Martha O'Brien

Last Friday, I drove to my women’s retreat at the Sisters of Loretto Motherhouse in Kentucky returning for my fourth visit in four years. On my way to walk around Mary’s Lake, I passed a field where clusters of daisies basked in the late day sun. Then, on Saturday morning, Sr. Elaine Prevallet read a Mary Oliver poem called Daisies.

…At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their – if you don’t
mind my saying so – their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example – I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.

What do I know? Who am I…here…not knowing and without answers?

One thing I do know is to savor small moments like seeing daisies growing in a Kentucky field on a blue-sky day. When I believe that I belong Here to the family of Earth ~ then perhaps I can simply live the questions and allow the answers a lifetime to unfold.

At the end of my walk, I felt an impulse to pick a few daisies to grace my room ~ to somehow grasp their beauty for a little longer. Another thought came. For now…I want to admire the daisies in the field where they belong.

One day in May, I woke up with a dream image.

I open a door and am flooded with light. The day after that dream, I took a flight to Nashville to rent a condo as I was moving there on Memorial Day 2007. I was leaving Texas a few months after my spouse’s death and returning to my hometown of Nashville.

Every day I searched Craigslist for listings. On the third morning, a new listing close to my Aunt Martha’s apartment popped up. The owner met me at the condo within 30 minutes of my telephone call. At 9:30 a.m. I walked inside the door and the room was flooded with bright sunlight from the patio doors!

When I opened the Door on my new life, light poured into my authentic Self where the real Martha wanted to make a home.

How do I prepare to live an urban life again after seven years living on land with live-oak tree vistas viewed from the long porch and walking along a rock-terraced creek created by God the Architect?

After I moved, the wise grief counselor who had guided me through my fires of sorrow celebrated my new beginning in a letter ~ You are coming full circle…geographically, spiritually, and emotionally…as you are re-homed in your “growing up” place. You are growing and expanding because your energy forces you to do that…to see meaning and feel each experience.

I once lived as a good girl who felt like
a lost duckling.

I once lived neglecting my own needs
to please others instead.

I once lived unaware that I was enough.

I have moved.

Now I live in the home inside of me
where all the design is mine.

As I paused at the Threshold of my 50th birthday, my perceived failures seemed to accumulate. The project at a large healthcare system where I worked as an education specialist failed in the implementation phase of organizing patient care with self-directed work teams. I resigned. Only a couple of years before, I had left HP when my job was eliminated due to HP’s first wave of workforce reduction.

My intention was to find contract facilitation work, but in the interim I tutored a sixth grade boy. When I met the boy’s parents at the intersection of Alpha and Omega Streets, I wondered if I was entering an alpha and omega Crossroad of my life.

Every day I drove William home from school and helped him with his homework. We shared a bond and soon he expressed his trust ~ You are my guide who clears the path of rocks. When he failed a science test, he wanted to hide the grade because he was afraid of his father’s anger. We faced his fear together. That night I transformed my own eleven-year-old’s fear of my father into compassion for William’s father.

At the end of seven months the mother abruptly fired me when her son’s grades had not improved. Her stinging words of anger slapped my pride as I experienced another sense of failure.

Catholic monk Fr. Paul Jones, my spiritual director, wrote in a Weavings Journal ~ The central image for failure is the desert…it runs from Adam and Eve’s exile from Eden through John’s exile on Patmos. The desert is where everything is exposed: our successes, accomplishments, and security.

The Crossroad at Alpha and Omega Streets symbolized the ending of my first half of life’s view of success and the beginning of the journey into the Desert. God forms us in those dry desert spaces.

The desert becomes the place where to simply endure is to triumph, resting on irrevocable commitment alone ~ to seek God for the sake of the seeking.
~ Fr. W. Paul Jones

About 3:30 a.m. a cheery bird song outside my window stirred me from a deep sleep.

That bird reminded me of a time when a phoebe built her nest cradled in an eave of our ranch house porch. Full of patient mothering, she sat on her nest and soon three tiny beaks were visible. Both mother and father phoebes buzzed the nest with constant feedings of insects and flies to the eager open mouths.

Soon, the day arrived when the cozy nest was too small to contain them and their new wings were ready for first flight. Two fledglings left and the last one was perched on the side of the nest flapping her tiny wings.

