Revelations ~ October 2021

This is a monthly column helping us to get to know our friends and members in a deeper way. We thank Monte High for taking the time to do these in-depth interviews for us. This month Monte used his talents to create a beautiful poem for us.

A Story of Laurel, In One Breath

Life is so mysterious, not long ago nobody could’ve imagined that I, Laurel Carpenter, would be sitting here, risen from my sickbed with an achy body and sore throat, looking into a device connecting me with another human being in the web of all existence, Zooming through space for a screen-time face to face conversation about a story of my life, the stories of my life 
(while columnist Monte imagines me thinking – “what is he thinking?!
how can he possibly take my story, make my story into a never-ending prose poem?”)

Life is so mysterious, beautifully wonderfully
I am not living the life I thought I would be living, oh my life
surprises me all the time, at no time did I think I would be a nurse and a farmer,
or that I’d live here in the Grand Valley I am from Miami where I lived for over 20 years,
yet my family – five generations of my family are from here, when I was a toddler my family moved to Miami where my dad’s from, and I lived there until I went off to college
it’s a strange in between feeling, like living in two worlds
I didn’t grow up here yet I have all this history here, I’m living in the family farmhouse that my grandfather built
yet I’m not from here, my cousins all grew up together – I grew up apart

Beautifully wonderfully I’ve come a long way in my 17 years of living here
I married a man from rifle – to Jake, Grand Junction is a big city and for me it’s a small town, so this is our middle ground, our best balancing act and we’re perfecting the art of juggling. It is a considerable part of my identity
doing the splits between urban and rural – I’ve learned to farm, to irrigate, keep animals And Can – 
the first year we moved onto the farm Jake said he was going to plant a garden and I thought
oh that sounds nice, and he planted an acre! the vegetables were overflowing
thankfully the gardens have gotten smaller yet the property has gotten bigger and we have sheep and chickens and ducks and dogs and cats and

Hi Mom, I’m Zooming with Monte, come say hi [hi Laurel’s mom (Ruth)]
she is marvelous, it is fabulous raising my kids intergenerationally
my mom has lived with us for eight years and my dad lived with us for the last few years of his life, so
my kids know what it’s like to be cared for and to care for elders,
and to support people through the end of life – life is mysteriously so, beautifully wonderfully so

in high school Laurel was in the Boy Scout Explorers so she had many adventures in the wilderness
Florida is ecologically diverse so she experienced and learned about the specific ecology of different places, various wild spaces swamps to old world forests camping kayaking hiking listening Laurel
was also the president of the environmental club and became the president of the countywide Congress
of environmental clubs in Miami, Dade County 2 million students
organizing beach cleanups organizing workdays organizing workshops
(picking up leadership skills, setting her foundation so
throughout her life leadership roles often find her)
Laurel assumed she would study environmental science

yet no – surprise! – It was time to visit colleges so Laurel
got on a plane with her father flying to Hampshire College in Massachusetts
life is beautifully wonderfully mysterious – she didn’t know it at the time
that Hampshire College is renowned for activism so Laurel found out about this protest that she
wanted to attend and convinced her dad to switch their tickets to Miami, instead fly to Washington DC so suddenly she found herself standing in a mass of 10,000 people
gathering flyers and posters and buttons and it was like she had found her world
a world of social justice, thoughtful Movement Oh the powerful feeling of finding yourself
in the midst of an active movement, 10,000 worker bees buzzing Oh feel the energy vibrating
people power pulsing, hearts united to awaken the masses to right a wrong
to create a better world

Laurel left college after two years, followed her heart to backwoods Montana
for a wildlife conservation campaign to protect the last remaining herd of wild bison she lived
in a commune 60 people cozy in a three bedroom cabin 
every day snowshoeing and cross-country skiing into the wild documenting and disrupting
the harassment the trapping the slaughtering of ancient bison, the fog of their mingling breath One
alive with the Great Beasts in the pristine winter wilderness beautiful wonderful the passion the purpose
this was her new world and she loved it

Laurel hopped the peace and justice train and became a traveling activist, she joined the struggle
to expose the moneymaker worshipers of wealth, spotlighting
the economic malignancy that tramples everything and everyone that gets in its way –
she organized protests, large mass mobilizations all across the country, her favorite memory
returning home to Miami to take a stand against the Free Trade of the Americas Treaty, trying
to prevent the exploitation of Central and South America, 30,000 people marching Oh!

