FORGIVE – verb – cease to feel angry or resentful towards (Oxford’s English Dictionary)

I just learned this. I always thought that to forgive someone was to cut the offender some slack, to let him/her off the hook, not quite to condone the behavior but to say, ‘It’s ok…’ when in reality it wasn’t. Kind of like turning the other cheek and not fully acknowledging the inappropriate behavior. These are actually some of the synonyms for ‘forgive’ in my thesaurus!

What I learned through studying anger and resolution is that forgiveness is the final step to conflict. The definition from the dictionary says it all. It is when you decide, ‘I’m no longer mad at you. I choose to let it go, to release the negative emotions I’ve had over this situation. So I forgive you.’ It’s for your peace of mind, your healing, your well-being. Forgiving is for YOU, the offended.

Forgiving does not excuse the behavior of the other person, it just says you’re done being upset about it.

Neither does forgiveness mean you should forget about it. We learn from negative interactions with others, so forgetting means there’s no lesson learned.

Forgiveness is not praise or approval, either. Someone acted badly, and that does not deserve praise. Neither is forgiveness permission to repeat the offending behavior.

Forgiveness is not about the offender at all. It’s all about the person that got hurt. He/she doesn’t even have to tell the offender they’re forgiven. It takes place inside. It’s a decision to let it go. It’s another personal decision to tell that person.

You need to truly be ready to forgive someone, though. You can’t offer forgiveness then turn around and be angry at that person again. If there’s a tendency towards that, then there’s unfinished business. You can’t double-talk – you have to come from an authentic place to forgive with integrity.

Do we need resolution to forgive? What about forgiving the dead who harmed us? Can we get resolution there? These are questions I don’t yet have answers to. Some people are capable of making their own resolution with conflicts in their lives. Others need closure with the person to move on. We’re all different.

But we all need to get to a place of forgiveness. Holding onto resentment is bad for our health. I once read that holding a grudge is bad for your heart. That makes sense to me, because underlying, unexpressed anger eats your insides if it can’t get out.

I once learned a system for dealing with past pain. It is based on the lack vs. abundance idea. Write a list of Thank you’s to people you are angry with. This is not easy to do, when you are mad at someone, but you start with little things. Maybe that person took you to lunch or made you laugh or helped you at work or home. The list grows, and you eventually see how much you got instead of how much you did not get. It will shift your perspective and allow you to let go of the resentment you hold.

To forgive is to help yourself. It gives you greater peace of mind and aids in having healthier relationships.

Who can you thank?

Who can you forgive?

How can you thank and forgive yourself?

I’ve had a long history with the Facebook Fan Page. Taos, New Mexico Green Homes was born to promote this blog, green building and my real estate practice. No longer in real estate, I closed it in the beginning of the year.

For months, I have vacillated about starting one specifically for desert verde, always thinking I will stop blogging. I guess we all ponder closing up our blogs now and then. I have decided to stick with it for a variety of reasons, too lengthy and irrelevant to bore you with here.

There are two fan pages now:

> desert verde for green building, green living, gardening, farming, climate change, the environment, ecology and so on. I’ll also post other pertinent info you might want to read and share.

> Journal Inspirations for journaling prompts, writing exercises, discussion and support. I had a journaling website for about ten years. I closed it and started desert verde. In the journaling section of this blog, I am recreating the website. The FB page will be an extension of it with more quotes and exercises.

You can like one or both on the right side of the page. Please join me! Thanks!

God made the country, and man made the town. William Cowper

I was raised in a suburb that people don’t normally think of as a suburb. Everyone had an acre of land that was carved out of the woods. Trees were not leveled to build these post-war neighborhoods. The woods were mostly intact when I was growing up, and that’s where I spent my time. I’d climb rocks, follow the brook, smell the skunk cabbage and, almost annually, get a bad case of poison ivy. That was the price to pay for living with nature, I suppose.

I have always been drawn to rural places to live, but I respect and cherish what cities have to offer. I spent a few years in my early 20s living close to and hanging around in New York City. I loved it! The city was electric! Never dull! I was inspired and stimulated simply walking down the street, and that was the perfect counterbalance to living on 200 acres an hour north. (photo: flickr Vikram Vetrivel)

My other experience with city life was spending ten winters in Tucson, Arizona. I loved being able to walk to the co-op for groceries and to the library with my kids. Just like New York, I got stimulated by walking down the street and observing people.

