Suspended Heart

To my mind, there is nothing that could be worse than not knowing the fate of a loved one, particularly a child.  A parent suffers the most when a child is missing; the parent’s mind and heart are suspended between hope and fear.  I bring this up because of a dream I experienced last night. 

It is the start of May, a spring time of possibility, of new growth, of hatchlings in their nest with wide, hungry mouths to feed, of sunshine that penetrates the atmosphere bringing forth life on earth in our northern hemisphere as our planet tilts toward the epicenter of our solar system.  I am fortunate to live in a safe community, a place full of people, potential, communal happenings, trust and generosity.  There is an abundance of young children and teenagers and parents and families, a flush of humanity in my village, which has yet still to awaken to this new day.  I sit here drinking a dark rich coffee and writing the workings of my mind as the sun rises over my shoulder and my heart sings its own thanks for all the goodness in my world. 

Yesterday my community, Hamburg, put on an all-day music fest.  This festival brought to town 1000 people wanting to party, enjoy music and celebrate the beginning of another beautiful Western New York Summer.  A few of us sat on my backyard patio sipping Lemon Drop Martinis and snacking on appetizers soaking in the last of the day’s warm rays.  I walked to Hamburg’s Memorial Park to join 500 other people, young adults, families, seniors, and children playing and laughing.  At 8 p.m. sharp one of the organizers of the Hamburg Music Fest led the audience in a sing-along of “All You Need is Love,” joining other people throughout the town in singing an iconic song that reminds us of what we all, one way or another, live out our lives for.

I meandered with friends up Main Street, Hamburg, USA, a slice of Americana at its finest with businesses flying the American Flag and coffee shops, pizza parlors, hair salons, local banks, restaurants, including Mexican, Italian, American grills, bars, offices, a floristry, an even an educational center equipped with commercial kitchen and yoga space dedicated to enlightening our community about healthier eating and being.  Another 300 people gathered on Main Street drinking beer and wine and listening to the live music provided by local musicians.  It was quite a scene.  Every few steps, I would encounter a friend or someone I knew.  It felt cheerfully good.

Turning to walk home early, I wanted to join my children and sit on my front sun porch so I could listen to the sounds and musical happenings from the comfort of my own space, an arts and craft style bungalow that I purchased and rehabbed 10 years ago when I was just separated and my boys were only 2 and 5 years old.  My how a decade has flown by, and my children have grown taller than me, and I have witnessed the growth of families with new babies in our neighborhood every year.  I am forever surrounded, and happily so, by children both at home and work.  I love how my next door neighbor’s children peek through the opening of the fence, a perfect entrée, between the yards and unhesitatingly join me in my backyard.  Just the other day these same children, ages 2 and 7, came over to help me sow peas in my raised beds.  You  could practically hear the microbes in the soil rejoice as little happy human hands moved the earth about adding seeds that would soon sprout to life and bring forth more life on earth, in our little corner of the planet.

Awakening this morning, my mind quickly registered the sounds of the dawn chorus, in particular the resounding honk of a flock of geese overhead while I still rested my body in my own bedroom nest. 

My backyard garden beds are bursting with life.  The ferns and Forget-Me-Nots and Bleeding Hearts grow prolifically overnight.  One day they were just barely visible buds poking out of the soil and the next they are startlingly in voluptuous bloom.  It is sacred and sensuous and moving, all this growing and living around me in my small 60 by 50 foot backyard.  As small as it is, it doesn’t change the basic truth of the goodness of rebirth.  It reminds me of when I was first pregnant, when I was told that my uterus was the shape of a lemon inside of me, probably I was only 2 weeks on, but I felt the immediate pull of life inside of me being.  And I am reminded of that in my garden beds, that even when the winter snows began to melt away, and only the memory of the garden life from the year before is a present reminder of what would once flourish again so abundantly, I still viscerally feel an awareness of the budding life and the truth of all that is reborn each spring time.  Then to find myself again amidst the rampant growth of everything in my yard, grasses, buds on the Norway Maple above my head spitting tree pollen all over the patio furniture and concrete below, the yellowness of the plump dandelions, the Viburnum that pushed forth its leaves through pregnant buds as if overnight, the ferns beneath the rapidly producing Dawn Redwood that grows ever taller to the heavens above each spring after its winter’s rest, and the ever reliable hosta that unfold their leaves so sensually each May.  How could we ever doubt the basic goodness of a rich, green life-producing earth that always remembers to wake up?

This entire continual verdant resurrection taking place is a calming reminder for a heavy heart and troubled mind with which I awoke to the world this morning.  Rebirth is something we can count on each year, it never fails us, and it is basically good for certain.  As I fell asleep last night before 11, after having read a chapter of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a book that I am reading in sips, I felt moved by the longing and love of one Russian’s heart.  My mind, as it dreamed last night, encountered a reality that for me is the most difficult any human being could face, the loss of a child, but even more specifically the unknown fate of a child.  In my dream, there was a turbulent sea whose level had risen unexpectedly, and my youngest son had boarded a vessel without any other members of his family.  Waves were rising and washing everything in their path out to sea in a violent torrent.  There was no stopping the onslaught of water’s fury.  And all I could see in my mind was my son as he parted from me to board a ship, alone.  As the water pounded the land and homes, a group of people had gathered and all I could do was think of my son’s fate.  My heart was heavy and broken, my mind grasped on to some small ray of hope that the sea faring vessel had somehow managed to ride the dangerous swells of water and that he would be okay.  I felt myself crying in my dream, and even though I knew that I was only dreaming, it did not take away the heaviness and deep sadness that settled into my heart.  It reminded me that this is some people’s realities right now, that a child or loved one is missing, and that the mind naturally longs for the child’s return. 