The phoebe mother sailed close by and chirped her encouragement yet stopped the feedings. Finally, the fledgling clumsily flew out of the nest and crashed into the window screen clinging there for several more minutes.

The phoebe mother and father watched from a distance perched on a tree limb. Then the tiny bird finally made a flying dash to a tree limb where she paused and then soared to freedom!

The fledgling reminded me of those times in my own life when I am hesitant to leave the security of a Nest and risk a flight to freedom.

We need both times of nesting to wait and listen for what is stirring in our souls and also times to risk everything and fly. Our hearts flutter open like a bird’s wings in flight. We trust that we will eventually have a smooth landing.

A bird’s nature is to leave the nest and take flight and sing. Our nature is to experience life and give voice to our Song.

We are all called to sit still and be with the Creating Presence.Returning to a remote House of Prayer in Sarita, Texas, for a five-day solitude retreat several years ago, I drove the last mile after passing through the gate with all the car windows open and took deep cleansing breaths. Then, the 1920s Spanish red-roofed Casa Grande came into view. Walking slowly down the steps into the dining room, I remembered to catch the screen door with my hand to keep it from making a banging sound.

On the bulletin board, my name was on an aqua note: “Welcome back. Your room will be Hannah”. The second story sparse porch room had a twin bed, a desk with a lamp, a chair, a dresser, and a crucifix on the wall.

Then, I once again reviewed the guidebook on observing silence and solitude:

• Walk at a slow pace.
• No TV. No music. No cell phones. No makeup. No jewelry.
• Coffee and tea are available only in the dining room.
• Be silent at meals and in rooms. No guests in rooms.
• Walk in silence, read in silence, meditate in silence, and eat in silence to listen to God.

The fidelity of my contemplative prayer practice that I learned at my first retreat [March 1987] has helped me to keep going through anxious days and the fires of sorrow. Each retreat revealed a part of me longing for Home. Solitude fostered a deep trust in that quiet place within me where I know that I belong to God.

As I walked in silence, the natural world opened my senses: A spider web glistened in the morning dew. Palm branches made a clacking sound as they caught a ride on the wind. Listening to the solitary note of a faucet dripping water into a rock bowl where cardinals and even javelina were refreshed. Walking west to catch the last rays of an orange ball sunset, a hush settled over the land as dusk came.

Solitude is essential for our spiritual lives… it is not immediately satisfying because we meet our demons, our addictions, our feelings of anger, and our immense need for recognition and approval. Henri Nouwen

Observing creatures has taught me many life lessons. Once while on a retreat where numerous wild turkey hens roamed the grounds, I sat under a shade tree in the late afternoon enjoying the coastal breezes and watched a wild turkey.

She was pacing back and forth in a narrow line beside a fence. When she saw the corner of the fence she turned back around only to return again stuck in the same small corner. After several minutes of repetitive movement, she stopped, looked the other way, and exited into the open space that was there all along.

A few days ago, a corner of my mind attracted a story line of failure, and I became stuck in a tired repetitive pattern of self pity. Once the usual commentary started, images flashed on my inner movie screen which aroused a puddle of feelings. I sensed that my reactive child self was about to spiral me into a descent. Then I said out loud, “Stop! Stop!”

In that tiny moment I shifted the old thought pattern and made a conscious choice to own my story and exit my stuck place. It took a dose of courage to exit the pattern of self pity. I realized that I could go to gratitude and tell another story: I am responsible for my decisions and action and not a Victim who blames others.

A lesson from a wild turkey: When I fall into a repetitive pattern, I can exit a stuck place and choose freedom rather than remaining in a dead-end corner.

All of creation is a Teacher and observing creatures is prayer.

While hand-washing the last rose-flowered bowl from my 1980s Nikko china set, I pondered how that bowl had been filled and emptied again and again. As I dried the bowl with a soft dish cloth, I thought I am like an ordinary bowl ~ a container for God’s in-dwelling Spirit.

I am emptied. I am filled. I am immersed in the waters of life. I am cleansed again and again.

Instead of continuing to use that last bowl, I placed it on a small shelf with other empty vessels. During the 40 days of Lent beginning next week on Ash Wednesday, those vessels will symbolize my intention to empty my mind of negative thoughts that block the filling of my heart with love. As I consent to the process of self-emptying which goes on forever, I desire God to fill me with overflowing love.