Summers were spent here in Taos, and I loved the balance between the two. By the time I got tired of the city, I’d come back to Taos. When rural life was getting to me, it was time to go to Tucson in the fall. It was an ideal situation. Now I’m in Taos year-round, and it’s my preference. I like rural living. It offers:

> Peace and quiet – There is nothing like waking up to birds chirping or looking out the window in winter to see snow gracing naked tree branches. When I go out on my back porch to have coffee in summer before the sun comes up, I feel like I’m camping. It’s cool, damp and quiet, meadowlarks and hummingbirds being the only noise. My house guests have even commented on the camp feel of early morning. People go camping to get away, but I enjoy it at home!

> Open space – I can stretch, literally and figuratively, in this wide open space. I can see mountains 60 miles away, and that feels expansive. I have enough room to grow food and have small livestock.

> Privacy – I have neighbors, and we respect each others privacy. We keep to ourselves, but if we need each other, we are there for support.

> Clean air and water – I have never lived in a place with clean air like Taos. The mountain views are always crystal clear, even on cloudy days. There is no smog between me and that mountain range 60 miles away. My well water is delicious, not treated with chlorine and fluoride.

> Outdoor activities – I am 15 minutes from the National Forest and BLM land for hiking, canoeing and biking. I walk a couple of miles every day over an old dirt road in our neighborhood. The night skies are clear for watching meteor showers.

> Cheaper cost of living – Generally, housing, food and gas are less expensive in rural areas. Property taxes are also cheaper. This could be good or bad. When schools depend on property taxes, their quality is diminished. Taos is like that. Our taxes are very low, but our services, roads and schools show it. Almost every town I’ve researched that has good schools has a healthy tax base.

> A sense of community – One thing I love about Taos and other small towns I have lived in is that people know who you are. I see people I know everywhere I go. I love that. The postmaster and supermarket cashiers call you by name, too. Public events feel like small parties. I like feeling connected.

So here I am in Taos with no plans to go anywhere. A couple years ago, I considered moving to a warmer climate, and all the towns I looked at were small and rural. Rural living has me in its clutches.

(This is part of a journaling newsletter I used to send out weekly.)

October 2003

I had a frightening thing happen to me recently. I was driving home one afternoon, and I realized my demons were creeping up on me.

‘Catarina is visiting,’ I like to say.

I took a fiction writing class last year, and we had to create a character. Mine has stayed with me, because her creation was so cathartic. Catarina is her name, and my paranoia/insecurities/demons is her game. Poor thing – she is a mess with all my worst qualities, but she is an objective place to put those things. She stands across the room when she’s bothering me, and when I send my demons her way, I feel a bit centered.

Except on this particular day.

I felt her lurking below the surface. I was on the edge of tears, afraid to open my mouth, and not able to find time or space to let her out with a good cry or a very long, powerful walk.

This built up over a few days (I was sleep deprived, too, which makes me vulnerable), and driving home, I became terrified of Catarina! My demons were taking control of me, and I was losing my power quickly. The worst part, though, was when I realized… I was afraid of my demons!

Oh God!

I burst into tears. Afraid of Catarina? Oh, please! Grow up, I told myself. You are old enough, wise enough and aware enough to know she is just an inappropriate response to a situation. You KNOW that, I silently scolded myself.

I couldn’t pull myself out of this downward spiral. Then I started beating myself up for letting it happen, and that exacerbated it. I felt out of control, and I was scared.

Until you learn to name your ghosts and to baptize your hopes, you have not yet been born; you are still the creation of others. Marie Cardinal

Yes. Yes. Yes. Things were finally in perspective when I found that quote at home.

Catarina is a throwback to my childhood. She is the creation of others. Yes, I created her, but she is responses to what happened (or didn’t happen) to me as a kid.

I’ve named her/it/them. I’m aware. I work hard to keep Catarina at bay, but she is still there. She is the unrealistic part of me. She is the past.

Sometimes I wish she would go away, but I know she will always walk with me. She doesn’t need to dwarf me, though. I need to embody her.

Your thorns are the best part of you. Marianne Moore

Thank you. Thank you for reminding me to accept those parts of me that I want to push away. We all have thorns, and they are what make us strong and give us lessons to learn. My friends and my kids accept all of me – thorns and roses.

As I dug around in the garden today, I thought about Catarina. She is not just full of negative qualities. She is strong, independent, capable of raising kids alone and of speaking up. She is the one who acts out, while I work to get past the past and live in the present.

With my thorns.

What you resist persists. What you look at disappears. Neale Donald Walsch

Write about your thorns.

(I’m going through my old writings, and I came across this journal entry about the Encebado Fire on Taos Pueblo.)

Fire destroys that which feeds it. Simone Weil

It’s been very very very very very hot here. 90 is considered hot, but
it’s been 95. We’ve been eating fruit and popsicles for every meal, it
seems. Should I mention that we’re grumpy? No, I’ll just leave it at that.