The heart always holds out some hope for a safe return while bracing itself for the worst and fearing the loss, yet fearing even more the not knowing.  A suspended heart of sadness is a grief that never seems to be assuaged.  As difficult as it is to not know, wanting to stay in a suspended state because the grief of actually knowing with absolute certainty that one’s child is dead seems too large a suffering to bear.  Yet never knowing is like meeting death and impermanence over and over again, moment after moment.  Which grief is more, I cannot say?   I was just grateful that when I finally did rise from the nest of my bed and go to my son’s room, I felt the palpable relief and supreme gratitude that he lay there serenely in his own bed, face down in his own dreams.   

Today, I will sit quietly and contemplate during my morning meditation all the people who are suspended between knowing and not knowing.  I will extend the fabric of my heart to them.  I will wish them some small peace, all the while realizing that they live in constant fear.  I will acknowledge this and give thanks for the original peace I feel and remind myself to not take the blessings of my life for granted, not even for one moment.

Working with Habitual Patterns -- A Tribute to My Son on His Birthday

The single greatest challenge in love and sustaining the basic goodness that resides within loving relationships is our habitual patterns.  Our habits are both an obstacle and an opportunity.  When we experience something somewhat familiar, whether a good or bad feeling, the memory triggers our mind to remember; and when something feels similar to an experience in the past, we may react the same way if we don’t pause to notice first.  We are conditioned to respond similarly over and over again, and we do this, ironically, even if the outcome was not what we wished for or wanted in the past.  The good news is that we can re-program our habitual responses and tendencies.  The situation is workable.  If we can slow down and pause for even a few moments, and feel the habitual response in our body, we can make some adjustments to the way we typically respond.  Retraining our mind to respond differently, or creating a new and healthier pattern, takes time and the reprogramming takes places in the body and in the mind.

 

The mind is basically good, that is clear, stable and strong beneath all the tapes, patterns, criticisms, self-judgment, and fear.  And the good news is every situation can be worked with.  The first, and most important thing we can do to shift habits and our knee-jerk responses, is to be aware, with supreme gentlenss, and even if we aren’t aware all the time, which most of us are not, when we say or think or do something that is a habitual response, it wakes us up.  We notice and then take a moment to pause before reacting, or at least considering pausing before reacting.

My eldest son is a teenager and in his first year of high school.  The last few days I have caught myself reacting to him.  I have been reminding myself, with kindness and gentleness, that I want to rewire my response to his patterns and pace in the morning.  He has trouble getting up and getting going, and I have been a neurotic mess in the morning, actually for many years, sometimes yelling, becoming anxious, whipping around the house like a tornado thinking that moving everyone along into their routines at this frenzied pace will help ensure a smoother running day for us all. 

I have realized  some things.  First, we do need to keep a schedule because school and work all do have a start time and we are bound by this in our society.  Second, I am responding to my own long held patterns and personal struggles of getting going in the morning that I have experienced first years ago as a child and teenager, in my years in graduate school in Chicago, then in my marriage, and when my children were babies.  For many reasons, including some depression I experienced, starting my days was a challenge for a long time for me.  It has become clear to me that my son is reminding me of my own habitual patterns and fearfulness of the depressive tendencies I had for years, depression that I think continued because I was too afraid to look at some things in my life truthfully.

 

My son has a practice he now does which is to sit with his eyes open in the living room and look around the house.  He said to me the other evening that he just wanted to walk around the house and look around at everything, to be aware of the world in our own home.   He has expressed some anxiousness about the speediness with which he feels the world is moving and the pressures of high school and growing up.   And as he sat the last couple of mornings, I caught myself in my knee-jerk pattern of too aggressively reminding him to go and get ready.  Very gently he reminded me that he was sitting and calming his mind for the day ahead.  This stopped me in my tracks and I stopped repeating my same morning, "let's get going" worn out mantra.  His quiet reminder to me woke me up on the spot, spoke to me to stop pushing my agenda, my fears and anxieties onto to him.

 

Today is his 15th birthday.  He is a burgeoning, awakening being.  I am thankful for his loving kindness and gentle patience as we all uncover our way to waking up.

As Quietly as a Mouse

One evening, as quietly as a mouse, I crept into stand by the side of my twelve year old son’s bed.  I just stood there, stock still with the night air enveloping me.  I felt to be dissolving into the space and swirling colliding molecules in the air around my body.  For those few moments, time stopped, as I quietly as possible inhaled and exhaled, breathing in my son, his frame barely silhouetted by the light from outside poking in from the space between the Roman shade and the sill.  Quiet.  Night.  Air.  Breath.  Body.  Love. Mother. Son.

