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Dull, dreary, brown, mousy and nondescript…

That pretty much describes the month of November.  After the colorful leaves of fall find their way to the earth below, we’re pretty much left with bare, lifeless trees in a monotone landscape.

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It occurs to me that November, the second to last month of the year, shares the same boring distinction – as far as months go – as that of the second month of the year, February. True, November has Thanksgiving, a wonderful American holiday and February can boast of Valentines Day, a commercially-driven day for lovers but weather-wise there is not much to recommend either one. Both have their fair share of gloomy, sunless days and cold-for-the-season temperatures with both pesky winds and unwelcome precipitation.

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Still, both months have merit. November is the gateway to the holiday season while February signals the halfway point of winter with the promise of spring soon to follow. For now, however, with the end of daylight savings time and the transition to cooler temps and the promise (threat?) of snow in the wings, early November can be fickle and unreliable. Nothing to do but hunker down, enjoy those hot, comforting beverages, stir up a pot of chili, burrow into a good book or catch up on those recorded TV programs and series – Orange, House of Cards, Breaking Bad – you’ve been wanting to watch (or watch again). Now, before the busy season is upon us, sit back and make the best of it!

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When I was in tenth grade, during the early 70’s – the Jesus Freak era – I belonged to an ecumenical church group. Comprised of young Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists and Catholics, we met in each other’s homes and churches, studied both the Old and New Testaments, sang hymns, attended retreats and ‘witnessed’ at prayer meetings and church services, both locally and throughout the state.

This loose-knit circle of friends, bound by a youthful exuberance and our various religious indoctrinations, became known as Corn Flakes. One of the group’s charter members, Cindy, an easy going strawberry blond with a big smile and infectious laugh, commented on the letters CF printed at the top of a variety pack single serving box of Corn Flakes, cheerfully observing that CF also stood for Christian Faith. The name stuck.

All these years later, I still have the paperback Bible (with the words ‘The Way’ colorfully emblazoned on the cover) that I carried with me to prayer meetings and read from each night. Many of the greetings and salutations, scribbled on the blank front and back pages by my fellow Flakes and new friends that I’d met during spiritual forays to other churches, are barely discernible now. Flipping through the pages, I see via the chapter chart that I used then to track my progress of each book in the Bible, that I had successfully completed reading Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Job, Ecclesiastics, Song of Solomon, Jonah, Malachi, most of Ezekiel, parts of Psalms, Matthew, Luke, John, Romans, 1st Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, 1st and 2nd Peter, 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, Jude and the first four chapters of Revelations.

During our weekly prayer meetings, we sat in a circle and sang favorite hymns like Amazing Grace, shared individual stories of faith and offered encouragement to those who struggled to keep on truckin’. Corn Flakes was occasionally invited to sing at church services and we travelled to other communities for weekend retreats to meet with other like-minded young people. Most of this activity was fairly mainstream (relative to my Catholic upbringing) although an outdoor gathering (vivid in my mind even today) of a young woman ‘speaking in tongues’ was a bit unsettling while a weekend retreat at a Baptist church where congregants were encouraged to come forward for a good old fashioned baptismal dunking was both odd and alluring (and yes – I complied with their invitation).

While my beliefs have evolved over time, bearing little or no resemblance to those heady days of Jesus-inspired religious fervor, I have fond memories of my Corn Flake years. Thanks to social media I have continued to maintain ties with many of the wonderful people I spent so much time with during my teenage years. Many of them still carry with them a strong faith and spirituality – two of them, one male and one female, are ministers – while some, like me, have changed their views or at the very least don’t use Facebook as a launching pad to broadcast their beliefs one way or another.

Music is a strong influence at any age but especially so when you are in your teens. I spent hours listening to the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar and, to a lesser degree, Godspell. While I now consider myself an agnostic / secular humanist, I am still moved by this music. I believe this has somewhat to do with the emotional attachment of my early efforts to define who I was and what I believed in but mostly because the music is just so incredible. The melodies, vocals, instrumentals, lyrics and the mood of pieces such as Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say) can still punch a hole in my gut and bring tears to my eyes. It’s the most powerful song on that album.

