More Duncan!

Oh!  Duncan the Dog!

Yesterday's post told the story of how I stopped to pat a Lab named "Duncan" and met the new owners of our family cottage--which they purchased in 1978.  Through them, I was invited back to see the cottage that was in our family since the 1890's and in which I had spent my boyhood summers.  Talk about opening the lost world!   

So, I wanted to say "thank you" for the invitation.  I purchased a watercolor print of the cottage and made a special visit on the day I left for home.  Nobody was home so I left it on their porch.

As I left the cottage, the second marvelous opportunity came my way.  Two carpenters were trying to save the old boathouse with a complete renovation.  (You can't tear anything down and rebuild-you renovate what's already there!)  They told me the boathouse had not been used, never opened since "way back when they got it."  

 I could not believe my good fortune!  Here I was just at the time they were going to open the old boathouse--and frankly, I hoped it would not fall apart.  The doors swung open and blew me back with years of memories before me. It was all there--all my fish'n stuff right where it was always kept--poles, buckets, bait basket, spear, oar locks. It was all there, all preserved.  If you look carefully, just to the left of the ladder and on the wall, sits my "old pal fishing bucket." 

Okay, what's going on here?  There is the easy to understand level--I love dogs, so did they--and we met over the dog.  The random chances were so small!

Perhaps the bigger truth is "care for others" opened unexpected opportunities.  They gave me a marvelous gift of inviting me to the cottage.  I returned with a gift for them.  The greater gift then opened with the boathouse.

There is also the glorious way we humans invest ourselves in the places we have lived and the things we use which are special to us.  That pile of junk lying there?  That's me! 

And then you wonder.  Bread and Wine, Body and Blood.  Outward signs of an invisible Life always with us.  Not a memory of the past, but the past always become the present.  

Dog-Incidence!

 Dog Rescues Forlorn Resident! 



Take a good look at this cottage on Capitol Island, just off Boothbay Harbor, Maine.  Can you see my roots in the place? countless summers were spent here.  Then with my grandfather's death in 1978, the cottage passed out of our family hands and into "strangers." It had been withe the family since the 1890's.  If you can mourn the loss of a place, then I grieved the loss of this cottage. 

For years, I stood on the beach below and gazed up at the cottage.  I imagined my whole family there--where we took meals, socialized, and just hung out.  When I had a sabbatical, I actually thought about renting the place! 

But you gotta let things go. Anyway--  I told myself I carried the cottage inside.  What you tell the head rarely wraps around the heart.  I just flat out missed the place and the vessel of so many memories of growing up there--and growing together with my family.  You gotta let some things go....


Enter, Duncan! 

So, I was coming back on this boat trip...and as I reached the wharf, I saw this group of kids gathered to pat this Chocolate Lab.  Irresistible!  I'm the original Lab lover, and I just went over and got into line. "Can I take my turn," I said to the owners?  That's all it took.  One thing led to another.  It's a small world.  You know how these things happen.  Have you guessed it?  Of course--the owners of the cottage!  You could have knocked both of us over with a feather.  By the time it was done, they invited me over to see the cottage.  For the first time since the house was sold, I stepped foot into it.  Have you guessed it again?  As good as it was--a wonderful experience, it was after all, the "shell."  The outward structure of an inner temple inside--the place where I had come from, never the same or replicable in the world.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I would not have passed this up for anything. There is a sense in which the outer appearance renews what you carry around inside yourself.

Now, there is another way to understand this story.  Dog
owners--or rather dogs who own people--have always had the uncanny ability to bring people together.  How many stories can we count of those who met and married with their dogs who matched them up?  It is said that a dog lives "open to the world."  Perhaps they predispose their owners that way also.  Maybe what looks like a coincidence is less of one--or is just a little more likely because of the love of a dog.  Was this a coincidence or a "dog-incident?" 




Duncan stands near the edge of the cliff that the cottage sits on. 

Memories Made Memorable

Footsteps that Last
Memories Made Memorable 

I will never forget when President Kennedy came to Boothbay Harbor the summer 1963.  Whatever there is of this little seacost town filled up and shut down.  Even the waters were jammed with the US Coast Guard going through the motions of checking boats for routine safety.  I will always recall the pictures of the President and Mrs. Kennedy walking up the steps of Our Lady Queen of Peace, the Roman Catholic Church that looks out over the harbor.  That's my image, forever transfixed, and I cannot pass this church without seeing his ghost of sorts there.

Now a lot of people have gone up those steps.  But it is this one life that is in my mind.  And why?    I believe that  tragic day in Dallas burned that image of him into me.  Not before -- the summer event was just that for me--an event.  But after, in the rear view mirror. 

From: The Boothbay Harbor Register

President John F. Kennedy and his sister, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, thronged by well-wishers as he leaves the 10 a.m. Sunday mass at Our Lady Queen of Peace in Boothbay Harbor on Aug. 12, 1962. Kennedy was the first president to visit Boothbay Harbor. Courtesy of Tom Carbone Archives

Our theologians agree on one point. They argue for the resurrection because the crucifixion would have ended his life strung up like a common criminal.  In fact, the events of Jesus' life are generally read back from the resurrection for people of faith. "He was either who he said he was or a lunatic on the level of somebody who said s/he's a poached egg."  (CSLewis)  They point to the event of the resurrection as the reality, the only event, which could have burned the footsteps into those who came after him....and as Somebody who still leaves them in this world and in our lives. 