Then Aidan said in his still young boy voice that will, no doubt, soon to be changing, “Hi mama.”  Those two simple words spoken all over the world were felt more than heard, reaching into a place inside of me, a place that words cannot touch.  It was the eternal connection between mother and child, as ancient as life itself on this earth.

I climbed into his bed and nuzzled into him, inhaling his boy scent at the nape of his neck, and no other moment mattered but this one.  Time suspended and the only truth for me was our two bodies touching, our hearts loving one another.  A few moments later I asked, “How’d you know I was here?”  He answered without a second’s pause, “I sensed you.”

It is winter in Western New York, cold with snow falling from the vast sky above blanketing the February ground.  Our winter has vacillated from snowy and blustery and freezing, to warm snaps and rain and full melting of the snowy blanket.  Some say it feels strange and I suppose it does to me too.  But it is what we have.  It is our reality in this moment in our earth’s temporal history.

My boys and I like to ski and snowboard.  We went out recently and my oldest, Kailen, sometimes feels a need to leave us so he can really cut loose and practice his snowboard finesse.  I am a skier and my youngest, Aidan, is a boarder.  He is still developing his skill and likes the slopes that are quieter.  He and I found a slope that is shaped in a bowl virtually free of other people.  There is always that one run that sticks with you after a day of being on the slopes.  The sun had just set, and the night time had closed in around the day.  All was still except the sound of our edges meeting the slope, making a crisp swish.  The air felt fresh in my nostrils, the trees were standing guard as we made our way from one side of the bowl to the other.  The experience felt precise and fresh and alive, and it only lasted a few minutes as we traversed that run together in harmony. 

Standing by his bed quietly that same evening, it felt as if we were one, we had perfectly paired on that ski slope and also in those quiet few moments in his bedroom.  The pairing of two human beings happens rather magically and ordinarily.  It cannot be orchestrated.  It simply happens when it happens. And yet these moments of creating something from nothing, from an emptiness to a moment in which the heart feels full and free of preferences and agenda and concepts and stories, are with us throughout our lives, actually throughout our days and moment to moment existence.  It is in being still enough and receptive enough to notice that the gift of oneness is experienced.  Paying attention to our life takes practice. 

Human beings feel a need to protect each other.  As I consider more about this basic instinct to take care of each other, I realize that it takes a certain combination of gentleness, kindness, courage and vulnerability to make ourselves available to both being protected and protecting. 

As a woman, I have made my way in my life after mostly looking after myself and have only in recent years, in my forties, come to see value and a desire in letting myself drop my stories and defenses in order to be protected by another, specifically by a man. 

I think all human beings at their core have a natural instinctive propensity to guard those they love, particularly when we think of mothers and their children.  This is not singularly unique to humans as there are many mammals that fiercely protect their young. 

I am also contemplating the male protecting his loved ones and how this instinct is something so beautiful and tender, and yet possibly something we have pushed away over the last four or five decades as our world changed and women became as prevalent in the work place and our economy as men, and often even earning more than their male partners, and leaving the “mothering” to the fathers in certain circumstances. 

We naturally want to partner and be with others, at least most of us do.  What would account for all the dating sites and new forms and formulations of late 20^th and early 21^st dating?  I, myself, have come to see very clearly that allowing myself to be cared for, protected by and loved by a man is something that I not only want, it is an innate need of mine, to pair up with someone, the right one, of the opposite sex.  It has taken me years and decades even to admit this, to drop my guard to say this out loud, and inside my own head and heart.  It has taken me a long time to let my vulnerability and tenderness open me to the love of a man, to trust a man enough, to have faith in his stability and constancy, however impermanent; it has taken a lifetime to say I want to grow old with someone.

I see clearly now that as much as men, at least the ones I am honored to know, want to protect their loved ones, with fierce and fearless hearts, they are vulnerable themselves, and they must trust in their tenderness and strength enough to offer this to another person, a woman, their beloved.  To protect, one must become vulnerable to their own hearts, they risk being rejected and pushed away; they risk losing the one they love as impermanence is a certainty as surely as we live and breathe.  And yet the urge to pair is so primordial and transformative, that we if we risk and see clearly our own self and the other self that wants to be loved and protected, then pairing becomes quite possible and quite lovely. 

And, listening, deep profound and abiding listening, is the fertile ground that loving, good, protecting relationships need.  We have a yearning to be loved, and it nourishes us.  It nourishes our primordial beings.  And I sense in my atoms and molecules and nuclei of my being, that surely as I return to my breath, I wish to return to someone’s loving embrace and protectiveness.  For me there is this visceral feeling of coming home to a primeval forest, an ever-moving stream in the fresh mountain air.

 

Listening

“Everything and everyone is speaking to us.”

There was once a prince who had at his disposal every worldly desire one could imagine, yet, Siddhartha Gautama knew that something was missing.  It wasn’t so much an emptiness as it was something just not quite adding up, a nagging feeling of being trapped, trapped by one’s own confusion.  The confusion was resulting from a mind that was ignorant, ignorant as in not yet realizing something.  The world beyond his grand palace was not even a world that existed for him.  Like the view once that the world was flat, this prince went around thinking that his world ended at the palace’s door.  There was nothing beyond it, nothing that he could yet relate to anyway.  The prince’s world was completely filled up, or so it seemed.  Still, he had a nagging doubt and became inquisitive and started to explore the world beyond the castle walls.  Just at that moment, the prince made room for the world beyond his narrow view to begin speaking to him. 
 