After listening for some time to the lyrics of Jesus Christ Superstar and trying to wrap my head around the mindset of the people who followed Jesus at that time and those who sought his crucifixion, I visited a Lutheran college bookstore in an effort to locate reading material to explain what the culture and social norms were at that time, how people thought back then and why. I remember wanting something non-religious, a secular approach (a phrase, however, that was not part of my vocabulary at that time) – not an explanation of events as depicted in the Bible but something rather that had no self-serving agenda. Basically, just the facts ma’am. I also recall thinking something about this whole Jesus Died on the Cross for Our Sins story just didn’t make sense to me. My then 10th grade mind also found the concept of imposing someone’s religious beliefs on others vis-à-vis the law as just not right. A lot to process when you’re only 15 years old.

So the roots of my eventual religious evolution coincided with my formative years while I was actively involved with an ecumenical church group. I actually find this incredibly amazing given that this examination of doctrine, of what I’d been taught in church – the belief system that was shared not only by my Corn Flake friends but my family, my peers, my community – was something that I questioned as a teen-ager without any of the influences we see today in the era of Instant Everything: news, information, social media, cable news, TV, movies and print journalism. On my own, of my own volition, I began to formulate ideas – ideas for which I felt guilty and not a little uneasy. Ideas that I tried to shout down in my mind with the mantras I’d been raised to know and regard as Truth.

The day would come though, in my late 40’s / early 50’s, when I would finally embrace that which I had tried to obscure from my very own consciousness for so long. What finally nudged me to accept that my views, my current beliefs, these ideas that had been running in the background of my mind for all these years – that all of this was valid and had merit – was after I read The DaVinci Code. While I understood the ‘fictionality’ of this runaway bestseller (not a terribly well written book, mind you), it got me thinking and wondering and it awakened in me all those doubts and questions from so many years ago.

I began to read books and watch documentaries about Christianity and Judaism and the history of these (and other) religions. My bookshelves are filled with books that I’ve read by religious scholars and both current and former ministers – some who were admittedly a bit militant whereas others were, like me, genuinely questioning all that they had been raised to believe was Right and True and Real.

What I found was not so much answers to my questions – in fact, I found very few for I believe there are many questions for which no one really knows the answers or the Truth (although they are quite adamant in believing and professing that they do) – but instead I discovered along the way others (many others, more and more all the time) who share my religious world view and more importantly, because of this, I felt liberated. I no longer felt that even though what I believed (or rather what I did not believe) was based on very honest and genuine ideas and views, I didn’t have to (nor did / do I!) feel guilty or uneasy for thinking that way. This alone was a tremendous relief.

I don’t expect my ‘religiously inclined’ family and friends to understand let alone accept where I’ve arrived at today in my Adventures in Free Thinking. And I won’t be surprised to discover that I may lose some Facebook friends or followers on my blog for making these views known. I would, however, ask those who know me and wish to comment, that you do so respectfully just as I will endeavor to return the favor in a respectful and forthright manner.

And for all my Corn Flake buddies out there, keep on truckin’!

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My 20s and 30s – and a sizeable chunk of my 40s – were spent allocating far too many hours, days, weeks (and more) agonizing over matters of little import, wasting precious time, energy and mojo fixated on imperfections, minutia and Other People’s Business which only served to diminish my own standing with self.

It should be easy, intuitive even, to recognize that the less stressful path to peace of mind is best pursued not from forceful, hand-wringing, futile attempts to guide events toward a self-determined outcome but rather in accepting and responding to life’s outrageously misfortunate slings and arrows with as much dignity and resolve as we are able to muster.

Don’t like how something has turned out, unfolding in directions that are out of alignment with your own wants, needs and desires? Adapt and / or find your own way, your own path, your own happiness, your own destiny. Stop lamenting over what is and wailing (to any who will lend an ear) about how life done did you wrong.

