between the two mares began, but that’s another story.
In an interview with Dr. Zachery Porcu, Journey to Reality DeSecularize Your Life Jonathan Pageau affirms this idea:
I really do have this intuition that in some ways, when Christ is saying, you know, to not judge your brother, it’s like, it’s actually a training mechanism. It’s actually, it’s like, it’s actually training yourself to see the right patterns, you know, so that when you encounter someone, you’re always encountering Christ in them. And you’re actually calling that person, you’re actually calling that person into becoming that by encountering that.
Like, if I encounter you and I see in you the best aspect of you and I see, you know, the highest aspect of you and I, you can see that in my face. So that’s what I’m encountering. It’s like, I’m actually calling you to become that. 1
This rings like a bell with regards to people I find difficult. If I treat them like they are Christ, if I view them that way, then I’m calling them to become like him. Even though Aiden is not made in the image of God, he is still God’s creature, with things to teach about patience, boundaries and seeing him with acceptance–we chose to bring him to our home–not regret–he’s created substantial friction because of the extra tasks he’s added to my day. But that friction is good because too much open time can devolve into too much screen time.
The other day I was listening to Dr Roger McFillin on his Radically Genuine podcast. In a Yale MD on Angels, Telepathy and the Spiritual Root of the Mental Health Epidemic, Dr. Anna Yusim says something similar to what Pageau is saying. She says we should hold space for people and she offers an exercise how to do this:
“And when I work with couples and even when I work with individuals who want to see change in their child, their husband, their wife, et cetera, I always teach them the concept of holding space, which is a very simple concept.
And that concept is, you know, oftentimes we see people as they are, as opposed to as they could be. And for five minutes a day, five could be a lot, maybe starting with one minute, twice a day, being able to hold space for that person to be the best version of themselves as they can be. More loving, more whole, less addicted, whatever it is that they need.
And when a person is holding space for their significant other, or for a child, or for someone they love, they want to invoke all of their senses. So what does that person look like? Sound like, smell like, everything, invoke like feel, who is that person in their ultimate form?
And how do you feel in the presence of that person? So it’s like you’re essentially planting a seed in the cosmos and holding space for one minute, twice a day for that person to step into the best version of themselves. This is something Henry Grayson taught me a long time ago, and I’ve been doing it with patients with amazing results because you’re exactly right.2
When I have held space, I have been even more quiet, literally holding space, listening with no preset idea. That’s one reason why I hate the Enneagram because the other person is spending brain power, figuring out what number I am instead of allowing me to reveal yourself, instead of holding space.
No I hold space by listening, by being empty, by allowing the person to reveal themselves and reveal me as we interact. Well Aiden has revealed my panic at not knowing what to do with him because he was a bit feral when he came—because he was unclaimed for six months and lived in a kennel. When I’ve expressed this at the vet’s office, they’ve reminded me I’ve gone through wild puppy stuff with Omalola.
He’s revealed how I don’t like my space invaded. My gosh, I’ve gone to the wild, angry, side so quickly with him. He’s been shrieked at. I’ve learned to put him in his crate, when he’s unbearable, so we can both calm down. What an awful mother I would have been, even now when I’ve made lots of peace with myself and my past. I would have been a screamer and like my mother too much in my creativity to pay attention.
Dog class has been painful to attend. I feel shame because he’s so wild and I’ve not had it in me to train him. He would not leave off jumping for my treat bag, and he was panting and distracted by the other dogs. He can’t hold a sit or down stay more than five seconds.
If I did the above version of holding space with Aiden I could imagine a dog lying quietly in the room while I did my work. I could imagine those bright eyes, Watching, while we heel past other dogs. And letting me shake hands with someone with another dog while sitting quietly next to me. Lying down quietly when he needed a break. And not jumping for my treat pouch. He’d leave it. At home he’d not jump on counters (they both do).
As soon as we got home, he heeled beautifully as we walked around our path for a potty break.Â
 Monique Anistee says we should be interesting to our dogs, make training a game, which reframes training for me because I often find sit, heel, stay boring.3 A game rather than train. Even as a teacher I knew to ask my students to play with writing by taking out some crayons and paper.
The redwing blackbirds are back. They honored us by settling in our trees. This morning one flirted with me as I walked the dogs. Oh and the killdeer too, trotting ahead of us. I stood before our oak trees and watched and listened as they made a joyful noise to each other. We’ve not had flocks of birds stop here in years past. Bruce says because our farm is out in the open.