 

Handle of the World

Handle of the World

There’s no place in the world,

like the Ship Ahoy dock,

the floating anchor,

that ties me to the one place,

where I hold the handle of the world,

against currents of tide and wind,

that threaten to sweep me away.

When will I learn the secrets,

Of eider ducks who swim,

up stream without a paddle,

Or gulls who fly like white kites,

without moving their wings?

Perhaps it is enough just to let go!

"The Still Point of the Turning World"

TS Eliot

Oh, have I ever spent time on this dock!  As the saying goes in Maine--"Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sit."  Either way, once on the dock, everything--I mean everything--is in motion around you--it all moves!  The currents with the never-ending flow of flotsom, jetsom--its whole world. In front of you, the ducks make their way as the gulls sail overhead.  Only you are stationary.  From that point, you can feel the one place where you can "literally let go" and be tied down. It's the one place to see yourself in the full flow of life.  For fleeting moments, you feel what TS Eliot wrote--"the still point of the turning world" where divine spirit pulls everything into the flow of life. 

Do you really have to be on a dock to feel that stillness which is so close to divinity?  Or, can we cultivate that habit in a special place, as the prayer reads, "where we may be still and know that thou art God."  Sometimes it is best to just sit--and be still. 

For the Love of a Mentor

"Thank you dear mentor 
for showing me the right path 
and illumining my mind.  
I will be grateful to you 
throughout my life." 

I saw this card and just loved it.  My mind flipped back over the long list of those who stepped up, reached out, and helped me reach a place which I could never attain by myself.  The real gift for me was not so much taking me by the hand and saying, “This is how you do it.”  It was something I caught sight of in them.  And, I was so embraced by it that I could not let go—or rather, it would not let go of me!”  

There is a saying which goes like this—“When the student is ready, the teacher arrives.”  Mentors are a lot like that.  The student chooses them. It is not the other way around! 

So I was just wondering from yesterday’s post—how about it, ever been a mentor, been chosen by somebody to help them along life’s path?  There are a lot of students out there looking—and are you the one who could show up to mentor them?  

Finding Forrester
Who Mentored Who?

Ever watch Finding Forrester?  Then go get it!  Talk about the story of mentors, and how an inner city kid finds him--and then on wings given by him, he places into a private school.  I won't ruin the plot--but the Finding Forrester part has as much to do with the student finding his mentor as it does the mentor being draw out of isolation and his own inner world.  
 
That's the wonderful mystery for mentors.  Precisely when people step out for their students, school begins for them as well.  Teach what you know, and know it again for the first time in all its splendor and truth.  We help students to find themselves, and in so doing, we too are found!  Now, go get the dvd and delight in it.  Better yet, watch out for your student who is out there on the horizon for you. 


 

The Fence of Knowledge

Grow-Up Time 


This Lobster Wharf is off of inner Boothbay Harbor.  The Lobster (pronunced "Lob-stah") Boats line up at docks and tied to moorings.  Before sunrise, the boats set out regardless of weather and are generally back with the catch between 2-3pm.  It is over this fence of knowledge that you see the boats go and return. 

What is the fence of knowledge?  It has a lot to do with on the job training and experience.  There is an old saying in Maine that is passed on from one generation to the next which takes to Lobstering.

"Before you go out on the waters,
you don't believe what others tell you.

Once you get out on the waters,
you don't believe what you tell yourself."  

The critical step in training is that each apprentice has a mentor or coach.  The apprentice must first pass basic sea-skills with the traps, lines and baiting--and to know how to take the helm and maneuver the boat into some tricky areas.  What's left to learn?
--Reading the weather (are the lobsters moving around or staying put?),
--Reading the weather--(are you about to go out into a Nor-easter?),
--What's the best way to set your traps and how can you --keep from tangling somebody else's traps?

This requires a mentor...who bestows a sense of avocation for lobstering which either gets into  your blood or not.

Look below--a much smaller boat, but you still see that there are two people in the boat.  You can count on one being the experienced mentor and the other the apprentice.  (And that fishing is good--look at the seagulls!) 

What ultimately matters is not what is taught--because lobstering is an avocation that is caught. Ironic isn't it--the ones who catch lobsters must first be caught themselves!

So what is your passion in life--not necessarily a job, but what did you "catch"  that sets you in hot pursuit of your interest?  I will bet that somewhere along the line, you saw something in a mentor which you wanted so badly for your life--that you just went out and followed the example until it became YOU.

  Parting Question...

It is said in Maine that you haven't learned "lobstahing" until you have trained an apprentice.


So I am just wondering....   

If you crossed the fence of knowledge with a mentor--
are you ready to be that mentor for somebody else?  

Tug of War

 Tug of War!

 I caught these two dogs at play--a Yellow Lab and a Golden Retriever.  Take both together and I call them "retrieving dogs"--not a noun but perpetual motion verbs.  Now look closely at what they both hold in their mouths--a stick for a tug of war.  These two dogs tugged at it and pulled each other until they feel down in exhaustion.  Good for them!  Then I thought of people and our species.  I thought of the emotional tug of wars that we get into and I stopped smiling.  I had to catch my breath.  How often do we grab hold of each others' emotions and pull at each other--virtual tugs of war.  And when we finally give in, is it the exhaustion of good-hearted play or broken-hearted people? 

Just Let Go...

This isn't healthy for me
I really need to stop
When I think about our past
My heart wants to pop

So as I say my last goodbye
I want you to know
That I'm trying my best
To learn to just let go

                                                                                                       c. Aubrey

 This poem could be about anything we need to let go.  

What would you like to say goodbye to?