I tell this story because it gives me insight into my heart and the experience of loving another.  When we meet someone, when there is mutual attraction, there is this sense of moving parts, of a dynamic experience rich with unknown actions and words and feelings and sensory experiences.  New love is fresh and has infinite potential; we are the artist upon which we will create the masterpiece of our love.  In love there is a second co-creator painting the mural, and it is our beloved.  The actions and feelings and thoughts and words to be spoken cannot be known because they have yet to occur in the new experience.  Vast is the potential of the love, of the mural.  With the painting of the mural, color begins to fill up the space on the canvas; the emptiness that existed prior to the love beginning is filled up with experiences.  Color emerges. Form takes shape.  Images  appear.  It is mysterious, but the mystery begins to become defined.  As space is taken up it, we may have the thought or feeling that that the experience taking place becomes less interesting, because it is no longer new.  Actually, this is precisely when opening our hearts further can lead us out of our own little confined palaces, like the prince, to discover that which we were fundamentally ignorant of before; we begin to let ourselves go deeper into our life's truly magical experiences.   

My sense is that when we overlay the raw, in-the-moment experiences with expectations, hopes or fears, is precisely when the love, the mural, loses its freshness, its oxygen.  Colors begin to fade or dull.  We begin to expect something different, like a particular result, and forget the wide open space that had heretofore existed on the canvas.  The freshness of the experience is somehow lost. We may experience disappointment, and be let down.  The unknown, which we before felt drawn to, now begins to frighten us.  Ironically and profoundly significant is that the nature of the experience that drew us in the first place was its fresh poignant impermanence, its momentariness, its presence.  We could never have known what would take place on the canvas, in our hearts, beyond the castle walls.  If we begin fixing a point, defining our love, suffering occurs.  We try to freeze love for fear of it dying or of our beloved leaving us.  How could we ever possibly go on without him or her?  Forgetting that we were going on before, we begin to crush the love, suffocate it, muss up the beauty and images, and the colors all run together and lose their natural elegance. In our ignorance and confusion, we suffer.

Here is something we have forgotten.  We are responsible for our happiness.  When things in love start feeling claustrophobic or even too distant, the whole thing begins to either implode or explode.  The love that was once there so vibrant and healthy, seems to have disappeared or even worse never existed in the first place.  Was it ever present?  Was it ever real?  Like the volcanic mountain of Mount Nevis by which I am sitting as it breathes its living force of both the fire of its teeming core or its cool refreshing water source of its deep natural spring, I sense magic, a very ordinary life giving sacred energy.  I cannot hold it.  I cannot define it.  I cannot capture it and contain it.  I can only let it run through me and feed me as I then in turn feed the rest of the world that I touch and encounter throughout my day. 

In this world, I comport myself with a code of conduct; it is with the sense that I am meeting the sacred world with a strong upright dignified posture and a soft and tender heart.  I, like the prince, knew there was something worth investigating beyond the four walls of the castle, the cocoon of my own mind's narrative and patterns, and it has taken me a good deal of living to get to some semblance of a code that fits with me, my being, as well as my interconnected being in the world.  The presence of gentleness, combined with fearlessness, gives nutrients to a life that is founded on basic goodness, and a wisdom derived from our human natural intelligence.  The life spark seems to have always been; I derive my confidence and well-being from being present in my moment-by-moment existence in our phenomenally beautiful world.  I then in turn can offer back to the world my experience of basic goodness in the form of deep listening, profound kindness and open hearted compassion, all synonymous for love.

As we sense our goodness, and risk being touched by the world and leaving our little palaces or cocoons, there are infinite moments when we can wake up throughout our day.  Each and every encounter, even if it feels contrived or placed with obstacles can awaken us.  As we go through our lives, and if we are blessed enough to wake up a bit through a mindful-awareness practice that we have been taught, we can more readily avoid the river of obstacles of our own making.  This does not mean that we will not be sad.  Impermanence is a fundamental truth.  We lose our loved ones; things are in constant flux and change.  Life would not exist without change, existence would not even be.  We would not be.  This does not mean there is less love, there is just less fixation and more awareness of our life and its fleeting nature.  There is the truth that there is a path to wake up, and waking up tenderly and bravely brings us to touch our own genuine heart of sadness.  It is genuine because it is always changing and transforming us.

I am spending a week of retreat from my everyday life, although this experience of being here by virtue of the fact that I am here is now my everyday life.  I am here with a friend from long ago.  I had no idea what to expect when we came together.  Expectations would have only built concepts and a narrative around an experience that had yet to be lived.  So, I remained open.  I knew that I wanted to have a week-long experience of being present to myself and my friend.  After years of touching my basic goodness, of mindfulness practice, I have come to the realization and profound awareness that friendship itself can become intensely intimate.  Either way, showing up as who we are to the other and deeply listening to them and the world around us as we move through space and time is an expression of generosity, of basic goodness, of our essence.  I have become aware that the simple act of listening, with an open mind and a willingness to be heartbroken, bridges the distance between two human hearts.  This is true love, truly loving another human being.  On this island as I see goats, pigs, cows, sheep and monkeys living symbiotically and at peace with human beings, I see that we can take a lesson on how to live with our earth in all its naturalness in a more sane and joyful way.