Last summer I made friends with a few redwing blackbirds who followed me from electric wire to electric wire on my walks. And a few killdeer who walked on ahead. It’s good to see them back.
Monday, March 9, 2026
I walked the dogs to the willows surrounding a tiny stream that disappears at our field and a pile of rocks where the water way runs through our field and the neighbor’s. The stream has a name that I don’t remember. They were alive with redwing blackbirds, settled and singing. The weather forecasters’ warnings about terrible weather blooming the next day seemed like a fable, the sun bright, the air warm, the birds celebrating.
This week I read that magical verse in I Corinthians 4:5;
Do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God.4
Commendation. Not condemnation.
Once I thought I experienced what felt like God’s judgement, harsh, condemning, because those years that’s I knew God and my relationship with him—unsettled, comforting but also a sense of being never enough. (Maybe I still feel that way. Those hell fire sermons from childhood left their mark.) I know how I fail to live up to the image of God in me. Inertia and reading my phone wins over silence. If there’s a snack out or chocolate I will grab it. If I want a book, despite the stack in my too be read pile, I’ll order it. I yell at the dog. I could go on.Â
I’d walked to my conference with Howard Nemerov, my coveralls on. I was fresh from cleaning stalls for Frank and Jeanette Gladd, trainers who broke Thoroughbreds and quarter horses for the track. He held my poems in his hand. He said there wasn’t much good in the poems. “You might want to give up poetry and take up farming.” I was stunned silent. I tried not to cry. He asked me if I was all right. He gave me a poem of his to critique. That summer a farmer became my muse and I wrote good poems that earned me my MFA and became my poetry collection: When the Plow Cuts. Standing before God felt like standing before Nemerov with his steel gray hair and the authority of the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize behind him. Years later I was told he did that to poets often.Â
Standing before judgement has felt like sitting with a neuropsychologist and her saying with a grim look on her face that I have mild cognitive impairment. “But that doesn’t mean, that doesn’t mean you’ll get dementia,” she said. And your doc thinks memory drugs might help, which I didn’t take. This was during Covid..And after the next test, my IQ improved, the doctor gruff with the good news I don’t need him and I couldn’t hear his good news. The insight that I’m a smart ass, uh intelligent, helps with how hard it’s been to find friends and how I need to keep challenging my mind. I have a hard time hearing the good news. Commendation. Not condemnation.
Standing before judgement has felt like Aiden wagging his butt, after I’ve shrieked, still joyous, mischievous, naughty, but still welcoming, glad to see me.
Standing before judgement has felt like receiving a note from a childhood friend thanking me for introducing them to Jesus even though I was an obnoxious evangelical/fundamentalist preaching the gospel. It’s like hearing from the only boy I babysat, thanking me for telling me to listen to the day, finding me to say he’s walking with the Lord. There will be a long table of people we sit down with whose lives we’ve touched.
Friday, March 13, 2026
The violent storms passed south of us, throwing grapefruit sized hail and a tornado that killed two and leveled whole towns. We got blessed, hard rain. Bruce and I took Omalola for a recheck on her lymph node and urine. Her insides look healthy on ultrasound but protein showed up in her urine. We’re waiting to hear about the additional test.
Wind as hard as a thunderstorm hit us in the middle of the night and has continued all day. I did not walk the dogs through the trees or along the road, as afraid of powerlines snapping as not hearing pickups drive up behind me. The trees have held steady in fifty mile an hour wind, even though one has some rot in it. A few small branches have fallen. The squirrels and birds are silent. I hope they have come to ground and not been beaten by the wind.
Well, they did come to ground. When I walked out at sunset, the dogs needing a potty break, I saw a flock of robins scattered on the soybean field, feeding. So many birds have settled around here. At least for now.
References
 1. The Symbolic World: 440 – Dr. Zachary Porcu – Journey to Reality: De-Secularize Your Life, Mar 12, 2026. The Symbolic World 440
2. Radically Genuine Podcast with Dr. Roger McFillin: 221. A Yale MD on Angels, Telepathy & the Spiritual Root of the Mental Health Epidemic, Mar 5, 2026
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/221-a-yale-md-on-angels-telepathy-the-spiritual/id1573253801?i=1000753184376&r=2724.279
3. Monique hosts the Lift Your Leg podcast, which is very helpful. And she has published the helpful guide to dog behavior: As a Dog Thinketh.Â
4. I Corinthians 4:5, ESV
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