And yet, this is difficult to do. Certainly, it’s challenging enough if one is circumspect and so able to analyze a bump in the road with calm, steely resolve but damn near impossible once you find yourself already tightly coiled (guilty as charged!) within a maelstrom of anxiety and emotions, frustration and annoyance.

A few years ago, I set a goal for myself (continuously renewed!) to try to live more in the moment, to tackle life as it comes with a quieter strength, with grace and good humor while actively seeking to live more delightfully, giving myself up to all that is good and real and lovely much as a child sees and interacts with the world. Listening to children’s laughter, watching their sense of wonder and curiosity, seeing them play with such freedom and abandon, gently reminds us of the innocence and joy we knew (or were entitled to know) when we were young.

Living delightfully – thrilling to the sight of a hawk perched on a fence post or soaring overhead, observing a lone egret, legs akimbo, standing in a marshy field, smiling at the recognition of a cardinal’s call, laughing at a shared private joke with a loved one, savoring a special meal surrounded by family and friends, enjoying the crackle and roar of a blazing fire, resting peacefully in quiet solitude after a hectic day – these experiences and others that provide immense satisfaction and peace are the lifeblood of our existence. If we don’t appreciate, cherish and relish these nuggets of happiness, we do ourselves a great disservice. I don’t know that anything is sadder than to observe someone who is merely plodding through life without enthusiasm, without gaiety, knowing no festivity or frolic, one whose life is anything but filled with comfort or warmth or cheer.

For me, I choose to live delightfully. Because otherwise, really, what is the point?

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Yes, I’ll shout it from the mountain tops! I love my husband more than I can say. He’s sweet, funny, sexy and wonderful. And my very, very bestest friend!

Quitting my job to go to school at the age of 34 paid off in more ways that one since not only did it put me on a healthier career path but it provided the setting and timing for the two of us to meet and fall in love. Hooray!

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On our lunch break yesterday, as we often do, my husband and I cozied into chairs at Barnes & Noble and with hot beverages in hand, each of us picked a book or two from the shelves to peruse until it was time to head back to the office. While Bill’s interest tended toward learning the intricacies of the new Canon 70D we recently gifted to ourselves, I decided on something a little more domestic.

Because we are (still) committed to finishing our basement, I scanned the shelves in the Home section for inspiration. While there was plenty to choose from – books devoted to the design process, remodeling how-to’s (more Bill’s bailiwick than mine), decorating and feng shui – I was instead drawn to a beautifully illustrated volume entitled Back to the Cabin by Dale Mulfinger. Filled with stunning photographs and stirring prose descriptive of a wide variety of woodland and lakeside retreats, this beautiful book immediately (but gently) pushed me into daydream mode – and I went willingly along for the ride.

Secluded getaways, far removed from the daily grind and go, go, GO mentality that drains us of our souls, these cabin structures and their environs, offered the reader (me!) images of an enticing shelter – a cocoon to envelop and warm and hug us into complacency. Imagine yourself, on a bright and sunny morning, stepping out the front door of your calming fortress (whatever its form) and taking in a lake, stream or mountain view (or even perhaps something not quite so dramatic but no less soothing such as rolling fields of corn or wheat) and experiencing the satisfying reality that such is your existence, with only the weather and your own whims and preferences to dictate how you wish to spend your time each day.

How is it that life as we know it, life as we pursue it, does not take this essential need for beauty and calm and peace (serenity now!) into account? Why must we be constantly bombarded with the bump and grind, the rush and mania of our everyday dealings, a lifestyle much more accelerated and fast-paced than when I was growing up or even just twenty or thirty years ago? Much of it what we are subjected to today we do to ourselves: Facebook, Twitter, 24×7 cable TV and all manner of social media. This is our hurry up, gotta have it, gotta do this, gotta do that, gotta know what’s going on and gotta have it NOW culture.