As in our case, we both have experienced marriage, the birth of children, divorce, uncertainty, heartaches and breaks, and still we are willing to take this journey to our centers, to our hearts, to our foundation.  My friend has opened his heart to me on this journey we are taking together for this short while.  Many things he has been generous and openhearted enough to share with me will remain with me for my life time.  One I wish to share is about listening.  As we sat together one tropical evening by the seafront in Nevis having a drink, he had a realization of when he knew his marriage had ended; it was when the listening between the two of them had stopped.  That was so simple and real.  It made sense and it was spoken with such genuine truth and sadness that I felt, as I looked into his eyes deeply listening without filter or self-consciousness, that I was looking into a mirror and seeing the ancient, ageless nature of what we are. 

As we drove through the beachside yesterday, the clouds began to form in the east and we traversed a rather rough and rock strewn road to come upon a raw strip of beach.  We passed bales of wool on the side and a dilapidated horserace course, to end up in front of a donkey that stood tethered to a wooden post.  The donkey had wound himself good and tight around the pole and both my friend and I immediately had the very human empathetic response to assist this animal in need.  With the help of our sense perceptions and even a force more primordial than our eyes or ears, we knew that this fellow sentient being was suffering.  We had a visceral response in our core to relieve the suffering.  Without really pausing he jumped out of the car and tried to get the stressed out animal to unwind itself.  With a heart of goodness and love, my friend responded and not really knowing how the animal would in turn react, this sad animal managed to further wind himself up.  From my spot, I could only feel my aching heart, helpless, completely and utterly helpless to do anything useful.  The only thing I could do is express my compassion and feel the immense sadness in my heart, to feel my good human heart so raw, so broken. 

Sensing that the donkey would not unwind and would only work itself up more and hurt itself, we drove off to a beach which by this time had become overtaken by wind and a grey storm cloud drawing closer from the east.  We decided to return and as we passed the donkey, he had managed to completely hook himself to the pole, with no room to move and with a hoof now caught in the little bit of rope that was slack.  It was one of the saddest sights I have ever witnessed.  Neither of us talked for a bit.  Words seemed hollow and superficial in the face of the realization that our happening upon that animal, and willingness to do good, may have caused more harm and suffering, however unintended. 

This morning as I sat in front of my island meditation shrine, spontaneously tears welled in my eyes and spilled out for that animal, for my friend Eric, for my son Kailen,  for old and new friends in my heart, for my own broken heart, for my beautiful world in all its true forms both of suffering and joy, love and fear, confusion and stability. 

I could not have been more in love with my world and everyone in my life, and everyone around my life than I was at that moment.  And I gave thanks for the teachings of truth and goodness that have been offered to me without our time’s transactional mindset.  The wisdom has been transmitted so that I, like so many others, might remember and awaken to all that is good in me and all that is good in everyone.

I ended my meditation sitting practice with a poem by David Whyte, “The Winter of Listening.”  I share with you now reader this poem which expressed in its unique medium that which I felt this morning, that which I have been feeling through this whole experience with myself and my friend, that which I am experiencing as I open my heart to touch love again, to touch my world again, to become vulnerable yet made whole by opening up to the forces of the world, its life force and its inevitable heartbreak.    Poetry is a doorway to that which we need to hear and the truth which we may ourselves be unable to speak.  It is the voice of our primordial goodness.

 

THE WINTER OF LISTENING

By David Whyte

 

No one but me by the fire,

my hands burning

red in the palms while

the night wind carries

everything away outside.

 

All this petty worry

while the great cloak

of the sky grows dark

and intense

round every living thing.

 

What is precious

inside us does not

care to be known

by the mind

in ways that diminish

its presence.

 

What we strive for

in perfection

is not what turns us

into the lit angel

we desire,

 

what disturbs

and then nourishes

has everything

we need.

 

What we hate

in ourselves

is what we cannot know

in ourselves but

what is true to the pattern

does not need

to be explained.

 

Inside everyone

is a great shout of joy

waiting to be born.

 

Even with summer

so far off

I feel it grown in me

now and ready

to arrive in the world.

 

All those years

listening to those

who had

nothing to say.

 

All those years

forgetting

how everything

has its own voice

to make

itself heard.

 

All those years

forgetting

how easily

you can belong

to everything

simply by listening.

 

And the slow

difficulty

of remembering

how everything

is born from

an opposite

and miraculous

otherness.

 

Silence and winter

has lead me to that

otherness.

 

So let this winter

of listening

be enough

for the new life

I must call my own.

 

Every sound

has a home

from which is has come

to us

and a door

through which it is going

again

out into the world

to make another home.

 

We speak

only with voices

of those

we can hear ourselves

and the body has a voice

only for that portion

of the body of the world

it has learned to perceive.

 

It becomes

a world itself

by listening

hard

for the way

it belongs.

 

There it can

learn

how it

must be

and what

it must do.