the movement of energy and emotion the sense of accomplishment marching she
would usually get arrested and often hurt, but then she would be released and the charges dropped
because the arrests were never lawful and she would sue them and she would win
and they would give her money funding her activism 
marching Oh the motion the emotion, engaged in the work devoted to the struggle
the deep bonds you form with your brothers and sisters in arms, linking arms
Speaking Out beautiful wonderful – one-of-a-kind life-changing experience

and then, when you come out of these giant protests and into the real world
the general population just doesn’t understand – the force
the force for good pulsing through your veins, and they don’t seem to understand the power
the people have the power to create a better world they don’t seem to understand what is happening and how
the world needs the heart’s power and they look at you like you’re the crazy one with your idealist mindset attempting to heal the world

so – Laurel is protesting at the Republican National Convention in New York City and she gets arrested
and all the arrestees get stored in a decommissioned bus depot with petroleum spilled on the ground and the fiberglass ceiling coming down so they spend three days sitting and standing in fiberglass and petroleum My God! (though she didn’t meet them at the time, didn’t know this at this time
she would later find out that Jacob Richards and Connie Murillo – her people – were present in that jail and smuggled out pictures which they sold to CNN making national news) so, Laurel gets out of jail and Ben, her husband at the time, tells her that her grandfather fell out of a tree and broke his leg so they get  on a plane with Laurel’s clothes still soaked in petroleum and fiberglass heading to Grand Junction to aid her grandfather

and they are living in the countryside and they don’t know anyone and they have a lot of spare time so Laurel is scrapbooking yes you heard that right Laurel is scrapbooking for eight months until one day they are walking by a coffee shop on Colorado Avenue and notice a flyer about the showing
of a documentary called “The Miami Model” – what the what?! life’s is so mysterious
Ben and Laurel look at each other like are you the one that put up that flyer because, because, because it is a documentary about the protest Laurel helped organize and she is featured in the film

and she hasn’t yet seen it so they decide to attend the screening and as they turn into the parking lot Laurel is unaware of the magnitude of the occasion, that she has truly arrived
her lifeline is shifting as she walks into the small building on Grand Avenue
into the Unitarian Universalist Church! And obviously they recognize her
hey aren’t you in this movie?, and watching the movie brings out pent-up emotions because the Miami arrest was extremely traumatizing and of course the lights come on and they ask her to speak so
she blubbers all puffy-faced and teary-eyed through her words, wonderful beautiful
so thus is she introduced to The Church and her best friend Connie

a room full of people viewing the movie and among them the few
who would become Her People like kindred souls they connected and started sharing their stories and within a few months they moved into a house together forming
the Confluence Collective – a place where people were encouraged to stop by and share their ideas,
safe to say even the most radical ideas and they began planning and organizing, building people power within the Valley, Speaking Out against injustice spreading the word of a better way
wonderful beautiful to be a part of a community so close together sharing their space and their lives and
organizing locally to affect the larger community 
[Elizabeth and I were working with them through a local activist group called A Voice of Reason]

Connie and I weren’t that close at first, we were kind of competitive in the beginning yet we became closer and closer over the years and then boom! Connie had Nicolai and Cohen, and I had Ramona all in
a span of 18 months , so, we moved out of the collective and into a house and we started 
raising the babies together, it was just the babies Connie and I and our partners living together and it was Amazing the babies shared a nursery together Connie and I both breast-fed all three of them 
they grew up together the children became our activism our way of changing the world, 
creating a better world.