It’s hard to imagine just chucking it all and spending the rest of our lives in a small cabin in the woods (or is it?) because for one thing, we need to work, we need money to live on, to buy clothes and food and medical care and to plan for retirement. I did mention that I was daydreaming, though, did I not? A Walden Pond type of existence certainly beckons though at times, to get away from it all, to simplify and live our lives examining joy and beauty and nature, relishing quiet and solitude, having time to really just think and enjoy the stillness and wonder of not constantly moving.

A girl can dream, can’t she?

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Temperature: 36 degrees. The wind, a brisk northwesterly blow at 16 mph. It’s 6:00 AM and I’ve been awake since about three. Fortunately, I had set out my sweats, underwear, socks and shoes the night before so I wouldn’t wake my husband if I decided to step out for an early morning walk. Fully dressed, I don a light-weight jacket, cap, scarf, gloves and adjust my favorite rhinestone-studded bling earmuffs so they fit snug against my ears.

The pre-dawn sky is a deep, almost turquoise blue which I find odd for this time of day, this time of year. A few stars and the always fascinating moon, half-full peering through the darkness helps to light my way as I begin my morning prowl. I don’t get too far before I first hear and then see a trio of the younger gals from down the street out for their run. The air bites, only just a little, and it feels refreshing. Still though it’s cold so I quicken my pace. Seems I have two modes when I walk: plodding and striding. Today, I’m definitely striding and it feels good.

I’m around the ‘loop’ and more into the open now and the wind, it’s strong. A tiny voice whines: Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But I push it aside and think how satisfying it will feel to persevere and DO this thing. I love walking in the early morning like this although I don’t do it as often as I’d like. The quiet, the solitude, the stillness. Knowing that once I’m done I’ve gotten my exercise out of the way for the day. It’s a great time to just think or better yet, just to BE. No computers, no phones, no To Do list to check off. Just me. That’s not to say I wouldn’t love for Bill to join me (and every so often he will) but alone time, ME time – well, I think everyone needs and is entitled to that.

The fresh air clears my head. The cold makes a body feel so alive! You have no choice but to react to the elements, accelerating forward in order to keep warm and moving one step closer to your destination. Kind of like life, eh?

I think it’s going to be a good day.

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Hopefully this isn’t a harbinger of things to come, not just yet anyway since we all know there is no way to ultimately prevent it, but death has been on my mind lately.

No, no. Not to worry. I’m not depressed or anything like that but two things this past week got me to thinking about dying and death, leading me to wonder what the fear is like when you know that the end – your end, your demise – is imminent, likely, certain – and knowing that you are helpless to prevent it. On a somewhat different plane, I have recently questioned too, what it is that goes through a person’s mind in a situation, where it is, sadly, what one seeks by one’s own hand, to bring about one’s own death.

First, the latter.

Amidst the beauty of the Rocky Mountains last week, as my husband and I were finishing a long hike, we encountered two park rangers and red tape strung between two trees to prevent us from taking that section of the trail. We were told there had been an accident at the falls. They wouldn’t provide us with any details but we later learned that someone had died there, presumably from having fallen off the steep cliffs towering over the river below. A friend who lives in Colorado told me a few days later that it had been a suicide, a 33-year-old male.

No one can ever know what another person’s motivation is whether it’s in regard to their career choices, their deeds (good or bad), their relationship choices (again, good or bad) and certainly not in regard to the state of such desperation as to drive them to end their own life. But it’s always tragic because whatever is currently causing so much hurt and so much pain may not always be so. I’m always a little annoyed when people claim that God ‘never gives us more than we can handle’. I beg to differ. I think not everyone is equipped to deal with the hardships foisted upon their lives whether due to nature or nurture (or more likely lack thereof) or caused by some evil act or simply as the result of the randomness of the universe. To proclaim such a thing, then, I think is to imply a weakness or a failing of the individual which I liken to adding insult to injury. Some things just ARE more than some people can – or should be able to – handle. It’s easy to come up with examples of individuals who have beaten the odds and won out over adversity, who despite a truly lousy set of circumstances, were able to persevere, to continue on, to be happy and enjoy their lives.