 

And

here

in the tumult

of the night

I hear the walnut

above the child’s swing

swaying

its dark limbs

in the wind

and the rain now

come to

beat against my window

and somewhere

in this cold night

of wind and stars

the first whispered

opening of

those hidden

and invisible springs

that uncoil

in the still summer air

each yet

to be imagined

rose.

A Beautiful Place

Hmmm, where to begin?  How about begin at the moment in which I find myself, sitting here crossed-legged on this dusty country loveseat in a beautiful place, all my senses alive.  My body awake, my mind precise and directly connected to the rest of me.  The classical violins strum and serenade our collective moment.  The aroma wafting from the stove, another homemade vegetarian pizza gently layered with mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, sweet basil, onions, and green olives.  The fizz and bubble of the dry sparkling wine mixed with the never, ever “Not-From-Concentrate” orange juice, five women soon to toast the sunny Autumn Saturday and the vibrant colors that awaken the optic nerve. 

Five working women, busy lives mothering children and ailing parents, running companies, running households, running lives and minds and hearts somehow manage to find a weekend to be together to transcend all the living that must be done back home.  We packed four “Zsa Zsa’s” (not my word but our friend Sharon’s second husband’s name for us) into a sedan with a weekend’s worth of clothes, jackets, food, and accoutrement (perhaps there would be some meditation time, some study time, some yoga time, perhaps it would all be wine toasting).  Our fifth friend would be along the next morning to join.  In rapturous joy to just be together for this weekend, we headed through the fall scenery waving to us from the side of the thruway to the Finger Lakes Region of New York for a wine tasting weekend (and food love fest!).  The trip to A Beautiful Place went by in a dash with conversation, connection, and shared love between friends of the heart.

Exiting the New York Thruway, we wended our way through Geneva on the Lake, past Hobart and William Smith College, toward Keuka Lake and our rustic home for the weekend.  Two hours from departure, we all stood perched on the front porch fiddling with the lock box.  Opened, key in hand, we moved like a collective wave into the cabin and were greeted by The Beetles, hundreds of them teeming, scurrying, black and red things scampering every which way as we four women entered disrupting their nest under the door’s jam.

After we cleared out the nimble little critters beneath our feet, brushing them out the doorway back onto the outside porch, we entered the cabin and deposited all of our bags and groceries and homemade dishes.  I went into the bathroom and quickly realized that there was no hand towel, it occurred to me that my memory did serve me earlier that day when I phoned Sharon to ask, “Do we need to bring our own linens?”  It ended being a fleeting thought that never entered the realm of worry or concern, and lo and behold, the no hand towel moment of recognitoin in our sweet little cabin moved from minor annoyance to all out panic, 'what no hand towels, no bath towels, no bed sheets, oh gosh, what else?'

I lifted up the bedspread and informed the crowd, 'no sheets, no bed linens either.'  Maureen moved into full action and high tailed it to the nearest Wal-Mart.  There was no big box, cheap sheet place to buy linens within 100 miles. So we ended up with 1200 count nylon thread (not a stitch of cotton) sheets from the local drug store.  Better than nothing we all agreed.  Problem solved, we moved right into the prepping of assorted flat bread veggie pizzas for dinner.  Munching on pistachios and chips and salsa and guacamole, we poured out glasses of wine.

The evening was full of merriment, joy, dance, wine, food and assorted pestilences. After rocking out to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” we changed the tone to something more subdued yet still 80’s, Barbra Streisand’s Home Concert with Barry Gibb’s on duet vocals.  We eventually settled into our respective country couches, in soft muted worn tones of pastel blue, pink and beige, and a couple of us curled up our minds and bodies with good books.  Maureen as she passed our little reading nook glanced down at the lampshade on one of the end tables and commented on the attached Walking Stick decoration ever so delicately gracing the edge of the shade, really only barely hanging onto the rim.  She asked, “Isn’t that real looking?” and, gently blew on it amazed by its impressive, realistic looking appearance.  As I glanced up from my computer screen, I saw the Walking Stick’s delicate body move to her outbreath, and knew within a fraction of a second that it was alive as any of us in that room, including those beetles from the afternoon.  After a few moments of excitement and surprise followed by double over belly laughter, I got up with a tissue in hand and gingerly took our latest bug friend for a ride outside into the lovely fall night.

As the weekend went on, I was the savior of small insects throughout the cabin, rescuing them via tissue capture and release.  Spiders, Walking Sticks, bees, beetle bugs, any little critter that crawled, flew or walked found safe passage back to the great outdoors.

On Friday night, we four settled into our respective bedrooms, Maureen and I upstairs in the loft and Sharon and Lora downstairs in the bedroom right off the bath.  Just as I was finding a fix on a comfortable position and ready to fall asleep upon the scratchy heat of the nylon sheets, someone below let loose a blood curdling scream which was shortly followed by two adult women in their forties very rapidly ascending the loft stairs.  Out of breath and in a panic which was frankly from where I stood, or rather lay, tremendously funny, they asked, “Did you hear that noise, there is something clearly in the walls which is trying to gain entrance into this cabin?”  I had not heard anything other than the Psycho-style shriek which had no doubt terrified whatever would-be intruder whom in my mind would certainly not be returning too soon.  Getting out of bed, knowing it was the right thing to do; I went down with them to check out the situation, went into the bathroom and found nothing amiss.  Just in case, I took a dining room chair and barred the downstairs cellar door which did not lock and brought up the painfully dull butcher knife to keep on the bedside table between the second loft room bed that they had decided to sleep in that night.  All settled, we eventually went to sleep upon what felt like great big nylon stockings, laughter mixed with a bit of unease in our minds and hearts.