(so when people approach me to thank me for taking in Connie’s children, saying things like you’re amazing it’s amazing what you’ve done I know they mean well, yet they are missing something – we were always a family, already a family, kids and parents enmeshed in each other’s hearts,
we’re just missing a family member now) 

several years later Laurel’s next story, the one we’ve all been awaiting (members of our congregation who’ve been around a while) holding our breaths because our hearts play a small part in this grieving
story of mourning
yes, Connie got cancer, no, no, no! Connie got cancer

at the time Laurel was a doula, a professional childbirth coach who walks you through a harrowing, intimate medical experience which is what cancer is so she became Connie’s personal doula
holding her hand every scan every imaging every surgery every everything and
Connie did the treatment grueling debilitating harrowing to buy some earthly time,
Connie let Laurel help shape how the boys were going to know about it
Laurel bought children’s books about how to understand your loved one’s cancer
she showed and explained Mama’s (she was Mama, Laurel is Mommy)  scans and x-rays and procedures and

Connie went into remission, she grew her huge heart impossibly larger living in the moment she celebrated life
(she sits in a circle singing –
may we be filled with loving kindness, may we be well
may we be peaceful and at ease, may we be whole)
she quit work homeschooled Nicolai spent all of her time with he and Cohen, and when the boys
were with their fathers, she would go on adventures everything from rock climbing to concerts,
dancing, dancing, dancing

she got 11 months free from cancer – Connie collapsed at a concert Laurel got a call from an ICU 
in Arizona so Laurel drove down to get her brought her back home, the cancer was back had moved into her brain, soon they moved her and the boys into their house like they had lived for so many years 
one big family
(“you know, it’s strangely paradoxical, some ways our family grew yet
it also shrunk because we lost her”) Connie opted not to do the treatment,
chose to cherish the rest of her life, they set her up with a sunny plant filled music filled
healing room, love poured into her room beautiful wonderful 

while Laurel tended Connie’s sickbed she worked full-time on her second bachelor’s degree,
a five-year commitment, graduating two months after Connie’s death,

sometimes I regret that it took me 15 years to graduate with my first bachelor’s degree yet
I wouldn’t be the person that I am today if I hadn’t driven out into the woods in Montana
beautiful wonderful I have a husband Jake and I are crazy busy yet we are happy 
Jake got a Masters degree in education and his dream is to be a middle school civics teacher yet now he’s living his other dream as a whitewater flyfishing guide and also works as a counselor at the mental health hospital – I am an RN working in home health I also deliver babies at a birthing center I also teach nursing classes at Colorado Mesa University and 
I still do a bit of volunteer organizing both locally and nationally and

I’m the president of the Board at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Grand Valley my
little community I am a spiritual person I had a religious upbringing I went from Methodist to Episcopal to born-again Baptist and became a Buddhist in college until I studied Comparative Religion and realized there isn’t a right answer, there is sacred wisdom in all of it my mother is now a Methodist minister so
I am a fine fit as a UU I am a spiritual person I love my little community
it means so much to me and my family I’m so grateful will never forget
how the UU’s supported us during Connie Murillo’s  passing, I love
knowing that my kids are being raised in a church environment where they can believe
whatever they want to believe and still be supported and loved

My kids mean the world to me, are the world to Jake and I they are happy kids
I love how they get to play in open country spaces catching snakes and frogs, exploring, wild 
life is so mysterious my kids don’t have sidewalks or a neighborhood we have soil and trees,
so different from my childhood it boggles my mind how I came to so love chickens
Jake teaches the kids flyfishing and bow hunting they can all tie flies and shoot a bow and arrow,
whenever we get spare time it is often an adventure in the Great Outdoors beautiful wonderful

Jake and I have four beautiful wonderful kids (two from Connie and two from Jake and I – all ours) I’m simultaneously humbled and filled it’s an honor to witness the type of people 
my children are becoming

Ramona is 13 in eighth grade wants to be a surgeon and a writer she’s already working on her first novel she is an avid reader and makes jewelry and art beautiful wonderful Ramona

though Nicolai is no longer living with us we lost the court battle he’s living with relatives in Denver
he still talks to Cohen on the phone and they text back-and-forth every day he’s a good soccer player is playing flag football now attending a private Catholic school is 13 in 8th grade beautiful wonderful Nicolai

Cohen is 12 in sixth grade is learning the clarinet wants to be a mathematician and videogamer he enjoys video games is saving money to buy a gaming PC beautiful wonderful Cohen

Emmett is nine in third grade is really into archery, plays hockey and likes anything to do with trains and visiting model train museums beautiful wonderful Emmett

and so is Laurel’s unexpected life,  living in the moment, taking one more breath 

Life flows on...   In endless song...