Not everyone, however, is so equipped to deal with hardships, for whatever reason. How enormously difficult must it be to deal with the violent loss of one’s childhood or innocence? How are we to suppose someone deals with physical disfigurations and bodily grotesqueries that severely impede their ability to meld into the social fabric of everyday life, having to endure taunts as children or the never-ending stares of strangers? To never know the stirrings of self-confidence and the ease of navigating the world thanks to a healthy self-image? Who are we to judge?

So while it is heartbreaking to learn that someone was so lost, so unhappy, so miserable with their lot in life that he or she would choose to end it, we cannot ever know, truly, the pain and despair that was so embedded in their being that to die and be no more was preferable to their suffering.

The second trigger to my pondering death and dying was an event that that occurred in 1888. I’m reading about a blizzard of epic proportions that killed hundreds of schoolchildren. On the morning of January 12, the people living in the plains area of the Dakotas, Nebraska and southwestern Minnesota woke up to a beautiful sunny day. Temperatures were milder than they had been in some time and as such, many of the children wore no coats, hats or gloves to school due to the unseasonably mild weather. Later in the day, however, the sky ‘exploded’ with sand-like snow, harsh, driving winds and a cold wave unlike anything the settlers there had ever seen.

In some cases, the teachers kept the children sheltered at school while others decided it best to dismiss school early to allow the students time to walk home. Some survived but many, many – far too many – people died. Their stories of struggling to seek shelter from the cold and the wind and the snow are heart-wrenching. Stories of bravery, loyalty and sacrifice, stories filled with parents’ decisions to not send their children to school that day, teachers’ decisions to stay in their classrooms, decisions to brave the elements, chance decisions to head in one direction and not the other: the chronicle of this staggeringly savage meteorological event is a tapestry of ‘if only this’ and ‘if not that’ which is harrowing to contemplate.

To find oneself caught in the open plains during a raging snowstorm, where you cannot see your hand in front of your face or to be unable to hear the shouts of your companions due the fierce howling winds, where the cold is literally sucking the life out of you, your body covered only with the thin fabric of what you’d worn to school that day and not having a coat or jacket to wrap around your body, or a scarf to protect your throat or gloves to cover your hands and fingers or a hat to keep what little heat remains within you from exiting your body through your head, is simply more than I can imagine. The horror of it, the reality of what this exposure to the elements would ultimately exact – one’s LIFE – may not have been on the minds of the youngest children but certainly the adults and the older students had to know they were not long for this earth.

I’m not known for having a high tolerance for pain. Nor do I easily bear being cold. It is, therefore, difficult for me to envision myself lost and alone, cold, so bitterly cold and unable to see or hear or feel anything except the blinding white, frigid, shrieking chaos all around me, frightened beyond anything I’d ever before experienced and knowing that the likelihood of survival or rescue or ever feeling warm and cozy and safe again was a reality of brutally false proportions. The terror and agony of what these people had to face is inconceivable.

How and when and where death makes itself known to us is impossible to say. May it, when death comes, be swift and painless, best perhaps, while we sleep. A mystery for the ages, contemplated throughout the course of history, unknown to all. I have no wisdom to impart. I only know now that these events, a chance encounter on a wilderness trail and picking up a book whose jacket cover caught my eye, has lead me to think of death in ways I had not before and for that, strangely enough, I am grateful. For I have been made urgently more aware of how beautiful and satisfying and comforting my own life is so I’d best enjoy it while I still can.

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This grand specimen greeted us early one morning as we drove into Rocky Mountain National Park last week. He stood just across the road from us and raised his head to bugle. When he’d finished staring us down, he ran across the road right in front of our car. Incredible! We saw elk throughout our week long stay but seeing this guy took the prize. A wonderful way to start our day! Just one of many memorable moments to cherish forever. Dare I say – this is what life is all about!