The pestilences aside, we knew we were surrounded by the stunning beauty of a fleeting fall weekend.  We were breathing in each moment, in each other, in our joys, in our irritations and sensibilities and wave lengths.  It is not easy to make yourself vulnerable to other humans and that is exactly what happens when you allow yourself to be taken away with others.  There are plenty of laughs but also annoyances, uncertainties that come from our individual habitual patterns rolled up into a collective of five women away.  It is funny because it is so true the statement “best pick your battles.” 

If something just doesn’t mean a lot to you than it is important not to cling to it.  If you know it means a great deal to another, give space for the other person to step in and just go along with them.  Being right is not the way to make and keep friends, particularly friends of the heart.  And, who knows when a weekend like this will happen again for all of us to be together in this way.  Life moves and it moves quickly and the gift is found in the present.  The important thing may be to let the other person tell their story or apply their skillfulness but when it starts to move into fear and continuing the perpetuation of cocoons and defenses, it is best to not say anything at all.  Find a way to stop feeding the fear and drama and realize that showing compassion for other’s neuroses and fears starts with allowing space for all this human stuff to simply be. 

Our Saturday morning started out rainy with overcast gray skies yet that didn’t not present an obstacle to hiking on a trail along a creek and wooded path.  We traversed a trail of fallen black walnuts and at the outset of our walk one such nut speedily fell to the path below hitting Lora on her hand and muddying up her sneakers and pants.  We took it as a sign to find a different path. After our morning walk, we came back to the cabin ravenous and to meet Jan who would be joining our weekend and the wine tour we had planned for the day.  Each with a Mimosa in hand to toast our good fortune and the celebration of color outside, we enjoyed more veggie pizzas and then headed over to the neighboring Finger Lake, Seneca Lake, and wineries, a distillery and a craft brew pub.

Back to the cabin, we made dinner of chicken vegetable stew, salad, peach cobbler and more wine.  We talked late into the night, then nestled into our beds to sleep.  Jan decided that the night was ready to end, so came up to the loft and inspired us to dance, extending the night until we all finally fell asleep tired, content, at peace with a smile still on our faces despite those damn sheets.

The morning came after once again feeling relieved to not have to endure yet another night of the nylon abrasion from those hastily purchased sheets (we later found out after reading the note on the fridge that “If you forget your linens, just call us.  Proprietors of A Beautiful Place”), and as there can be with a group of humans, there was some drama that inevitably came up.  A few of us went on a long walk to release any built up tension, while I hung back with Jan to write, read, and sit quietly.

As the time came to set out, we tidied up "A Beautiful Place," our small, rustic, insect-ridden cabin without linens, and headed home.  A weekend for five women who carved out enough time to rejoice in our strengths, our differences, our joys and our collective struggles in this beautiful place and in this beautiful world of ours.

Life is a Blank Page

Before me stands a blank page.  Empty.  Open.  Waiting.  At times writing comes to me, a central theme or idea and spurs my hands into writing, pouring out of me onto the blank canvas before me, this computer screen.  Other times, I am a heart full of feelings, a body full of experiences and sense perceptions.  Memories, recent and long ago, ideas wanting to be expressed and expanded upon, thoughts and emotions and everyday occurrences wish for some outlet.

I write about that which touches my heart, the life of a mother and the joys, the failings, the disappointments, and the lessons.  As I commit deeper and more regularly to a daily meditation practice, to mindful awareness of my momentary life, I feel a certain contentment in both the joys and tribulations of this parenting journey.  In the Buddhist teachings, there is this notion that we have all been each other’s mother and child, so we can feel a certain human family kinship with everyone else.  This does not mean the relationship is always easy.  There is misunderstanding and strong emotions of the negative kind that can overtake us. 

There are those occasions when love between myself and my sons feel like an aching drip.  The love gets mixed up with attachment and creates suffering.  A suffering borne of the realization that one of us will die, that separation will occur and a fear rises up demanding a response, ‘How can I go on without this love, this passionate love I feel for you?’

Interestingly of note is that in one moment we may feel this intense love and palpable fear of separation; and in the subsequent moment, feel another form of suffering that is borne of also fear but manifests as aggression.  The aggression may be characterized by yelling, using hurtful words, getting even, being disappointed, passive aggressive qualities of shutting the other out, or even physical abuse, either way it is suffering, and this comes from a place of fear, fear that there is not enough.  That we aren’t loved enough, respected enough, that there is not enough time to be together, jealousy, inadequacy.  It is rooted in qualities of poverty, thinking we are impoverished.

In love, whether between parent and child, lovers, friends or family members, there is another way.  There is a place, a path in the middle.  There is a pathway, a mental pathway that there is enough, that there is nothing missing, that everything we need and are is available in the moment. 