On the Fourth of July, it was… hot, but a breeze picked up, the
temperature dropped to about 85, and rain threatened. It was raining in
the mountains, so we were hoping it would make it into the valley. I sat
on the back porch in the wind and watched lightning strike the
mountains. I thought, Yes, we’ll get some rain soon. My second thought
was, Fire.

About 30 minutes later I was inside and smelled smoke. I thought it was a
neighbor burning trash (very traditional here to burn trash outdoors in a
metal barrel – and very toxic, I might add…), but when I went outside, I
saw a huge plume of smoke coming from the mountains. Oh sh*t. A
wildfire. I thought we could get through one season without a fire.

The wind was very strong now and pushing this fire towards town at an
alarming rate. It had to be assessed before the Forest Service could order
fire crews, bulldozers and slurry bombers, though. This was also sacred
land on Taos Pueblo, so all decisions had to be approved through their
administration. While this process went on, we wondered what the immediate
future held. I wished I’d put gas in the car before coming home from the
holiday parade, and began to mentally pack up kids, dog, cat, food,
clothes, photographs and important papers. I hate that feeling, but we’ve
had so many fires in recent years, it almost felt normal.

The wind died down overnight into Saturday, temperatures dropped and the
humidity rose, slowing the fire advance into the valley. The wind on
Saturday afternoon (there is a perpetual breeze here) pushed the fire away
from town, thankfully, so no buildings or people were threatened. The
valley is now full of smoke, though, which is gagging me.

My mother, who is back in the hospital with very high blood pressure, is
worried that we are burning up in this fire. Her doctor (for some weird,
mysterious and stupid reason) took her off her anti-depressants, so she is
very irrational now. She watched CNN all day yesterday, and it’s adding to
her hysteria. I had to tell her we’re safe, but I actually was not
convinced we were. The fire seems to be under control, but the wind can
shift and change all that in a split second.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. Henry Thoreau.

My friend, Michael, put a post on Facebook last week that read:

You’re offered a winning lottery ticket for 136 million dollars. You are told, and know it to be true, that no matter what you do with the money, you will be miserable for the rest of your life. Would you take it? I think most would, regardless of what they say.

My response was:

You’d have to define ‘miserable’, but no, money is not worth anything. Money is just energy that flows in and out, up and down, like other energies and emotions, but somehow (definitely has to do with the Industrial Revolution), we ended up placing a lot of importance on it. Now it’s so holy, we kill each other over it. We base our self-esteem on it, we compare ourselves to others over it, and we hoard it. We’ve become mentally ill over money, forgetting that we are not money, and neither are how we make it, how much we have and how we spend it. We are so much more, but our perspective has changed now that we are not self-sufficient anymore.

You can work yourself out of misery, unless you are self-destructive. Happiness is your choice.

This issue of the value of money comes up over and over in our modern world, but Thoreau had it right over 100 years ago. I’m sure you’ve seen this question: ‘Do you live to work or work to live?’ How would you answer that? If you are working 80 hours a week, are you happy? Do you have time to visit with yourself? Who are you? Do you know? Do you have a family? Do they know you? Are you making a great salary? Is that why you work so much? What are you going to do with all that money? What if you died tomorrow? What good would that money do you today?

When I was young, my aunt said to me that my dad, a dentist, went to med school and worked hard so he could have a comfortable retirement. I thought, ‘How silly! Why not live before you are 65?!’

Watching my dad trudge to work every day for decades, I decided I was not going to be that drone. I’ve been self-employed for almost 30 years as a landscaper, purveyor of beads, seamstress and writer. When I got actual jobs, they had to have flexible hours and were usually temporary. My friends and I say I have always been semi-retired. I am not rich, and I have no retirement package, but I have had time to visit with myself, enjoy the scenery, and actually live all these years!

I do not have a pretty picture of who I might have become if I’d been working full time, year round with two weeks off a year for the last 30 years. I’d have suffocated long ago. I am much more content to have the flexible life I lead with enough money to pay my bills. If I had 136 million dollars, I’d pay off my house and my little credit card debt, then give the rest away. Money will never make me happy, so it is worthless.

To mourn is to be extraordinarily vulnerable. It is to be at the mercy of inside feelings and outside events in a way most of us have not been since early childhood. Christian McEwen

The shootings in Tucson yesterday hit me hard. I love Tucson, I love Arizona, I have the highest respect for Gabrielle Giffords’ work in the solar industry and Congress, and I love children. There is no reason for the hate this country has been feeling lately, but it seems momentum was building up to this event.

