I fought the roots of evil, and won.

In the great Northwest, the Himalayan Blackberry is one form of Evil. It mows down whatever lies in its path with an insatiable hunger for more ground. It's amazingly successful, with stalks so thick and spikes so sharp that it's far easier to ignore than to deal with.

Last Saturday the sun came out. In the stark light I noticed the blackberries had nearly smothered a lovely old stand of hardy fuchsias, with their purple-and-red blooms that resemble an outrageous woman's bloomers on a laundry line. I put on my thickest gloves and went on the attack.

This winter has been a time to dig around in my own insides and uncover what's been neglected. I found a bunch old friends hunkering down there (more on them later), but did not expect to find a Himlayan Blackberry inside my own soul. There it was: the drive to win, to put myself and above everything - and everyone - else.

I'd always cherished the fantasy that deep down, I'm a really "Good Person." I'm pleased to report that I no longer have that particular illusion. So now I can get on with things, hopefully with more honesty.

We humans are the blackberries of the animal world. We spread everywhere, growing and thriving. Without even trying, we possess, overtake, kill and destroy.  And we also make our own flowers and juicy delicious berries, dripping with life and the joy of being.

As within, so without. I felt so empowered as I clawed through dried pine needles and black earth, crawled under 2-inch thick branches that fought back, scratching my face, and tore out the roots at their source.

As I attacked the blackberries, did I try to cut Evil from my own soul ? At some level, perhaps.

Like Evil, the fierce beauty and power of the blackberry will never be totally vanquished. It's just time for something else to have a chance to grow.

For now.

Be Love, Walking

The month of May was marked by the passing of two dear ones: my 99-year-old grandmother and a close friend of nearly 20 years. I am so thankful to have grown into a life that makes room for deep emotions. It is good to cry aloud and mourn the loss. To praise their unique gifts. To smile at their peculiar challenges. To celebrate the depth of our bonds. And to grow from the experience of their death.

Oh, how dearly will I miss them. But like a skeleton amidst beautiful, deep red roses, death shows us how to live. Each death teaches us to acknowledge the preciousness of our own life and to revel in the joy of being here.

Grandma lived a long life, but Dan was only 51, a father, husband and community leader who had so much more to give. His leukemia came back full force just after he’d made it home from an arduous stem cell transplant. Blessed with strength and fortified by chemo, he visited with a flowing stream of friends and family over his last few days. Meanwhile his son and close woodcrafter friends created the most beautiful casket that any of us had ever seen. When he passed, they placed him in that beautiful box.

That night some of us who cherished Dan came to his family’s living room to once again share food, drink his homemade wine, and play music that he loved. We gathered around his body, ravaged by leukemia, but still holding the memory of his spark. There and all around the village we held each other in an amazing outpouring of love and open-hearted emotion: tears, laughter, songs, smiles, hugs, wailing, toasting, roasting. Dan’s eldest son Forrest spoke as he would have, giving great thanks for the deep river of community spirit that Dan had a large hand in co-creating.

Throughout his illness, Dan's wife Beth has grown into a fuller expression of her gifts: a beautifully transparent, generous heart; the presence to experience each moment fully; the grace to hold uncertainty; the strength to move forward; her depth of emotion and inspired posts on Caringbridge.org. She will yearn for his bodily presence every minute, every hour. I've wept bitterly for her and Forrest and Jesse, the ones who lost the most.

After many tears I still carried a vague, unsettled depression. What is it all for? Why are we here? I took a walk and threw myself down on the grass for a nice little breakdown. I actually beat the ground with my fists and kicked my legs. I was furious at the Something (my word for God) for allowing this to happen.

While I soaked the dirt with my tears, our cat Sparky walked up the back of my legs and sat on my butt. I had to laugh. Sparky is half bobcat, a magnificent animal that runs across our yard like it was the African plains. Mary Oliver’s delicious poem “The Summer Day,” came to mind (it even involves involves falling in the grass). Excerpt:

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I too am a magnificent animal, one who would sing and write and make art, letting her heart run as free as the African plains. I will be a warrior for my wild self. That will be my gift, for Dan and grandma and myself everything else that has to die.

But then a few days later, it was back, a stinking pool of depression that sunk my moods. What is it NOW? I did yoga. I cried some more. It wasn’t clear until I sat quietly to meditate. I made my body into a soft, permeable bowl to receive, and it came. Love, is all. Love.

I saw it then, the deep regret that I didn’t love them enough. I didn’t fight enough to spare grandma from a lonely death in a nursing home far from family. I didn’t connect more deeply with Dan and Beth in the last year; I had let some painful differences linger. My regrets lay on the rug like a mangy black dog, chewing its wounds. I cried some more, for what I’d lost.

Then it came: Be love, walking.

Walking means to keep moving forward. I can’t go back, but I can pay it forward. Isn’t love like water? The exact same water has been recycling itself over this planet since the dinosaurs walked the Earth. Even today we are drinking dinosaur pee, filtered a billion times. Love is endlessly recycled, too. I can walk with love down the road, and it will be the same love as the love I missed out on. Almost.

I can be love, walking. And you can too.

Review: "Olive Kitterage" by Elizabeth Strout

This novel unfolds through 13 portraits of people living in a small town on the coast of Maine. A large, brutally honest, no-nonsense retired math teacher, Olive sees her fellow townspeople mainly as nincompoops, ninnies, and dopes, and blames others for nearly all of her life's discomforts.

Widowed at 74, Olive slowly awakens to herself. Through her losses and disappointments, she begins to notice both the emptiness and the beauty of her days.When she finds tentative love in the arms of a man she would have barely tolerated previously, my heart flooded with joy.

How had I come to care about her so much? Terrific writing, full of nuanced, perfectly chosen details. Rich in surprises, suffering and smiles, this book deserved the Pulitzer prize. (As a slow writer, I was gratified to find credits for the stories go back to 1992).

What was the joy about? At any age, each of us carries the possibility of growing up. Any of us can discover a deeper way of experiencing ourselves, our relations and our world. So let's not wait.