This does not mean to discount or diminish the difficulties of life, the challenges of being human, the inevitable sadness and suffering of being alive on this earth.  On the contrary, being fully present with a mind that is open, a body that is warm, senses that are alive and aware, and a heart that is available, is to be fully alive and awake as a human being. 

I speak of parenting, being a mom in this essay because I just came through a week of great eye opening and learning.  It has not been an easy week; it was immensely painful. 

Two people as a couple, whether together or divorced, can benefit from being mindful and aware of one another, of our own minds and hearts and of the place our children are in at the moment.  This is not always easy particularly in a world that is so speedy.  A world so wired in all the time.  A world that operates with a poverty sentiment, that if I am not online, or someone isn’t messaging my on Facebook, I am somehow out of the loop, or unimportant.  We relish and require in an addictive way of being paid attention to by another.

Over the last year I have noticed the trigger, emotionally and psychologically, of that the little message bubble in Facebook.  I literally feel a thrill of seeing it lit up red.  The addiction we have to being noticed in this digital age; I am sure that this desire to be noticed has simply changed in the way we experience it but has been with human beings since the dawn.  I just have this sense.

This digital age brings with it a price.  Children and adults spend much more time linked to an electronic device whether at their fingertips or to their ear.  We all spend much less time out of doors.  We use these devices in a state of ignorance, trying to erase a pervasive feeling of boredom or attachment to attention.  We seek perpetual entertainment.  Whether children are from single parent families, products of divorces or two parent working families, we use the digitized devices as babysitters and methods of entertainment.  Caregivers have to work full time often then keep the household running by shopping, cooking, laundering, cleaning, etc.  We all need a little downtime and space in our busy speedy 21^st century schedules to relax and be peaceful.  I know I use the digital world as a form of supervision, my kids would rather be glued to those and not out roaming  the streets, perhaps on adventures or even getting into a bit of mischievous.  What has the trade-off been?  Is it worth it?

In the heat of a fury that overtook me one Thursday evening after finding jeans and dust-devil laden socks in the family room, more clothes strewn in a messy disordered bathroom, undone dishes, I transformed from loving, caring mother to a whirling tornado like she-devil storming angrily and abruptly and loudly to where my son was working on homework at 10 pm in the evening, after an afternoon of sloth-like time undoubtedly wired to television and I Pad.  All of a sudden I detested my decision to ever allow admittance of I Pad or Play Station, let alone computer and TV into our family life.  Simply, I blew.  I felt only rage.  Underneath the vomit of expletives and physical threats, my enraged self, she felt the existence of loving mother.  I knew I had a part in this outcome.  I had helped seed this indifference and slovenly behavior.  I was partly responsible.  If children don’t have the care and mindful guidance of a parent wiser and older, then how can they be expected to grow up with respect and concern for others, even for their own well-being?

There were so many tears, and eventual reconciliation of a kind that involved me stepping out of the whirl of torment and anger to see that my child was really hurting.  That the power I felt in belittling him was not being beneficial, could do real harm and damage if not checked.  The regret I felt for my aggressive actions was not grounded on guilt but wisdom.  I knew that I carried responsibility for my son’s lack of caring.  We needed space, we needed to communicate.  He just said over and over that he didn’t feel as if he was ever good enough.  Were we even having conversations with him about what it meant to be a meaningful member of this family?  Both parents since we are divorced would have to have conversations of this kind.  I would begin by saying sorry and then by listening with kindness and openness.

After the volcanic explosion of emotional venting, my eldest son, who did not bear the brunt of my assault and frustration, came to me, stood before me on the stairs and said that he wanted to share something with me that he hadn’t told anyone.  The April prior on a cruise we took, just the three of us, he had met a girl his age, and had his first experience of falling in love, of kissing another’s lips.  It was beautiful to witness and heartbreaking to watch her end their relationship via a text message.  But he shared that she, who had experienced her own heart ache through the loss of her mother in a terrorist attack, shared with my son what it meant to feel love of another woman other that your own mother.  She told him, “It truly is all good” and that if the ship capsized and was sinking she would be happy to die with him. 

This morning, I awoke after a night of broken sleep and haunted dreams, I drove to Lowes to purchase a bathroom faucet early in the morning and let my mind open to the experiences and feelings of my senses.  I saw a wide sky blue with wisps of clouds above me, a rising sun, and fresh, almost spring-like air and felt completely awakened, even if I had lost hours of sleep taking care of my friend’s two dachshunds the night prior.  What had gone before was over.  There was only me in this car, breathing and something about the morning light and smell of the air and the music I had chosen to listen to tapped into my deepest most profound and joyful place in my mind and I knew that all is okay, all is good, there is not one thing missing, even if at times we humans misapply, or feel lacking, or fearful, or angry.  Our ignorance is real but underneath is the quality of wholeness of infinite unity, of aliveness and wide wakefulness. 

My joy today would come from doing for others, making myself available to love the ones in front of me, to attending my son’s basketball game and being a harbor he could moor to in the midst of his fear and uncertainty about his sports acumen.  I would love today unreservedly.  I would love my children, my family and myself and make no apologies for what had gone before.  I would love, forgive and surrender to the world I am in, the world I have created.