Artist Jan Richardson speaks of this love ~

You hollow us out, God,
so that we may carry you,
and you endlessly fill us
only to be emptied again.

Create in me a clean heart, O Gracious One, and put a new and right spirit within me. ~ Nan Merrill’s re-visioned Psalm 51.

The heart opens and then it closes…open your heart as much as you can because our whole life’s work is to keep opening the door to the heart. ~ Pema Chodren

A friendship with a wise elder offered me a doorway to open my heart. I met ninety-five year old Elsie when she requested visits from a hospice volunteer because she was lonely.

During the nine months of visiting Elsie at her assisted living facility, I enjoyed making her a cup of tea after her afternoon nap. A brilliant mind in a frail body, she was eager to talk about her travels, marriage, family, and owning a business. Every visit was like opening a treasure chest brimming with stories, and it was my privilege to listen with simple presence.

A different kind of beauty sparkled from her eyes. Bony thin with her gray hair pulled high on her head in a bun, her long fingernails splashed with peony pink nail polish. She was born in Korea where her parents served as Presbyterian medical missionaries. At age twelve she shepherded her two younger brothers on the train to boarding school in North Korea. Once an avid reader, she was too blind to read or watch television so she sang hymns at night to fall asleep and mentally reviewed her life.

On our last visit, Elsie talked about being a Navy WAVE before she married. Then she quoted some lines from a poem that she had memorized at Wilson College over seventy-five years ago about what comforts my sad heart. We parted saying I love you to each other and Elsie added ~ I think we are just about finished.

The next morning on Memorial Day 2011, Elsie breathed her final puff of air alone in her room.

Elsie’s friendship opened my heart to love and her legacy of amazing stories remain with me always.

On a chilly cloudy day last week, I walked my errands carrying my little Whole Foods tote bag designed by Sheryl Crow. I passed the YMCA, West Elm, the rehabilitation facility, the high rise apartments for retired teachers, and the creek where the snapping turtle scares the ducks. I crossed the street at the 24/7 Kroger store and walked towards the bank, Walgreens and Trader Joe’s.

When I passed the Crow’s Nest sports bar, I noticed a wet scarf at the edge of the sidewalk soaked after a night of cold rain. Even sopping wet it looked like cashmere! I continued on my errands, but I was lured back to the spot thinking…

What if that scarf REALLY IS cashmere?

So, I returned and scooped the scarf into a plastic bag and walked a couple of blocks home. I ignored the label that said Dry Clean Only since it was too late for that! After washing out the dirt, sticks and leaves, the scarf rinsed soft and clean, and I hung it to dry. The next morning, I walked to 6am yoga class with the beautiful charcoal gray 100% cashmere scarf wrapping my neck in a warm embrace protecting me from the frigid air.

At times, Life seems to soak us with freezing rain while we long for comfort and warmth. While walking the Path of my ordinary day, God surprised me with a random event that gave me a moment of joy. Another reminder that ~

Everything is God.God the Mother wraps us in a warm cashmere scarf when the cold winter rains of life come.

Watching Dear Genevieve on HGTV inspired me to rearrange the furniture in my condo living area. As I looked around the space, some of the furnishings had been with me through the decades and survived multiple transitions: married at 22, divorced at 42, re-married at 52, widowed at 62. At that transition over four years ago, I returned to my hometown of Nashville.

The day after Thanksgiving, with my friend Anne’s expertise, we rearranged everything in the room. Finally, like finding the right piece of a puzzle, it all clicked together and the room’s picture was complete.

The antique chest changed places with the bookcase. The 1940s buffet table my mother refinished acquired a new home with my niece. The sentimental value of the table lives within me so I released it. The TV moved out of the corner to perch on a table with a smaller footprint. A new jute rug and color-popping pillows pulled the eclectic pieces together into a pleasing palette. The room’s energy flowed again.

After the furniture had been rearranged, I wondered how my outer space is a reflection of my inner space.

What needs clearing in my inner rooms?

A room of resentment needed airing from unmet expectations carried from a decade ago. Sitting in my room cluttered with anger, I emptied the hurt and compassion filled the space. The windows in my room of forgiveness opened when I communicated with someone after a five year silence.

For the birth of the new year, I want splashes of color and open spaces in my heart.