When a tragedy like this occurs, it brings me back to what is real. Last night I put on quiet music and was reminded that everything we do and everything we have are superfluous to what really is.

So you had two pieces of cake for dessert? It’s not important. A new book is sitting unread on the table? Not important. Struggling at work? Again, not important. These little things are everyday stressors and guilt makers, but in the shadow of people, especially children, being killed, they make no sense and serve no purpose.

Life is bigger than cake.

When people die, my routine naturally stops. My daily doings seem like a meager part of the universe. Mundane responsibilities become irksome, and this knowing of the spirit world becomes apparent. I bathe in it for as long as I can put off what needs to be done on this material plane.

I sense a clarity that makes me shed my masks, my walls, my games and my guilt. I get down to my core, who I really am without the crap that external influences have smeared on me over the decades.

Is this mourning? Is this love?

I don’t know what it is, but it is raw and real. I need to touch this every day, not just when tragedy strikes. We all do.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all the families affected.

It’s that time of year again to buy a Christmas tree. My daughter and I have been eyeballing the tree lots as we do things in town. I have noticed that most of them are full of big, beautiful trees. Usually, by this time of year, the lots are pretty empty, and we end up buying the dregs. We always find a nice tree, but it’s always one of the last ones.

I see these full lots as a sign of the bad economy. People can’t afford to buy trees this year? Most of the tree sellers don’t take credit cards, and I think a lot of America is living on credit cards these days.

Last year, I vowed to buy the Charlie Brown Christmas tree from now on – definitely the one no one wants, the raggy one, the uneven one, the littlest one, the ugly one. That’s how we got our dog at the shelter. We looked at the ones that had been there a long time, the ones no one wanted. Mr Big had been there the longest, and no one had taken him home in 150 days, so we did. He is awesome, by the way!

So… back to trees……..

This year, we have tossed around the idea of getting a fake tree to spare ourselves the annual shopping, guessing if a tree will fit, lopping off the bottom, remembering to water, then dragging it out to the brush pile in January, needles dropping all the way. A tree you put back in the box and into the storage room sounds so easy and appealing.

But it is our dire need for convenience that has driven us from nature to unsustainable living!

The New York Times says a fake tree would have to be used for 20 years to offset it’s unsustainable manufacture and disposal. ‘The annual carbon emissions associated with using a real tree every year were just one-third of those created by an artificial tree over a typical six-year lifespan. Most fake trees also contain polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, which produces carcinogens during manufacturing and disposal.’

So, cross fake tree of my list of things to buy this week. I could go to the thrift store, though………

What are other options?

> Buy a cut tree. Here in New Mexico, locals go to the mountains and cut them. They get a permit to cut a certain number, so it’s not a big free-for-all. In other places, trees are grown on a farm and transported. Some of the lots here are full of those kinds of trees. I think people have the idea that the trucks of trees are cut from forests, national or otherwise. They aren’t. They are grown for the purpose of selling this time of year. The forests remain intact. If you do buy a cut tree, take it out back for wildlife to live and nest in. If you have neighbors, collect theirs, too. If you don’t have a yard, find a way to dispose of it so it will be recycled – become part of a brush pile or be chipped into mulch. Some towns will collect them for that very purpose.

> Buy a live tree. This takes a little planning. You should plant the tree as soon as you are done with it, so you need to dig a hole for it beforehand, read: before the ground freezes. The soil needs to be saved indoors so it’s not frozen. Mix it with some compost, and plant the tree after Christmas. You also should not leave a live tree indoors for more than a week. It is dormant, and the warm temperatures inside will prompt it into growing. Purchase your tree, bring it inside just before Christmas, leave it for a week, then take it out and plant it. You can also leave it in its pot in a shady spot until spring, and water it once a week, but this has never worked for me. Depending on where you get your tree, it may not have been balled and burlapped properly, which will kill the tree. If you get your tree from a reputable nursery, you should be ok. I think it’s better to just plant it when you are done with it.

> Rent a tree. In Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, there are companies that will rent you a live tree, bringing it to your house and picking it up when you are done. The trees then get planted. This is a very eco-friendly option, a little pricey (up to $125 for a tree), but a great option for those in places where you can’t plant a live tree. Check your area for this service. It would be a great business to start! I have my thinking cap on already….

> Get creative! Here’s what I have done in the past in places or economic times when a tree wasn’t possible.

> When I was 20, I lived in a teeny tiny apartment in New York. I went outside and cut a few small branches from an evergreen, placed them in a wine carafe and tied a red ribbon around the neck. I sat it on the cold part of the radiator.
> A few years later, in cramped quarters in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I cut a small (18″) scrawny evergreen from the woods and brought it in. We cut the lower branches and put it in a vase of water for a week.
> I once made a tree wall-hanging out of fabric scraps. We put gifts on the floor at the bottom.
> We lived a block from a thrift store in Tucson one year, and there we found a tabletop tree with little ornaments already on it. My older (and only, at the time) daughter was 2 1/2, and hadn’t yet been bombarded with the commercialism and the need for the biggest and best. We put that tree on the dining room table and scattered gifts around it and on the floor beneath it. The look on her face when she came in the room was priceless – complete surprise and awe at the magic. That was one of my favorite Christmases.

I still haven’t made up my mind about what we are going to do this year. If it’s earth-shattering, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, do what’s right for you and the environment, and have a lovely holiday.

I always end up at the river this time of year. Fall is such a transitional time, and I don’t always do well with transition. Apparently, I subconsciously seek out the soothing sound of the low water moving over and around the rocks in November.

This has gotten to be a ritual to accept the onset of winter. Summer is gone, and fall is a beautiful and warm season, but the winter freeze is not far behind. Summer birds have come and gone, winter birds are moving in, and other wildlife are settling into their winter routines. Time at the river for me is a last hurrah and acceptance of the next seasonal change.

I don’t care for winter. As the sun begins its southward journey in August, I begin to wonder and worry about what kind of winter we will have. I don’t like surprises. Will it be cold? Snowy? Cloudy? Am I prepared? What are we in for?

I was told that the weather the first two weeks of September is indicative of the winter to come. I have found this to be true. This year, it was unusually warm and dry. Will winter be warm and dry? I hope so.

I don’t want winter to come. Ever. But come it will, as will spring. Catching a bit of river flow in November brings some sort of acceptance of that. The river is life, constant motion, feeding the plants, animals and scenery, and a respite from all that tries to still me or hold me back. It rejuvenates me, giving me the strength to move through yet another transition.

The willows are glowing gold with tinges of green, slowly surrendering to winter. The mud at the edge of the river smells… well… earthy and full of life. Just below the surface of the river, the rocks are covered with mud and algae waving with the water’s movement. Salt dots the mud and rocks on the edge, proof the water was higher earlier in the year.

I smell salt, mold and fishermen. Life.

I wish I could bring the sounds and smells home with me to share with you, but I can only bring back the sights. Click them for larger images.

These last two are of the US Geological Survey’s Gaging Station. Engineers have been measuring the height of the river here since 1931. The highest discharge was 9730 CFS (cubic feet per second) in June of 1948 and again in June 1949. For all the floods I’ve seen in the 22 years I’ve lived here, they have not been record-breakers, obviously! The lowest CFS was 155 in September 1956.

I wrote about a day at the river last November and a day on the Verde River in Arizona last spring.

I went for a walk the other night with my 83 year old neighbor, who out-walks me, by the way. She is very outspoken and does not mince words. We got on the topic of climate change, natural resources, conservation and the ‘green movement’ (for lack of a better term).

She does not feel hopeful.

She feels there are too many people on the planet to offset her recycling, and water and electricity conservation. She wonders why she bothers doing those things, when our population is too great for our resources. Her point is: What’s the point?

In 1985, in Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management, I read that our resources could maintain 2% of the then current population. That meant 98% of the 4.85 billion people inhabiting the Earth had to die off for the planet to be in balance. Over-population.

Today we sport almost 7 billion people on the planet, and naturally, we have fewer resources than 25 years ago. As long as too many people are sucking up too few resources, the earth’s massive ecosystem will not be in balance.

So do our small, personal recycling and conservation efforts offset the imbalance between resources and the number of people on the earth? My neighbor thinks not. She feels her efforts are a waste of time. She does them, but wonders why.

A colleague of mine feels his efforts to educate people through his progressive website are for naught. When he digs up information such as Monsanto and BP donating money to The Nature Conservancy and Halliburton being named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index in the Global Oil Services sector, he wants to give up.

He does not feel hopeful, obviously.

It’s frustrating to be working towards reducing CO2 emissions, cutting back on consumption, educating everyone around you, and feeling you’re making progress in restoring and maintaining the health of the Earth, only to find out that some big corporation has more sway than you do. Much more sway!

So do our efforts make a difference?

If several million individuals:

> recycle
> close lights in unused rooms
> drive less, carpool or cycle
> build or remodel energy efficient homes
> not fly
> bring reusable bags to the store
> turn down the thermostat
> buy local and organic food
> etc,

will their actions offset one dirty, underhanded, non-transparent, anti-environment corporation greasing the palm of a non-profit that is supposed to be protecting and conserving nature?

What are your thoughts?